[Typhoon]

It's hard to believe that this is true, but here's an article about it.

Fuel's paradise? Power source that turns physics on its head

"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."

[Typhoon]

I hadn't seen that hydrino theory has already been posted about. Sorry.

I was quite skeptical when I saw the article mentioning hydrino theory. Wikipedia presents some opposing opinions.

Andreas Rathke:

"We found that CQM is inconsistent and has several serious deficiencies. Amongst these are the failure to reproduce the energy levels of the excited states of the hydrogen atom, and the absence of Lorentz invariance. Most importantly, we found that CQM does not predict the existence of hydrino states!"

Robert L. Park:

"Mills has written a 1000 page tome, entitled,"The Grand Unified Theory of Classical Quantum Mechanics," that takes the reader all the way from hydrinos to antigravity (WN 9 May 97). Fortunately, Aaron Barth...has taken upon himself to look through it, checking for accuracy. Barth is a post doctoral researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Institute, and holds a PhD in Astronomy, 1998, from UC, Berkeley. What he found initially were mathematical blunders and unjustified assumptions."

Douglas Osheroff:

a "crackpot idea."

[bobcousins]

I think the best quote I have seen about this is:

"It's possible that he has stumbled on some interesting new chemical process; ultimately peer review and market forces will decide whether any of his laboratory work has useful applications."

Dr Randell Mills is either a genuis, a crackpot, or a charlatan. You can never rule out some new physics being found, but the odds on genius are low.

Without going into the science, he said it would take 18 months to develop a prototype. His original patents were applied for about 7 years ago, and I believe at least one was withdrawn by the USPTO. He sued, lost, appealed, lost. Other scientists have seen some 'curious results', maybe this will end up like the cold fusion thing.

Mills has said he is concentrating on commerical applications rather than trying to prove his theory to skeptics, so I will judge BLP Inc on their commerical success. I am filing this in the 'I'll believe it when I see it' folder.

[Mesuge]

bob> Well cold plasma/fusion works pretty well and has been reproduced at many universities around the world. They achieve easily COP in double digits but this thing is burning thungsten (welding) rods like crazy! Thugsten is relatively abundant in the crust but on the whole this is just a bit better nuclear plant with low level of radioctivity. In another words just a typical technofix for a couple of decades if you manage scale it up nothing more.. And only if 100% asteroid of thungsten and mega weight happen to land just outside the MIT..

[FireJack]

Reading the article and seeing all this "hundreds of scientists have independantly verified my claims" makes me go hmmm. If it was as incredible as he makes it out to be I would have thought I'd have heard of it by now.
I also fail to see how a small heater can cause an electron to be reduced to a closer (and thought to be impossible) orbit in a way that produces energy. If its so easy why has no one done this yet? Sounds like a lot of smoke and mirrors to me.

[syncline]

Snake oil. Don't give this nonsense a second's serious thought.