hydrinos for you and me

I noticed a reference to hydrinos made it into this week's commentary.

You might check out the web site for more info:
http://www.blacklightpower.com/

But here's a brief summary if you're not inclined to look through the above.:
Randal Mills, a physician amongst other things, promotes a theory that the electron in a hydrogen atom can be induced to enter lower energy states than the ground state accepted by modern physics. A hydrogen atom with its electrons in one of these lower energy states is known as a hydrino in their lingo.

Randal Mills, based on this theory, founded the Blacklight power company. The company claims that as a result of their science a wide variety of stuff can be made hugely better. The stuff includes batteries, coatings for ships, coatings for integrated circuits, super strong structural materials, and jet engines to name a few.

The thing that interested me about this a few years ago when I stumbled on it was the apparent substantive nature of the company and the nearly complete lack of credibility to any of their claims.

To my inexpert eyes it looks like complete crap. The company in some form has been around since at least 1996 and the theory goes back to at least 1989. Has anybody heard about super long lasting hydrino batteries, about mainstream physicists agreeing with the concept of electrons with enerigies below the ground state, hydrogen generators that can produce 70 times as much energy as conventional hydrogen generators, or any revolutionary products coming out of these guys in the ten years or so the theory and the claims have been around?

A few things had changed on their web site since the last time I looked at it: They seemed to have removed the test reports done by outside agencies. These were so lame that their grandiose and unsubstantiated claims are more credible without them. They were also referencing some sort of investment from a power company. I didn't find a reference to that on their current site.

Here's a few links for those of you interested.
Balanced article, talks about NASA program to test the rocket.
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0250/baard.php

Compares the hydrino with the doofisino
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~aaronson/doofusino.html

Technology survey done on predecessor to Blacklight power
http://www.blacklightpower.com/pdf/technical/hydrocatalysis power corp asses..pdf

Well what do you think? Any hydrino believers out there? Maybe you think the hydrino theory is crap, but there's something to some of their claims?

Does anybody know where this company get's their money?

Here's some theory that I just made up:

If you get an electron below the base state, you should be able to turn the hydrogen atom into a neutron. But there is a slight difference in mass between a hydrogen atom and a neutron. That means, you guessed it, that you need an atomic bomb.

Well the interest in hydrinos seems to be pretty much underwhelming. Thank you to ArticPenquin and DrMatt for their responses. I think that DrMatt's theory has some basis in fact in that there is a theory that a neutron can decay into an electron and a proton . It may be that articpenquins responses were so insightful that other potential responders were just too awestruck to put their own thoughts out.

Maybe if I could have worked Michael Jackson into the topic there would have been a few responses, but it is difficult to see exactly what Michael Jackson has to do with hydrinos.

The topic interested me because I thought I'd known somebody like randal mills and I was hoping somebody might have info on Mills or the current status of Blacklight Power. It now looks like I am pretty much the only person on this forum who has the remotest interest in this topic so I will go in peace.

If you pick up a copy of Skeptic Magazine Vol.8 No.4 you'll get a 2-for-1 in that it contains the following 2 articles (amongst many others):

• An Amazing Life: An Interview with James “The Amazing” Randi by Michael Shermer
• Bigger than Fire? A Scientific Examination of Randell Mills’ “Hydrino” Theory by Aaron J. Barth

It can be purchased online for $6US at this link.

You can also read much more about this topic at this other link.


Luceiia
Chocolate slam dunks Blacklight

This thread might have received more notice in the Science forum.

Here's mention of hydrinos in Randi Swift columns: http://www.randi.org/jr/013103.html

http://www.randi.org/jr/092002.html

North Texas Skeptics:
http://www.ntskeptics.org/news/news2002-09-09.htm

Thanks Luceiia for the reference to Skeptic magazine. I'm not a subscriber but I do buy individual issues every now and then (all of which I have thoroughly enjoyed).

I think I've seen most of the hydrino related stories on the web. The theory seems to have been thoroughly debunked by people who sound like they know what they are talking about.

What I have been looking for with regard to this story is some details about the reported incidents. For instance, what in the world led a utility to invest money in this? Was there straightforward corruption involved? What do the people in the company think about what is going on? Is there still research going on in the company? Even if the hydrino stuff is crap, does any of the research have any value?

The patent application story was interesting to me. I was involved in a vaguely similar company for awhile. The founder/leader was off trying to get patents on bogus crap while the rest of the company was working hard to take the company down a legitimate path. I wonder if something like that could be going on at blacklight.

If Mills is correct that his molecular modeling program gives correct results, why? I haven't gone through Mills's theory, but I've heard it contains errors in basic math. It stands to reason that the results used in molecular modeling, traced back through the theory with correct math, would lead to something quite different from what Mills started with.

I am not convinced that the real quantum theory rules out hydrinos. The arguments along this line seem to involve a misunderstanding of the uncertainty principle, which holds automatically for any differentiable spatial function. (There is no such thing as a packet that is too small for uncertainty. A smaller size simply means a larger distribution of momentum. In case you'd mention relativity, remember that speed approaches c as momentum approaches infinity.)

If hydrinos are found not to exist, then what is the explanation for the energy release observed by Mills and P&F? I'm not convinced it's just as simple as there isn't any.

Finally, if hydrinos exist, they are not cheap energy. They would require water that is reasonably clean. Any compressible impurities in the water would reduce the pressure available for catalytic potential. Try this on an industrial scale and you'd lose more energy and money running the purification equipment than you'd gain from the hydrinos.