An Older Person's Field?

Thanks to everyone so far who has recorded their age in yesterday’s poll. Looking at the tally so far, one thing stands out to me, and that is that a good majority of people coming to this site are not particularly young.

Out of almost 600 poll respondents so far, one per cent are 18 or younger, and only thirteen per cent are 30 or younger.

In a world where we see many of the movers and shakers are making big marks on the world at young ages, we don’t see many spring chickens in the cold fusion research community. Piantelli, Focardi, Levi, are in their 70s and 80s — and we lost Martin Fleischmann last year. The Swedish professors who have expressed interest and support are at quite advanced ages, and Andrea Rossi at 62 (I think), while seemingly fit and well has most of his life behind him. Francesco Celani is 61.

Perhaps it is because the young generation of today were not alive or paying attention in 1989 when cold fusion made its big and short-lived splash. Perhaps they have been too well educated about cold fusion’s impossibility. Or maybe it just takes a bit of maturity to start thinking about the quantum realm and the possibilities it offers for new scientific discovery.

Whatever the reason, it’s a bit of a concern when the leading lights in a new and possibly revolutionary field are at an age where we might soon lose them. I’m sure that something like a big E-Cat announcement of 3rd party confirmation or a working E-Cat product release could change things quickly, and we will need the younger generation at some point to get on board if a LENR revolution is to take hold.