Journal of Applied Physics, NASA, and the Hydrino 247
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.
To control plasma (Score:2, Informative)
subtract JAP publications (Score:5, Informative)
Cold Nuclear Fusion Anybody? (Score:2, Informative)
Saddly, If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is...
Re:Good to see a payoff for "bad" science finally (Score:5, Informative)
Let the scientific method operate (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Cold Nuclear Fusion Anybody? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Cold Nuclear Fusion Anybody? (Score:1, Informative)
he is an idiot. or a troll. hard to tell which really.
okay, you want a real response:
we can get over 100 unique elements with nothing more then three subatomic particles because the properties of elements are largely determined by how their outer shell of electrons interacts. There are many other factors (mass is determined by number of nuclear particles
that also answers the second part of his troll. the reason that molecules can be nothing like the elements they are composed of is that once elements bond together, they have a different outer electron shell structure (well, not really, but you can think of it that way), so they have different properties.
Re:Reckless Disregard for the Truth (Score:4, Informative)
Park seems to be a freethinker. He's very conservative on some things, but he mocks a makery of idiocy like the SDI.
More about the verifier (Score:5, Informative)
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!!!)
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...
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.
For you who actually think before posting... (Score:2, Informative)
For those who would like to read more, please
Re:reputed journal... Maybe.... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Slashdotted. (Score:4, Informative)
Research Project Funded by the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts
Principal Investigator
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
Test Firing BLMPT Thruster
Re:For you who actually think before posting... (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Do a Google search on "randell mills physics" (Score:3, Informative)
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".
Re:Crackpot Ideas (Score:3, Informative)
How many people have died because they went to someone with a crackpot idea that he could heal them without surgery, without chemo, without drugs? How many people have spent needless time sick because they used homeopathic medicine (studied and disproved since 1846) instead doctor approved medicines (or chicken soup and bed rest)? How many people have had a lifetime of missed chances, because instead of working on something that could have been right, they were working on a crackpot idea that didn't have a chance in hell of being right? How many chances do we miss as a society because we spend on crackpot ideas (and supporting thier manufacturers) instead of real things, the money from which will go in part to real research?