It seems every other day that someone comes up with a way to extract useful chemical energy from water. The fact that it’s physically impossible is less important than the fact that one can always find gullible people to fork over large quantities of money for these so-called “inventions”.

But this guy is really taking it to the next level. 25 employees, 60 MILLION dollars in venture capital funding, and a 2000-page book describing his new theory of quantum physics; I’m almost impressed by the amount of effort he’s put into this scam. He even put a new twist on the usual process for getting energy from water. From the article:

Mills’ theory, which he expounds upon in his self-published 2,000 page book, The Grand Unified Theory of Classical Quantum Mechanics, rests on what he describes as his discovery of the hydrino - an altered version of hydrogen that has an energy level lower than its ground state, or the baseline energy level. These modified atoms, he argues, are the stuff that comprises dark matter, the invisible material that many scientists believe composes more than 90% of the universe. The mechanism that creates hydrinos - a chemical reaction whose released energy can allegedly be harnessed for power - is what Mills calls the BlackLight Process.

What the article doesn’t say is that this is a pretty stardard explanation of zero-point energy - the kind found powering starships and death-rays in science fiction, not the actual scientific concept. The crux of the matter is the supposed “energy level lower than ground state”, which is impossible by definition.

It is true that nobody has ever created a new theory of physics without first questioning the old theories. In fact, scientists are encouraged to look for flaws in established theories in order to better understand the universe. But for a new theory to supplant an old one (for example, relativity superseding Newtonian mechanics), there needs to be quite a body of repeatable experimental evidence, and the theory must bear the closest scrutiny by other scientists. Dr. Randell Mills (note that he is a physician, not a physicist) has only the results from his laboratory, and responds to academic criticism with the same old crap about how science is hostile to anyone who would try to think differently, etc. His exact quote is “As long as you’re in the mainstream, you’re fine. But if you’re doing something paradigm-changing, you’re proving that academics have been going down the wrong path,” which quite frankly makes me angry. He is nothing more than a con artist, and to see him accusing people who are doing real science is infuriating.

As for whoever gave him $60,000,000 to develop a free energy machine, well, I hope they weren’t counting on recovering that investment. (Seriously, where can I find such stupid and naive people with so much money to give out? I’ve got a lovely Brooklyn Bridge here to sell them…)