Mats Lewan has announced the publication of the second edition of his book “An Impossible Invention”, which covers the story of Andrea Rossi and the E-Cat. The first edition was published at the beginning of 2014, and Mats explains on his blog some of the changes he has made:
The new edition contains corrections of minor errors and a few updates to the story.
Among the updates are some more details on Andrea Rossi’s studies in philosophy, specifically in phenomenology, that apparently contributed to a mindset which seemed necessary to insist going ahead in such a controversial field as cold fusion.I have also added a more detailed examination of the legal saga of Rossi. In the first edition I wrongly stated that he was acquitted from environmental charges. However, these charges regarded above all lacking permits for handling of special waste, and not, as some believe, illegal dumping or discharge of toxic waste. I have studied sentences and transcriptions of testimonials, and it’s clear that Rossi was never convicted for fraud of this kind. On the contrary, it was shown that Rossi’s business really processed and sold the waste materials that were purchased.
The first edition was published before the Lugano test report was published, and so new material about that is now included. In reading this section of the new version of the book, Mats includes some details I find interesting.
For example:
- Levi’s testing team had insisted that if they were to carry out this new test, they must be able to analyze the E-Cat’s fuel — otherwise the test would have been simply a repeat of the 2012-2013 one where only energy in/out was measured, and would have been essentially meaningless, since their goal was to get a better understanding of how the E-Cat worked. Mats was not able to discover how and why Industrial Heat agreed to this stipulation, but they did acquiesce.
- Mats said that he himself got “carried away” after the report was published, and tweeted that cold fusion was now real and would soon be commercial. However, his editors at Ny Teknik asked him to delete the tweet.
- On listening to critics of the report, Mats became open to skeptical views on measurement errors, particularly a couple of electrical measurement values. He writes, “I took this quite seriously until I got a possible, albeit unexpected explanation from the researchers and Rossi.”
- He mentions that Carl-Oscar Gullström’s paper, “Low Radiation fusion through bound neutron Tunneling” got some positive attention from Bo Höistad, one of the authors of the Lugano report who told Mats: “It is very interesting. It fits like a glove with our results, both the isotopic changes and the absence of radiation. It is the first time that I see a scenario that could explain the results—it has not existed before!”
I have not read all the book yet, but I am pleased that this new edition has been published which brings us more up-to-date on the E-Cat story. I would imagine that in the future further updates, or perhaps a second volume will be needed to cover future developments.
A free download of the ebook version of the book has been made available to people who purchased the first edition. So far, the book is available in Swedish and English; Mats mentions that an Italian translation is underway and will be available next year.