Slashdot Mirror
NASA to Investigate Hydrinos
An Anonymous Coward writes "A new NASA program might once and for all settle the "hydrino" question. The concept of the hydrino -- hydrogen shrunk below its normal state with the resulting release of extreme ultraviolet light -- has been derided by the physics establishment and surprisingly embraced by many engineers and people with deep pockets. Slashdot hashed the hydrino pretty vigorously in December 1999. Now NASA is funding independent research into making a rocket from this novel idea. If it works, we could be seeing a sea change in physics. If it fails, hydrinos might finally just float away. There's an active study group of several hundred users (including some prominent scientists) devoted to debating the possible existence of hydrinos. In many ways it sprang from slashdot."
Basically, the crackpot theory says that, "Well, if Hydrogen in the n=1 state has an energy of -13.6eV, and if energy goes as 1/n^2, then if I make n=1/2, that's 30.8 eV per hydrogen in free energy!!"
That's all this theory is, folks, I promise.
This is impossible. Why don't we see this energy signature anywhere in nature? How would the energy get back into the Hydrogen atom? What's to prevent the atom from collapsing into n=1/(infinity). If I can make n (the energy level) arbitrarily close to zero, I can get an infinite amotn of energy out of each atom!
It's kinda like tying a marble to a string and dropping it to a black hole - i can get infinite energy by tying the string to a generator. Except in the caser of hydrogen it's actually not possible.
The uncertaintly principle is a well proved physical theory that would have to be seriously (and impossibly) violated for this guy's crackpot theories to work.
Maybe next time.