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Blacklight Power Returns With More Lab Validation

By Chris Morrison | Aug 13, 2009

For readers who aren’t familiar with Blacklight Power (likely the majority), here’s the executive summary: A company formed in 1991 (right after the cold fusion claims of Fleischmann and Pons were torn apart) claims that 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.

But unlike most of the free energy crowd, Blacklight has survived for almost two decades and has a staff of dedicated Ph.Ds, including its founder, Randell Mills. It has also taken about $60 million in funding, and struck deals with utilities to sell them electricity. And its process has received third-party validation from Rowan University.

Blacklight presents a tantalizing case, because it dangles just enough credible details to keep telling its story. And it doesn’t hurt that the math the company is based on is incomprehensible to ordinary mortals.

The latest in its saga is news that three researchers at Rowan have run a second round of tests on Blacklight’s solid fuel. The trio say they have verified that the fuel is capable of continuously releasing more energy than is put in to start the reaction. And this time, they made the fuel themselves rather than receiving from the company — a significant difference from the first test, when associate professor Peter Jansson told me he wasn’t sure what Blacklight did to prepare the material.

Most importantly, the Rowan group says they have gotten 6.5 times more energy than the maximum energy potential of the materials involved. The implication is that Blacklight’s special hydrogen atom, the “hydrino”, is making an appearance. Hydrinos supposedly have an electron in an extremely low orbit around the nucleus; getting it there releases the extra energy.

Blacklight has attracted its share of ridicule through the years, mostly from scientists who discount the notion of the hydrino. Physicists and chemists familiar with hydrogen and spectral chemistry tend to immediately reject hydrino theory. Weigh that against some impressive backers, including a Reagan-era energy official and Michael Jordan, the former CEO of EDS and Westinghouse.

I’d tend to believe the scientific community over a set of rich investors, mainly because the former are more likely to know how to work out an equation and operate a mass spectrometer than the latter. Investments of $60 million may sound like a lot, but far larger amounts have been thrown away on silly ideas.

Then again, Blacklight has its validations and its papers, of which it has just released another. There are also its utility partnerships — now up to six, although the two it has named, Akridge Energy and Escatado Energy, are rather small.

Rowan, generally considered a pretty good public school, is also too small of a name to get Blacklight much recognition. But it’s not clear exactly what the company is after, either — more partnerships? More funding? More scientific recognition? Perhaps all of the above?

While Blacklight is deciding how to play its cards, here’s a rather longer article I wrote about it last year, complete with quotes from (separately) confused and scornful scientists.

Chris Morrison, a reporter on energy, renewables and climate change, is the former lead cleantech writer for VentureBeat. Follow him on Twitter.

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  •  
    1

    TamPogo

    08/13/09 | Report as spam

    RE: Blacklight Power Returns With More Lab Validation

    Sadly, with the fight for gov. funding ongoing, most Ph.D's who are involved in hot fusion research will always slam those who are not, so effectively, the cold fusion researchers have been black balled, fitting to see the same happen to BlackLight over the years. lol Never say never is my motto, and I can't wait for all these naysayer Ph.D's to be proven wrong all these years.

    LowestCostWireless.com

  •  
    2

    Mark Goldes

    08/13/09 | Report as spam

    RE: Blacklight Power Returns With More Lab Validation

    Chava Energy is also developing fractional Hydrogen technologies. The possible existence of fractional quantum states in the Hydrogen atom (f/H) has been debated since the advent of quantum theory in 1924, according to Ronald Bourgoin, a graduate student of the late Dr. Robert L. Carroll (a mathematical physicist who consulted with our group for 12 years). Dr. Carroll first described ?inverse quantum states? in his 1976 book, and wrote a paper with that title in 1990, suggesting they would one day prove extremely important.

    Chava uses the term f/H for the fractional hydrogen species since we are not convinced that other theories accurately describe the same particle we are seeing below the Bohr orbital. Regardless of what fractional Hydrogen orbits are labeled, or prove to be in fact, they allow hundreds of times the power of Hydrogen combustion with oxygen. Using fractional Hydrogen, one barrel of water becomes the equivalent of hundreds of barrels of oil.

    The late Arie de Geus invented an entirely different energy production method that also utilized fractional quantum states of Hydrogen. His Patent application entitled: Method and Apparatus for the Production of so called Fractional Hydrogen and Associated Production of Photon Energy, may describe the simplest possible f/H device, which could be called a plasma discharge tube. His invention involves a mixture of various simultaneously formed fractional states of Hydrogen that are claimed to be extremely stable. He claimed his work was proven in many laboratory experiments and independently verified.

    The Chava work with fractional quantum states, employing a completely different approach, has opened a path to a new concept called the Self Powered Internal Combustion Engine (SPICE). This is an evolution of successful experimental work done thirty years ago.

    This concept, when validated, will lead to a cost-competitive alternative to fossil fuels and nuclear power. Importantly, it can be sized perfectly for use in automotive applications ? even utilizing a modified reciprocating engine, but with the ability to sell electricity to the grid when parked, and to supply pollution-free renewable power.

    This concept of an automobile that needs no fossil fuel or battery recharge has been a long-time ambition and vision for the ideal alternative energy application. En-route to that objective, improved fractional hydrogen fuel mileage technology might be retrofit to existing vehicles.

  •  
    3

    exaviator

    08/17/09 | Report as spam

    RE: Blacklight Power Returns With More Lab Validation

    "Fractional" hydrogen -- atoms of hydrogen below ground state -- would not simply be a "cost-competitive alternative fuel". The existence of such a thing would be tantamount to the discovery of fire in the modern age.

    Just because:
    (a) it would make you (and me) happy as hell to see the eggheads get their comeuppance, and
    (b) there is a mathematical construct of lower-than-1s hydrogen orbits knocking around in people's heads
    doesn't make it plausible.

    Be careful not to get your emotions wrapped around a theoretical principle. The actual science, as described by Rowan U., is weak at best. If what they are saying is true about their experiments, the assertion could be repeatable and "falsifiable" (they KEY REQUIREMENTS for ANY sceintific theory, even the gospel of AGW) by any number of un-exotic laboratories. But it isn't happening, and IMO it never will.

    I think Mr. Morrison did a yeoman's job as a journalist not taking sides and trying to give BPL as fair a hearing as possible in this brief article while making appropriate recognition of skepticism.

    But if this turned out to be true it would change EVERYTHING.

  •  
    4

    froarty572@...

    09/04/09 | Report as spam

    RE: Blacklight Power Returns With More Lab Validation

    Since Dr Mills of Black Light Power has already defined the hydrino and because fractional quantum state hydrogen is also misleading I prefer to use the term "relativistic hydrogen" as proposed in a 2005 paper by Jan Naudts? On the hydrino state of relativistic hydrogen atom?
    Naudts argues that detractors of fractional state hydrogen overlook relativistic effects inside a Casimir cavity. These relativistic effects were discussed in a 2002 paper by Italian researchers Di Fiore et all "Vacuum fluctuation force on a rigid Casimir cavity in a gravitational field". They proposed the possibility of verifying the equivalence principle for the zero-point energy of quantum electrodynamics, by evaluating the force, produced by vacuum fluctuations, acting on a rigid Casimir cavity in a weak gravitational field. Their calculations show a resulting force has opposite direction with respect to the gravitational acceleration, Their proposal indicates equivalent acceleration outside the cavity relative to inside the cavity. Their 10 E^-14 N of force may appear inconsequential but it is a constant acceleration which in the spatial confinement of a cavity I propose can result in frame divergence and accumulate into time dilation for hydrogen atoms obeying gas law inside the cavity. I am proposing that the exclusion field associated with Casimir cavities represents a very local gravitational depletion zone as opposed to the more familiar concentration zone of a gravity well. QED refers to this exclusion of longer wave length vacuum fluctuations inside a Casimir cavity as "up conversion" but I think Naudts relativistic solution is actually at work. I believe time is occurring at multiple seconds per second for atoms diffused inside the cavity inversely proportional to the cube of the distance between "plates" as indicated by the Casimir formula for non-ideal conductors. I believe the normal gravitational field for Casimir plates is modified as plates approach each other in Casimir geometry forming a "depletion" zone between them that upsets the normally isotropic field very locally between the plates. The field is concentrated in the metal lattice which draws down the confined reservoir of a Casimir cavity to create the depletion zone.

    Locally hydrogen remains just hydrogen and the Bohr radius is never violated. The small acceleration inside the Cavity accumulates into time dilation and Lorentz contraction which would explain catalytic action but with the appropriate rigid Casimir cavity catalytic action can be leverage into producing excess heat. In the case of the skeletal catalyst used by Mills, Rayney nickel, it is evident that H1 is the preferential state for diffusion. H2 is denied mobility compared to H1 which is able to accumulate velocity inside the exclusion field of the cavity. The small difference in gravitational acceleration calculated by Di Fiore et all represents a diverging relativistic frame allowing the Warkowski space time temporal coordinate of H1 to vary inside the cavity vs. outside the cavity. I prefer to call this "relativistic hydrogen" as opposed to Mills and others who refer to it as fractional quantum states, Their empirical data and calculations of 137 such fractional states varying from 1/2 to 1/137 appears correct but I propose they should be considered perspective multipliers which solve for the trig portion of the Bohr radius measured in our reference frame due to Lorentz contraction. This suggest that Hydrogen orbitals inside a depletion zone can twist their orientation on the time axis in quantum number steps. Dr Mills already claims these fractional states to be non radiative which agrees with my theory that the orbital radius is actually unchanged and the 4D orientation is responsible for the fractional states as observed from a reference frame outside the cavity.


    N =1 is assumed to be 45 degree for flat space sharing dimensions equally. As Velocity increases toward C on spatial axis XYZ time is suppressed (event horizon), As velocity increases toward C on time axis the spatial axis XYZ are suppressed (Casimir cavity).

    If relativistic H1 forms relativistic H2 it is also denied mobility just like hydrogen molecules near the mouth of the cavity that were unable to diffuse into the depletion zone. The relativistic H2 however has accumulated velocity, is still in a frame with a different acceleration rate and is subject to gas law - heat still trying to diffuse the molecule in opposition to this confinement. The vacuum fluctuations of this still diverging relativistic frame build "organized" boundary conditions with the covalent bond of the confined molecule which breaks the bond and restores the atoms to monatomic levels using ZPE. You could also say the energy is provided by gas law for those opposed to ZPE :_)

    When relativistic H2 forms inside a cavity it emits a photon then becomes spatially confined in opposition to the moving frame and gas law. When these forces accumulate to break the covalent bond the atoms reorient to the appropriate "fractional quantum" angle for the local Casimir geometry and the cycle starts over in a photon emitting cascade between H1 and H2 that does not consume the hydrogen. This continues until the atoms escape the cavity or the geometry overheats and grows shorts that relieve the depletion zone.

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