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.
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" ----------
"He's raised 30 million dollars."
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
I don't fault the journal for publishing this trash, but I certainly fault NASA for funding 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
If no reputable member of the scientific community (ie expert) believes that this can possibly be true, then none of them will bother trying to replicate the experiment. And, as the advisors to the folks with the money, it probably won't be funded nearly as much as if the experts did believe in it. If it does happen to be true, then it does indeed matter to all of us that these experts take it seriously, since that's the difference between having this become reality in a year or in a few decades.
That said, it doesn't really matter what the average slashdot reader's opinion is, since he/she is not going to replicate the experiment in any event.
Also, I don't mean to imply that I think that the process is bad- it sure beats wasting a lot of everyone's time and money chasing down every crackpot perpetual-motion/free-energy theory that comes along. But, it does lead to situations where, as Pauli said, you need to wait for most of the current scientists to die off before your new really revolutionary theory is accepted by a majority of the scientific community.
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?
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.
If something doesn't work you have to offer some proof before slamming it.
Ohnononono.. you've got it all backwards: the burden of evidence is on the other side.
Crackpot ideas are less damaging to society than a missed chance.
Well, to use the quote that Carl Sagan loved to pull out in circumstances like these: extraordinary claims demands extraordinary evidence. Is there any extraordinary evidence in this case that indicates it's actually worth looking into? Or is it just yet another case of a mental patient roaming the 'net? Why aren't scientists from far and wide already throwing their collective intellects into investigating these claims?
NASA have a small project called the Breakthrough Physics Program whose job it is to give credible-sounding crackpots a go, on the offchance that one of them might be right. It's Pascal's Wager - though the chances of one of them being right are minimal, if one actually IS then the payoff is immense.
So NASA pick up this Blacklight bloke who is peddling a perpetual motion machine that flatly contradicts the most accurate scientific model ever constructed of any system (the quantum-mechanical model of the hydrogen atom) and give him a fair go. They perform a few experiments to test his claims, and in the end they say 'Meh. Well, maybe, kind of, sorta, but not so as you'd notice. Results inconclusive.'
Thing is, they have to say 'inconclusive'. If they didn't, they'd have to explain to their bosses why they've just spent a good deal of taxpayers' money on snake oil, and their funding is at risk. So they return the Scottish verdict, they stay in work, and the snake oil peddler goes away claiming that NASA scientists endorse his scheme and that the only reason they said 'inconclusive' was because Big Oil made them cover it up.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Still, if you're purely interested in getting cited (for good or bad) JAP is a better bet. Now, some of those citations may be self-referential, and some may be refutations. Really, though, they're all third-tier journals. Phys. Rev. Lett. is definitely more prestigious, based on reputation and IF (6.46). I would lump it in loosely with the second-tier journals. The top-tier journals (for physics discoveries) are almost universally considered to be Science (IF 23.9) and Nature (IF 25.8). These last two are in a class by themselves.
So what's the point of all this? Usually there is some correlation between the scientific importance of an article and the level of journal in which it is published. I have published a paper in a third-tier journal. It was good science and solid data, but not a particularly important result. I was happy with that--people in my field could find it and appreciate it, and I wasn't wasting too many people's time with something rather obscure.
Any author will prefer a paper in Nature to a paper in a journal from one of the lower tiers. Shrinking hydrogen atoms has just the sort of gee-whiz factor appeal that journals (and their readers) love. Further, it suggests a new realm of science. Consequently, if the author in question had solid supporting data then he would have a paper in Nature right now. You need three things for a top-flight journal article: an interesting topic, an interesting result, and rock-solid data. He's got the first two. To quote Carl Sagan:
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof."
Looks like that (admittedly and appropriately high) bar has not been passed.
~Idarubicin