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Physics Fraud or Ground-Breaking Science?
N. D. Culver sent in an interesting Village Voice story. Here's a quote: "...Randell Mills, a Harvard-trained medical doctor who also studied biotechnology and electric engineering
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says he's found the Holy Grail of physics: a unified theory of everything." And, the story says, Mills' company, BlackLight Power, has rounded up over $25 million in investment capital to exploit practical applications of Mills' work, which traditional physicists claim is nothing more than cold fusion rehashed. Is Mills a charlatan, or is this cutting-edge science? Read the story and decide for yourself.
I'm guessing his work hasn't been peer reviewed, as we haven't heard stories of other scientists verifying, or even testing, his theories.
From what I understood, Unified Theory investigation required massive particle accelerators to generate data and test ideas.
I'm not going to say this guy is a fraud, but I would wait for a few other researchers to go over his work before I start buying stock in his company!
Dana
they STILL cant whip out a decent website!
-- your knees hurt, don't they?
A unified theory of everything would certianly be a Good Thing(TM), but I really doubt anyone could discover that yet.
But still, if they got cold fusion to work, that would be cool. Nice, efficent, clean, virtually unlimited power. Mmmm. I'm hungry.
(Ugh. Responding to my own post...)
I read the article and have decided that I should have jumped to conclusions instead of 'waiting for peer review'
Thanks to his Grand Unified Theory, he's almost generated limitless energy (cold fusion?) and revolutionized artifical intelligence. Wow, I wonder what other over-hyped topics his work also touches upon.
Dana
This guy has been rehashed many times on usenet. His claims are bogus, and he is a well known fraudster.
You need only search for his name and his company on deja news.
-dennis towne
Alter Aeon Multiclass MUD - http://www.alteraeon.com
"The craft Mills imagines would be made of hydrino compounds and powered by hydrino engines and batteries. There would be pods containing intersecting helium and electron beams under a negatively charged plate. The electrons in the beam would be deformed in such a way that they would oppose gravity and push up against that electric field of the negative plate, Mills theorizes. Anything attached to the plate would also experience lift."
Not only that, but for the low, low price of only 19.95 plus shipping and handling, you'll get a extra bottle of Hydrinos ABSOLUTELY FREE!
Look at the amazing things that NEW Hydrinos (scholarly review pending) can do!
* Turn water to rocket fuel
* Shrink water (stockpile more for that long Y2K weekend...)
* Replace that pesky lava-lamp with a clean, safe nuclear byproduct--ultraviolet light
* Use it as gasoline in your car
* It also polishes wood, plastic, and glass to a magnetic, semiconducting sheen!
Stay tuned, folks, and you'll see how YOU can make money off this revolutionary new crackpot idea... IPO!
25 million investment in a fraud? I don't think anyone could get 25 million peddling snake oil. I'm willing to give him the benifit of the doubt.
Have you checked out Zoid.com yet? Zoid.com
yer dumb.
From the article: "If you could fuck around with the hydrogen atom, you could fuck around with the energy process in the sun. You could fuck around with life itself," claims Dr. Phillip Anderson, a Nobel laureate in physics at Princeton University. "Everything we know about everything would be a bunch of nonsense. That's why I'm so sure that it's a fraud."
:) I love people that don't beat around the bush and candy-coat what they really think, especially a brillant physics professor who obvious thinks this guy is a loon.
Ok, this guy Dr. Anderson gets my vote as the coolest Nobel Laureate alive. Why don't you say what you really think, Dr. Anderson!
heh...you can get 25 million these days for ANYTHING. for instance, desktop.com which is a javascript-driven method for providing free file upload and download and calculators!
-- your knees hurt, don't they?
Great. Lovely.
*IF* this is indeed true, doesn't it just warm your heart to know that this great cheap, perhaps even free, energy source is in the patent process. Ahhhh, I love the system.
O.D.
_______________________
Mello like the Yello, but without the fizz.
_______
I just wish I could c:\format Internet
Virtual Chaos
Sounded pretty good to me, anybody have comments?
This guy is half-full with shite. Everyone who believes him is 100% full.
I don't have the time or the interest to go through this article point by point, but it has all the obvious hallmarks of crank science well-lubed with snake oil.
My favorite point is the comparison of his funding with the current internet stock mania--the implication being, if his funding is modest in comparison to internet IPO's and whatnot, he must be on the level.
Stop hyperventilating. TANSTAAFL.
Well, the scientific establishment is occasionally totally wrong, but usually they tend to have more of a clue about it than somebody who:
Mills says that with this new understanding he's produced clean and limitless energy and an entirely new class of materials and plasma that will reshape every industry in the coming decade. Mills also claims breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, cosmology, medicine, and perhaps even a form of gravitational jujitsu.
It looks like the sort of thing that people trying to set up a religious cult claim, rather than serious scientists who actually try to show some evidence. If his theory is that great and simple, why doesn't he have any working examples?
Though the topics he broaches could be coming from a B-movie mad scientist, Mills's cadences are more often like those of a motivational speaker.
Ahh, now this is sounding more like it. I think it's time for a gratitous link to today's userfriendly. Clearly the buzzword complience of his claims make him out to be in the marketing rather than technology end of the business.
Despite howls from the scientific establishment that Mills is a relic of the "cold fusion" trend quashed a decade ago, BlackLight Power Inc. has raised more than $25 million from about 150 investors.
Wow, ladies and gentlement, I believe we have a winner for the competition of where foolish investors will part with their money after the internet stocks die down.
Every now and then someone pops out of a hole claiming to have a grand unified theory of some sort. The claims get some attention in the scientifically-clueless mass media, and occasionally even make the "lighter" science-related mainstream magazines. And then they're never heard from again....
Scientology has competition!
From reading this article, it looks like this company may have discovered an effect of quantum physics that has gone previously unexplored. Big deal, maybe, but hardly a grand unified theory.
The Kulturwehrmacht On the front lines of the Culture Wars
Finding God in a Dog
I want an Ehydrino laptop case. The first person to mess with my laptop would get 120 volts of AC fun! Seriously, however, I think that the doctor may be on to something. His research sounds implausible to most physicists, and to me, but even what we accept today was once ridiculed. Also, if Hydrogen can be 'compressed' then what about the heavier elements? And what about the lab tests on the Ehydrino compounds? If the orbitals on a hydrogen atom are shrunk, then wouldn't bonding be more difficult with traditional atoms?
Pax Digitalia
A scientific theory has to be able to explain the results of experiments, both new ones and OLD
ones!
I doubt that he is able to explain any quantum
effect at all. But that doesn't matter if you
just want to get money to play around with that
nice electron.
Why is this moderated as flamebait?
The revolution will NOT be televised.
His theory predicted in clear language two recent astronomical discoveries-one, the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate, and, two, there are stars that measure as older than the expansion of the universe itself.
As an astronomy grad, I feel qualified to comment on this: (a) The accelerating (not just expanding!) universe result is based on two very preliminary studies of supernovae in distant galaxies, where they try to use supernovae as "standard candles". Given the incredible diversity of stars, this is a highly controversial and speculative result, though it might ultimately prove correct. (b) Stars older than the Universe? Bah! This was a silly thing related to the current expansion rate of the Universe, and it is clearly incorrect given our current understanding of the data.
I could go on and critique the rest of the article, but I'll leave it to someone more qualified: if its on par with the astronomy bits, its garbage. I'd take odds his "Mill's cells" are producing some purely chemical energy, and the product materials will turn out to be novel chemical compounds rather than "new forms of matter". If they ever exist outside his lab.
To repeat from the article: "It's the American story," says Dr. Robert Park of the American Physical Society. "But he's still wrong."
"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."
- Lots of claims of "patents pending".
- Not one single patent number.
- Not one single reference to a scientific paper.
- A plug for a (non-peer-reviewed, probably over-priced) book.
If it looks like a scam and it smells like a scam, it's almost certainly a scam. If this guy doesn't deliver on his promises RSN, I hope he spends the next five years in prison, and the twenty after that slaving to pay back the people he scammed.--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
We ought to wait for the results of some INDEPENDENT SCIENTIFIC TESTS before we assume that this is entirely bogus (although much of it does sound too good to be true) or that it's true.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
There's a problem there. It's almost impossible to violate one law of physics, because the laws that we have discovered tend to be interconnected. As Larry Niven once wrote, "changing one law of physics is like eating one peanut."
Another problem I have is the question of rigorous scientific testing. I remember the cold fusion flap of the late 1980's, and I remember how nobody could duplicate the experiment. I guess that's why we have such things as "peer review" and "independent observation and confirmation."
However, there are companies that are shelling out big bucks to bankroll this guy, just on the off chance he's right. Still, that's not necessarily a bad thing for them -- simply because a venture capitalist loses some money in a scheme that doesn't pay out, his company is NOT going to drop-kick his butt out of his office.
I say we wait and see what happens. I think that Mills will reduce himself to absurdity soon enough.
Strike while the irony is hot! -- The Freethinker
shows what the guy knows. All of electronics, magnetism,
superconductivity, even our understanding of normal
conduction, depend on quantum theory. The list is endless.
Anderson's quote sums it up. If we don't understand the
hydrogen atom, we don't understand *anything*. Obviously
most scientists would prefer to believe in the work of
the last 75 years, than that of some unrefereed weirdo --
until he writes up his theory, makes real predictions with
it, and they have the chance to test it out for
themselves. I wouldn't bet on such a theory.
So he can explain "why is there gravity?"
The unification of magnitism with electricty in the 19th century explained magnitism. It didn't make radio possible. The discovery that signals could be transmitted through the air came before Maxwell's equations. It's the difference between science and engineering.
And Mills is a long way from making a discovery worth $25x10**6
J
Bad science, and really bad physics.
Please moderate this topic, and everyone along with it, down to around -7.
Is it just me, or does the logo for BLP look a lot like the AOL logo ???
...maybe I can actually stop by there and take a look! I'm afraid I'm not optimistic, especially after I heard the part about an AI machine with consciousness.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
Read this article...
And people call ME insane. This dude is a few files short of /
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
As an MIT alum, a quick search of the online directory....
no Randell Mills doing course 6 (EE) or 7 (biology)
in fact no Randell Mills at all.
Hee hee! You sound like a Libertarian.
How did the guy manage to get $25M in funding? Are investors that naive? or is there a fraud there. Regardless of whether or not what he says is true, what are the odds that a "breakthrough" like that is real. I'd guess one true story in about 1M "breakthrough" like this one.
...)
I guess it comes down to this: Give hope to people and they'll believe anything. (same applies to cure for cancer, AIDS,
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
This is what I took from the article:
1) Man has Grand-Unified-Theory-Of-Everything(tm)
2) Man can make limitless energy, space ships, super duper A.I., and just about everything else.
3) Man is planning IPO.
4) Man will not say how because he wants to *patent* the technology.
Hmmm....
And the quotes all seemed to say one of two things:
Average Joe Board Member "Gosh, I don't know but I think it would be great if it's true!!"
Average Physicist "It's a crock."
Just wait till some crappy band steals your nic.
This is all very very suspect and reeks of being a sham. But it should be tested to show one way or the other. After all, mainstream physics has been wrong about things before.
Here's one "simple" test -- Unplug the "hyrdino" and see how long it runs.
Of course doing that with a fusion reactor doesn't work so well either, but we have enough confidence in that concept to figure we just need to get better at it.
Is this guy at best mistaken or at worst a charlatan? Very likely. But when a unified theory is found (if one can be found), it will likely shown most of what we think we know to be..well, at least little off. And some parts.. maybe WAY off.
--
Linux is Linux. GNU is Hurding itself.
As explained to me by my physics prof:
1)You can't win
2)You can't try
3)You'll always loose.
What I read in the article does not just fly in the face of Thermo, but also thumbs it's nose at it as it does the flying. Look, I don't care if he says that it's suppose to work at the atomic or macro level, rules are rules, and this is why people have not been able to do things like produce repeatable demostrations of cold fusion.
With my opinion aside, the rhetoric of the article is good. The writer simply presents the ideas and arguments that were prsented to him, and lets the reader deside on thier own, with a slight hint twords the crazy people in this case. The rhetoric of the opins given, are quite different. Mills arguments apear to be mostly using techspeak with only limited understanding. This can in some sense be forgive, seeing as the background is more biological based and not in "pure" physics. The arguments give against Mills are better founded in who has given them. Most notably by people that have tried to debunk such people before. So, in the end, what time that is given to the detractors is much more effective and helps to bring a good balance to the article.
Read it, you'll be surprised, but take a bit of salt with you.
I think that this article is mixing a few scientific terms up. The grand unifying theory is a theory that describes the relationships between gravity quantum mechanics and particles (the main one being gravity). Mills does not seem to explain any of this. He simply talks about some magic box that seems to create "Hydrinos" (named after Neutrinos?) and these seem to be able to do any and everything. Either this person is a complete fraud and is trying to rip people off or he has discovered a neat little experiment where he has not finished his energy calculations. Maybe a start would be to explain how he discovered a lower orbital than the first shell already known to exist? (Something like this could shift the entire basis for Chemistry as well as Physics. Something a Nobel Prize would be good for). Surely this "new shell" would be unstable and hence would destroy the atom (Electron plus Proton). No no, I think there is an error in his calculations somewhere. Nice if it worked but....no I think this is as useful as belly button lint
I think people are a bit drastic in assuming that he *must* be a fraud, just because his results are weird or impossible. After the last ten or twenty years of QM, I'm ready to believe that impossible results will be commonplace.
Would I invest in his company? No. If I had some spending money, and I felt like risking it, I might speculate in his company, just because, if he *does* have anything, it could be worth a lot - even if it's not what he thinks it is.
It's like the guy who thinks water burns, because he's been able to make an engine burn a water/gas combo. He's wrong, but there could be applications for an internal-combustion-and-steam engine.
If he's got neat materials, I don't care if his physics is stupid; he's got neat materials.
On the other hand, he sure *sounds* like a kook.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Somehow I read that as
"Unreefer-ed wierdo"
Which seems substantially less accurate a description.
I thought that the purpose of science was to find out all of the answers! Maybe not now, but at least the idea is to keep looking until we eventually do!
It seems to me that he's wanting us to include his theories as things to take on faith, too... one of the warning signs that a fool and your money are going to be partners.
Strike while the irony is hot! -- The Freethinker
This is complete "cutting edge science for net idiots hype". The only current theory of everything is string theory. This is just chemistry set hacking. Calabi-Yau equations at 10 paces. Witten would kick his ass.
Blacklight Power has been trying to recruit scientists in the Central NJ area. I went in for an interview - when I was there they were looking for help in trying to make conventional rechargable batteries for laptop computers, but had no clue as to who to hire, how to build the batteries and so on. I actually met this Mills guy at the interview.
He knows nothing, and as far as I can tell is a major con artist looking to make a fast buck by stealing technology from legitimate companies and then pedealling it under wildly inflated claims as something revolutionary, much like the fakirs that promote magnets as water purifiers and arthritis cures.
As far as I could tell Blacklight Power was a rented office in a industrial park.
Mills with a unified theory of the universe? He can barely zip up a fly, and has no clue how a battery works.
If he has $25 million in investment capital, he got it from his dad, or by holding up a bank.
I wouldn't trust this guy with a paper clip. Harvard Degree? MIT? Has anyone called to check to see if these credentials are real? I doubt it.
Sorry, conspiracy theories aren't going to make me relax my expectations of peer review. In fact, it increases them. This has too much of an X-Files-y "They don't want you to know" feel for me to take it seriously. In the real world, anything that he could be doing without any grants or backing (in an old factory, no less) could be easily tested.
And his overall story seems like a parody of the American Dream. Poor boy goofs off in school, has major life-changing event that turns him into super-brain, works outside the establishment which won't listen to his ideas, fights prejudice to bring hope to millions... Wait, I think they left out a part with him working a menial job at an energy plant and doing brillient work with the equiptment after everyone had gone home. Kinda a Tucker meets Good Will Hunting sort of thing.
-Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
Hahahaha. Are "Hydrinos" anything like neutrinos?
At least the article is good for a laugh. The very crux of what is being proposed by Mills is:
Under specific conditions, the potassium acts as a catalyst to collapse hydrogen's electron orbit. The energy once used to maintain the higher orbit is released as ultra-violet light, Mills says.
While I can see that IF there were electrons in an outer valence level of hydrogen AND these electrons were somehow dropped to a lower valence level by the presence of potassium (dubious, I've never heard of such a thing) THEN energy would be released and could be harnessed, sure. But hydrogen is periodic table element #1, it has only 2 electrons, and both are in the lowest possible electron shell already, so how could they be dropped any further?
Anyway, this is a mildly amusing piece of science fiction. Someone email me when BlackLight Power goes IPO so I can make some money shorting their stock.
I don't know much about anything in this field. In fact I know next to nothing but all of this backlash from the scientific community: is this normal or is it jelousy that he might be on to something that they wish they had found first. I also wonder if it could be related to the fact that he started a company with the idea? The way I understood the business aspect was that Cold Fusion was the pariah of the scientific world jsut because of the cooks in Utah. Can someone please give me a little insight into this?
As a side note, I loved the one proffessors description of the situation that if this were true "you could fuck with everything".
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
This guy's just peddling a bunch of easy answers for feeble minds. I was just waiting for him to say that hydrinos when fed into a flux capacitor operating at 1.1 Jigawatts while travelling 85 miles per hour would facilitate time travel (my apologies to the diehard Back to the Future fans who have that all memorized as I'm surely misquoting).
Sir Isaac Newton said: "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants." This guy claims that he's seen further by developing a UFO. =)
Come on... this kind of sensationalistic tripe is what makes paupers out of the less informed folk. Not only that, but it detracts from legitimate work being done by credible, respected scientists and the ground-breaking work that has been done.
For those not acquainted with the theory Dr. Mills proposes, it is this: Dr. Mills claims to have invented a method of causing the electrons in hydrogen atoms to drop to a lower energy state, i.e., move to a lower orbit around the nucleus, in the process giving off large amounts of energy. He also claims that this "lower energy hydrogen" is in fact the "black matter" required to unify the other theories in that the amount of matter/energy in the universe which other theories require in order to balance.
Having read all of the data provided on his site, I can say that he makes a compelling case -- however, he doesn't seem in a big hurry to have his claims validated. Which (combined with the lack of responsivenes previously mentioned) inclines me to be extremely skeptical of his claims.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
fnord.
This is hardly a grand unified theory. But the existance of "hydrino" electron states is still an important theory.
After reading the article, I'm still pretty sceptical about all of it. As the article says, most of molecular/atomic physics and chemistry uses the ground state of the hydrogen electron as a fundamental law... I suppose it is possible that there are less enegertic stable electron states within the "probability cloud" that forms around the nucleus, but that would also mean that we have to reconsider all of the equations that support current electron wave mechanics and kinetics. (I think this is covered by a derivative of the Schroedinger wave equation?)
There's little/no independent confirmation of the results, even though it should be fairly easy to detect the hard UV emissions caused by the electron state changes as hydrinos are formed. Unless there's some other form of energy dispersion occuring (kinetic?), based on the quantum nature of electron states, there should be a discrete change in energy, resulting in a discrete band of photon emission.
This is exciting if it's for real, but I'm gonna wait until there's a good body of independent evidence to support it before I buy into it.
Well, the bubble gets the biggest just before it bursts. Not to put too fine a point on it, the people willing to put $25 million into this are the same kind of people that are throwing money at any company that can put "Linux" in a press release. Let's enjoy it while it lasts.
I've got a physics background (working on my MS in General Relativity), and this guy is a very smart person. Honestly, he must be. How could an idiot get so much money with such an obviously stupid theory? The equation that describes the hydrogen atom is called the Schrodinger equation. Basically, it says that the kinetic energy + the potential energy equals the total energy. 2 -h 2 --- Del Psi + V(x,y,z) Psi = Energy*Psi 2m V is the electrodynamic potential. Yeah I know the equation looks weird, but that's what it means. And this equation describes about 99.99% of all the properties of the hydrogen atom. The stuff this equation misses, like spin (a relativistic effect) and the Lamb shift (a quantum field theory effect) are pretty small and take nice expensive machines to even notice they exist. Nothing of the "we'll cut the size of your atoms in half by 50%" exists. Think about this: if it were possible for hydrogen atoms to transition to a lower energy state, they would have already done so by now. Mother Nature likes to be in the lowest energy state possible. If she gould have squeezed more energy out of hydrogen atoms, she would have already done so.
>The unification of magnitism with electricty in the 19th century explained magnitism.
Explained electromagnetism.
Spontaneous bulk magnetism, such as that holding your "Hello World" printout from 2nd grade to your mom's fridge, requires quantum mechanics for a satisfactory explanation.
I am really hesitant to post anything about this since it will most likely be flamed to a crisp.
However, Mills stuff is just the tip of the iceberg. There has been quite a bit of active research in this whole, particularly in Japan and Europe.
The most interesting work has not been in the original electolysis using heavy water and palladium although SRI and to a lesser extent Los Alamos have been doing work in this area and have essentially confirmed the *original* observations of Pons and Fleischman. The major problem with this type of experiment is that you need to get close to a 1:1 (.9 as I recall) ratio of hydrogen atoms for each atom of the palladium crystal matrix before you get results. If you have cracks or other impurities you will NOT achieve that level of packing. If you use bulk materials the stuff gets explosive. One SRI researcher died from this. Also this whole area is *very* close to weapons research so Los Alamos has become very quite in the last couple of years while SRI is still plugging along. Here is a link to a page that has a nice summary of the issues.
The most interesting area, in my opinion, has been in the area of light water electrolysis where some people have seen signs of transmutation - which of course goes from 'fradulence' to 'outright witch craft' as far as conventional science goes.
Mills work is actually kind of on the sidelines from the 'mainstream' research in this area. He does have a lot of backing by reasonably conservative investors (2 mid size power utilities). He does have a comprehensive theory and has done numerous experiments to validate various aspects of his theory that have allegedly been confirmed by independent labratories.
Here is a link to a reprint of a recent Wall Street Journal article on BlackLight and its recent work.
Here are some other 'Cold Fusion' sites:
Cold Fusion Times
Infite Energy Online
BlackLight Power
Clean Energy Technologies a company that has done a lot with light water cold fusion and has recieved a number of patents in the area.
A Cold Fusion Bibliograph by Dieter Britz
I had a really carefull read of this, then I read it again. Here are my thoughts. The primary point in interest in this whole thing is: (If you don't want to read all of this stuff just read the last paragraph, it's funny and explains it all).
I can take this and accept it as a maybe, there is nothing there I can imediatly find problem with without reading much more about his work, although the current electron model fits most cases it is known to be slightly wrong. It starts to get silly after that:
I quote the notes "produced clean and limitless energy" ok, this is obviously the line bringing out the 'cold fusion' comparisons, this line gives this away as marketing hype. Thermodynamics already tells us that energy can neither be created or destroyed, just changed from one form or another. If the guy had claimed to have found an efficent method of tapping the energy stored in matter it would have almost been believable, anything that requires scraping theries that have been around as long as thermodynamics needs to be backed with some serious grade proof, and I see none.
Another interesting line "Mills also claims breakthroughs in artificial intelligence" This one is curios, I remember reading the "Emporors New Mind" By Roger Penrose where he makes a pretty convincing argument that the brain uses processes of physics not understood and so could not be simulated with current techniques. If indeed Dr Mills has discoverd something fundamentaly new in physics (although I am doubting this) this particular claim may not be unreasnable. This sentance goes on to mention "cosmology, medicine, and perhaps even a form of gravitational jujitsu." which quite frankly has me checking the date to see if it was publiched April 1st.
We then move on to the clincher that explains it all. "Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co. is considering a public offering of BlackLight Power stock in 2000". Everything the guy said is true, if he can convince the media then his IPO will be possesed of "limitless energy", he will gain curious new "Material" possesions, be able to afford the best "Medicine" and maybe finance his own space station to develop "gravitational jujitsu".
Either Mills is the best scientist since Einstein, with the engineering abilities of Edison,
....or....
He is a bs artiste.
I know where my money is ! After all $25m is nowt for an Energy coy to put into venture capital. What bugs me is how easy it is to raise this sort of cash.
Life is just a bowl of All Bran - Small Faces
* Add it to your pet's water! Double it's size in minutes! * Wash your clothes in it, to make them whiter than white AND bullet-proof! * Soak those Windows 2000 CD's in it! Guaranteed to kill all known bugs! * Fill your SuperSoakers with this! Turns your opponents invisible!
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)
What points to question this work is that most science (even back in the nineteenth century) is built off the back of other, older science. Even those scientists viewed as mavericks, such as Louis Pasteur, built off a considerable weight of work - they just took it in unexpected directions.
This science doesn't seem terribly indebted to other scientists, which makes me mistrust the theory. This doesn't mean that he is necessarily wrong, but that the effect of Mills cells is almost certainly caused by a different means (unsurprisingly, this is the explanation for cold fusion - energy created through a chemical reaction rather than a nuclear one).
I would be suspicious of Mills, and rightly so. The article doesn't touch on Mills' background for his entire working life - the twenty-odd years between graduation from Harvard Medical School and today are a blank. What has led him to this point? What research has he done in the interim? That he is very smart is without contest, but the very smart are apt to make mistakes of equal grandeur. Look at Ramanujan, who made important discoveries in modern mathematics but also made equally great errors in prime numbers. Like Ramanujan, Mills seems to have a great difficulty and impatience with the scientific method, and it is this that should make us most suspicious of his hypotheses.
--
--
There is no premature anti-fascism. -Ernest Hemingway
Just from reading the article. Not the actual details that he's trying to prove, but how the article is written, and how the information is presented. This, to me, does not seem like a valid article written by any journalist. Blatant profanity, and ego-hyping of the inventor, it seems as if the article was written by the man himself.
But, then again, maybe that's just the writer's style. Erik Baard, has also written many other articles on the uses of power and electricity.
Fraud or no, the whole thing just looks like a big game for the public to me.
...or at least something similar. It doesn't sound like this guy did came up with a Grand Unified Theory (he seems more salesman than physicist), but it does sound like he could have come up with a practical way of getting hydrogen into a superconductive state. Not sure.
/. will follow-up on this, because superconductors will indeed revolutionize just about every industry (including computers), once an effective way is found to put them to use.
I will need to read more on it, but the behavior he's describing sounds similar to that of superconductors. I'm intrigued. I hope
One consideration though, is that if he figured out how and why what he's doing worked (not just trial and error), then maybe he could have done come up w/ the Grand Unified Theory, but I seriously doubt it.
I can't help but think some of those scientists who heard but had not seen sounded like the kind of people you hear about when talking about Galileo, Einstein and Newton. I'll wait and see what happens before I judge - he may be on to something, but there seems to be too much salesmanship here.
Really? What about that PC you're reading this on?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Plain and simple, the guy is a quack.. His theorys have no basis in fact. i.e. he is full of crap and is trying to play salesman sells his warez to unsuspecting investors...
THE CRACKPOT INDEX (see #7)
Poor Mr. Mills quickly racks up the points.
After reading his claims that his work is ``past the scientific verification stage'' while it won't be until January that he ``will submit [his] findings to a premier [yet unamed] scholarly journal'' it makes me wonder how carefully he paid attention when he was attending Harvard and MIT (if he actually did). Peer review is at the heart of scientific verification.
Mr. Mills: just what grade did you get in your physics class?
This guy should team up with my favorite scientist, Alex Chiu. Not only has Alex invented cheap, simple immortality with his Eternal Life Device, but he is also doing important work with Teleportation and Space Travel. With the added power of Hydrinos(tm), just imagine the possibilities.
.
With Mills and Chiu working together, maybe humanity could finally solve the awesome mysteries of Nature's Harmonic Simultaneous 4-Day Time Cube
joe fusion
joe fusion
anarchitect
um, yes, that is a good question....
I love these stories. Every undergrad physics major (or wannabe) comes out of the wood work claiming to be an expert and goes on rambling about this and that. Fun to read!
and for that matter, why was the reply marked flamebait?
I'll admit this does sound interesting, but i have a few questions. The article wasn't quite clear on his model of the electron as "bubble". Does he mean that this "bubble" it's self is a charge(essentially the electron)? I find this very strange, and it makes me wonder how a model of multiple electrons in one orbital would look? If they had just stayed when they said "two dimensional disks", i could have handled it a little better, because that would be just like the rings around saturn or something, but prehaps i comletely misunderstood their wording. Furthermore, if the article meant that the "bubble" was simply a model with every point on the bubble representing a possible space for the electron to occupy, wouldn't that be the same thing as the traditional model of an s orbital(which is just a sphere)?
Also, i would like to know more about how he will go about collapsing hydrogen's ground state orbital. I realize that im having trouble with this since im used to the traditional particle and enegery wave models, which only allow the electron to occupy certain energy levels, with s being the ground state. Anybody with a physics or chemistry background able to explaint this to me? This somewhat brings me back to this idea of bubbles, if the bubble is representing the electron, does everything inside of the bubble also represent the space avaiable to the electron? This even further confuses me since as you add further orbitals, such a s p orbital, it would consume the s orbital, and if everything inside of the bubble can be occupied, that means that the p and s orbitals would become one and same. man...too much thinking, prehaps too little on my part.
Id really like to hear what you guys think.
..every few years some crackpotm starts talking about Hydrino's. jeez, If you know what a valence band is, and about tunneling, then you know this is carp, big wet and stinky..
What I do understand, however, is quantum mechanics. I have problems with two of Mills' assertions:
First, this interesting concept does absolutely nothing to address the fact that photons also have both particle and wave-like behavior. Second, his idea of orbitspheres is completely incompatible with atomic and molecular orbital theory. For those who don't know, orbitals are areas of probability where the electron is likely to be found in an atom or molecule. This theory can be used to explain, qualitatively, chemical reactions and their mechanisms. This brings me to my second quible with his claims:
I have a number of problems with this. First, all the quantum theory which he's dismissing in so cavalier a manner has actually proven itself, countless times. Using the same theories which he dismisses, quantum chemists and solid state physicists have been able to predict the results of untried chemical reactions. This is achieved by computer modeling which implements the mathematical formulas that make up the "fraud" Quantumists are "guilty of".
Second, let's not forget who won the Nobel Prize last year for Chemistry. It was the people who concieved of and implemented DFT, one of the more powerful quantum theories which I mentioned above.
Lastly, I'd like to comment that this guy's speculation is all well and good, but where are the mathematics to back it up? Quantum theory is largely supported by extensive mathetmatical formulae. I took an Advanced Quantum Class, learning the nitty-gritty of that stuff, and even wrote code for a program which implemented it. I ported a Fortran implementation of it to C, and added some stuff. I've seen how it works at a fundamental level. If his theory undoes all of that stuff, I want to see the mathematics which support it. I doubt, however, that he has any.
So, it seems to me that this guy is out to bamboozle stupid people with a lot of money. I just wish he wasn't trying to do it with junk science.
I've had a link to the blacklight power stuff on my website for years now (and I got the link from a website that was years older). For 400 more crackpots try this
-- SIGFPE
Am I the only person on slashdot who gets a real kick out of seeing different people's methods of avoiding spam? Check out this poster - he's got a mini perl script in order to convert the shown email address into the real address.
:)
There's another user, I forget what his username is, who has in his sig "reverse, remove everything between the two e's, and rot-13 encode to email me" (a paraphrase, and probably a bit wrong, but the real one is really that obfuscated)
I get a big kick out of seeing those email obfuscations that work in theory because spam bots that troll the web are dumb and most humans aren't.
So, I've got to submit my own - I'm making this up on the fly, so if it's a bit wrong, be gentle:
My email address: "moc.|.ucv.|.natitbeielladm5s"
s/(\d)/($1 - 3)/e;
s/moc/ten/g;
s/ieb/\@/g
s/\.\|\./\./g
reverse
s/[com|net|org]/edu/g
And there you have it!!! (s2mdalle@titan.vcu.edu)
Oh, excuse the regexps if they're a bit screwed - my perl is rusty.
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
The reason is because the energies involved before the effects of the theory are felt are far greater than can be achieved outside of a major particle accelerator (or cosmic rays.) A grand unified theory only has effects at energies *many* orders of magnitude higher. I cannot have practical applications.
Incidentally, do we really know that he has $25M in investment? That may be a false claim to encourage others to invest - is there independent confirmation of this?
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
I have something that is simply amazing!! astounding!! It is my new hocus-pocus..super-de-duper elixer.. Look here.. what do I have.. Thats right ordinary dirt.. Now take this ordinary dirt and pour my super-duper amazing elixer on the ordinary dirt... And presto! GOLD!!! Thats right! Using modern alchemy I can make gold from dirt!!! Wow!! isn't that amazing!! I have also invented a transporter as well.... And if you believe what I just told you.. You can belive the bullshit this guy is pulling off. This guy is full of shit!!! And doesn't know a damn thing... Plus he is from MIT.. And after having dealt with numerous MIT graduates in engineering and Computer Science... I have found most of them to be very egotistical and very dimwitted!! i.e. usually gettng mad at them from fucking up!!
Claimer: Yes, I took basic QM. No, I don't remember very much of it.
Definitely the former; an idiot wouldn't be able to do the confidence act so well. Agreed that it's stupid. On a site which touts itself as News for nerds, Stuff that Matters, it's disgusting to see it wasting space here.On the other hand, if Roblimo loses some money in this guy's scam, maybe it would improve the editorial skepticism of Slashdot.
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
- Arthur C. Clarke, Clarke's First Law
"When, however, the lay public rallies round an idea that is denounced by distinguished but elderly scientists and supports that idea with great fervor and emotion--the distinguished but elderly scientists are then, after all, probably right."
- Isaac Asimov's Corollary to Clarke's First Law.
Even ignoring the fact that I know enough about physics (having worked at a reactor in a previous life oughta qualify me :-) to read through the bunk in the article being discussed here (and make no mistake, the "technology" in this article is bunk), there's also the fact that "great fervor and emotion" (as in "Help, help, we're bein' repressed, can't you see the violence inherent in the system!") is the Village Voice's stock and trade.
This isn't always bad. Paranoia ("lookit the Eeeevul Corporit Masterzz"), especially when combined with a liberal arts education ("cuz science is so hard compared to marching in protest!"), can be a pretty useful combination when you're trying to ferret out real oppression, but when it comes to science, all you end up with is total gullibility when it comes to anything involving scientific clue.
"Ah," I hear you say, "but this free-energy theory could be true! Who are you, Tackhead, to say what's worthy or not?". Well, yes, it could be true. And the earth could be carried on the back of a giant turtle, but is it worth investigating when there are better theories to work with? The relativist notion that "all ideas are equally worthy of debate" is great for politics and art, (issues on which Village Voice reporters spend a lot of time writing, and writing well), but a complete flop when you try to extend them to science. The evidence we have makes it pretty bloody clear that world is not sitting on the back of a giant turtle, and any attempt to claim that this "theory" is "just as valid as the big bang theory" is hogwash.
Science, unlike politics, requires skepticism, not paranoia, and it doesn't respect your politics one way or the other. Given the political leanings and (lack of science in the) educational backgrounds involved, I'd bet that anyone with a crackpot theory that, if it were true, might destabilize capitalism, would have a lot of credibility in the eyes of a VV reporter, no matter how loony the theory.
On both counts - bad physics according to what I know in my brain, and hokey emotional rhetoric instead of valid peer review according to what I feel in my gut - my money's with Asimov's Corollary on this one.
You will see, as responses, a number of statements made by people with one degree or another claiming that their education is what allows them to refute or substantiate these claims.
A degree is only proof that you have the economic power to attend a center of education and regurgitate what they want you to regurgitate.
Many of these people have a finicial interest in debunking Mr. Mills. Dr. Robert Park is making money on a debunking book to be published next year. Dr. Michio Kaku has based his career off of string-field theory.
As for the rest of us, we have an easy option, wait a year. "I'll have demonstrated an entirely new form of energy production by the end of 2000." - Randell Mills.I can wait a year to make my informed decision.
There are, and have been, a lot of theories about the nature of the universe. History shows that the one thing intelligensia does not like is anyone who does not agree with them. I can't blame them. How would you like to base your whole career on the "fact" that the three corners of a triangle add up to 180 degrees?
The problem with modern science is that the "proof" of most discoveries is based on a lot of assumptions. Some of these assumptions have bene around for so long that we have begun to regard them as facts.
Regardless of the outcome, he has at least given support to a very important scientific theory: Money for scientific research is easier to acquire if you can show a profit - Grant Money for Dummies
No Zen is good zen
In the next year, Mills promises, the revolution will be "hydrinoized."
The revolution will not be hydrinoized.
The revolution will not be brought to you by Blacklight Power
In 4 parts without commercial interruptions.
The revolution will not show you pictures of Dr. Randell Mills
blowing a bugle and leading a charge by Niels Bohr, Albert Einsten
and Richard Feynman to eat
hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary.
The revolution will not be hydrinoized.
with all due apologies to Gill Scott Heron
garyr
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
I'll limit my comments on Mills' ideas as represented in the article to my own field of astrophysics and cosmology:
If these hydrino things really existed, then they would probably be made in stars which have the central pressures and temperatures needed to really force hydrogen to jump through hoops, being basically sustained hydrogen bombs. Theoretical astronomers have created a "standard solar model" which takes all of standard nuclear physics, solar opacities (basically what color is the gas which makes up the sun)... really all standard physics.. and predicts the temperature, radius, luminosity, lifetime, and internal structure of the sun, all of which matches observations to high accuracies. If you change any of the parameters (such as the possibility that hydrogen is shrinking into Hydrino and releasing extra energy) would change the sun, and would no longer match observations.
Mills' cosmology is pretty much crap. He claims that the Universe was never smaller than it is now. There are two basic ways that we know that the universe was smaller than it is now: when the universe was as dense as the center of the sun, there was spontaneous nuclear fusion which converted about 1/4 of the hydrogen into helium, 10^-5 of hydrogen into deuterium, and 10^-10 (i think, don't have my charts in front of me) of hydrogen into lithium. All three of these predictions match observations.
Also, when the universe was denser than it is now, it was hotter, hot enough to glow. That light is still around, a fossil remnant of big bang.
Mills has two arguments against this, the age mismatch of the stars and the age of the universe and the acceleration of the expansion of the universe. The age mismatch: you can use stellar models like the ones I described above to deduce the ages of stars. They show that the oldest stars in the universe are about 14 billion years old, while a popular cosmology theory suggests that the universe is 10 billion years old.
The problem with this is the concept of error: both of these measurements are difficult and have large uncertainties. The real age of the stars should be stated as being somewhere between 10 and 18 billion years, while the age of the universe is somewhere between 9 and 15 billion years when determined independantly. Now there is no conflict.
The other effect, the accelerating expansion of the universe, actually increases the estimates of the age of the universe. When this acceleration is taken into account, the age of the universe increases to about 14 billion years, right in line with the estimates of the ages of the stars, one reason why this acceleration was treated so well by the scientific community.
Here's the way this works: Galaxies are moving away from us, and thats how we measure the rate of expansion of the universe. When we see a distant galaxy at some distance moving away from us with some velocity, we use the middle school equation distance=velocity x time to calculate how long the galaxies have been seperating. But if the velocity is accelerating, then in the past it was less than it is is today, whch increases the time. It is possible that the acceleration of the universe was so strong that in the past, the velocity was zero, and this is the bounce state that Mills was referring to, but then we wouldn't have the helium and deuterium that we have today, nor would we have the fossil energy.
The article makes it sound like Quantum Physics hasn't had a commercial application. Hey folks, you are using a commercial application of Quantum Physics right now! Yeah, the semiconductor technology or "Solid State" (now aka condensed matter) physics products can only be explained through quantum physics. If classical physics was correct, all p-n junctions would have to short out to pass current (incidently, this is often what happens when you fry a transistor in your cpu). Solar Cells, CCDs (the things that take the pictures in camcorders and digital cameras), diode lasers (like in a CD player), hospital nMRIs (nuclear magnetic resonance imaging), and Pokemon are all commercial devices that would not work if quantum physics was replaced by classical physics. Ok, so Pokemon was made up, not even quantum physics can explain that. I hope that this guy's theory can be debunked before he garners more press.
On the other hand, if his energy and materials research produces results, I don't really care if the guy hasn't got a clue as to why they work. The nobel prize in chemistry was awarded to a hairstylist a few years ago because he invented/discovered (your pick, he was the first to make it) a ceramic that could be formed at common temperatures and then survive nuclear temperatures. He didn't really know why anything he did worked either... But at least he didn't come up with a pseudo-science explanation for it.
As far as (super)string theory goes, it tidies up all of the problems that physicists had with the mathematics of quantum physics. You could argue that quantum physics can all be derived from (super)string theory. That is just an extension of the equivalence principle, which says that all of Classical Physics can be derived from Quantum Physics, and any place that they differ requires an experiment to prove one over the other--Quantum Physics wins over Classical Physics in all of the above applications I mentioned. Many astrophysicists look to the sky in the hopes of finding something that can verify (super)string theory. Hopefully we can find darkmatter clusters of sufficient size to be viable candidates for supersymmetric partical clusters. All currently observed darkmatter microlensing events can be explained without supersymmetry.
ccoakley@candleconsulting.com
Network Security: It always comes down to a big guy with a gun.
This guy is absolutely wrong, and he's probably knowingly wrong. (ie, fraudulent).
I've seen this kind of thing many times. After awhile you start to spot the frauds. Consider:
1. He's appealing to the 'underdog' effect. "Yeah, scientists everywhere hate me, and I'm going to prove them all wrong!" This elicits sympathy.
2. He is promising way, way too much. Any one of these inventions would make him a wealthy man. He wouldn't need investors the way he has gotten them; he would make a material sample, show it to some big corporation, and get bought for a couple hundred mil.
Consider: he's promising about a dozen revolutionary advances all at the same time, for one low, low monthly payment. It's just not likely that he would simultaneously overthrow all of established physics in so many areas at once.
There may very well be breakthroughs of this magnitude, but they won't happen like this: all promises up front with no delivery. Instead, a scientist will announce a revolutionary discovery and probably will make a whole lot of money. Then, a lot of OTHER people will make further progress based on the original breakthrough, and they will make tons of money too.
There's not enough wattage in anyone's head to throw back the frontiers of science in so many directions simultaneously. If this were real, his head would be totally wrapped around making the energy release work. That alone would make him enough money to buy small countries. The only reason to make claims in so many areas at once is to get investment money. I can't imagine of a surer way of showing that his basic breakthrough -- the power generation -- has no substance. If it were real, he would already be demonstrating a machine that worked.
This reminds me almost exactly of a claim by a company that was local to where I lived, about ten years ago. They claimed to have sped up the AT compatible machines of the day by a factor of 100 using off-the-shelf components.. Of course, it was a fraud, but it had a lot of people excited and I believe the owner made a lot of money. I don't know what happened to him -- hopefully he is in jail. Intel spent many billions to make computers 100 times faster than an AT. If it could have been done with off-the-shelf components, you can bet Intel would have done that. They're not stupid.
As a culture, we like to believe in the myth of a single person seeing the brilliant insight that nobody else is capable of seeing. But the stuff he's talking about here is too basic. There's no way that millions of scientists missed it. Just like the AT-machine that was 100 times faster, this 'invention' will disappear, and most of the investors will lose their money.
My $0.02.
The splitting of H2O into H2 and O2 and then using the H2 as a "free" fuel has been a gimmick money making trick used for at least the last 50 years by free energy con-men: http://www.syc.org/e/dennis4.html This reminds me of another laughable free energy scheme: http://www.ucsofa.com/index.htm Both operate pretty similar-- buy the expensive book, contribute for your share in the technology, blah, blah....
If he's got neat materials, I don't care if his physics is stupid; he's got neat materials.
I agree. From the article it sounded like various people have tested his "cell," and have gotten the same results. The issue seems to be why, and if you can produce this energy, and make these cool materials, who cares why it works. Let's figure that out later.
Also, the way everyone jumps to conclusions and ignores data when ananlyzing this guy, reminds me of a Mr.Gregor Mendel. Remember him?
On the amazon page, Ulrich Gerlach from the department of Mathematics at Ohio State University gives a pretty long list of things wrong with Mill's theories.
I don't understand the arguments at all, but nobody has mentioned the page yet. Ulrich does indeed exist (http://www.math.ohio-state.edu/~gerlach/ ). He's the only scientific reference I've seen in this mess so far.
Then again, anyone is free (able) to use any scientist's name on amazon.
When I first saw this article, I thought immediately if Michio Kaku, who spoke at MIT's orientation last fall. Kaku is an incredible speaker with vast vision into unified string theory, which is an attempt at unifying most scientific knowledge. Kaku, like this freak, is attempting to find what Einstein was looking for when he died -- the one, simple equation, that unified all the laws of physics. Finding the below quote from Kaku in the article was proof enough to me that this guy doesn't quite get it.
Oh, and as an aside, if you're looking for REAL research about this -- check out Kaku's _Hyperspace_ (ISBN: 0385477058). Great book for scientists and laymen.
>
It's true. My cat told me this last night after I finished playing chase the shiny metal dangly! They say it's impossible to herd cats but with my amazing telepathic powers, I've now only managed to produce emergent flocking from felines but I've harnessed their kitty gestalt to solve the really BIG problems (patent pending).
So as I was saying, P = NP. And unlike other charlatans, I'm going to give you my proof.
Behold!
Axiom 1: N = 1
P = NP
P = (1)P
P = P = NP QED!
So now I've not only solved protein folding, the travelling salesman problem, stock market prediction, hangnails, and balancing BSP trees, but I can also use my newfound persuasive powers to get the chicks. I just say that I like to solve HARD problems and that I don't DICK around but THRUST right into the matter and COME upon a solution.
You may all send your money now and moderate this puppy up!
First, a disclaimer: I am not associated with this "Dr Mills" in any way. The name we have in common is merely a coincidence.
The theory has to be bogus.
The Grand Unified Theory, if it is eventually found, will provide a single set of equations to describe the four fundamental forces of nature: strong, weak, electromagnetic and gravity. The Standard Model as currently understood has unified the strong, weak and electromagnetic forces into a single set of equations, but these equations do not include gravity. The unification of gravity with the other forces has occupied the finest minds in nuclear physics for over fifty years. Albert Einstein spent the last thirty years of his life on such a unification and he did not succeed.
Now "Dr" Mills has allegedly created a unified theory of his own, and by using it created a method by which he dissociates water and combines potassium with the hydrogen to produce "hydrinos". As any nuclear physicist worth his salt will tell you, a chemical method cannot produce results that the best particle accelerators existing in the world today have not been able to do.
Also, the process as described cannot produce energy, as it is thermodynamically impossible for it to produce a net energy gain. Energy is required to dissociate the water molecule into its constituents, whether it be by electrolysis, by catalyst or by enzyme. If the alleged process produces ultraviolet light as claimed, the energy required to create this light must come from the dissociation of the water. By the laws of thermodynamics, the energy allegedly produced by the alleged process cannot yield as much energy as was required to dissociate the water molecules.
There is also the question of the "Doctor's" qualifications. Does he have a doctorate in nuclear physics? No. Does he have any accredited degree in nuclear physics? No. Does he have any formal training in nuclear physics? That we don't know, but I believe it's unlikely. Therefore, we can safely assume that the "Doctor" is not qualified to speak on the topic of Grand Unified Theories. Are we to believe that someone with no formal qualifications in nuclear physics has succeeded in something where the greatest minds in nuclear physics of the last fifty years have not? Is Dr Mills, without formal qualifications in the field, a better nuclear physicist than such eminent minds in the field as Einstein and Hawking?
Which, then, is the more likely explanation? That Dr Mills has miraculously and without formal training solved one of the great unsolved scientific problems of our time? Or that he is a fraud and a charlatan, out to fleece gullible people out of their money? The simpler and therefore more likely explanation is that the "Doctor" is a fraud, as is evidenced by his previous exploits.
Like Dr Mills, I lack qualifications in the field of nuclear physics. However, if I can provide good arguments to debunk his claims from general knowledge only, desite my lack of qualifications in the field, then clearly there's something wrong with the claims of Dr Mills.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
Or at least he is according to his own theory. If matter converts constantly to energy until a point where there is nothing but energy and then returns to a state of a high density of matter. Then his use of a material that accelerates the transfer of matter to energy would surley cause us to destroy all matter(transfer to energy) in a shortened time.
Would you believe...whoops?
Null
If its stupid but it works, its not stupid.
I think that he *has* discovered a new particle, the "put-on".
He has clearly already demonstrated the puton's
enormous potential of raising money. Since
everyone knows time=money, he might be onto something here.
There is also another site that is worth a visit. "Since there are plans to take this company public, those of you who missed the chance to invest in cold fusion will be given another chance to become a millionaire". I missed both Linux IPOs, but this is one where I will surely take part...
Now, please don't flame me or moderate me down, but if I had founded something as profound as the theory of unification I think I'd like to profit from my work.
Yes, I do beleave some investigation is needed, but the initial negative attitude assuming that he might be fake I don't think is terrible friendly.
But I do agree, it would have been nice to release it for free. But doing some "for the good of the community" doesn't feed yourself or your family, or put a roof over your head at night.
Oh well, just my two cents
Pete
Do you have any references for any of this information? I would certainly like to read more about this.
Go f yourself, you spamming troll.
I've seen some cites for people who have confirmed his results but not from people who have failed to confirm the results. After a few months, the list of people who had tested cold fusion and failed to replicate was very long and the cold fusion hype machine became unraveled. This seems to have been going on for far longer and there are no lists of people who aren't confirming something new is going on here.
But beyond the energy numbers there are those new compounds that people apparently haven't seen before. Where are the debunkers who can map these compounds to previously discovered materials? Aparently nobody among his detractors are arguing that the compounds aren't novel.
The guy may yet be a fraud, but at the very least there appears to be wheat among the chaff. To dismiss it all with an airy wave of the hand is very much unscientific.
We'll know by June what's real or not.
DB
I have two basic issues with Mr. Mills:
a) he has a "special" material that seems to produce this effect
b) he describes quantum theory with classical physics
Now, with the reading of a) in the article I already took a serious doubt on the work the man has done. It just reeks of magnetized water or snake oil. What is the material is my question? Needs more review very certainly. I doubt it will hold up.
Now with b) I take more issue - the reason that classical physics isn't used to describe subatomic particles and interactions is that it just doesn't hold up. Now unless we've been stupid or blind or both I find it hard to believe that describing his procedure with classical physics is even possible. Maybe that's why it seems to work in the first place.
Oh well. We'll find out in time that this is probably a sham.
nick
A qui ck search on IBM's patent site reveals 8 patents, most of them having to do with DNA and gene therapy.
This site lists his biography, including his academic history, his resume, a list of supposed patents (11 of them), and a list of publications. None of them seem to be from peer-reviewed journals though?
Also, the Aquarian Research Foundation is backing him. A quote from their page:
BlackLight Power will present about 10 compounds to the American Chemical Society and "five papers that give explicit details and is absolutely reproducible," Dr. Mills said. "I have a unified field theory that's absolutely testable at every stage and on every item." "Thank God we're getting our day in court," Dr. Mills said.
That's all that matters. If, by following the same steps, you arrive at the same results that he achieved, then his ideas merit attention.
I'm highly skeptical of him, because he hasn't published his work for peer review. No one can verify his results because it's a trade secret? I don't buy that.
If it is true, this is going to be a highly disruptive technology, on the same order that
the railroad, the car, and the telegraph were.
Real scientists publish their results in peer-reviewed journals, or at least put up preprints on xxx.lanl.gov. They still have plenty of time to get patents if they want, plus the nobel prize makes getting the vc much easier. ;-)
The fiction about "lowering the hydrogen electron's orbit level" seems to be based on muon-induced fusion.
An ordinary duterium molecule (D_2) has a tiny probability of spontaneously fusing into helium. (This is a result of quantum tunneling: one nucleus tunnels through the nuclear potential barrier into the vicinity of the other.) If you replace one or both of the molecule's electrons with muons, then the larger mass of the muon makes the stable molecular state smaller than it was before. The nuclei are thus closer together, increasing the probability of spontaneous fusion.
This actually works.. the only problem is that of creating enough muons of the right energy cheaply enough to be practical. Many people are plugging away at this, and there is a journal dedicated to muon-induced fusion.
I think that the cold fusion reference might come from a not-well-known phenomenon called muon-catalyzed fusion. Muon catalyzed fusion uses a subatomic particle called the muon, which is essentially a heavy electron, to produce fusion at near room temperatures. This effect has been experimentally observed since the 50's, mostly as a nusiance effect in particle accelerators.
It works because the muon is some 207 times heavier than the electron, and the math works out that if you put it around a proton, that means that the average distance of the muon from the proton is about 200 times closer than that of the electron in a similar state around a proton. This means that the muonic hydrogen atom itself is about 200 times smaller than the conventional hydrogen atom. It takes a lot less energy for other hydrogens to get close to the small atom (for you science types, the couloumb barrier is much thinner), so you can cause fusion at much lower temperatures.
The problem with muon-catalyzed fusion is that it takes muons, which are incredibly energy-expensive to produce. The efficiency of the particle accelerators needed to make them is miniscule. No free lunch there, although there are a few people looking into its viability.
So anyway, this sounds a fair bit like Mills' hydrinos, although with no claims whatsoever towards a Grand Unified Theory or antigravity or whatever. If Mills took a cue from this well explored (but somewhat obscure) theory to provide some background to his fusion claims, he sure tacked on a heap extra.
Oh, and from what I've seen, Pons and Fleischmann, when they did the experiments leading to the cold fusion incident, actually might have found something interesting. However, all their measurements relied on a bunch of calorimetery that is somewhat difficult to interpret, and no evidence that actual nuclear fusion was going on was accurately reproduced. Mills might have stumbled on to the same electrochemical effect (if it exists), but I sincerely doubt that he's got any genuinely stunning new physics.
I guess the proof is in the pudding: If he comes up with something that actually works and produces energy, I'll believe him.
Transmeta has filed patents on their technology and Intel has cited them as significant competition in their anti-trust case. Check it out in past slashdot articles.
DB
Or atleast prove it mathmatically
Assumptions that have led to a multitude of discoveries both amazing and practical, including the computer you're currently hunched over in the mental bomb-shelter you've created to protect yourself from a world you probably feel is against you and against all right-thinking men and full of 'crazies', 'lunatics' and 'scientific know-it-alls' who are all busy trying to repress Truth, Justice and the American (your) Way and whom only a few, brave souls (yourself first and foremost amongst them) are aware of as the true Predators and Intellectual Demons that they are. Other than that I agree with you completely. Run on sentence, I know. Sorry!
We allready know how gravity works.
I wonder sometimes why these people don't make a physics fraud FAQ so that when journalists come calling they can refer them to it and say that if they pass muster and don't fall into well established physics frauds, taking it apart will at least be an interesting exercise.
Then again, I'm still waiting for the Vatican/WCC to put out its christianity FAQ
DB
Is there a good reason why are you running around using my name? You are #113919 on Slashdot. I am #10219.
Do I have to go and register every alternative spelling? Groan. This stinks.
Duke of URL
The claims, if true, would be as great if not greater, than the earlier breakthroughs of quantum mechanics and relativitiy. Both of these breakthroughs were preceeded by a series of unexplained phonemena (which they then explained).
In the case of Quantam theory there was the photoelectric effect, superconductivity, the van Der Waals force (molecular attraction) and atomic spectra.
In the case of relativity we had the precession of the orbit of Mercury and the measured constancy of the speed of light (The Michaelson-Morley Experiment).
There a few unresolved issues now such as the missing (dark) matter in the Universe, but it is too early to tell how real it is.
If "hydrinoized" hydrogen atoms really exist, someone would have seen some anomalous effect by now. I suspect that the only thing Mills is shrinking is his investors' wallets.
Ok, this guy Dr. Anderson gets my vote as the coolest Nobel Laureate alive.
Well, he also gets my vote as the most closed-minded Nobel Laureate (I _REALLY_ hope he was misquoted..) Deconstructing what he said:
"I'm sure this is a fraud, because human beings don't know how to fuck around with the energy process of the sun."
Just because something isn't possible with today's technology, doesn't mean that it's not possible at all. If this guy is so closed minded as to believe that something isn't possible, just because _he_ can't think of a way to do it, well, that just smacks of stupid boneheadedness.
Again, I _REALLY_ hope he was misquoted.
If I remember correctly, when Niagra Falls was to be harnessed for hydroelectric power (around the turn of the centuary, I believe), Testla proposed the idea of something very absurd. The current electrical power genius, Thomas Edison, and his company Edison Electric company (now General Electric, or GE) thought his idea was poposterous. Testla proposed he could send current on a wire farther than anything that had been done before (20 miles was the current maximum) and everyhting could run off of it.
The James Westinghouse company (I think) backed Testla and outbid Edison for the Niagra Falls hydroelectric station. In that station the first of these new generators was built, for Tetla didn't even build a protoype or even write down anything related to what he had discovered. He also claimed it would give twice as much power per revolution of the generator magnet as what was currently being used. The scientific community though Testla a fool.
What he discovered, and what we now use to power homes across America and most of the rest of the world.
'It' is alternating current.
Science works in funny ways, but sometimes the 'nut' does end up being right. The results I saw in the article did not completely write out the technology proposed (unlike the cold fusion followups in the late 80's early 90's). It's something to ponder
- Sig
Pete C
Alison
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." - Albert Einstein
I cannot understand what the heck he is doing in the first one. He seems to be addressing a real issue if he is going to use classical mechanics on an atom: If we let the electron move around the atom in an orbit (or an "orbitsphere") it is experiencing centripetal acceleration. Thus, it will be radiating EM waves, lose momentum, and crash into the nucleus. [I hope I got that right.] This was the problem with the Bohr model for the atom.
So what is this stuff about:
Unfortunately, there is no bibliography at the end of the PDF, so I can't go look up Haus[1] to find out what he is talking about. Can anyone who knows what is going on help me out here?Clearly, all exciting discoveries have already been made.
Why anyone would do any form of physics, when everything has already been done, is beyond me.
Similarly, Windows 2000 is the final word in operating systems. There can be no better. Just look are the new "side-by-side" DLL scheme that will completely eliminate DLL hell.
Everyone at MSOFT knows windows products are robust, but it is the poorly written third party applications that cause crashes. Third party applications must be assimilated. Resistance is footile.
From February 2000 until the end of time, everthing else will be decay. Windows 2000 is the crowning acheivment of humanity. Bill Gates is the Michelangelo of our times.
You fools! You are too blind to see it! There will be much weeping and gnashing of teeth in the linux community when this crowning glory is acheived.
Flashback 80 years...
Every now and then someone pops out of a hole claiming to a have a theory of energy, and light, and time. Some crazy patent clerk has come up with unbelievable ideas, but soon he will fade away and never be heard from again.
Dr. Mills could be correct. I suggest the following:
Atoms are almost completely empty space; of course it would take a vast amount of energy to decrease this space, but there is nothing to suggest that it would take infinate energy to do so. The moment we perfect a way to focus a massive amount of energy on the valence electron in a hydrogen atom (Fusion, anyone?), we can collapse the atom itself by decrease the space between the nucleus and the electron. Naysayers, just remember that 50 years ago the concept of splitting an atom was ruled bogus, as was space travel, GPS systems, and supercomputers.
In order to further Dr. Mill's research, I shall sit on a broomstick in an attempt to collapse an atom of hydrogen under the vast pressure that will be created by the insertion of the broomstick into my rectum.
:-)
He should donate a working demo model to someone big, to show it off, like the government. Or get his patent finished. Till then, I really don't care about hype. Its just vapourware. :o)
My 2 kopecks
I am some what skeptical but consider:
Noone thought it was possible to travel around the earth. Science proved them wrong.
Noone thought it was possible to visit the moon. Science proved them wrong.
Noone thought it was possible to harness the power of lightning. Science proved them wrong.
The point is that in all these cases, someone refused to accept that something couldn't be done, or didn't know that it couldn't be done. Great things come when someone just decides to do something without regard for the possibility/impossibility of it. Linux would not be around if Linus had any idea what he was getting into. So we should be open minded about this.
There have been posts about the impossibility of creating more energy from a reaction than is put into it. Generally I believe this is true. But he may have found some ways around traditional limitations. What needs to be done is a complete audit of every particle and stray energy beam and everything else current technology can detect. Stop outside forces from interfearing as much as possible, and keep track of those that can't be stopped. Then start it up. After the test run, do another audit. I suspect that excess energy can be accounted for through things like neutrinos streaming through the room and affecting the process, and the overall matter count will probably be slightly lower. Basically, though it will appear that more energy was released than was invested, that was not really the case.
How people like that get access to so much money. Clearly the guy is a nut or a fraud (or both) yet he gets money and people write about him.
"Once you've got it up, what would you use to travel horizontally?" Mills asks.
...
... to infinity and beyond, cowboy.
Thrusters?
... "Too inelegant. Try a flywheel to play off angular momentum," he suggests
What the heck is this guy been smoking. If you can produce linear momentum (mv) from a flywheel to "play off" angular momentum you would not really need his anti-gravity device - just point your thrusters up and
Tell me.
I assume that is an Einstein reference?
In which case he did not come out of "nowhere". He came out of a PhD program at a respected university. He did his thesis on methods of calculating Avagadro's number.
Cheers,
Ben
PS Einstein did extremely well in school. The myth to the contrary is based on a reporter who did not know that the numerical scores used in Austria were reversed from the German - the scores that looked like Einstein failing everything were actually top marks!
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
Almost as funny as the "hot grits down my pants" troll. But not quite. Keep practicing, you show potential...
I have no idea if this individual is on to something or not, but I am willing to wait for further information before I crucify the man. Anyone who believes that science has finished its turbulent path, that today's dogma will reign for millenia, is most likely mistaken (kill me if I am wrong).
Newton had a good run, just over 250 years before Einstein and Maxwell made their adjustments. Ptolemy enjoyed over 1000 years at the top with the earth at the center of the universe.
Mill's may or may not be onto something here but as it is a radical viewpoint, expect the papacy to attempt excommunication.
I am also alarmed by descriptions of research being shut down for political concerns or fear of
improper appearence ("did you say COLD-Fusion? I am sorry but we'll have to pull your funding.)
When scientists close their minds to the improbable I tend to get nervous.
Thanks
Kent
-------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------
This guy is just going to make more prejudice in the science community against people trying to do work into new sources of power especially fusion, cold or not. It is a shame that that is the case, since fusion to me seems the best source of future power that is under development. Solar and wind produce too little and depend on the weather, hydrodynamic (tide/waves turn generators)and geothermal depend on geology. Fusion would be the best, but there are too many crocks (even communists- the Fusion Energy Foundation is a communist propaganda thing) that research into fusion power is ridiculed. Of course fusion power is not **really** new - we used it to blow up Hiroshima. Problem is containing all that energy. Either cold fusion or some way to hold in the energy of hot fusion (sort of like the Warp Core Containment Fields in Star Trek, but remember the Warp Core Breach??:-) ). Infinity = Symbol for Infinity = + 1 If you have Infinity and add 1 its still infinity
Just a note: Roger Penrose is a very highly respected mathematician, but many feel that he should stick to maths and not do the philosophy thing. The core argument of ENM is generally felt to be at best incomplete, if not simply wrong. Some critics would describe it more harshly.
An interesting and respectful review can be found here.
...Then he really is making false claims.
Unfortunately, I can't get to the site from work (I hate Cyber Patrol =P ).
The Grand Unified Field Theory wouldn't account for the so-called "missing mass" as much as it aims to unite the standard model with the relativistic model; three of the four known forces (or interactions) have been united under the standard model (although questionably so); it's gravity that's putting up a fuss under Einstein's General Theory of Relativity (which pretty much directly contradicts some key parts of quantum physics).
If this guy didn't find a way to explain the gravitational force that works in terms of quantum mechanics, then he hasn't achieved a unified field theory.
The most recent (December) issue of Scientific American (http://www.sciam.com/ , I believe) has some other useful information on these subjects and more.
- Cattywampus.
peer review is not always right either. I believe a de-centralized science is the best science, and that this peer review, though it has clear benefits, can also be detrimental. There is a certain herd mentality amongst the so-called scientific community, academics especially. If science is to fundamentally advance, we need people to push the envelop, there is simply no other way. Virtually everyone who has done so has been met with harsh criticism by the entrenched.
Though the vast majority of people, such Mills, may be incorrect, it is also people like him that shake science up and advance it. This is not to say that we should throw 'peer review' out the window; rather, that, we should allow both to coexist. For if all science were restricted to commonly help perceptions, it would never make great strides. On the hand, to accept whole whatever the latest longhair purports to be fact would be equally foolish.
The interplay between the two "groups" creates a better system. Yes, all in all, Mill is most likely wrong. No one is asking us to swallow his line whole. What is the harm of allowing Mill and his investors to risk their money and effort? At worst, they lose money. At best, they produce something of use. Which can later be peer reviewed once they have an undeniable proof of concept, such that it can be "properly" classified, filed, writen up, or what have you. The biggest threat is not the ignorant few, it is the myopic "elite" that would try to restrict the few beyond their FOV.
This guy may come in 2nd, but no one is cooler than Feyman.
Is it published in some big science jounral like the Journal of Chemistry and Physics? Is there some topical meeting to discuss the applications of such a theory? No! We hear about it in the Village Voice; a journal that is known for it's scientific writing :) Show me the cold fusion reactor working, tell me how it works, then maybe I'll believe it. Till then leave this toilet science where in the john
Dear interested Slashdotters,
Let's try to not laugh when reading this article. Since when would a Nobel laureate say something like (quote)
"If you could fuck around with the hydrogen atom, you could fuck around with the energy process in the sun. You could fuck around with life itself," claims Dr. Phillip Anderson, a Nobel laureate in physics at Princeton University. Everything we know about everything would be a bunch of nonsense. That's why I'm so sure that it's a fraud."
This whole article looks like one of those lameass "infomercials" I unforunately wake up too in the middle of the night when I fall asleep with the TV on. "Make a $$$$ a month making Hydrinos AT HOME..."
Well, nobody's going to read this since it's all the way down in the 200's, but hey..
What everybody who's posted that i've read seems to be missing is: It doesnt matter if he's right.
If his theory is accurate, it'll change science in huge ways.. but what the guy is essentially saying here is:
"Hey, this is my theory. I think it works, but I may be wrong. But just in case I'm wrong, here: have a cheap, clean power source and some chemical compounds that nobody's ever seen before."
So does it Really matter if his theory is correct or not? In a scientific sense, yes it's important.. but he already has a working prototype of his energy cell that Is putting off energy. If it's because of collapsing electron levels, or because of a never-before seen chemical reaction, does it matter? It's using cheap, widely available chemicals to produce clean energy and he managed to build the thing on $25 million, which is Much less than has been poured into other energy schemes.
It'd be great if he really could make anti-gravity devices and explain away all the weirdness that is quantum mechanics, but even if not he'll still probably change a significant portion of the world just with the stuff he's already got. I say let the scientists screw with the theory and abstract portions of it until they can decide if he's right or if he's nuts, and give me my flying car that runs on water in the meantime(and i don't mean one of those cheesey little VTOL mini-plane things.. god those are stupid looking).
Dreamweaver
"If a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live" -- MLK, Jr.
This is almost certainly cold fusion all over.
.02 Euro
Just rember that Pons & Fleischman really belived in their findings. Unfortunately they didn't really know about the subject matter. I found the argument that if they really had produced that much energy, they should have been fried by the radiation from their aparatus most convincing.
But as one can see luncatics can raise a lot of funds if they just belive in their 'findings'.
Wouln't be possible in Europe, where even fiancial investors have some basic scientific training.
And this quote about clean energy is totally bogus. Even if there was _no_ pollution at all, the release of energy into earths environment is a serious problem in itself, if done in sufficiently large quantity. Total ignorance to this fact shows the quality of the scientific 'discussion' the orginator offers. I will just be interessted wehther this is plain fraud or some obscure mistake. In the unlikely event this is genuine, I will thake the risk on benig wrong, but remenber all that talk about perpetuum mobiles in the last century. (Or, on a related point take all the people that invent 'unbreakable' encryption.)
Just my
Arno
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Unfortunately, this professor is not one that
could be considered open-source. He is more into
p(hysics)-commerce than the more ideological pursuit of peer recognition and the betterment of physics.
Notice how he's already going for the patents? The skepticism from other professors it primarily because he won't release his research for peer review (debugging).
I think its a natural response to distrust claims made by closed-source groups by an open-source community. Especially when the "really cool product will soon come out!" Sound like marketing groups you know?
I'm not saying that this guy's claims are wrong or that he shouldn't be having his personal marketing team labelling all these alleged particles with catchy names. The fact is, physics is the best approximation to how the universe works, big and small. Its not exact. If this guys claims are correct, then we these particles should be ovservable in nature. Sure, the percentage may be 0.00001% but they should occur naturally.
Are these particles stable? If they were, we should see a larger percentage of them...relatively common, even.
The key words here are predictable and observable. (see Heisenberg)
He passes out no real information about how to go about either of these.
So yeah, I will remain a skeptic until he open-sources some information to make his claims credible. Until then, his "theory" will remain a hypothesis(he is educated) until it can be released to peer review for the scientific method. If it passes that, then it can be labelled a theory.
As far as people throwing money at this guy...all investments are a gamble. This one may have a good pay-off but don't feel too left out that he is no longer accepting any private investments. The odds are heavily stacked against anyone brave (or foolish) enough to throw money at this. Either way, he gets what he wants....money. Win-win situation for him. Being called a charlatan doesn't mean a whole lot anymore...especially if you have a good marketing team. Sad, really.
Besides, when he does IPO, the value of the stock will probably go like gangbusters even if he can't turn a profit. Remember how many "skeptics" said not to throw your money at all these web start-ups? I do.
-Vel
P.S. I really do wish I had some concrete evidence to back/discredit my claims but that's the beauty of it. He didn't provide any. Hype will make this guy rich, not fact.
An interview with Dr. Mills ran on the McLibel web site last February:
Parts 1 2 3
It doesn't take any deep knowledge of physics to come to the conclusion that this is a fraud. If it were real, it would be really fucking obvious. I can think of a few really clean experiments just off the top of my head (I mean, don't you'd think you'd be able to notice if the hydrino gas failed to react with oxygen?).
One of the more interesting things are the "independent" results that blacklightpower got done for them. Anyone else reminded of Mindcraft?
LILO boot: linux init=/usr/bin/emacs
I think I would be much more at ease if I were reading this in some reputable scientifically oriented source, like SCIAM. Even a big name like CNN or New York Times would have been better. This seems like some type of liberal arts hippy site, and I think the editors are being optimistic.
There's no reason for a sig here.
The Pseudoscience page has some great examples of scientific-sounding nonsense. And sure enough, the historical examples show that the outwardly sophisticated are often the most thoroughly taken marks.
Perhaps its our curiosity toward (and faith in) scientific-sounding things that makes us especially vulnerable to magic laundry magnets, cargo cult engineered diagnostic machinery, and the like.
Quiquid latine dictum sit altum viditur
A search of dejanews came up with this quote, from a chemistry professor in Israel: "Actually, if the descriptions of the model that we got here were accurate, then there's a bigger problem than the lack of experimental evidence. As I understand it, the basic principle of the "hydrino" theory is that when the Bohr equation predicts something that contradicts the Schroedinger equation, we go with the Bohr equation. Since the Bohr equation is essentially an ad-hoc fit to the observed spectrum of the H atom, while the Schroedinger equation can be derived from first principles, I am a bit uneasy when someone presents me with a wave function that is inconsistent with the Schroedinger equation and expects me to believe that it's likely to be an accurate description of an atom's behavior. ----- Richard Schultz schultr@mail.biu.ac.il Department of Chemistry tel: 972-3-531-8065 Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel fax: 972-3-535-1250 ----- "I don't know why you are wrong, but my data shows you are completely off." --Jed Rothwell, sci.physics.fusion, 21 Jul 1992 " Interesting, no?
I studied physics myself, but left that field of science because nothing serious was happening in basic low-level physics anymore.
Although quantum physics describe small particles/waves perfectly, and general relativity describes the universe, the unification leading to that horrible thing called super-string theory is in my opinion a dead-end. 11 dimensions might be present in a math paper, but come-on where's the daily experiment to proof that?
Mister Mills and his black-magic lab seem to have somethin cooking. Although he might be a fraud, i like his way of doing science. First discover somethin you don't understand, then have the grey university college professors break their heads on that.
Actually what Mister Mills found in a experiment might be the phenomena leading to the missing part in current physics, like Madam Curie's radiation discovery brought physics a new clue.
Whether Mister Mills earns money by going to an IPO, i don't care. I'm just hoping to live long enough to see a more sensible explenation than something like super-string theory.
Robert
(stock@infomagic.nl)
Firtht potht tollth rithe and be recognithed!
- Lithp Guy
Welcome to the firtht potht challenge. The greatetht game on the net.
Hey, that last bit sounds like IWin.
Want a nice crackpot site, go to C. Cagle's singtech. You only have to forget everything you know.
I tend to say that is is shit, but that is almost always the normal reaction to something we don't understand.
Is it possible there is just a lack of language for this current situation?
Having neither the time nor interest to see if he really is full of shit, I'll carry on like the rest of us -- trusting those that have looked and still said, "yup it's shit".
It still doesn't make any of us correct though. Oh, if it were only certain that we are perfect at seeing through the shit...
A common thread in discussions like this one seems to be that the grand old institutionalized scientists have a vested interest in protecting the status quo and the sanctity of the theories they have built their careers around. And along comes some upstart threatening to tear down their favorite paradigms. While there is some rigidity that naturally comes when working under a particular worldview for so long, I don't think the perception of crusty scientists unwilling to accept new ideas is true at all.
I saw a lecture not too long ago in which a Los Alamos physicist presented some work they had done with the Pioneer spacecraft now on the outskirts of the Solar System. Basically they were pinging it with radio signals, waiting for the return and thus measureing the spacecrafts acceleration and trying to match it with the gravitational acceleration due to the sun, other planets, etc. They found a systematic error that could not be accounted for. His conclusion: it's probably something prosaic that they hadn't thought of yet. In the followup question and answer many possible solutions were proposed, all of which had been checked out and discarded as possibilities. I made an interesting sociological observation. Every scientist in the room was hoping the solution to this dilemma was new physics. This despite the fact that General Relativity is one of the most tested and established theories out there. Of course maybe Mr. Mills has explained these results in his papers.
after all that work to make sure you keep your eMail free from the spambots... you put it unmodified in your post anyway.
!PU EKAW
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
right. I'd like to see some production models of this new "amazingly infinite energy source". But it probably works about as well as the perpetual motion machine on my desk. He bashes quantum theory while saying he has a grand unification theory, that makes me more skeptical than before. A REAL grand unifying theory could do alot more than make better plastics. I'm an engineering student with a penchant for quantum theory, I know a bit about this subject and I think this guy is completely full of it. Or so it goes.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
"I have not actually tested this code, I have merely proven it correct."
It stated that researchers are usually required to back up their research and request for grants with all kinds of proofs and peer reviews; then this guy comes along with wild unsubstatiated claims and ends up with all kinds of funding.
You can imagine what's going through Dr. Anderson's mind. Maybe: Start heating the tar and get the feathers.
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
The Grand Unified Theory of Classical Quantum Mechanics
Reviewer: Ulrich Gerlach from Dept of Mathematics, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio
December 21, 1999
There are four aspects to the theoretical underpinning of this book, (i) philosophical, (ii) theoretically physical, (iii) experimentally physical and (iv) mathematical. The theoretical underpinning for this book are the six theory sections, which are also posted by the author on several of his web pages. My review is directed at these theoretical underpinnings. For the purpose of orientation, one may note that these six sections come as pdf files. Consequently, it is natural to label their pages in consecutive order. For example, the references would be on page 33. The ensuing seven remarks are labelled according to which of the above four aspects I am talking about.
Let me summarize this review by putting it into a wider perspective. As one can see from the issues I have pointed out, the author's work is grossly deficient from (i) the philosophical, (ii) the theoretically physical, (iii) the experimentally physical and (iv) the mathematical point of view. The author is terribly confused about all these issues and my suspicion is that he does not even realize it. I could cite additional instances, but I merely would be beating a dead horse.Based on the observations listed above, a more accurate assessment of the author's work is that it is an example of what, for good reasons, gives mathematicians, engineers, physicists, and philosophers a bad reputation in the eyes of prospective scientists or the public in general.
David E. Weekly (dew, Think)
David E. Weekly
Code / Think / Teach / Learn
h4x0r for
This story reminds me of two things:
First, when Von Daniken (ancient aliens visited us and gave us tech) was big in the 70's and the great hyper-rationalist Carl Sagan refused to summarily dismiss his outlandish claims, instead insisting on meticulously refuting his arguments one by one.
It also reminds me of the incredible flak that the "discover" of the link 'tween Helicobacter pylori and ulcers recieved. The man was a total pariah, and it's a shame I can't think of his name right now, because millions of people can now eliminate their ulcers entirely.
Just 10 years ago, the medical establishment was giving this guy grief and telling people like my dad to "get less stress" and "drink milk". The Barbarians! Who knows what therapies we now rely on (radiation, chemo, marrow transplants) will seem medieval in only a few short years.
Maybe this guy has noticed an effect that the establishment will more precisely explain, and some good will come of his work.
(Unfortunately, what this guy is claiming is a little too extraordinary.)
Finish Human Genome Project. Opensource DNA. Figure out what it does. Improve it. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
I mean really?!?? Ya kmow?
/ k.d / earth trickle / Monkeys vs. Robots Films /
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
I heard a few years ago that Polaroid cameras violate known laws of physics by producing full colour images using 2-colour filters (Orange and Blue).
They still seem to work pretty well though.
Anyone else notice the Masonic-like logo of BlackLight Power?
Hmmmmmm......
In his solution to the Grand Field Theory, which has he discovered as the elementary particle?
My quantum physics is both rusty and antiquated. It is impossible to keep up if I do not read papers every month in quantum physics. (And it had been too many years.)
I do remember when I used to study it, when I was a foolish teenager wishing to develop the holy grail of the Grand Field Theory (teenagers sometime have delusions of grandeur) that the frustrating mathematical element is any theorectical elementary particle I can come up with mathematically do not fit all known subatomic particles completely.
Or maybe my math and nuclear physics just sucked.
What is his most elementary particle? Or has Grand Field Theory evolved past the point of basic elementary particle?
P.S. Please do not flame (but gently correct) for my scientific erring.
P.P.S. I do hope either someone finally figured the Grand Field Theory out, of did a definitive proof a la Goedel of proof of Fermat's Theorem.
It is one of those childhood deprivation (not knowing the Unified Field Theory) that I hope to satiate within my lifetime. It needs closure.
I hope to God someone figures the theory out.
Corrinne Yu
3D Game Engine Programmer
Not Figuring out the Grand Field Theory
3D Realms/Apogee
Corrinne Yu
3D Game Engine Programmer
"There also appears to be a fundamental antithesis between the forces of gravitation and that of radiation. The one appears to be the precise opposite of the other" Lester Ward "Dynamic Sociology", 1883
Tie him up and throw him in the lake. If he sinks, then he was a scientist and you should mourn his loss by naming a highway after him. If he floats, then he's a loon who weighs as much as a duck and is made of wood, and therefore you can build a bridge out of him, which was the point all along.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
What does a checken eat? Checks?
well if some mit guy is trying to support cold fusion again, i can't think of a better institution than the california institute of technology to debunk it. again.
At the turn of the century, physicists figured they had everything pretty much wrapped up and all the interesting problems solved. Then along came relativity, quantum mechanics, innumerable new particles, nuclear energy, and everything else under the sun.
Enormous strides will be made in the next fifty years, but the perennial human need to think "But this time, we'll get it right" is probably again misplaced.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
I don't know about you, but I find it very annoying to have to use each individual's unmunging scheme. Munging is just irritating - my filters take care of incoming SPAM and I don't have to worry about munging addresses.
Bad English apologies.
I mean a definitive proof that there is no way to develop Grand Field Theory at all, a la Goedel's proof.
Or something like proof of Fermat's Last Theory, using mapping from one system to another.
Corrinne Yu
3D Game Engine Programmer
let's take item number one:
"The major problem with this type of experiment is that you need to get close to a 1:1 (.9 as I recall) ratio of hydrogen atoms for each atom of the palladium crystal matrix before you get results. If you have cracks or other impurities you will NOT achieve that level of packing."
I think maybe it's time to whip out my chemical engineering training (had to come in use some day). Okay, let's wrestle about palladium. We Chem E's have been using palladium and platinum for years now, with great effectiveness. So I know a few things that I feel I should share with you.
1.a) Standard hydrogen soaking of platinum yields a ratio of about 700:1, hydrogen-to-platinum atoms. Palladium has similar numbers. None of your 1-to-1 nonsense. Think about the respective sizes of the atoms. Now think about the size of metallic matrices. Figure it out.
1.b) We've had a ball with H-soaked Pl & Pt; they're really useful as a reaction surface. With a bit of effort, you could dig up any number of facinating papers on the subject. But you see, there's a big difference between chemical (electrons) and nuclear (baryons) reactions.
Anyhow, just wanted to note that your pseudo-fact was bullshit.
2) "One SRI researcher died from this."
links?
3) "to validate various aspects of his theory that have allegedly been confirmed "
allegedly?
4) "He does have a comprehensive theory "
so do christians, but that doesn't increase their credibility. Internal correctness means nothing without external proof.
5) "a reprint of a recent Wall Street Journal article on BlackLight and its recent work"
To repeat what has been said a thousand times before, anyone who seeks out the business & mainstream press, while scorning the scientific establishment & peer review, has been shown to be a fraud. I challenge you to provide 2 counter examples.
It's 9 pm, I'm leaving work. Goodnight.
Anybody read the Skylark series by Doc E Smith? The main character in that is a hulk of a guy with unlimited cash and a monster brain. He discovers a limitless(ish) source of energy and sets about creating a star ship. Sounds kinda like this guy might have read those books...
There is no spoon
Wasn't he that munk who had sex with vegetables?
I don't buy it, but what the hell, it's worth trying.
Mr Mills has quite a few Australian patents, but you wouldn't want to suffer the Java 3270 emulation needed to view them. Below are the ones which are WIPO.
HYDROGEN CATALYSIS POWER CELL FOR ENERGY CONVERSION SYSTEMS
INORGANIC HYDROGEN COMPOUNDS, SEPARATION METHODS, AND FUEL APPLICATIONS
LOWER-ENERGY HYDROGEN METHODS AND STRUCTURES
APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR PROVIDING AN ANTIGRAVITATIONAL FORCE
ENERGY/MATTER CONVERSION METHODS AND STRUCTURES
ENERGY/MATTER CONVERSION METHODS AND STRUCTURES
ENERGY/MATTER CONVERSION METHODS AND STRUCTURES
ENERGY/MATTER CONVERSION METHODS AND STRUCTURES
APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR PROVIDING AN ANTIGRAVITATIONAL FORCE
ENERGY/MATTER CONVERSION METHODS AND STRUCTURES
MAGNETIC SUSCEPTIBILITY IMAGING (MSI)
A review of his book with a few useful footnotes is here
Ok, I'm not saying this guy is right, because I don't know his shit from shinola. I'm not a physicist. I'm a mechanical engineer.
I do know:
1) Most journalists can't get specific scientific details right in their stories to save their lives. It stems from the fact that most of them can't do the scientific work and that's why they're journalists. They also think win98 is great and stable and believe Mindcraft benchmarks are unbiased.
2) You can mathmatically prove the whole universe is particle based, but it isn't. There's a wave/particle duality that means you have throw a bunch of particle theory out. Why? Not because particle theory shouldn't exist, but because it doesn't experimentally and wave theory does. I also know there is no real way to predict whether the electron will be a particle or a wave in a given experiment, except by the results. i.e. "Thats definitely a wave."
3) I have already seen people post theory's which they say are "the definitive way something works" and then in the same paragraph tell how how it doesn't capture some theoretical details we already know. (the schrodinger's equation post) This is crap, if an equation is THE way something works it should cover all the bases within experimental error. Anything else is an approximation, no matter how good.
4) Scientists like to think they know everything. Every once it a while people have to turn them on their ear. Newton did it to a bunch of ancient greeks, Einstein did it to Newton, and quantum theory did it to Einstein. (remember "god does not play dice with the universe") Big deal, happens all the time. These are theories not facts. The Big Bang is not a fact. I can assure you, you were not there to observe it.
5) I have heard no one tell how his theory violates overserved fact. It assaults one of the pillars of modern physics, but big deal. Pillars of physics are there to be assaulted. Somebody would have done it sooner or later.
6) Something unexplained is happening with Mill's process. It may not be what he says is happening. In fact it probably isn't. But the fact that the scientific community is sticking their heads in the sand says something is wrong to me. Scientists should be inherently curious about unexplained phenomenon not inherently sceptical. This stinks of the same thinking that had the church condemn Galileo, except now physicists are playing the part of the church.
Unfortuneately I'm probably posting this to late to get it noticed...
So far I've gotten all my Karma from telling people they are wrong... :)
I just got my copy of The Elegant Universe. So, for the experiment:
We both curl up under a blanket with said book.
Begin reading at page 1.
Turn page.
Repeat as necessary until a) we get warm or b)we throw the book to the side and get HOT.
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
I simply cannot believe that Mr. Kaku isn't willing to give Mills any credit. His own theory was labeled as total insanity when it was first proposed. In one of Kaku's papers that was written for the layman, he talked at length about how it's not whether physics theories are crazy, but whether they are "crazy enough". The fact that Mills' theories contradict such fundamental principles of physics should be considered a PLUS point, not grounds for dismissal.
;). The fact a (Nobel Laureate?) physicist would use "fuck" three times in one sentence talking to an interviewer is quite an admirable trait in my book ;).
That aside, Mills' claims seem to fall in to the too-good-to-be-true category. I won't invest any money in his endeavor, but I will stay optimistic.
And I liked Dr. Anderson
MoNsTeR
A few of my friends and I were looking at investing in his company and we met with Mills at his offices in Philadelphia several years ago. We were introduced by a common friend who is an investment manager and who was interested in getting a third party opinion on what Mills was doing. Basically, he struck me as a very honest and forthright individual and it was abundantly clear that he's a very smart man.
We also met his R&D Director who had a heavily bandaged hand/forearm -- one of the gas CF reactors they were putting together (basically a 1 foot high electrolysis tube) exploded on him.
Anyway, they put on a very convincing presentation and we chatted for over 2 hours. He also gave me a copy of his "Theory of Everything" thesis -- I can't follow the math but the general principles are certainly very interesting (I have a B.Sc. in Physics so I know enough to be dangerous). This thesis is almost 500 pages long and is very detailed. He puts an interesting quote on the dedication page of this document: "And God said, 'Let there be light'; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness." I guess you can read a lot into this.
Like most "mad" scientists, he's obsessed with his theory and clearly is very proud of what he has achieved; or, at least, what he thinks he has achieved. And indeed, if and when his theory proves correct, he will be remembered as one of our most important scientists. But it's still way too early to pass judgement. We should leave it to history to determine whether he's a visionary or just another dreamer. One thing I will say for him, he knows that he has a tough row to hoe. He knew that in postulating a new form of Hydrogen to explain everything from Cold Fusion to dark matter he was going to attract a lot of skepticism (if not outright hostility). To his credit, here we are 4 years later and he's still plugging away and we're still talking about him.
I was a bit taken aback when I discovered that he wasn't a physicist. Not that he hid this fact or anything, just that given the nature of the theory I naturally assumed he had to be a physicist. I don't remember clearly but I think he has a degree in Medicine (thus the Dr.) and some other post-graduate degree (chemistry?). But this is another big strike against him -- physicists will *never* accept a theory of this magnitude from a non-physicist without a very convincing body of incontrovertible evidence to support his theory.
Could it be that Mills' little "Hydrino" atoms and "Dihydrino" molecules will be the answer to everything? I really can't say. But I am willing to keep an open mind and I wish him well.
BTW, we did not invest in the company for two basic reasons: 1. Even if his CF theories are correct, we thought the practical production of CF reactors was still a long way off, and 2. His finance guy (his brother) had a market cap on the company that was way out of whack for a high-risk enterprise like this (about 1/2 billion $) -- our investment would have diluted to nothing by the time (if ever) the company generated any revenue.
Just because mankind has defined a word for electron, does not necessarily mean that man understand what it is made off. To my understanding we have words for the observed effects of gravitational-, electric- and magnetic fields but absolutely no knowledge of what they are built or constituted from. Just dwell some moments about pair-production, i.e. a photon with an energy higher than 1.02 MeV may be turned into one electron and one positron. By virtue of this observation, do you know what an electron or a photon is made off? Personally I think that man suffers from hybris, that is to say if he does not know of its existence then it does not exist. Look at Mills as a new Linus Thorvalds, and in another field. If he is capable of producing something that science does not understand, then science is not complete. Don't kill his researche, say - "Cool man, show me more!" guran
While 25 million is a lot of cash for you and I, divided between 150 investors, especially the larger ones who have that kind of money to spare, it is no longer quite that impressive. The people listed as investors all have the kind of capital that they can afford to put a little money into this. And while a majority of scientists think he is a crackpot, there is some support of a few independent labs and scientists. If he is wrong they lose some money, but they can afford to do that with how rich they already are, on the other hand if he turns out to be right, or even partially right, they would become unfathomably rich.
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. To advance the project, Mills may soon enter into a collaboration with the Institute for Simulation and Training at the University of Central Florida, which does the bulk of its work for the military.
So he's going to make a thinking machine too. This guy is amazing.
People like this scare me. I bet he actually believes all his wild claims.
Hands in my pocket
It was obviously overshadowed in the article, but what's this mess about Mills' proprietary research in AI? Brain Child Systems doesn't seem to be anywhere on the 'net...at least it isn't available from Altavista.
Maybe it's because I'm a CS guy, but I think that this conscious AI stuff is a bit more radical than the physics bit. It would be a big enough revelation that we could have some sort of reasoning machine able to drive a car +unassisted+, let alone a "space ship." If there is consciousness to boot, then we may have a miraculous occurance!
If his claims are accurately reported, and if they are true, then I would have to say that he is the most vile person on the face of the Earth for not releasing the research to the public.
Seriously, what the hell are you talking about?
Hands in my pocket
...that that was in Canadian dollars, which equals approximately $237 american, and 52 pounds sterling.
Har!
JD
Why America Should Conquer Canada
Moreover, many people seem to have problems in general with the concept of a theory. I will give you an example of a theory: Sum over the all of the Forces = Sum over all the masses * accelleration of each mass This theory gives me predictive power, if I assign velocity to be the time integral of acceleration, and the position to be the time integral of velocity. Now using this theory (actually all of these theories) together, I get a simple predictive equation that relates position to velocity and acceleration (or in this case applied force per unit mass).
X=X0 + V0*t + (1/2)*(Total Force/Mass)*t*t
With this theoretical predictive equation, I can model position changes as a function of time. All the measurements I do may seem to indicate or in the parlance of the experimentalist, lend support to the theory, but no number of measurements can prove the theory correct. But I can always disprove it, simply by showing where it does not predict accurately.
People mistakenly believe that when something is a theory, it is not accepted/acceptable as a representation of reality. This is not correct. A theory is a predictive system which can and is tested, and is intrinsically falseafiable. That is the very nature and heart of science, that one can falsify a theory by finding out where it doesn't work. A theory that is not falseafiable is not scientific, it is a religious issue. This is precisely why on other threads the poor folks who posit creationism as an alternative to an evolutionary like process are beating their heads against a wall that they shouldn't be wasting their time on. Creationism is religion not science, evolution and related theories are testable, falseafiable, and modifiable.
When a theory is found to be false, some significant salvage work goes on to see what parts are useful and accurately predict observations, and where it fails. This post-mortem analysis is usually hidden from view of most of us, but practitioners of the science want to know what works and what doesn't. The parts the seem to work are usually kept for empirical reasons, as it is easier to explain regions of validity without subscribing to the theories deeper innards.
There is a great example of this. I just gave above a brief descrption of Newton's laws. (note: A law is in this case a widely accepted theory). That equation I gave above is used by millions of school kids in order to figure out where the car stops, or the cannon ball lands, etc.
That equation (actually the theory underneath it) is false. Or, stated another way, it has limited regions of applicability. One cannot and should not use that underlying theory to calculate Hohmann transfer orbits (minimum energy orbits for visiting our neighboring worlds). You can get most of the details right, but due to relativistic effects associated with curved space-time, a small error in calculation can spell disaster for the mission. NASA just had an issue just like this crop up (though theirs was more along the lines of showing the stupidity we have here in the US in still using the english measurement system... the English are not using it themselves!!!). You need to deal with relativistic effects, solar wind effects, magnetic effects, etc. That is to say that the theory is at best incomplete, and at worst wrong. On the other hand, no one is going to haul out the Einsteinian equations in order to calculate this orbit (or last time I checked they wouldn't do it), even though that theory (GR) is more accurate than Newton's theory of gravitation.
Ok, why have I said all this? Simple. As it turns out, many people have posited fractional quantum numbers for many years. All sorts of properties and measurements have been postulated, all sorts of behaviors have been theorized. To this date, in the system that is under study, none has been observed as far as I know. I do not know of any confirmation of this fellows work, but I do know of much disparagement of his methods (e.g. pointing out the flaws in his efforts).
If I were the average non-scientist on the street, I would be seriously skeptical about these things. There is always a romantic notion about some forgotten scientist somewhere finding something where no one else could, but largely this doesn't happen. I can tell you from personal experience that most scientists have enough built in skepticism to avoid the eureka factor if at all possible. It is better to be cautious than to be labelled a charlatan.
No body knows what this fellow found. However, he has been making claims of fractional quantum number stuff in hydrogen for quite some time. As it turns out, Hydrogen is the one element for which we have a very workable theory. This theory specifically precludes fractional quantum numbers. The reason for that is that they would be observable in the spectra of the atom. They are not observable. Either there is a complicated reason for non-observability, or they don't exist. My bet is on the latter.
As a side note, there is such a thing as a fractional quantum effect (the fractional quantum hall effect) though it is quite difficult to explain. There are also filling of fractional quantum Landau levels. There is nothing sacred about the integer versus the fraction in physics. We are not diophantinians.
My best guess is that this stuff is fake or another effect is poisoning his results. We see that all the time. That is precisely the purpose of the journal article, to call attention to a specific thing, and get smart people thinking about this. Why hasn't he published? I would be asking this.
Be smart. Be skeptical.
If you're just fiddling around with peas for the fun of it, OK. I'll smile and nod and go around with whatever you're saying.
If you're claiming to be the second coming of Albert "Freakin'" Einstein and Thomas "Freakin'" Edison all wrapped up in one, and there's tons of money involved, I'm not going to take your word for it, nor the word of any number of _Village Voice_ reporters, nor even the word of twelve Purdue physics grad students on leave. I'm not just going to keep my eyes on your hands, I'm going to see if the tips of your fingernails are snow white.
In other words, watch your wallet.
Okay, most of this is crap, but he does touch on one question for which I have never heard an answer. If matter exhibits gravity and warps space a little, what happens to that gravity when matter is converted to energy ?
Measure all energy going in and out of this "thingy" over time. This is what calorimetry tries to do. If the net energy coming out divided by the mass of the device and all the "stuff" in it, including anything added during the operation exceeds the energy density of known chemical reactions and gets into the nuclear energy density regime, then its time to say "Eureka."
After reading the news story, I predict that the word "Bullshit" is what will be said when the above test is run. Conservation of energy is a powerful debunking tool.
rm -rf microsoft*
Energy causes gravity also!
I think people should try not to trash things like this outright, as the majority of the scientific community seems to be doing on instinct.
Sure, I'm cynical just like everyone else, and suspecting that all he is after is a quick buck - but when you think about it, one day, a guy just like this is actually going to be right. You may say "flying saucers, pfft", yet you must agree that we are going to get nowhere with the current propellant / combustion based systems. So someday, these super new technologies are going to have to be invented, right? Think about how far we have advanced in a mere hundred years - where do you think we will be in another 100?
Do you think we will slowly evolve the technology from what we have now to flying saucers with limitless energy sources? I don't think so: once things like this are discovered and announced, it will become commonplace within a few years if it is truly ground breaking technology.
Scientists will refuse to beleive anything like this until it is clearly proven to them (and may not even beleive it then), because it destroys a lot of facts they held to be true. In fact, some may feel they have wasted years, or even their whole lives in a certain field which has just been shown to be irrelevant or based on mistruths. So we can't expect them to back up anything like this, even if it does turn out to be correct. Then again, it is the done thing to present findings like this for peer review, which as far as I know, has not been done. So, its fair enough that they aren't convinced.
We have to invent these technologies sometime; one day all those visions of the future that seem so far off will become the present. Someone has to invent it - and although a lot of these kind of ventures are probably scams, somewhere in there is one that will shape the future.
nick
Let's see. I read a news item today that says a new process has been developed for making photographic film 10 times more efficient than previously possible, basically a perfect conversion of light to chemical reaction. It is at the quantum limit of 100% efficiency. The method apparently involves adding a chemical called formate to standard photographic emulsion. If the physicists are so fucking smart, why didn't they think of this fifty years ago? Regarding cold fusion, it has not been shown to be impossible, just the opposite in fact. It only seems that the plasma fusion people can't possibly see how it could work. But Richard Feynman (one of the smart physicists) is said to have said that cold fusion is certainly theoretically possible (fusion isn't inherently hot or cold, it is just the collision of two atoms with sufficient force to bring the nucleii close enough to fuse). It is just an engineering problem (how to line up the nucleii to make a direct hit when pushing them together rather than colliding at a random glancing angle). The only reason high temperature is required is that hot fusion depends on the random collision of nucleii, most of which collide at non optimal tranjectories.
there are always mentions of them and they are
all talk, vapor.
when will any of this actually be applied it its
real ?
who cares about its ipo ?
humans first.
if this was real, it would og hand in hand with nanotech.
Thank you both for those two comments. I've spent more time than I probably should have explaining to people that nobody has ever explained WHY gravity works the way that is has been proven to. I usually get "They've explained it, YOU just don't know," or "It has to do with magnetism and electrons." *sigh*
What a bunch of morons on slashdot... sheesh, no data, no facts, no nothing... oh, i'm sorry... you do have something... fucking opinions. This is a very clear-cut case of wait and see. sure we can all sit around and fucking rationalize (read: create reasons for) our personal opinions, but the fact of the matter is we will all know the truth of the matter sooner or later. And the only damn thing that hacked me off in the article was the complete ego-freak Kaku. I read his stinking multi-dimensional crap a few years ago. Whew! What an ignoramous. I mean talk about shit no one will ever be able to prove. But that Big-Bang is fact shit. Man, that takes the fuckin' cake and shoves it up our collective ass. Reality for humans is contiually evolving perception coupled with increasingly abstract interpretations. I should be more specific and say "Our Reality" because all the ideas and theories we hold to be fact are predicated on empirical observation. Period. I mean, we have gravity but no explanation. Yet there the hell it is. Reality doesn't need our sorry asses to argue over the details. It is. We are. But the way you people fool yourselves into thinking you know one goddamn thing about Mills, his project, or better yet, "Reality" is pathetic at best. We as humans have a relative capacity for truth. And I feel diminshed as a human when I see such knee jerk reactions to anthing they can explain or didn't simply think of first. And by the fucking way you patent hating bitches, the guy who got a patent on the first CRT still fucking got screwed, so... are you all so damn communistic that you can't stand to see a person turn a profit. Don't get me wrong, but those so fucking stupid as to turn loose of their money deserve to lose. People lie too... Hmmm... guess we don't always know the truth, eh? Wise up. No one has a crystal ball and no matter how damn hard we try, NO ONE WILL EVER KNOW THE FUTURE. So just relax and enjoy the ride as it unfolds...
Did you actually read that article? It was filled with quotes from other scientists saying stuff like (paraphrased)
"Mills's theory sounds like horse-shit, but he has some interesting observable phenomena to show. I saw the phenomena and I'm interested in finding out what the hell is going on."
Does that sound like someone who has been snowed over by a fast-talking salesman? Is that equating "It would rock if..." with "It is True that..."?
Instead of a tirade about how gullable the reporter is, how about checking up on his reporting? Contact some of the people quoted in the article. Verify that they exist, that they said what they were quoted as saying. Ask about the properties of the new materials they say they tested. See if you can get hold of a sample that you can hold in your hands (yeah, right).
Damnit, be skeptical rather than reactionary! I think this guy's (Mills) probably a hoax too. But having read the article, I now know that he exists, I know what his claims are (so I laugh later if-when they are refuted), and I know the names and institutions of some independant scientists who I could contact if I felt the pressing need to investigate further (which I don't).
--
Will Dyson
Will Dyson
"We can't stop here
If you did not get your spacetime cup with your kitchenette click here
well first off, their website is on a freebsd box in PA. not NJ, but PA. furthermore, mills states: Randell L. Mills BlackLight Power, Inc. 493 Old Trenton Road East Windsor, NJ 08512 in the doc: http://www.blacklightpower.com/astrophysics.html and at the home page is: BlackLight Power, Inc 493 Old Trenton Road - Cranbury, NJ 08512 Phone: (609) 490-1090 - Fax: (609) 490-1066 two different cities? the patents also come in under the a PA address, but the company is in NJ..... plus, their website is HOSTED in PA, where mills LIVES, by a company called pair Networks. the ftp server says blacklight power, but telnet, mail, pop, all say scire.pair.com) (ttyp2) feel free to explore..... ip==209.197.112.101 have a nice day ps: he didn't go to mit, as stated in another post, plus his mail, RMills@blacklightpower.com goes to vipmail.earthlink.net....
It produces limitless energy! Use it for bombs or rocket fuel or just to heat your home!
It also keeps ships from rusting while giving them stealth ability, AND you can use it for artificial intelligence to fly your light-speed flying saucer! Yes, you too can soon invest in this wonderful technology... just send your chek for $100 (plus $24 S/H) to:
...
Sorry, no CODs.
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
Why is this?
I hear people demanding "peer review" and scorn is heaped because its not been given. Well, my spiteful readers, of course its not been subjected to peer review. I mean, my God! Were such technology released, it would no doubt be stolen ... just like my temporal-induction-field generation was taken from me by the Dept of Agriculture (a bootlick to the CIA) before I could send myself into the past to warn people.
I'm sure that this great scientist is just guarding his discovery until he can release it, without fear of reprisal from our government, the same government that, through its German minions in the GSG9 implanted a monitoring device in my head and has been stealing my thoughts for years.
We need to rally around this discovery! Its clear that this man is no more crazy than I!
=-P~~~~~~~
Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I'll never know.
Remember this sentence from the origianl article?
"Mills explains that in this contraption, resembling a souped-up home furnace, water is electrically then catalytically broken down into atoms of oxygen and hydrogen."
That's enough. If he can "break down" water into atoms of oxygen and hydrogen, then he has already solved the world's energy problems. Hydrogen is an incredible source of energy.
If I rememeber my university physics properly, it is not possible to "break down" a water molecule without releasing lots of uncontrolled energy which would consume the oxygen and hydrogen atoms (you put a lot of energy into breaking up water molecules, and you get an explosion). This is why the "water engines" running on hydrogen of the 80's never were produced.
So now he can do it in a controlled fashion. Isn't that enough right there to shock the scientific world and make billions?
Sigh, I don't know why I bother with this..
1. Sorry working from memory here. Maybe it was a ratio where they needed to get to 90% of the theoretical maximum possible. Anyway this is more or less antique technology in this area. See this page for a synopsis of important experiments.
2. See near bottom of this page .
3. Allegedly - until published and peer reviewed. However, the work was convincing enough to get conservative investors coughing up 25 million.
4. It is a theory with alleged (see above) experimental confirmation repeated by independent labs. A slightly different situation.
5. I am too tired and irritated by your attitude to provide specific counter examples. However, there is one story I came across that summarizes what I see happening in this field. The Wright Brothers were ignored or denounced as frauds by 'authorities' for 5 years in America even though they could be seen to be flying regularly by Long Island commuters. They only got attention from institutions like the US DOD after they moved to Europe and became an instant press sensation. (sorry no links).
You said, "Money should be spent where there's a reasonable expectation that it'll do some good." This all sounds fine and good in theory, but how exactly to propose to do this? Would you advocate a central board of "science" that makes all funding allocations? Do you honestly believe this is the best policy? History has shown us time and time again that you simply can't innovate like this. Particularly if it is to be run by bureaucrats and academics (e.g., those who are not "naturally" chosen based on their performance). How many scientists would have never made it if the popular consensus had its way? Or better yet, which revolutionary scientists HAVEN'T been exposed to great opposition.
I believe it was Eistein who said "great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." Perhaps, i'm taking this out of context; however, look at your history. The most revolutionary ideas tend to be the ones that run most contrary to widely held beliefs from the so-called experts. Not until they proved them wrong, developed a product, shown the many empirical proof, did they believe. Science has been wrong before, and it will be wrong again. You can be sure of that. Yet, you would tie our hands, put all our eggs in one basket (That of scientists "reasonable expectations"), in the name of what? Efficiency?
The investors are hardly naive spinsters spending their retirement money. They are institutional investors who are making a calculated risk. This company could go poof tomarrow and none of the investors would be in trouble. Furthermore, you can be sure that their investment portfolio offers a significantly positive expected value. That is to say that if you take the aggregate of all their investments, they're statistically more likely to profit and, most likely, do so better than less risky investments on the whole, than they are to fail.
The capital market is not a zero sum game. These particular investors are pursuing money. Where there is a "reasonable expectation" of profit in other lines of R&D, you can be sure money will be available. In other words, the pool will grow.
Our economy, our very innovation, would be no where if we allowed this sort of conventional thought process to dominate all scientific work. I, for one, am not willing to only allow for only the conventional, as cookoo as it might seem to most of us.
You are free to disagree with this man, call him a fool, bring undeniable proof to the table, speak out against him, or whatever you wish. However, you may absolutely not impinge on his freedom or that of his investors. He is doing you, nor anyone else, any harm. The argument that his failure will discredit "real" research is weak at best. None of these concerns are substancial enough to warrant such instrusions into his life.
Percy: I intend to discover, this very afternoon, the secret of alchemy -- the hidden art of turning base things into gold.
Edmund: I see, and the fact that this secret has eluded the most intelligent people since the dawn of time doesn't dampen your spirits at all.
Percy: Oh no; I like a challenge!
[later]
Percy: (rushes out the living room, dirtied) My Lord! Success!
Edmund: What?
Percy: (drags Edmund into the living room) After literally an hour's ceaseless searching, I have succeeded in creating gold. PURE GOLD!
Edmund: Are you sure?
Percy: Yes, My Lord! Behold! (uncovers the top; their faces get bathed in green light)
Edmund: Percy, it's green.
Percy: That's right, My Lord.
Edmund: Yes, Percy, I don't want to be pedantic or anything, but the color of gold is gold -- that's why it's called gold. What you have dis covered, if it has a name, is some green.
Percy: (stupefied; picks up the green) Oh, Edmund, can it be true? that I hold here, in my mortal hand, a nugget of purest green?
Edmund: Indeed you do, Percy, except, of course, it's not only a nugget as it is more of a splat.
Percy: Well, yes, a splat today, but tomorrow, who knows? or dares to dream!
Edmund: So we three alone in all the world can create the finest green at will.
Percy: Thus so! (whispers) I'm not sure about counting in Baldrick, actually.
Edmund: Of course, you know what your great discovery means, don't you, Percy.
Percy: (smiles) Perhaps, My Lord.
Edmund: That you, Percy -- Lord Percy -- are an utter berk!
Best wishes
tom
--
"Just believe everything I tell you, and it will all be very, very simple."
It may be true that it is impossible to perfectly isolate any system, it is always possible to "transform" any open system in a closed one.
How?
In thermodynamics, the universe is divided into 3 parts:
For a closed system, the environment is empty.
It also follows that system + environment is a closed system, and this for any given system.
For day-to-day engineering applications, it suffices to include the direct surrounding of your experiment to get a reasonable approximation. The next step is to include the earth's atmosphere.
In an abstract way, one can treat the whole universe as a closed system.
WWTTD?
From the article: "BlackLight Power boosters scoff that they've seen no practical application of quantum theory since the atomic bomb and nuclear power,[...]". This is, to say the least, not true. We all sit at computers, physics that made ICs and semiconductor stuff is solid state physics which is a branch (or maybe offspring is a better word) of quantum theory. More: the guy promises energy that comes from decreasing electron orbital momentum. First of all this is like 'burning' hydrogen to hydrine, second, we have no clues (from the current physics) that its ever possible, and third, I saw such an idea in Russian science fiction story (this was about gaining energy from stopping electron spin). This guy has some 'products' of his theory and they may even work - thats OK. But did he show anything to prove that the theory is right? As for $150M from investors, well, there's a sucker born every minute.
Believe it when you see it in Nature, with corroborating evidence from independant researchers.
Deleted
Actually, according to the article, he provided sample power cells based around his theory and technology to a number of scientists who confirmed that it *did* work, whether they agree with this theory as to why they work or not. So he clearly *does* have working examples.
Hey, this topic comes up in /. once in a while, when another fool gets his ToE (Theory of Everything) into the light of /.. These sort of theory is easy to make a fool out of you. A lot of people tried, and all of them weren't rewarded, even Einstein failed.
To me, each of the ToEs, including the string theory, sounds a lot like crackpot stuff. 11 dimensional vibrations of strings/membranes? Believers quoted with "The big bang is a fact, not a theory" - did they participate in that event? It's cool (and intellectualy chalanging) math, but does it reflect or model reality?
The final ToE will very likely look like crackpot stuff at the first sight, too. But unlike the crackpot stuff we have today, it will be possible to make experimental proofs.
I personally believe that it will look much less spectacular than cold fusion, supersymmetric particles and such like. There are already a lot of self-contradictory results of current theories that a good ToE will get rid off, like black holes (no light escapes - how does gravity escape?).
So the theories we have now are bad enough, but at least they are somewhat in consistency to our observations. I prefer the problems of QM and GR to nutty "star trek" phy"sick"s any day. Too many people trekkify the classic theories, anyway (FTL travel, quantum teleportation, using black holes for time travels, etc... Cut their funding!).
"If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself"
Do not taunt Happy Fun Hydrino...
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
I am not going to even beginning to say weither this guy is right or wrong. Through the deduction of Sodd's Law if say he is wrong then it will turn out to be right. ;)
I am going to reserve judgement on this until the scientific papers have been released, reviewed and the experiments either reproduced or not.
However from what I can tell it looks like a fraud. My reasoning on this is that he has not specialized and has too many far out ideas. i.e. The fact of an anti-gravity technology, AI computers with a sense of being and the ability to create limitless cheap energy. These kind of technologies just would/are taking vast resources of brain power and research. And for one man to come up with them all - just a bit too far fetched.
On the other hand, if he is right. Well the applications would be endless and maybe, just maybe he is a utter genius and the next Enstein. Maybe he has actually found a mathematical path through the equations of quatum mechanics that does show what he is saying is correct.
I do have to confess that I have slight gut feeling that maybe that he might be right though. I should note at this point I am certainly no expert or authority on quantum mechanics. The reason for this is that it seems to me that although we are pushing string theory to get our answers it seems to be getting more and more complicated and more and more entangled. It usual a rule of thumb that the nature manages to boil things down to simple fundamentals and equations without great complexity.
Now here is an alternative explanation which is seems to be simplier. May answer unexplained observation. By the rule of thumb it seems that this could provide a better explanation.
However gut feeling IS NOT science.
But in the end the truth of the matter will come through. If he is right then his experiments will be able to be reprocuded independantly by other scientists. If he is wrong then the experiments will fail.
So personally I am going to keep a close eye on this and see what the scientific community say when his work can recieve peer review.
What he says in his article an on his web site is confused, to put it mildly. It's quite difficult to even understand what physical "laws" he calims to have discovered. His "orbitsphere" and contracted atoms sound like he read a paper on muonium at some point.
My gut reaction is that it looks very unlikely. Hydrogen is the favorite toy of the QM community. As a species, we have been banging on it for more than a century now. It is very hard to believe we would have missed a whole family of atomic states, as is claimed by Mr. Mills.
My guess is that he has a calibration error in his heat measurements, a very easy mistake to make. Measuring heat is really hard.
Kind Regards,
Kind Regards,
Bruce
I'll check the UW website. I'd like to read more on this topic.
funny.. I found one at least... (a patent) Inventors: Mills; Randell L. (R.D.#2,Cochranville, PA 19330) Appl. No.: 744697 Filed: August 13, 1991 It's for his gene sequencing apparatus. It's one of the ones I saw mentioned on his web site. Results of Search in 1976-1999 db for: randell AND mills: 16 patents. Hits 1 through 16 out of 16 I'm guessing you didn't pick "all years" .. heck maybe their search engine is messed up cause of y2k :)
I'll start out by saying that I am not sold on the idea that this guy has a Grand Unified Theory. I also don't believe he has any of the technology that he claims to have.
That said, however, I would be quite happy to have reason to change my beliefs. If he does have what he says, it would be quite a paradigm shift.
As for some of the comments along the lines of "He isn't a scientist therefore he cannot possible have solved the Grand Unified Theory and the Ultimate Question to Life, the Universe, and Everything." Well, why not? If a non-scientist could not make scientific discoveries, there would be no science in the first place. If they guy wants to spend his (and potentially gullible investors') money on research that may not pan out, that's his business (and that of his investors).
Then there are the comments along the lines of "it has to be true because I want it to be or because he says it is", well, perhaps it is true, but have you seen any evidence of it? I know I do not have any evidence one way or the other.
Personally, I think we should wait and see what comes of his research. Perhaps he does have a Grand Unified Theory that works. Perhaps he is only crying wolf and knows he is wrong already. Perhaps it is only a ploy to sell his book. Perhaps he is another persecuted Gallileo type. Perhaps his research is totally wrong, and maybe he has a novel result even though his physics is wrong. Consider this: suppose everyone dismisses the theory without even trying to disprove it and he turns out to be right? (The same applies in the other direction - suppose he is wrong and everyone embraced it.)
If I had the disposable cash, I might speculate on his company just because it might prove interesting, but he is not ready for serious investment yet IMNSHO.
I'll leave everyone with a thought: how many discoveries that led to items we take for granted today were scoffed at by the academic (and otherwise) authorities of the time?
If it works in theory, try something else in practice.
I was just using that stuff as an example of an obfuscated way of putting your email address.
I've got the nazi procmail filters from hell on my mailbox, and usually about 1 or 2 spams gets through every week, which isn't really all that bad. My email address should always be located right above my name in the little user info post box thingy. I don't obfuscate it any - the code in that post was just for fun.
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
An empty enviornment does not exist due to quantum effects. It can only exist as a intellectual abstraction/ideal. Yes, engineering can be done with a good enough approximation, I said that in my original post . But, unless you can suggest someway to prevent quantum effects TANSTAACS (There Ain't No Such Thing As A Closed System- with my apologies to RAH)...Similarly for the whole universe constituting a closed system - Well, maybe if they are defined as closed systems over an infinitely short period of time/no time. Hmm... there is an interesting question... how long can a 'system' remain 'closed'... infinitely, not at all, somewhere in between... or better- how long is a system of a certain size likely to remain closed for(assuming that it can be truely defined as closed...)... -And, how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
The pitfalls of the English language in describing something of a mathematical/deep physics nature becomes apparent, and rather than continue the defense of a point of dubious worth... I think I'll go to bed...
Thanks,
LetterRip
I would like to apologize for responding to an imposter duke. His actions should not be encouraged, even by trolls. Identitiy is an important thing on the message boards, and I for one believe that maintaining a unique persona is a vital part of communicating. Please DukeofUrl, get a better login. You will only be moderated down on every post you make, not affecting the real Duke's karma anyway. Duke (the real one), I would reccomend bookmarking this other guys user info page, to at least track and make sure no real damage is done.
Happy Holidays
fist
The friendly first poster.
Uh, no, not exactly. It can be done with a lantern battery and a couple of electrodes.
i es_SP/SP18/prog1-SP18.html
Here's a kid's chemistry set (on CDROM ???) that includes the experiment.
http://jchemed.chem.wisc.edu/JCESoft/Issues/Ser
-- We are all ignorant, just on different subjects.
We have every right to be skeptical of him. Most of us, I'm sure, are. There is a certain percentage, however, that would love nothing more than to restrict Mills' rights based on some principle (look at the comment parallel to yours). The point I'm trying to drive home is, that, enforced or unenforced, sometimes it is necessary to strike out on your own. That, sticking strictly to peer review, for whatever reason, can hold you, and consequently society, back.
I'm not necessarily asking (in fact, i'm not) people to believe in Mills or even give him the time of day. I do, however, come from a family of engineers/entreprenuers. As such, I can tell you, from experience, that, sometimes the only way to prove that something can be done is to just go out and do it. If my parents had to wait and change consensus in the scientific community, they'd have gotten no where. Now granted, none of their work was nearly as revolutionary and contradictory as Mills' work. Yet, none the less, centralized organizations such as the National Science Foundation, universities, DoD, certain large corporations, and many others never did believe what they DID was possible, let alone practical.
Here, with Mills, we have a somewhat irrational response to anything remotely associated with Cold Fusion. Though it may indeed be impossible, many refuse to even give this man the time of day. It seems clear to me, that, assuming his idea is feasible, the only way he is going to prove himself is to make it happen and seek private investment, worrying about "peer review" later. I can think of no structure, no organization, no set of rules, that can guarantee to rule out the truely impossible and leave those few oddballs (who actually are on to something) unmolested. I remind slashdot that intectual freedom is important, and, that, an instrinsic part of that freedom is the freedom to be wrong.
Now I'll have that missing ingredient for my cure to baldness! Mix that with a little of my infamous snake oil and my magic beans will spring to life! (evil laughter ensues) ctimes2
My cube. My friend. My solace. My prison.
You'll find several attempts to replicate the "BlackLight Process" here. They all appear to have failed.
Also, in poking around I found that Dr. Mills (the man behind BlackLight Power) is a doctor of medicine and not a physicist.
So, is all this a con game? Quite likely, and apparently a successful one. The Wall Street Journal reports BLP has been receiving some not-insignificant investments.
-- WhiskeyJack
With no formal training, Dr. Mills has developed an amazing new theory of Theoretical Funding. The Grand Unified Monetary theory or GUM which unifies the four forces of nature Avarice, Gullibility, Ignorance and Humor.
Infomercial hosts everywhere will write sonnets in his honor. I stand in awe.
[-- Trust the Monkey --]
Ok. Still, I must ask: Who is to decide what offers a "reasonable expectation of scientific return." Most non-profit organizations already do make such restrictions [though I've seen cases where they do it to absurdity]. These people [Mills and company] are private citizens and companies acting alone; I fail to see how their actions are threatening to "science".
Also, I'd like to make one other point. And that is, that, this danger of restriction runs not just in legal interferce, but also in using academic and funding "forces". This is not to say the National Science Foundation (et. al) should have to fund experiments which are most likely going to fail, but, that, as a society, we must tolerate a certain amount of failure. In other words, we should be tolerant of others that do as they wish, within reason, on their own dollar. Overblowing the absurdity of this guy's claims is a very real danger, in that you can create a certain aversion to risk. Where investors [or backers, or even other academics] will think not just of the calculated risk, but of dangers in associating with someone who is so despised by the scientific establishment. This is not to say that you can't laugh at this guy, but it is something to think about.
Sorry, but the 700:1 ratio of hydrogen to platinum or paladium is in volume, not atoms. For example, 1 mol of hydrogen (22.4 L) would be absorbed by 32 mL of platinum, which weighs about 640 g, which are about 3.2 mol. So here the atom ratio is 1:3.2.
Here I'm assuming that the 700:1 is right because I don't want to check it out right now. But it sounds reasonable.
Two-dimensional disks, and he calls them "orbit-spheres"? Last I heard, spheres had 3 dimensions. This isn't just nit-picking. Are these charges carried by spheres or disks? There's a big difference
A circle is one dimensional and a sphere is 2 dimensional.
A sphere is a 2 dimensional subspace of "normal" Euclidian 3 space. The definition of a circle, sphere, hypersphere whatever is:
The set of all points x such that the distance from a given point O (often taken to be the origin of your coordinate system) to x equals a constant r. So the "interior" of the sphere doesn't make ense to talk about. It's all surface
There is a big difference between spheres and disks, but they are both 2 dimensional A sphere is as above, but a disk is a circle (1 dimensionalm it's just a line withe the ends curved around and joined) with the interior which gives it area hence 2 dimensions.
The proof of the fact that circles and higher dimensional analogues are also n-dimensional Euclidian manifolds embedded in n+1 dimensional space is left as an exercise for the reader.
---CONFLICT!!---
I'm not saying Mills has been harmed. Far from it. I'm merely said that it would be a mistake if everything first had to pass through the much deified peer review that you speak of. I hear many slashdot juniors clammoring for it, but few truely seem to understand how academia works, let alone industry.
I didn't hear Mills demanding that everyone believe him. Nor would I expect people to. What he did do, if my reading is correct, is let it be known that he is working on some propietary technology, with the intent to draw interest, and consequently investors. He might not have "proof" yet that would stand up in academic circles; he does, however, seem to think he has some insight that he can commercialy exploit. Before he can do this though, he must get some capital so he can develop it. If slashdot ruled the world, this would not happen. In other words, many on slashdot want him to prove he can walk, before he attempt to crawl. In industry, this is called risk and effort; that is what investors and entreprenuers are for.
Let Mills and his institutional investors bear the risk; we needn't believe. When and if he develops whatever it is that he is working on, then you might worry about peer review.
PS: I personally think it is highly likely that Mills is simply mistaken, but i'm not willing to entertain psuedo fascist notions of how capital should be "properly" distributed. Particularly when I, as everyone else on slashdot, have so little information to go on.
As others have noted, this sort of thing happens all the time. What can prevent it? The important thing about publication in science is that you are making your full conclusions public, that you are not retaining "secrets" about the detailed methods used for commercial purposes. You can't keep secrets and still call it science. To be accepted into the body of science, work must be first published in a way that it can be fully reviewed by any other competent scientist; second the conclusions MUST be reproducible and confirmed by others, either the details of the logic (for a theory) or the actual experimental system. Usually the confirming experiment is constructed to be different in a variety of ways to explore the boundaries of the phenomena being investigated - getting to know how nature actually behaves despite what we theorize is critically important. Finally, to be fully accepted the work must be theoretically integrated with the existing knowledge framework - just because somebody has discovered something new (like Einstein's relativity) doesn't mean the moon suddenly falls out of the sky.
Generally none of these crackpots get beyond the first stage - they have some special machine but they won't reveal some critical "secret" about its construction. Established scientists generally tell them to just come back when they're rich and famous. Pons and Fleischmann with Cold Fusion did get into stage 2, and were shot down there when nobody doing anything reasonable could reproduce their work. Mills still hasn't gotten past stage 1 here. The investors are of course being bilked. I hope he gets sued for fraud, but that hardly ever happens.
As has been pointed out before, this bears some relation to the Open Source approach: the first stage of publicly releasing your code, no secrets, is exactly like scientific publication. The second stage is where other people come in and port, tweak, add features, etc.
So the question of the hour is - do we have this problem in software? Where people come in with some great new program that will "Solve all the World's Problems (TM)" but as it is closed source and under non-disclosure etc. etc. nobody really knows whether it can do what the hypesters say. How much venture capital/stock market fever lately has gone into stuff like this? I think the two issues are actually quite closely related. Both Open Source and real Science have a common enemy: closed, proprietary, market hype-driven drivel.
Energy: time to change the picture.
The theory of relativity was considered snakeoil by the vast majority of the scientific community for some time. Also nikola tesla met great oposition befor his theories were excepted. Why dont you undergrads go back to bioling water, and the nobel lauriets admit you might have been beaten out. I am not going to wait for you guys to die of old age before new ideas can be accepted :P
The review of Mills' book on GUT is here on amazon.com
While I completely support the boycott of amazon.com, there is a rather telling customer review of the book by an Ohio State math professor at the site which shoots him down completely. Here's a couple of exerpts:
2.(iii) By an appropriate rotation of the laboratory, any linear combination of the angular eigenmodes having the same l-value will become independent of the azimuthal angle \phi, i.e. will become a pure m=0 mode having the same l-value. (This is a consequence of the familiar "addition theorem" for spherical harmonics.) According to the Mills theory, the oscillation frequency of the system will therefore have changed from a non-zero value to the value zero. Putting these two observations together, one has the result that, by merely changing the orientation with which one looks at the charge distribution, say, by tilting one's head, one can change the frequency with which the system vibrates.
5.(iii) The author claims that the hydrogen atom has energy levels below those already measured spectroscopically. He claims (e.g. on page 21) that these levels betray their existence only through atomic collisions. If that were indeed the case, then the atomic beam physicists would have seen these energy states a long time ago with the help, among others, of the Ramsauer effect. This effect is observed when electron having the right energy exhibit resonance scattering (only for the l=0 part of the electrons' angular momentum) when they scatter off a neutral atomic beam. Furthermore, these electrons would also reveal any of the author's "hydrino" states by the energy necessary to ionize the hydrogen atoms in these states.
This is exactly what I said. When I said decentralized, I was referring to the necessity for freedom from ANY central authority. This is not to say that standards and the like are unimportant, but evolution depends on a certain degree of disparity. In other words, I support both the loner entreprenuer/scientist and the National Science Foundation (et. al) grants. Though, truth be told, I think the entreprenuer/loner contributes far more fundamental advances to science, than any structured bureaucracy (e.g., government, academic, etc.)
Mills brags too loudly about his academic credentials.
The context for statements by any scientist/academic person X is: (1) where does X work now, or what team does X currently represent? & (2) what has X achieved lately? People whose work is sharable, marketable, explicable or repeatable don't have to make a big deal out of their academic credentials. Mills' doing so suggests he lacks substance.
Speaking of "goofballs who went to Harvard," the big H still has the Unabomber to live down...
NOTlonelyOLDlady48
...but only vaguely.
I think it must have been Asimov -- his short stories are what I read so long ago that I can't recall them exactly.
(Or perhaps Sheckley? Or Blish?)
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
Christian R. Conrad
mail me at iki.fi ; same user ID as here