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November 07, 2005
Really should be filed under "foolishness"
If you ever look at teh /., you know that this little piece of faux-news has the geekboys up in arms, and with good reason:
Randell Mills, a Harvard University medic who also studied electrical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, claims to have built a prototype power source that generates up to 1,000 times more heat than conventional fuel. Independent scientists claim to have verified the experiments and Dr Mills says that his company, Blacklight Power, has tens of millions of dollars in investment lined up to bring the idea to market. And he claims to be just months away from unveiling his creation...
What has much of the physics world up in arms is Dr Mills's claim that he has produced a new form of hydrogen, the simplest of all the atoms, with just a single proton circled by one electron. In his "hydrino", the electron sits a little closer to the proton than normal, and the formation of the new atoms from traditional hydrogen releases huge amounts of energy.
This is scientific heresy. According to quantum mechanics, electrons can only exist in an atom in strictly defined orbits, and the shortest distance allowed between the proton and electron in hydrogen is fixed. The two particles are simply not allowed to get any closer.
According to Dr Mills, there can be only one explanation: quantum mechanics must be wrong.
Which is, of course, heady stuff for a guy who is an MD and did "some graduate work in electrical engineering at MIT". Am I the only one who parses that as "MIT dropout"?
Of course (and I offer full props to Dean Esmay for this), it becomes a bit more difficult to believe this guy when he's apparently been talking crap about this hydrino for no less than six years. From 1999:
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...
"I'll have demonstrated an entirely new form of energy production by the end of 2000," Mills responds. "If (insert token doubter here) has escaped our universe through a wormhole by then, I'll send my first $1000 in profits to his new address."
By the end of 2000, hrm?
This guy isn't a scientist. He's the Hal Lindsey of physics quackery.
Posted by Chuck at November 7, 2005 09:51 PM
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Comments
He's been at it since 1991. 14 years. Yet somehow he keeps getting funding....
Posted by: Dean Esmay at November 8, 2005 09:16 AM
Oh yay! I was so sad when cold fusion went away. But now the hydrino is here! It is a happy day in science dreamland again!
Posted by: Zuska at November 10, 2005 05:07 PM