Off subject - I make no claims about the validity of the article or it's arguments - it's like Eestor - it promises something wonderful, seems impossible, and nobody in the general public has yet seen a demonstration.
They're saying it will be commercialized by next year with power cells installed in a working power plant - apparently they had a breakthrough last fall. Interesting read. But yet again, we're told we have to wait another year for the public to see something tangible.
http://money.cnn.com/2008/07/01/smallbu ... 2008070210
Good read if you're looking for a new tidbit about these guys.
They also have a picture of one of the devices - In the top right Randell Mills is holding it in his hands. The claim is that the little thing you see him holding can produce 50 kilowatts of power.
Blacklight Power in the news again
His theory is kooky, but who knows. Maybe these things work, just not for the reasons he thinks. A lot of groundbreaking experiments have worked out that way.
Either that or he's done some very clever fakery that's going to greatly embarass the big name people he's got over there. If I had to guess, I'd say it's just a standard chemical reaction.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bumblebee#Flight
Either that or he's done some very clever fakery that's going to greatly embarass the big name people he's got over there. If I had to guess, I'd say it's just a standard chemical reaction.
Actually, I found out today that's an apocryphal tale. It's been well-understood for some time that they generate lift through through dynamic stall.Theoretically, the bumble bee can't fly - but no one told the bumble bee.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bumblebee#Flight
It is believed that the calculations which purported to show that bumblebees cannot fly are based upon a simplified linear treatment of oscillating aerofoils. The method assumes small amplitude oscillations without flow separation. This ignores the effect of dynamic stall, an airflow separation inducing a large vortex above the wing, which briefly produces several times the lift of the aerofoil in regular flight. More sophisticated aerodynamic analysis shows that the bumblebee can fly because its wings encounter dynamic stall in every oscillation cycle. [26]
-
just_an_observer
- Posts: 21
- Joined: Thu Apr 03, 2008 1:39 pm
Interesting
Of course the real proof will come if they can deliver next year - but I'd agree that if they work it may not be for the reason he theorizes - but there just might be something there. Speculating for a minute here, but how do you toil away for 19 years developing theories that everyone says are completely wrong, and then produce (speculation here) a device that is capable of generating 50 kw of power? I haven't seen many charlatans that can keep a game going for that long and actually have something to show for it in the end. Usually the game falls apart within a few years, and he's got $60 million in funding and doesn't need anymore money. Plus, he's got 25 employees. It would be hard to believe that so many people are in on a racket. Someone mentioned in the article also claimed to have had "interesting" results when trying to replicate the claims made by Blacklight Power. I think it's interesting, but it will be more interesting if they deliver next year.
What Mills claims is that it's possible that the electron energy in an Hydrogen atom can actually be lower than the ground state it 's in. Common sense would suggest that it would be at the lowest energy level it can go to already, as suggested by "Ground State".
We would already have found "Hydrino's" in nature at some point. I'm assuming that the fuel cell he has is most likely that, a fuel cell. He could probably milk this for awhile specially if he gets even a little electricity from it, add a little heat and he'll be making claims for millions of dollars more to "perfect" his fuel cell.
We would already have found "Hydrino's" in nature at some point. I'm assuming that the fuel cell he has is most likely that, a fuel cell. He could probably milk this for awhile specially if he gets even a little electricity from it, add a little heat and he'll be making claims for millions of dollars more to "perfect" his fuel cell.
Someday, somewhere, someone is going to figure out a unified theory. That unified theory will probably find some unusual physical properties that we don't know about. When this happens, lots of people will be very skeptical. It has happened time and time before. It will happen again.
I just don't think that this is the guy.
I just don't think that this is the guy.
I give him this credit: He's not calling cold fusion, "fusion". He thinks it is another process. Hydrino isn't so bad; If you can split the "atom", then why not have an energy level lower than some supposed "ground state"? The atom was considered "that indivisible entity" at one time.
I don't think it is a con, I think it is the anomalous heat from the so called "cold fusion" reaction replete with huge amounts of wishful thinking. First off, the thing probably only warms slightly higher than the energy inputs would warrant. He'll never get a device that can deliver 50KW reliably, especially if you take away the 49+KW input required for running the electrolytic cell or whatever. The thing is, that anomalous heat is still such a mystery.
I don't think it is a con, I think it is the anomalous heat from the so called "cold fusion" reaction replete with huge amounts of wishful thinking. First off, the thing probably only warms slightly higher than the energy inputs would warrant. He'll never get a device that can deliver 50KW reliably, especially if you take away the 49+KW input required for running the electrolytic cell or whatever. The thing is, that anomalous heat is still such a mystery.
Sure, all he has to do is overturn our understanding of quantum mechanics. Good luck with that.Helius wrote:I give him this credit: He's not calling cold fusion, "fusion". He thinks it is another process. Hydrino isn't so bad; If you can split the "atom", then why not have an energy level lower than some supposed "ground state"? The atom was considered "that indivisible entity" at one time.
If he's not a fraud, he's a crank.
Edit: I pass on my BS detector kit once more and note in so doing that the principals violate points 2, 4, 5, 6, and 7.
I'll lean toward 'crank'. It'll not work. I'll bet it gets inexplicably warm at times though. 50KW? No, never happen. It's 20 years work using the trial and error method; his `hydrino' theory, or any scientific theory really has nothing to do with it. The theories that pushed it along were more like "hmmm maybe if we whack the palladium 8 times instead of 6..." or "maybe if we wrap a coil around the electrolytic cell"....scareduck wrote:Sure, all he has to do is overturn our understanding of quantum mechanics. Good luck with that.Helius wrote:I give him this credit: He's not calling cold fusion, "fusion". He thinks it is another process. Hydrino isn't so bad; If you can split the "atom", then why not have an energy level lower than some supposed "ground state"? The atom was considered "that indivisible entity" at one time.
If he's not a fraud, he's a crank.
Edit: I pass on my BS detector kit once more and note in so doing that the principals violate points 2, 4, 5, 6, and 7.
There is no known basis for this slight inexplicable heat. Probably a weak force explanation like Widom and Larsen's, but who knows. Whatever it is, it isn't obvious in collider traces or other high energy experiment results.
BTW, regarding your detector: I'd give him 1 and 2. He's getting money from somewhere. He certainly isn't selling product!
Ha! Read up on Sonship some time, they of Free Electricity and Ionizing Laundry Balls (plain plastic balls they claimed could replace detergent). Hundreds of employees, tens of millions of dollars. Pure fraud.It would be hard to believe that so many people are in on a racket
What's interesting about Blacklight is they seem have experimental evidence of... something. My guess is that its not nearly as fundamental as a 1/n electron state, as they claim, and so will not produce nearly as much power as they claim. I suspect the generators will run for a few months at most.
-
jlumartinez
- Posts: 143
- Joined: Thu Jun 28, 2007 7:29 pm
- Location: Spain
I don´t know what to think. It seems quite revolutionary at first look.
On one side they have a 1000 pages physical book explaining their new unified theory. It seems a respectful work -at least- not done to cheat people and with this theory they can model the molecular structure of all chemical compounds...so, for this side it seems to works.
But on the other side it seems incredible. A compound never seen in the earth... a lower atomic energy state than H2. They should not be compared with cold fusion: what they say is that the excess energy found in the 1989 cold fusion experiments by Pons and Fleischman - that they couldn´t explain and couldn´t replicate accurately why happened- may be due to the formation of this new H2 state. So they claim that maybe this anomalous -cold fusion- behavior could be another way of their reaction instead of what those researchers claimed as real cold fusion of H2 into He.
The problem in the mainstream scientific community is that Science has evolved so much in the last century that every day is harder and harder to believe in a new revolutionary theory. We are getting used to explain 99.99% of the world with our current theories so it is harder to create a new theory: we are used to explain every phenomena just as a simple extension of the current scientific models . This is exactly what happens to people which are against of Polywell - or new fusion confinement different from Tokamaks- and they don´t even get a chance to demonstrate its performance. Time will tell ... But we always has to be at least a bit open minded to give a try to new ideas. At the end this is what is everything in science. Time (and experiments) will tell.
On one side they have a 1000 pages physical book explaining their new unified theory. It seems a respectful work -at least- not done to cheat people and with this theory they can model the molecular structure of all chemical compounds...so, for this side it seems to works.
But on the other side it seems incredible. A compound never seen in the earth... a lower atomic energy state than H2. They should not be compared with cold fusion: what they say is that the excess energy found in the 1989 cold fusion experiments by Pons and Fleischman - that they couldn´t explain and couldn´t replicate accurately why happened- may be due to the formation of this new H2 state. So they claim that maybe this anomalous -cold fusion- behavior could be another way of their reaction instead of what those researchers claimed as real cold fusion of H2 into He.
The problem in the mainstream scientific community is that Science has evolved so much in the last century that every day is harder and harder to believe in a new revolutionary theory. We are getting used to explain 99.99% of the world with our current theories so it is harder to create a new theory: we are used to explain every phenomena just as a simple extension of the current scientific models . This is exactly what happens to people which are against of Polywell - or new fusion confinement different from Tokamaks- and they don´t even get a chance to demonstrate its performance. Time will tell ... But we always has to be at least a bit open minded to give a try to new ideas. At the end this is what is everything in science. Time (and experiments) will tell.
That's because people have a lot of empirical knowledge backing up the theory. When non-specialists come up with something that requires a forklift replacement of both, and also have a product to sell (or better yet, one that's on the verge of Changing! The! World!), look out. From the CNN article cited in the leadoff article post:jlumartinez wrote:The problem in the mainstream scientific community is that Science has evolved so much in the last century that every day is harder and harder to believe in a new revolutionary theory.
Jan Naudts, a physics professor at the University of Antwerp, says of Mills' work, "The few people who looked at it immediately found errors." He adds, however, "That's quite common with new theories. And his hasn't been investigated on a large scale."
Some reviewers noted that the more coherent parts of the book were simply copied wholesale from other texts. A 100-level science student would've gotten his/her ass flunked right out for as much.jlumartinez wrote: On one side they have a 1000 pages physical book explaining their new unified theory. It seems a respectful work -at least- not done to cheat people
Respectful? Not done to cheat people?