Hydrino theory
Encyclopedia
Blacklight Power, Inc. of Cranbury, New Jersey is an alternative energy company founded by Randell L. Mills who claims to have discovered a new energy source. The new energy source is based on Mills' theory that a hydrogen atom energy level can drop below the ground state. Mills calls the theoretical hydrogen atoms that are in an energy state below ground level, "hydrinos". BLP has created a system it calls Catalyst Induced Hydrino Transition, or CIHT, and according to its web site "It is expected that CIHT will competitively, economically, logistically, and environmentally displace essentially all power sources of all sizes: thermal, electrical, automotive, marine, rail, aviation, and aerospace".. Mills self-published a closely related treatise entitled The Grand Unified Theory of Classical Physics (GUT-CP).
Where Mills has not been ignored he has met general skepticism in the academic community since the founding of BLP in 1991. Mills' ideas of "CQM" and "hydrinos" have been criticized by mainstream physicists as "pseudoscience
" and rejected as "just silliness".
By 2009 BLP had raised about $60 million in venture capital, and claims to have seven commercial agreements to license BLP energy technology for the production of thermal or electric power to utilities and private corporations. By 2011 no known power generation has occurred. Mills envisions that CIHT (Catalyst-Induced-Hydrino-Transition) cell stacks can provide power for long-range electric vehicles, a claim described as "scientific nonsense—there is no state of hydrogen lower than the ground state" by Wolfgang Ketterle. Mills claims this electricity will cost less than 2 cents per kilowatt-hour, compared to an 8.9 cents cents per kilowatt-hour national average. In 2010 the company claimed that "CIHT technology was independently confirmed by Dr. K.V. Ramanujachary, Rowan University Meritorious Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry". The independent confirmation claim was based on company funded experiments described in four papers by Rowan University researchers and a fifth report written by a scientist consulting for GEN3 partners. All the experiments were conducted with BLP direct involvement and were unpublished in peer reviewed journals.
IEEE Spectrum
magazine listed Blacklight as a "loser" technology in its 2009 report because "Most experts don’t believe such lower states exist, and they say the experiments don’t present convincing evidence."
A subsidiary, Millsian, offers a molecular-modeling software-application based on "CQM" theory. The subsidiary had been formed in June 2006 as Molegos Inc. and renamed in October 2006.
, and studied biotechnology and electrical engineering at MIT., and a degree in Chemistry from Franklin & Marshall College
in 1982.. Mills claims that Blacklight's power source "represents a boundless form of new primary energy", and says that he "think[s] it's going to replace all forms of fuel in the world.".
An article in the technology column of the New York Times described in 2008 how Mills had kept plugging on and getting $60 million in venture funding despite his theories being rejected and ignored by the scientific community for years.
As of February 10, 2011, the agreements were not mentioned on the websites of any of the identified companies and details of the contracts were not publicly available. However, John E. Akridge, owner of the real estate development company that is the parent company of Akridge Energy, LLC and a BLP stock holder is quoted in a BLP press release as saying "we believe BLP technology will have a profound impact on the environment and the economy" and "We are excited to be one of the early adopters of BLP technology."
In addition to the agreements listed above, BLP has had agreements with other utilities including Connectiv and PacifiCorp which, as of 1999, had invested $10 million in BLP. The agreements are private.
In 2000, the USPTO
approved patent application 09/009,294 entitled "Hydride Compounds" after an initial rejection, and gave it . The fee had already been paid, but it hadn't still reached the stage of final issuance. The company was later granted "Lower-Energy Hydrogen Methods and Structures". A mocking column by Robert L. Park
and an outside query by an unknown person apparently prompted Director Group Director Kepplinger to review this new patent himself, and he expressed concerns about the patent's theoretical basis, the existence of fractional quantum numbers. He also noticed that the patent application, 09/009,294, had the same theoretical basis. He contacted another Director, Robert Spar, who also expressed doubts on the patentability of the patent application. This caused the USPTO to withdraw from issue the patent application before it was granted and re-open it for review, and to withdraw four related applications, including one for an hydrino power plant. This prompted Blacklight to sue in the US District Court
of Columbia, saying that withdrawing the 09/009,294 application after having paid the fee was contrary to law. In 2002 the District Court concluded that the USPTO was acting inside the limits of its authority in withdrawing a patent over whose validity it had doubts, and later that year the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
ratified this decision. Application 09/009,294 was so near issuance that it slipped into the list of issued patents as US6030601. The status of withdrawn patent US6024935 is unclear since it still appears in the USPTO website as a granted patent.
In March and April 2008, Blacklight Power had four UK patent applications relating to models and apparatus based on hydrino theory refused by the UK Intellectual Property Office. The decision was based on "the experimental evidence provided and the acceptance of the theory by the physics community generally", which led to the conclusion that the theory "was probably not valid", and therefore that the inventions were not "capable of industrial application" as required by UK patent law. In November 2008, the UK Patents Court
overturned the rejection of the four patents, ruling that they should only have been rejected if the theory was clearly invalid (rather than probably invalid) and remitted the case to the Patent Office for reconsideration. In June 2009 a hearing officer at the UK patent office found that a full investigation with the help of an expert in GUTCQM wouldn't have a reasonable prospect of finding it a valid theory, and rejected the patents again.
and General Merrill McPeak.
refers to as the ground state
of hydrogen.
Mills first announced his hydrino state theory on April 25, 1991 in a press conference in Lancaster, as an explanation for the cold fusion
phenomena that had been revealed in 1989. According to Mills, no fusion was actually happening in the cells: all the effects would be caused by the hydrogen atoms which shrunk as they fell to a state lower than the ground state of hydrogen. The increased proximity between the shrunk atoms would cause them to fuse sporadically. Some of those atoms would be deuterium
atoms (a hydrogen atom with one extra neutron), which would explain why there were occasional readings of neutrons. No experimental evidence was offered by Mills, and his claim was ignored by the scientific community.
Mills claims that much of standard particle physics, while having experimental validation, should be rejected due to its reliance on overfitting
.
is an extended particle or membrane that in free space would consist of a flat disk of spinning charge
. Mills' model for the bound
electron treats the electron not as a point nor as a probability wave, but as a "dynamic spherical shell" of zero thickness surrounding the nucleus. The resulting model, called the "orbitsphere", is claimed to provide a fully classical physical
explanation for phenomena including quantization of angular momentum and magnetic moment. The model is not restricted to the integer orbitals
of the hydrogen atom
described by the Bohr model
and calculated from Schrödinger's equation but is claimed to allow the existence of fractional integer orbitals. Mills' model is claimed to derive "classical
" orbitals from the classical nonradiation condition
defined by Hermann A. Haus
in 1986.
he calls "The BlackLight Process" allows a bound electron to fall to energy states below what quantum theory predicts to be possible. In the hydrogen atom, these states are postulated to have an effective radius of 1/p of the ground state radius, with p being limited by the speed of light to a positive integer less than or equal to 137. He terms these below-ground hydrogen atoms 'hydrinos'. Mills' mechanism consists of a non-radiative energy transfer between a hydrogen atom and a catalyst that is capable of absorbing
a certain amount of energy. The total energy Mills says is released for hydrino transitions is large compared to the chemical burning of hydrogen, but less than nuclear reaction
s. Mills claims that limitations on confinement and terrestrial conditions have prevented the achievement of hydrino states below 1/30, which would correspond to an energy release of approximately 15 keV
per hydrogen atom.
journals or unreviewed conference proceedings. Some reported significant observations in experimental studies, including:
In 2005 Dr Mills stated: "We've done a lot of testing. We've got 50 independent validation reports, we've got 65 peer-reviewed journal articles, We ran into this theoretical resistance and there are some vested interests here. People are very strong and fervent protectors of this[quantum] theory that they use."
staff as independent verification of BLP claims. None of the reports for this research appears to have been submitted to peer reviewed journals for publication. A version of the reports for this research can be found on the BLP web site. The reports describe calorimetric and analytical chemistry experiments that according to the summary section of the first report "confirms independently the empirical findings of BLP with respect to anomalous heat generation and chemical analysis". However,BLP and Rowan University have had a long term relationship and characterizing BLP related research by Rowan University as independent might be misleading.
Rowan University staff have been actively involved with BLP for many years. BLP is described as an affiliate company in an undergraduate report of BLP related experiments. Rowan BLP related research has, at least, been partially funded by BLP and it has often used materials and equipment supplied by BLP for the experiments. Peter Jansson, a Rowan University Associate professor, has been involved with BLP since at least 1997. He was an executive with Altlantic Energy (a subsidiary of Conectiv in in 1999) when Conectiv invested in BLP. Jansson's 1997 master thesis was related to BLP theories, and he has been a credited author on several BLP related papers including two of the four most recently released. BLP has provided an academic scholarship for at least one of the Rowan University staff that have taken part in the BLP related research by Rowan University.
In 2002 Rowan staff conducted research on a rocket engine based on BLP technology for the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts
(NIAC).
The Phase I study was conducted at Rowan University and led by Rowan mechanical engineering professor Anthony Marchese. The team reported that with assistance from BLP, they successfully replicated previous results, including the observation of line broadening indicative of hydrogen atoms moving much faster than would ordinarily be expected under the experimental conditions. The team reported that two thrusters were built and successfully fired, however the team did not succeed in making thrust measurements. The project was not picked up for phase II NIAC funding by NASA.
and Anthony Leggett, have made statements strongly critical of the idea of hydrino energy. Ketterle characterized Mills claims as "scientific nonsense", and Leggett asserted that Blacklight Power is unable to prove its claims about Quantum physics. The most visible critic of Mills' theories has been Robert L. Park
, the spokesman for the American Physical Society
, who said of Mills, "He's wrong in so many ways, it's beyond counting."
Where Mills has not been ignored he has met general skepticism in the academic community since the founding of BLP in 1991. Mills' ideas of "CQM" and "hydrinos" have been criticized by mainstream physicists as "pseudoscience
Pseudoscience
Pseudoscience is a claim, belief, or practice which is presented as scientific, but which does not adhere to a valid scientific method, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested, or otherwise lacks scientific status...
" and rejected as "just silliness".
Company
Mills founded the company in 1991. It was founded as HydroCatalysis Inc. and later renamed to Blacklight Power Inc. By 1999 the company was claiming to have produced excess energy for over a year. By 2000 Mills raised $25 million in funding for the company. Mills convinced several researchers that supported him to sit at the board of his company. Subsequently, several venture capital firms placed representatives on the board, and other important persons in business joined the board, including a former CEO of Westinghouse.By 2009 BLP had raised about $60 million in venture capital, and claims to have seven commercial agreements to license BLP energy technology for the production of thermal or electric power to utilities and private corporations. By 2011 no known power generation has occurred. Mills envisions that CIHT (Catalyst-Induced-Hydrino-Transition) cell stacks can provide power for long-range electric vehicles, a claim described as "scientific nonsense—there is no state of hydrogen lower than the ground state" by Wolfgang Ketterle. Mills claims this electricity will cost less than 2 cents per kilowatt-hour, compared to an 8.9 cents cents per kilowatt-hour national average. In 2010 the company claimed that "CIHT technology was independently confirmed by Dr. K.V. Ramanujachary, Rowan University Meritorious Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry". The independent confirmation claim was based on company funded experiments described in four papers by Rowan University researchers and a fifth report written by a scientist consulting for GEN3 partners. All the experiments were conducted with BLP direct involvement and were unpublished in peer reviewed journals.
IEEE Spectrum
IEEE Spectrum
IEEE Spectrum is a magazine edited by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. The IEEE's description of it is:IEEE Spectrum began publishing in January 1964 as a successor to Electrical Engineering...
magazine listed Blacklight as a "loser" technology in its 2009 report because "Most experts don’t believe such lower states exist, and they say the experiments don’t present convincing evidence."
A subsidiary, Millsian, offers a molecular-modeling software-application based on "CQM" theory. The subsidiary had been formed in June 2006 as Molegos Inc. and renamed in October 2006.
Founder and CEO Randell Mills
Randell Mills graduated from Harvard Medical SchoolHarvard Medical School
Harvard Medical School is the graduate medical school of Harvard University. It is located in the Longwood Medical Area of the Mission Hill neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts....
, and studied biotechnology and electrical engineering at MIT., and a degree in Chemistry from Franklin & Marshall College
Franklin & Marshall College
Franklin & Marshall College is a four-year private co-educational residential national liberal arts college in the Northwest Corridor neighborhood of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, United States....
in 1982.. Mills claims that Blacklight's power source "represents a boundless form of new primary energy", and says that he "think[s] it's going to replace all forms of fuel in the world.".
An article in the technology column of the New York Times described in 2008 how Mills had kept plugging on and getting $60 million in venture funding despite his theories being rejected and ignored by the scientific community for years.
Commercial licensing and agreements
Blacklight Power claims to have seven commercial agreements to license energy technology for the production of thermal or electric power to utilities and private corporations. BLP has identified four of these companies in its press releases. The four companies and the date of the press release announcing the licensing are as follows:- Estacado Energy Services (wholly owned subsidiary of Roosevelt County Electric Cooperative), December 11, 2008
- Farmers’ Electric Cooperative, Inc., January 6, 2009
- Akridge Energy, LLC (wholly owned by John E. Akridge, III), July 30, 2009
- GEOENERGIE SpA (Energy Subsidiary of Geogreen (part of the RadiciGroup)), March 23, 2009
As of February 10, 2011, the agreements were not mentioned on the websites of any of the identified companies and details of the contracts were not publicly available. However, John E. Akridge, owner of the real estate development company that is the parent company of Akridge Energy, LLC and a BLP stock holder is quoted in a BLP press release as saying "we believe BLP technology will have a profound impact on the environment and the economy" and "We are excited to be one of the early adopters of BLP technology."
In addition to the agreements listed above, BLP has had agreements with other utilities including Connectiv and PacifiCorp which, as of 1999, had invested $10 million in BLP. The agreements are private.
Patents
BLP holds entitled "Method and system of computing and rendering the nature of the chemical bond of hydrogen-type molecules and molecular ions". It describes rendering the chemical bonds of hydrogen using imaging software, covering their "Millsian" molecular modeling software application. BLP may hold two other US patents. The status of these patents is unclear.In 2000, the USPTO
United States Patent and Trademark Office
The United States Patent and Trademark Office is an agency in the United States Department of Commerce that issues patents to inventors and businesses for their inventions, and trademark registration for product and intellectual property identification.The USPTO is based in Alexandria, Virginia,...
approved patent application 09/009,294 entitled "Hydride Compounds" after an initial rejection, and gave it . The fee had already been paid, but it hadn't still reached the stage of final issuance. The company was later granted "Lower-Energy Hydrogen Methods and Structures". A mocking column by Robert L. Park
Robert L. Park
Robert Lee Park , also known as Bob Park, is an emeritus professor of physics at the University of Maryland, College Park and a former Director of Public Information at the Washington office of the American Physical Society...
and an outside query by an unknown person apparently prompted Director Group Director Kepplinger to review this new patent himself, and he expressed concerns about the patent's theoretical basis, the existence of fractional quantum numbers. He also noticed that the patent application, 09/009,294, had the same theoretical basis. He contacted another Director, Robert Spar, who also expressed doubts on the patentability of the patent application. This caused the USPTO to withdraw from issue the patent application before it was granted and re-open it for review, and to withdraw four related applications, including one for an hydrino power plant. This prompted Blacklight to sue in the US District Court
United States district court
The United States district courts are the general trial courts of the United States federal court system. Both civil and criminal cases are filed in the district court, which is a court of law, equity, and admiralty. There is a United States bankruptcy court associated with each United States...
of Columbia, saying that withdrawing the 09/009,294 application after having paid the fee was contrary to law. In 2002 the District Court concluded that the USPTO was acting inside the limits of its authority in withdrawing a patent over whose validity it had doubts, and later that year the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
-Vacancies and pending nominations:-List of former judges:-Chief judges:Notwithstanding the foregoing, when the court was initially created, Congress had to resolve which chief judge of the predecessor courts would become the first chief judge...
ratified this decision. Application 09/009,294 was so near issuance that it slipped into the list of issued patents as US6030601. The status of withdrawn patent US6024935 is unclear since it still appears in the USPTO website as a granted patent.
In March and April 2008, Blacklight Power had four UK patent applications relating to models and apparatus based on hydrino theory refused by the UK Intellectual Property Office. The decision was based on "the experimental evidence provided and the acceptance of the theory by the physics community generally", which led to the conclusion that the theory "was probably not valid", and therefore that the inventions were not "capable of industrial application" as required by UK patent law. In November 2008, the UK Patents Court
Patents Court
The Patents Court is a specialist court within the Chancery Division of the High Court of Justice of England and Wales. It deals with disputes relating to intellectual property.-References:...
overturned the rejection of the four patents, ruling that they should only have been rejected if the theory was clearly invalid (rather than probably invalid) and remitted the case to the Patent Office for reconsideration. In June 2009 a hearing officer at the UK patent office found that a full investigation with the help of an expert in GUTCQM wouldn't have a reasonable prospect of finding it a valid theory, and rejected the patents again.
Corporate Governance
The present chairman of the Board, president and CEO is the founder, Randell L. Mills . Former directors of the company have included turnaround expert Michael H. JordanMichael H. Jordan
Michael H. Jordan was an American businessman. He has served as the Chief Executive Officer of PepsiCo Worldwide Foods , Westinghouse Electric Corporation , CBS Corporation , and Electronic Data Systems .Jordan was born in Kansas City, Missouri, to the late Mary Virginia Witt and Hugh Franklin...
and General Merrill McPeak.
Theory and claims
Mills claims that chemicals, under controlled experiments, may react catalytically with atomic hydrogen to generate an "ultraviolet plasma". The company claims that the special plasma byproducts predicted by GUT-CP, called "hydrinos", have been experimentally observed to have an energy state below what quantum mechanicsQuantum mechanics
Quantum mechanics, also known as quantum physics or quantum theory, is a branch of physics providing a mathematical description of much of the dual particle-like and wave-like behavior and interactions of energy and matter. It departs from classical mechanics primarily at the atomic and subatomic...
refers to as the ground state
Ground state
The ground state of a quantum mechanical system is its lowest-energy state; the energy of the ground state is known as the zero-point energy of the system. An excited state is any state with energy greater than the ground state...
of hydrogen.
Mills first announced his hydrino state theory on April 25, 1991 in a press conference in Lancaster, as an explanation for the cold fusion
Cold fusion
Cold fusion, also called low-energy nuclear reaction , refers to the hypothesis that nuclear fusion might explain the results of a group of experiments conducted at ordinary temperatures . Both the experimental results and the hypothesis are disputed...
phenomena that had been revealed in 1989. According to Mills, no fusion was actually happening in the cells: all the effects would be caused by the hydrogen atoms which shrunk as they fell to a state lower than the ground state of hydrogen. The increased proximity between the shrunk atoms would cause them to fuse sporadically. Some of those atoms would be deuterium
Deuterium
Deuterium, also called heavy hydrogen, is one of two stable isotopes of hydrogen. It has a natural abundance in Earth's oceans of about one atom in of hydrogen . Deuterium accounts for approximately 0.0156% of all naturally occurring hydrogen in Earth's oceans, while the most common isotope ...
atoms (a hydrogen atom with one extra neutron), which would explain why there were occasional readings of neutrons. No experimental evidence was offered by Mills, and his claim was ignored by the scientific community.
Mills claims that much of standard particle physics, while having experimental validation, should be rejected due to its reliance on overfitting
Overfitting
In statistics, overfitting occurs when a statistical model describes random error or noise instead of the underlying relationship. Overfitting generally occurs when a model is excessively complex, such as having too many parameters relative to the number of observations...
.
Model of the free and bound electron
Mills claims that the electronElectron
The electron is a subatomic particle with a negative elementary electric charge. It has no known components or substructure; in other words, it is generally thought to be an elementary particle. An electron has a mass that is approximately 1/1836 that of the proton...
is an extended particle or membrane that in free space would consist of a flat disk of spinning charge
Electric charge
Electric charge is a physical property of matter that causes it to experience a force when near other electrically charged matter. Electric charge comes in two types, called positive and negative. Two positively charged substances, or objects, experience a mutual repulsive force, as do two...
. Mills' model for the bound
Bound state
In physics, a bound state describes a system where a particle is subject to a potential such that the particle has a tendency to remain localised in one or more regions of space...
electron treats the electron not as a point nor as a probability wave, but as a "dynamic spherical shell" of zero thickness surrounding the nucleus. The resulting model, called the "orbitsphere", is claimed to provide a fully classical physical
Classical physics
What "classical physics" refers to depends on the context. When discussing special relativity, it refers to the Newtonian physics which preceded relativity, i.e. the branches of physics based on principles developed before the rise of relativity and quantum mechanics...
explanation for phenomena including quantization of angular momentum and magnetic moment. The model is not restricted to the integer orbitals
Principal quantum number
In atomic physics, the principal quantum symbolized as n is the firstof a set of quantum numbers of an atomic orbital. The principal quantum number can only have positive integer values...
of the hydrogen atom
Hydrogen atom
A hydrogen atom is an atom of the chemical element hydrogen. The electrically neutral atom contains a single positively-charged proton and a single negatively-charged electron bound to the nucleus by the Coulomb force...
described by the Bohr model
Bohr model
In atomic physics, the Bohr model, introduced by Niels Bohr in 1913, depicts the atom as a small, positively charged nucleus surrounded by electrons that travel in circular orbits around the nucleus—similar in structure to the solar system, but with electrostatic forces providing attraction,...
and calculated from Schrödinger's equation but is claimed to allow the existence of fractional integer orbitals. Mills' model is claimed to derive "classical
Classical electromagnetism
Classical electromagnetism is a branch of theoretical physics that studies consequences of the electromagnetic forces between electric charges and currents...
" orbitals from the classical nonradiation condition
Nonradiation condition
Classical nonradiation conditions define the conditions according to classical electromagnetism under which a distribution of accelerating charges will not emit electromagnetic radiation. According to the Larmor formula in classical electromagnetism, a single point charge under acceleration will...
defined by Hermann A. Haus
Hermann A. Haus
Hermann Anton Haus was a Slovene-American physicist, electrical engineer, and Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Haus' research and teaching ranged from fundamental investigations of quantum uncertainty as manifested in optical communications to the practical...
in 1986.
Blacklight process
According to Mills, a specific chemical processChemical process
In a "scientific" sense, a chemical process is a method or means of somehow changing one or more chemicals or chemical compounds. Such a chemical process can occur by itself or be caused by somebody. Such a chemical process commonly involves a chemical reaction of some sort...
he calls "The BlackLight Process" allows a bound electron to fall to energy states below what quantum theory predicts to be possible. In the hydrogen atom, these states are postulated to have an effective radius of 1/p of the ground state radius, with p being limited by the speed of light to a positive integer less than or equal to 137. He terms these below-ground hydrogen atoms 'hydrinos'. Mills' mechanism consists of a non-radiative energy transfer between a hydrogen atom and a catalyst that is capable of absorbing
Absorption (electromagnetic radiation)
In physics, absorption of electromagnetic radiation is the way by which the energy of a photon is taken up by matter, typically the electrons of an atom. Thus, the electromagnetic energy is transformed to other forms of energy for example, to heat. The absorption of light during wave propagation is...
a certain amount of energy. The total energy Mills says is released for hydrino transitions is large compared to the chemical burning of hydrogen, but less than nuclear reaction
Nuclear reaction
In nuclear physics and nuclear chemistry, a nuclear reaction is semantically considered to be the process in which two nuclei, or else a nucleus of an atom and a subatomic particle from outside the atom, collide to produce products different from the initial particles...
s. Mills claims that limitations on confinement and terrestrial conditions have prevented the achievement of hydrino states below 1/30, which would correspond to an energy release of approximately 15 keV
Kev
Kev can refer to:*Kev Hawkins, a fictional character.*Kevin, a given name occasionally shortened to "Kev".*Kiloelectronvolt, a unit of energy who symbol is "KeV".* Krefelder Eislauf-VereinKEV can refer to:...
per hydrogen atom.
Book
Mills claims he has unified Maxwell's Equations, Newton's Laws, and Einstein's General and Special Relativity on the basis that they must hold on all scales from the subatomic to the cosmic. Mills has put forward his thesis in his book, originally called The Grand Unified Theory of Classical Quantum Mechanics (GUT-CQM), and later given the new title The Grand Unified Theory of Classical Physics (GUT-CP).Reported experimental findings
The BLP website lists 95 publications by Mills et al. Most of these were published in low-impactImpact factor
The impact factor, often abbreviated IF, is a measure reflecting the average number of citations to articles published in science and social science journals. It is frequently used as a proxy for the relative importance of a journal within its field, with journals with higher impact factors deemed...
journals or unreviewed conference proceedings. Some reported significant observations in experimental studies, including:
- Chemical reactions that produce plasmasPlasma (physics)In physics and chemistry, plasma is a state of matter similar to gas in which a certain portion of the particles are ionized. Heating a gas may ionize its molecules or atoms , thus turning it into a plasma, which contains charged particles: positive ions and negative electrons or ions...
in gas cells with input energies far below the level that conventional theory predicts is required to produce such plasmas. - Spectral lines from gas cell plasmas which match the predictions for hydrino transitions.
- Detection of excess heat from plasma cells using water bath calorimetry.
- New chemical compounds said to have been formed from hydrino hydrides (i.e. a hydrino which has captured another electron to form a negative hydride ion) which show unusual properties and structure.
- Molecular 'dihydrino' gas formation and detection.
- Experiments demonstrating excess energy when sodium hydrideSodium hydrideSodium hydride is the chemical compound with the empirical formula NaH. It is primarily used as a strong base in organic synthesis. NaH is representative of the saline hydrides, meaning it is a salt-like hydride, composed of Na+ and H− ions, in contrast to the more molecular hydrides such as...
is heated in contact with Raney nickelRaney nickelRaney nickel is a solid catalyst composed of fine grains of a nickel-aluminium alloy, used in many industrial processes. It was developed in 1926 by American]] engineer Murray Raney as an alternative catalyst for the hydrogenation of vegetable oils in industrial processes...
catalyst (R-Ni)
In 2005 Dr Mills stated: "We've done a lot of testing. We've got 50 independent validation reports, we've got 65 peer-reviewed journal articles, We ran into this theoretical resistance and there are some vested interests here. People are very strong and fervent protectors of this
Rowan University BLP related research
In 2008, 2009 and 2010 BLP news releases cited research by Rowan UniversityRowan University
Rowan University is a public university in Glassboro, New Jersey, USA with a satellite campus in Camden, New Jersey. The school was founded in 1923 as Glassboro Normal School on a twenty-five acre tract of land donated by the town...
staff as independent verification of BLP claims. None of the reports for this research appears to have been submitted to peer reviewed journals for publication. A version of the reports for this research can be found on the BLP web site. The reports describe calorimetric and analytical chemistry experiments that according to the summary section of the first report "confirms independently the empirical findings of BLP with respect to anomalous heat generation and chemical analysis". However,BLP and Rowan University have had a long term relationship and characterizing BLP related research by Rowan University as independent might be misleading.
Rowan University staff have been actively involved with BLP for many years. BLP is described as an affiliate company in an undergraduate report of BLP related experiments. Rowan BLP related research has, at least, been partially funded by BLP and it has often used materials and equipment supplied by BLP for the experiments. Peter Jansson, a Rowan University Associate professor, has been involved with BLP since at least 1997. He was an executive with Altlantic Energy (a subsidiary of Conectiv in in 1999) when Conectiv invested in BLP. Jansson's 1997 master thesis was related to BLP theories, and he has been a credited author on several BLP related papers including two of the four most recently released. BLP has provided an academic scholarship for at least one of the Rowan University staff that have taken part in the BLP related research by Rowan University.
In 2002 Rowan staff conducted research on a rocket engine based on BLP technology for the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts
NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts
right|200pxNASA Institute for Advanced Concepts was a NASA-funded program that was operated by the Universities Space Research Association for NASA from 1998 until its closure on 31 August 2007. NIAC sought proposals for revolutionary aeronautics and space concepts that could dramatically impact...
(NIAC).
The Phase I study was conducted at Rowan University and led by Rowan mechanical engineering professor Anthony Marchese. The team reported that with assistance from BLP, they successfully replicated previous results, including the observation of line broadening indicative of hydrogen atoms moving much faster than would ordinarily be expected under the experimental conditions. The team reported that two thrusters were built and successfully fired, however the team did not succeed in making thrust measurements. The project was not picked up for phase II NIAC funding by NASA.
Mainstream science BLP related research and analysis
Mills' claims have largely been ignored by mainstream science. A few articles in peer reviewed journals have been published that are mostly critical of BLP theories and claims. Two Nobel laureates in physics, Wolfgang KetterleWolfgang Ketterle
Wolfgang Ketterle is a German physicist and professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . His research has focused on experiments that trap and cool atoms to temperatures close to absolute zero, and he led one of the first groups to realize Bose-Einstein condensation in these...
and Anthony Leggett, have made statements strongly critical of the idea of hydrino energy. Ketterle characterized Mills claims as "scientific nonsense", and Leggett asserted that Blacklight Power is unable to prove its claims about Quantum physics. The most visible critic of Mills' theories has been Robert L. Park
Robert L. Park
Robert Lee Park , also known as Bob Park, is an emeritus professor of physics at the University of Maryland, College Park and a former Director of Public Information at the Washington office of the American Physical Society...
, the spokesman for the American Physical Society
American Physical Society
The American Physical Society is the world's second largest organization of physicists, behind the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft. The Society publishes more than a dozen scientific journals, including the world renowned Physical Review and Physical Review Letters, and organizes more than 20...
, who said of Mills, "He's wrong in so many ways, it's beyond counting."
Independent experiments in chronological order
- February 1996: NASA published the paper, "Replication of the apparent excess heat effect in light water-potassium carbonate-nickel-electrolytic cell" by Janis M. Niedra, et al. The paper describes experiments done with a 28 liter electrolytic cell on loan from Hydrocatalys Power Corporation (as BLP was known at the time). The experiments described in the paper did not recreate the large heat gains reported for the cell by BLP however unexplained power gains in the cell ranging from 1.06 to 1.68 of the input power were reported. Speculation on the causes of this excess power was included in the "Summary and Conclusions" section of the paper. From that section: "Although our data admits the existence of an unusual source of heat with the cell, it falls far short of being compelling" and "Following the principle of simplest explanation that fits the data on hand, recombination [referring to recombination of hydrogen and oxygen] becomes the explanation of choice".
- January 4, 2005: Šišović et al. published a paper describing experimental data and analysis of the Mills' theory that a resonant transfer model (RTM) explains the excessive Doppler broadening of the Hα line. Šišović et al. concluded that: "The detected large excessive broadening in pure hydrogen and in Ne–H2 mixture is in agreement with CM [Collision Model] and other experimental results" and that "These results can’t be explained by RTM". The collision model explanation for excessive broadening of the Hα line is based on established physics.
Independent analysis of Mills' models in chronological order
- May 20, 2005: Andreas Rathke of the European Space AgencyEuropean Space AgencyThe European Space Agency , established in 1975, is an intergovernmental organisation dedicated to the exploration of space, currently with 18 member states...
published a critical analysis in the New Journal of Physics. He concluded:
"We found that CQM is inconsistent and has several serious deficiencies. Amongst these are the failure to reproduce the energy levels of the excited states of the hydrogen atom, and the absence of Lorentz invarianceLorentz covarianceIn standard physics, Lorentz symmetry is "the feature of nature that says experimental results are independent of the orientation or the boost velocity of the laboratory through space"...
. Most importantly, we found that CQM does not predict the existence of hydrino states!" - Rathke
- August 5, 2005: Jan Naudts of the University of AntwerpUniversity of AntwerpThe University of Antwerp is one of the major Belgian universities located in the city of Antwerp. The name is sometimes abbreviated as UA.-History:...
argued that Rathke did not take into account complexities introduced by relativistic quantum mechanics, and that without doing so Rathke was not justified in rejecting the possibility of a hydrino state.
- September 26, 2005: The Journal of Applied Physics published a critique by A. V. Phelps of the 2004 article, "Water bath calorimetric study of excess heat generation in resonant transfer plasmas" by J. Phillips, R. Mills and X. Chen. Phelps criticized both the calorimetric techniques and the underlying theory described in the Phillips/Mills/Chen article. The Journal of Applied Physics published a response to the critique by Phillips on the same day.
- 2006: inspired by Naudts' response, Norman Dombey concluded that Mill's theory of hydrino states is "unphysical". According to Dombey, the hydrino states would require:
-
- non-relativistic counterparts to remain physical, but they don't have them.
- compatibility with a coupling strength (fine structure constant) equal to zero to remain physical, yet "hydrino states" seem to exist in the absence of any coupling strength.
- binding strength that falls with the coupling strength. The hydrino model predicts that binding strength for hydrino states increases as the coupling strength falls, rendering the states unphysical.
- April 2007: Antonio Di Castro showed that the states below the ground state, as described in Mills' theory, are incompatible with the SchrödingerSchrödinger equationThe Schrödinger equation was formulated in 1926 by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger. Used in physics , it is an equation that describes how the quantum state of a physical system changes in time....
, Klein-GordonKlein-Gordon equationThe Klein–Gordon equation is a relativistic version of the Schrödinger equation....
and DiracDirac equationThe Dirac equation is a relativistic quantum mechanical wave equation formulated by British physicist Paul Dirac in 1928. It provided a description of elementary spin-½ particles, such as electrons, consistent with both the principles of quantum mechanics and the theory of special relativity, and...
equations."
- May 1, 2008: The Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics published an article by Hans-Joachim Kunze critical of the 2003 paper authored by R. Mills and P. Ray, Extreme ultraviolet spectroscopy of helium–hydrogen. Hans-Joachim Kunze is professor emeritus at the Institute for Experimental Physics V Ruhr University Bochum, Germany. The abstract of the article is: "It is suggested that spectral lines, on which the fiction of fractional principal quantum numbers in the hydrogen atom is based, are nothing else but artefacts." Kunze stated that it was impossible to detect the novel lines below 30 nm reported by Mills and Ray because the equipment they used did not have the capability to detect them as per the manufacturer and as per "every book on vacuum-UV spectroscopy" and "therefore the observed lines must be artefacts". Kunze also stated that: "The enormous spectral widths of the novel lines point to artefacts, too."
Independent commentaries in chronological order
- October 27, 2000: Robert L. ParkRobert L. ParkRobert Lee Park , also known as Bob Park, is an emeritus professor of physics at the University of Maryland, College Park and a former Director of Public Information at the Washington office of the American Physical Society...
, of the University of MarylandUniversity of Maryland, College ParkThe University of Maryland, College Park is a top-ranked public research university located in the city of College Park in Prince George's County, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C...
, writes a follow-up:
"Unlike most schemes for free energy, the hydrino process of Randy Mills is not without ample theory (WN 8 Jan 99). Mills has written a 1000 page tome, entitled,"The Grand Unified Theory of Classical Quantum Mechanics," that takes the reader all the way from hydrinos to antigravity (WN 9 May 97). Fortunately, Aaron Barth (not to be confused with Erik Baard, the Randy Mills' apologist), has taken upon himself to look through it, checking for accuracy. Barth is a post doctoral researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Institute, and holds a PhD in Astronomy, 1998, from UC, Berkeley. What he found initially were mathematical blunders and unjustified assumptions. To his surprise, however, portions of the book seemed well organized. These, it now turns out, were lifted verbatim from various texts. This has been the object of a great deal of discussion from Mills' Hydrino Study Group. Mills seems not to understand what the fuss is all about." - Park
- 2007: In a review of cold fusion research, Edmund Storms, a cold fusionCold fusionCold fusion, also called low-energy nuclear reaction , refers to the hypothesis that nuclear fusion might explain the results of a group of experiments conducted at ordinary temperatures . Both the experimental results and the hypothesis are disputed...
researcher, concludes that the hydrino model provides a possible explanation for cold fusion.
- June 6, 2008: Robert L. ParkRobert L. ParkRobert Lee Park , also known as Bob Park, is an emeritus professor of physics at the University of Maryland, College Park and a former Director of Public Information at the Washington office of the American Physical Society...
, of the University of MarylandUniversity of Maryland, College ParkThe University of Maryland, College Park is a top-ranked public research university located in the city of College Park in Prince George's County, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C...
, writes a follow-up:
"BlackLight Power (BLP), founded 17 years ago as HydroCatalysis, announced last week that the company had successfully tested a prototype power system that would generate 50 KW of thermal power. BLP anticipates delivery of the new power system in 12 to 18 months. The BLP process, (WN 26 Apr 91) , discovered by Randy Mills, is said to coax hydrogen atoms into a "state below the ground state," called the "hydrino." There is no independent scientific confirmation of the hydrino, and BLP has a patent problem. So they have nothing to sell but bull shit. The company is therefore dependent on investors with deep pockets and shallow brains." - Park
Advocacy
- BlackLight Power, Inc., corporate website.
- Millsian, Inc., corporate website.
Commentaries by Critic Bob Park
- Blacklight Power: Some Ideas Are Simply Too Dumb to Die! from Bob Park's newsletter What's New, January 13, 2006
- Hydrinos: How Long Can a Really Dumb Idea Survive?, What's New, June 6, 2008