Australian Skeptics are reporting on the latest developments in the world of Andrea Rossi's e-Cat machine.

For those who came in late, this bloke Rossi has invented a machine called the e-Cat that he claims performs cold fusion. There has been buzz about it for a while after his last demonstration allegedly "worked" - at least to the point of convincing someone to actually buy a unit - by generating more electrical power than it took in.

So far most of the actual scientific community are very skeptical about it.

Dick Smith sent over an engineer a couple months back, who reported that the most likely explanation was an error in measuring the energy that went in and out.

Dick has taken this to the next level by offering a cool $1m cash. Rossi has rejected the offer unequivocally:

“If this guy wants to test a 1 MW plant and has 1 million to spend he can buy a 1 MW plant, with a regular contract, that gives him all the necessary guarantees and to us the logic financial guarantees. Our plants Are tested by Our Customers and the Consultants they choose. I have not time at all for this clownery. Besides: when Our E-Cats will be in the market, this ‘millionaire’ will have the chance to buy for few hundred dollars an E-Cat and test it as he wants, so why waste money? I do not need his money.” [Quoted verbatim]

“If this guy wants to test a 1 MW plant and has 1 million to spend he can buy a 1 MW plant, with a regular contract, that gives him all the necessary guarantees and to us the logic financial guarantees. Our plants Are tested by Our Customers and the Consultants they choose. I have not time at all for this clownery. Besides: when Our E-Cats will be in the market, this ‘millionaire’ will have the chance to buy for few hundred dollars an E-Cat and test it as he wants, so why waste money? I do not need his money.” [Quoted verbatim]

that quote makes no sense to me.. i am the only one?

yeah exactly. if product was real you would think he would be jumping at the offer

He doesn't want Dick stealing his secrets, we'd all buy a Dick-Fusion device.

"Hay baby, my house is powered with Dick-Fusion. Wanna see?"

Our plants Are tested by Our Customers and the Consultants they choose.

Randomly capitalising adjectives and nouns. Is that you Faceman?

The inventor is Italian

And it works for more than 30 seconds?

Next thing you know they'll invent a cruise ship that's 'coastline' proof.

Our plants Are tested by Our Customers

I don't trust this due to second capitalised Our.

For those that are curious, there's an interesting talk here on the state of play in cold fusion research (or LENR as they like to call it):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtweR_qGHEc

The guy giving the talk studied under Fleischmann, who was one of the two to kick off the whole controversy. He mentions Rossi towards the end and gives his thoughts at about 4:30 in here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3N3dWlIPUQ&feature=related

Given the energy outputs claimed by the Fleischmann-Pons and Italian-style experiments (just a couple of orders of magnitude more than can be explained by chemical reaction, but many magnitudes below typical 'hot' fusion reactions), and the way that the experiments work (loading up palladium/nickel with very high amounts of hydrogen etc.) it seems plausible that there is some quantum shenanigans going on (e.g. tunneling) to cause the anomaly. It's a pity that Fleischmann & Pons got screwed over by their universities and as a result now it's difficult to do serious research in this area.