Sunday is not a good day to argue with Christ <g> but here goes...
Early in his life Einstein was a patent clerk and not a very good one. In fact, in 1904 when he applied for a promotion at the patent office, his request was summarily rejected. He was spending too much time on weird theories of his own, and his paying-job as a patent clerk suffered. Later on, those weird theories were ridiculed by almost everyone for years, but energetically defended by a few "open minds" and after 14 long and painful years, finally given some mainstream attention. Which then snowballed into how we percieve him today. Is this a fair analogy to Randell Mills? Apparently this writer in Baltimore, Steve Christ, wants to make such a case: http://www.examiner.com/x-1528-Baltimore-Personal-Finance-Examiner~y2008m12d6-Einstein-and-the-breakthrough-discovery-that-could-end-fossil-fuels I think the comparison is strained for several reasons. First in the early 1900's science education and knowledge was relatively weak, even among the elite, yet mainstream inertia was just as severe as today ('jealousy' is a universal constant). By comparison - it was far, far easier for anyone with insight to make the "major breakthrough" then, than today. Experts like Bob Park assure us that physics is 99% "finished" nowadays. OTOH - Einstein got almost everything right. I am pretty sure that Mills, in contrast to what the mainstream wants to believe, has found at least "part of" an astounding breakthrough in an area where the experts were convinced that there could be no major advancement - so in one way Mills accomplishment is more impressive than Einsteins'. OTOH I am equally convinced that RM did not get everything right, or at best only has discovered a subset of the impending breakthrough. Will this kind of relative give-and-take "balance out" to make his net accomplishment the equal of Einstein (especially since Mills can always amend his early mistakes if he acts swiftly) ? We will probably have a better feel for the answer to that one in 5 years. Or sooner, if his BLP's present effort makes it to the public demonstration stage beofre then, but the curious thing - which came into view last week - is that the recent Mizuno experiment shows us just how easy it would be (if it were to be fully replicated) for someone (who is even more unknown in the USA than Mills is in Japan) to come out of the woodwork, so to speak, and blow the socks off the world of physics with something that is arguably more important, yet intimately related to Mills' work, but was missed essentially because Mills did not get everything right- and also chose early on to consciously avoid LENR ('jealousy' is a universal constant) - i.e. the strategy was to avoid all nuclear reactions due to the bad rap that cold fusion was getting - when the "real" strategy should always be the "full truth and nothing but". Jones
