Brian Ahern, NASA and the First ‘Cold Fusion’ Patent Granted (1993 MIT/Air Force)

If occasionally the energies released from transmutation events becomes localized into a nano location where two monoatomic isotopes of hydrogen find themselves and fusion between the two occurs, then nanofusion might just be the best descriptive name, rather than cold fusion. (While pondering this it’s good to keep in mind that there are two common fusion reactions in deuterium. One gives off neutrons while the other one doesn’t.) Read this NASA cold fusion experiment with heat-positive results, December 1989, NASA Technical Memorandum 102430, by Gustave Fralick of the NASA 2018 GRC AEC LENR team: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19900008108.pdf

In 2003, a NASA LENR report chose to categorize the work of Brian Ahern as nanofusion instead of LENR. (See pages 44 – 48 ‘Low Energy Nuclear Reaction’. See pages 48 – 50 ‘Nanofusion’.

Inventor Brian Ahern has two LENR patents.

The first one was the first LENR patent granted by the U.S. patent office, way back in 1995. It is assigned to MIT and the U.S. government (Air Force) . It was published in 1993; only a few years after the initial cold fusion flurry of 1989 had settled down. Developed by and granted to MIT and the Air Force in spite of the fact that MIT played a major role in discrediting cold fusion research. (by falsifying data in order to show negative results, see Eugene F. Mallove ‘MIT and Cold Fusion: A Special Report’ in Further Reading)

The second LENR patent of Mr. Ahern claims the first as priority and is an LENR patent that uses nanoparticles. (In my opinion nanofusion is just another name for LENR and should be categorized as such.) As a daughter patent of the prior patent, which the government retains rights to, Mr. Ahern most likely needs to hold a licensing agreement for this LENR technology (permission) from the U.S. government (DOD Air Force) in order to commercialize it.

NASA / CR-2003-212169 “Advanced Energetics for Aeronautical Applications”

David S. Alexander, MSE Technology Applications, Inc., Butte, Montana

3.1.5 Low Energy Nuclear Reactions

3.1.5.1-Electrochemically Induced Deuterium Fusion in Palladium The first-discovered form of solid-state fusion was that achieved by electrochemically splitting heavy water in order to cause the deuterium to absorb into pieces of palladium metal. When this experiment is conducted according to procedures that have resulted from the work of many researchers since 1989, it is reproducible.

3.1.6 Nanofusion

3.1.6.1-Background Dr. Brian Ahern, whose background is physics and materials science, claims his nanofusion concept will take advantage of the demonstrated fact that nanosize particles (containing approximately 1,000 to 3,000 atoms) have different chemical and physical properties than bulk-size pieces of the same material. One reason Dr. Ahern gives for this is explained as given below.

1. When a particle of a substance consists of 1,000 to 3,000 atoms in a cluster, there is a higher fraction of surface atoms than for atoms in a bulk piece of the same material.
2. Military research (suggested by the nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi), which had been classified in 1954, but was later declassified, demonstrated that if a cluster of atoms in the 1,000 to 3,000 size range was given an impulse of energy (e.g., as heat) and if a significant number of these atoms have a nonlinear coupling to the rest (e.g., the coupling of surface atoms to interior atoms), the energy will not be shared uniformly among all the atoms in the cluster but will localize on a very small number of these atoms.
3. Thus, a few atoms in the cluster will rapidly acquire a vibrational energy far above what they would have if they were in thermal equilibrium with their neighboring atoms.
4. This “energy localization” explains why clusters in this size range are particularly good catalysts for accelerating chemical reactions.
5. If the cluster is palladium saturated with deuterium, Dr. Ahern claims the localized energy effect will enable a significant number of the deuterons to undergo a nuclear fusion reaction, thereby releasing a high amount of energy.

The following 2010 LENR patent, assigned to Brian Ahern, claims the priority LENR patent from 1993, which has been granted and is assigned to MIT and the U.S. Air Force.

US 20110233061 A1 – Assignee – Brian S. Ahern

Publication date: Sep 29, 2011- Priority date: Mar 29, 2010

Abstract

Methods and apparatus for energy production through the amplification of energetic reactions. A method includes amplifying an energy release from a dispersion of nanoparticles containing a concentration of hydrogen/deuterium nuclei, the nanoparticles suspended in a dielectric medium in a presence of hydrogen/deuterium gas, wherein an energy input is provided by high voltage pulses between two electrodes embedded in the dispersion of nanoparticles.

Priority patent

1993 Air Force LENR Patent “Method of maximizing anharmonic oscillations in deuterated alloys” US5411654A Filed: Jul. 2, 1993 GRANT issued: Feb. 5, 1995 – Inventors: Brian S. Ahern, Keith H. Johnson, Harry R. Clark Jr. – Assignee: Hydroelectron Ventures Inc, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US Air Force – This invention was made with U.S. Government support under contract No. F19628-90-C-0002, awarded by the Air Force. The Government has certain rights in this invention. https://patents.google.com/patent/US5411654A

Further Reading:

Introduction by Dr. Eugene F. Mallove

(MIT Class of 1969, Aero/Astro Engineering, SB 1969, SM 1970)

Editor-in-Chief, Infinite Energy Magazine

President, New Energy Foundation, Inc.

In fact, the story of cold fusion’s reception at MIT is a story of egregious scientific fraud and the coverup of scientific fraud and other misconduct—not by Fleischmann and Pons, as is occasionally alleged—but by researchers who in 1989 aimed to dismiss cold fusion as quickly as possible and who have received hundreds of millions of DOE research dollars since then for their hot fusion research. The cover-up of fraud, sad to say, reaches the highest levels at MIT and includes the current MIT President,Charles M. Vest. Remarkably, President Vest has recently been named by U.S. Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham to head the Task Force on the Future of Science  Programs at the Department of Energy. – end quotes