originally published in Italian by unknown
Giornale di Brescia onTuesday, April 26, 2011
It struck a spark of electricity in Bologna, where the engineer Andrea Rossi and his scientific advisor, Professor Sergio Focardi, on January 14 of this year, demonstrated an experiment that has attracted much interest and seems to have realized the dream of producing energy through a fusion process; the generic name given to the alleged nature of nuclear reactions that would occur at pressures and temperatures much lower than those necessary to obtain hot nuclear fission, which requires temperatures on the order of a million Kelvin.
The starting point of the research carried out in Bologna had its roots in 1989,when after many experiments, two electrochemists Martin Fleischman and Stanley Pons, announced that they had obtained a basic result of “cold fusion.” The development of the Rossi/Focardi research was the same work presented two decades ago by Pons and Fleischman and which interested the engineer Rossi, while following another path of study.
The basic materials employed in the process are nickel and hydrogen. Sergio Focardi was trying for years to explain the energetic anomalies that occur during the contact between nickel and hydrogen, a phenomenon also known as early as 1936 and neglected it was not reported to be of practical scietific interest.
The E-Cat (Energy Catalyzer), also christened the “Bologna reactor,” basically combines atoms of nickel and hydrogen to generate and release energy, with an energy gain measured at least thirty times greater than the input power.
The scientific community has already divided between skepticism and possibility. The problem is that even the inventors of the E-cat are unable to fully explain the precise, theoretical principles upon which their technology is based. The reaction between nickel and hydrogen breaks a few rules of classical physics and has led to resistance from some in the scientific community.
On March 29,2011, Rossi once again demonstrated the E-Cat in the presence of Swedish academics, who have shown a great interest in advancing case studies in partnership with the University of Bologna, in an attempt to explain scientific basis for this unique result in the combination of the atoms of nickel and hydrogen. Professor Essen of the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology and Sven Kullander, Professor Emeritus at Uppsala University, who witnessed and assisted in the experiment, expressed their resolve for further study. The experiment in Bologna seems to have given force to a topic neglected for too long.
After the ongoing disaster which happened at the Japanese Fukushima nuclear power plant, the discovery of Focardi and Rossi is a valid contribution on the road that may – in the near future – continue to step towards the production of safe, nuclear energy.
For the first time, you set up the possibility of producing nuclear reactors and small risks with content, shielded by the lead which as been proven to contain the spread of gamma rays. We must remember that cold fusion may involve the need for devices with advanced security standards. So far, the experiments have revealed no radioactive emissions.
If the experience in Bologna is the concrete we will need to promote further investigation, Italy should at least show the same interest as Sweden.
Translation by Gerard Cruz
nickel+hydrogen=energy 