Blacklight Power

[Elmar Moelzer]

http://pesn.com/2014/01/20/9602425_Randell-Mills_explains_upcoming-Blacklight-power-demo/

To be frank, this makes no sense to me whatsoever and I believe that Mills will disappear again for a few years after this demo and more funding (that will inevitably result from this) only to reemerge again with a new story once the money is gone, but then I would be so happy to be wrong.

[sanman]

If this nonsense were even remotely plausible, there would be national laboratories and top universities investigating it. But the fact is that it doesn't even pass the giggle test, and nobody is paying attention except for gullible scientifically illiterate investors. Fools and their money are soon parted.

On the other hand, that so many would be enticed into giving their money to this sham shows how desperate the global markets are for energy breakthroughs.

The Polywell people seem to conduct themselves in a very credible way by comparison. They are as transparent as possible, and are at least circumspect in their claims, instead of being wildly optimistic. I really like their style.

[lcs]

On the other hand, that so many would be enticed into giving their money to this sham shows how desperate the global markets are for energy breakthroughs.

"Global markets" are only desperate to make a buck.  That they can be so easily duped is remarkable but well known to manipulators.  It is the oldest game on earth, but not the oldest profession.  But the end result is the same.

[adrianwyard]

So, it's the 29th. There's no mention on the website so presumably the demo scheduled for yesterday didn't happen? Big surprise there...

http://www.financialpost.com/markets/news/BlackLight+Power+Announces+Game+Changing+Achievement+Generation+Millions/9384649/story.html

Is it only me who thinks it might be telling that the work is published with Wiley Online? As in: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiley_E._Coyote

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/er.3142/abstract;jsessionid=E17D2817E628B7C19EF31DAAFAEE57D7.f02t02

[Elmar Moelzer]

No, it did happen and there is a vague account of it. Lots of praise of Mills, but not much substance.
I am honestly not sure what to think about all this. My strategy is to wait and see what happens. Cant go wrong with that.
http://www.e-catworld.com/2014/01/report-from-the-blacklight-power-demonstration/

[bad_astra]

Is it only me who thinks it might be telling that the work is published with Wiley Online? As in: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiley_E._Coyote

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/er.3142/abstract;jsessionid=E17D2817E628B7C19EF31DAAFAEE57D7.f02t02

It is probably only you. Nice potshot. John Wiley & Sons, Inc publishes academic papers.

[JeanPierre_LeRouzic]

Hi,

There is too much reliance on peer review. Being published doesn't mean much, either at a conference or a commercial publisher as often their acceptance rate is around 1/2. The selection criterion with such a rate are: Is it written in correct English, does it respect our template and is it barely understandable?

Only a few journals have more selective acceptance rates.

You have also to remember that one third of scientific papers are of bad quality: http://www.nist.gov/mml/acmd/peer-090913.cfm

At Wiley and other publishers there are even options so that everyone can publish if she is willing to pay  publication fees (US$3000) :
http://authorservices.wiley.com/bauthor/CTA.asp#oo

However I don't know if it is the case here.

[Elmar Moelzer]

BLP put up the video of the presentation in their news section (news from the 29th of January):
http://www.blacklightpower.com/whats-new/

[kch]

Is it only me who thinks it might be telling that the work is published with Wiley Online? As in: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiley_E._Coyote

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/er.3142/abstract;jsessionid=E17D2817E628B7C19EF31DAAFAEE57D7.f02t02

It is probably only you. Nice potshot. John Wiley & Sons, Inc publishes academic papers.

Had to chuckle -- Wiki got the Coyote's first name wrong in the URL (although it's correct in the article) ... 

[Elmar Moelzer]

Want to admit, I have only watched part of their presentation. Some things really did not make much sense to me. They are talking about megawatts of power from small amounts of water. To me megawatts per volume are meaningless. I would like to know MWh or kWh per liter. That would make a lot more sense. The little bursts they showed in the videos did not look all that impressive either.

[adrianwyard]

I am pleasantly surprised to see the video was posted. After trashing BLP and Wiley Online, I shall - for my sins - watch this two hour video...

[Prober]

I am pleasantly surprised to see the video was posted. After trashing BLP and Wiley Online, I shall - for my sins - watch this two hour video...

So does Blacklight work? 

[Elmar Moelzer]

So does Blacklight work? 

I honestly don't know. The video was not all that convincing to me. All we got to see was a few (not too impressive) explosions and the claim that these released a certain amount of energy (more than the charge they put into it). I have no way of verifying that rather extraordinary claim. So I still haven't made up my mind about them. They claim to be only weeks away from a self sustaining prototype. That will be interesting to see (if we get to see it).

[adrianwyard]

I did watch the video (all 2.5 hours), and I can see why BLP is a conundrum: Mills’ certainly doesn’t sound like a quack, but every once in a while he calmly makes a claim that should earn him several Nobel prizes - if he’s correct.

He didn’t stray beyond freshman physics for the whole talk, which gives the impression that there’s nothing particularly complex or involved in their system. This may have been dictated by the audience. Investors?

For those who don’t know Mills has a Chemistry bachelors degree, but his doctorate is in medicine.

Highlights:
+ The theory behind their discovery relies on classical physics only (5m00s).
+ Quantum Mechanics is false, is not-predictive, and excludes the hydrino because it wasn’t known at the time QM was developed.
+ His extension of classical physics works at the atomic scale. (see 41m47s for diagram of the structure of an electron).
+ Dark Matter is made up of hydrinos. (Hydrino is a hydrogen atom at lower than (traditional) ground state.) Hydrino’s are unreactive, don’t emit or absorb light - dark.
+ His theory predicted cosmic acceleration before it was discovered experimentally.

The demo, and claims about what was shown:
+ The test equipment consists of spot welders configured to use high current (15-20,000 Amps) at low voltage ~8 V. (9m50s)
+ And as far as I can tell, that’s what makes the reaction go. Passing that current through water causes the hydrogen in the water or hydrates to transition to the hydrino state, releasing energy.
+ The energy gain is 100 times.
+ The demos used a couple of ‘fuel’ capsules, a ‘jumping jack’ and a ‘cute christie’ (I think that’s right, sound was poor.)
+ The ‘jumping jack’ is a copper vessel containing a little water. The Cute Christie is Silver with MgCl that has absorbed water.
+ The jumping jack releases a broad spectrum of wavelengths (not a discrete spectral line) others (all?) release extreme UV.
+ The extreme UV is one of the evidences that this is not a conventional discharge. Quote: "Unchallengeable signal and proof that we’re making a new state of matter. This absolutely disproves the current theory of quantum mechanics.” (32m0s)
+ They are seeing 1kJ released from 0.01 ml of water in <1 millisecond. The demo released ~1MW.
+ So energy density is 0.1TW per Liter of water.
+ 1 Liter of water is equal to 100 liters of gasoline. (1h25m)
+ Expect to deliver energy for under $10 per kW. (1h6m)
+ NMR testing shows evidence of a hydrino-hydrino molecule.

A skeptical response:
Two things were shown:
+ Spot welders creating flashes during several discharges.
+ A computer monitor showing the output of a calorimeter.

It seems to me that placing a little water between the electrodes of any old spot welder would make a flash and bang. We have to trust Mills that what we’re seeing is unexpected.

And of course computer displays can be fabricated in numerous ways.

+ If Mill’s theory is correct and the results are what he claims them to be, then reproducing and verifying them should be dead easy.
+ Unlike many outlandish theories it seems quite possible for them to trap some of the produced hydrino gas and make it available for testing. Mills was asked about that (1h56m) and said they had only been detected by signature (e.g. UV).
+ Or if the hydrino gas stays in the system but becomes ‘dark', then a closed system should see an increase in mass or pressure beyond that caused by the observed material.

For those interested, his book is available online. On page 197 he discusses how the the photoelectric effect and classical wave theory were misconceived (by Einstein et al). Interestingly, this is right after a discussion of Photon Torpedoes.

http://www.blacklightpower.com/theory-2/book/book-download/

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The good news is what Mills claims should be able to produce extraordinary evidence. Thus far, we've not seen it.

[Elmar Moelzer]

+ They are seeing 1KJ released from 0.01 ml of water in <1 millisecond. The demo released ~1MW.
+ So energy density is 0.1TW per Liter of water.
+ 1 Liter of water is equal to 100 liters of gasoline. (1h25m)

This part made no sense to me whatsoever. I would measure the energy density of 100 liters of gasoline in kWh, not in kw. Yet they say 0.1 TW per liter of water and 100 times more than gasoline. Now gasoline has a energy content of about (from the top of my head, so don't nail me if I am off a bit) 9 kWh per liter. So this means that 100 times gasoline would be about 900 kWh per liter.
Another calculation, assuming he meant TWh when he talked TW, we get this: 1kJ/ 0.01ml = 100kJ/ml = 100MJ/l.
100MJ are ~ 28 kWh. Please someone correct me if my math is wrong. I am doing that in my head whilst compiling code. So I have very little time.
So where the 0.1 TW fit in, no one knows. It seems to me like a total gibberish of numbers and units.

It seems to me that placing a little water between the electrodes of any old spot welder would make a flash and bang. We have to trust Mills that what we’re seeing is unexpected.

That is exactly what I think as well.

[adrianwyard]

To be fair, I may have misheard a few things - the audio was recorded on-camera and hard to hear.

I think they are generally referring to 1ms as the event duration, and then assuming you could repeat that 1000 times per second for max theoretical power output. So if 0.01 ml of water gives you 1MW, then a full liter could indeed give you a max of .01TW.

According to Wikipedia the energy density of gasoline is 31MJ per Liter.

It is a little suspicious to me that all the numbers are powers of ten.

[Elmar Moelzer]

To be fair, I may have misheard a few things - the audio was recorded on-camera and hard to hear.

I think they are generally referring to 1ms as the event duration, and then assuming you could repeat that 1000 times per second for max theoretical power output. So if 0.01 ml of water gives you 1MW, then a full liter could indeed give you a max of .01TW.

According to Wikipedia the energy density of gasoline is 31MJ per Liter.

It is a little suspicious to me that all the numbers are powers of ten.

I got 36 MJ per liter. Either way, 31 MJ means even less kWh per liter than my number did. So it adds up even less. I still don't get the calculation like that. You can not have X TW per liter. You can have X TWh per liter. Anything else does not make any sense.
The only number I see for time in this context is 1 ms. So maybe the .01 TW is released for a time of 1 ms. So if we took 10 GW and divided this by 1000 to get one second, we get 10 MWseconds. Then divide this by 3600 to get an hour and we get 2.7 kWh... Not all that impressive. So I doubt that he meant that.

[adrianwyard]

I can't right now find place where he said the energy density was 0.1TW/l, so my notes may be in error on that.

So at a minimum, he's saying 0.1TW is the max theoretical power output of a 1 liter system.

[Elmar Moelzer]

I can't right now find place where he said the energy density was 0.1TW/l, so my notes may be in error on that.

So at a minimum, he's saying 0.1TW is the max theoretical power output of a 1 liter system.

No, you were not wrong. I heard him say the same thing, which is why I am complaining. I cant make any sense of his units in the context they are provided in. Energy density/content is measured in kWh per liter. If we are not talking about energy density, then what is the point of talking about liters at all?

[sanman]