Slashdot Mirror
Journal of Applied Physics, NASA, and the Hydrino
Erik Baard writes "I wanted to bring you the last on a story that was slashdotted in June: NASA's investigation of the 'hydrino' rocket. In June I reported for wired.com that the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts was
funding a six-month study of rockets propeled by plasmas created by BlackLight Power Inc. The company claims that energy is released when it shrinks hydrogen atoms, bringing the electron closer into its nucleus than thought possible. Here's the scoop: the researcher told NASA that *something* was indeed generating plasmas with more kinetic energy than would be expected for the power input. And the kicker is that BlackLight founder Randell Mills scored a paper about his plasmas in the mainstream Journal of Applied Physics -- after a few years of following this bizarre startup, that floored me." Here's the Village Voice story with these updates.
Better recalculate those schrodinger equations. Lets add more variables this time :D
----
Go canucks, habs, and sens!
They should add a new line to the Slashdot FAQ: "You should only read this site if you payed attention in science class." ...and if you paid attention in English class.
evil adrian
--No money raised for this...
Sex - Find It
I would take the publishing of a science paper these days with a grain of salt. The register just did some ground breaking reporting in this area for another company like this and found out that the state of peer review at most of these mags is poor at best.
As long as it sounds plausible then it gets published. Stringing enough buzz words together usually does the trick. Unfortunatly the science mags have gone the same way as the game review mags. Don't make waves or you don't get content and loose readership and advertising dollars.
Read the whole article at the Register
Papa Legba come and open the gate
See this slashdot thread for a complementary project working on the other half of the technology necessary to yield plasma-powered rockets. Plasma, essentially the fourth state of matter, is VERY hot and cannot be contained by normal means. A magnetic field, ostensibly impervious to temperature, is thought to be the way to contain the plasma and direct it. There is nothing really new here, except that this scientist is using a novel way to try to create this high energy plasma: the hydrino. Good luck to him... but I am also somewhat skeptical. He seems to be too much venture-capitalist, not enough scientist.
Nasa OK'd the physics, and made sure that the scientists weren't fudging the data. Great, and too bad all this company has right now is "abnormally energetic plasma". So far we have an unexplained phenomenon. Genereally, unexplained phenomena get researched by scientists for years *before* a company and patents are formed, ne? Something stinks here, but I don't think it's a scam. It's mostly the smell of optimism ^+_+^ Who other than me predicts a "yeah, well, it's kind of like that antigravity effect - it happened, but no one can explain it or use it" type of situation arising from this research?
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
Of course this is a scam, but I think there's an interesting question here: if they have any kind of setup which stores energy in a worthwhile way, and their patents depend on their explanation of how it works, which is crap, a sub-ground state of hydrogen, might their patents be ineffective at limiting commercial usage of the setup when it turns out the mechanism of operation's different than the patents claim?
"player 4 hit player 1 with 0 stroms"
payed is a perfectly cromulent word.
From the link, "Randell Mills has pledged for a decade to spark a revolution in physics that will not only overturn much of the atomic science that been taught and rewarded since the early 20th century, but will also provide a source of clean and nearly limitless energy."
Saddly, If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is...
I can't make up my mind if this shall be modded "Troll" or "Funny"....
Brevity is the soul of wit
-- Polonius
No, that requirement should be for posting to the site. Poor spellers should still be allowed to read it, as long as they realize this will not improve their spelling!
Seriously, I am not criticizing anyone specific here, but when you misspell common words, it takes a lot of credibility away from your thoughts. I wish slashdot allowed me to automatically mod down the poor spellers by a point or two. A system to correct them before they post incorrect spellings would be better. Though admittedly I like being given indications that the poster is a fool before bothering to read some badly reasoned nonsense, which sometimes can delay me for some time before jumping to erroneous conclusions in a digusting logical error which I immediately dismiss in annoyance. Watching for the misspelling of words gives an early warning that the poster is not thinking clearly and may be attempting to disguise an opinion in the garb of a fact.
Bear in mind that this very criticism is just an opinion. There are surely exceptions to this rule, but in general I doubt I am the only one that feels this way. I honestly believe that if you are uncertain how to spell a word, you should never use it in written communication.
"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt."
-attribution uncertain, sometimes given as Mark Twain
I probably missed a word somewhere in this post, and that means the trolls will eat me alive. I had a good run I guess.
For every ground breaking discovery there are a million crackpots. Scientists have plenty of reasons to be sceptic. Once this guy is able topower a space heater with his plasma they will have to believe him.
btw who says the ether exists?
Those comments would be vaild if the person in question had a single shred of evidence to support his theories. However, after millions of dollars invested, he's yet to demonstrate his "technology" in a controlled environment, nor has anyone been able to reproduce a single one of his results beyond what is expected by conventional science.
No bravery involved. I just don't care.
It sounds nice to say that every idea should get a fair examination, but in reality there are limited resources, both materially and in terms of peoples' time. You have to make some judgment calls, and it makes me angry that NASA is wasting money on a textbook free energy scam when they could be spending it on something useful. Of course it's possible that 'hydrino' theory is correct, but I certainly don't see any reason to believe that's so in the meandering mess of 'experiments' that have been advanced so far as proof. Having an open mind is a great ideal, but you have to practical about things too if you want to get anything done.
...wearing a skin-tight topless leather jumpsuit, with cutaway buttocks and transparent crotch panel.
With enemies like Park, Mills doesn't need friends. This is a really good way to get credibility with investors for Mills.
Seastead this.
Thank you
Whether people believe or don't believe that this effect is real or non-existent is completely irrelevant. We have a perfectly good scientific method for distinguishing reality from fiction, and any "opinions" volunteered by experts and lay readers alike are not just irrelevant, but actually harmful to the success of that method.
The company will in due course provide all the info necessary for independent verification, which may succeed or fail, or else it won't provide it, in which case it fails by default on the scientific front. Opinions are, quite literally, just a waste of time.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
many self-righteous so-called "scientists" have this incredible fear of anything outside their understanding. Meteorites? They don't exist,
Psychic powers? Oops, they went away when you walked in the room.
Psychic powers? Oops, we ignored basic sercuity cautions and let the subject cheat.
Psychic powers? Oops, it looks like we fudged our numbers.
Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, shame on you.
When "scientists" stop acting as defensive about their holy truths as any other two-bit religion with a tenuous basis, perhaps we can make some real progress.
Because the odds of surviving cancer haven't steadily been going up. Because there's no drugs for people with HIV to hold back the virus. Because our movies all come on magnatic media, or long rolls of optical media. Because we have to search for a payphone when we need to make a phone call. Because slow mail or expensive phone calls are the only way for most Americans, Europeans and Japanese to communicate.
get back to the "real" work of investigating the universe *as it exists*, not as you believe it to exist.
Small enough circuits have quantum bleed-over, just like predicted by theory. Einstein's theory predicted gravitational lenses, just like they were found in real life. These theories describe the universe fairly well.
On the other hand, we've been seeing perpetual motion machines for how many centuries? And they never seem to work if and when we get our hands on them. How much work should a scientist spend studying something that's been disproved time and time again? When given something that seems bogus and is presented by someone with a financial motive, that doesn't correspond to the theories that are correct in every observation they made, the general trend is that it actually is bogus.
Here's another question: what do you do? Scientists would rather not go on what they feel will probably be a wild goose chase, instead working on stuff they feel will get results. I can hardly fault someone for making that decision - I try to avoid wasting my time myself. If you believe it has value, why don't you dedicate your time to studying it?
The details of the paper are:
Journal of Applied Physics -- December 15, 2002 -- Volume 92, Issue 12, pp. 7008-7021
The abstract is as follows:
Comparison of excessive Balmer alpha line broadening of glow discharge and microwave hydrogen plasmas with certain catalysts
R. L. Mills, P. C. Ray, B. Dhandapani, R. M. Mayo, and J. He
BlackLight Power, Incorporated, 493 Old Trenton Road, Cranbury, New Jersey 08512
(Received 11 April 2002; accepted 25 September 2002)
From the width of the 656.3 nm Balmer alpha line emitted from microwave and glow discharge plasmas, it was found that a strontium-hydrogen microwave plasma showed a broadening similar to that observed in the glow discharge cell of 27-33 eV; whereas, in both sources, no broadening was observed for magnesium-hydrogen. Microwave helium-hydrogen and argon-hydrogen plasmas showed extraordinary broadening corresponding to an average hydrogen atom temperature of 180-210 eV and 110-130 eV, respectively. The corresponding results from the glow discharge plasmas were 33-38 eV and 30-35 eV respectively, compared to [approximate]4 eV for plasmas of pure hydrogen, neon-hydrogen, krypton-hydrogen, and xenon-hydrogen maintained in either source. Similarly, the average electron temperature Te for helium-hydrogen and argon-hydrogen microwave plasmas were high, 30 500±5% K and 13 700±5% K, respectively; compared to 7400±5% K and 5700±5% K for helium and argon alone, respectively. External Stark broadening or acceleration of charged species due to high fields can not explain the microwave results since no high field was present, and the electron density was orders of magnitude too low for the corresponding Stark effect. Rather, a resonant energy transfer mechanism is proposed.
It the theroy isn't verified, thats science to. Also, there is no harm in trying to do something with the phenomenon even if we don't understand it. I think its likely that the guy might be able to make something usefull and *have no clue* why it works. Electricity was being used and studied 100 years before we had a clue what it was.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
Except you spelled "cromulant" wrong.
"btw who says the ether exists?"
Have you taken a look at the vacuum lately? At this point I'd be more comfortable calling it "ether" instead of "vacuum," because there seems to be more "something" than "nothing" out there.
The likelyhood of this is being real is pretty low, but if true, it would likely stand atomic & quantum theory on its ear. I know that I don't know enough to say for sure, but I have to think that the fundamental basis of the proposition hear, that electrons are a sort of 'bubble' versus the accepted 'cloud', would require a lot of coincidental observations for the bubble theory to actually be true while the cloud theory appears to be true.
I'm very skeptical, but I'm sooo ready to see *some* kind of advance in the area of power generation.
Of course I've looked at the vacuum. I'm staring at it right now. It doesn't look anything like the old theories of what the "ether" was.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Who else here is sick of seeing the ad in your signature for yersex.tilegarden.com? It can't be just me.
For those that haven't seen the page, allow me to recreate this hilarious joke for you:
Please choose one:
- I have a penis.
- I have a vagina.
You press the submit button and the next page says either "you are a man" or "you are a woman." If you select both or neither, an equally hilarious response is displayed.
Oh, and there's an oh-so clever plug to three 'humorous' books on Amazon. I can only hope they are as funny as this page. I may bust a gut.
ENOUGH WITH YOUR LAME-ASS PAGE. I would rather look at a gaping asshole.
Anthony Marchese is a professor at Rowan University, where he teaches Mechanical Engineering. He is a rather nice, young, "cool" professor, as I used to have him.
I'm guessing the reason NASA sent him out to research this is because among other things, he has done reasearch on how things combust (burn) in space. He has had his experiments taken up on the "vomit comet" as well as on the taken space shuttle mission STS-94, to which I recall a CNN reporter stating in an obviously overpitched tone, "Well, isn't that dangerous?"
I shall now turn this into the first ever slashdotting with credits as I list the names of the network administrators I know run various rowan.edu servers, ALL of which are now non-accessable:
Engineering.rowan.edu's administrators: (NOTE: an old Sun SPARC workstation box, will not survive any slashdotting, which it appears to be already getting!!!)
Rowan.edu (in general) administrators: We must be fair - the school only had (has?) about a 4.5 Mbps total Internet connection (assuming no faster lines ever came through; they were waiting on a certain phone company for years...) - I'm timing out connecting to their stuff too...
All the above URLs are off the top of my head, as I can no longer access any of those servers. Of the above, only www.rowan.edu seems to be up.
Congratulations to all the slashdotters who now have successfully flooded an entire campus' Internet connection. The students trying to stea^H^H^H^Hresearch their term papers but are now unable to get online will forever remember you.
Shame on you. Fool me twice... Can't... Can't get fooled again.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
It's not just BlackLight Power's work in bombs, rockets, and rusty ships that has the military's attention. Mills has stacks of proprietary research on artificial intelligence. In what he calls Brain Child Systems, Mills has done the math for a reasoning machine with consciousness.
The more I read this guy, the more the hairs on my back stand straight.
My uncle had a saying, that I just can't keep out of my mind as I'm reading all this:
"Someone who knows everything knows nothing."
WHAT IS IT WITH YOU GUYS!!!
This guy is a con-artist taking you for a ride. Why are you feeding his ego. Utter nonsense!
If you actually read the NASA study, you will immediately see that there the amount of experimental evidence in NO WAY justifies any of the claims made. Excess power generation based on microwave heating of two different gas mixtures invalidates millions of REPEATABLE experiments conducted over the past 80 years? I DON'T THINK SO. Much more likely is that the adsorbtivity of the gases wasn't the same.
The NASA study didn't even get to the point where they measured exhaust gas velocity.
GIVE ME A BREAK.
Such as, just pulling an example from the top of my head, someone SUCCESSFULLY MAKING USE OF this refuted theory???
That's like someone refuting relativity based on the predictions of newtonian physics... If he's onto somethign new here, then it's obvous that existing science isn't going to predict it.
You don't send a scientist to investigate questionable science, and what may or may not be a scam. You send a scientist *and* someone familiar with con artists, scammers, sleight of hand, misdirection, etc. How many times does this have to be said?
-Chris
San Diego Padres, 100 Park Blvd, San Diego CA 92101
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by
Seriously, I am not criticizing anyone specific here, but when you misspell common words, it takes a lot of credibility away from your thoughts.
It takes away credibility in some peoples minds, in other's it doesn't. 99% of the time I don't even notice typographical errors in peoples writing. I wish slashdot allowed me to automatically mod down the poor spellers by a point or two.
I wish I could mod you down by a point or two, but it looks like someone's already beat me to it.
A system to correct them before they post incorrect spellings would be better.
Yeah, we wouldn't want anyone talking about new ideas or concepts like 'hydrino' or anything. Better change it to 'hydrant' on the fly, or maybe trigger the lameness filter! Everyone loves that! The lameness filter never stops anyone from talking about anything interesting. "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt."
-attribution uncertain, sometimes given as Mark Twain
Yes, but also 'sometimes attributed to Mark Twain' the quote "Never trust a man who only knows how to spell a word one way" as well, so perhaps it would be rather foolish of you to go around misattributing quotes to MT in your anti-miss-spelling crusade. I probably missed a word somewhere in this post, and that means the trolls will eat me alive. I had a good run I guess.
Ah, ever the brilliant prognosticator. You're right. You misspelled 'digusting' which should be 'disgusting' (or did you perhaps mean degusting?).
now, normally I wouldn't hold that against you, but I do believe that the standards set for others should be applied to self, and thus I suppose you have "removed all doubt" that you are, in fact, an idiot.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
But he used it with such a noble spirit that it still embiggens his post.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
How much physics do you know? The science used to refute the claims of the hydrino is extremely well grounded in years of experiment. You'd have to do a hell of a lot more than he has done to get me to doubt the E & M work of Maxwell or the uncertainty principle of Heisenberg.
Brevity is the soul of wit
-- Polonius
Lol crackhead.
As Skeptic publisher Michael Shermer says, "The proof is in the hydrino pudding. The question is, when are you going to have desktop hydrino pudding?"
"Desktop"? No, imagine a Beowulf cluster of >THUNK
Thank god he didn't advise a laptop version. I only fill my lap with pudding for *special* occasions.
Voodoo Girl is the bomb!
Actually, payed is only valid for the 10th sense of pay in that link. In the context of the FAQ, it is (probably) used incromulently.
Of course, quite a predictable response. As the parent post of this thread pointed out (oh, wait, what parent post? It seems to have gotten modded out of existance), even shown a working prototype, "real" scientists will still refuse to even consider the possibility that their theories contain an error.
"How much physics" someone knows seems irrelevant, if that physics allows "proof" that something can't work when it actually does. And by reductio ad absurdum...
Seriously, I am not criticizing anyone specific here, but when you misspell common words, it takes a lot of credibility away from your thoughts.
I think logical fallacies such as argumentum ad hominem take a little more credibility away from someone. Address the idea itself rather than some straw man you (inadvertently?) set up.
In the distance you hear an ominous moo.
I've done some reading on this subject, and the fundamental theory stems from an assumption that the electron assumes a non-classical (particle) and non-quantum (no probability wave) form of a two-dimensional shell (called an "orbitsphere"). This is where everything comes from, and nobody has been able to disprove the theory yet. The work presently being persued is seemingly discombobulated because it's being influenced by commercial applications. It is pushing to empirically prove the existence of hydrinos (i.e. lookie what I made, therefore they exist!) instead of forming a rock-solid experiment (in the eyes of the scientific community) to prove the existence of hydrinos (i.e. I did X and Y and got A, not Z or B, and here's my test setup and data which clearly shows that I took into account all the variables that you'd otherwise say I neglected, therefore they must exist. Now how can I make money off of this?).
/. the following link. It's Dr. Mills' company's webpage which offers a free PDF "book" on the subject.
For those who would like to read more, please
Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.
How scrumtrulescent! I find myself embiggened by your vocabulary.
If this hydrino particle exists at a lower energy level than a hydrogen atom, wouldn't one expect them to be somewhat common outside of the laboratory? In fact, you'd expect them to be more and more common as time passes because the energy needed to maintain a hydrogen atom with the electrons at a higher energy level would be lost as unusable heat (entropy, right?). So you'd expect with all the particle physics, quantum physics, etc being researched, you'd think someone else would have run into one of these "hydrinos" in the wild. I'll believe it when someone reproduces his results. Until then, I'll file this next to cold fusion in my "unsubstatiated miracle science" folder.
If not all sentients are human, couldn't it be possible that not all humans are sentient either?
Isnt that kinda the idea?
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
I think they make H-Bombs small enough to sit on your desk.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Research Project Funded by the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts
Principal Investigator
Project Summary
During the past decade, several research groups have begun to report unique spectroscopic results for mixed gas plasma systems in which one of the species present was hydrogen gas. In these experiments, researchers have reported excessive line broadening of H emission lines and peculiar non-Boltzmann population of excited states. The hydrogen line broadening in most of these studies was attributed to Doppler broadening associated with high random translational velocity of H atoms (i.e. "fast hydrogen").
Recent data have been published by scientists at BlackLight Power reporting similar phenomena that suggests the presence of a newly identified regime of energetic mixed gas hydrogen plasma systems. Specifically, the following phenomena have been reported:
Preferential Doppler line broadening of atomic hydrogen emission spectra,
Inverted populations of hydrogen Balmer series in microwave hydrogen gas mixture plasmas,
Novel vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) vibration spectra of hydrogen mixture plasmas, an
Water bath calorimeter experiments interpreted as showing increased heat generation in certain gas mixtures.
Scientists at BlackLight Power, Inc. have explained the above phenomena based on a hypothesis that, under certain conditions, hydrogen atoms can undergo transitions to energy levels corresponding to fractional principal quantum numbers. However, since the theoretical explanation of the BlackLight Process has entailed a reworking of quantum mechanics, the theory has not been readily accepted in the scientific community. Regardless of the theoretical explanation, the experimental data suggests that these plasma systems have unique characteristics that warrant further exploration for propulsion applications.
Accordingly, the objective of the recently completed NIAC Phase I study was to assess the potential of low pressure, mixed gas hydrogen plasmas toward the development of high performance space propulsion systems. The project was awarded to Rowan by the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts in April 2002. Prior to the Phase I study, no attempt had been made to apply this type of plasma system toward the development of a rocket thruster. Preliminary calculations suggest that such a thruster could achieve performance several orders of magnitude greater than chemical rocket propulsion.
During the period of May 1, 2002 to November 30, 2002, the following progress was made on the project:
Conceptual designs for two separate proof-of-concept thrusters were completed.
Configuration designs for thruster hardware were developed using SolidWorks 3D solids modeling.
A BlackLight Plasma Thruster (BLPT) was fabricated.
A BlackLight Microwave Plasma Thruster (BLMPT) was fabricated.
An experimental vacuum test chamber apparatus was developed for testing the BLPT and BLMPT thrusters.
A spectroscopic technique was developed for measuring thruster exhaust velocity using a Doppler shift of hydrogen emission spectra.
A 1 kW class arcjet thruster and power supply was obtained from NASA Glenn Research Center to benchmark Doppler shift velocity measurement technique.
Experiments on the BlackLight process were performed including:
o Thermal characterization of a compound hollow cathode glow discharge apparatus,
o Hydrogen line broadening measurements in low pressure microwave water plasmas,
o Measurements of inversion of line intensities in hydrogen Balmer series,
o Measurements of novel vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) vibration spectra of hydrogen mixture plasma, and
o Water bath calorimetry experiments.
The BLPT and BLMPT were installed into vacuum systems and successfully test fired.
Preliminary experiments were performed to measure emission spectra of the exhaust gases of the BLMPT thruster.
Each of these results is described in the Phase I final report, which was issued on Dec. 2, 2002.
The following presentation was given at the NASA Instituted for Advanced Concepts Phase I Fellows Meeting in Atlanta, GA on October 25, 2002. Download presentation here.
Rowan Project Personnel
Test Firing BLMPT Thruster
NASA has an entire budget set aside for advanced propulsion research. This includes way out there theories like this one. If they didn't waste it on this, they'd waste it on something else.
Does anyone else find that so called scientists that dismiss something new out of hand aren't really worthy of being called scientists? IMHO a scientist is like Captain Kirk.. always going where no may has gone before. It's one thing not to believe every thing that comes down the pipe but creeps like this guy that hunts down 'voodoo' just piss me off. If there is nothing to someones ideas and claims then eventually it'll be self evident. There is no need to attack new ideas just because they may be wrong. I've always thought learning from mistakes was the best way. If you're not proving something works then at least your shining light on what doesn't.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Sorry, until we have the current living heir to the intellectual tradition and rigor of Richard P. Feynman examine and confirm these claims, it's just so much snake oil.
You have a point, but so does the parent post to yours.
If something such as perpetual motion is known to be false, fine, but I read about the difficulties in convincing the scientific community that meteorite theories could be valid, even when comparing existing craters with profiles of ballistic craters.
I do agree that this hydrogen theory is dubious at best, how long does it take to perform the experiment? I have to admit that the anti-social looking brush-offs by existing scientists don't exactly improve public confidence as it often does look like scientists simply don't think the public is worth educating. It's all a psychology thing, the person doing the denying almost always looks guilty, which is admittedly a tough thing to break.
Not really. Believe it or not, outside the laboratory, *very* few atoms actually have their electrons at ground state. Those suckers fly all over the place, constantly promoting and radiating.
:-)
Well, okay... I should qualify that with "on Earth, very few...".
The concept of "ground state" exists as more of a theoretical curiosity (that we can actually exploit in some instances, such as in gas lasers) than a part of normal reality. Like the idea of absolute zero, or frictionless pulleys, or Young managing to perform the "classic" double slit experiment 200 years ago (hell, I've tried reproducing his work with much higher quality modern materials, and failed miserably... Without an electron beam and an etched mask, no way).
Your comments are falsehoods. Post proof or retract.
Buckyballs weren't found in the wild until after they were made in a lab. My only point is that sometimes things in the wild aren't found because we haven't been looking specifically for it.
Heh heh. They misspelled "Planck."
...of Mills' math. The page you pointed to simply recapitulates the basics of the standard Bohr atom, INCLUDING the assumption that particles are pointlike -- and therefore essentially abstract, as Bohr preferred to think. The author never engages Mills math or his reasoning.
Mills explicitly assumes that the electron, to be physical, must have an sensible extended form. His solutions to the Schrodinger equations don't describe a 3D 'cloud' of statistically-probable positions for each point charge spread through space at each given time. He has instead found a valid set of equations that describe the electron as a 2D 'shell' of charge. Read his book for more, argued better than I can. His math spits out the hydrogen atom we observe quite accurately.
It's frustrating that many people won't take more time to understand Mills' proposals. That's the problem with paradigm shifts; to grapple with the different model, you have to posit that the model might be sufficiently descriptive, even if that invalidates assumptions of your own model. And when you've had seventy years of the Copenhagen interpretation of the atom, you've got some basic assumptions that people don't like to see threatened -- so they won't consider a new model, or will only point out that, in terms of the old model, it doesn't make sense. But it's by definition impossible to understand the new paradigm solely in terms of the old; if it weren't you wouldn't need a new paradigm.
It seems to me that the thing to do with this is either (1) refute it (2) prove it (3) explain it.
As a possible answer to #3, just suppose:
As I remember, you can apply any charge that is a fraction of e to a "Electron Tunnelling Microscope" by adjusting the pattern of the electrons. That is, the electrons interact together, and give you any charge you want at the tip.
Now, that being the case, I note that their "plasma" is a *low* density plasma, probably low energy too. Therefore, one would expect large waveforms. If they are large waveforms, then they at least partially correspond to that "new" state of matter, in which you lower the temperature of the hydrogen gas down towards absolute zero, and you start to see interesting things with the Pauli exclusion principle. And the gas ceases to behave like atoms, but starts to behave like a network.
In other words, this could indeed be a fractional shell level per atom, in the network system only.
But on the other hand, if this is so, this will never yield useful energy, because it is necessarily a low-energy phenonemon.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
So what if this guy's theory is wrong? As long as there is sufficient evidence of a new strange or unexplained phenomena it's probably worth investigating. Maybe scientists are too busy repeating experiments done by 1000 other scientists. People have already spent billions in hot nuclear fusion and when I last checked it's still the same number of years away. The ISS is not significantly more than an expensive Mir.
......".
You might as well call Columbus a crack pot and a conman - his theory was wrong, he took other people's money and practically lied to them, and he was far from being even the first.
Same goes for cold fusion - even if it's not cold fusion, there seems to be some interesting phenomena in it.
Tons of scientists make up theories without providing any evidence, but they still are lauded for it. Sure it's called "theoretical
To naysayers it's better to ignore stuff than be negative without evidence, at least you won't look like an idiot if you are wrong.
Your comments are falsehoods. Post proof or retract.
Class...
/. and other such forums. If you're not good at spelling and use MacOS X you should consider using OmniWeb as you browser for such activities as it has a spell checking feature. Spell checking in OmniWeb actually works and thus alleviates the need to compose your response in a word-processor.
I'll now address the subject of posting to
Class dismissed...
"Oh drat these computers, they're so naughty and so complex, I could pinch them." --Marvin the Martian
Not only does the lab coat look funny, it shows he can't be a real scientist. Real scientists wear WHITE lab coats, this guy is wearing a BLUE lab coat. I think blue coats are for sanitation workers.
I get the impression that the majority of the people badmouthing Dr. Mills and BlackLight Power are doing so simply because what he claims is so revolutionary that it sounds too good to be true. The majority of the commentors on this thread have shown no understanding of the physics behind these claims (I'll be the first to admit, I don't know enough physics to understand what this theory is trying to say, so I will not comment on whether or not this is a crackpot theory). However, I did take the time to find the paper where Mills published his theory, and read through the first few pages. Even though it was over my head, I did grasp that if his theory supports what he claims it does, it could be very powerful.
I therefore leave more knowledgeable groups (such as peer-reviewed journals) to sift through the physics and decide if it is at least possible. If it is possible, the next step to validate a scientific theory is to verify its predictions, which BlackLightPower has claimed to have done. To double check these claims, it is up to other institutions to try to reproduce these results. I have yet to find any group that has tried to repeat the hydrino experiments. I think that this is what NASA is trying to do. If NASA can get the same results, it's a pretty sure bet Mills is on to something here. If they can't, this theory will be defeated once and for all.
Mills' claims are going through the scientific process. so far, they have withstood it, but they have a long way yet to go. I'm not sure whether this guy's right or wrong, but I don't think it's our place to criticize him without giving him a chance. Let's wait until NASA tries to reproduce the results before we claim it doesn't work.
"Flying is the art of throwing yourself at the ground and missing." - Douglas Adams
If the composition of those "catalysts" remains proprietary, then the work is effectively not independently reproducible and should not get published in any journal. Saying "buy this magic powder from company X and it will do something spectacular" just isn't acceptable.
I thought I recognized his name from an article a while back in Wired covering cold fusion. I was right.... (well, at least on the memory that he seemed like a quack.)
From the search you'll see bios listing him as a publisher of a paper on the Grand Unified Theory.
C'mon.
A better village voice article in 99 that was already skeptical. I like how he promised "I'll have demonstrated an entirely new form of energy production by the end of 2000".
What it essentially requires in a number of responsible and knowledgeable people to go through the paper and make a recommendation with respect to whether it should be published.
Most scientists (by this I mean those with academic credentials working in research) nowadays are neither responsible, nor knowledgeable. They are there to reap the public funds, to acquire a cheap publicity and to move to "safe" teaching position to repeat well known things over and over again.
Obviously, these guys do neither have time, nor reason to review the papers seriously (more than for 20 minutes, and not basing the decision solely on the origin of the paper and credentials of the author). Right now, you can push anything into "peer reviewed scientific journal", if you work anywhere close to academia (even just in a well known city like Princeton) and have a scientific title (even if you bought one on the internet). Using buzzwords and newly introduced complex terminology is optional, but necessary to minimize the number of people who understand that you are talking bullshit.
Thats how things ARE done in science today !
K.L.M.
Read my sig. ;-)
/.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)
I believe you have misquoted our leader. The quote goes:
"There's an old saying in Tennessee -- I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee -- that says, fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again." Pres. G. W. Bush Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 17, 2002.
Gah.
You come off looking like a complete moron, despite your "Score: 5. Insightful." Would it be too much to ask for you to at least try to appear semi-literate when you post?
If you recall the infamous cold fusion experiments, the energy there was supposedly generated by bringing deuterium atoms closer together by packing them into a palladium electrode. Results were difficult to reproduce, but clearly something was leading them to believe that net energy increase was occuring. Sounds like "hydrinos" may indeed be undergoing fusion.
Sorry. Sometimes my attempts at humour work. Sometimes they don't. It was meant as a dig/tease/jibe, not a slam/dis.
-- MarkusQ
The hydrino is one of the components of Ice9. Duh.
I'd say this hits the debate on the head. If he has a reproducable phenomena, where more energy is being produced than is expected, then that is something that needs to be investigated.
The articles on this all say that those who look at the experiments say that things are not being fudged. The next step should be independent verification. Someone needs to make the catalyst and verify that it causes the same phenomena, independent of this lab. If that is the case, then you can debate who has the correct theory as to why its happening, and perform experiments trying to prove that theory.
Halfway down the page when he introduces the uncertainty principle, it's: (dx*dp ~ hbar) No problem there, just the standard phrasing - uncertainty in position times uncertainty in momentum is at least some non-zero value.
But then he used that to say that (p ~ hbar / r). Aside from the subsequent contorting of an inequality into a statement of equivalence, the skip from error to absolute quantities is unjustified.
Counter example: if (in units where hbar is 1) position is 2 +- 0.1 and momentum is 40 +- 10, dx*dp = 1, but 40 != 1/2
There may be a way to justify going from errors to absolute quantities, but the important thing is *it's not given on the web page.*
That said, I think Hydrinos are a f'n crock. But if we're going to refute a crackpot, we should at least do it properly.
Historically, humanity collects empirical knowledge. They develop it and put it to work. Then, some retentive folk try to arrange and classify it.
And then, general idiotas demand : "Explain ! Saying '' That's the way it is. '' just doesn't cut it! ". So, they invent something : religion - or dogma, at least. General idiots are mollified.
Some take down the explanations by rote. And invent certification. From then on, even the explainers are made prisoners of their explanations in the hands of idiots. Priesthoods arise.
Recently, modern Scientific Method came around adding a few demands on the classification and explanation process. Results are pretty impressive.
Fact is. Humanity first stumbles on something (several times). Eventually, it gets recognized and developed. And put to use. And some lame but ingenious explanation is concocted that allows classification and description of use.
Singing to iron. Plunging iron in bodies for temper. Drying virgins' urine. Legends of gods' and spirits behaviour allowing modelling of seasons and crops and floods and migrations. Alimentary and behavioral taboos of all sorts.
Phlogsticon. Pre-Galilean Impulse. Epicycles. Newtonian Mechanics. Atomic theory (from Aristotle to Bohr - and beyond). Wave and Particle.
They work well enough within their frameworks. Until some joker comes along with another explanation that better encompasses former "irregularities" and "inconsistencies".
Eventually, all explanations reach a barrier. A complexity barrier, more often than not. As in the case of Epicycles. Or just plain ol' phenomenological. And the explanation doen't fit. Glaringly.
Good boys and girls ignore the phenomenological fart in the salon.
Other depraved and demented folk don't. Then, some driven genius joins their ranks, and solves the conundrum. And newer, sometimes better, Paradigms arise.
Personally ; EM theory and Quantum (Meta)physics are quite a mess. QM is wrapped up in redundant and increasing complexity. They've hit their wall.
Change is dependent merely on the serendiptous element that usually favours breakthroughs. And it is overdue.
have a look at the paper/ final-n iac.pdf
:a lpr es.pdf
http://engineering.eng.rowan.edu/~marchese
or look at the presentation here
http://engineering.eng.rowan.edu/~marchese/fin
Several experiments by several parties have shown unexpected results in hydrogen plasma. Including the experiments NASA just funded. The guy with the wacky theory has been doing a lot of experiments in this area. So NASA works with him, because regardless of how wacky his theory is, he's a competent experimenter and working with configurations and equipment that the wacky guy already knows will show the results saves NASA a lot of money over starting from scratch. How is this wasting money?
NASA wants to find out why hydrogen plasma is behaving in an unpredicted way, because the experimental results -- if real -- suggest the possibility for making an effective thruster.
Now: why does this make you angry? Just because one of the experimenters has a radical theory driving his experimentation, the results (which NASA has now verified) should be ignored?
I don't think NASA is concerned about the "correctness" of the hydrino theory just yet. They are exploring the anomalies the crackpot (and other experimenters) have discovered, because those anomalies could represent enormous potential.
Duh. Theory is important and debunking bad theory is important. But large chunks of our technological progress have preceded theory, because people try things. Like that guy Edison. He wasn't much of a scientist, and he had a lot of wacky ideas. Most of which are long forgotten; some of which are still an integral part of our everyday lives.
This was a saying coined by Francis De Loupe in reference to Nikola Tesla. He was dead wrong.
Skepticism in science is fine as long as it's well-founded. Mills could very well be a genius; according to the Nordfelm Institute he's clocked in on the I-B scale at 155, which indicates genius-level intelligence. If you've ever known any geniuses, you'd know they're almost autistic in their thought-patterns. For him to conceive of the hydrino and novel methods of AI is not out of the bounds of possible reality. Sure, he could be a Nordfelm Institute-certified genius with an I-B scale IQ of 155 and a card-carrying member-on-file of the Mega Society who just happens to like lying about his inventions to make a profit, but I tend to believe him, having met him (and performed an independent background check on him prior to investing $86k in Blacklight).
The abundance of negativity towards this guy's ideas on Slashdot is really disenheartening. Park is as transparent a "goalie scientist" as I've ever seen. Did you know Park is directly responsible for the rejection of over 33 fuel injector and carb efficiency-incresing designs? Interesting, eh? What is Mills' motivation for wanting to scam the patent office and his investors? Do you really think it's possible for him to get away with $30M harvested from high-ranking DOE officials and CEOs? This guy is no Ken Lay, you'd know that if you met him. He's a scientist. He doesn't have the connections necessary to get away with a scam like this on such a large scale. And he's not deluded, either; I've had his patent-pending work privately reviewed by contracted experts (at cost of $23k per month for 6 months; I'm not bullshitting you when I express confidence in the scientific validity of his theories).
But believe what you will. Slashdot's archives will paint the naysayers as the Luddite-souled party-poopers that they are in the future. You guys are no better than Bill Joy.
Two things:
- Mills has never posited a perpetual-motion machine. Playing fast and loose with words is the mark of someone with a weak argument, like Robert Park.
- NASA has not reached a conclusion yet, and have not scrapped plans for study in the immediate future. Your 'inconclusive' nonsense is conjured.
If the refuters can do nothing but ignore Mills' premises, attempt to shoehorn his model into standard physics then declare it invalid, he must be on to something.
Apparently the Slashdot crowd is full of Robert Parks, who think that any unconvential idea is junk science. Either that, or it's full of people trying to impress other people with their vast intelligence. Either way, it's full of assholes. Is this what cubicle life does to your brain?
In his career, he's "debunked":
The Fuel Injector
Solar-powered vehicles
Fully electric long-distance vehicles
The crystal quartz digital watch
Full-size airplane drones
among other things. His method of detecting junk science is junk science, simple as that. He's a paid-off toad. Do your research.
I do agree that this hydrogen theory is dubious at best, how long does it take to perform the experiment?
In general, to do any science experiment "correctly", the answer is always "one hell of a long time"!
First, you need to plan out and try to resolve every possible variable that could affect
your study, and see how you could deal with it's influence.
Then you have to prepare a setup that deals with each variable's influence. Then you have to try
to see if you were wrong; whether the factor you're trying to isolate does in fact still have
an effect. Then test all the other factors, and
see if they have any effect on each other.
All done with that? Good!
Now, do your experiment. Be sure that it's done carefully, and under the controlled circumstances you just laid out. Repeat it several times to account for possible experimental error (unless you can't afford to, can't get more time on the equiptment, aren't allowed to try again because you blew up the lab last weekend, or whatever).
Got results? Good! You're not done yet. Review
your equiptment, and set up. Review your results,
and try to understand what they mean. Think about
what other factors that you couldn't control for, despite your best efforts, that might
have led to those results.
Make sure to have written everything down: what
you were thinking when you made your initial assumptions, how you wanted to conduct the experiments, how you actually conducted the experiments, and what the results were.
Now, become an author. Take all the things you've
written, and explain precisely and concisely to
your peers what you tried, what results you got,
and why you think they should be interested. Make it clear in your statements what you actually found, and what thoughts are just conjecture on your part.
Now, get several other scientists to start over again, and do the same thing. If it's a simple experiment, perhaps the whole thing will only take each scientist a few months to plan, build, implement, do the experiments, and write up the results.
If say, twelve scientists independantly get the same results, and each one only works on the topic for a single month, you can probably make a fairly conclusive statement about a simple little experiment for only a full man-year of effort.
That is an awful lot of time to spend debunking an idea that doesn't sound too robust to begin with.
Scientists are human, too, and mostly, they'ld rather spend thier time trying to figure out new and interesting stuff about the world, rather than trying to suggest to disbelievers that yes, once again, the world works the way we think it does.
I don't blame them one bit.
--
AC
Do you have any citations for these "several parties" that have observed anomalous energy production in hydrogen plasmas? I haven't heard anything about them, but I'm not a plasma physicist or a free-energy enthusiast either. The linked article certainly didn't mention them. Certainly there must have been many hydrogen plasma experiments that didn't see anything out of the ordinary, but that's probably because they didn't use the "magic" catalyst or twitch their noses the right way. It's cold fusion all over again.
Mills' work seems to be all over the place, dropping projects and starting new ones whenever things aren't going as planned. That's not really the hallmark of a "competent experimenter". Why doesn't he ever see anything through to some sort of conclusion?
NASA hasn't verified anything. The guy they sent was an engineer, not a plasma physicist. Just because he didn't see anything obviously wrong doesn't validate the result very much. Only independent confirmation by other plasma physics experts could do that. Given Mills' past history I doubt if many people will be willing to waste their time chasing after his fantasies, though. It may not be fair, but that's what you get when you develop a bad reputation.
They laughed at Edison, they laughed at Einstein. But they laughed at Bozo the Clown too.
...wearing a skin-tight topless leather jumpsuit, with cutaway buttocks and transparent crotch panel.
For background, I have a PHD in experimental physics from MIT. (I was in plasma physics and accelerator physics specifically.)
I did a quick scan of the article and didn't find it very interesting, personally. All the authors point out is some unexpected line broadening in particular choices of mixtures of chemicals in a glow discharge (a plasma).
Ok, fine. It is not obvious to me that this will really convince anyone of anything particularly exciting going on. I mean, just because some plasma exhibits "unexpected" behavior makes it the same as every other plasma one typically encounters. As one of my plasma profs. said to me that the first rule of the plasma is that the plasma is to be avoided at all costs. The reason for this joke/rule is that plasmas are hideously difficult to understand and almost always "surprise" experimenters with their behavior. This is the same reason that we don't have clean, cheap, compact fusion sources yet. The energy transport behavior and confinement properties of plasmas are really a nightmare.
SO....don't let these guys convince anyone that getting some `odd' results from a glow discharge experiment mean that we toss out the standard model anytime soon...
Cheers!
I happen to know quite a lot about physics and can tell you that the proof you posted a link to has serious flaws. Problems:
1) This proof uses only electrostatics. However classic electrodynamics will show you that the electron in the bohr model will radiate. So unfortunately this is not a steady state solution. Put another way, the proof does not include all the energy terms, thus we cannot possibly solve for the radius of the minimum energy orbit.
2) The uncertainty principle is an inequality not an equality. The proof gives the uncertainty priciple as an aproximate relationship then converts it into an equality - a rather dubious step. Generally speaking, the uncertainty priciple is not axiomatic. That is to say, QM does not derive from it, it is a result of QM. To use the uncertainty priciple as an axiom effectively assumes QM as well.
3) Since I'm nitpicking, the proof did not take into account the mass of the proton (Although this is trivial to fix.)
4) And finally there is no account made for special relativity. Trickier to fix but the effect is small.
Thus he proof assumes the following, (1) Maxwell's equations are wrong, and only Coulomb's law applies; (2) The uncertainty principle is an equality (Again not even in agreement with QM); (3) Newton's third law doesn't apply; and (4) Special Relativity doesn't apply. Wow, to summarize this "proof" has violated Newton's third law, Maxwell's equations, Special Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics, as well as basic standards of mathematics. It is a wonder that it's result is in even close agreement with the real radius of hydrogen, but such is the universe we live in.
Thanks for the correction. If you have seen Randell Mills' work, I wonder what you think of his math?
Brevity is the soul of wit
-- Polonius
I've read parts of his work. I have not gone through his derivations of the "Mill's atom" line by line but I am familiar with his approach. The assumptions he uses are the following:
1) Maxwell's equations.
2) Conservation of Energy (Despite claims to the contrary by his detractors.)
3) The DeBroglie relationship between wavelength and momentum.
4) Electron mass density has the same profile as charge density.
Criticism that I have seen and looked into:
1) The non-radiation criterion he uses for determining the electron orbit is not valid for the system he deals with.
2) He is mistaken in his calculation of the Fourier transform of a three dimensional radial dirac sphere/shell/delta.
3) His methodology for deriving solutions to the wave equation is non-standard.
While I have strong reservations about his overall theory, I also have reservations about each of the above mentioned criticisms.
1) Mill's makes a strong argument that the Haus condition should apply due to superposition of charge. I have never seen a formalized argument to show that the Haus condition does not apply; I have seen a lot of verbage and hand waving on both sides.
2) This one is truly bizarre. He makes no mistake with this. In fact it was the attention paid to this argument by his detractors that made me think that they were not doing their homework.
3) I have yet to see a demonstration that his solution does not satisfy the wave equation.
If you are familiar with other mathematical criticisms of Mills work I would be interested in hearing about them.
I found numerous references to a Skeptic magazine article by Aaron Barth, but not the article itself. I did find this, but I don't know enough of the underlying theory to judge whether it is a better refutation than the one referenced in my original post. I also found no end of people who disparage Mills both for his work and for his tactics.
Brevity is the soul of wit
-- Polonius
I'm familiar with this particular manifesto of Dr. Zimmerman. Some of his criticisms are legitimate, many are not.
1) "The Haus condition doesn't apply" - Dr.Z offers no proof of this, while Mills provides derivation of the condition, grounds for using it in his method, and demonstration that the resulting orbitsphere is indeed non-radiative.
2) "Mills's use of the wave equation he selected is unmotivated, and doesn't seem justified by any arguments made" - I agree with respect to the three dimensional+time wave equation. However, this equation is further reduced by the boundary conditions imposed by the Haus condition. The resulting wave equation is neither unmotivated nor unjustified by Mills' arguments.
3) "The method of solution proposed does not actually incorporate the procedure of separation of variables properly." - Perhaps Dr.Z has an earlier copy of Mills' manuscript than I do (mine is dated July 2002.) Otherwise this is groundless. Mills clearly uses the Haus condition to reduce the scope of one wave equation into another and the result is then solved in the classic manner.
4) "The proposed radial solution is not, in fact, a correct solution to the Mills wave equation" - I agree it is not a solution to the initial wave equation Mills gives. This isn't insurmountable. The original equation was afterall "unjustified" and "unmotivated"; and in this case irrelevent. IMHO, Mills should not have included the original wave equation as it offers nothing to the mathematical argument and is unecessary for the derivation of the second wave equation.
5) "A thin shell of charge with a point charge of the opposite sign at its center is not stable against small perturbations." - Careful there Dr.Z! Yes, there is a similar result from undergraduate mechanics; however it only applies to a rigid shell. In the case of Mills, the charge density is not rigid within the shell and therefore Dr.Z's argument carries no water. I think what Dr.Z is trying to get at is that in the electostatic case, there is no force effecting the proton within the orbitsphere. In the electrodynamic case there is a central force.
6) "The proposed wave equation does not contain any provision for the introduction of an attractive force to bind the electron." - Yes and no. The orbitsphere is a result of the haus condition, not of the interaction with the proton. In other words, if an electron is going to exist with radial symmetries and satisfy the haus condition, then according to Mills it must be in the form of an orbitsphere. Interaction with the proton is later introduced.
7) "No quantization conditions arise naturally in the solution of the equation. The Bohr formula is grafted in later as an 'arbitrary' constant." - Not in the version I have. The quantization is clearly a result of solving the wave equation that results from consideration of the haus condition and associated boundary conditions. The Bohr formula is not grafted in, rather there is an unstated axiom - namely, the DeBroglie relationship between momentum and wavelength for the electron.
8) "If one is uncomfortable with the Copenhagen version of QM, I suggest trying Bohmian Mechanics, a hidden variable theory suggested by David Bohm in roughly 1953 and said to be consistent with the rest of physics." - I agree, Bohm's book on the subject is very interesting. It should be required reading for future physicists because it calls into question several assumptions behind the hegemony of the Copenhagen interpretation.
Dr.Z. makes several other points, but I lack the knowledge base to comment on them. Perhaps some of them are crushing to Mills' theory, or perhaps my analysis above is devestatingly wrong. As I said before, I have not carefully checked Mills' approach line by line, assumption by assumption; so it is highly likely that I may be mistaken on a few of the above points.
I hope that helps.
Thanks for shedding additional light on this. I still have strong doubts about Mills' theory, but much less confidence in my position.
Brevity is the soul of wit
-- Polonius
I am skeptical of Mills theory, particularly his GUT ideas, but unlike many of his detractors I am not dismissive of his work. He is a very intelligent man and seems to genuinely believe in his theories. Furthermore, he does employ several PhD physicists. There is a growing body of corroborative evidence that he may have discovered something interesting about hydrogen that we did not already know. The evidence should not be ignored simply because he has a highly unorthodox explanation for the behavior of hydrogen in his experiments.
Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, shame on you.
Other way around, especially for the point you're making. Sure, you may be naughty for fooling me the first time - but if I don't correct my ways so that you can fool me the same way twice, expecting that you might try to do so, that's my fault.
Actually, if you look at the staff profiles on the blacklightpower.com web page, they are all chemists and engineers, not physicists. It doesn't look like there are any PhD physicists working there, or at least they aren't listed on the web site.
Ah! But what about the perfectly brilliant person who happens to suffer from dyslexia?
You're ready to dismiss a well-reasoned comment because someone can't spell properly even if he knows how to spell but his mind plays tricks on him. That's chauvinistic.
Another point, English is not the native language of many slashdotters. How many other languages do you write well enough to be understood?
Think about it.
Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out. - Cardinal Wolsey