Brilliant Light Power, Inc. (BLP), formerly BlackLight Power, Inc. of
Cranbury, New Jersey
Cranbury is a township in Middlesex County, New Jersey, United States. Located within the Raritan Valley region, Cranbury is roughly equidistant between New York City and Philadelphia in the heart of the state. As of the 2010 United States Ce ...
, is a company founded by Randell L. Mills, who claims to have discovered a new energy source from observing that electron in a hydrogen atom can drop below the lowest energy state into a "hydrino state". The claims lack corroborating scientific evidence despite claims of experimental verification, and the proposed hydrino states are unphysical and incompatible with key equations of
quantum mechanics
Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. It is the foundation of all quantum physics including quantum chemistry, ...
. BLP has announced several times that it was about to deliver commercial products based on Mill's theories but is yet to deliver a working product.
Mills has self-published a closely related book, ''The Grand Unified Theory of Classical Physics'' and has co-authored numerous articles on hydrino-related phenomena. (Self-published) Critical analyses have been published in the peer reviewed journals '' Physics Letters A'', '' New Journal of Physics'', '' Journal of Applied Physics'', and '' Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics''. In 2009, '' IEEE Spectrum'' magazine characterized it as a "loser" technology because "most experts don't believe such lower states exist, and they say the experiments don't present convincing evidence" and mentioned that Wolfgang Ketterle had said the claims are "nonsense".
Company
The company, originally called HydroCatalysis Inc. was founded in 1991 by Randell Mills who claimed to have discovered a power source that ''"represents a boundless form of new primary energy"'' and that will ''"replace all forms of fuel in the world"''. On April 25, 1991 at a press conference in
Lancaster, Pennsylvania
Lancaster, ( ; pdc, Lengeschder) is a city in and the county seat of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. It is one of the oldest inland cities in the United States. With a population at the 2020 census of 58,039, it ranks 11th in population amon ...
, Mills first announced his hydrino state hypothesis which rejects the idea that "cold fusion" was occurring in studies surrounding the
Fleischmann–Pons experiment
Cold fusion is a hypothesized type of nuclear reaction that would occur at, or near, room temperature. It would contrast starkly with the "hot" fusion that is known to take place naturally within stars and artificially in hydrogen bombs and ...
. According to Mills, no fusion was actually happening in the cells, and all the effects would be caused by shrinkage of hydrogen atoms as they fell to a state below the ground state. Experimental evidence offered by Mills was in contradiction to known chemistry and was dismissed by the scientific community. and
By December 1999, BLP raised more than $25 million from about 150 investors. By January 2006, BLP funding exceeded $60 million.
Among the investors are
PacifiCorp
PacifiCorp is an electric power company in the western United States.
PacifiCorp has two business units:
# Pacific Power, a regulated electric utility with service territory throughout Oregon, northern California, and southeastern Washington.
# ...
Morgan Stanley
Morgan Stanley is an American multinational investment management and financial services company headquartered at 1585 Broadway in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. With offices in more than 41 countries and more than 75,000 employees, the fir ...
and several BLP board members like Shelby Brewer who was the top nuclear official for the Reagan Administration and Chief Executive Officer of ABB-Combustion Engineering Nuclear Power and former board member
Michael H. Jordan
Michael H. Jordan (June 13, 1936 – May 25, 2010) was an American businessman. He served as the chief executive officer of PepsiCo Worldwide Foods (1986–1990), Westinghouse Electric Corporation (1993–1998), CBS Corporation (1995–1998), and ...
(1936 – 2010), who was Chief Executive Officer of
PepsiCo
PepsiCo, Inc. is an American multinational food, snack, and beverage corporation headquartered in Harrison, New York, in the hamlet of Purchase. PepsiCo's business encompasses all aspects of the food and beverage market. It oversees the manuf ...
Worldwide Foods,
Westinghouse Electric Corporation
The Westinghouse Electric Corporation was an American manufacturing company founded in 1886 by George Westinghouse. It was originally named "Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company" and was renamed "Westinghouse Electric Corporation" in ...
,
CBS Corporation
The second incarnation of CBS Corporation (the first being a short-lived rename of the Westinghouse Electric Corporation) was an American multinational media conglomerate with interests primarily in commercial broadcasting, publishing, and t ...
and
Electronic Data Systems
Electronic all cash BSN acc: 1311729000110205 Data Systems (EDS) was an American multinational information technology equipment and services company headquartered in Plano, Texas which was founded in 1962 by Ross Perot. The company was a subs ...
.
In 2008, Mills said that his cell stacks could provide power for long-range electric vehicles, and that this electricity would cost less than 2 cents per kilowatt-hour.
In December 2013, BLP was one of 54 applicants to receive ~$1.1M in grant funding from the
New Jersey Economic Development Authority
The New Jersey Economic Development Authority (EDA) is an independent government entity in the U.S. state of New Jersey dedicated to broadening and expanding the state's economic base.
The EDA creates public-private partnerships to provide access ...
.
Collaborators with the company
In 1996, NASA released a report describing experiments using a BLP electrolytic cell. Although not recreating the large heat gains reported for the cell by BLP, unexplained power gains ranging from 1.06 to 1.68 of the input power were reported, which, whilst "...admit ngthe existence of an unusual source of heat with the cell...falls far short of being compelling". The authors went on to propose the recombination of hydrogen and oxygen as a possible explanation of the anomalous results.
Around 2002, the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) granted a Phase I grant to Anthony Marchese, a mechanical engineer at Rowan University, to study a possible rocket propulsion that would use hydrinos.
In 2002, Rowan University's Anthony Marchese said that whilst "agnostic about the existence of hydrinos", he was quite confident that there was no fraud involved with BLP. Although his NIAC grant was criticised by
Bob Park
Robert Lee Park (January 16, 1931 – April 29, 2020) was an American emeritus professor of physics at the University of Maryland, College Park, and a former director of public information at the Washington office of the American Physical Society. ...
, Marchese said ''"for me to not continue with this study would be unethical to the scientific community. The only reason not to pursue this would be because of being afraid of being bullied."''
Criticism
In 1999, the Nobel prize winning physicist
Philip Warren Anderson
Philip Warren Anderson (December 13, 1923 – March 29, 2020) was an American theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate. Anderson made contributions to the theories of localization, antiferromagnetism, symmetry breaking (including a paper in 19 ...
said he is "sure that it's a fraud", and in the same year another Nobel prize winning physicist,
Steven Chu
Steven Chu The following year, a 2000 patent based on its hydrino-related technology 6,024,935 Lower-energy hydrogen methods and structures, February 15, 2000. Retrieved February 11, 2011 was later withdrawn by the
United States Patent and Trademark Office
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is an agency in the U.S. Department of Commerce that serves as the national patent office and trademark registration authority for the United States. The USPTO's headquarters are in Alexa ...
(USPTO) due to contradictions with known physics laws and other concerns about the viability of the described processes, citing Park and others.
A hydrino laser patent and a hydrino energy patent have not been withdrawn by the USPTO.
An April 2000 editorial column by Robert L. Park and an outside query by an unknown person''Patent nonsense: court denies BlackLight Power appeal'' ''What's New'', Robert Park, September 6, 2002 prompted Group Director Esther Kepplinger of the USPTO to review this new patent herself. Kepplinger said that her "main concern was the proposition that the applicant was claiming the electron going to a lower orbital in a fashion that I knew was contrary to the known laws of physics and chemistry", and that the patent appeared to involve cold fusion and perpetual motion. Kepplinger contacted another Director, Robert Spar, who also expressed doubts on the patentability of the patent application. This caused the USPTO to withdraw from issue the patent application before it was granted and re-open it for review, and to withdraw four related applications, including one for a hydrino power plant.
In 2000, a law firm engaged by BLP sent letters to four prominent physicists asking them to stop making what it called "defamatory comments". The physicists had been quoted in the ''
Village Voice
''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture paper, known for being the country's first alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher, John Wilcock, and Norman Mailer, the ''Voice'' began as a platform for the creat ...
'', '' Dow Jones Newswire'' and other publications as dismissing BLP's claims on the basis that they violated the laws of physics. In response, one of the physicists, Robert L. Park of the
American Physical Society
The American Physical Society (APS) is a not-for-profit membership organization of professionals in physics and related disciplines, comprising nearly fifty divisions, sections, and other units. Its mission is the advancement and diffusion of k ...
, said that if BLP sued, he was confident the scientific community would lend its support and that the court would side with the physicists. Park later wrote that a number of the recipients of the letter, who had "responded honestly to questions from the media", had since fallen silent. Scientists, Park wrote, are easy to intimidate since they are not rich enough to risk costly legal actions.
In May 2000, BLP filed suit in the US District Court of Columbia, saying that withdrawal of the application after the company had paid the fee was contrary to law. In 2002, the District Court concluded that the USPTO was acting inside the limits of its authority in withdrawing a patent over whose validity it had doubts, and later that year, the
United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (in case citations, Fed. Cir. or C.A.F.C.) is a United States court of appeals that has special appellate jurisdiction over certain types of specialized cases in the Federal judiciary of ...
ratified this decision. Applications were rejected by the UK patent office for similar reasons. The
European Patent Office
The European Patent Office (EPO) is one of the two organs of the European Patent Organisation (EPOrg), the other being the Administrative Council. The EPO acts as executive body for the organisation
(EPO) rejected a similar BLP patent application due to lack of clarity on how the process worked. Reexamination of this European patent is pending.
Robert L. Park, emeritus professor of physics at the
University of Maryland
The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of M ...
and a notable skeptic, has been particularly critical of BLP since 1991. By 2000, Park remained skeptical, stating:
"Unlike most schemes for free energy, the hydrino process of Randy Mills is not without ample theory. Mills has written a 1000 page tome, entitled, "The Grand Unified Theory of Classical Quantum Mechanics", that takes the reader all the way from hydrinos to
antigravity
Anti-gravity (also known as non-gravitational field) is a hypothetical phenomenon of creating a place or object that is free from the force of gravity. It does not refer to the lack of weight under gravity experienced in free fall or orbit, or to ...
. Fortunately, Aaron Barth ..has taken upon himself to look through it, checking for accuracy. Barth is a post doctoral researcher at the
Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
The Center for Astrophysics , Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA), alternatively called the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, is an astrophysics research institute jointly operated by the Harvard College Observatory and Smithsonian Astrop ...
, and holds a PhD in Astronomy, 1998, from UC Berkeley. What he found initially were mathematical blunders and unjustified assumptions. To his surprise, however, portions of the book seemed well organized. These, it now turns out, were lifted verbatim from various texts. This has been the object of a great deal of discussion from Mills' Hydrino Study Group. "Mills seems not to understand what the fuss is all about." – Park
By 2008, Park continued to express his skepticism:
"BlackLight Power (BLP), founded 17 years ago as HydroCatalysis, announced last week that the company had successfully tested a
prototype
A prototype is an early sample, model, or release of a product built to test a concept or process. It is a term used in a variety of contexts, including semantics, design, electronics, and Software prototyping, software programming. A prototyp ...
power system that would generate 50 KW of thermal power. BLP anticipates delivery of the new power system in 12 to 18 months. The BLP process, discovered by Randy Mills, is said to coax hydrogen atoms into a "state below the ground state", called the "hydrino". There is no independent scientific confirmation of the hydrino, and BLP has a patent problem. So they have nothing to sell but bull shit. The company is therefore dependent on investors with deep pockets and shallow brains." – Park
In 2008,
Robert L. Park
Robert Lee Park (January 16, 1931 – April 29, 2020) was an American emeritus professor of physics at the University of Maryland, College Park, and a former director of public information at the Washington office of the American Physical Society. ...
wrote that BLP has benefited from wealthy investors who allocate a proportion of their funds to risky ventures with a potentially huge upside, but that in the case of BLP since the science underlying the offering was "just wrong" investment risk was, in Park's view, "infinite".
Various scientists also voiced their opinions as far back as the 1990s.
Steven Chu
Steven Chu In 1999, Princeton University's physics Nobel laureate Phillip Anderson said of it, "If you could fuck around with the hydrogen atom, you could fuck around with the energy process in the sun. You could fuck around with life itself." "Everything we know about everything would be a bunch of nonsense. That's why I'm so sure that it's a fraud."Wolfgang Ketterle, a professor of physics at MIT, said BLP's claims are "nonsense" and that "there is no state of hydrogen lower than the ground state".Michio Kaku, a theoretical physicist based at City University of New York, adds that "the only law that this business with Mills is proving is that a fool and his money are easily parted." and that "There's a sucker born every minute." While
Peter Zimmerman
Peter D. Zimmerman (June 15, 1941, Portsmouth, Virginia – August 27, 2021 Washington, D. C.) was an American nuclear physicist, arms control expert, and former Chief Scientist of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. At his death, he was Eme ...
was chief arms-control scientist at the State Department, he stated that his department and the Patent Office "have fought back with success" against "pseudoscientists" and he railed against, among other things, the inventors of "hydrinos". In 2009, the editors of '' IEEE Spectrum'' magazine characterized it as a "loser" technology because " st experts don't believe such lower states exist, and they say the experiments don't present convincing evidence" and mentioned that Wolfgang Ketterle had said the claims are "nonsense". BLP has announced several times that it was about to deliver commercial products based on Mill's theories but has not delivered a working product.
Peer-reviewed criticisms
In the 2000s, several reviewed articles were published criticizing Hydrino theory for being incompatible with Quantum Mechanics.
For example, in 2005, Andreas Rathke of the
European Space Agency
, owners =
, headquarters = Paris, Île-de-France, France
, coordinates =
, spaceport = Guiana Space Centre
, seal = File:ESA emblem seal.png
, seal_size = 130px
, image = Views in the Main Control Room (1205 ...
, publishing in the '' New Journal of Physics'', wrote that Mills' description of quantum mechanics is "inconsistent and has several serious deficiencies", and that there is "no theoretical support of the hydrino hypothesis". Rathke said it would be helpful if Mills' experimental results could be independently replicated, and suggested that any evidence produced should be reconsidered in the context of a conventional physical explanation. One inconsistency of Mills' CQM with quantum mechanics regards its inability to be reconciled with the probability density function in quantum mechanics. Rathke stated, "However, while solutions of the Schrödinger equation with n<1 indeed exist, they are not square integrable. This violates not only an axiom of quantum mechanics, but in practical terms prohibits that these solutions can in any way describe the probability density of a particle." In the same year, the '' Journal of Applied Physics'' published a critique by A.V. Phelps of the 2004 article, "Water bath calorimetric study of excess heat generation in resonant transfer plasmas" by J. Phillips, R. Mills and X. Chen. Phelps criticized both the calorimetric techniques and the underlying theory described in the Phillips/Mills/Chen article. The journal also published a response to Phelps' critique on the same day. In 2005 Šišović and others published a paper describing experimental data and analysis of Mills' claim that a resonant transfer model (RTM) explains the excessive Doppler broadening of the Hα line. Šišović concluded that: "The detected large excessive broadening in pure hydrogen and in Ne–H2 mixture is in agreement with CM ollision Modeland other experimental results" and that "these results can't be explained by RTM". The collision model explanation for excessive broadening of the Hα line is based on established physics.
In 2006, a paper published in '' Physics Letters A'', concluded that Mills' theoretical hydrino states are unphysical. For the hydrino states, the binding strength increases as the strength of the electric potential decreases, with maximum binding strength when the potential has disappeared completely. The author
Norman Dombey
Norman or Normans may refer to:
Ethnic and cultural identity
* The Normans, a people partly descended from Norse Vikings who settled in the territory of Normandy in France in the 10th and 11th centuries
** People or things connected with the No ...
remarked "We could call these anomalous states " homeopathic" states because the smaller the coupling, the larger the effect." The model also assumes that the
nuclear charge In atomic physics, the effective nuclear charge is the actual amount of positive (nuclear) charge experienced by an electron in a multi-electron atom. The term "effective" is used because the shielding effect of negatively charged electrons prevent ...
distribution is a point rather than having an arbitrarily small non-zero radius. It also lacks an analogous solution in the Schrödinger equation, which governs non-relativistic systems. Dombey concluded: "We suggest that outside of science fiction this is sufficient reason to disregard them." From a suggestion in Dombey's paper, further work by Antonio Di Castro has shown that states below the ground state, as described in Mills' work, are incompatible with the Schrödinger, Klein–Gordon and Dirac equations, key equations in the study of quantum systems.
In 2008, the ''Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics'' published an article by Hans-Joachim Kunze, professor emeritus at the Institute for Experimental Physics,
Ruhr University Bochum
The Ruhr University Bochum (, ) is a public research university located in the southern hills of the central Ruhr area, Bochum, Germany. It was founded in 1962 as the first new public university in Germany after World War II. Instruction began in ...
, critical of the 2003 paper authored by R. Mills and P. Ray, Extreme ultraviolet spectroscopy of helium– hydrogen. The abstract of the article is: "It is suggested that spectral lines, on which the fiction of fractional principal
quantum number
In quantum physics and chemistry, quantum numbers describe values of conserved quantities in the dynamics of a quantum system. Quantum numbers correspond to eigenvalues of operators that commute with the Hamiltonian—quantities that can be kno ...
s in the hydrogen atom is based, are nothing else but artefacts." Kunze stated that it was impossible to detect the novel lines below 30 nm reported by Mills and Ray because the equipment they used did not have the capability to detect them as per the manufacturer and as per "every book on vacuum-UV spectroscopy" and "therefore the observed lines must be artefacts". Kunze also stated that: "The enormous spectral widths of the novel lines point to artefacts, too."