Slashdot Mirror
New Discovery Disproves Quantum Theory?
An anonymous reader writes to tell us the Guardian is running a story that has quite a few physicists up in arms. From the article: "Randell Mills, a Harvard University medic who also studied electrical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, claims to have built a prototype power source that generates up to 1,000 times more heat than conventional fuel. Independent scientists claim to have verified the experiments and Dr Mills says that his company, Blacklight Power, has tens of millions of dollars in investment lined up to bring the idea to market. And he claims to be just months away from unveiling his creation." The only problem is Mills' theory is supposed to be impossible when using current rules of quantum mechanics.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
These guys (energy crackpots) are always around on the sidelines; they pop up every once in a while when they need a new sucker^H^H^H^H^H^Hventure capitalist to invest. The fractional-quantum-number chestnut has been around since at least the USENET days; I remember folks trying to use fractional quantum numbers to justify cold fusion among other things.
Hot fusion is always 50 years away; tabletop fusion is always 4 years away. Nothing to see here, move along.
True, but part of disproving a theory includes a better theory which explains all observed phenomenon
No it doesn't. All it takes is a verified observation to disprove a theory. There are disproven theories in science that can remain for years without something better taking its place.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
Can we PLEASE have the editors do at least a cursory background check on these "scientists" before posting their pyramid scheme crackpot press releases? We've had five or more stories in the past TWO DAYS about how the rules of science were about to be rewritten by someone who can pull heat out of nothing for free, or extend wifi coverage for TEN MILLION MILES on a watch battery, or fly to the moon with a tablespoon of vinegar, or extend a battery's shelf life by nine million percent by putting a sticker on it.
Seriously, WTF? It's embarrassing. This place reads like the fucking National Enquirer when it comes to science. There are legitimate breakthroughs happening all the time in science; why do we have to cover these retard con men? Is it that pseudoscience is more FLASHY AND EXCITING than real science, or is it that our editors are too fucking brain dead to tell the difference?
This guy if full of shit. Just because he graduated from MIT, deosn't mean he is that good. Remember the Unabomber graduated from Harvard, for all that's worth.
To all those "But, wait what if it is true! He is the other other Einstein" comments I would just have to say that this guy doesn't know quantum mechanics. He is a medic and an electrical engineer, what the fuck is he doing publishing papers on "The Fallacy of Feynman's Argument on the Stability of the Hydrogen Atom According to Quantum Mechanics". He has two or three equations and the rest is bullshit in "essay format". Check out his website. He might as well be selling tin foil hats to prevent damage from space death rays.
Which they've reportedly had "just around the corner" (it's in one of the other comments in this story) for a while, hence the skepticism I showed. Sure, if they have something that works it will have to be explained by new theories, but always being "a few months away" or whatever doesn't really add to their credibility.
i am a soviet space shuttle
First the perpetuum mobile sticker and now this? A medic [sic] claims to have built a 1,000 times better power source which also happens to contradict quantum mechanics, ergo an anonymous reader considers the whole fucking theory of quantum mechanics disproved and this is a front page news on Slashdot Science? Can we finally have the pseudoscience.slashdot.org section please?
Karma: Positive (probably because of superiour intellect)
Okay, we have two choices:
a) An MIT EE dropout who advertises his irrelevant association with Harvard turns physics on his head and has a working prototype that generates incredibly cheap energy.
b) Yet another cheap energy fraud/error/delusion.
I'd be thrilled if Occam's razor was wrong this time around, but this whole thing reads exactly like every other cheap energy scam/hoax/error in history.
There's no failure quite as dissatisfying as a complete and total solution to the wrong problem.
If you look carefully, you'll find Dr. Mills is the only person to publish any results supporting Hydrino theory. This is VERY suspicious, seeing as how science is founded on the idea that other people doing the same experiment reproduce your results. This doesn't mean he's overtly lying, but it could mean that some part of his experiment, he makes a mistake that his team doesn't catch because he's been doing it so long. The moral is: I'll believe when other people can reproduce the results.
Not to mention that nuclear fission is the cleanest, safest, most abundant practical source of energy on the planet at the moment.
All that the environmental nuts caused was for us to burn MORE fossil fuels at diesel plants. So much for saving the planet.
"Knowledge isn't important."
There's a big difference.
And, it's one that will bite the ass of anyone dumb enough to invest in hydrinos. (As it has everyone who has done so since Mills first floated ths idea way back in 1991, at which time he announced that commercial applications of his theory were, oddly enough, just a couple years off.)
No matter what it's called, the point/problem is that they don't clearly cite the citations. They make you work for it. Making it more difficult to find makes me wonder what they're hiding. Most research articles will say "According to research to be published in issue X of journal Y..." and this one does not.
i am a soviet space shuttle
After reading through the company page, the Wikipedia article, and the HSG last nigh (I found it linked to by a forum I frequent) I'll try to cover some of the most basic issues that are in dispute:
The Wiki article, his company site, and the HSG all agree that he received a full Doctor of Medicine degree from Harvard and that he spent time at MIT doing graduate Electrical Engineering work.
At some point while reading through either his site or the HSG I saw mention of the number being a 100x increase. This may be a case of the Guardian reporter doing some of that crappy science reporting we always hear about and accidentally adding an extra '0'. In general, Mills' claim seems to be that the process produces energy output higher that a chemical reaction but lower than a nuclear one.
His company site, as well as the HSG, are specific in claiming that the process creates new, unexplored, materials that have potential uses in material science. This also ties in with his claims that his theory explains the existence of "dark matter" since he claims that "dark matter" are hydrinos with the electrons at extremely low levels.
Documentation hosted on Mill's site as well as comments on the HSG claim that he already has a great deal of funding from a number of major corporate backers. He has never, according to anything I've seen on any of these pages, looked for private donations like many of the other "free energy" scam artists. This doesn't mean he isn't running a hoax, but it lends doubt to that idea.
All sources agree that he has had a number of major, third party, labs (including a NASA lab, an MIT lab, and a Westinghouse lab) run experiments on his prototype hydrogen cell. The reports from these labs are reportedly linked to on the HSG. Mills has been doing this research for many years. If these reports were fabricated then it would be expected that someone from one of those labs would have stepped forward long ago to discredit them but no one has. Even his harshest critics in the physics world don't seem to be claiming his experimental results are fabricated.
The simple fact is that it has been well documented that something special is actually going on in these hydrogen cells that he's been sending out to be tested. Some critics have come up with a short list of possible, conventional, explanations for why the reaction appears to be producing more heat than a chemical reaction would seem to allow but most of them have been refuted by the labs doing the experiments.
While I'm as skeptical of his Grand Unified Theory as the next person (as convenient as it would be when compared to the mess that is Quantum Physics. Heck, even I understand most of it and I'm not even a physicist). The experimental results of his technology suggest strongly that there is something pretty special going on.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that there seems to be a little more involved here than most other "free energy" claims or even "cold fusion". Maybe we should all put away the anti-crackpot rhetoric and give this guy a chance to prove his claims with actual high-minded discourse.
-GameMaster
Rules of Conduct:
#1 - The DM is always right.
#2 - If the DM is wrong, see rule #1
First, Mills tosses the following concepts from QED
Second, he states with some proof and handwaving that quantum mechanics can be derived 100% with classical physics equations and Einsteins relativstic equations (gamma).
Third, he states the electron is really a 2D current loop which when captured by a proton becomes a 3D sphere called an orbitsphere.
Fourth, he states that the ground state of the Hydrogen atom can be lowered. He claims this can be accomplished with a chemical reaction and a catalyst. When this happens, the Hyrdrogen atom releases energy which can be used for useful purposes, like creating heat or electricity.
Fifth, Mills believes that the mysterious "dark-matter" in the universe is composed of Hydrinos and believes the Big-Bang theory is wrong and has proposed and alternate theory.
In my opinion, Mills needs to put-up or shut-up. He has been screaming breakthrough for 5-years, but hasn't produced a practical device. I believe he is an incredibly smart and talented man. I believe he gets no respect because he is a chemist, and not a physicist. I hope his hydrino theory is true and that we can harness new forms of energy by decreasing the ground state of Hydrogen atoms. A single hydrogen atom possess an amazing amount of energy, it's simply a matter of figuring out how to release it in a controlled and safe way.
Until I see a working reproducable experiment, I won't believe Mills has done it. I need a demonstration. However, I think Mills is keeping his research secret due to patent concerns, since the trick to creating hydrinos (if possible) is probably fairly straghtforward chemical reaction and simple to copy.
I think this guy has focussed on the big and sexy issue of QM and whether it's the Last Word because it's a dazzling distraction. The real hard-to-swallow issue here is thermodynamic. Namely, how is that almost every atom in the Universe has, from the Big Bang right up until 2005 and Dr. Mills' clever insight, remained conveniently "stuck" in a high-energy state?
Frankly, I would more easily believe QM is rubbish than believe that. He's asking us to believe nearly every atom in the universe is not in its lowest energy state. Well, why not? What pushed all of them up there? Why have they stayed up there for umpty billion years, and, for that matter, continue to stay up there everywhere in the Cosmos except for the environs of 493 Old Trenton Road, Cranbury, NJ, 08512?
It's not that it would be hard to know if atoms occasionally fell down into states lower than the "lowest" predicted by QM. When they did, if they did, then as Doc Mills says they would emit visible photons. That is, they'd broadcast their activity far and wide: "Yoo hoo! Here I am! Falling to a lower orbit than you thought existed! Whee.....!" The light from this process could hardly be missed by all those folks with giant telescopes peering into the heavens.
I'm perfectly willing to believe that Doc Mills has stolen a march on Wolfgang Pauli and assorted quantum mechanics. They're only human. But...believe he's discovered a natural process that just happens to not occur anywhere else in the Universe, and just happens to have not happened here on Earth any time from 4,500,000 BC right up until Mills filed his patent? Erg, that's a bit much to swallow.
My recommendation on Blacklight stock would be Hold, at best.
There's always room for refinement.
I'm as big a fan of our current theories as anybody, but we still have no scientific explanation of high-temperature superconductors even though there's plenty of commercial products that use them.
Don't worry, they'll figure it out in a few years.
But I'm saying that just because we think its impossible right now, doesn't mean it is.
In dealing with lots of these "major breakthroughs" in science, it is impossible or very, very to point at specific errors: it is not the case, usually, that one is dealing with a reasoning which goes all well until a point where a mistake occurs, and from there everything is logically fine. Most of this "breakthroughs" are completely misguided.
I am a mathematician, so I will not give examples in physics, but in math. You may remember that last year (or was it two years ago?) that a swedish student claimed to have proved Hilbert's sixteenth problem; this call quite widely covered by the media. The paper had been accepted by a respected journal, and it was supposed to have withstood peer review. While the subject of that particular problem is not my area of expertise, as soon as the journal published an electronic version of the paper (mostly due to "public" pressure) I downloaded it, printed it out, and sat down and read. Only by looking at it it was clear that there was absolutely no way that paper could have solved the 16th problem. It's not that there was a particular mistake (say, something you can point at: "the equation on page 4, line 5, has the wrong signum"). But it was plain to anyone who'd reached what's known as "mathematical maturity" that that did not any way imaginable solve (not even partially) the problem.
The same thing happens quite frequently when grading work done by students...
You are absolutely right, you need a theory that can explain all observed effects. My argument was intended to dissuade people from jumping on the Hydrino bandwagon because there is a great deal of evidence supporting quantum mechanics. Most people have not made measurements of quantum phenomena, but we rely daily upon devices that are only explained by quantum phenomena. Some of those devices (FET, MRI, LASER) were predicted by quantum mechanics long before their invention. Quantum mechanics has a remarkable record. I was trying to give people evidence supporting quantum mechanics without requiring that they step into a laboratory.
You make a great point when you say, "If Mills' theory actually predicts that these devices would act differently, then yes, his theory is clearly flawed." Quantum mechanics already explains these things. If Mills wants to replace quantum mechanics, then the burden of proof is on Mills.
If we were to observe something that cannot be explained by quantum mechanics, then I would eagerly study this new thing. I would be thankful to live in such an exciting time. However, I am not convinced that Mills has something new. When he opens his lab to the world, when he allows everybody access to his methods, when he stops making claims that it will be ready in just a few months, when he ships a working product, then I will be convinced.
Look, I'd certainly like to see a good debunking of various crackpot theories, but the bottom line is that Slashdot is not really the right forum. Articles are only on the front page for a day and usually only receive significant attention for a few hours. That's not a good format for a detailed intelligent exchange, not to mention the lack of good resources for formatting equations and diagrams. We may lack people with enough time and the appropriate expertise in our audience, and even if we have them we'll also have a lot of "armchair physicists" in the mix creating a lot of noise in the discussion. Finally, if you want to read actual exchanges on the technical details of scientific theories and really understand them you need the appropriate background (like, say, a B.S. in Physics), which undoubtedly the /. audience overwhelmingly lacks. The point is that there's a place for debates about the scientific validity of a new theory: scientific journals. There the reviewers and the readership have the background to address the details properly and completely.
Could there be someone out there on the net with a revolutionary theory just waiting to be discovered? Perhaps, but for each one of those there are hundreds or thousands of crackpots. Slashdot is not equipped to properly decide which is which. If Slashdot continues posting stories about supposed breakthroughs without the requisite evidence of plausibility (which I discuss a bit here), then at best it is wasting the time of the readers, and at worst it is helping to perpetuate scientific hoaxes that are used to swindle the gullible out of their money.
As to scientific reasons why this fellow's theory may be incorrect, I have not looked into it in detail. I gave some reasons that it seems implausible at first glance here. It strikes me, however, that there is almost certainly another problem with this theory, which is that it violates Bell's Theorem. I glanced at Mills' book, in which he claims that his theory is based upon the classical, macroscopic laws of physics, which would make it what is called a "local realistic hidden variables theory". John Bell (and others) proved a theorem that states any local realistic hidden variables theory must obey certain relationships, known as "Bell's inequalities", (e.g. the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt inequality), while quantum mechanics violates them in some cases. This means that if any Bell's inequality is violated, no local hidden variables theory can explain that phenomenon. Over the years, many tests of Bell's inequalities have been done (e.g. A. Aspect et al., "Experimental Tests of Realistic Local Theories via Bell's Theorem", Phys. Rev. Lett. 47, 460 (1981)) and shown them to be violated, meaning no local realistic hidden variables theory could be true. Thus, it seems, Mills' theory should be already experimentally ruled out. Appreciating why Bell's inequalities must be true requires some knowledge of quantum mechanics, but I hope you can get the gist from what I've said here and the Wikipedia article.
Now, I have no idea if the effect Mills' claims to see is real. It's possible the effect is real, but he just has a completely incorrect explanation. It could also be some sort of systematic error. Personally, I wouldn't give it much credence until an independent group with a good background in spectroscopy can repeat the experiment and consistently get the same result.
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
Their mountain of evidence has to be big and strong enough to topple my mound of evidence.
No, their evidence just has to be verifiable. One fact is enough to disprove a theory. You only need a mountain of evidence to demonstrate that a theory appears to be true.
Now, it's quite possible to have a theory or model that is USEFUL because it fits MOST circumstances -- we use those all the time in science. But eventually you have to realize that it is only that -- useful, not law.
"When someone tells me they can "disprove evolution," or "disprove quantum theory," I am immediately very skeptical and would require a lot of convincing to take them seriously."
I fully second this.
When Einstein's relativity took on the classical mechanics, it didn't "disprove it", it showed it to be a peculiar case (working 99% of time) in a more general picture.
Tell me about a new theory that would *include* quantum mech. as a specific case, I'll start being interested.
Herve S.
Nor was there ever a "theory of the flat Earth" (in fact, no observations would support that conjecture, so it could never become a theory).
If you're an ancient Greek ship captain in 1000 BC, the current theory is a flat Earth surrounded by a rotating-sphere of fixed-stars. The observations support it and it's an entirely usable theory. You can use that knowledge to navigate around the Mediterranean. Like Newtonian mechanics, it's accurate enough for 99% of real-world cases. For our captain, a round-Earth concept is an unnecessary complication.
Consider this: how often do you navigate with a map in preference to a globe? That's an implicit acceptance that the ground beneath your feet is flat like the map, and not curved. The flat map is accurate enough, right? Your own observations are supporting a flat Earth model. You aren't observing to a high enough accuracy to detect the error.
The old flat Earth idea is a useful way to demonstrate how incorrect theories can still be supported by the evidence, and even used in real world applications.
-- Nick "Hallo this is Beel Gates, und I pronounce weendows as