People sometime ask us : ” How can we believe that you are getting the results you claim? There are so many big claims of breakthroughs in research.” So, here’s a brief summary. In science, the only test of validity is experimental and observational confirmation of predictions, made before the observations.

LPPFusion’s predictions have been confirmed by experiment and observation and checked by our peers. Back in 1985, Eric Lerner, (now LPPFusion Chief Scientist) with guidance from Dr. Vittorio Nardi and Dr. Winston Bostick of Stevens Institute, pioneers of fusion energy and astrophysics research, published a detailed quantitative model relating quasars and the dense plasma focus (DPF) device that Nardi and Bostick were working on. This peer-reviewed paper connected basic phenomena in nature—quasars—with similar, but far smaller, processes in the fusion machines.

These theories were an elaboration of the work of Hannes Alfven, who won the Noble Prize in Physics in 1970 for his widespread contributions to plasma physics. Dr. Nardi had introduced Lerner to Alfven’s work. Lerner later met and was mentored by Alfven himself.

This model of the DPF as a miniature quasar led eventually to LPPFusion’s work on the same device. In 1994-2001, we worked on other groups’ machines with a tiny amount of funding from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab. While it took a while to raise the money for our own laboratory and device, we built that in 2009.

In 2012 we published results in Physics of Plasmas, the leading journal in field, confirming our 1985 predictions and showing that, based on this model of the dense plasma focus, we had achieved the highest confined ion energy yet reported. (This was equivalent to a temperature over 100 times that in the center of the sun). This caused quite stir among our colleagues and this paper was the most read of any published by the journal that year. Today, the research service Altmetric ranks our paper’s “Attention Score” among the top 3% of all papers of similar age, so our work was widely noted by our peers. 

We topped our own record in a 2017 paper in the same journal getting over the equivalent of 2 billion degrees K. Last year we claimed in a peer-reviewed paper “ the highest confined ion energies of any fusion experiment (> 200 keV) as well as, recently, the lowest impurities of any fusion plasma. Among privately-funded fusion efforts, our experiments have achieved the highest ratio of fusion energy generation to device energy input (wall-plug efficiency) and the highest nτT product of 3.4 × 10²⁰ keV-s/m³” The reviewers for this special issue on privately-funded fusion research were chosen from among our competitors.

So in short, we’ve imitated nature, using the work of earlier pioneers like Alfven, Bostick and Nardi, to make predictions that have been confirmed in the laboratory and validated by our peers. That’s how you know what we say about our results is real, not hype.

To get more real results, we need your help—now. We still are over $20,000 short of our next goal of $100,000 and we are 6 days late getting there. Our team is working full-out in the lab, but unless we get some money in quick, LPPFusion Chief Scientist (and President) Eric Lerner will have to slow the lab work and redirect more time to fundraising. Please don’t let that happen and delay this vital work. If you have not invested, do that now, in any amount over $100. If you have invested, please spend a little time showing this update around to those you may convince to invest. Thanks!