A leading American physicist has come out and asked for a national cold fusion research effort in the USA. Dr. Robert Duncan, Vice Chancellor of Research at the University of Missouri told The Columbia Daily Tribune newspaper that he thinks Low Energy Nuclear Reaction claims like those made by Andrea Rossi deserve investigation by the US government.
Duncan said a national research program to look into cold fusion and its merits is needed. He told Daily Tribune reporter Janese Silvey that he is in the early stages of drafting a proposal for such a program. Duncan’s program would involve federal grants to university researchers working on LENR.
Robert Duncan Courtesy University of Missouri
Such research is needed because cold fusion is poorly understood and scientists don’t really know what causes it, Duncan said. He also noted that nobody seems to know how the excess heat in devices like Rossi’s e-cat is created. Such knowledge would be necessary to engineer large systems powered by LENR devices, Duncan added. He also believes that physicists need to reevaluate their opinion of Cold Fusion.
Interestingly enough Duncan predicted that there will be more inventors like Rossi producing results nobody understands. The article also quoted Steven Krivit who said the process was already understood.
Duncan is a very distinguished scientist he is a fellow and a lifetime member of the American Physical Society. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Doctorate in Physics from the University of California-Santa Barbara. Duncan would be well qualified to head up research into LENR because he is a recognized expert in low temperature physics.
In his career Duncan has been director of the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, a fundamental physics researcher for NASA, a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of New Mexico and a visiting member of the Physics Faculty at the California Institute of Technology. Dr. Duncan has also consulted with industry, he helped found three companies dealing with alternative energy and minimally invasive cancer diagnostics and surgery.
Dr. Duncan has been working as a consultant with Energetics Technologies an Israeli-American company that has been doing cold fusion research for about a decade. He helped Energetics Technologies set up a facility at the University of Missouri’s Life Science Business Incubator in Columbia, Missouri.
http://youtu.be/JyNn_Z6wCIk
Dr. Duncan became involved in cold fusion research when Scott Pelley of the popular American TV news program 60 Minutes asked him to comment on it. Duncan was so impressed by the field that he got involved in it. Pelley is now anchor of the CBS network’s national news broadcast the most watched in the US so Duncan has friends in the media who can help him.
He would be in an excellent position to spearhead a national research effort into LENR. He heads the University of Missouri’s research enterprise which has more than $250 million a year in contracts and grants. Its facilities include multidisciplinary research centers and an incubator that tries to commercialize new technologies.