Writing a book about Andrea Rossi Cold Fusion - what story would you tell?

Just a year ago, before Andrea Rossi and Sergio Focardi’s device, the E-Cat started receiving wide acclaim; a book about cold fusion would have included nothing but scathing reviews of the practice. The book would have been an overview of the failures of the science since 1989 when it was discovered. From the early Fleischmann and Pons experiments to the later experiments by Korea, the US military, and certain auto manufacturers, the book would have chronicled decades of wasted time, money, and research. Despite how much money was poured into these projects and despite official and unofficial support afforded to all of the projects, cold fusion was shown to fail again and again.

In most cases, the media built up a strong case, hailing cold fusion as the harbinger of a new era in alternative energy, and each time shortly after more tests were done, the media retracted their statements, calling the science foolish once more. This drove many researchers underground, including Rossi, but still for years and years, nothing was discovered. However, now that 2011 is upon us, and more news has been pouring out about Rossi’s research on a daily basis, the possible legitimacy of cold fusion is becoming a bit hard to ignore.

In fact, Rossi has actually attempted to lend more credibility to his research by labeling it as a new field of study, LENR, short for Low Energy Nuclear Reactions. Despite the new name, the idea behind this new field and cold fusion is the same. The E-Cat device invented by Rossi is meant to encapsulate and put to better use, a reaction between hydrogen and nickel known as nickel hydrogen fusion. The resulting reaction causes the nickel to turn into copper and energy is created and redirected to power other devices in the process.
There is still some skepticism about whether the reaction that is occurring is chemical or nuclear. If it is proven to be a chemical reaction, then this will not be cold fusion at all, but regardless of what kind of reaction is occurring, the E-Cat has been shown in public on multiple occasions. There have always been mixed opinions on it from people that have seen it work, but all unanimously agree that some kind of reaction is occurring and that this reaction is creating energy.

Some scientists have studied it, and a Swedish study that has recently been published states that the reaction is not a chemical one, though they have not stated what it actually is, just what it is not. It seems that it is still unknown what is actually causing the reaction, or what type of reaction it is. Ignoring this fact, and the requests of the scientific community to fully explain what the device is doing, Rossi has recently partnered with Defkalion green technologies as well as Ampenergo, two companies that were committed to producing and marketing the E-Cat. He was set to fully release the E-Cat for sale in late 2011 but has recently severed his connection with Defkalion for self described financial reasons.

It is not known how exactly this will affect his production schedule, but Rossi still plans to have a plant built in America in October of 2011. In the wake of Rossi’s success, perhaps inspired by him, occasional collaborator, Francesco Piantelli plans to open up his own company to study his personal brand of cold fusion. He has a project that he is working on too and is planning on starting his own company to help research his own method more fully.

A book about Rossi would have to include all of the information mentioned above, and a tone that made it clear that what he is doing now, if it does succeed, will change the face of energy relates science forever. Cold fusion, which has been mocked as a field of study for over 22 years, could be heralded as the greatest savior of the worldwide energy market and it will be all thanks to Rossi’s work that the relevancy of the science was brought back to light. Despite countless failures in the past, Andrea Rossi was able to see to it that cold fusion was taken seriously again, and in the process, changed how we see alternative energy.

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