The following post was submitted by Swedish author and journalist Mats Lewan
Thursday was my first day at ICCF-19, and it was worth every minute.
Let me first give you a picture of the situation. I quickly understood that ICCF-19 is very different from earlier years. The number of attendees is the double of what had been expected. A total of about 500 people is lot more than in recent years, even though similar numbers have been reached occasionally at ICCF before.
And apart from the number, the most important difference is the significant amount of young people, which is healthy for the field. Or as long-time renowned cold fusion researcher and ICCF organizer Michael McKubre put it: it’s good and bad. The good thing is that new talent is added, the bad thing is that the quality of the questions is lower than usual since many people lack the background that long-timers have gained through the years –- either the don’t ask questions so as not to make a fool out of themselves, or they ask questions and do make a fool out of themselves, he said, jokingly.
However, I think we both agree that the inflow of new people, talent and ideas is more important than any other aspect.
As for the contents and the presentation, another long timer, Jed Rothwell, told me he was disappointed, not seeing anything really new, whereas, McKubre admitted that there was “some progress”.
I found several presentations interesting, and I tweeted about a few during the day. Steven Katinsky presented an expected LENR Industry Association called Lenria.org. Peter Hagelstein presented interesting results from Mitchell Swartz’s experiments with NANOR-type devices, with clear excess heat.
The Russian scientist Alexander Gromov talked on LENR in plasma electrolysis, and later there were presentations of several other Russians: Vladimir Vysotskii gave a talk on transmutation in biological systems with coli bacteria to decrease half-time decay of the dangerous Cs137 isotope in nuclear waste; Igor Vitalievich Goryachev on another method for remediating nuclear waste; and Anatoly Klimov on excess heat and transmutation in plasmoids (plasma + EMF fields), with possible applications in aerodynamics.
It was clear, also talking with several attendees, that the Russians are doing very well in LENR. They reportedly have regular meetings, even monthly, discussing these kind of experiments. Another Russian — Parkhomov — made a presentation in front of his poster, without a microphone, and unfortunately I didn’t hear much, but as far as I understood he presented isotopic changes from his ‘Lugano replication’ experiments. MFMP registered what was said and will probably post it soon. There was also an interesting theory presented by Mark Davidson, including the concept of deviation of rest mass of particles.
I also had the pleasure to speak with several interesting persons I had not earlier met, or not even been in direct contact with.
One of them was Carl Page [brother of Google CEO Larry Page] who is a strong supporter of the field which he knows well, and while talking with me and Robert Godes of Brillouin Energy, Page told me that he had invested in this company, and that he also found Godes’ theory interesting (I got some good briefing from Godes on his technology which I have studied too little before). BTW, Page also confirmed the rumor about him trying to put up a meeting between Rossi and Elon Musk, which I covered in my book, although he was a little sad that Rossi perceived him as a venture capitalist and not an angel investor.
I would say the Page is a good force for the cold fusion field, and he also told me that he knows Tom Darden of Cherokee/Industrial Heat and respected him much for his way of thinking and his view on how the field could be developed with some kind of ecosystem with mutual agreements on intellectual property.
As a whole it was clear that there’s a lot of positive energy (!)getting into the cold fusion community, and it’s good to remember that there’s so many experienced people having done research for decades, when we’re getting closer to the day when working devices and processes are around, producing data that can finally serve for that solid, accepted theory which the field needs to advance further.
UPDATE: I forgot a few comments
– It’s clear that several investors and industrial companies are getting into the field. That’s a new thing.
– Energiforsk (used to be Elforsk) was represented to gain information and knowledge in the field.
– After discussions with several persons, adding my own sources, I conclude that there probably is good awareness of the latest LENR technology development at the political top level in the following countries: USA, China, Russia, France, Saudi-Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and gradually also India and maybe Japan.
