Quantum Theory *might* have just been disproven

[Dominus Atheos]

Or a part of it anyway

Fuel's paradise? Power source that turns physics on its head

· Scientist says device disproves quantum theory
· Opponents claim idea is result of wrong maths

Alok Jha, science correspondent
Friday November 4, 2005
The Guardian

It seems too good to be true: a new source of near-limitless power that costs virtually nothing, uses tiny amounts of water as its fuel and produces next to no waste. If that does not sound radical enough, how about this: the principle behind the source turns modern physics on its head.

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. Independent scientists claim to have verified the experiments and Dr Mills says that his company, Blacklight Power, has tens of millions of dollars in investment lined up to bring the idea to market. And he claims to be just months away from unveiling his creation.

The problem is that according to the rules of quantum mechanics, the physics that governs the behaviour of atoms, the idea is theoretically impossible. "Physicists are quite conservative. It's not easy to convince them to change a theory that is accepted for 50 to 60 years. I don't think [Mills's] theory should be supported," said Jan Naudts, a theoretical physicist at the University of Antwerp.

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."

Rick Maas, a chemist at the University of North Carolina at Asheville (UNC) who specialises in sustainable energy sources, was allowed unfettered access to Blacklight's laboratories this year. "We went in with a healthy amount of scepticism. While it would certainly be nice if this were true, in my position as head of a research institution, I really wouldn't want to make a mistake. The last thing I want is to be remembered as the person who derailed a lot of sustainable energy investment into something that wasn't real."

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."

Dr Mills's idea goes against almost a century of thinking. When scientists developed the theory of quantum mechanics they described a world where measuring the exact position or energy of a particle was impossible and where the laws of classical physics had no effect. The theory has been hailed as one of the 20th century's greatest achievements.

But it is an achievement Dr Mills thinks is flawed. He turned back to earlier classical physics to develop a theory which, unlike quantum mechanics, allows an electron to move much closer to the proton at the heart of a hydrogen atom and, in doing so, release the substantial amounts of energy he seeks to exploit. Dr Mills's theory, known as classical quantum mechanics and published in the journal Physics Essays in 2003, has been criticised most publicly by Andreas Rathke of the European Space Agency. In a damning critique published recently in the New Journal of Physics, he argued that Dr Mills's theory was the result of mathematical mistakes.

Dr Mills argues that there are plenty of flaws in Dr Rathke's critique. "His paper's riddled with mistakes. We've had other physicists contact him and say this is embarrassing to the journal and [Dr Rathke] won't respond," said Dr Mills.

While the theoretical tangle is unlikely to resolve itself soon, those wanting to exploit the technology are pushing ahead. "We would like to understand it from an academic standpoint and then we would like to be able to use the implications to actually produce energy products," said Prof Maas. "The companies that are lining up behind this are household names."

Dr Mills will not go into details of who is investing in his research but rumours suggest a range of US power companies. It is well known also that Nasa's institute of advanced concepts has funded research into finding a way of using Blacklight's technology to power rockets.

According to Prof Maas, the first product built with Blacklight's technology, which will be available in as little as four years, will be a household heater. As the technology is scaled up, he says, bigger furnaces will be able to boil water and turn turbines to produce electricity.

In a recent economic forecast, Prof Maas calculated that hydrino energy would cost around 1.2 cents (0.7p) per kilowatt hour. This compares to an average of 5 cents per kWh for coal and 6 cents for nuclear energy.


"If it's wrong, it will be proven wrong," said Kert Davies, research director of Greenpeace USA. "But if it's right, it is so important that all else falls away. It has the potential to solve our dependence on oil. Our stance is of cautious optimism."

I'm not a Quantum Physicist, but it sounds like the part that got disproven was only how far apart a proton and electron can be in a hydrogen atom, so what's the big deal?

[Nephtys]

Already posted.
http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?t=80038

[Dominus Atheos]

Maybe I should read more of this forum

[Alyeska]

The entire point about quantum theory is it turns traditional physics on its head. Thats part of how quantum theory works. Its unpredictable nature.

[wolveraptor]

Not really. Most general physics calculations don't vary from quantum caculations to a great degree. It's a revolutionary field, but not necessarily a paradigm-shattering one.

[Kuroneko]

Not really. Most general physics calculations don't vary from quantum caculations to a great degree. It's a revolutionary field, but not necessarily a paradigm-shattering one.

Well, if one works in Lagrangian or Hamiltonian mechanics, I suppose there is enough mathematical similarity to justify that statement. However, that's hardly a typical approach to a 'general physics calculation', since for most situations, it's comparable to using a sledgehammer to kill a fly. Or did you mean that the results don't vary to a significant degree, except perhaps for a limiting case of small system size?

[kheegster]

Not really. Most general physics calculations don't vary from quantum caculations to a great degree. It's a revolutionary field, but not necessarily a paradigm-shattering one.

'General physics' these days usually require quantum mechanics... off the top off my head, I can't think of any fields of physics or astrophysics where the assumptions or methods of quantum physics can safely be ignored. Solid-state physics, particle physics, stellar astrophysics, you name it, quantum mechanics is required somewhere along the line. If you mean high-school physics when you speak of 'general physics', then you're probably right.

Not paradigm shattering? Schrodinger's cat, quantum entanglement, wave-particle-duality...to paraphrase Feynmann, the fact that you don't find it shocking means that you don't understand it.

Einstein himself couldn't bring himself to accept the consequences of quantum mechanics.

Check out John Gribbin's website for some popular science articles on quantum physics.

[Darth Wong]

Does anyone have a source for this who is not a general-audience journalist? I'm not sure how much damage would actually be done to quantum mechanics if it was determined that there is a lower ground state than previous thought, but I've seen so many of these "close-minded scientists skeptical of revolutionary paradigm-shattering discovery" articles that I've gotten sick of them. They're all written in the same manner; you could almost make a template and then just change a few words and names each time.

[drachefly]

In the other thread, Kuroneko pointed out an article, but didn't provide a full citation... from the format, it looks like it could be found on arxiv. I'll check it out... here you go:

http://www.arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0505150

[kheegster]

Does anyone have a source for this who is not a general-audience journalist? I'm not sure how much damage would actually be done to quantum mechanics if it was determined that there is a lower ground state than previous thought, but I've seen so many of these "close-minded scientists skeptical of revolutionary paradigm-shattering discovery" articles that I've gotten sick of them. They're all written in the same manner; you could almost make a template and then just change a few words and names each time.

Physics World had a small news article on it some months ago, but it didn't go OMG T3H NuKleUR FushUn W0rks!!!11

Linka

Hydrogen result causes controversy
5 August 2005

When is the ground state of a hydrogen atom not the ground state? When it is a "hydrino" state, according to Randy Mills and co-workers at BlackLight Power, a company based in Cranbury, New Jersey. In a series of papers Mills and co-workers have argued that the results of a variety of experiments on hydrogen plasmas can only be explained by the existence of a new state in which the electron has less energy than the n=1 ground state. Mills argues that the hydrino state could be used as a new source of energy -- a claim that has led to a predictably negative response from other researchers -- and may even have some connection to the problem of "dark" matter. Now two theoretical physicists in Europe have joined the debate, with one opposing the hydrino hypothesis and the other supporting it.

Hydrogen is the simplest of all the atoms, containing just an electron and a proton. It normally takes 13.6 eV of energy to separate the electron and proton when the atom is in the ground state. Similarly, if an electron and proton combine to form a hydrogen atom in the ground state, 13.6 eV of energy is released in the process. However, if there is a new energy state below the ground state it could be possible to release even more energy.

The ground state of hydrogen is stable in the sense that it cannot emit photons. However, Mills argues that it can undergo a non-radiative transition to a lower state with the help of a catalyst, releasing the additional energy in the process. "In layman's terms, a catalytic process causes the latent energy stored in the hydrogen atom to be released by allowing the electron that is otherwise in a stable orbit to move closer to the nucleus to generate power as heat, light and the formation of a plasma," Mills told PhysicsWeb. Similar non-radiative transitions occur in fluorescent lights and in the formation of chemical bonds in cases where the excess energy is carried away by a third particle.

Mills, who has a medical degree from Harvard, started working on the electronic structure of hydrogen in the late 1980s and has published more than 60 papers on the hydrino state since then. "This research represents a new primary energy source and a new field of hydrogen chemistry," he says. "It may also explain or lead to explanations to many important scientific questions such as the identity of dark matter and a physical rather than mathematical theory of atomic physics."

Earlier this year, however, Andreas Rathke of the European Space Agency published a paper in which he argued that the theory for the hydrino state put forward by Mills was "the result of a mathematical mistake" (New J. Phys. 7 127).

Now another theorist has joined the debate with a different point of view. Jan Naudts of the University of Antwerp in Belgium argues that the Klein-Gordon equation of relativistic quantum mechanics does indeed permit the existence of a low-lying hydrino state, although he stops short of claiming that hydrino states really exist (physics/0507193). "In physics the experiment decides," says Naudts. "Either the hydrino exists, in which case we have to accept a small correction to the textbooks on quantum mechanics, or it does not exist, in which case we have to find better arguments to explain why it does not exist." Naudts says that results of Mills and co-workers have recently been confirmed by a group at the Technical University of Eindhoven. "Nothing is decided yet, but I think it is time to fill the holes in our theoretical understanding of the hydrogen atom."

However, Rathke remains sceptical, claiming that the solution found by Naudts "is known in the literature and had previously been discarded as unphysical." He also says that Naudts has found evidence for just one new state, whereas Mills claims to have found 137, and that the binding energy calculated by Naudts does not correspond to any of these states.

Mills, not surprisingly, welcomes the results of Naudts: "It is a very good sign that he has initiated the work in the quantum physics community to reconcile quantum theory with the enormous amount of data that confirms the existence of new states of hydrogen."

About the author
Peter Rodgers is Editor of Physics World, Belle Dumé is science writer at PhysicsWeb

[Anguirus]

"Cautious optimism" sounds about right. I am not remotely qualified in the realm of quantum physics, but it sounds like in ten years he'll either be a laughingstock or seriously rich. I'll adopt a "wait and see" attitude.

[drachefly]

137 new states? I wonder if it's not a coincidence that this is the nearest integer to the reciprocal of the fine structure constant. But I can't imagine why...

[kheegster]

137 new states? I wonder if it's not a coincidence that this is the nearest integer to the reciprocal of the fine structure constant. But I can't imagine why...

1/137 is merely an approximation to the fine structure constant, and even then only in the correct units.

[Kuroneko]

1/137 is merely an approximation to the fine structure constant, and even then only in the correct units.

Given current precision, it is quite safe to say that 137 is the closest integer to its recipricol. Units do not matter. [α] = [e²/(ε_0hc)] = A²s²/( (F/m)(Js)(m/s) ) = A²s²/( (s^4A²/(m³kg))(kgm²/s)(m/s) ) = A²s²/(s²A²) = 1.

[Wyrm]

1/137 is merely an approximation to the fine structure constant, and even then only in the correct units.

The fine structure constant is dimensionless. No units. That's why people take notice when it crops up.

[tharkûn]

If memory serves, Mill's 'orbitspheres' run into a relativistic boundary at that point. I think their radial velocity or somesuch is verging on the superluminal at the 137th reciprocal state.

[kheegster]

1/137 is merely an approximation to the fine structure constant, and even then only in the correct units.

Given current precision, it is quite safe to say that 137 is the closest integer to its recipricol. Units do not matter. [α] = [e²/(ε_0hc)] = A²s²/( (F/m)(Js)(m/s) ) = A²s²/( (s^4A²/(m³kg))(kgm²/s)(m/s) ) = A²s²/(s²A²) = 1.

My bad...forgot that it is dimensionless.

1/137 = 0.00729927007

alpha = 0.007297352568 plus/minus 2.4E-11 (2002 CODATA value

It is only similar up to 3 significant figures, a precision easily achieved with modern experimental techniques. The similarity of the constant to the reciprocal to 137 has to be nothing more than a coincidence with the integer number of hydrino states claimed.

[Kuroneko]

It is only similar up to 3 significant figures, a precision easily achieved with modern experimental techniques.

Exactly--it's at least two significant figures better than any other integer recipricol, so the statement is quite correct. (Note that it says nothing as to the possible significance of 137 itself.)

The similarity of the constant to the reciprocal to 137 has to be nothing more than a coincidence with the integer number of hydrino states claimed.

Here, it's not a coincidence (although that doesn't mean it's right). In Mills' theory, the electron's velocity around the nucleus is directly proportional to the quantum number and number of protons, with the constant of proportionality being the fine structure constant; this is apprently derived using completely classical considerations of potential energy. The minimum state has to be 1/137 or else the electron will be faster than light. That's the reasoning, at least--what's odd is that Mills' theory does not seem to be Lorentz-invariant, so it is very dubious as to how meaningful relativistic limits are in this respect (to say nothing of other inconsistencies).