One of the better articles to appear on the subject of LENR in the
context of a valid commercial effort appeared recently in C&EN (which is
becoming a top flight science journal) and was picked up by SciAm.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cold-fusion-lives-experiments-create-energy-when-none-should-exist1/
Stephen Ritter, the author, relies a lot on his expert Howard J. Wilk ,
who is an organic chemist, obsessed with Randy Mills’s progress, still
trying to decide if the SunCell commercialization effort is real or
scam. The situation with Rossi is a little clearer on the negative side,
and should be resolved in a few months, at least in its legal aspects,
but the idea that Mills could be a more sophisticated con-artist is hard
for many to digest. RM has real and impressive academic credentials and
other business accomplishments (software)... and "no priors", as Harry
Bosch would say. Much of the following is quoted or paraphrased from
Ritter's fine article.
In 2014, Wilk asked Mills if he had ever isolated hydrinos, and although
Mills had previously written in research papers and patents that he had,
Mills replied that he had not. Moreover, it would be “a really, really
huge task.” Side note: This is an outright cop-out by Mills - since he
was actually showing vials of hydrino compounds as far back as 15 years
ago. No matter what his credentials are, Mills has the habit of
spreading blatant falsehoods, to a lesser degree than Andrea Rossi, but
enough to make one wonder if the same character flaws are not deeply
embedded.
Almost everyone who has closely followed Mills agrees: If the SunCell
generates hydrinos and megawatts, then there has to be demonstrable hard
evidence: “Show us the hydrino!” Wilk mentions four possible
explanations: Mills’s science is actually correct, [but harder to tame
than it should be, possibly missing a single piece of understanding],
it’s a complete fraud by a genius with no morals [this could be closer
to Rossi], or it’s just simply bad science [providing a lavish
livelihood at investor's expense], or it’s what Nobel Laureate Irving
Langmuir called "pathological science"... which is a kind of logical
delusion that Langmuir himself suffered from, at times. We could add
that a mix of several of these is more likely. Even so, even the
skeptics hope that there is some grain of truth involved in the claims.
“I hope they’re right,” Wilk says but he has never been a true believer.
“I think if hydrinos existed, they would have been detected by others in
laboratories or in nature years ago and would be used by now.” As an
wanna-be-believer, I would add that the "solar wind" should be an
undeniable source of hydrinos and should have shown the needed hard
evidence, based on Mills theory, since it has been studied since 1859.
You have to imagine that in the past 27 years, Mills has spent millions
on finding real particles. If not, why not?
We on this forum have for years been coming to same conclusion as
Ritter: "All the discussions about cold fusion and LENR end this way:
They always come back to the fact that no one has a commercial device on
the market yet, and none of the prototypes seem workable on a commercial
scale in the near future." Plus, the inventors always follow one failed
effort with what looks like a serial scam, a next big disappointment and
never let 3rd parties test any device independently.
A real product, even if only micro scale or a toy - not a legal
proceeding or massive fund-raising effort, will be the ultimate arbiter
of truth... but isolating dense hydrogen in the solar wind, with the
agreement of NASA, would help immensely.
Another possible way to confirm - from Dufour's ICCF20 paper is the
iron-55 evidence, the so-called pico-hydride.
This is dense hydrogen, which is attached (magnetically?) to iron 54 in
such a way that on mass-spec analysis, it looks like 55Fe - but is NOT
radioactive. Normal 55Fe is strongly radioactive. This is brilliant !
and could be the smoking gun for dense hydrogen reality, but it does not
come from Mills and has a different lineage, so to speak.
