Randell Mills GUT - Who can do the calculations?

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Mills only gets a COP of 3. That is not competitive when Rossi is now getting 300.

Axil, like a lot of believers, refuses to recognize the difference between a claim, even the most idiotic of claims, and a fact. Neither Mills nor Rossi has ever properly demonstrated that they get a COP (mistaken name for power ratio) of more than zero, squat, zip, nada, nothing. Their claims are worth about the same as my claims for my high power pink invisible flying unicorns and for much the same reasons.

Quote from Epimetheus

About your other points. Are you saying that Mills precision is actually worse or that QM is much better than in this picture? I am not aware of a much better technique then Hartree-Fock

You refer to a modern QM calculation method. How many hand tuned parameters does they need? Mills uses just fundamental physical constants to achieve the shown performance.

I found the post quite confusing. What do the plots show? Here is what seems to be a preprint of the Mills article: http://www.millsian.com/papers/modeling paper 072309S.pdf

The article itself was published: http://physicsessays.org/brows…nd-6-31-g-basis-sets.html

The chart shown here is not in the preprint. However, on review it appears that the data in Table 75, which shows a list of compounds and then predictions from the three programs (3-21g and 6-31g and the Millsian program, has been plotted against the experimental results. As can be seen, the claim of the paper is that the Millsian predictions are spot on, whereas those of the other programs are very weak.

Actually, from my own understanding of quantum mechanics, it is inadequate to predict the solid state, at least I heard that from Feynman, ah, so many years ago. However, we might expect simulations to be different, using statistical techniques. Is it?

If that article is confirmed, which should actually not be difficult, I'd expect, then Mills has a spectacular success for his program. It's important to distinguish this from his other claims. This could give his theory a leg up, but quantum mechanics is entirely spectacular in other ways. Something may be missing from it, and Mills may have found a practical approach that works. It's not proof of a theory, but lends support and credence, and that must be granted.

There are many people who could confirm or disconfirm the relatively clear claim presented here. What has been done? Often fringe claims lie unexplored, and this is a major problem for any researcher working in the fringes. Holmlid has some fascinating results, but practically no confirmation or disconfirmation. It's a huge problem. It is understandable that many would simply stay away, but this is what I see is missing: cold fusion research suffered a major blow the first time a grad student's PhD thesis was rejected because it was about cold fusion. That must be identified as the poison it is. If the work is quality work, rejecting it because the field is rejected is highly offensive and obviously could lead to an appearance of confirmation bias for the negative opinion: hey, nobody has replicated!

Sure, if you pull the rug out from under replication efforts, that's expected!

If no grad student will work on it, this is a self-fulfilling conclusion. This is quite general, it is not just about cold fusion. It is essential that the ability to explore the frontiers of science be encouraged, so that published claims like this are investigated and confirmed or otherwise. Finding negative results is positive work, it is not only confirmation that should be recognized. A careful study that may prevent others from wasting time has done good service to human knowledge.

Is anyone aware of an independent study about this claim?

By the way, I am singularly disinterested at this point in theoretical arguments about this. The program is apparently available and so must be the others, so this is a very simple "experiment." First of all there would be the data set presented by Mills. Then one would run analysis on a broader set (dealing with the possibility that Mills cherry-picked his best results.). Almost anyone should be able to do this if they have access to the programs and know how to use them or can learn. The results could easily be publishable.

Quote from Eric Walker

Epimetheus wrote:
Mills uses just fundamental physical constants to achieve the shown performance.

I think this is one of the propositions in need of testing rather than simply assuming to be true, which is thankfully an effort you are seeking to help out with.

While it may seem very simple, this is an unconfirmed claim as to what we have seen here. It is about six years old. Basically, "Mills says" that his predictions are far better than those of others. Has anyone checked, by using the programs?

I looked on Google Scholar for citations of the article. There were twelve. Eleven were by Mills (with co-authors). The exception:
http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/html/apr/articles/55015.html
Against Point Charges DL Selke - Applied Physics Research, 2015 - ccsenet.org

The Selke article is attempting to establish a theoretical basis for preferring Mills theory, by considering point charge of the electron. He seems to assume that quantum mechanics requires a point charge. I don't believe he is correct. Rather, sometimes a point charge is assumed for some estimating purposes. However, the electron is obviously not a point charge -- and he gives some reasons -- but my understanding is that quantum mechanics treats the electron as a probability distribution, effectively a cloud of probability, fuzzy, not a point. So he has shot down a straw man. Nobody has replied, his article has not been cited. It's still fairly new.

But he simply assumes the calculation success from the Mills article, apparently.

He cites experimental confirmation of the Mills hydrino claim, but then notes that it has not been confirmed. So he gets some points there.

Look, I'm not taking on this project. I have enough on my plate. However, I can provide, if people want it, guidance as to how to move beyond the limitations of "generally accepted." There are no guarantees, but it's possible. If you understand what I'm suggesting, and do it, you will learn a great deal, that's practically guaranteed. Mostly, and most importantly, you will learn about yourself, because moving beyond social conditions requires stepping outside of "normal," while remaining sane. It can be tricky!

Personally, that knowledge is valuable whether or not the "project" succeeds. In a way, "success" is in movement, in the journey, not the nominal goal.

However, this process often succeeds. Goals thought impossible are reached. Besides:

Fun!

Meanwhile, an obvious path forward for Mills is neglected. Instead, we see all these arguments about theory, and then about his relatively unconfirmed experimental claims. And complaints that Mills is rejected because of prejudice. Maybe. Maybe not. I will point out one fact I have observed. I have never seen any skeptic convinced by being told that they are stupid and biased and refuse to see the evidence.

Consider that. We may do this over and over, it doesn't work, but we keep doing it. What is this, to keep doing what doesn't work? Why?

Quote from Wyttenbach

Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:

Can you post the name of the rejecting prof's and university??

I have Wyttenbach blocked for reasons previously explained, so it is unreliable that I will see questions. Sometimes I do, for several reasons, including the flash of the message as a page loads. In any case:

The story is found in Bart Simon, Undead Science, Rutgers University Press, 2002.

The student was Nigel Packham. The reviewing professor was a "one committee member," and the University was Texas A&M. He was working with John Bockris, and he and Bockris were brought under suspicion by Gary Taubes' Science article that suspected deliberate addition of tritium. (Which was an outrageous accusation, a black mark on Taubes' record. I like Taubes, but he completely screwed up here.)

This happened in 1990. "Finally, in 1992, Packham handed in an acceptable thesis. he had been forced to rewrite it, excluding all the material on cold fusion."

Understand that to do great damage, the story does not need to be true. It merely needs to circulate. However, the story is likely true.

Taubes actually has a great deal of detail on the thesis defense. pp. 413-418. From this account, the problematic member of the committee was Manny Soriaga.

For his book, Taubes interviewed Soriaga by telephone and Packham in person. Taubes does cover the "compromise," but does not give a date. I am not sure that I can fully reconcile both accounts as to the final resolution.

In this case, Taubes had become personally involved. Freakin' mess.

What is clear is that the objections to the original thesis were out of a strong belief that cold fusion was bogus. In fact, the Bockris tritium results were consistent with other findings. Tritium is widely reported, something which is easily misunderstood, because the levels are quite low, about a million times down from helium, which has been correlated with heat. Tritium has not been correlated with heat, though my guess is that it probably is correlated. It is *not* "commensurable" with heat, i.e., with levels of tritium predicted from classic fusion reactions, and that fact seems to have mostly shut off studies comparing tritium and heat. It's very difficult to find information on this, most studies either looked for tritium (i.e., Bockris) or heat, not generally both. (Tritium production may involve an additional variable, not always well-controlled, the presence of hydrogen in the heavy water. Heavy water exposed to air will slowly increase in light hydrogen concentration, it is hygroscopic.

Holverstott has a nice introduction at http://www.brettholverstott.com/sample/

I was a midwife and founded a school of midwifery, so the story he tells about Semmelweiss is very familiar. Semmelweiss was right, and the practices he introduced were life-saving and ultimately adopted, but after a shameful delay.

However, there is another side to the story. Semmelweiss became obsessed, attacking the obstetric profession, and he literally lost it, was committed to an institution and died there from a beating from guards.

What's the lesson to draw here? Most cite Semmelweiss as some sort of evidence that the mainstream is wrong. He was right. The mainstream was wrong. But ... his example also shows how not to communicate what one has found. Could he have done better? I don't know. But probably.

Holverstott reports trying to communicate with experts about Mills. He may go into much more detail in the book, but I would pose the problem for him in this way: What's missing here, the presence of which would make a difference? And can you supply it?

The tendency is to rely on what I called Plan A. Commercial devices hit the market, then they will have to pay attention!

But then what happens if there are delays and failures? What if actually harnessing the discovery is far more difficult than thought?

Plan B is to do the science. Holmlid is doing the science, but something is missing: his most basic findings have not been confirmed, yet he is getting deeper and deeper into work that builds on the basic findings and that seems to assume them. That is his privilege, but is this efficient and effective?

I have pointed out that if it is true that Millsian makes very accurate predictions, this could be established and shown. And if those predictions are coming from Mills' formulae, then those formulae deserve closer attention. To study this and show it is quite a bit of work. Is anyone doing it? Mills tooting his own horn in that paper five years ago on Millsian is not going to cut it.

Independent confirmation, it's critical. And if one confirmation is not enough, then it must spread. It does not require every or even most physicists, say, to look at it. It only takes a very few.

There are ways to foster this, but I don't see that the possibilities are being pursued. Hey, someone, make me wrong!