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What the ‘cold fusion’ debacle has revealed

“Cold fusion” has a serious legacy problem. Back in 1989, researchers announced that they had demonstrated the phenomenon — a nuclear reaction producing excess heat at room temperature — that promised to revolutionize clean energy. Soon after, they were ridiculed for the assertion. Chemical & Engineering News, the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, reports how the debacle scarred science and has tainted the continued search for similar energy technologies.

Since the initial claim imploded, the general consensus in the scientific community has been that the phenomenon simply isn’t possible. But a few researchers have independently reported similar experiments that have produced excess heat, if in underwhelming amounts. But consistently reproducing results has been an elusive goal. No one has put forth an accepted theory that would explain such energy generation. No commercial product based on the effect has successfully made it to the market. And those pursuing commercial opportunities have often come off as hucksters, further dampening interest in low-energy nuclear reactions or similar research.

Enter Brilliant Light Power (BLP). The New Jersey-based company claims that it has found a way to shrink hydrogen atoms into “hydrinos,” a term it has coined and trademarked. The process generates a huge amount of energy, says BLP founder Randell Mills, and the company is poised to release a commercial device next year that can harness this reaction to power homes and businesses at a fraction of the cost of current energy technologies. Many scientists harbor serious doubts about the device and expect yet another disappointment.




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3 thoughts on “What the ‘cold fusion’ debacle has revealed”

  1. The LUX experiment has failed to find WIMPs; we cannot explain the neutrino deficit of the sun. How was Dragonfly 44 formed? Explain the k-factor. Why do distant quasars not display relativistic time dilation? Please have the “…many scientists who harbor serious doubts,” that same brilliant lot who can’t explain the basics of the universe above, explain the wavelengths of light observed in peer reviewed papers from multiple methods of catalyzing the hydrogen to dark matter reaction. Randell C Mills is the greatest physicist who has ever lived. Your lack of rigor to investigate is lazy at best and simply religion, at worst. Hopefully in won’t take you 500 years to figure it out.

  2. They’ve been going in one form or another since 1991 and still haven’t brought anything to market. They had a patent withdrawn by the USPTO and rejected by the EPO, due to unproven claims of new physics. I couldn’t find any peer reviewed science to back up their claims, is there any?

  3. It is irresponsible to group BrLP into an article about Cold Fusion, but, I assume that was your purpose.

    Some of notice these attempts to discredit BrLP by association with this unrelated subject. Dr. Mills also believes cold fusion is not theoretically possibly.

    If the mistake was innocent, I forgive you. If not, then know that this type of diversion will not work. Brilliant Light Power will make it to market. Its replacement of Quantum Mechanics with the Grand Unified Theory of Classical Physics will eventually take hold and Cold Fusion will still be theoretically not possible.

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