Journal of Applied Physics, NASA, and the Hydrino

Erik Baard writes "I wanted to bring you the last on a story that was slashdotted in June: NASA's investigation of the 'hydrino' rocket. In June I reported for wired.com that the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts was funding a six-month study of rockets propeled by plasmas created by BlackLight Power Inc. The company claims that energy is released when it shrinks hydrogen atoms, bringing the electron closer into its nucleus than thought possible. Here's the scoop: the researcher told NASA that *something* was indeed generating plasmas with more kinetic energy than would be expected for the power input. And the kicker is that BlackLight founder Randell Mills scored a paper about his plasmas in the mainstream Journal of Applied Physics -- after a few years of following this bizarre startup, that floored me." Here's the Village Voice story with these updates.

Oh no! It IS possible!

Better recalculate those schrodinger equations. Lets add more variables this time :D

Should be lots of skepticm

There are many reasons to be skeptical of this project:

• The company is named "Blacklight Power".
• The guy looks funny in that lab jacket.
• Most of the scientific community finds these theories "crackpot ideas".
• He's raised 30 million dollars.

--No money raised for this... [tilegarden.com]

Re:Should be lots of skepticm

• "The company is named "Blacklight Power""
  • All the really cool names like "Lockheed-Martin [lockheedmartin.com]" are already taken.
  • If you weren't spending money on start-ups with silly names several decades ago, you would have missed the opportunity to invest in General Atomics [ga.com].
• The guy looks funny in that lab jacket.
  • It's the guys that don't look funny in a lab jacket that worry me.
• "Most of the scientific community finds these theories "crackpot ideas"."
  • So? We should all be more concerned with what the scientific method has to say about his ideas, not the "community."
  • If we don't, we'd be no better than the Catholics who locked up Galileo.

"He's raised 30 million dollars."

• 99.99% of which did not come from Slashdot users.
  • If we're not monetarily involved, what's wrong with a little cheerleading?
  
  

Re:Crackpot Ideas

Does anyone else find that so called scientists that dismiss something new out of hand aren't really worthy of being called scientists?

I don't think that's a fair characterization. They don't reject new things out of hand, they reject revolutionary things out of hand. As well they should.

Why? Because there are an infinity of false revolutionary "scientific" ideas possible. A scientist's job is to be skeptical, not credulous. Yes, scientists are "going where no man has split infinitives before" but they go there with intellectual rigor, not having sex with whatever has blue skin and big tits.

And this story, with the upcoming paper, just demonstrates that the system is working quite well.

If you think that scientists should be more interested in bizarre and revolutionary ideas, then you should spend some time in sci.relativity and sci.physics (just to name a couple of newsgroups) and see how many crazy, ignorant people with crazy, ignorant theories there really are out there who complain that "they're being persecuted" and "Einstein got bad grades and nobody believed him, either" (he didn't and they did).

reputed journal... Maybe....

I would take the publishing of a science paper these days with a grain of salt. The register just did some ground breaking reporting in this area for another company like this and found out that the state of peer review at most of these mags is poor at best.

As long as it sounds plausible then it gets published. Stringing enough buzz words together usually does the trick. Unfortunatly the science mags have gone the same way as the game review mags. Don't make waves or you don't get content and loose readership and advertising dollars.

Read the whole article at the Register [theregister.co.uk]

Re:reputed journal... Maybe....

Blah blah blah...

You, an uncredentialed /.er who goes by the name Pap Legba, have just dismissed the peer review process of scientific journals, comparing "science mags" to "game review mags."

I considered arguing your pseudo-point, perhaps suggesting that you read the actual journal article, which you might find to be intelligent and thorough, and to provide sufficient information to duplicate the experiment in your own lab, which is expected in peer review journals.

I also considered mentioning that the people that review these articles, although quite busy, are well versed in their respective fields.

But that would only serve to validate your ridiculous point.

So instead I will directly attack your apparent lack of intelligence.

You are an idiot.

-Rothfuss

Re:reputed journal... Maybe....

Since I've been in the position of peer reviewing similar journals, I have some sympathy for people who let through results that are obviously wrong. Here's why: with a result that's based on an experiment, nobody expects the reviewer to go repeat the experiment. If somebody writes a paper that clearly describes an experiment, says they checked everything they should have checked and made all the calculations they should have, and comes up with a "surprising" result, it'll get published. And if you think about it, this is how it should be. If other people repeat the experiment and get the same answer, then it's right. And if everybody else gets a different answer, then we all know the original author is an ass.

I don't fault the journal for publishing this trash, but I certainly fault NASA for funding it.

Re:reputed journal... Maybe....

I must slightly disagree with your statement. For science to be healthy, all research, in all journals, at all times, should be taken with a grain of salt. There is nothing ground breaking about fraud in science. It happens, and will continue to happen. Science is very complex, and any single paper, like any single data point, is nothing more than a guess. In this case, we have an anomaly, a hypothesis, and some research. Time will tell if this hypothesis is correct, or if the anomaly is real.

In fact the validity of a paper is only determined after years of careful work to reproduce, understand, define the range, and provide a complete theoretical basis for the work. This was very pleasantly explained in Kim Stanley Robinson's [kimstanleyrobinson.net] Antarctica. The importance for patience was shown recently with the AT&T Jan Hendrik Schön fraud scandal among others. Most of the damage in these cases are caused by the treatment of science as a religion that provides instant truths, rather than a process that occasionally provides useful answers.

It amazes me the number of people of people who equate 'published in a peer reviewed journal' with 'stamp of truth'. This mistake is often made in the 'health sciences' sector in which firms routinely create products based on single peer review studies and then abuse the findings of those studies to market the products.

Unfair comment

From the article:

"The proof is in the hydrino pudding. The question is, when are you going to have desktop hydrino pudding?"

Regardless of the validity of the research, this comment sounds unfair to me. You can say the same about nuclear fusion, which is also being researched for a long time. When are we going to have desktop nuclear fusion?

To control plasma

See this slashdot thread [slashdot.org] for a complementary project working on the other half of the technology necessary to yield plasma-powered rockets. Plasma, essentially the fourth state of matter, is VERY hot and cannot be contained by normal means. A magnetic field, ostensibly impervious to temperature, is thought to be the way to contain the plasma and direct it. There is nothing really new here, except that this scientist is using a novel way to try to create this high energy plasma: the hydrino. Good luck to him... but I am also somewhat skeptical. He seems to be too much venture-capitalist, not enough scientist.

Different Angle:

Nasa OK'd the physics, and made sure that the scientists weren't fudging the data. Great, and too bad all this company has right now is "abnormally energetic plasma". So far we have an unexplained phenomenon. Genereally, unexplained phenomena get researched by scientists for years *before* a company and patents are formed, ne? Something stinks here, but I don't think it's a scam. It's mostly the smell of optimism ^+_+^ Who other than me predicts a "yeah, well, it's kind of like that antigravity effect - it happened, but no one can explain it or use it" type of situation arising from this research?

blp

Of course this is a scam, but I think there's an interesting question here: if they have any kind of setup which stores energy in a worthwhile way, and their patents depend on their explanation of how it works, which is crap, a sub-ground state of hydrogen, might their patents be ineffective at limiting commercial usage of the setup when it turns out the mechanism of operation's different than the patents claim?

subtract JAP publications

Having a paper accepted in the Journal of Applied Physics is no great feat. JAP is not considered as one of the more scholarly physics journals and often times publication in JAP translates to "you couldn't get the work published anywhere else." Folks who regularly publich in Phys. Rev or Phil Mag tend to look down on JAP publications.

Re:subtract JAP publications

Having a quick look at impact factors (IF) for a few journals, I was surprised to note that papers in JAP (IF ~2.2) are more likely to be cited (taken collectively) than papers in any of Phil. Mag. A, B, or Lett. (IF 1.8, 1.2, and 1.5, respectively.) IF should never be used by itself to measure the quality or importance of a journal.

Still, if you're purely interested in getting cited (for good or bad) JAP is a better bet. Now, some of those citations may be self-referential, and some may be refutations. Really, though, they're all third-tier journals. Phys. Rev. Lett. is definitely more prestigious, based on reputation and IF (6.46). I would lump it in loosely with the second-tier journals. The top-tier journals (for physics discoveries) are almost universally considered to be Science (IF 23.9) and Nature (IF 25.8). These last two are in a class by themselves.

So what's the point of all this? Usually there is some correlation between the scientific importance of an article and the level of journal in which it is published. I have published a paper in a third-tier journal. It was good science and solid data, but not a particularly important result. I was happy with that--people in my field could find it and appreciate it, and I wasn't wasting too many people's time with something rather obscure.

Any author will prefer a paper in Nature to a paper in a journal from one of the lower tiers. Shrinking hydrogen atoms has just the sort of gee-whiz factor appeal that journals (and their readers) love. Further, it suggests a new realm of science. Consequently, if the author in question had solid supporting data then he would have a paper in Nature right now. You need three things for a top-flight journal article: an interesting topic, an interesting result, and rock-solid data. He's got the first two. To quote Carl Sagan:

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof."

Looks like that (admittedly and appropriately high) bar has not been passed.

Cold Nuclear Fusion Anybody?

From the link, "Randell Mills has pledged for a decade to spark a revolution in physics that will not only overturn much of the atomic science that been taught and rewarded since the early 20th century, but will also provide a source of clean and nearly limitless energy."

Saddly, If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is...

Re:Cold Nuclear Fusion Anybody?

"How come we can get over 200 completely unique elements..."

Where do people get this crap? I have recently run into this belief with some coworkers. They also seemed to believe there were over 200 elements. There are around 112-118 elements. After around 92 they are man made. Somewhere around 110 they are only last few a split second and are only seen indirectly by their decay. Do yourself a favor and look at a recent periodic chart, or even just do a google search.

Reckless Disregard for the Truth

people like Robert Park. Park even went so far as to falsely charge in Forbes magazine that Mills was claiming a cancer cure from hydrinos. In 1988, Mills published a paper on cancer therapy in the journal Nature that relied on conventional physics-- he hadn't conceived of the hydrino yet.

With enemies like Park, Mills doesn't need friends. This is a really good way to get credibility with investors for Mills.

Re:Reckless Disregard for the Truth

Park's latest newsletter says:

NIAC (NASA Institute of Advanced Concepts) contracted with the Mechanical Engineering Department at Rowan University in Atlanta, to test the idea. Well, they just issued the final report for the 6-month Phase I study. They "successfully test fired" the thruster. "However, due to time and cost constraints successful measurements of the exhaust. velocity have not been completed." Not to worry. "These concepts will be proposed for an ongoing Phase II study."

Park seems to be a freethinker. He's very conservative on some things, but he mocks a makery of idiocy like the SDI.

Let the scientific method operate

Whether people believe or don't believe that this effect is real or non-existent is completely irrelevant. We have a perfectly good scientific method for distinguishing reality from fiction, and any "opinions" volunteered by experts and lay readers alike are not just irrelevant, but actually harmful to the success of that method.

The company will in due course provide all the info necessary for independent verification, which may succeed or fail, or else it won't provide it, in which case it fails by default on the scientific front. Opinions are, quite literally, just a waste of time.

The JAP Paper is online

The details of the paper are:

Journal of Applied Physics -- December 15, 2002 -- Volume 92, Issue 12, pp. 7008-7021

The abstract is as follows:

Comparison of excessive Balmer alpha line broadening of glow discharge and microwave hydrogen plasmas with certain catalysts

R. L. Mills, P. C. Ray, B. Dhandapani, R. M. Mayo, and J. He
BlackLight Power, Incorporated, 493 Old Trenton Road, Cranbury, New Jersey 08512

(Received 11 April 2002; accepted 25 September 2002)

From the width of the 656.3 nm Balmer alpha line emitted from microwave and glow discharge plasmas, it was found that a strontium-hydrogen microwave plasma showed a broadening similar to that observed in the glow discharge cell of 27-33 eV; whereas, in both sources, no broadening was observed for magnesium-hydrogen. Microwave helium-hydrogen and argon-hydrogen plasmas showed extraordinary broadening corresponding to an average hydrogen atom temperature of 180-210 eV and 110-130 eV, respectively. The corresponding results from the glow discharge plasmas were 33-38 eV and 30-35 eV respectively, compared to [approximate]4 eV for plasmas of pure hydrogen, neon-hydrogen, krypton-hydrogen, and xenon-hydrogen maintained in either source. Similarly, the average electron temperature Te for helium-hydrogen and argon-hydrogen microwave plasmas were high, 30 500±5% K and 13 700±5% K, respectively; compared to 7400±5% K and 5700±5% K for helium and argon alone, respectively. External Stark broadening or acceleration of charged species due to high fields can not explain the microwave results since no high field was present, and the electron density was orders of magnitude too low for the corresponding Stark effect. Rather, a resonant energy transfer mechanism is proposed.

Likelyhood

The likelyhood of this is being real is pretty low, but if true, it would likely stand atomic & quantum theory on its ear. I know that I don't know enough to say for sure, but I have to think that the fundamental basis of the proposition hear, that electrons are a sort of 'bubble' versus the accepted 'cloud', would require a lot of coincidental observations for the bubble theory to actually be true while the cloud theory appears to be true.

I'm very skeptical, but I'm sooo ready to see *some* kind of advance in the area of power generation.

More about the verifier

Anthony Marchese [rowan.edu] is a professor at Rowan University [rowan.edu], where he teaches Mechanical Engineering. He is a rather nice, young, "cool" professor, as I used to have him.

I'm guessing the reason NASA sent him out to research this is because among other things, he has done reasearch on how things combust (burn) [rowan.edu] in space. He has had his experiments taken up on the "vomit comet" as well as on the taken space shuttle mission STS-94 [rowan.edu], to which I recall a CNN reporter stating in an obviously overpitched tone, "Well, isn't that dangerous?"

I shall now turn this into the first ever slashdotting with credits as I list the names of the network administrators I know run various rowan.edu servers, ALL of which are now non-accessable:

Engineering.rowan.edu's administrators: (NOTE: an old Sun SPARC workstation box, will not survive any slashdotting, which it appears to be already getting!!!)

• John Robinson [rowan.edu] (Head engineering network admin)
• Dennis Dipasquale [rowan.edu] (Secondary engineering network admin, which is funny, since he was hired first)

Rowan.edu (in general) administrators: We must be fair - the school only had (has?) about a 4.5 Mbps total Internet connection (assuming no faster lines ever came through; they were waiting on a certain phone company for years...) - I'm timing out connecting to their stuff too...

• Mark Sedlock [rowan.edu] (General all-around network administrator and good guy to know)
• Patrick Ackerman [rowan.edu] (Primary generic *.rowan.edu webmaster and graphics designer)
• The rest of the general Rowan Information Resources Department

All the above URLs are off the top of my head, as I can no longer access any of those servers. Of the above, only www.rowan.edu seems to be up.

Congratulations to all the slashdotters who now have successfully flooded an entire campus' Internet connection. The students trying to stea^H^H^H^Hresearch their term papers but are now unable to get online will forever remember you.

It gets better:...

From the refered article [villagevoice.com]:

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.

The more I read this guy, the more the hairs on my back stand straight.

My uncle had a saying, that I just can't keep out of my mind as I'm reading all this:

"Someone who knows everything knows nothing."

OhNo

WHAT IS IT WITH YOU GUYS!!!

This guy is a con-artist taking you for a ride. Why are you feeding his ego. Utter nonsense!

If you actually read the NASA study, you will immediately see that there the amount of experimental evidence in NO WAY justifies any of the claims made. Excess power generation based on microwave heating of two different gas mixtures invalidates millions of REPEATABLE experiments conducted over the past 80 years? I DON'T THINK SO. Much more likely is that the adsorbtivity of the gases wasn't the same.

The NASA study didn't even get to the point where they measured exhaust gas velocity.

GIVE ME A BREAK.

Re:OhNo

The NASA study didn't even get to the point where they measured exhaust gas velocity.

NASA have a small project called the Breakthrough Physics Program [nasa.gov] whose job it is to give credible-sounding crackpots a go, on the offchance that one of them might be right. It's Pascal's Wager - though the chances of one of them being right are minimal, if one actually IS then the payoff is immense.

So NASA pick up this Blacklight bloke who is peddling a perpetual motion machine that flatly contradicts the most accurate scientific model ever constructed of any system (the quantum-mechanical model of the hydrogen atom) and give him a fair go. They perform a few experiments to test his claims, and in the end they say 'Meh. Well, maybe, kind of, sorta, but not so as you'd notice. Results inconclusive.'

Thing is, they have to say 'inconclusive'. If they didn't, they'd have to explain to their bosses why they've just spent a good deal of taxpayers' money on snake oil, and their funding is at risk. So they return the Scottish verdict, they stay in work, and the snake oil peddler goes away claiming that NASA scientists endorse his scheme and that the only reason they said 'inconclusive' was because Big Oil made them cover it up.

Will Science Never Learn?

You don't send a scientist to investigate questionable science, and what may or may not be a scam. You send a scientist *and* someone familiar with con artists, scammers, sleight of hand, misdirection, etc. How many times does this have to be said?

-Chris

Obligatory... sorry.

As Skeptic publisher Michael Shermer says, "The proof is in the hydrino pudding. The question is, when are you going to have desktop hydrino pudding?"

"Desktop"? No, imagine a Beowulf cluster of >THUNK
Thank god he didn't advise a laptop version. I only fill my lap with pudding for *special* occasions.

For you who actually think before posting...

I've done some reading on this subject, and the fundamental theory stems from an assumption that the electron assumes a non-classical (particle) and non-quantum (no probability wave) form of a two-dimensional shell (called an "orbitsphere"). This is where everything comes from, and nobody has been able to disprove the theory yet. The work presently being persued is seemingly discombobulated because it's being influenced by commercial applications. It is pushing to empirically prove the existence of hydrinos (i.e. lookie what I made, therefore they exist!) instead of forming a rock-solid experiment (in the eyes of the scientific community) to prove the existence of hydrinos (i.e. I did X and Y and got A, not Z or B, and here's my test setup and data which clearly shows that I took into account all the variables that you'd otherwise say I neglected, therefore they must exist. Now how can I make money off of this?).

For those who would like to read more, please /. the following link. It's Dr. Mills' company's webpage which offers a free PDF "book" [blacklightpower.com] on the subject.

Re:For you who actually think before posting...

I have read his work and brought it to the attention of my chemistry professor - a cautious optimist in the cold fusion search. He had also read Mills' book and declared it UTTER bunk. What I failed to catch as an undergrad was that his mathematics were totally flawed. I wasn't really reading it critically.

He showed me errors which I could confirm from undergrad level physics, calc, chemistry. Remember Mills is a freaking MD not a PhD. His results may not be a fraud but he hasn't put together a cogent theory.

The biggest problem wasn't actually with the math errors per say but that the math was totally mis-applied. The results were meaningless. Before you say I was just following along with the "establishment" I can tell you it wasn't a close call.

At best he is an alchemist. At worst he is a fraud.

It would be great if he comes up with a way of extracting energy from water (he claims to generate enough energy from hydrogen to extract it from water).

Wanting something to be true though does not make it any more likely to be true, however.

Slashdotted.

Here is the text I was able to get:

Research Project Funded by the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts

Principal Investigator

Anthony J. Marchese, Ph.D. [rowan.edu]
Associate Professor
Department of Mechanical Engineering [rowan.edu]
College of Engineering [rowan.edu]
Rowan University [rowan.edu]
201 Mullica Hill Road
Glassboro, NJ 08028-1701

Office: 235 Rowan Hall
Email address: [e-mail] [mailto]
Telephone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]

Project Summary

During the past decade, several research groups have begun to report unique spectroscopic results for mixed gas plasma systems in which one of the species present was hydrogen gas. In these experiments, researchers have reported excessive line broadening of H emission lines and peculiar non-Boltzmann population of excited states. The hydrogen line broadening in most of these studies was attributed to Doppler broadening associated with high random translational velocity of H atoms (i.e. "fast hydrogen").

Recent data have been published by scientists at BlackLight Power reporting similar phenomena that suggests the presence of a newly identified regime of energetic mixed gas hydrogen plasma systems. Specifically, the following phenomena have been reported:

• Preferential Doppler line broadening of atomic hydrogen emission spectra,

• Inverted populations of hydrogen Balmer series in microwave hydrogen gas mixture plasmas,

• Novel vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) vibration spectra of hydrogen mixture plasmas, an

• Water bath calorimeter experiments interpreted as showing increased heat generation in certain gas mixtures.

Scientists at BlackLight Power, Inc. have explained the above phenomena based on a hypothesis that, under certain conditions, hydrogen atoms can undergo transitions to energy levels corresponding to fractional principal quantum numbers. However, since the theoretical explanation of the BlackLight Process has entailed a reworking of quantum mechanics, the theory has not been readily accepted in the scientific community. Regardless of the theoretical explanation, the experimental data suggests that these plasma systems have unique characteristics that warrant further exploration for propulsion applications.

Accordingly, the objective of the recently completed NIAC Phase I study was to assess the potential of low pressure, mixed gas hydrogen plasmas toward the development of high performance space propulsion systems. The project was awarded to Rowan by the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts [usra.edu] in April 2002. Prior to the Phase I study, no attempt had been made to apply this type of plasma system toward the development of a rocket thruster. Preliminary calculations suggest that such a thruster could achieve performance several orders of magnitude greater than chemical rocket propulsion.

During the period of May 1, 2002 to November 30, 2002, the following progress was made on the project:

• Conceptual designs for two separate proof-of-concept thrusters were completed.

• Configuration designs for thruster hardware were developed using SolidWorks 3D solids modeling.

• A BlackLight Plasma Thruster (BLPT) was fabricated.

• A BlackLight Microwave Plasma Thruster (BLMPT) was fabricated.

• An experimental vacuum test chamber apparatus was developed for testing the BLPT and BLMPT thrusters.

• A spectroscopic technique was developed for measuring thruster exhaust velocity using a Doppler shift of hydrogen emission spectra.

• A 1 kW class arcjet thruster and power supply was obtained from NASA Glenn Research Center to benchmark Doppler shift velocity measurement technique.

• Experiments on the BlackLight process were performed including:

o Thermal characterization of a compound hollow cathode glow discharge apparatus,

o Hydrogen line broadening measurements in low pressure microwave water plasmas,

o Measurements of inversion of line intensities in hydrogen Balmer series,

o Measurements of novel vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) vibration spectra of hydrogen mixture plasma, and

o Water bath calorimetry experiments.

• The BLPT and BLMPT were installed into vacuum systems and successfully test fired.

• Preliminary experiments were performed to measure emission spectra of the exhaust gases of the BLMPT thruster.

Each of these results is described in the Phase I final report [rowan.edu], which was issued on Dec. 2, 2002.

The following presentation was given at the NASA Instituted for Advanced Concepts Phase I Fellows Meeting in Atlanta, GA on October 25, 2002. Download presentation here [rowan.edu].

Rowan Project Personnel

Anthony Marchese, PI

John Schmalzel, Co-PI

Peter Jansson, Co-PI

Mike Muhlbaier, student

Kevin Garrison, student

Jennifer Demetrio, student

Tom Smith, student

Mike Resciniti, '02 (Graduated. Now at University of Michigan.)

Test Firing BLMPT Thruster

Last updated: Dec 4, 2002

Richard P. Feynman,

Sorry, until we have the current living heir to the intellectual tradition and rigor of Richard P. Feynman examine and confirm these claims, it's just so much snake oil.

He doesn't have to be 100% right.

So what if this guy's theory is wrong? As long as there is sufficient evidence of a new strange or unexplained phenomena it's probably worth investigating. Maybe scientists are too busy repeating experiments done by 1000 other scientists. People have already spent billions in hot nuclear fusion and when I last checked it's still the same number of years away. The ISS is not significantly more than an expensive Mir.

You might as well call Columbus a crack pot and a conman - his theory was wrong, he took other people's money and practically lied to them, and he was far from being even the first.

Same goes for cold fusion - even if it's not cold fusion, there seems to be some interesting phenomena in it.

Tons of scientists make up theories without providing any evidence, but they still are lauded for it. Sure it's called "theoretical ......".

To naysayers it's better to ignore stuff than be negative without evidence, at least you won't look like an idiot if you are wrong.

wait for the results to be reproduced

I get the impression that the majority of the people badmouthing Dr. Mills and BlackLight Power are doing so simply because what he claims is so revolutionary that it sounds too good to be true. The majority of the commentors on this thread have shown no understanding of the physics behind these claims (I'll be the first to admit, I don't know enough physics to understand what this theory is trying to say, so I will not comment on whether or not this is a crackpot theory). However, I did take the time to find the paper where Mills published his theory [blacklightpower.com], and read through the first few pages. Even though it was over my head, I did grasp that if his theory supports what he claims it does, it could be very powerful.
I therefore leave more knowledgeable groups (such as peer-reviewed journals) to sift through the physics and decide if it is at least possible. If it is possible, the next step to validate a scientific theory is to verify its predictions, which BlackLightPower has claimed to have done. To double check these claims, it is up to other institutions to try to reproduce these results. I have yet to find any group that has tried to repeat the hydrino experiments. I think that this is what NASA is trying to do. If NASA can get the same results, it's a pretty sure bet Mills is on to something here. If they can't, this theory will be defeated once and for all.
Mills' claims are going through the scientific process. so far, they have withstood it, but they have a long way yet to go. I'm not sure whether this guy's right or wrong, but I don't think it's our place to criticize him without giving him a chance. Let's wait until NASA tries to reproduce the results before we claim it doesn't work.

reproducibility and publishing

Rather, the report simply notes that these high-energy plasmas are created only with the company's catalysts.

If the composition of those "catalysts" remains proprietary, then the work is effectively not independently reproducible and should not get published in any journal. Saying "buy this magic powder from company X and it will do something spectacular" just isn't acceptable.

Do a Google search on "randell mills physics"

I thought I recognized his name from an article a while back in Wired covering cold fusion. I was right.... (well, at least on the memory that he seemed like a quack.)

From the search you'll see bios listing him as a publisher of a paper on the Grand Unified Theory.

C'mon.

A better village voice article [villagevoice.com] in 99 that was already skeptical. I like how he promised "I'll have demonstrated an entirely new form of energy production by the end of 2000".

This IS cold fusion

If you recall the infamous cold fusion experiments, the energy there was supposedly generated by bringing deuterium atoms closer together by packing them into a palladium electrode. Results were difficult to reproduce, but clearly something was leading them to believe that net energy increase was occuring. Sounds like "hydrinos" may indeed be undergoing fusion.

Re:Suggestion

They should add a new line to the Slashdot FAQ: "You should only read this site if you payed attention in science class." ...and if you paid attention in English class.

Re:Suggestion

payed [reference.com] is a perfectly cromulent word.

Re:Good to see a payoff for "bad" science finally

There is a very interesting refutation of hydrino theory here [freeenergies.org]. The author uses basic E & M, a little calculus, and the uncertainty principle to assert that the Bohr radius is the minimum energy for a Hydrogen atom's electron. I'd love to see someone refute the argument.

Re:Good to see a payoff for "bad" science finally

For every ground breaking discovery there are a million crackpots. Scientists have plenty of reasons to be sceptic. Once this guy is able topower a space heater with his plasma they will have to believe him.

btw who says the ether exists?

Re:Good to see a payoff for "bad" science finally

It sounds nice to say that every idea should get a fair examination, but in reality there are limited resources, both materially and in terms of peoples' time. You have to make some judgment calls, and it makes me angry that NASA is wasting money on a textbook free energy scam when they could be spending it on something useful. Of course it's possible that 'hydrino' theory is correct, but I certainly don't see any reason to believe that's so in the meandering mess of 'experiments' that have been advanced so far as proof. Having an open mind is a great ideal, but you have to practical about things too if you want to get anything done.

Re:Good to see a payoff for "bad" science finally

many self-righteous so-called "scientists" have this incredible fear of anything outside their understanding. Meteorites? They don't exist,

Psychic powers? Oops, they went away when you walked in the room.

Psychic powers? Oops, we ignored basic sercuity cautions and let the subject cheat.

Psychic powers? Oops, it looks like we fudged our numbers.

Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, shame on you.

When "scientists" stop acting as defensive about their holy truths as any other two-bit religion with a tenuous basis, perhaps we can make some real progress.

Because the odds of surviving cancer haven't steadily been going up. Because there's no drugs for people with HIV to hold back the virus. Because our movies all come on magnatic media, or long rolls of optical media. Because we have to search for a payphone when we need to make a phone call. Because slow mail or expensive phone calls are the only way for most Americans, Europeans and Japanese to communicate.

get back to the "real" work of investigating the universe *as it exists*, not as you believe it to exist.

Small enough circuits have quantum bleed-over, just like predicted by theory. Einstein's theory predicted gravitational lenses, just like they were found in real life. These theories describe the universe fairly well.

On the other hand, we've been seeing perpetual motion machines for how many centuries? And they never seem to work if and when we get our hands on them. How much work should a scientist spend studying something that's been disproved time and time again? When given something that seems bogus and is presented by someone with a financial motive, that doesn't correspond to the theories that are correct in every observation they made, the general trend is that it actually is bogus.

Here's another question: what do you do? Scientists would rather not go on what they feel will probably be a wild goose chase, instead working on stuff they feel will get results. I can hardly fault someone for making that decision - I try to avoid wasting my time myself. If you believe it has value, why don't you dedicate your time to studying it?

Re:Good to see a payoff for "bad" science finally

Im 100% with you on this one. The guy has a weird ass phenomenon and a theroy about why it happens. Other people are trying to verify it. Thats pretty much science in a nutshell.

It the theroy isn't verified, thats science to. Also, there is no harm in trying to do something with the phenomenon even if we don't understand it. I think its likely that the guy might be able to make something usefull and *have no clue* why it works. Electricity was being used and studied 100 years before we had a clue what it was.

Re:Good to see a payoff for "bad" science finally

If this hydrino particle exists at a lower energy level than a hydrogen atom, wouldn't one expect them to be somewhat common outside of the laboratory? In fact, you'd expect them to be more and more common as time passes because the energy needed to maintain a hydrogen atom with the electrons at a higher energy level would be lost as unusable heat (entropy, right?). So you'd expect with all the particle physics, quantum physics, etc being researched, you'd think someone else would have run into one of these "hydrinos" in the wild. I'll believe it when someone reproduces his results. Until then, I'll file this next to cold fusion in my "unsubstatiated miracle science" folder.