Brilliant Light Power, Inc. (BLP), formerly BlackLight Power, Inc. of

Cranbury, New Jersey Cranbury is a township in southern Middlesex County, within the U.S. state of New Jersey. As of the 2020 United States census, the township's population was 3,842, a decrease of 15 (−0.4%) from the 2010 census count of 3,857, which in turn ...

, is a company founded by Randell L. Mills, who claims to have discovered a new energy source from what he says is the electron in a hydrogen atom dropping below its ground energy state into a "hydrino state". The claims lack corroborating

scientific evidence Scientific evidence is evidence that serves to either support or counter a scientific theory or hypothesis, although scientists also use evidence in other ways, such as when applying theories to practical problems. "Discussions about empirical ev ...

and the proposed hydrino states are unphysical and incompatible with key equations of

quantum mechanics Quantum mechanics is the fundamental physical Scientific theory, theory that describes the behavior of matter and of light; its unusual characteristics typically occur at and below the scale of atoms. Reprinted, Addison-Wesley, 1989, It is ...

. BLP has announced several times that it was about to deliver commercial products based on Mill's theories but has never delivered any 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 ''Physics Letters'' was a scientific journal published from 1962 to 1966, when it split in two series now published by Elsevier Elsevier ( ) is a Dutch academic publishing company specializing in scientific, technical, and medical content. Its ...

'', ''

New Journal of Physics ''New Journal of Physics'' is an online-only, Open access (publishing), open-access, peer review, peer-reviewed scientific journal covering research in all aspects of physics, as well as interdisciplinarity, interdisciplinary topics where physics f ...

'', ''

Journal of Applied Physics The ''Journal of Applied Physics'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal with a focus on the physics of modern technology. The journal was originally established in 1931 under the name of ''Physics'', and was published by the American Physical So ...

'', and '' Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics''. In 2009, ''

IEEE Spectrum ''IEEE Spectrum'' is a magazine edited and published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. The first issue of ''IEEE Spectrum'' was published in January 1964 as a successor to ''Electrical Engineering''. In 2010, ''IEEE Spe ...

'' 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 physicist

Wolfgang Ketterle Wolfgang Ketterle (; born 21 October 1957) is a German physicist and professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His research has focused on experiments that trap and cool atoms to temperatures close to absolute zer ...

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 ( ) is a city in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. With a population of 58,039 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, eighth-most populous ci ...

, Mills first announced his hydrino state hypothesis which rejects the idea that "cold fusion" was occurring in studies surrounding the Fleischmann–Pons experiment. According to Mills all the effects (which themselves were disputed to be unreproducible) were caused by shrinkage of hydrogen atoms as they fell to a state below the ground state. Arguments offered by Mills were in contradiction to known chemistry and were 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 based in the Lloyd Center Tower in Portland, Oregon with operations in the western United States. PacifiCorp has two business units: Pacific Power, a regulated electric utility with service territory thro ...

, Conectiv, retired executives from

Morgan Stanley Morgan Stanley is an American multinational investment bank and financial services company headquartered at 1585 Broadway in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. With offices in 42 countries and more than 80,000 employees, the firm's clients in ...

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 (1936 – 2010), who was Chief Executive Officer of

PepsiCo PepsiCo, Inc. is an American multinational corporation, multinational food, snack, and beverage corporation headquartered in Harrison, New York, in the hamlet of Purchase, New York, Purchase. PepsiCo's business encompasses all aspects of the f ...

Worldwide Foods,

Westinghouse Electric Corporation The Westinghouse Electric Corporation was an American manufacturing company founded in 1886 by George Westinghouse and headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was originally named "Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company" and was ...

CBS Corporation CBS Corporation was an American multinational media company with interests primarily in commercial broadcasting, publishing and television production. It was split from Viacom on December 31, 2005, alongside an entirely new Viacom; both ...

and

Electronic Data Systems Electronic Data Systems (EDS) Corporation was an American multinational corporation, multinational information technology equipment and services company headquartered in Plano, Texas, which was founded in 1962 by Ross Perot. The company was a s ...

. 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.

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 The NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC), formerly NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC), is a NASA program for development of far reaching, long term advanced concepts by "creating breakthroughs, radically better or entirely new aerospa ...

(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, 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 Anderson localization, localization, antiferromagnetism, symmetry breaking ( ...

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 List of federal agencies in the United States, agency in the United States Department of Commerce, U.S. Department of Commerce that serves as the national patent office and trademark ...

(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 publication based in Greenwich Village, New York City, known for being the country's first alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher, John Wilcock, and Norman Ma ...

'', ''

Dow Jones Newswires Dow Jones & Company, Inc. (also known simply as Dow Jones) is an American publishing firm owned by News Corp, and led by CEO Almar Latour. The company publishes ''The Wall Street Journal'', ''Barron's'', ''MarketWatch'', ''Mansion Global'', ' ...

'' 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 ...

, 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 one of the 13 United States courts of appeals. It has special appellate jurisdiction over certain categories of cases in the U.S. federa ...

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, United States. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the Univ ...

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 the phenomenon of creating a place or object that is free from the force of gravity. It does not refer to either the lack of weight under gravity experienced in free fall or orbit, or to ba ...
. 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), previously known as the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, is an astrophysics research institute jointly operated by the Harvard College Observatory and Smithsonian Astrophy ...
, and holds a PhD in Astronomy, 1998, from
UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after the Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkele ...
. 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 prototype ...
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 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."

, a professor of physics at

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ...

, said BLP's claims are "nonsense" and that "there is no state of hydrogen lower than the ground state".

Michio Kaku Michio Kaku (; ; born January 24, 1947) is an American theoretical physicist, Science communication, science communicator, futurologist, and writer of popular-science. He is a professor of theoretical physics at the City College of New York and ...

, 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 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 ''

'' 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

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. Mark Chu-Carroll a science blogger and professional software engineer accused Mills of engaging in a scam: "Mills... is getting investors to give him money, promising that whatever they invest, they'll get back manifold when he starts selling hydrino power generators! He promises they'll be on market within a year or two – five at most! Then he comes up with either a demonstration, or the testimonial from his neighbor, or the self-publication of his book, or another press release talking about the newest version of his technology..... It's been going on for almost 25 years, this constant cycle of press release/demo/testimonial every couple of years.... claims from 2009 claiming commercialization within 12 to 18 months; from 2005 claiming commercialization within months; and claims from 1999 claiming commercialization within a year.... But he always comes up with an excuse why those deadlines needed to be missed. And he always manages to find more investors, willing to hand over millions of dollars. As long as suckers are still willing to give him money, why ''wouldn't'' he keep on making claims?" ''

Scientific American ''Scientific American'', informally abbreviated ''SciAm'' or sometimes ''SA'', is an American popular science magazine. Many scientists, including Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, have contributed articles to it, with more than 150 Nobel Pri ...

'' reported that in 2014, Mills was asked by an interested follower if he had ever isolated hydrinos and, in spite of previous claims, Mills said that he had not and that it would be "a really, really huge task." The interlocutor pointed out that if hydrinos were being produced at the rate Mills claimed, there would be obvious observations. Moreover, there was no sign of progress, "Every year they make up half the remaining distance to commercialization, but will they ever get there?" In 2015, an energy analyst writing for ''

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine founded by B. C. Forbes in 1917. It has been owned by the Hong Kong–based investment group Integrated Whale Media Investments since 2014. Its chairman and editor-in-chief is Steve Forbes. The co ...

'' noted that Mills had made numerous extraordinary and difficult-to-believe claims including that he had "refuted quantum mechanics, can explain "mysteries of the sun" and has identified dark energy. His inventions can: produce power very cheaply through "'shrinking' the hydrogen atom's orbitsphere" with a power density of 100 billion watts per liter. Additionally, the materials created can act as an explosive or propellant, make ships rustproof and endowed with stealth properties, produce an anti-gravity effect that will allow a vessel to elevate, and "form the basis of batteries the size of a briefcase to drive your car 1000 miles at highway speeds on a single charge.""

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 The European Space Agency (ESA) is a 23-member International organization, international organization devoted to space exploration. With its headquarters in Paris and a staff of around 2,547 people globally as of 2023, ESA was founded in 1975 ...

, publishing in the ''

'', 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 ''

'' 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 ''

'', concluded that Mills' theoretical hydrino states are unphysical. For the hydrino states, the binding strength increases as the strength of the

electric potential Electric potential (also called the ''electric field potential'', potential drop, the electrostatic potential) is defined as electric potential energy per unit of electric charge. More precisely, electric potential is the amount of work (physic ...

decreases, with maximum binding strength when the potential has disappeared completely. The author Norman Dombey remarked "We could call these anomalous states "

homeopathic Homeopathy or homoeopathy is a pseudoscientific system of alternative medicine. It was conceived in 1796 by the German physician Samuel Hahnemann. Its practitioners, called homeopaths or homeopathic physicians, believe that a substance tha ...

" 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 of an electron in a multi-electron atom or ion is the number of elementary charges (e) an electron experiences by the nucleus. It is denoted by ''Z''eff. The term "effective" is used because the shi ...

distribution is a point rather than having an arbitrarily small non-zero radius. It also lacks an analogous solution in the

Schrödinger equation The Schrödinger equation is a partial differential equation that governs the wave function of a non-relativistic quantum-mechanical system. Its discovery was a significant landmark in the development of quantum mechanics. It is named after E ...

, which governs non-relativistic systems. Dombey concluded: "We suggest that outside of

science fiction Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, space ...

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 ''Emeritus/Emerita'' () is an honorary title granted to someone who retirement, retires from a position of distinction, most commonly an academic faculty position, but is allowed to continue using the previous title, as in "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 ...

, critical of the 2003 paper authored by R. Mills and P. Ray, Extreme

ultraviolet spectroscopy Ultraviolet radiation, also known as simply UV, is electromagnetic radiation of wavelengths of 10–400 nanometers, shorter than that of visible light, but longer than X-rays. UV radiation is present in sunlight and constitutes about 10% of th ...

helium Helium (from ) is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol He and atomic number 2. It is a colorless, odorless, non-toxic, inert gas, inert, monatomic gas and the first in the noble gas group in the periodic table. Its boiling point is ...

–

hydrogen Hydrogen is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol H and atomic number 1. It is the lightest and abundance of the chemical elements, most abundant chemical element in the universe, constituting about 75% of all baryon, normal matter ...

. The abstract of the article is: "It is suggested that

spectral line A spectral line is a weaker or stronger region in an otherwise uniform and continuous spectrum. It may result from emission (electromagnetic radiation), emission or absorption (electromagnetic radiation), absorption of light in a narrow frequency ...

s, on which the fiction of fractional principal

quantum number In quantum physics and chemistry, quantum numbers are quantities that characterize the possible states of the system. To fully specify the state of the electron in a hydrogen atom, four quantum numbers are needed. The traditional set of quantu ...

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."

References

External links

* Robert L. Park
''BlackLight Power: Some Ideas Are Simply Too Dumb to Die!''
in his newsletter ''What's New'', January 13, 2006 ; General media * * * * {{cite news , url=https://www.cjr.org/the_observatory/weird_science_reporting.php , title=Weird Science (Reporting) – CNN covers unfounded claims about new energy technology , publisher=

Columbia Journalism Review The ''Columbia Journalism Review'' (''CJR'') is a biannual magazine for professional journalists that has been published by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism since 1961. Its original purpose was "to assess the performance ...

, last=Raeburn , first=Paul , date=December 15, 2008 , archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20081216011011/https://www.cjr.org/the_observatory/weird_science_reporting.php , archive-date= December 16, 2008 , url-status = live Pseudoscience Fringe physics Companies based in Middlesex County, New Jersey Companies established in 1991 Cranbury, New Jersey 1991 establishments in New Jersey

Company

Collaborators with the company

Criticism

Peer-reviewed criticisms

See also

References

External links