The open-sourced low energy nuclear reaction (LENR) effort called the Martin Fleischmann Memorial Project is showing some success. These successes include: replication of Francesco Celani’s wire reactor by the Hunt Utilities Group in the United States and Mathieu Valat who is working at an unidentified location in Europe. (from energycatalyzer3.com)

The results from the tests have been posted online for all to see. The European test has apparently generated five watts of energy. The organization is working with Celani’s reactor because he so far has been the only LENR scientist to supply them with his technology.

Interestingly enough the project’s facilitators admit that they are keen to purchase a 1 megawatt (megawatt of heat) gas-fired ecat unit from Andrea Rossi’s Leonardo Corporation. They would like to place in a war veterans hydrotherapy rehabilitation center. They would certify it first. This would seem to indicate military involvement or a desire to get the military involved.

The Project’s website indicates that the facilitators have been in contact with Rossi himself and asked if they could get some ecat units for testing. The facilitators wrote that Rossi is open to the idea but he has said he would only make his technology available after certification.

Conceptual drawing of a Celani Reactor courtesy Martin Fleischmann Memorial Project

The Project is trying to get access to some other LENR technology including the Jet Energy NANOR (the device that has been tested at MIT) and Brillouin’s LENR boiler technology. It appears that the investors behind that technology have not agreed to provide their devices to the project.

The Project has a new and rather misleading name for its technology they call it the New Fire. Since LENR is not fire but rather an electrochemical reaction I’m not sure the name is accurate even if it sounds very cool.

The Project has currently raised $7,090 towards its goal of raising $500,000 to fund research. It is also trying to get a crowd fund raising initiative going. In such an initiative large numbers of people donate small amounts of money to the cause. They believe that such an initiative is necessary because of the institutional biases that govern mainstream science. The Project is trying to remain transparent by posting a spread sheet outlining some of its costs online.

So far it has spent about $521.872 on website related expenses and corporation fees. Interesting the corporation fees are listed in British pound sterling so that is an indication this effort might be based in the UK and have something to do with Kressen which has a business plan built around the Celani reactor. Kressen is based in Maidenhead, Berkshire in the United Kingdom.

Crowd fund raising or crowd sourcing might be the best answer because it frees the organization from domination by one group or organization. It also provides LENR researchers with a source of money that bureaucrats can’t shut down. Many past experiments have been shut down because college administrators have been able to call their golf buddies and get the funding pulled so the institution won’t be embarrassed.

It goes without saying that some sort of crowd based investment might also work for LENR. Persons could donate a small amount of money and get a share of stock. Such an effort would be difficult in the USA because of the rules set down by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for corporations.

It looks like the Project is on the right track although I would like to see a little more transparency from it. For example the location of the European Celani cell replication, the site simply says EU (the European Union). Since the EU is a big place encompassing dozens of countries that doesn’t help us locate this. Nor does it say whether this replication has is associated with STMicroelectronics reported efforts to replicate the Celani reactor.

Hopefully this effort will continue and gain momentum. Also hopefully other inventors will put the data being gathered by the creators of the New Fire to good use.

Going by the latest comments by Andrea Rossi says, what he and his associates see, and what we, the waiting public see are quite different things. E-Cat enthusiasts (and some skeptics) are looking for even the tiniest glimpse, or a 3rd party report a plant in action, but nothing recent has been produced.
(from e-catworld.com)

On the Journal of Nuclear Physics, Steven Karels asked if Andrea Rossi might ignite the world’s imagination by putting on a demonstration of a self-sustaining plant in action and silence the critics who say he has nothing.

True to form, Rossi rejected the idea and commented:

1- we are working very strong to manufacture our plants. In our factories the work has never been so intense as it is in this period. Therefore the E-Cats, that soon will hit the market, will not fade, be sure. If there is around somebody saying the contrary, let them talk, while we work.
2- the report of the indipendent third party will be published, as I always said. Whatever the result
3- the efficiency and the convenience of the E-Cats is very simple to measure: the Customer looks how much energy consumes and how much energy produces: it is not difficult.

Understandably people are eager to know whether this miracle technology is real or not — but Andrea Rossi does not seem to be interested in satisfying our curiosity before he is ready to move. If he wants to work in peace the current situation probably suits him fine.

The experiments were carried out at the Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI), Villigen, Switzerland, which is the only research institute in the world providing the necessary amount of muons. The international collaboration included the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ) in Garching near Munich, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH Zurich, the University of Fribourg, the Institut für Strahlwerkzeuge (IFSW) of the Universität Stuttgart, and Dausinger & Giesen GmbH, Stuttgart. The new results fuel the debate as to whether the discrepancies observed can be explained by standard physics, for example an incomplete understanding of the systematic errors that are inherent to all measurements, or whether they are due to new physics.

The hydrogen atom has played a key role in the investigation of the fundamental laws of physics. Hydrogen consists of a single positively charged proton orbited by a negatively charged electron, a model whose success in explaining spectroscopy data dates back to its proposal by Bohr in 1913. The energy levels of this simplest of atoms can be predicted with excellent precision from the theory of quantum electrodynamics. However, the calculations have to take into account that—in contrast to the point-like electron—the proton is an extended object with a finite size, made of three quarks bound by so-call ‘gluons’. Therefore, the electric charge as well as the magnetism of the proton is distributed over a certain volume. The extended nature of the proton causes a shift of the energy levels in hydrogen. Hence the electric and the magnetic charge radii can be deduced from a measurement of the level shifts.

In 2010, the first results on the spectroscopic determination of the shift of the so-called 2S energy level in muonic hydrogen were published. The exotic atoms were generated by bombarding a target of regular hydrogen with muons from an accelerator at PSI. Muons behave a lot like electrons, except for their mass: muons are 200 times heavier than electrons. The atomic orbit of the muon is therefore much closer to the proton than the electron’s orbit in a regular hydrogen atom. This results in a much larger sensitivity of the muon’s energy level to the proton size and hence to a stronger shift of the energy levels. Measuring the level shifts is very technologically demanding: muonic hydrogen is very short-lived (muons decay after about two millionths of a second), so the light pulses for the excitation of the resonance have to be fired onto the hydrogen target only nanoseconds after the detection of a muon. The new disk laser technology developed by the Institut für Strahlwerkzeuge (IFSW) of the Universität Stuttgart was an important element to fulfil this requirement. The lasers necessary for exciting the resonance were developed by the Max-Planck-Institute of Quantum Optics in cooperation with the Laboratoire Kastler Brossel (Paris).

In the experiment described in the newly published Science article, the energy shift was determined for another transition. This leads to a new measurement of the electric charge radius of the proton. Its value of 0.84087(39) femtometers (1 fm = 0.000 000 000 000 001 meter) is in good agreement with the one published in 2010, but 1.7 times as precise. The discrepancy with existing radius measurements made in regular hydrogen or by electron-proton-scattering, the so-called proton size puzzle, has thus been reaffirmed. In addition, the new measurement allows a determination of the magnetic radius of the proton for the first time by laser spectroscopy of muonic hydrogen. This results in a value of 0.87(6) femtometers, in agreement with all previous measurements. Though the precision is, at present, of the same order as in other experiments, laser spectroscopy of muonic hydrogen has the potential of achieving a much better accuracy in the determination of the magnetic proton radius in the future.

Background
Physicists around the world are actively seeking a solution to the proton size puzzle. Previous measurements in regular hydrogen and by electron-proton-scattering are being reanalyzed and even repeated. Theorists of various disciplines suggested ways to explain the discrepancy. Very interesting proposals explain the discrepancies by physics beyond the standard model. Other explanations suggest a proton structure of higher complexity than assumed today which only reveals itself under the influence of the heavy muon. New measurements are needed to check on these possibilities. Muon-proton-scattering experiments are being developed at PSI, new precision measurements at the electron accelerator in Mainz are being considered, and the PSI team plans to measure, for the first time ever, laser spectroscopy of the muonic helium atom in the course of this year.

The required modifications of the current laser system are being investigated in the frame of the project “Thin-disk laser for muonic atoms spectroscopy” which (financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)) is carried out at the ETH Zürich (Prof. Dr. Klaus Kirch, Dr. Aldo Antognini) and at the IFSW (Prof. Dr. Thomas Graf, Dr. Andreas Voß). The Project “Muonic Helium” is also generously supported by the European Research Council (ERC) by an ERC Starting Grant held by Dr. Randolf Pohl from the MPQ in Garching.