Trip Report - ICCF-21 Conference for Condensed Matter Nuclear Science

Coming home from the EU2017 Thunderbolts conference, Edo and I were strategizing where to take SAM next. Several presenters had shown examples of elements being transmuted into other elements. For example, Peter Mungo Jupp proposed instant fossilization, the idea that a pond of creatures could be instantly converted from carbon and oxygen (water) into silicon and calcium. As if they were literally changed to stone, a very common theme in myths and religions. SAM can explain this as the combining of nuclets into larger atoms. We've spent the last 10 months studying transmutations in nature - geology, biology, meteorology - and found it's everywhere; scientists just haven't had an atomic theory that suggested they even look for it.

So, Edo, Jan and I started looking for conferences to attend and found the ICCF-21 - International Conference on Cold Fusion. It was perfect, this conference would be full of professional physicists and experimenters that were already questioning main stream nuclear physics. Serendipitously it was being held in my hometown at my university, CSU in Fort Collins, Colorado.

We submitted an abstract and were accepted to present at the poster sessions. We put together a poster and made a bunch of handouts. Our goal was to introduce SAM, the new neutron, and the Electric Universe to a brand-new group of people. The response we received was way better than we could have imagined.

ICCF-21 Poster

The conference was held June 3-8, 2018. The first day was an introductory course for beginners. It gave us a good understanding of the history, techniques and status of cold fusion. However, it was the people we met we found most exciting. Many of these people have been working on cold fusion since the beginning, 30 years ago.  They've worked at places like NASA, Los Alamos Labs, Stanford, MIT. Quite a few have a background in the nuclear industry. Many came from Europe, Japan, China and India.  These are the true heavyweights in Cold Fusion research.

Cold Fusion - a.k.a. Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR)

Mainstream scientists believe cold fusion is not happening because the expected radiation and byproducts found with hot fusion are not being observed. Because of this you cannot mention 'cold fusion' and get a patent or publish a paper. So, what do you do? Change the name! It's now referred to as Low Energy Nuclear Reactions or LENR (amongst other names).

Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann

In 1989 Pons and Fleischmann at the University of Utah announced they had achieved cold fusion. Their experiment consisted of palladium electrodes in a bath of heavy water. They applied a DC current which loads the palladium electrodes with deuterium atoms (²H). These deuterium atoms fuse together into Helium-4 (⁴HE). In the process, excess heat can be released. This defies our current understanding of nuclear physics. Transmuting one element into another is not supposed to be possible at room temperature. Elements are thought to be created in the high heat and extreme pressure within a star or when a star explodes.

Pons and Fleischmann's announcement caused an uproar in the physics community. Many people attempted to reproduce their results but most failed. A few found excess heat occasionally but it wasn't reproducible. Many published results prematurely, cold fusion was labeled pseudoscience and your career could be in jeopardy if you pursued it. Pons and Fleischmann were attacked and accused for being fraudulent and sloppy in their procedures. The idea of room-temperature fusion could not be allowed; it went against long-cherished theories. In 1992 they moved to France to continue their work, no longer able to work in the US.

However cold fusion has not gone away. There is more than enough evidence to show it works. And the US government has many patents and is very concerned that the US is losing ground to foreign programs. Other countries are quite serious about it. The Japanese government is funding a joint program with universities and companies.

LENR is a disruptive technology. It could change the balance of power in the world and of large economic interests. The use of oil, solar, wind and nuclear for generating power could largely be replaced with LENR technology. Imagine every house with it's own LENR generator in the closet - no greenhouse gases, no radiation, no waste chemicals, no pollution - just clean, cheap, virtually unlimited power. Fuel it every few years and you're good to go!

LENR Technologies

The presentations showed the different types of experiments being tried. They can broken down into several categories:

• Electrochemistry - This is what Pons and Fleischmann did, metal electrodes (palladium or nickel alloys) in a bath of water or heavy water. Most of the effort for LENR has been concentrated on this method.  There have been quite a few successes but there are many more failures. Reproducibility is still elusive.
• Gas Powder - Powdered metal (typically nickel) is placed into a chamber filled with pressurized hydrogen, an electric bias is applied across the chamber to create a plasma. Results seem very promising but again this is difficult to reproduce and there are few people working on it.
• Plasma - There was surprisingly little said about using plasma chambers to transmute elements. We found some papers from past conferences but overall LENR in plasmas has little activity and is little understood.
• Semi-conductor - Nikola Tesla was thought to have used a 'carbon button lamp' to generate excess heat in the 1930's. The belief is he was doing LENR and his apparatus was a semi-conductor but this is hard to prove.

LENR in Nature

At the introductory class, Mahadeva Srinivasan presented a lot of suspected biological and geological transmutations. Edo and I kept looking at each other, these were the same ideas we had been talking about for months. The idea of biological and geological transmutation was brought up again in several presentations later in the week, however it wasn't emphasized to the extent we think it should have been. Understanding how nature is transmuting elements is essential if we expect to do it ourselves.

LENR in Industry

One of the most interesting presentations about transmutation was by Mahadeva Srinivasan. He discussed how the Silcal Metallurigic, Ltd. smelting plant in Tamil Nadu, India, was manufacturing an iron alloy with 73% silicon. They were astonished to find they were getting more material out of the smelter than they were putting in. And it wasn't an insignificant amount, they put in 21 tons of silicon and iron and got out 25 tons of final product, an increase of 3 tons of silicon and 1 ton of iron.

Records show they had a carefully controlled process and were diligent in quantifying their input and output material. The furnace used 12   kVA of AC current. The large carbon electrodes are consumed in the process, there is an additional supply of carbon in the form of wood.

The hypothesis the plant scientists came up with is that the carbon electrodes in the furnace were combining with oxygen to create the additional silicon and iron. This process is exactly in line with SAM; first silicon is created from oxygen and carbon. Two silicon atoms then combine to make iron. It's a growth process.

Special Session on the Structure of the Atom

Special Session with Norman Cook on Atomic Structure

On Tuesday evening a special session was held for those interested in atomic structure. About 30 people attended.  Norman D. Cook presented his FCC lattice model. We soon discovered there were many other people with their own models for the nucleus. As a group, we discussed the pros and cons of the different models and approaches to the nucleus.

Most of the models come from a physics perspective. They start with attempting to explain how the neutrons and protons, quarks, etc. come together and how the forces within the nucleus work.

SAM is unique in that it was developed from a chemistry perspective - how does the nucleus explain the properties of the elements and define the structure of the periodic table? Many people were impressed with this chemistry approach,.  They realize that chemistry and physics are closely related and that these fields must come together. We know SAM can be that bridge. It addresses observations found in both physics and chemistry.

The New Neutron

One of our primary objectives at the conference was to introduce people to the new neutron. This is the idea that a neutron is a proton/electron pair. The New Neutron was front and center on our poster and we created a handout. We gave out dozens of copies. In addition, we distributed at least 40 copies of Carl Johnson's papers about the neutron. We were surprised how receptive people were to this idea. There were several who had already reached this conclusion. We heard from one researcher that quantum mechanics research may show evidence for the nuclear neutron being a proton and electron.

We believe that our misunderstanding of the neutron as a fundamental particle is the reason both hot fusion and cold fusion research have not been successful. Most experimenters perceive they are trying to overcome the strong and weak nuclear forces. What are these forces and how do they work? We really don't understand them. We can't measure them or use them. How can you work with something you don't understand?

SAM postulates that the nucleus is held together with the electrostatic force. We believe LENR will be successful by focusing on the electrical nature of the atom. We need to understand the duality of the proton and electron.

LENR and SAM

It was apparent from the conferenence that the primary focus of the LENR community is to fuse hydrogen (¹H) and/or deuterium (²H) into Helium (⁴He). These are the lightest of the elements and fusing them yields large amounts of energy. We believe the focus on these light elements is too limited - proof exists that LENR occurs in geology, biology and meteorology regularly here on earth.

By observing nature, we can learn a lot. By studying the abundances of the elements in the Sun, the solar wind, our atmosphere, and the surface of the earth we can deduce how the elements are being created. We simply let nature be our teacher and show us those nuclear reactions which are most likely and those that are most easily reproduced.

SAM postulates that the larger elements are composed of clusters of protons in the shape of the icosahedron. The icosahedron is the largest platonic solid that can be densely packed. These clusters combine in a tree-like structure. By combining clusters, we can demonstrate how LENR occurs in nature.

Many people suggested we show the forces involved and this has become one of our next areas to focus on. We now have a list of scientists willing to work with us on the equations and share with us their experimental data.

Colorado State University - A Great Venue for a Conference!

Academic Village Commons

What a beautiful place to have a conference. CSU has focused on providing a turn-key conference at an affordable price.  This was a 5-day conference. For a double occupancy dorm room it cost $850 for everything. The only time I pulled out my wallet was to tip the bartender and for the photocopier.  Included was all our food, a shuttle to and from the airport, a social hour every evening with free wine and beer, a closing banquet, and a bus tour to either Boulder or Golden to one of the national labs (NIST, NREL, NOAA or NCAR).

We stayed in the Academic Village in the honors dorms. These dorms each had thier own bathroom. The only issue was they didn't provide any soap! But that was easily solved at the very helpful main desk.

All meals were in the dorm cafeteria and were surprisingly tasty. We could choose from a salad bar, Mongolian grill, Mexican food bar, hamburgers, fried chicken, pizza and a lot more. My weakness was the soft serve ice cream with chocolate syrup.  I gained 6 pounds!

Everyone pretty much stayed on campus the full week and ate there. Many of the tables were big enough for 8-10 people so it was easy to sit down next to a group of strangers and not feel like you are intruding. In this way, I met a lot of people.  Often, I discovered the gentleman I was talking to had worked for NASA building nuclear powered rocket engines, or he had worked at Los Alamos labs or on a nuclear submarine. The way the conference was set up made it easy to talk to other people.

Summary

We found there is a lot of enthusiasm and effort being made in the LENR field and research is continuing. It's addicting to a lot of people. However, there is a lot of work yet to be done. Until there is a theory to explain it, many investors are reluctant to fund projects. We feel SAM is a good candidate to fulfill that role.

There is also enormous resistance from conventional physicists who think LENR is impossible. They are currently spending $40 billion on the hot fusion reactor ITER in France. Success in LENR would hurt their budget. Not to mention the oil, solar and wind industries. We feel it's only a matter of time before LENR will succeed and it becomes available.

Our efforts introducing SAM and the New Neutron things went much better than expected. We met dozens of people and handed out lots of papers. We received very little resistance to our efforts and a surprising amount of support. In addition, we had many opportunities to introduce Electric Universe ideas. Most of these scientists had never considered electricity in Space. It was a lot of fun to be an ambassador for the EU movement. It pointed out isolated the EU group is and that we need to attend and speak at conferences outside the EU. People really are hungry for this information.

On the last day, we formed a small group of people to study theories about atomic structure. This group will give us access to the experimental data desperately needed to make progress with SAM. In addition, there are several people with an extensive understanding of Quantum Mechanics and how to calculate the forces within the nucleus. We believe this group will make it possible to bridge the gap between SAM and mainstream physics.

The LENR community is very open to explore other models in attempting to advance their work. It was an honor to get to know these people and we look forward to working with them.