# Physicists - Does this disprove quantum theory? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 4, 2005, 11:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/physicists-does-this-disprove-quantum-theory/329461 "2005-11-04T11:22:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Wallenstein](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/b5a626/32.png) [@Wallenstein](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wallenstein)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2005, 11:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/physicists-does-this-disprove-quantum-theory/329461/1 "2005-11-04T11:22:36Z")
From an article in today’s Guardian newspaper: > **[Fuel's paradise? Power source that turns physics on its head](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2005/nov/04/energy.science)** > > · Scientist says device disproves quantum theory · Opponents claim idea is result of wrong maths > [@](#): > > 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 > > \ > > What has much of the physics world up in arms is Dr Mills’s claim that he has produced a new form of hydrogen, the simplest of all the atoms, with just a single proton circled by one electron. In his “hydrino”, the electron sits a little closer to the proton than normal, and the formation of the new atoms from traditional hydrogen releases huge amounts of energy. > > \ > > This is scientific heresy. According to quantum mechanics, electrons can only exist in an atom in strictly defined orbits, and the shortest distance allowed between the proton and electron in hydrogen is fixed. The two particles are simply not allowed to get any closer. > > According to Dr Mills, there can be only one explanation: quantum mechanics must be wrong. “We’ve done a lot of testing. We’ve got 50 independent validation reports, we’ve got 65 peer-reviewed journal articles,” he said. “We ran into this theoretical resistance and there are some vested interests here. People are very strong and fervent protectors of this [quantum] theory that they use.” So will this turn quantum physics on its head, or is this another “perpetual motion” snakeoil salesman? Anyone read any of the supporting papers for this? Has it appeared in any of the mainstream scientific press at all? (Mods: hope that’s not too much text re. copyright etc) ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2005, 11:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/physicists-does-this-disprove-quantum-theory/329461/2 "2005-11-04T11:28:19Z")
This has all the markings of a bullshit free energy scam, right down to “history will prove me right when science eventually catches up”. Delusions of Galileo. ---
**Author:** ![ReuvenB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9fc348/32.png) [@ReuvenB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ReuvenB)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2005, 11:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/physicists-does-this-disprove-quantum-theory/329461/3 "2005-11-04T11:37:06Z")
“What has much of the physics world up in arms is Dr Mills’s claim that he has produced a new form of hydrogen, the simplest of all the atoms, with just a single proton circled by one electron. In his “hydrino”, the electron sits a little closer to the proton than normal, and the formation of the new atoms from traditional hydrogen releases huge amounts of energy.” According to the problem set I did just yesterday, the lowest electron orbital exists because it is a compromise between kinetic and electromagnetic potential energy, forming the lowest energy state. Therefore, creating a new orbital (even if it could be done) that had the electron closer to the proton wouldn’t give off energy, it would take energy. I say snake oil. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2005, 11:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/physicists-does-this-disprove-quantum-theory/329461/4 "2005-11-04T11:38:14Z")
Ah. [here](http://www.blacklightpower.com/) is Black light’s web page. Still looks very quackish to me; claims of ‘resonant transfer’ etc abound. ---
**Author:** ![SentientMeat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@SentientMeat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SentientMeat)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2005, 11:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/physicists-does-this-disprove-quantum-theory/329461/5 "2005-11-04T11:45:38Z")
I’ve met this Alok Jha journalist chap myself. He seemed pleasant enough, but has obviously not taken the advice of his fellow Guardian science writer Ben Goldacre, who slates precisely this kind of gun-jumping hype in [this IMO essential article](http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/badscience/story/0,12980,1564369,00.html). There might well be some interesting results here. But the extraordinarily bold claims about electron orbitals require extraordinary evidence, and young Alok should have held back his article for at least 18 months. ---
**Author:** ![scm1001](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c4cdca/32.png) [@scm1001](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scm1001)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2005, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/physicists-does-this-disprove-quantum-theory/329461/6 "2005-11-04T13:41:45Z")
I looked at the publication list on the site. Ok this scientist /company is not totally quackish and has published some scientific papers in reputable journals. But most of teh key papers in his list are marked as “submitted”. But many of them are over three years old - yes they were submitted but then rejected. Even Donald Duck can submit a paper, getting it accepted is the hard part. The vast majority of published papers are in very low quality journals - likely to be refereed by people outside the area and likely to be impressed by a bunch of impressive graphs and claims. I looked at one paper they did publish. It looked to me rubbish and I am not even close to being an expert in the fields covered. I would have rejected it outright. Essentially he is claiming excess power output from a plasma generator. This is problematic territory as like cold fusion you have to put a lot of energy in to get some out. So if you get your sums wrong you think you have excess energy when you dont. They also claim to have made new forms of hydrogen and hydrogen compounds. If this was true then it would be very easy to prove. What they have reported in the paper I saw was data which even if right could simply be another compound that they hadn’t thought of or accounted for rather than something exotic. My gut feeling - a respectable scientist getting into areas he is not qualified for and perhaps seeing something interesting but totally misinterpreting it ---
**Author:** ![toadspittle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c0e974/32.png) [@toadspittle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/toadspittle)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2005, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/physicists-does-this-disprove-quantum-theory/329461/7 "2005-11-04T14:09:56Z")
He’s going to have to prove it, basically. He’s going to have to build his reactor, and show that it gives off more energy than it takes in. Until that happens, his theories are just too quacky to be accepted. Not that his theory is necessarily BS, but without widely repeatable experiments, it just doesn’t bear consideration. Like string theory. Did I say that out loud? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2005, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/physicists-does-this-disprove-quantum-theory/329461/8 "2005-11-04T19:27:59Z")
This is ancient history. It didn’t work ten years ago, and it still doesn’t work. ---
**Author:** ![Bill\_The\_Cat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ba8739/32.png) [@Bill\_The\_Cat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bill_The_Cat)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2005, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/physicists-does-this-disprove-quantum-theory/329461/9 "2005-11-04T20:02:52Z")
The only thing I really understand in their [ACS presentation](http://www.blacklightpower.com/presentations/ACS%20Meeting%20Fall%202005%20Fuel.pdf) is the [sup]1[/sup]HNMR spectroscopy, but from what I can see, it looks really hokey. They claim that somehow, by treating otherwise normal hydrogen molecules with potassium, they can catalyze the reaction with K[sup]3+[/sup] and get hydrogen to go into lower energy states. Questions that I would ask them at a scientific setting: (a) If hydrogen has all these lower energy states (fractional Rydberg numbers), why is it that the hydrogen that we normally observe has integral Rydberg numbers? Are they sitting in a local minimum? (b) Why haven’t these same spectral lines (far-UV and X-ray) been detected in stars? © If you can catalyze the formation of lower hydrogen energy states with simple potassium, why is it that no aberrational results are found when Birch reductions are performed on organic molecules? (d) Have you been able to synthesize any organic molecules containing the hydrino ion, or is this entirely an effect you see at high/low temperature gas phase spectroscopy? ---
**Author:** ![Jinx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Jinx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jinx)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2005, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/physicists-does-this-disprove-quantum-theory/329461/10 "2005-11-05T01:33:54Z")
> [@Bill The Cat](#): > > …Questions that I would ask them at a scientific setting: > (b) Why haven’t these same spectral lines (far-UV and X-ray) been detected in stars?.. My friend, an astrophysicist from Harvard (and a 4.0 all the way in undergrad alone) now doing research for NASA says: “We have, but we haven’t recognized them before.” Astronomical spectral analysis is my bread and butter, and the rest of his “answer” is just outright WRONG, in EVERY possible way… Also he says: “One red flag, to me, is that Mills claims “65 peer-reviewed journal articles” but I’ve never seen any mention of this in anything that I read regularly (Physics Today, etc.) [I’ve never heard of the journal ‘Physics Essays’ that they cite!!!]” And, he adds: “Mills’ web page ([www.hydrino.org](http://www.hydrino.org)) is 100% junk. The grandiose claim of outdoing Einstein, Newton, Planck, etc., as well as answering every unanswered question in the book, is a sure-fire pointer to a kook. I love how he trumpets that his book is more than 1000 pages long – as if that means anything!” From he minds at Harvard/NASA research… - Jinx ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2005, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/physicists-does-this-disprove-quantum-theory/329461/11 "2005-11-05T02:50:12Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > Ah. [here](http://www.blacklightpower.com/) is Black light’s web page. > Still looks very quackish to me; claims of ‘resonant transfer’ etc abound. A [previous thread slamming on those folks.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=239749) Scam is the word. ---
**Author:** ![Cardinal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cardinal/32/4000_2.png) [@Cardinal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cardinal)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2005, 9:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/physicists-does-this-disprove-quantum-theory/329461/12 "2005-11-05T09:23:33Z")
I read this article today, too. I especially noticed this paragraph: # ================== But Prof Maas and Randy Booker, a UNC physicist, left under no doubt about Dr Mill’s claims. “All of us who are not quantum physicists are looking at Dr Mills’s data and we find it very compelling,” said Prof Maas. “Dr Booker and I have both put our professional reputations on the line as far as that goes.” So the people who are on his side are the ones who aren’t specifically trained in the field? This is a point in his favor how?