A new source of energy... backstory

Many will remember the Fleischmann Pons Cold Fusion fiasco in 1989. This was front page news, two respected scientists had discovered cold fusion, a gateway to a limitless cheap non polluting source of energy, hitherto thought impossible. However it seemed no one could replicate their experiment and they we quite quickly written off and fools or hoaxers and laughed off the stage. However it turns out that their experiment  if properly done takes weeks to perform. It also required bars of the precious metal palladium  most of which refused to perform for reasons unknown and the experiment produces a small amount of excess heat which is quite difficult to measure. So as it happens, after the hoo hah had died down and in the 20 odd years since their experiment has been replicated quite routinely, most notably by the US Navy. However by then no one was listening and of course the amount of heat produced was small, far from a successful commercial source of energy. Moving forward, a breakthrough occurred in 1998 when a group headed by Professor Focardi of the University of Bologna produced a similar effect with a bar of nickel which is a much more common metal and it was much more repeatable and the amount of heat produced was much larger, but again practically no one was listening. However two people were listening. One was Professor Piantelli of the University Bologna who collaborated in the experiment and another was an Italian business man Andrea Rossi a friend of Professor Focardi. They have both worked to improve the system to produce commercial amounts of heat and it appears the Rossi / Focardi  version is ready first and the full scale reveal is planned for Oct 28th ecat.com, so let us see if the world is turned upside down or we have a damp squib.