Blacklight Power: Unlimited Alternative Power Source or Snake Oil?

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 and goes against quantum mechanics theory.

Alok Jha, Guardian, reports about alternative power source by creating a new hydrogen atom (Hydrino*) by bringing the electrons closer together.

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.”

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.

* Wikipedia defines Hydrino as:

Hydrino theory is a colloquial term for one aspect of a controversial new hypothesis of atomic chemistry and physics developed by medical doctor, chemist and inventor, Dr. Randell Mills, MD, termed “Classical Quantum Mechanics.” This hypothesis is not accepted by the physics community.

The Hydrino hypothesis, evidence for and independent replications can be found at the website of the company (BlackLight Power Inc.) founded by Mills to develop the hypothesis and prototypes. The main evidence in support of this novel hypothesis consists of the following claimed phenomena:

* Formation of plasmas in gas cells with input energies far below that required to form such plasmas.
* Spectral lines from gas cell plasmas which match the CQM predictions for hydrino transitions.
* Detection of excess heat from plasma cells using water bath calorimetry.
* New chemical compounds said to have been formed from hydrino hydrides (ie a hydrino which has captured another electron to form a negative hydride ion) which show unusual properties and structure.
* Molecular diHydrino gas formation and detection.
* Spectral lines from the sun’s corona said to derive from hydrino transitions, also said to be the cause of the higher temperatures of the corona relative to the sun’s surface contrary to scientific expectations.
* A proposed explanation for “dark matter”, a mysterious mass not visible but forming 95% of the universe with observable gravitation effects. CQM argues that hydrinos, or lower energy hydrogen comprises this “dark matter”.

I am rather skeptical about Blacklight power (and it is not the first time I came across it). I think the best resolution can be achieved by independent verification of the claims by a reputed group of independent scientists.

What do you think?