If Rossi had a device that actually worked as advertised, the first thing he would do would be to set up multiple peer-reviewed demonstrations that would prove his claims in an undebatable way. As soon as incontrovertible evidence was provided, Rossi would become a media superstar, make history, and receive billions in pre-orders from all over the world. And if the physics was on Rossi's side, it would be very easy for him to provide the "extraordinary evidence" required by his extraordinary claims.

But years have passed and the validity of the E-Cat is still an open question. There have been some demonstrations, but results are still very much under discussion. There is no undebatable experimental evidence that the device works as advertised. So either Rossi prefers mystery over fame and billions, or the E-Cat a scam in some form or another.

FWIW, I did my own research about 2 years ago on this mysterious e-cat device, and I found out there is a surprisingly rich history of unexplained effects in nickel-hydrogen systems: heat that cannot be explained by theory. I am almost convinced Rossi and the few other (competing) scientists who are studying this effect are onto something HUGE. See my post: http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=61

Unfortunately the scientific community is very hesitant to review/reproduce the experiments because the words "cold fusion" have had an extremely bad connotation since the Pons and Fleischmann 1989 fiasco.

> Many skeptics were left unconvinced. But the customer that the E-Cat was being tested for—which Wired UK says was rumored to be the US military's DARPA—was satisfied, and purchased the unit.

This doesn't mean that DARPA is not a sceptic. It means the unit has passed the simplest test of "not a cardboard box covered in tin foil with a guy going 'Beep Boop' next to it". Now DARPA can buy a single unit and tear it apart to see if there's anything interesting there.

A £1m gamble on interesting is not much for military budgets. I don't think I'd have spent the money - it feels like a scam or a sad delusion - but maybe there's some interesting chemistry even if cold fusion isn't there.

I remember watching the first E-cat "test". This is one of those things that is either an incredible breakthrough or a "the bigger the lie" type scam. The key thing to remember is that Rossi is not doing this to advance some scientific field, but to invent a product for commercial sale. To that end, any tests or data they release is not intended for rigorous scientific review, but to convince potential customers that they've got a viable product.

That being said, it definitely seems that they have some sort of energy breakthrough. Whatever fuel they have in the e-cat outputs more energy per density than any conventional fuel source. What is not clear is if this is a battery (like hydrogen) or genuine fuel source. They have been shown to produce a lot of energy over a period of several hours, but I haven't heard of any week or month long tests being conducted.

http://phys.org/news/2013-05-rossi-e-cat-energy-density-high...

It might be interesting to know that Andrea Rossi has a history with "breakthrough" discoveries and inventions.

His former company Petroldragon was disbanded after they dumped over 70.000 tons of toxic waste (and probably their method of recycling oil didn't work at all).[1 -wikipedia][2- italian source].

Most of the tests that were done violated very basic scientific rules and can be considered demonstration more than anything. The paper on arxiv.org was done by a scientist who was very close to Rossi (Giuseppe Levi) and some of its methods are questionable according to [3 - german] and [4- shorter/incomplete English version].

A real independent proof of the claims made by Rossi is still to be delivered.

While I hope that Andrea Rossi has found the next BIG thing and that he is just paranoid and incredibly bad at communicating, I seriously doubt it and go with "It's a big scam" for now. With some luck history will prove me wrong.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Rossi_%28entrepreneur%29 [2] http://archiviostorico.corriere.it/2004/novembre/27/Riciclag... [3] http://www.psiram.com/ge/index.php/Focardi-Rossi-Energiekata... [4] http://www.psiram.com/en/index.php/Focardi-Rossi_Energy-Cata...

EDIT: Typos (at least the worst ones)

What I find amusing about this is the fact there willing to turn these things on in an unshielded environment demonstrates they know it will fail. 1MW of the cleanest fusion we know about would still kill everyone in a large room before you could blink.

PS: If it's enough power to heat a cup of coffee you needed serious shielding.

This is a big scam. Note that Rossi has previous experience with similar scams [1].

Note that basically any and all information on ECAT is distributed through a big spam network of SEO sites. I have been following this campaign (along with Steorn) loosely from the very begining.

All the usual telltale signs are there. The project is alway bound to be released in the next 4 months.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Rossi_%28entrepreneur%29...

Anyone interested in the subject should read this paper describing two experiments conducted by outside researchers.

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1305.3913v3

The article says that the exact nature of the reaction (e.g. the catalyzer used) remain secret. At the same time, Wikipedia claims that an Italian patent was granted for E-Cat.

However, isn't the point of the patent system that the discoveries are made public? Does this mean, since the catalyzer was apparently not patented, that someone could (independently invent and) patent it instead? Or do I understand patents and law in a wrong way?

Hacker News + science is often a very bad mix. Any evidence this is actually a fusion device, not a chemical energy converter or a brick?

Andrea Rossi is a scammer. You can search the full story of his previous scam on Google ( searching Petroldragon ). It should, however, spend a few more words to talk about his academic qualifications: Andrea Rossi graduated in PHILOSOPHY and has also acquired a fake degree in chemical engineering from the "Kensington University," a university-scam that was closed by court order years ago. In this fake university has "graduated" even Kim Il-Sung from North Korea ... :-)

http://news.newenergytimes.net/2012/01/11/rossi-engineering-...

Seems like people with the appropriate qualifications have their doubts about this machine. [0] [1]

[0] http://motls.blogspot.com/2013/05/tommaso-dorigo-impressed-b... [1] http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2013/05/21/the-e-cat...

I'm reading this: http://www.forbes.com/sites/markgibbs/2013/05/20/finally-ind...

actually on the ecat.com site :"Leonardo Corp guarantees a COP of 6 for the ECAT, meaning that it takes a required 1 kW of input power to produce 6 kW of heat", which is, granted, quite an achievment.

Berkeley, California is a "nuclear free zone" as the many signs scattered around the city will announce to those that enter. I guess this machine will not be allowed for sale here.

It says you need to provide it with hydrogen. Doesn't extracting hydrogen from water require energy? How much hydrogen and nickel are required for how much output? (If it works at all)

This is really going to be an amazing decade.

How much does this reactor cost? Can't someone buy and review it, test if it works, etc.?

There's got to be a prediction market somewhere I can bet against this thing.