October 6, 1999
REPRINT FROM DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
Researcher Claims Power Tech That Defies Quantum Theory
By ERIK BAARD NEW YORK -- A researcher based in New Jersey is presenting
to a gathering of chemists in Ontario, Calif., Wednesday the science that
he says will underpin a multi-billion dollar energy and materials company.
The catch is that his theory - that hydrogen atoms can be shrunk in a
stable form - is an impossibility in the established understanding of
quantum physics. Still, Dr. Randell Mills, a Harvard University-trained
medical doctor who has done postgraduate studies in physics and chemistry,
isn't going it alone. His start-up, BlackLight Power Inc. of Cranbury, New
Jersey, has received support and advice from utilities Conectiv (CIV) and
PacifiCorp (PPW) and from Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co. (MWD). Other
major companies are waiting in the wings, Dr. Mills claimed.
"We have stayed supportive of this in the face of fairly significant
scientists saying it can't be," a senior executive with Morgan Stanley
Dean Witter, who asked that he not be identified, told Dow Jones
Newswires. Pending further verification and commercial commitments, Morgan
Stanley Dean Witter plans to usher BlackLight Power to an initial public
offering within two years, the executive said. The investment bank will be
an underwriter and hasn't put its own money into the start-up, the
executive said, but another source close to the situation said Morgan
Stanley Dean Witter had made an overture to that end.
Dr. Mills claimed the process of transforming hydrogen atoms into smaller
"hydrinos" by chemical catalysis will provide "a virtually unlimited
supply of energy" through distributed power turbines. The hydrinos
themselves combine with other elements, he said, to make compounds that
could be the basis for batteries to power cars 1,000 miles at highway
speeds before recharging; a plastic that conducts electricity and shares
magnetic qualities with iron; and super-strong coatings, among other
things. There could be "potentially thousands, if not millions" of novel
compounds, he said. He also said that compounds such as the ones
BlackLight Power is creating account for the more than 90% of the mass of
the universe that scientists say is so far unobservable.
Dr. Mills hasn't made acceptance easy for himself or his sponsors by
claiming he has found the holy grail of a grand unified theory of
classical quantum mechanics and that the effect of his work on humanity
will be "bigger than fire." Indeed, Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning
physicist at Stanford University, said in September "it's extremely
unlikely that this is real, and I feel sorry for the funders, the people
who are backing this." Dr. Michio Kaku, a theoretical physicist at City
College of New York cited another time-honored law that might apply to
BlackLight Power investors: "There's a sucker born every minute."
The American Chemical Society forum is the first open peer review of
BlackLight Power's findings, while mainstream quantum mechanics,
scientists point out, has evolved from decades of tests and analysis.
BlackLight Power has sent its work out for numerous tests at independent
laboratories over the past several years and has seen positive results,
Dr. Mills said. Conectiv is "really on the optimistic side," albeit
"cautiously" so, said David Blake, Conectiv vice president and BlackLight
Power board member. "It's getting more and more difficult to argue with
the results Dr. Mills is presenting and the validations he is starting to
accrue," Blake said. Both Dr. Mills and Conectiv's Blake say "two major
corporations" are currently testing crystals provided by the labs, but
they declined to name them.
"These folks are spending their time and energy, and the money it takes
to pay technical people, on this. You don't do that unless you've got some
inclination that you'd better look at this," Blake said. But are Conectiv
and PacifiCorp making a "Hail Mary pass" in a once stolid industry thrown
into turmoil by deregulation? "Utilities...especially on the second tier,
like Conectiv and PacifiCorp, are really looking for edges because they
don't have the size and scope" of mega-utilities that are forming through
mergers all around them, said Robert Rubin, a utilities analyst with Bear
Sterns Cos. in New York. Shareholders will forgive managers for making a
few odd bets because "the payoff could be huge," Rubin said. Still,
"there's a difference between investing $2.5 million and $250 million."
"Randy has had no trouble raising the funds he needs," the Morgan Stanley
Dean Witter executive said.
Dr. Mills confirmed that the company had $10 million, largely from the
two utilities, and equipment and property bringing its capital up to about
$30 million. BlackLight Power will present about 10 compounds to the
American Chemical Society and "five papers that give explicit details and
is absolutely reproducible," Dr. Mills said. "I have a unified field
theory that's absolutely testable at every stage and on every item."
"Thank God we're getting our day in court," Dr. Mills said. Also speaking
at the meeting about the reported hydrogen energy release, in the form of
visible and ultra-violet light, is Dr. Johannes Conrads, who retired last
week as the director of the Institute for Low Temperature Plasma Physics
at the Ernst Moritz Arndt University in Greifswald, Germany.
The BlackLight Power research done at the institute was funded by the
company, but "my research was completely independent," said Dr. Conrads,
who has studied plasma since 1959 and has worked for NASA and taught at
Princeton University. Dr. Conrads has flown to the society's meeting in
California to report that he's seen "a few astonishing things" from the
hydrino process, he said. "Something from the Mills cell is releasing
energy, and remarkably high energy, that is clear," Dr. Conrads said.
Equally compelling is that energy in the Mills cell decays at a rate
independent of the removal of outside electricity, and the reaction works
only with BlackLight Power's catalyst, he said. But Dr. Conrads stops
short of vindicating the hydrino theory.
"None of my experiments so far is falsifying Randy's theory, but
unfortunately none of my experiments is verifying it, either," Dr. Conrads
said. Dr. Conrads said he's taking his time to examine Dr. Mills' theory
because "this is not for sensation. I am an old professor in physics." Dr.
Conrad, who emphasized his lack of credentials as a materials scientist,
said he has sought Dr. Mill's permission to invite peers at
DaimlerChrysler AG (DCX) to examine the hydrino crystals. Dr. Conrads
parts with Dr. Mills somewhat by standing with traditional quantum
mechanics as it applies to the ground state that the Mills theory claims
to breach. But Dr. Conrads says he could see Dr. Mills work as a chemical
approach to the new science of non-ideal plasmas. This unusual plasma is
composed of charged particles at low temperatures and as densely packed as
a solid, he said. Indications are that in such an environment,
conventional quantum rules might not apply, he said. With more sensitive
equipment, however, he expects to find stronger evidence for "fractional"
hydrogen, he said.
"Everyone was telling us that heat was too nebulous," Dr. Mills said. To
put his work on more solid ground, he manufactured hydrino-based crystals
in mass, he said. "The hydride ion cracked the nut, right there, that did
it," he said. BlackLight Power's laboratory cabinets are stacked with
vials of crystals of varied colors and forms. Other scientists have been
supportive. On the BlackLight Power board sits Dr. Shelby Brewer, a
nuclear engineer and physicist who is also the former chief executive of
ABB Combustion Engineering and an assistant secretary in the U.S.
Department of Energy from 1981 to 1984. Dr. Melvin H. Miles, an
electro-chemist researching batteries at the U.S. Navy facility in China
Lake, Calif., said the BlackLight crystals put Dr. Mills "way ahead of
cold fusion in that he has a tangible product to show people."
"Randy Mills impressed me that he may also be brilliant. He talks off the
top of his head in a way that other scientists can't. But that doesn't
mean he's right. I think his results are right, but doesn't mean his
theory is right," Miles said.
This is hokum, bogus, flim-flam, quackery, shysterism.