Storms Releases New LENR Book
Christy L. Frazier
June 27, 2014

Infinite Energy Press has the privilege of releasing the new book by Dr. Edmund Storms, The Explanation of Low Energy Nuclear Reaction: An Examination of the Relationship Between Observation and Explanation.

The Foreword of the 351-page book (which includes an extensive 904 references, most of which are discussed within the book) is written by Dr. Michael McKubre. He notes that Storms “knows more about cold fusion than any person alive...He has studied longer, harder, and deeper than any other.” McKubre highlights Storms’ “willingness and ability to systematize the literature of the field” and notes that there is “no better synthesis of knowledge and understanding presently available to us.”

In his Preface, Storms lays out the prime purpose of the new book. He writes: “This book provides many answers to the rational questions posed by skeptics about the reality, shows how an explanation is best structured, and describes some basic features commercial application must take into account. Cold fusion is not a mystery because it can actually be understood using the concepts applied to normal science.”

Experimentalist McKubre appreciates Storms’ continued critique of existing LENR theory: “Dr. Storms is an active experimentalist and his (sometimes ruthless) evaluation of the huge diversity of models so far proposed to account for LENR is particularly well adapted to the needs of experimental science.”

Storms does not spend much time in the book rehashing the mistreatment of cold fusion science (this has been covered extensively before), but in the Preface he does briefly refer to the long road behind and ahead for the field. He writes: “We can forgive skepticism and rejection when a new discovery is first announced. This is the way of modern physics — reject until proven true. Nevertheless, publication of false information about the claims, refusal by peer reviewers to allow publication of information describing well documented behavior, and personal attack have no business being used to stifle research. Science is not embarrassed or diminished by incorrect claims, but it is damaged by arrogant attack. Rather than providing protection from what is considered by some to be bad science, these attempts to keep science ‘pure’ will now be remembered as the true examples of bad science. Treatment of cold fusion has become a diagnostic tool for revealing how science is actually practiced by some people in contrast to how they are expected to behave.”

Storms’ first book, The Science of Low Energy Nuclear Reaction: A Comprehensive Compilation of Evidence and Explanations About Cold Fusion (published by World Scientific, 2007), was incredibly popular and is still available as an e-book. The new book is available in Kindle format via Amazon.

The Explanation of Low Energy Nuclear Reaction is available in paperback for $28 (international customers will have an added shipping cost). Ruby Carat of Cold Fusion Now designed the book cover (featuring a representation of the hydroton proposed by Storms), as well as a website specifically for the book, http://lenrexplained.com, which features a summary of the author and his work. The book is available from Infinite Energy.. Carat's design on the book cover will soon be available on a coffee cup, t-shirt, hat and bumper sticker at http://www.zazzle.com/lenrnomics. John Maguire has conducted an audio interview with Storms for Cold Fusion Now.

In the Foreword, McKubre highlights a few of the reasons one should buy Storms’ new book: “The opportunity to learn directly from the most knowledgeable person in arguably the most important emerging field, and to share his concise and well considered condensation of a difficult and scattered literature are not the only or primary reasons to comprehend The Explanation of Low Energy Nuclear Reaction. Laid out clearly and gently in Chapter 5, ‘Description of an Explanation,’ is the first physical science based description of a potential explanation for cold fusion.”

An Interview with Edmund Storms

Your first book, The Science of Low Energy Nuclear Reaction, was published in 2007. When did you first consider publishing a second book?
I realized about a year ago that my understanding was not up to the task of making the effect work every time. I would have occasional success, just enough to keep me interested but not enough to attract financial support. This financial support is needed because the study of the effect no longer benefits from what a single individual can contribute using less than modern tools. The study needs modern tools, many hands, and knowledge from many sources.

Unfortunately, the theory that guides such work I found to be in conflict with the basic behavior of the LENR process and with what is known about the basic laws of nature. Even the proposed theories seldom agreed with each other. If future studies were to be effective, this confusion had to be reduced. That is why I wrote the book. 

Can you tell readers generally what new material is presented in The Explanation of Low Energy Nuclear Reaction?
The book summarizes and explains most of the major observations about helium, tritium, energy, radiation, and transmutation production. The relationships between these observations are shown and how many previously unexplained behaviors can have a common explanation. I also give summaries of some proposed theories to show how the process has been explained by other people. Finally, I show the basic conflicts with natural law some of the basic assumptions used in these theories contain.

Can you provide a brief description of the model you’ve been working on recently?
I make several basic assumptions that I then justify. These are:

. The LENR process does not take place in a chemical lattice.
. The LENR process takes place only in cracks of a critically small gap size.
. All isotopes of hydrogen can fuse by the same basic process, with only the nuclear products being different.
. The basic process removes energy over a period of time as photon emission. Most of this emission does not leave the apparatus.
. The fusion process causes the transmutation reactions.
. The overall process is consistent with all natural law and requires introduction of only one new process.
. Cold fusion and hot fusion are not related in any way.

How is this model an improvement over other theories that exist?
Unlike other models, I can explain the observed behavior without using ad hoc assumptions, show what aspect of the process needs to be explored next, and predict what will be discovered. In addition, the model is consistent with accepted natural law.

Can you describe the proposed special chemical structure called a “hydroton”?
The Hydroton is the structure in which the fusion and transmutation processes take place. This structure allows the excess mass-energy to be drained away before fusion takes place.

This is a normal chemical structure without any ad hoc assumptions being required for its creation. The structure and the environment in which it forms uniquely allow a new process to take place that has remained invisible before. This new process is the great discovery made possible by the behavior of LENR.

What, if anything, is “missing” from your proposed theory?
Much is missing that will keep graduate students busy for decades. I have only drawn the general map. The details of where the trees and rocks are located have to be filled in.

You have been an experimentalist for so many years. What prompted your investigation into theory?
Theory is the guide to experimental research. Every experimentalist has in his head a guide to his work that can be called a theory. In normal science, these guides are well known and well established. In LENR, the guides are missing. Consequently, experimentalists tend to wonder aimlessly. I got tired of aimless wondering and only occasional success. Someone had to do the dirty job of cleaning up the mess in theory, which I undertook. We will see whether or not I live to regret this choice.

In an interview with Marianne Macy for IE #111, you noted that you were hoping that tests of your new theory would soon be underway. What is that status of testing the hypothesis, and do you have any results to report?
I have finally had time to get back into the lab. So far, the results look encouraging.

Over the years, you’ve conducted several surveys of the field. Jed Rothwell has noted in numerous forums that you are perhaps the only person who has “read everything” in the LENR field. How did reviewing all that data shape your idea of the nuclear active environment (NAE)?
Most people have a very poor knowledge of what other people have done. This knowledge is essential for the patterns and the consistent behaviors to be seen. My access to the overall knowledge is unique and essential to my work. However, reading all the papers is not for the faint of heart, requiring the study of about 2000 papers.

Can you specify the ways in which a solid theory will help accelerate development of a technology?
Right now technology is hampered by active material not being able to be made on demand and by lack of material with high energy production. Rossi is perhaps the only exception to having solved this problem, but he is not sharing his method. The next problem will be the life-time of the material for making useful energy. That problem has not been addressed. Finally, control of the process is a challenge because the rate of production from LENR increases with increased temperature. These problems will require a correct understanding for them to be solved.

Finally, conventional scientists will not accept and support such studies unless they can accept an explanation. Unfortunately, that requirement is the nature of science these days.

Your subtitle is “An Examination of the Relationship Between Observation and Explanation.” What is that relationship, and where do you think it now stands in the LENR field?
Observation and theory are joined and are essential to each other. Observation makes no sense unless an explanation is applied and a theory that is in conflict with observation is pure imagination and perhaps insanity. At present, a very poor relationship exists between observation and theory in the LENR field.

How do you think your ideas will be accepted by people who have developed other theories?
This question is at the heart of how soon LENR will be accepted by conventional science and used as technology.  No one likes to have their ideas shot down, so I do not expect the other theoreticians to be happy. Nevertheless, an understanding that most people in the field can accept needs to be achieved before scientists outside the field will pay much attention to the claims. If the response by the major players is an emotional food fight based on hurt egos, we can kiss the technology goodbye for many more years. Instead, I hope the book will encourage scientists outside the field to take a new interest and bring some new ideas to the debate.