Brilliant Light Power Going To Market - Free Energy Generator

[fagin]

I'm going to put solar panels in front of the headlights on my Jeep...

That will generate even more power as the light will be moving at the speed of light PLUS the speed you drive.

 

[jrhowell]

But as it is now, it looks like it will take something like a functioning SunCell to turn the tide.

That is a ridiculous idea, that the only convincing evidence would be a commercially viable energy source. There is a huge gap between the unconvincing anomalous results that he has presented so far and something like that.

Any reproducible experiment that generated hydrinos in sufficient quantity for them to be detected would be convincing. So far nothing like that has ever been shown. Just science-y sounding explanations and promises of a bright future from something that he still cannot convincingly demonstrate to actually exist after decades of work.

Why not a simple experiment to generate hydrinos using just pure hydrogen and the required catalyst (apparently water molecules)? Instead there are all kinds of chemicals in a demonstration that immediately burns out with no easy way to account for the brief energy production among all of the reactions that occur.

Looks like a fraud, smells like a fraud...

 

[Horatius]

Any reproducible experiment that generated hydrinos in sufficient quantity for them to be detected would be convincing.

And let's note that "in sufficient quantity for them to be detected" doesn't have to be all that much. Consider the history of research into plutonium:

After a series of purification steps Chicago chemists Burris Cunningham and Lewis Werner could then extract small amounts of plutonium salt from the original material. These salts, however, trapped a little water within their crystal structure. By burning thesalts in air—and therefore reacting them with oxygen—the scientists created a water-free plutonium oxide. For the first time they were able to put their pure compound onto a specially made scale and record that they had isolated 2.77 micrograms worth. “They could actually see it,” says U.C. Berkeley nuclear engineer Eric Norman, who performed some of the new tests to identify the sample’s origins. “No one had ever seen plutonium before.”

That's micrograms, not milligrams. Millionths of a gram. And that's all it took to set us on the road to a plutonium-based atomic bomb.

 

[JeanTate]

Couldn't find the particular post I wanted to quote - it was somewhere in the discussion of either the CNN "device", or ms' "no commercial power source could melt W rods in 0.00001ns!" (I'm paraphrasing) - but this will do.

You melt the snow,,,, hey I might try that. Only need to figure out where to buy wire that can supply 2KAmps at 120Vac
Might have an issue with my 400 Amp panel too.

If you plug in 493 Old Trenton Rd, East Windsor NJ (the official location of BLP) into Google Maps, you'll get an idea of what sort of building it is, and what sort of commercial/industrial power supply it likely gets from its local utility (PSE&G?).

 

[JeanTate]

JeanTate mentions the Rathke paper which is highly critical of Mills and his theory. Here is a link to it without a paywall:
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1367-2630/7/1/127

Thanks marplots.

Part 2


There comes a time, in the life of many threads here in the Science, Mathematics, Medicine, and Technology section of the ISF, where someone points out an important feature of at least the Science part: ISF members really do like to read primary sources. Which means papers published in relevant peer-reviewed journals.

You, markie, have been asked for primary sources, and in post #1142 you provided a link to a source which appears to contain some such primary sources.

However, it now seems that you yourself have not read them (or at least not read some of the key ones). Instead, you seem to be relying upon a book. And relying upon what is said in that book to be a sufficiently accurate summary of what's in at least some of the published papers.

Several ISF members have asked, even challenged, you on some of the physics and chemistry aspects of the claims you have made (or repeated) re the work of Mills et al. and the BLP Free Energy Generator (ditto re engineering, financial, and other aspects; I'm going to concentrate on the physics, and some of the chemistry). Myself, I have formed the - provisional - opinion that you do not seem to understand the physics of hydrinos very well, nor are you particularly familiar with what's in Mills et al.'s published papers. I do hope, as this thread continues, to have solid evidence that my provisional opinion is wrong.

"How do you know it's not very good?"

This is an excellent question!

I'm going to take my time to answer it. First, I'll describe a context, or background; one which I think quite a few ISF members can vouch for, from their own, personal experience.

At least in the west, your average physics department of your average university gets, on average, at least one unsolicited document a month. Some such are brief, some run to hundreds of pages. A great many make claims about Einstein being wrong, or otherwise seeking to overthrow some well established part of physics. Some end up being published in viXra, a few on arXiv, and a tiny minority appear in a journal. Unbeknownst to the general public, many of those journals are "pay to publish"; whilst they may have the appearance of being peer-reviewed, almost everything submitted ends up being published (the only thing which counts is the $$ paid by the author(s) to the journal).

(Aside: I do not know how many, if any, of the ~25 journals in Brett's "over 100" list are of the "pay to publish" kind.)

The ones which end up in arXiv, or a non-"pay to publish" journal, we might call "fringe"; the rest, "crackpot". In this scheme, Mills' stuff is fringe, as you have already noted.

A common feature of fringe ideas is that the idea leader's papers (Mills, in this case) are cited by the idea leader or her colleagues ... and essentially no one else. This certainly seems to be the case here! I've been checking the ~50 papers in Int. J. of Hydrogen Energy with R.L. Mills as an author, and so far I've found almost none which are cited by anyone else.

Which brings me to A. Rathke (2005), "A critical analysis of the hydrino model", New Journal of Physics, Volume 7, Issue 1, pp. 127 (2005) (see post #609 for links). This does, indeed, cite a Mills paper; three in fact (all links are to the respective ADS entries): Mills+ (2002) "Comparison of excessive Balmer α line broadening of glow discharge and microwave hydrogen plasmas with certain catalysts", Journal of Applied Physics, Volume 92, Issue 12, pp. 7008-7021 (2002); Mills&Ray (2002) "Substantial changes in the characteristics of a microwave plasma due to combining argon and hydrogen", New Journal of Physics, Volume 4, Issue 1, pp. 22 (2002); and Mills&Ray (2003) "Extreme ultraviolet spectroscopy of helium hydrogen plasma", Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics, Volume 36, Issue 13, pp. 1535-1542 (2003)*.

I have no idea what led Rathke to decide to take the time and trouble to write his 2005 paper, but I can well imagine that it went something like this: likely hundreds of physicists - including those who do little or no research - have read at least one of the three papers Rathke cites; likely almost all quickly found what they considered to be fatal flaws; likely very few thought there would be a way to "save" this idea. But Rathke was different; perhaps he had some spare time, perhaps he was curious, perhaps a superior suggested it'd be an interesting project, ...

Anyway, he did take a look, decided there was really nothing in the idea, wrote his paper, and got it published. It has nine cites ... none of them by Mills et al.

Does that answer your question, markie? Do you now have a better idea of why your suggestion - "Perhaps it's time for you to download the GUTCP book and read, at least the introduction" - is not one I'll be taking up any time soon?

* all three are in Brett's ">100" list. BTW, I just noticed that his list - of 81, as I count it - contains duplicates.

(to be continued)

(my bold)

Rathke (2005) has 29 references, of which 23 have Mills as author (all but one as lead author, and five as sole author). So how come I missed this?

Well, it seems that ADS doesn't cover Int. J. Hydrogen Energy at all (perhaps it recognizes it as not meeting its standards? or not being sufficiently related to astrophysics?), and 17 of the 23 Mills references are from that journal. One reference is Mills' own book (no surprise that ADS doesn't include that!). And I missed the one reference in which Mills is not the lead author (Phillips+ (2004) "Water bath calorimetric study of excess heat generation in ``resonant transfer'' plasmas", Journal of Applied Physics, Volume 96, Issue 6, pp. 3095-3102 (2004)).

Which leaves two. One is also in New J. Phys. 4, but on p70 (not p22). The other is Mills+ (2002) "Comparison of excessive Balmer alpha line broadening of glow discharge and microwave hydrogen plasmas with certain catalysts", J. Appl. Phys. 92 7008; I have no idea why ADS missed this.

Take away: it takes time - but pays - to be extra careful on things like this, especially when it's in a field you are not particularly familiar with.

 

[JeanTate]

I don't know what happened to the contract with that power company. I'm not an insider in the loop.

<snip>

How concerned, or similar, are you about this?

 

[jsfisher]

The temperature of the first working SunCells is supposed to reach 3000 C.

Great, but that is not what I asked.

Mills has said that when the reaction is quenched the graphite dome (about one foot in diameter) will almost immediate go from glowing white hot to not glowing at all.

This is also not responsive to what I asked. Moreover, white hot is considerably below the temperatures under consideration here.

In addition, how is the glowing (well above) white-hot graphite prevented from sublimating? (or silver from boiling or ....)

How he plans to shut down the reaction relatively quickly, I'm not sure, especially since the reaction can apparently self sustain to some extent.

This should be a major concern, no?

 

[jsfisher]

Here is a portion of an article from the Village Voice (written 1999) that sheds some light, pun intended.

Let me see if I follow this....Joseph Conrads, who published under the pseudonym Hannah Conrads, is really Johannes Conrads? Which one is possibly the most respected plasma physicist in the world?

 

[The Man]

Yes you have it essentially right. The photon (from the hydrogen to hydrino transition) is said to have a sharp 'cutoff' at a maximum energy. If only one photon is released in the process it will be that maximum energy, ie, a photon of a particular wavelength. But there can also be a continuum of photons of lesser energies released as well, which will sum up to the maximum energy, which will be a multiple of 13.6 eV.

To be clear, the resonant transfer of the 27.2 eV to the third body occurs first ; this destabilizes the ground state hydrogen which then falls to a lower energy hydrino state, emitting a photon or a continuum of photons in the process.

Losing 27.2 eV isn't destabilizing "the ground state hydrogen" it is already a lower energy state itself.

Also of note, the catalyst can be a number of different compounds, as long as they have an ionization energy of 27.2 eV. Mills only relatively recently found that water itself, free of bonding to other water molecules, has the correct ionization energy to be used as a catalyst.



Right. Why exactly is the electron of the hydrino impervious to photons (of any energy)? It has to do with what is called the Haus non radiation condition, wherein certain configurations of surface charge (which define the electron) do not radiate photons, nor are they disturbed by photons. Why is this? The currents of surface charge are apparently 'not synchronous with the speed of light'. That's about as deep as I can go. Mills goes more deeply into this and the findings of Haus. BTW Haus was Mills' teacher at MIT.

Actually, the Haus non radiation condition explicitly treats the electron as a point charge.

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1986AmJPh..54.1126H

Abstract

An alternative derivation of the radiation field of a point charge is presented. It starts with the Fourier components of the current produced by the moving charge. The electric field is found from the vector wave equation. Each step in the integration permits physical interpretation. The retarded time appears very naturally in this derivation. The interpretation of the present derivation is that a charge at constant velocity v¯(‖v¯‖<c) does not radiate, not because it is unaccelerated, but because it has no Fourier components synchronous with waves traveling at the speed of light. Of course, Cherenkov radiation in a medium, in which the velocity of electromagnetic propagation is less than c, is the classic example of radiation by a charge moving at constant velocity.

Also it is the Haus non radiation condition not the 'Haus non absorption condition'. So while intend to account for the non-radiation of consistent bound charge orbital sates (as experimentally observed) it can not in and of itself preclude that bound state being as your put it "disturbed by photons" (absorption) as that is also experimentally observed.

 

[JeanTate]

You say this:
And you also say this:
So are we right in thinking that the formation of a hydrino causes the emission of a detectable photon at a characteristic energy and the "resonant" transfer of 27.2eV to a third body (which you call a catalyst), which is, apparently, a water molecule? If so, why?

Yes you have it essentially right. The photon (from the hydrogen to hydrino transition) is said to have a sharp 'cutoff' at a maximum energy. If only one photon is released in the process it will be that maximum energy, ie, a photon of a particular wavelength. But there can also be a continuum of photons of lesser energies released as well, which will sum up to the maximum energy, which will be a multiple of 13.6 eV.

To be clear, the resonant transfer of the 27.2 eV to the third body occurs first ; this destabilizes the ground state hydrogen which then falls to a lower energy hydrino state, emitting a photon or a continuum of photons in the process.

Also of note, the catalyst can be a number of different compounds, as long as they have an ionization energy of 27.2 eV. Mills only relatively recently found that water itself, free of bonding to other water molecules, has the correct ionization energy to be used as a catalyst.

And then the hydrino apparently has zero cross section for interaction with photons of the emitted photon plus 27.2eV? If so, why?

Right. Why exactly is the electron of the hydrino impervious to photons (of any energy)? It has to do with what is called the Haus non radiation condition, wherein certain configurations of surface charge (which define the electron) do not radiate photons, nor are they disturbed by photons. Why is this? The currents of surface charge are apparently 'not synchronous with the speed of light'. That's about as deep as I can go. Mills goes more deeply into this and the findings of Haus. BTW Haus was Mills' teacher at MIT.

(my bold)

Here's Rathke's summary, from the Introduction section of his paper:

These [new hydrino states] are assumed to be reachable in the collision of hydrogen atoms with a catalyst, which can make an electronic transition of the same energy. In the collision the energy is transferred from the hydrogen to the catalyst, which absorbs it by an electronic transition to a more energetic state. Eventually, the catalyst will release the acquired energy by the emission of a photon and return to its ground state. The lowest-energy hydrino state, the real ground state of the hydrogen atom, is then determined by the requirement that the orbital velocity of the sheath electron must not exceed the speed of light. The use of the alleged hydrino states for power systems relies on inducing the decay of hydrogen to a hydrino state and using the energy released in this process.

YMMV, but I find Rathke's summary far more readable and understandable than the multiple versions markie has posted here.

So, what's this "Haus non radiation condition"?

I'm not going to provide links (stuff on this is easy enough to find), but there's a decent-looking WP article on it, and in its Talk page, you can read attempts by Mills boosters to have them edit the text to include Mills', um, work. Suffice it to say that it's a curious, but quite esoteric, corner of classical electromagnetism, which Mills tried to bolt onto his CQM ("a new deterministic theory of quantum mechanics called the 'grand unified theory of classical quantum mechanics' ", as Rathke puts it). You can also quickly find some old (~13 years!) internet discussions of this.

Or, to repeat what's been said, the reasons for the apparent odd behavior of hydrinos, re absorption and emission of photons, are entirely dependent on the validity of CQM.

ETA: The Man beat me to it, re "Haus non radiation condition"

 

[The Man]

Yes you are right, the answer is found in Mill's alternative theory. That theory started forming when he was working with his professor Haus at MIT.
Anyway, a post or two ago I gave a superficial description of why the hydrino does not absorb a photon, nor release one (unless it is destabilized by yet another resonant - energy transfer collision with a catalyst).

Great, collision of all kinds of different energy transfers happen all the time in gases and plasmas. So we should find those transitions to hydrinos and back again all over the place.

"superficial" is an understatement, entirely inadequate would be as polite and more accurately descriptive.

 

[JeanTate]

The last sentence is a bit convoluted, and not at all what I intended (if you read it straight). Too many negatives.

Here's a better version (changes in bold):

The notion that essentially all research chemists and physicists (and astronomers, astrophysicists, cosmologists), everywhere, would ignore the potentially fundamental, Nobel Prize winning ideas Mills et al. has published is ... difficult to accept.

For sure, and I am acutely aware of this aspect. But those in academia are people and not immune to herd dynamics.

And they are also pretty good at quickly deciding what is crackpot and what is not.

Likewise at reading the papers which report null results when trying to replicate Mills et al.'s reported results (Phelps&Clementson (2012) is far from the only one), and which conclusively show CQM to have no legs (e.g. Rathke (2005)).

If a couple of prominent scientists endorsed Mill's work, the floodgates would open I think.

I think you have it backwards ... the floodgates would open if "a couple of prominent scientists" were able to replicate Mills' reported results, or if someone could re-write CQM in such a form that it was internally consistent and consistent with all relevant experimental and observational results.

(One can dream.) Mills already has a number of smart people at universities who are willing to endorse at least certain aspects of his work. But as it is now, it looks like it will take something like a functioning SunCell to turn the tide.

Yes, you can dream.

Another thing which might turn the tide is an explosion at BLP, followed by a few thousand deaths in East Windsor, due to toxic exposure to hydrino compounds.

 

[JeanTate]

Hi, markie, blindly accepting the existence of imaginary "hydrino formation" is not good.
There is no evidence of hydrinos existing in that experiment. There is no evidence that this is anything more than a (probably inefficient) electroplating machine.
The scientific papers have been debunked in this thread.

Blindly accepting the existence of hydrino? "No evidence"? Ha!

RC is correct, as he usually is.

From my reading of the published papers, I have found none - zero, zilch - which independently report the existence of (or formation of) hydrinos (independent of Mills et al.)

Can you, markie, cite any such paper?

 

[JeanTate]

<snip>

But according to GUTCP the electron is a 2 dimensional spherical surface comprised of current loops of charge, which essentially comprises an 'ensemble of charges'.

What is the electron in CQM?

 

[The Man]

This shows that you do not understand what Mills is saying about the electron. You are depicting the electron as a point particle orbiting the nucleus. But according to GUTCP the electron is a 2 dimensional spherical surface comprised of current loops of charge, which essentially comprises an 'ensemble of charges'.

Well, there goes Haus non radiation condition which also is explicitly about "the radiation field of a point charge".

Also I should point out that "an 'ensemble of charges'" would not constitute a surface. a surface would be continuous where such charges would be discrete. So your assertion appears to be that Mills doesn't consider the orbiting electron to be a point charge but a collection of, well, "current loops of charge" which would actually mean 'charges traveling in loops of charge', as a current is unit charge passing a point or surface per unit time.

 

[Worm]

For reference, the Village Voice article referenced above: http://www.villagevoice.com/news/quantum-leap-6420156

 

[JeanTate]

It's interesting that skeptics swoon over Rathke's critique.

"skeptics"? "swoon"? "critique"?

markie, I hate to break it to you, but you should be really happy that Rathke took the time and trouble to a) read Mills' work, and b) write a paper on his CQM.

Once again, you seem to be rather ignorant of what science is, and how it works. For example, fundamentally, all scientists are "skeptics", and a high percentage of published papers are "critiques".

The usual (scientific) response to Rathke's paper would be one - by Mills, or someone else - pointing out the flaws in his (Rathke's) paper (e.g. misapplication of techniques, misrepresentation of key elements of CQM), or presenting a revised version of CQM which was demonstrably internally consistent.

As you well know, Mills himself did not write such a paper. That dealt a huge blow to both his credibility as a serious physicist, and to the perceived validity of CQM.

I remember reading it some years ago and was not impressed.

Perhaps you could re-read it?

As I recall he tried to describe the hydrino in terms of the Schrodinger equation, and it didn't support the existence of hydrinos. Well of course it didn't! A major point in GUTCP is that Schrodinger's equation is not the way to do it, and reasonable grounds imo for this are given in GUTCP.
Furthermore, how many people realize that Schrodinger himself regretted what his equation became used for? Pardon the bad grammar.

I think the kindest thing I can say here is that your memory is fallible ...

Oh, and what hecd2 said.

 

[JeanTate]

But wait! There's more!

(my bold)

Who is this "possibly the most respected plasma physicist in the world" Joseph Conrads? Google comes up blank for me.

The paper's lead author is not Joseph Conrads, but Hannah Conrads; Google tells me there are lots of people with this name ... but none (apparently) who are (or were) plasma physicists. ADS has 30 entries, all but three before 2000, and the earliest 1963.

Perhaps markie can tell us what's going on?

Here is a portion of an article from the Village Voice (written 1999) that sheds some light, pun intended.

Dr. Johannes Conrads, former director of the Institute for Low Temperature Plasma Physics at Ernst Moritz Arndt University in Greifswald, Germany, told a gathering of the American Chemical Society in October that he was able to produce "remarkably high energy" from a Mills cell. But Conrads said he thought the energy could be coming from an effect within dense regions of plasma produced through the BlackLight Power process.

Thanks.

So now we have Joseph Conrads (per your source), Hannah Conrads (lead author of the paper your source cited), and Dr. Johannes Conrads.

Here is a link to what I think is the source ("an article from the Village Voice (written 1999)"). It's an interesting read, especially considering the date. For some reason I can't quite put my finger on, I was particularly struck by this: "Times are tough on Robert Mills Sr.'s 91-acre grain farm in Chester County, Pennsylvania."

I guess Mills boosters are not especially known for the consistency, accuracy, and reliability, wouldn't you say?

ETA: Worm had already posted a link to the VV source markie cited. As they say in CosmoQuest (formerly BAUT), I was ToSeeked (can't remember what the ISF term is, ninjad?)

 

[The Man]

Why not a simple experiment to generate hydrinos using just pure hydrogen and the required catalyst (apparently water molecules)? Instead there are all kinds of chemicals in a demonstration that immediately burns out with no easy way to account for the brief energy production among all of the reactions that occur.

Looks like a fraud, smells like a fraud...

Well, they need water molecules that aren't bound to each other (dipole-dipole attraction and other Van der Waals forces). If only there was a state of water where the molecules weren't dominated by such forces. No need to get steamed up about their inability to find such a state of water though.

 

[JeanTate]

Of course I can see your very well laid out point. Arp had a fundamental idea and went full tilt with it, even despite growing evidences against it.

Mill's theory has minimal first principles and yet it is highly predictive of phenomena such as spectra and bond energies.

So you say.

That's rather an underwhelming statement.

Given that "Mill's theory" [sic] is internally inconsistent, a flaw that's likely not fixable.

I'd've been far more impressed if you'd said something like "and Mills has shown (paper1, paper2, paper3, ... paper45) that it is fully consistent with all relevant experimental and observational results, within its domain of applicability".

But we already know that Mills seems far more interested in developing a free energy generator than overthrowing one of the two foundations of contemporary physics, winning global acclaim (and fortune) as the best physicist since Einstein, oh and bagging a Nobel Prize or two.

Try as I might, I simply cannot understand why he has chosen to not focus on the physics.

I hate to sound like a salesman, but you really should read the Introduction in GUTCP. Much better than me blathering on.

And I hate to sound like a broken record, but you really should read the relevant Mills et al. papers, and those which cite them. Much better than me blathering on.