Next Big Future - Latest Comments in Blacklight Power follow up and other claims

Re: Blacklight Power follow up and other claims

glad777 — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 09:41:09 -0000

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2.The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3.Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Nuff said

Re: Blacklight Power follow up and other claims

GoatGuy — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 16:11:37 -0000

Indeed - and thank you: the analysis is as you would admit, "off the back of a napkin", but you know, most really great technologies always "pass the napkin test" from before their inception through the research phases and finally even into production. They're just not "barely" anything. They make obvious sense.

Separately, I did take the time to read a fair amount of the 103 page paper found at the "various experimental results" hyperlink above. To quote you, "lest I start to sound like a believer" ... I too am impressed by the miasma of real science and technology words used to describe the series of tests performed in their apparently well-outfitted laboratory.

They're employing gas chromatography, X-ray techniques, gallium ion streams, calorimeters, vacuum pumps, compounds aplenty, and more. Here is the KEY fiinding in my reading: through a complex set of sample preparations, they believe they have masured samples of reactants that have generated in excess of 50 kilowatts of heat over the period of 40 minutes reaction-time, or some 250kJ of energy from a kilogram of reactants. However, their preparation techniques (including and not limited to the compounds, but their admixtures and addition of significant thermal pulses) could also easily be storing large amounts of thermal energy as allotropic crystaline systems and so on.

I'm still quite skeptical.

Oh, BTW: the best part is the first 2 pages - they're worth the read. Dr. Mills (or an associate) posits that Hydronium is Science's Missing Link between Cosmological Expansion and Dark Matter. I will say this with honesty: after I got up off the floor from laughing so hard, i was struck by the thought that should Dr. Mills' theory prove even slightly possible in the deep recesses of intergalactic space, well... then the dude is up for a Solid Gold Pen and a Nobel.

However, if his pot remains cracked ... then I think he HAS to get a handle on his cabal of marketing stretch-spinners, and let them know in no uncertain terms that getting a few minutes of 50KW out of a kilogram of highly reactive lithium-hydride and hydroxide mixtures ... does NOT a 50KW generator make. Not close, not by a nose, not by a length. A league perhaps.

Re: Blacklight Power follow up and other claims

GoatGuy — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 04:41:30 -0000

NextBig[future]:

You see my good fellow, I really do WANT to believe. From the center of my scientific soul, I hope that there are cunningly accessible degenerate states of "hydronium" or "hydrino" or whate'er its discoverers have labelled it - that in their one-time creation release capturable, tangible, macroscopic amounts of energy which may in turn be captured as energy for the masses to use.

The problem is that I don't have what all scientists in the end need to have: a reasonably accessible procedure to reproduce the results, to verify the findings, to accept the tabular degrees of freedom that purportedly embody the technology.

People argue, "but there are things being done, discovered, disputed and set aside by Big Science that no common man may even dream of funding, building and reproducing. That is the nature of Big Science. How dare you demand that the Boffins of Blacklight come up with a tangible, reproducible, economically ponderable vision of their technology. Good God, man ... this is going to power civilization itself to the next phase. You sound like a woodchuck, and worse, with a damaged cudgel!"

Well, maybe so. But I think not.

I think that there is precious little "science" that can't at least from a discovery-of-the-equations-of-state perspective be done on the lab-bench. All of thermodynamics can be done in a thimble (so said Dr. Carnot), and the vast majority of "big science" that powers todays world-wide nuclear reactors ... also happened in test tubes.

I've given a "college effort" several times at making headway through the abstruse pseudo-science articles presented by Dr. Mills. I've put up on several other forums similar responses of, "well they got buckets, bags and barrels of money ... you think a bunch of dumb bastards would just bequeath money on them if they were selling snake oil?"

And my reply remains the same: surely if the technology is actually, factually as simple as it is said to be, then it must be something that can be clearly outlined, that any one of us educated dunces can use to verify the findings. I mean, please: how hard should it be to create the hydrino, if there are over 68 "degenerae ionization states' for it.

Re: Blacklight Power follow up and other claims

pstudier — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 03:18:06 -0000

Randell L. Mills has been at this for years. There are a couple pages about hydrinos in Voodoo Science which is copyrighted 2001. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wik... where there is some history and criticism of the concept.

Re: Blacklight Power follow up and other claims

nextbigfuture — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 02:26:26 -0000

There is no lack of funding problem. They have gotten $50 million in funding.
So believe, don't believe. Feel free.
We can see next year if products are made, sold and work or not.

Re: Blacklight Power follow up and other claims

GoatGuy — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 23:36:08 -0000

My good fellow goats... the problem with this "technology's credibility" is manifold. I always ask the same questions of technologies that are supposed to be fundamental breakers of "known science":

* Is the technology accompanied by a long list of 'obvious Wow!' resolutions to civilisation's hard or looming problems?
* Is the device been shown only to a secret enclave of investors, but not the public for fear of letting the proverbial cat out of the bag?
* Is there a dark conspiracy powered by legions of conventional scientists and assorted dunces that is but the only thing standing in the way of this invention's radical change of most-everything as we know it?
* Are the names, "quantum", "nano", "radical", "known science", and especially "Tesla" conjured into the conversation points?
* Is the chief scientist figured largely in other areas of research where his results are considered just as if not more controversial?

And Finally...

* Is this a business proposition whose only shortcoming is a lack of funding?

Passing all of these questions - while many pieces of bonafide science do - generally points to the object of discussion being at or near the Fraud Line. I detect this with JUST the captions of the ancillary studiously prepared (but likely abstruse) articles presented above:

OPTICAL POWER BALANCE ... 1000x (one THOUSAND times) more light at a given plasma power? Well, ain't that something: the glow-discharge inside a metal-halogen discharge lamp emits over 100 lumens per watt (1,000W car-sales lot bulbs), and is 15% efficient. Theoretical maximum efficiency is 683.002 lumens/watt. So ... this technology is going to produce 1,000 times that 100 lumens per watt, or 100,000 lumens per watt, and moreover over 150 times more light than is theoretically possible? GIVE ME A BREAK. Its not.

Let's try another: "100 times the H kinetic energy..." (referring to Balmer line broadening). Now this is harder. Balmer lines do broaden with increased kinetic energy ("temperature") of plasmas. Pretty well known. It seems to me though that the disingenuity is obvious as well as devious: Run the plasma tube at much lower pressure and much higher voltage, and voila. MUCH higher temperature of the plasma. Or, vice-versa ... much higher pressure (kilobars) and again higher voltage ... and the gas-discharge Balmer lines will be markedly widened. It is the classic result for LIGHTNING BOLTS, since their plasma channel measures 'microns' for the powerful and bright return-stroke.

OK, OK. Goat is a skeptic. Well, at least the 3rd one can hold water, no? "Energy balance 100x that of combustion of [diatomic hydrogen ...] power density greater than 10 watts per cubic centimeter"

What on earth is this referring to? There's no evidence of what energies were INPUT to the aforementioned reaction in order to produce the startling anomalous results. These results are, by themselves so patently absurd so as to call into credibility the READER for entertaining the time to review the article!

In any case ...

Its time to move on.