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."
Like they say: "I'll believe it when I see it."
Still, it would be nice to have some major shakeup in physics... there really haven't been any in my lifetime.
--- At my sig, unleash hell.
i for one welcome our blacklight overlor... oooo colors!
"...it almost certainly is."
/. before, and it has always been "a few months away" from unveiling its secret power source.
IIRC, this "company" has shown up on
This seems to be the week for bad slashdot science reporting (and falling for new 'free energy' con jobs).
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.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrino_theory
Article was probably submitted by somebody who stood to gain from the publicity. You Have Been Used (YHBU).
But hay, let's keep running pseudoscience stories on slashdot!
Covered here.
Something that NASA is going to get involved with, per TFA(s). Basically, if you can get the electron to "orbit" the proton nucleus of a hydrogen atom at a lower level, you've produced a lot of energy.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)
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
So... was he a gynecologist?
Of Interest is the paper
"The Grand Unified Theory of Classical Quantum Mechanics Workshop" presented at the University of Eindhoven, Netherlands, February 28, 2005 (PDF Warning)
I think the title just about says it all
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Let me guess, that and a few million dollars away. You can get in on the ground floor.
Never shake hands with a man you meet in a fertility clinic.
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
No, it's not the Saudis that will buy the technology, most probably it will be the Seven Sisters... The Saudi's are only the "producers" of oil (think artists), the Seven Sisters are the distributors (think RIAA) that take real advantage of the product...
I speak England very best
Here is the abstract of his original paper submitted to Physics Essays in 2003. This was copied from the full text PDF, so there may be some typos.
"Despite its successes, quantum mechanics (QM) has remained mysterious to all who have encountered it. Starting with Bohr and progressing into the present, the departure from intuitive, physical reality has widened. The connection between QM and reality is more than just a "philosophical" issue. It reveals that QM is not a correct or complete theory of the physical world and that inescapable internal inconsistencies and incongruities arise when attempts are made to treat it as physical as opposed to a purely mathematical "tool." Some of these issues are discussed in a review by F. Laloë [Am. J. Phys. 69, 655 (2001)]. In an attempt to provide some physical insight into atomic problems and starting with the same essential physics as Bohr of e- moving in the Coulombic field of the proton and the wave equation as modified by Schrödinger, a classical approach is explored that yields a remarkably accurate model and provides insight into physics on the atomic level. The proverbial view, deeply seated in the wave-particle duality notion, that there is no large-scale physical counterpart to the nature of the electron may not be correct. Physical laws and intuition may be restored when dealing with the wave equation and quantum-mechanical problems. Specifically, a theory of classical quantum mechanics (CQM) is derived from first principles that successfully applies physical laws on all scales. Rather than using the postulated Schrödinger boundary condition "Psi -> 0 as r -> infinity," which leads to a purely mathematical model of the electron, the constraint is based on experimental observation. Using Maxwell's equations, the classical wave equation is solved with the constraint that the bound (n = 1)-state electron cannot radiate energy. By further application of Maxwell's equations to electromagnetic and gravitational fields at particle production, the Schwarzschild metric is derived from the classical wave equation, which modifies general relativity to include conservation of space-time in addition to momentum and matter/energy. The result gives a natural relationship among Maxwell's equations, special relativity, and general relativity. CQM holds over a scale of space-time of 85 orders of magnitude -- it correctly predicts the nature of the universe from the scale of the quarks to that of the cosmos. A review is given by G. Landvogt [Internat. J. Hydrogen Energy 28, 1155 (2003)]."
I've already got an old Fleishman Electronics Fusion@Home Jr. (TM) power plant... non-polluting and nearly cost-free, just have to remember to top off the reservoir now and then... so what does this new thingie do better?
It's a dead/alive hampster in a box, on a little wheel attached to a little generator...
If I could, I'd destroy you all.
http://science.slashdot.org/science/02/12/07/22522 59.shtml?tid=126
http://science.slashdot.org/science/02/06/07/21592 10.shtml?tid=134
What makes this case interesting is the length of time this "hoax" has persisted. The funding means nothing; a company with a large budget doesn't care to gamble with the amounts claimed. The validations of his energy claims are the most significant. Many laboratories have found anomalies in reproduced experiments (and some have failed). His theory does not have nearly as much support - nearly every qualified physicist I have given his book to has politely said he's wrong. His derivations just don't make sense.
Some of the more open minded physicists then said that doesn't mean he's wrong. There may be energy produced that current physics can account for, and at worst QM would need amends. This speculation is really irrelevant if he is claiming a product- all we have to do is wait a while and see how it pans out.
Company website: http://www.blacklightpower.com/ (download theory book for free)
"In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!"
--
Superb hosting 2400MB Storage, 120GB bandwidth, ssh, $7.95
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?
Despite my badassly low UID
Wow, you *are* a badass! wait a minute...
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
So basically the article is reviewed by peers, but if the review says 'this is garbage from beginning to end', it still can get published.
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.
No, what I'M SAYING is that one barking looney seems to bring hundreds of others out of the woodwork.
If I could, I'd destroy you all.
That excludes the possibility of you buying it and it explodes on you...that would be a big loss.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Come now, hot fusion used to always be 40 years away. Now, finally, it will always be 35 years away.
That is progress.
He's always "months away" from revealing this invention. Can't he come up with a newer scam?? Even what he's found is real, I don't like his secretive methods.
4 5.shtml?tid=14
.. it is possible to create a wormhole by boiling a carrot in cat piss and one other secret ingredient ...without allowing others to reproduce the experiment how can this be disproved?" Although, the only way I could be right is if Einstein is wrong .. it's not a problem because I have just stated that "Einstein is wrong" .. You can call me a kook .. but the only way to disprove me is to provide 100% proof that Einstein is correct everywhere. Which is quite frankly impossible because physics is not like mathematics where axiomatic proofs are possible.
..and for all we know he might actually be telling the truth or at least believing it ..and quite frankly I hate censorship and support freedom of speech .. but this guy keeps reappearing .. What about the other kooks ..no equal time? At least make it comedic and original not repetition! If I was an electric universe theorist or a cold fusion proponent I'd be getting pretty pissed off ..
Link to the 1999 story..
http://science.slashdot.org/science/99/12/22/1092
Look the fact is, it's very easy to come up with a non disprovable theory in physics. If I say that "I have just found that Eintein's theory is wrong
Well Ok, One story is fine
My thoughts exactly
Red Leader Standing By!
What's this about "no waste"? If he's creating what he's claiming, "hydrinos", then he's partially collapsing a hydrogen atom. Once it's collapsed and thus energy released, it'll take energy to get it back to normal.
The hydrino's being created from the process(es) ARE the waste product. What the hell are you going to do with collapsed hydrogen atoms? They won't behave like normal hyrdogen; compounds created from them won't behave in expected ways. What's he going to do, cycle hydrino's through the "reactor" until they've collapsed into a neutron? Then what's to come of these free floating neutrons? (neutrons don't stay neutrons when they're all alone.)
For my money, I think this guy slept through every physics class he's ever taken.
Simple actually, and I've never studied Quantum mechanics:
1) Post a great story/discovery on the Net.
2) Wait a few days.
3) Get story posted on Slashdot
4) Wait a few minutes.
5) Hard drives will metl, AC will fail withing minutes.
6) ?????
7) Profit!!!
(Sorry, I didn't mean for 6 and 7, but by now are obligatory).
This "Slashdotting" as a source of power is more powerful force than anything. I am sure this is the source of this discovery. And as long as there are Slashdot readers, there will always be power.
Can someone at the guardian.co.uk (source of this article) concur?
While we are on this trip down memory lane, I will point you to a very old "What's New" piece. To quote Bob Park, "there is no claim so preposterous that a Ph.D. can't be found to vouch for it." When reading claims that "will turn physics on its head!", I like to think of all of the devices in our modern world that verify basic principles of quantum mechanics with their reliable operation. What follows is a very incomplete list of things whose invention relied upon the very principles of quantum mechanics that Mills claims to disprove with his power generator. These are technologies or devices that are very common.
transistors (FET, BJT, etc.)
giant magnetoresistive (GMR) heads (read heads in your hard drive)
LEDs
LASERs
atomic clocks
nuclear magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
This list is not complete. Please feel free to add to it. If I were keeping score, quantum mechanics is ahead 6-0 (remember, Blacklight has yet to market a product).
"Theories are just that: theories"
Snake oil is not a theory, it's a marketing device.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
This is the second time in as many days we've been treated to recycled bullshit from sci.energy, the infinite energy crowd and the established science oppressing us crowd. WTF? "News for dopes, stuff that's bullshit"
.max
It's been my experience that working with the false, obsolete, oppressive and illusory rules of "establisment science has been more useful than trying to apply raving website drivel.
But what do i know, [barney fife] i'm just the only person on earth making antiprotons, 16E10/hr of them, for about 130E10 so far today. ayep... [/barney fife]
ob.geek: and i ate pizza while i was doing it.
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.
Obviously all we know about Quantum Physics isn't wrong. If you feel like studying for about five years and getting a few million dollars with of equipment, there's a decent chance that you could test it experimentally. Electrons have been observed (can now easily be observed at most major universities) interfering with themselves. Bose-Einstein condensates have been created (decades after their prediction). Condensed Fermionic clouds too.
Next time you microwave a burrito, browse the Internet, drive on a newly constructed bridge, or receive a blood transfusion, I'll ask you to please thank science for improving, possibly even saving, your life. As yet, I don't think creationism has given you anything but an IOU.
Creationism is unscientific. Science consists of a well tested method. Creationism is not founded on this method--it is founded on discomfort with the results of correct application of this method. This is of crucial importance. For example, there are things that the Chinese teach in schools that would leave you feeling ill. Not because they are incorrect, just because they teach things in "history" class that should be taught in a "our theory of government" class. If you're going to teach Creationism, put it where it belongs--in a social studies class. Or at least offer it alongside, for example, Einstein's Cosmological Constant theories--an example of when something other than experimental evidence clouds a scientific mind. The intrusion of the weakness of the human mind intrudes on its ability to reason and function.
As for tangible historical data, I think that a hundred years of verifiable experiments works well compared to what little we have in the form of modern western religions. Islam is likely the most recent, at around 600 AD. Christianity falls in next. Judaism last. What we have of most of these are archaeological sites in varying states of dispute and ruin, various old texts, and a lot of oral tradition.
With evolution we have archaeological sites in varying states of dispute and ruin. Ignore the fact the these sites outnumber a hundredfold critical religious sites, are found all over the world (Jesus never visited Antartica that we've found), and the observations are objective. This is obviously less tangible than what has made it through hundred generations of strife, culture clash, and vested interests over a few hundred sites in one of the most conquered areas of the world. Ignore that your competing observations are of subjective phenomena of large cultural signifance. Ignore, well, reality.
I may have missed some sarcasm in your post, but I cannot repeat this defense too often. Bottom line, Science is testable by design. That it offers more than religion in this single respect is as undeniable as it is obvious. One of the greatest tragedies of the modern era has been the acceptance of people saying absurd things.
For Einstein, Copernicus, Galileo, and Archimedes to hold thier religious beliefs in check with regard to their observations was their greatest gift to mankind. They knew that the surest sign from their respective gods came in the form of the world they lived in. They understood that, where the religions of men conflicted with the world of God, it was obvious that divinity lived in reality, not in the words and beliefs of their confused, broken, and corruptible fellows.
Lack of appreciation of these facts belies misunderstanding of the tenets and goals of Science, and sadly focus on the cosmology of ancient religion shows a lack of appreciation for what great things there really are to glean from faith and history. Read the Bible. If you get more out of Genesis than Matthew, I you have my pity. I'm afraid I can't offer similar analogies for the Quran or Torah, but I think you get the idea.
I think Mauve has the most RAM. --PHB (Dilbert Comic)
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.
"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.)
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.
And they're always electrical engineers.
Les Miserables Volume 1 now up with my reading of
Just because you believe in something (or don't) does NOT mean it IS or IS'NT true
> Quantum Theory has many, Many, MANY experiments showing that it correctly predicts the results.
Yeah, but so does Newtonaian Physics (think the Voyager probes). So QM clearly isn't actually wrong, but it might be inaccurate.
Personally, I hope he's right: it would be a magnificent opportunity for some significant scientific discoveries. I never could understand how a real person of science would object to such a thing (probably an ego thing).
The Geek journal has an article about a poet with a degree in computer science who claims to have invented a video card that outperforms the most advanced offerings from Nvidia, and the card can be mass produced for a dollar.
The inventor claims to have millions of dollars in backing,a nd indpendent graphics artists have tested the board.
"we plan to produce 20 million cards a year soon, say CEO J Anklsy"
This is just an FYI for a link to more info about Deuterium toxicity:
t ml
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mheavywater.h
I would have thought that Deuterium would have been just fine, but I can understand perhaps that large quantities of Deuterium can indeed slow down some metabolic processes enough to cause some problems. I was thinking more along the lines of Tritium toxicity, but being radioactive that should make a little more sense. Deuterium is atomically stable but unusual because it is consumed quickly in stars to become other atomic products (the source of most deuterium found in nature). It is much harder to combine two simple hydrogen atoms to become Deuterium through fusion.
Yeah, the Hydrino would likely behave quite a bit different from normal hydrogen, but in this case it is more like an even lower quantum state than typical quantum state for hydrogen. I don't know where the "inventor" of this idea comes up with yet another elemental name for this quantum state, however. A photon hitting the electron is going to push the electron back into a more "typical" quantum state anyway, at least with current theory.
I have seen muon catalyzed fusion taking place using a theory similar to this one where the muon takes the place of the electron to form an exotic atom. The problem with muons, however, is that they have a relatively short half-life and are therefore not useful for large scale fusion production.
Why do all these stories seem to have a rubber stamp quality? Always has something revolutionary that breaks physical laws, they have millions availible from investors and they aren't quite ready to unviel but they have already had independent verification. It's like saying I have CU photos of Bigfoot but it'll take a few weeks to get them back from the one hour photo shop. There's always a delay in providing the goods to drag things out. Inspite of their "investors" I'm sure in the meantime they are willing to take additional investment dollars. 'Never mind the cord plugged into the wall we are actually pumping electricity back into the grid'. I thought Snake Oil went out in the 1800s?
Ha! He mentions that he has 65 peer-reviewed citing and discussing his theory. Search scholar.google.com for RL Mills. The second entry is his book. Click on the Cited link, and you'll notice that there are indeed many papers citing his work. And sir Mills himself is first author on just about all of them.
----------------- Oink. Moo. rarr! -----------------
Actually... you know how in glasses of beer there seems to be an infinate number of bubbles from the same spot on the glass? Can't we harness that?
I think the amount of gas dissolved in a particular volume of beer is finite.
-or-
So that's where all the greenhouse gases are coming from.
There are 1.1... kinds of people.
This is not to say that he didn't actually go to MIT, but it does raise some suspicions in my mind that he's pulling our collective legs.
If anyone who went to Harvard is reading this, could you check on your alumni accociation's website to see if this person really went to Harvard Medical School?
I do have the background to judge the believability of this claim (Ph. D. in theortetical elementary particle physics) and I'll tell you: this is fucking embarassing.
Here's a simple way to judge these sorts of claims that doesn't require any scientific training: major breakthroughs in fundamental physics are not made by people developing a secret product that will solve the world's energy problems.
Did you ever stop to wonder if the /. editors don't post these things just to get the activity level a little higher around here? There is always a lot more posts on flamebait political subjects and quack science then for for most of the other things that appear around here... And besides, it's a lot of fun to listen to the collective intelligence of the /. community go ballistic on some crackpot, almost as much fun as it is to watch the more gullible parts of the same community defend those crackpots! In my opinion, post away at this crap: maybe /. needs a new story category for them, crackpot science and flamebait politics. They can even give it a little tin-foil hat emblem (the crack-pot scientists always think the establishment is out to get them...). Then, when I'm in the mood to be amused by this stuff, it'll be here waiting for me.
Every single transistor in the computer you typed your post on is a working example of Quantum Physics in action.
Every one of them. That's hundreds of millions of examples right in front of you.
Look around at the world. Quantum physics is *everywhere* and we make a lot of use of it. It's demonstrated in just about everything technological, it's verifiable using equipment (not cheap equipment, but you *can* do it) and it's well-documented and understood.
You say you want "TANGIBLE evidence" ? It's right there, literally in front of you. You just need to understand your world better.
Intelligent Design offers nothing to help us understand the Universe better. It draws a line in the sand and says "This side is ineffable. You cannot know anything more about it." That's the exact antithesis of Science, which is about saying "Why does this occur and how can we predict it?"
What does ID give you? How can we make use of that 'knowledge'? How can we use it to predict future events? Why should we stop questioning the Universe, and isn't that a fundamental abrogation of the intelligence that (ID believers say) we were given?
It's not science, any more than saying "Quantum Physics is wrong! My tests (which I won't give you the details of) prove it beyond all doubt!"
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
Here's an interesting trick that demonstrates the interference of light:
Hold you hand out with your fingers together in front of some light source. Squeeze your fingers together until they make a tiny slit. Look at a source of light through the slit. You will notice bands between your fingers. They are interference fringes due to the wave nature of light.
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.
Believe me, anyone who can find a better theory than QM to describe the physical interactions we see is going to have a Nobel prize at the end of it, and the eternal admiration of his or her fellow scientists. But there are scammers out there of the "this shampoo was designed in a Scandinavian university!!!" who will try to use pseudo-science as part of the con game, so I'm sure you'll probably understand why physicists might be perfectly right to go "wait a minute..." It's not as if some guys haven't tried to scam the scientific community in the past.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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.
While the Sun's core is really, really, really hot, and yes, fusion takes place in the Sun an accounts for the current temperature and physical state of the Sun, the reaction rates are really, really, really low. Think of it -- the Sun has lasted about 5 billion years in its present mode of fusion and is predicted to last another 5 billion years before it goes red giant. And it won't go red giant because it has exhausted all of its hydrogen -- because it has a non-convective core, it just needs to exhaust enough hydrogen in the core to start hydrogen shell burning, which turns it into a red giant.
Not only is the core of the Sun enormously hot and dense compared to even the inside of a Tokomak fusion reactor experiment, the Sun is so freaking huge and massive that even a very low reaction rate that allows it to stretch out its fuel for 10 billion years allows it to put out massive amounts of energy. Of course it is doing hydrogen fusion instead of deuterium or tritium, but when you think of a hydrogen bomb, the H-bomb is doing something quite unlike what happens in nature -- it is burning up its exotic fuel in the blink of any eye -- a hydrogen bomb is more supernova-like than star-like.
What got me thinking along those lines was supposedly the cold fusion thing got going when this Steve Jones fellow was working on some theory about very low rates of fusion happening inside the Earth to account of geothermal heat. I was wondering that these must be very low rates of fusion indeed, but I was going through an astronomy textbook talking about the Sun, and I thought, hey, wait a minute! The Sun is actually doing fusion at very low rates indeed, although whether fusion is taking place in the solid state inside the Earth is another matter to consider.
1. Intel claims infinite number of transisters available on new chip
Intelligence reports secreted out of North Korea's super-secret semiconductor labs claim a new way to pack semiconductors on silicon at infinite densities, using new technology which packs electrons closer to protons than normally allowed. Remember folks, only North Koreans need dense computer chips.
2. Latest Linux release boots before PC is switched on
Kinetic Distributions, Inc. is shipping a computer that's turned on by kicking it. Remember folks, in Soviet Russia, computers boot you.
3. Researcher claims open source licensing causes random memory corruption.
Slashcode causes random memory corruption in Slashdot editors. All your pseudoscience are belong to us.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
This is why I didn't go into anthropology (other than the money sucked)... the only time a new theory in anthro is accepted is after the major proponents of the old theory die off, and I didn't want to be part of such a backward profession. Unfortunately, I'm starting to realize that humans in general do the same thing in all areas of life... political parties, office politics, professional football... we all seem to want to be part of a "winning team" because of the emotional boost we get when "we" win something.
I'm almost certain there's a biological reason for this, but I won't investigate further because there's no way to change current anthropological theory anyway.
Erik
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...
Yes, that's fairly close to what many of them thought. It was only after the ideas of quantum physics explained many long standing puzzles of physics (e.g. the stability of the atom) and many new phenomena in the laboratories of many researchers that the ideas began to gain credibility. This work is, so far, lacking all those things, so as of yet there's no reason to take the theory seriously. Moreover, this theory seems to contradict most of known quantum theory without satisfactorily explaining how quantum mechanics has been so successful for all this time. There may be reason to look for the effect, but so far there's no reason to give the theory too much credence.
You do realize that the stability of the atom (the fact that it does not collapse due to radiative damping) was one of the great successes of quantum mechanics, don't you? Your statement about the hydrogen atom is completely incorrect, as far as I can make sense of it. Schroedinger's equation itself does not predict radiative damping directly. Did you perhaps mean Dirac's equation? You have to either use a semiclassical or quantized field approach. The quantized field picture (the more exact treatment) is based directly on Maxwell's equations and so agrees with them by design. One can also verify that the ground state will not radiate in that treatment.
Without having read the details of Mills' claims, I can tell you why is sounds like nonsense. An atom is dissipative system, because it interacts with the electromagnetic field. By that, I mean that if it is given energy, it will eventually lose that energy because it emits light (the rate may be very small in some states, of course). One would expect to find hydrogen in whatever the lowest energy state is, then, because if it's in a higher state it will eventually emit light and drop to the lowest state. Thus, the idea of a state lower than the ground state then seems pretty doubtful, even if you were to forget for a moment that the modern theory of the atom (quantum electrodynamics) is probably one of the most exactly tested theories in history. To put it another way, you'd have to overturn not only quantum physics but also thermodynamics. Futhermore, one must ask why, when the vast majority of the baryonic mass of the universe is Hydrogen, this effect has never before been noticed in the emission and absorption lines of materials either in the lab by physics or anywhere else in the Universe by astronomers.
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
This is not the first time somebody claims to have made some major scientific breakthrough, leading to almost limitless energy. As usual, nothing ever came out of these claims.
I suggest everbody heads straight to James Randi's website http://www.randi.org/ to look at some of these claims. I am also not surprised that if some of these scientists looked at this particular claim were fooled by chalatans. It's not the first time this happened, either. You need a magician to see through these tricks.
Rick Maas, a chemist at the University of North Carolina at Asheville (UNC) who specialises in sustainable energy sources...
From the UNC catalog:
Richard Preston Maas (1987) Professor of Environmental Studies B.A., Bucknell University; M.S., Western Carolina University; M.S.P.H., Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
"M.S.P.H." is "Master of Science in Public Health". His field is water quality. He's been an expert witness on lead leaching from bronze parts of water systems.
And where are the "65 peer reviewed papers"?
A theory is not the same as a hypothesis (or conjecture), despite the fact that a lot of people confuse the terms.
A theory is a framework for describing a certain natural phenomenon. It's a formalized, systematic, predictive, logical, and testable expression of all previous observations that has never been falsified.
It's definitely a bit more than "a working idea".
There was never a "theory of the Earth being the centre of the universe" (and, BTW, it's perfectly acceptable to consider the Earth's position as your universe's "fixed point" - it just makes most calculations a lot harder). 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).
RMN
~~~
"The Flying Spaghetti Monster moves the electrons into a closer orbit, releasing vast amounts of energy," said Mills. When asked why such deenergized hydrogen atoms were not found in nature, despite the fact that changing back to regular hydrogen would require massive amounts of energy, Mills changed the subject.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
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
Atomic mass comes from the nucleus, not the electrons. The number of electrons in deuterium and hydrogen is exactly the same. Moreover, the chemical properties of H2O and D2O are exactly the same. Deuterium is slightly toxic for altogether different reasons than chemical properties.
Informative my ass. That's just plain wrong. If you'd bothered to study chemistry beyond the high-school level you'd probably come into contact with a rather central part of chemistry named kinetics. Kinetics has everything to do with nuclear mass. Since deuterium weighs twice as much as hydrogen, it moves at half the speed.
This means different bond strengths. Different vibrational energy levels. And most importantly: completely different reaction kinetics. If a reaction involves the forming or breaking of a hydrogen bond (thus moving the hydrogen atom), it will proceed much slower if a deuterium atom is involved instead. This is called the "kinetic isotope effect" and is a frequently-used method for investigating reaction mechanisms. Google for it.
And this is precisely the reason why deuterium is toxic. The enzymatic catalysis going on in the body are sensitive to this kind of stuff. If a certain step in a multiple-step reaction moves to slowly, the next step may not be able to occur. Hydrogen ions are directly involved in some of the cells most critical reactions, such as the in ATP synthase.
Besides which, your words fall on their own unreasonableness. If the chemical properties aren't the reason for deuterium's toxicity then what the heck is the reason? It's not radiation - deuterium is stable. It certainly isn't mechanical toxicity (as with asbestos).
It can't be anything other than chemical effects.
.....If he has a prototype it is a theory....
No! If the prototype actually does what is claimed, it is a working model, living proof that it works by producing the huge amounts of energy. Explaining HOW or WHY it works as claimed would be the theory. Until such a working model actually exists and can be demonstrated publicly, it appears to be in the same catgory as the "cold fusion" business of some years ago, namely a hoax.
All theory is gray
I have often noticed that medical doctors and engineers seem to make the best crackpots. Interestingly, this guy seems to be both. The reason seems to be that engineers and M.D.'s have enough science and math training to think they understand science, and can do math well enough to think they have 'proved' their crackpot theory. They don't, however, have enough background to understand how things like quantum mechanics and relativity actually work, and they aren't really trained in the scientific method so they don't understand how to actually support or refute a theory.
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.
Does this mean we should take every crackpot seriously? No, of course not. What it does mean, though, is that serious scientists should be encouraged to not rule something as meaningless merely because it is likely incorrect as stated. If we'd done that, we'd never have learned anything about anything.
A trivial example is the "Cold Fusion" fiasco from Fleich and Pons (spelling may vary) from Utah. Well, I doubt anyone seriously expected anyone from Utah - especially chemists - to stumble onto anything interesting in physics. And, surprise surprise, they didn't. What they DID stumble onto, however, was a very interesting form of fuel cell that can store fairly large amounts of hydrogen within the cell.
ObTrivia: The problem with Apollo 13 was that hydrogen and oxygen stored for use by the fuel cells was vented into space after an explosion. Conclusion: If the fuel was stored in a chemically stable form, which could be electrically released to generate more power than was used to release the fuel, then you'd have an fairly accident-proof fuel cell. If the fuel was then contained wholly in the cells, you would need no fuel tank or fuel lines, removing a problem with existing hydrogen technology.
Can these claims have any meaningful value? I don't know, but I do know that if they do and they are 100% ignored because they're meaningless as is, we never will know. The trick is to learn what is useful without being burned by the useless, discarding that which cannot be usefully learned from without discarding information which would save time to examine closer.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
"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.
'creationism/ID (yes, they are the same thing).'
No, they are not the same thing. They are both philosophical and theological theories, and not scientific theories at all, of course, but that doesn't make them the same thing any more than it makes gravity and conservation of energy the same thing. Creationism is a fundamentalist point of view that god actively created the world (in the extreme case, literally in 7 days). Intelligent design is compatible with creationism, but it's also compatible with the Theist notion of the divine clockmaker - the notion of a God who created the universe by giving it a push at the dawn of time, and since has been hands off. (Intelligent design would hold that such a god would have had to be very selective in the direction of his push, of course.) Not that I'm endorsing these views, but, claiming that they are the same is oversimplification, and including such errors weakens your whole argument. (Not as badly as claiming ID is a scientific theory weakens your opponent's arguments, of course.)
--Parity
'Card carrying' member of the EFF.
"...Blacklight Power, has tens of millions of dollars in investment lined up to bring the idea to market."
/.
Most marketing firms would have stuffed a sock in this person's mouth at this point; Because without a working model, it's just noise that wakes up any competitors. But consider the Venture Capitalists here. V.C.'s make their money by selling the idea to investors, not advertising by talking to the likes of
On a positive note. This V.C. Founder just might be the first to do it; Then I'll say, "I'm sorry."
You have no right to be condescending. You have *no idea* what you're talking about.
BUT the problem is, there is NO EVIDENCE other than deductive logic on how that happened.
This is a breathtakingly wrong statement. Let me help you.
Evidence for evolution. Here is a very good summary of some of the evidence. It shows example after example of physical evidence for evolution. The nice thing about this site is it explains the evidence, shows how it could be falsified, and includes criticisms. To say there is no evidence is completely ignorant. There are transitional fossils, molecular evidence, fossil hominids, evidence of jury-rigged mechanisms, and much more.
I assume you will criticize me for referring you to different parts of the same site. However, that site has an excellent collection of information, and it's all referenced so you can check the primary sources all you want.
NEWS FLASH --> The 'Theory' of evolution still has holes in it. Big ones, like; how did life come to exist? (The question of how life 'evolved' is well explained and fairly supported by 'evolution.' No one is questioning that.)
What do you mean, no one is questioning that?!? That's the whole issue! Here's a NEWS FLASH for you: Evolutionary theory has NOTHING AT ALL to do with how life came to exist. It's about how life *changes*. It's about how life's diversity came about. It's about natural selection and common descent. None of this depends on how life got here. That's a separate area, called abiogenesis, and it's not part of evolution.
And, by-the-way, scientific proof is only accepted as 'proof' if it is repeatable and predictable. In which case, NEITHER evolution or ID has proof behind it as to the beginnings of life, and the only theory that we could 'prove' is ID, for reasons stated in my previous post.
Science doesn't have proof. It has evidence. You don't know what you're talking about, and I'm tired of trying to educate you.
But you want a link?
I didn't ask you for a link.
Do I have to google for you as well as think for you?
Is being an asshole your normal mode of discourse? Damn, if you are going to be so condescending, you should have some faint idea of what you're talking about. LEARN something about science, learn about evolution, and then you might be able to speak with some kind of credibility. Believe me if I wanted someone to think for me, I'd look elsewhere.
I am, however, willing to guess that you won't bother to look at any of the evidence I provided you. You've already decided it doesn't exist, and surely wouldn't want to be bothered with facts.