© Charles Moir 2011 Being sceptical is not only a good thing, but essential to for any rational person. Without scepticism you simply have faith without reason or logic. That way madness lies. Just because someone, even someone you trust such as a parent, tells you the tooth fairy exists, or Santa Klaus, or God, you should not just take it on trust. So just because I tell you that Cold Fusion exists, or that the Rossi Reactor is real -  don’t believe me. Do your own research - there any plenty of links on this website to find many independent reports. In my research I’ve come across probably just about every criticism, accusation and question that sceptics have put forward. So here are some of the common questions, and the answers that I have found. (The following page has an FAQ with answers of the more general questions about the ‘Rossi Reactor’.) Have you lost your mind - this is so obviously a scam. I suggest you do the due diligence research that I've done, and other far more capable scientists have done. Read what the independent scientists and sceptics, who have seen and tested the actual device, have to say. Try as we might to find ways in which this could be faked, a fraud or a scam we can find no practical way all the tests can have been faked or that all the people who have seen and tested this device can have been fooled. Not a single witness to any of the 5 separate demonstrations has said it was faked or suggested any way in which it might have been faked. This is impossible because everyone knows Cold Fusion was proven fake. No, it was not proven a fake. It was difficult to reproduce, but that does not mean it doesn’t exist. Some highly influential people, often with vested interests in it not being real (hot fusion researchers), influenced the majority view and media. Hundreds of subsequent experiments have replicated anomalous heat effects. Cold Fusion is difficult to reproduce because the conditions required to make it work are (or were) not understood. Over the last 20 years some of the conditions have become more clear, and it’s now known that most of the original failed Cold Fusion experiments did not work because some of these required conditions were missing (such as the pre-loading of H or H2 into the metal lattice). Rossi and Focardi claim they understand enough to reproduce the effect 100% of the time, and have demonstrated this. Ask any software engineer, just because he can’t reproduce a bug, whether the bug is therefore ‘proven not to exist’. Of course not. All software engineers know that if the same bug is reported a few times, irrespective of whether he can reproduce it, it’s likely that it does exist. It’s just that the conditions required to reproduce it have not yet been determined. This is the down-to-earth reality of experimental science. Why haven’t I heard about this? If this was for real, then press would be all over this. So you would imagine. In Italy it has gained much more mainstream coverage, but the outside world simply hasn’t picked it up yet. This is partly why this website exists. This is the way the media works; they hear a wild story, so first they ask their ’expert’, who upon hearing ‘Cold Fusion’ immediately responds ‘it’s obviously a fake’, and that’s that. No mainstream coverage. Seriously that’s exactly what happens in the mainstream media. Cold Fusion scepticism is so entrenched that it will take some spectacular demonstration before it will begin to be accepted by the mainstream. Do you know just how unlikely this thing is? Yes, you are correct, statistically this is very unlikely. There have probably been a thousand previous claims varying from nutty perpetual motion machines, to supposedly serious scientifically backed scams. Not one of which has ever demonstrated a working device, let alone multiple demonstrations where sceptics were allowed to perform the tests. Without the evidence shown previously I’d agree this was probably just another scam. No nuclear signature is produced, so it can’t be nuclear reaction. There is no radiation produced so it can’t be nuclear process. The spent fuel is not radioactive, so this can’t be a nuclear process. As Julian Schwinger, the (late) Nobel physicist used to keep repeating. ‘The circumstances of Cold Fusion are not those of Hot Fusion’. In fact, low level radiation is produced, which is why the device has the lead shielding. This is many orders of magnitude below what hot fusion people would expect, and the wrong type of radiation (thankfully) but the fact there is radiation produced is in itself a sure sign that something very novel is going on. There have been few major nuclear physics paradigm shifts in the last 50 years (superconductivity, perhaps, being the exception), so it’s about time we had one :-) In fact, high-temperate superconductivity was equally ‘impossible’ to most knowledgeable scientists, before it was proven real. It's impossible to overcome the Coulomb barrier, so Cold Fusion is impossible It is not possible through currently known processes to overcome the Coulomb barrier that prevents hydrogen protons penetrating the Nickel nucleus, and thus turning into Copper. To imagine that you, or indeed anyone, fully understands the workings of all nuclear or quantum interactions is naive. Richard Feynman, who perhaps understood quantum mechanics better than anyone (and shared the Nobel prize with Schwinger) said ‘I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.’ Don’t fall into the trap of imagining we know all, or even most of how the sub-atomic nuclear world works. “I know about Nuclear processes, and believe me there is no possible theory that could explain Cold Fusion, therefore it’s all bunk. I do not believe any experiments that claim to show Cold Fusion.” This is a real quote by a supposed rational scientist. It doesn’t really deserve a reply to be honest since this guy has absolutely no sense of history (he would be embarrassed how many times similar arguments have been used to deny the possibility of just about every modern technology), but to say ‘because I do not believe it, all experiments that show it are therefore wrong’, is unworthy of any intelligent rational person. That’s religion, not science. And that’s also not an untypical reaction No independent tests have been performed. This is incorrect. You are confusing it with the following question. Five separate demonstrations have included tests on the device performed by independent third parties. No one present at any of the demonstrations has any explanation of how these tests could or might be faked. They have all confirmed the inexplicable release of large amounts of heat energy. Here is a link to a report on the second 18-hour test. No independent replications have been performed This is almost correct. Rossi has not revealed all the inner workings of the current devices. (If you were sitting on an invention of this magnitude, you’d hardly give it away.) However there have been multiple replications of the Nickel / Hydrogen experiment producing anomalous heat, going back to 1989 and reported in a 1994 paper by Piantelli and Focardi. The Japanese researcher Arata also replicated the effect. Recently NASA has said it will try to replicate the Focardi experiments because they were some of the better Cold Fusion demonstrations. Update: Here is a report of a recent replication. No scientific paper has been published describing how it works, so it’s can’t be serious. Well, not quite. There are a number of papers from Focardi describing the basic Nickel / Hydrogen effect dating back to 1994. But due to the fact that no ‘serious’ journal will publish any paper on Cold Fusion, on principle, even if submitted by Nobel physicists, Rossi and Focardi created their own website to publish these and other ‘controversial’ theory papers.  The Journal of Nuclear Physics. In fact, four of the greatest physicists of the last 100 years, Edward Teller, Willis Lamb, Brian Josephson and Julian Swinger all spoke favourably about the possibility of Cold Fusion, so I (and you should) take little notice of the opinion on the lesser physicists on the impossibility of Cold Fusion. But this isn't Cold Fusion as we know it because it uses completely different elements and methods. This is true, it’s not the same as the Cold Fusion proposed by Pons & Fleischmann that involved Palladium and Deuterium, but a different form, and by all accounts a rather more effective form, of Cold Fusion, or LENR (Low Energy Nuclear Reaction). Rossi has been in conflict with the law before, he's a proven scammer It is true that he has a troubled past with the Italian authorities with a previous business venture. There are always two sides to the argument and this is Rossi’s view.  If you have any knowledge of doing business in Italy (I have a Italian business friend) you’d understand that official corruption is not uncommon. Apparently bankhanders and bribes to officials are commonplace, and often required in order to stay out of trouble. Rossi is not the inventor, Piantelli is It is true that the discoverers of the original Nickel / Hydrogen process are two other Italians, Focardi and Piantelli, (now retired) university professors from different Italian universities. However, the real breakthroughs required to turn an anomalous heating effect into a reproducible, scaled up, commercial device have come from Rossi. Rossi has made at least three major breakthroughs: 1. A Cold Fusion effect that is 100% repeatable 2. That has been scaled up to produce huge amounts of excess energy 3. Can be turned on and off at will What, one man has achieved in a few years, where all previous Cold Fusion research, over the last 20 years has, at best, produced only inconclusive results? It would seem so. The only information about the device comes from Rossi’s own blog This is incorrect. Rossi’s website does include a lot of detail about the experiments, and much speculation by others on possible mechanisms but many of the independent witnesses have published their own findings and opinions. See the Demos page. Rossi has not revealed his ‘secret’ of how this works. This is not how science is done. While the basics of the reaction are known and published in scientific papers, and replicated, it is true that Rossi says there is a secret catalyst that’s necessary in order to scale it up to the levels he does. a) Would you tell the world the secret if you had discovered something of this significance? Few people would. b) Rossi is not trying to convince the scientific world. Rossi and Focardi have proven to themselves (and a growing number of others) they can do it. Rossi is trying to build machines to sell and sees little benefit in proving this to sceptical scientists. The market is a better judge of whether this is real or not. If it’s not, they won’t sell any. If it works there will be a stampede for this. The measurements by the independent observers were poorly done. Were the amounts of energy small and the effects subtle, then it would be important to ensure the highest accuracy. The fact that such huge amounts of energy are being released means that getting measurements accurate to the last few percent is relatively unimportant. On the first test some water was not turned to steam, and so the energy calculations were wrong. See above.  The ongoing arguments about how wet the steam might have been misses the point. The fact any steam is being produced is a miracle. Whether their claimed 10kW device actually produced 3K, or even just 1kW, is a distraction - we have here  a demonstration that very large amounts of energy are being produced. The second demonstration was held to counter some of these criticisms. Instead of producing steam, for a limited period of time, a test was held over an 18 hour period heating a large flow-through of water. It was shown to produce around 15kW for 18 hours continuously. Of the two possibilities, that this is a new form of non-dangerous nuclear power, or that this is fraud, the latter is far more likely. Were the claims without evidence, I’d agree. Were the claims made with some evidence, I’d probably agree still. But the third parties and sceptics who have witnessed and examined the devices, after five separate demonstrations, have tried and failed to find any evidence of fraud or fakery. The Evidence page lists other supporting evidence. The device was plugged into the mains (wall outlet), so the demonstrations are obvious fakes. This is a stupid argument for several reasons: a) It assumes all the witnesses are even more stupid and didn’t think of that. b) In fact, they carefully measured the power into the device c) The power required to fake the original demos  (10Kw) is at least three times more than you can obtain from any normal mains outlet or lead without some complex fakery going on behind the wall (using dangerously high voltages and step down transforms at the other end). This was, of course, tested for. So no, the units are not powered from the mains. If the device can produce more power than it requires, why does it have to be plugged into the mains at all? Some heat has to be provided to start the reaction. Secondly, the devices have control electronics that need to operate. Remember this device produces only heat, not electricity. If Rossi wanted to silence his critics he would just .... <fill in with your own pet idea>. Rossi is not trying to silence or even persuade any critics. And neither would you if you had what he claims to have. He has stated many times the market will be his judge, not sceptical scientists who cannot understand how his machine works. His focus is 100% on producing machines to sell. Either his machines work as claimed and he will have happy customers, or they will not, and he will be out of business before he even starts.