Voodoo Science

More voodoo science here; like a bad hot dog, this fusion stuff keeps on coming back. Robert Park has fought this stuff for what seems years on end.

A guy that keeps regurgitating his scientific cud, one Dr. Randell Mills, has also suffered from Park's pointed skewers. I find Mills' work the ramblings of a lunatic. He essentially claims two major breakthroughs, one theoretical and one experimental.

1. 'The Grand Unified Theory of Classical Quantum Mechanics'
2. A new source of power, direct plasma-to-electricity-power -conversion systems, a new class of chemistry, new chemical processes, new light sources, and powerful new laser media.

Now, I could buy the fact that he made some discovery in one or the other area, but both? And in that second one, claiming multiple discoveries pushes him over-the-top. The guy suffers from grand delusions and has suckered a bunch of people along for the ride.

Mills puts on a fascinating game face; he actually composes lots of well structured derivations of physics. I often forget how hard you have to work to formally debunk an elliptically argued set of equations that don't differ much from the readily accepted math. I looked up his version of diffraction theory (PDF) on his website and it didn't look much different from what I have used, apart from the snaky argumentation with weird diversions into hand-wavy abstractions.

Furthermore, each electron only goes through one slit classically, but it is imprinted with the wave character of the photon that it creates across both slits due to its interaction with the slit. An electromagnetic wave exits.

The end result doesn't differ much from arguing with a wing-nut. The wing-nut complains of his opponent's hand-waving, where the reality shows that the wing-nut projects his own inadequacies into the discussion.

Quantum mechanics reproduces the mathematics that
corresponds to this physical electromagnetic wave by invoking a nonsensical waving probability. Thus, it is stuck with the unfortunate result that the "wave-particle duality is unlike anything in our common everyday experience". Physics can now be reinstated over mysticism for this simple experiment based on an understanding of the physical nature of fundamental particles.

Mills has published papers in reputable journals. I should note that just because something gets published in the bulletin of the American Physical Society doesn't mean it has any credibility. If you paid your dues, you could put your abstract with the 4-point typeface into the 2"-by-2" box and they would publish it. The yearly compendium of abstracts from the APS meeting gave lots of physics grad students amusement. I remember vividly one guy that would always submit his pet zany theory of plate tectonics; he would basically fill the box with a topographic map.

I dug around and found out the truth behind why the APS allowed the wackos in. From the alumni news of Winona State University (a cool campus, located below the bluffland banks of the Mississippi River):

At the 50th anniversary of the murder of his friend and co-worker, Winona State University alumnus Tom Baab, '48, of Park Ridge, Ill., established the Eileen Fahey Memorial Scholarship. Fahey, a secretary at Columbia University, was shot and killed at her desk on July 14, 1952.

While earning his master's degree in American letters at Columbia, Tom worked part-time for the American Physical Society (APS), headquartered at the Pupin Physics Laboratory on the Columbia campus in New York City. Fahey, a 20-year-old secretary, was sitting at her desk reading a letter from her fiance, a Marine serving in Korea, when Bayard Peakes entered the office and emptied a clip of .22 caliber pistol shots into Fahey, killing her. Peakes then fled the campus.

In the weeks that followed, Tom was among those questioned by police for possible leads and motives. Peakes was finally traced through a letter written to him by Karl K. Darrow, head of Bell Labs and secretary of the APS. Darrow had declined to accept a paper Peakes wanted to present at the next APS meeting. Peakes's paper proposed the non-existence of the electron and Darrow rejected it, suggesting that Peakes might ruin his career in physics with such a theory.

At his arrest, Peakes said he wanted to kill a man at the APS since his rejection letter had come from a male. Fahey was the only person in the office and the shots were directed at her instead. Peakes was tried and sentenced to the Rockland County Asylum for the Criminally Insane.

Boots: quaking.

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Update: The latest Bob Park ruminations:

2. BELOW THE GROUND STATE: BEFORE SPRING THERE IS MARCH MADNESS.
On March 23, 1989 in Salt Lake City, the University of Utah held a press conference to announce the discovery of cold fusion, but the story had already been leaked to the world's most influential financial dailies, the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times. Both papers continued to print unfailingly optimistic reports for weeks. Among those lured into the swamp was Randell Mills, a 1986 graduate of Harvard Medical School. Two years later Mills held a press conference of his own to announce that it wasn't fusion. It was better! Hydrogen atoms can shrink into "hydrinos," releasing energy. With the 17th anniversary of cold fusion approaching, both papers are now running credulous stories about Mills and his company, BlackLight Power. BLP, which has never produced anything, is rumored to be preparing an IPO.