Coverage of Rossi Patent in Media Sources (Brian Josephson and Tom Whipple)

There has been little mention from mainstream news sources of the US Patent office granting Andrea Rossi his patent — and really at this stage that’s not entirely unexpected, given the overall media silence on the topic of LENR in general. However there are couple of noteworthy exceptions.

First, in the Falls Church News-Press, a local newspaper published in Falls Church, Virginia, Tom Whipple has written an article titled “The Peak Oil Crisis: Cold Fusion Gets a U.S. Patent” which discusses how the new information contained in it should now be much easier for replicators to be able to demonstrate the Rossi effect, and show that this technology is not a fraud.

Whipple concludes:

For those of us who have been following this technology for over a quarter of a century, the granting of a U.S. patent marks a major milestone in the history of science for it offers the opportunity to get mankind beyond the age of carbon and nuclear fission fuels and all that they have wrought – rogue petro state governments, pollution, global warming, and dangerous radioactive wastes. For now, the major question is whether this or similar technologies can come into widespread use fast enough to slow and then halt the many adverse societal, economic and climatological trends with which we are currently beset.

Secondly, Nobel laureate Brian Josephson, a British physicist, has written a comment on the Nature website in the “Week in Science” news section for August 21-27:

“As flying pigs have so far not yet been spotted in these parts, you won’t be getting the following news from Nature itself! We are pleased to have this opportunity to keep Nature readers up to date: 1) “For the first time in two decades, the Japanese government has issued a request for proposals for low-energy nuclear reaction (LENR) research”. For details see http://news.newenergytimes.net/2015/08/24/japanese-government-will-fund-lenr-research-again/ 2) Andrea Rossi has been granted a US patent for his ‘energy catalyzer’, which claims to produce large amounts of energy from a nuclear reaction (however, the patent itself does not refer to this aspect, only giving details of the design).”

Brian Josephson has been a long time follower of Andrea Rossi’s work, and someone who seems convinced about the reality of LENR and the Rossi effect, and one of the few in the science community who has been willing to publicly speak out in support of this field of research. So far his support does not seem to have caught on among his scientific colleagues, however.

Personally, I’m not expecting too much of a media splash on this news. The mainstream media in general seems to take its guidance on science reporting from what respected mainstream scientists say on a topic, and so far precious few have said anything positive about LENR or the E-Cat.

My guess is that it will be people in the business community who will be more interested in the granting of a patent — this raises the visibility of the E-Cat in commercial terms, and is an important step in getting the technology into the marketplace. I do agree with Tom Whipple that the information contained in the patent should be helpful to replicators, and I know that already there are people getting ready to try new replications based on what is revealed in this patent. Some successful replications based on the E-Cat recipe in the patent could be quite convincing.