Mike Carrell wrote:
But people should at least be cognizant of the fact that they > are making extraordinary claims! And they should expect disbelief, and be > ready to deal with it. They should offer rock solid evidence even if it is > not extraordinary. > > Ditto claims by Mills and Correa. As far as I know, the only anomalous > energy claim that has claimed any scientific basis in conventional theory > is cold fusion. Of course many people disagree, but Hagelstein and others > believe it can be explained with textbook physics.
Jed's brush is too wide. Mills does not claim 'anomalous energy' . . .
I classify both cold fusion and the Mills claims as "anomalous" energy. "Anomalous" is not synonymous with "unbelievable" -- it just means there is no explanation. Mills, unlike CF, does not have a textbook physics explanation. He proposes to rewrite the textbooks. That does not mean he is wrong, but it does mean he must be cognizant of the fact that most scientists will find his claims very difficult to swallow. I am sure he knows that!
Mills is much, much better and far more credible than people like the Methernitha crowd, Greg Watson, or for that matter Correa. But he still has a wide credibility gap, and he still has not made a real effort to convince people. The last thing he told me, years ago, is that he does not want to convince people, and that he likes things the way they are. (That was also the last thing I heard from the late James Reding while he was diligently shredding Patterson's prospects. Several CF researchers have also told me they like being big fish in a small pond.)
Many years ago Mills supposedly had energy producing devices which would have convinced any reasonable engineer, such as the devices he and Thermacore developed, described by Donald Ernst in 1992. Assuming those claims were not a horrible mistake, or for some reason they could not be replicated, Mills could have easily used those devices to convince the entire world that his claims are valid. I do not know what to make of the fact that he failed to do that. I am forced to conclude that:
1. Either the claims fell through for some reason I never heard about, or
2. Mills is stark-staring crazy, like most other people in over-unity energy biz.
I have heard many times that it is actually:
3. Mills is working on some ultra clever secret business scheme.
But I do not believe this, because I simply cannot imagine any business strategy that would have worked better than revealing the whole thing back in 1992, and letting events take their natural course. It is hard to imagine any scenario that would have eventually worked out with Mills being less than a dozen times richer than Bill Gates by now, and him being the most famous and respected person on earth. After 14 years millions of people would have seen the effect, and I think there is simply no question Mills would have been given the full credit for it, and objections would have been swept aside by now, by the force of public opinion.
. . . there is a measureable fuel consumption, many documentated and detailed experiments, and confirmation by other observers.
Oh come now. Yes, we all agree that Mills has done some interesting experiments, but the confirmations by other observers hardly compares to the confirmations available for CF. Most of the confirming evidence he cited years ago was only distantly related to his claims. All this would be forgivable -- indeed it would be the only viable path forward -- if Mills had not held in his hands devices that would have convinced millions of engineers worldwide back in 1992. If you can convince engineers you do not need to worry what the physicists think. You can ignore them along with the patent office, Scientific American, and the rest of the peanut gallery. Engineers far outnumber physicists, and they have much greater access to capital and the real-world levers of power.
- Jed
