Every so often, my co-worker stops by my desk with his latest report on Blacklight Power–a company that claims it can extract nearly limitless amounts of energy from water, by moving hydrogen atoms to a theoretical state almost all physicists believe to be impossible.
He’s a bit of a conspiracy buff/crackpot, so I’m not really sure what to think of his claims about a “new power source that will save the world”. From what I’ve read, there seems to be an ample supply of both true believers and total skeptics.
Is anyone knowledgeable enough about Randall Mills’ theory/results to provide some insight to this “world changing” technology?
I didn’t read the article, but I can say with certainty that you cannot extract useful energy from regular 'ol water that is at standard room temperature and pressure.
If he wasn’t making shit up, it wouldn’t have taken him eighteen years and counting to enter mainstream markets. If you’re using phrases like “limitless amounts of energy”, you need to put up or shut up.
It’s always possible that there’s a breakthrough that would extend Known Science. All the company need do is provide instructions for independently-replicatable tests of the science behind their tech. If they can’t, it’s bogus.
Sure you can: pour it and use it to turn a wheel, expose it to an equal amount of anti-water, use it to refill a car battery that’s run dry, use temperature gradients (assuming “room temp” is only on average), or wave action to extract energy (assuming enough water), or harness brownian motion (assuming you don’t need much energy).
However, transitioning to a state most physicists believe impossible* is bunkum, of course.
It’s not bunkum if they actually do it and teach others to do it independently. Doesn’t matter how many physicists say it’s impossible; experimental results rule, and theory simply has to adapt.
That’s a big ‘if’, of course. Merely claiming something to be possible is not enough.
Thanks for your replies! I’m of the “no free lunch/too good to be true” camp on this too.
My co-worker likes to provide updates on various “marvelous new technologies” that happen to be “outside the mainstream”. Blacklight Power is on the top of his list these days. He likes to print out articles on the latest “results” and bring them over to me. He’ll stand over my desk and read off the cost per kilowatt hour of Blacklight vs. other power generating methods. I try to ignore him most of the time. :rolleyes:
One has to wonder why EVERY entity that claims to be able to extract usable energy from water doesn’t go ahead and do just that, insteading of extracting money from the gullible. Much more helpful than knowing about particle physics is knowing about scams.
No, no, both of them are powered by the same source that permits John Travolta to keep headlining movies.
I’ve actually read Randy Mills’ text on Classical Quantum Theory and it is gibberish, albeit well-composed gibberish. It’s not just that it contradicts existing theory, but that it fails to provide falsification versus QM and is even by Mills’ admission manifestly incomplete. Blacklight has been around since at least 1998 (the first time I recall seeing the website) and yet its ‘revolutionary technology’ has so far succeeded in completely underwhelming the energy generation market despite claims of being dirt cheap to implement and maintain. So I’d say that the technology speaks for itself.
That doesn’t appear to be a problem here on 21st century Earth. There is a very large portion of the population who are astoundingly credible when it comes to this stuff. When such phenomenon turn out to be real, as they occasionally do, someone eventually notices–because, if you’re lucky enough to actually find a case where you can reliably predict or produce a result that others can’t, you can make a lot of money on it. This is what distinguishes reality from fantasy: real results, instead of post-hoc reinterpretations and confirmation bias.
However, the odds make lotteries look good, and there’s a lot of woo-woo competing for your attention.