Randell L. Mills is the founder of Brilliant Light Power (previously called BlackLight Power), a company trying to generate useful energy by catalyzing transitions of hydrogen into the “hydrino state”, i.e. an alleged state of hydrogen with a lower energy than the 1s state. The existence of this state is justified by Mills early on in his 1800-page tome, The Grand Unified Theory of Classical Physics. The book throws out quantum mechanics on the first page, and proceeds to purportedly derive all of physics and chemistry from a classical foundation. TL;DR – everything in the book is nonsense as far as I see. I expect that this is glaringly obvious to physicist readers but I have written this post anyway for the benefit of non-scientists.
(There have been other arguments by other people besides Mills that a “hydrino state” exists. These arguments are also wrong but for more interesting and substantive reasons. See the next post.)
(Brilliant Light Power is not a cold fusion company, but it’s still kinda on-topic for this blog because people sometimes discuss the alleged hydrino state when attempting to explain cold fusion.)
(I also want to repeat something I said in the last post: It’s not impossible to do world-beating invention and technological development despite having a terrible understanding of how the technology works microscopically. Just look at the pharmaceutical industry. This is just a blog post about the book, and I have not looked carefully into Brilliant Light Power or its products or the evidence that its products do or don’t work as advertised. And I’m not planning to. What I’m really trying to say is, please don’t sue me.)
By the way, how much lower-energy is the alleged hydrino state compared to 1s? As far as I understand from Eqs. I.116 & I.124 of Mills’s book, lower by 13.6eV × p where p is an integer between 1 and 137.
General context about quantum mechanics
Although quantum mechanics has a reputation in the popular press (and even occasionally in the technical press) for being paradoxical, mysterious, and controversial, this reputation is entirely undeserved. Quantum mechanics is none of those things, it is merely unintuitive. Being unintuitive is not logically a strike against a theory, but it makes people prejudiced against it, and unable to think straight about it. And once you start down that path, the internet can bring you enough negative misinformation about quantum mechanics to last a lifetime.
Anyway, I personally am one of hundreds of thousands of professionals—physicists, engineers, chemists, molecular biologists, materials scientists, and others—who rely on quantum mechanics every day to do their jobs developing useful technology. Quantum mechanics has been thoroughly understood for almost 100 years now, and with each passing year we can dump millions more observations into the ever-deepening ocean of evidence that quantum mechanics is how the universe really works.
So the idea of throwing out quantum mechanics and starting from scratch with classical mechanics is completely analogous to throwing out the periodic table in favor of earth-water-air-fire, or throwing out molecular biology in favor of vitalism.
Now about that book
That brings us to The Grand Unified Theory of Classical Physics. I think the book has just as little value as one would expect from the previous paragraph. I try to read things charitably, but I don’t think there is any kernel of truth or insight to be found in this book, at least in the sections I read.
Real physics vs making-it-up-as-you-go-along
Many people experience physics like this: There’s a list of equations that the instructor wrote on the chalkboard, and you try plugging in different numbers into different formulas until, hopefully, you calculate something that matches the answer at the back of the book. Then you (optionally) make up a one-sentence ad hoc justification why that’s the right formula to use. This activity, while very common in poorly-taught intro physics courses, is not physics, and has nothing to do with physics.
When I read this book, it seems to me that Mills is engaging in this activity page after page. It seems like Mills knows the right number or equation for this or that famous physics phenomenon, and he just writes down a formula that more-or-less matches it, and makes up a few sentences qualitatively describing why this formula is what it is.
In proper physics, by contrast, you need to write down an equation that applies in many different situations and stick to it. It’s gotta have variables with specific definitions, it’s gotta have a specific domain of applicability, etc. Everything has to be specific, specific, specific—so specific that in any conceivable situation, there is a right and wrong answer to the questions: “Does the equation apply here? And if so, what exactly do the variables mean in this context?” That’s how you know that you’re not making things up as you go along.
Moreover, once you have that fully-specified equation written down, you need to apply that equation to many different situations, and find that it always gives the right answer. That way you’re getting more out of it than you put in.
Numerology and more
Mills does not do this. It looks like he does, but really he doesn’t. As one random example, Table 34.1 (p1536) is a set of four formulas for the ratio of the masses of the electron, muon, tau, and neutron, in terms of just the fine structure constant. (No such formula is known or believed to exist by mainstream physicists.) It sure looks like he just tried adding and multiplying things randomly until he wound up with a number that matched the experimental mass data. [This activity, ascribing significance to meaningless random relationships between numbers, is dismissively called numerology.] He suggests that it is not numerology, using the word “derived” (“The masses of the leptons, the quarks, and nucleons are derived…”). So where is the more basic equation from which these can be mathematically “derived”? I can’t find it.
Indeed I can’t find a single case in the whole book where a general law is used to derive a more specific law quantitatively (and where the general law is not part of mainstream physics, and where the more specific law is known to be correct). He does plenty of that qualitatively, but not quantitatively. Key concepts like “orbitspheres” used throughout the book are never defined quantitatively as far as I can tell (by which I mean, writing down one or more equations / criteria that allow anyone to figure out what the orbitsphere is in any situation, objectively, uniquely, and completely.)
Afterward
Obviously this is just my opinion! So please don’t sue me. 😀
Is there a plausible theory of cold fusion / LENR? 
It is clear that the author did not read Dr. Mills’ book. Dr. Mills uses nothing but Maxwell’s equations and an understanding of what is required to construct a non-radiating model for the electron. From that basic derivation, everything else is straight forward.
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What if ?, Mr Einstein’s Equation, (E=MC2) actually means ,That : “Energy is Equal to Mass Compressed Squared”?. And He was actually reffering to instantaneous Compression, via Implosion. Now the theory behind Cold Fusion is exacltly this, Implosion,of, or Sono Cavitation, to Sono Implosion, of Deturium. We already Know that Keely, dissociated water,at 428 KHZ. The Hydrino is Kinetically Compressed, by Collisions, is Mr. Mill’s Theory I say it’s more like via Sono Resonance,and Negitive Cavitation,which leads to Implosion, which actually releases the eV energy. As discrete packets of energy,what we call Electrons/Positrons or Photons. They are simply a Super Critical Plasma Cloud. And the whole Hydrino production hint’s to me,that a Super Critical Phase Change ocurred,somehow?. A Transduction, of Pure Potential into a reversed to a New Negative Ground State,or below Ground state , and we now call anything above this a Positive Ground state instaed of just the Old one Ground State definition, Mills once said, “Hydrino’s,or the Dark Matter, Become an energy Sink”.
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As a layperson with many years of general science interest it is always invigorating to delve into new ideas without the baggage of personal reputation or ego predetermining the opinionated verdict. Hours of documentaries watched of QM and String Theorist prima dona talking heads, dozens of popular science philosophical adventure books read and I get more understanding of mass creation, energy transfers and the workings of the Universe browsing the GUT-CP for an hour on a Sunday afternoon.
I applaud Dr. Mills for his singled-mindedness in progressing toward his vision of non-metered, non-polluting and distributed power for all. I hope he succeeds.
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Could you name one – just one – technology that uses quantum mechanics? Not quantum effects, which are experimental results, but derivations starting with the schroedinger equation and ultimately resulting in a useful technology. Lasers? No. Semiconductors? No. Superconductors? No. Solar panels? No.
For 25 years I’ve been an R&D engineer, specializing in physical chemistry, surface science and solid state materials science. I cannot think of a single thing that was actually predicted by quantum mechanics. For that matter, I cannot think of a single thing that can’t be solved using classical physics and the appropriate statistics (Fermi/Bose/Boltzmann).
The first sentence of Feynman’s QED is “suppose we put all the atoms in the universe in a box.”
No, thanks, I’d rather consider a real atom in real Minkowski space interacting with a real photon. Outside the box.
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I don’t understand your distinction between “quantum mechanics” and “quantum effects”. For example, quantum mechanics is essential for almost every aspect of our understanding of chemistry. Starting from the basic laws of quantum mechanics, you can derive everything from orbital hybridization to resonance stabilization, Pauli exclusion principle, electron orbitals, the periodic table, aromaticity, intersystem crossing, and on and on and on and on.
When a chemist uses her understanding of electron shells and the periodic table to synthesize a new useful chemical, is the result a “technology that uses quantum mechanics”? I say yes! But I guess you’ll disagree? Maybe you’ll say that the structure of the periodic table is merely a “quantum effect” not a “use of quantum mechanics” because historically we had some understanding of the periodic table before we fully understood quantum mechanics. But it was a mediocre understanding!! Indeed, if you want to know what chemistry without quantum mechanics looks like, go watch a high school chemistry class discussing electron shell theory. Student: “Why is there no 3f subshell?” Teacher: “There just isn’t.” Student: “Why is Hund’s rule true?” Teacher: “It just is.” Student: “Hang on, Hund’s rule has exceptions?!” Teacher: “Yes it does.” The whole topic is just a giant mess of bizarre ad-hoc rules.
There is only one correct and consistent way to explain electron shells and the periodic table, and that’s the quantum mechanics explanation that starts with the Schrodinger equation. This explanation works perfectly and unambiguously and has no ad-hoc footnotes and has no exceptions. The layout of the periodic table follows directly from the Schrodinger equation and cannot be explained (correctly and in all its details) in any other way. And the result is so useful that you find it taped to the wall of every chemist’s office.
Other than virtually every aspect of chemistry, I’m surprised that you “cannot think of a single thing that can’t be solved using classical physics and the appropriate statistics (Fermi/Bose/Boltzmann)”. Are you a surface scientist who has never done electron diffraction? In classical physics, electrons don’t diffract! When you analyze LEED data, you are not manipulating bras and kets and Hamiltonians, but you are using quantum mechanics! Give yourself some credit! Ditto for XRF and Auger electron spectroscopy and on and on. Are you a materials scientist who has never made ohmic contact to a semiconductor? Those usually work by quantum tunneling (as do zener diodes etc.). Maybe you just follow the contact recipe and don’t think about how it works? But if you ever want to really dive into ohmic contacts work, to intelligently design them beyond the limitations of trial-and-error and rules-of-thumb, you would find that you need to familiarize yourself with quantum tunneling.
I’m also surprised that you “cannot think of a single thing that was actually predicted by quantum mechanics”. Have you heard of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precision_tests_of_QED , the most accurate predictions in the history of physics? For example, two unrelated experiments, analyzed according to two very different and very involved calculations, give the same answer to 8 significant figures. That accuracy is like measuring the distance from New York to San Francisco by two different methods, and getting the same answer to within 10cm.
I think your underlying point is that a lot of technologies related to quantum mechanics were initially discovered in a way that didn’t necessarily directly rely on a stereotypical quantum-mechanics analysis (bras and kets and Hamiltonians). This is not true in every case (e.g. quantum cryptography) but yes it is often true. Indeed, you can get pretty far by experimentally messing around and rules-of-thumb and ad-hoc seat-of-your-pants theorizing. But you can’t get all the way to full and correct understanding. After the initial demo, as the field develops and matures, messing around gets replaced by correct analysis and intelligent design, which is based directly or indirectly on quantum mechanics. Electron orbital theory is a great example, but so are, say, lasers, where Schawlow and Townes were calculating the quantum linewidth limit before the first laser was even demonstrated.
I’m currently involved in atomic interferometry (clocks, gravimeters, etc.), which is a field of technology in which pretty much every advance is intelligently designed in advance using an analysis involving stereotypical quantum-mechanics analysis (Hamiltonians and bras and kets). For example, here are my coworkers calculating small correction terms in the scale factor of atomic interferometry accelerometers: http://doi.org/10.1364/JOSAB.28.002418 . Everyone in the field does this type of analysis all the time and the results really do help debug and optimize the instruments. Again, I acknowledge that this type of “stereotypical” quantum analysis is less common than indirect uses of quantum mechanics (without bras and kets), e.g. chemists using the periodic table, or OLED designers thinking about how to facilitate intersystem crossing, or surface scientists using electron diffraction. But this “stereotypical” quantum analysis is indeed occasionally used directly in technological development, if that’s what you’re wondering.
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If the theory is too much to bother with, print out a few of the latest journal articles, in the Journal of Hydrogen Energy, and go talk to some of your colleagues in the experimental physical chemistry field. Talk to the Raman experts, the UV spectrometry experts, the NMR experts, the calorimetry experts. Ask them to explain to you the methods and results in the Mills papers. You will find Raman modes that should not exist, NMR peaks that should not exist, and large exothermal reactions that should not exist.
Shouldn’t exist, but do exist. As predicted by Mills.
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One thing that always bugs me regarding unified theories is they only count for what we see, the idea of a big bang is great but we only account for the matter and positive energy (since every force/explosion must have an equal and opposite force/explosion – or what you create is lopsided and wrong).
What I think would solve this is with our positive universe created by the big bang where time is increasing, there must also have been a counter big bang (where all the anti-matter [aka dark matter] normally lives), and travelling backwards in time relative to our universe. Think of a infinity symbol (where T=0 and T=infinity, is the singularity in the center, +T is the right hand loop going clockwise, -T is the left hand loop going anti-clockwise). They are mirror images of each other, so as our universe expands, the dark matter/anti-matter universe evaporates – you can also think of this as the pair of universes turning itself inside out over and over again – the big bang (and big crunch) is therefor the point in time when it reverses direction.
I have drawn a diagram to show this, the start in the positive universe will start large and get smaller as the dark matter is squeezed out of existance, which is why we don’t see any more dark stars and the supermassive black holes they create and why yellow stars are far more common than supergiants. The first dark stars collapsed to supermassive black holes, this dispursed the dark matter in a disk creating the first galaxies, the more stars that are created the more light is emit and this pushes the dark matter out of existance faster and faster, creating an accelerating universe on our side – and a good explanation why there is more dark energy (light shone from all stars from the bigining of time), as well as why hydrogen condenses to form stars (as dark matter is pulling on space-time from the opposite side, creating the dent/gravity for it to fall into – i.e. dark matter is giving momentum (Z boson) to normal matter making fusion possible.
The whole process is about two different mechanisms to transfer momentum from one side of the universe to the other, dark matter is trying to push momentum to normal space, light and neutrinos are trying to push it back to negative space.
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Because that is how quantum theory is developed. It has to be accepted like a religion needs to be believed because someone said so. Then ther is the Grand Unified Theory -Classical Physics of Randell Mills. Its power is in its predictions and some of which were used to make practical devices. One is an antigravity device, another produces a thousand times more energy than is put in, another predicts the molecular structure with virtually no error bars for molecules as large as DNA and proteins. Existing competing modelling software is nowhere as accurate or powerful when based on quantum mechanics of any version.
What if Randell Mills is right and Quantum Physics and the Standard Model,
that depends on QP is wrong, very wrong. Then those using SM and QP are
shooting in the dark as far as getting answers of any kind. This means
that there are no quantum fields. The only thing that can be considered
as quantified or as a discrete piece is the photon and particles that
derive from it, such as the electron and neutrino. The theory of Randell
Mills, Grand Unified Theory Classical Physics has too much going for it
to be discarded as just another fraud or attempt at correcting the
Standard Model. It answers all questions that are still open and which are
extremely difficult to answer in the SM, it predicts many phenomena of
which several have been confirmed several years after their GUTCP predicted
them, it has allowed the development of devices that work but, either
should not work, or are extremely difficult if not impossible to explain
according to the SM or QM. At least 4 devices have reached commercial
status or are in development by Randell Mills and others working with him
based on GUTCP. So pick which side you want to be on. For lectures on
GUTCP given by universities and other important aspects developing from
Randell Mills’ company, Brilliant Light and Power, see:
https://www.scribd.com/book/322776015/Randell-Mills-and-the-Search-for-Hydrino-Energy
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/futurist-dr-randell-mills-talks-suncell-off-grid_us_592ec431e4b07c4c73138706
Click to access BLP-e-4-25-2016.pdf
http://webcast.massey.ac.nz/Mediasite/Play/8ef7e03e26fc458b8eb7f351738f26811d
http://www.massey.ac.nz/massey/expertise/profile.cfm?stref=944130
http://brilliantlightpower.wikia.com/wiki/GUTCP_Fact_Sheet
https://brilliantlightpower.com/
Rowan University’s report http://brilliantlightpower.com/wp-content/uploads/pdf/Chary%20Redacted%20Report.pdf
Rowan University’s report II http://brilliantlightpower.com/wp-content/uploads/pdf/Jansson%20Redacted%20Report.pdf
UNC Asheville’s report http://brilliantlightpower.com/wp-content/uploads/pdf/Dr.%20Booker%20Redacted%20Report.pdf
University of Illinois report http://brilliantlightpower.com/wp-content/uploads/papers/GlumacReportwithGraphics2014.pdf
Click to access EUV-Mechanism-051817.pdf
https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/context/why-quantum-mechanics-might-need-overhaul
https://www.libertariannews.org/2016/07/12/randell-l-mills-a-living-legend-greater-than-einstein-and-tesla-combined/
https://innercircle.engineering.asu.edu/2017/02/23/attend-powering-the-future-
talk-with-randell-mills-march-1/
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“At least 4 devices have reached commercial status or are in development by Randell Mills and others working with him based on GUTCP.” I’m curious, are there any devices that I can buy with my credit card right now based on GUTCP? Where can I order them, and what exactly do they do? (By the way, something being available commercially does not in itself prove that it is based on sound science. (I can buy dowsing rods on Amazon.) But still, I am curious.)
I don’t have much to add beyond what I already wrote in my post. If you want to convince me take GUTCP more seriously, here is one easy way: Read the paragraph I wrote above about Table 34.1 in the book (the table with formulas for the muon mass etc.), and show me the derivations of those formulas (the book says that those derivations exist, but they do not seem to be written down and I strongly believe they do not actually exist).
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You can buy several from Brilliant Light and Power.
https://brilliantlightpower.com/management/
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Kaz, you said “at least 4 devices have reached commercial status or are in development…based on GUTCP”, and then I asked whether any devices were for sale right now based on GUTCP, and then you replied with a link to the BLP management page. I’m not sure why you linked to the BLP management page; it doesn’t seem to answer my question. Was that a typo, or a joke, or something? Thanks in advance.
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HI Steve – Glad you made it to Chap 34 and found the lepton mass ratios. However, I suspect you may not have found Chap 36 (title – “Leptons”) where the formulas are actually worked out in some detail.
However, I think you’d do well to start with the basics. And the most fundamental part of Mills’ remarkable theory is how he starts with Haus’ non-radiation theory to demonstrate the stability of the 1s orbital to photonic (but, importantly, not non-photonic) radiation. If you’re comfortable with advanced Fourier transforms then you can read Appendix A where he develops the full derivation. In it, Mills shows how spherical harmonic waves of the 1s orbitsphere do not contain components that are capable of generating a photon. Later, in Chapter 2, Mills extends this analysis to the excited bound electron and shows that these same spherical harmonic now *do* contain frequency components that can generate a photon and therefore excited electrons *will* radiate. It’s actually a really, really observation. By far the most elegant theorem I’ve ever encountered. Good luck.
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OK, chapter 36 it is. Let’s start with Eq. (36.2), which I will rewrite as
(1 sec) = (Planck time) × α × π × √2 × (Planck mass / electron mass)².
(What is “sec”? “The sec is essentially the second—the definition for the cordinate time in MKS units.” In fact it’s 0.2% different from a second.)
What do we make of Eq. (36.2)? It’s a numerological coincidence! I’m 100% sure. How am I so sure? Because the second was defined in the 1500s as 1/86400th of a day, and it is still to this day approximately 1/86400th of a day (the BIPM technical definition of a second has changed a lot, but the length of time of 1 second has changed very little since the 1500s, for obvious reasons). This is a totally arbitrary unit of time. The earth’s rotation speed is always changing, other planets rotate at wildly different speeds, and those 1500s scientists could have just as easily divided the day into a 72,000 or any other number of divisions. So the second is an arbitrary amount of time. But everything on the right-hand side of that equation is a fundamental constant of nature, and would have the same values if the Earth rotated at a different speed or if 1500s scientists had divided the day into 72,000 seconds or whatever.
Now let’s look at the text leading to (36.2). He uses some other equations (32.21,32.36,32.43), all of which appear to be laws of nature not involving how long a second is, and claims to combine these to derive (36.2).
Now we pause for a second and step back. What’s the difference between skillful reasoning and skillful rationalization? Skillful reasoning goes forward from premise to conclusion, while skillful rationalization goes backwards from conclusion to premise. Superficially, they look similar. But the all-important difference is that skillful reasoning only supports true statements, while skillful rationalization can support any statement.
Here we have an example of a conclusion (36.2) which is definitely a meaningless coincidence, yet it is supported by [something that looks like] a derivation that says that this meaningless coincidence is an inevitable consequence of the fundamental laws of physics.
If he can derive an equation which is a random coincidence, he can derive anything, and therefore he is doing rationalization, not reasoning. Specifically, I propose that he started with (36.2), which he had discovered by trial-and-error multiplication, and then he worked backwards, either constructing the premises (32.21,32.36,32.43) knowing how he wanted (36.2) to turn out, and/or inserting arbitrary choices or mistakes in the steps going from the premises to the conclusion.
Again, this is just one equation, but every part of the book that I tried to follow in detail gave me the same impression: rationalization, not reasoning. I get this same impression from certain homework and exam answers that I’ve seen written by confused students, but I have never in my life gotten this impression when reading a real physics textbook or paper.
(Incidentally, am impressed by how the book captures all the superficial aspects of a good physics textbook, while capturing so little of the deeper semantic level. In a sense, it sorta reminds me of reading mathgen or snarxiv.)
I didn’t read Appendix A, but if you want to encounter elegant theorems, and/or correct explanations of the radiation properties and decay rates of atomic states, I suggest curling up with a good mainstream physics textbook.
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You make the common mistake of criticizing a work while at the same time refusing to take the effort to understand. The argument for the sec unit is explained in Chapter 32 and is tied to the fundamental notion that gravity arises as the relativistic correction to the dilation of space as energy is converted into matter. That’s not an obvious concept and unless you take the time to understand it, there’s not much I can do to convince you otherwise.
Again, I urge you to take acquaint yourself with the non-radiation condition. It was developed independently by two researchers, most notably H. Haus under whom Mills studied and collaborated with at MIT. It says that rather than acceleration being responsible for radiation, instead an ensemble of current density must possess Fourier components synchronous with light speed. This is a remarkable result. From it, it’s possible to develop an ensemble of current density that can orbit a fixed point yet not contain any of these critical frequency components and therefore remain non-radiative. And indeed, when you do so, you find that this particular ensemble has physical characteristic that match exactly those observed in the bound electron through experiment. Can you say that about QM? If you said “yes”, then you’re wrong because you neglected spin. Even more, QM utterly fails to predict the physical characteristics of any of the higher order atoms, ions and molecules. In contrasts, Mills’ model exactly solves these characteristics. I know so because Mills’ equations can be easily solved in spreadsheet format and I can share my very own version of this spreadsheet with you. In it, all the ionization energies for the 1 through 20 electron ions are solved exactly. That’s simply not possible in QM.
I’ll leave you with one more tidbit. Feynman famously quipped that all physicists worthy of the name should put the 137 on their wall and worry about it. I can give you the physical interpretation for 137 that you’ve never heard but once you do you’ll never forget. The fine structure constant is the ratio to the Bohr radius of a perfect spherical resonator cavity in free space with a harmonic frequency that exactly matches the photon with rest mass equal to the electron. What does that mean? Think of free space with its vacuum permittivity and permissivity as an LC circuit in which an electromagnetic wave packet is propagating. If you want “freeze” a photon with the proper rest mass into an electron, you need to start by trapping it with a spherical resonator cavity in of the appropriate dimension. That dimension is exactly alpha * the Bohr radius. The rest is easy. Do see what I didn’t need to describe the fundamental transformation of energy into matter? Anything to do with Schrodinger or Heisenberg.
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Optiongeek, yes I did take the time to read that part of Chapter 32. I stand by exactly what I said before. Let’s take this question: is the close agreement between the “sec” and the “second” an important observation that counts as supporting evidence that Mills’s analysis is on the right track? Or is it a meaningless coincidence? How do you answer that question? How do you think Mills answers that question? (My assessment, as I said, is that Mills thinks it’s an important observation, but that in fact it’s a meaningless coincidence.)
I don’t follow, can you say exactly what experimental observation in atomic spectroscopy cannot be successfully explained by mainstream quantum mechanics? Would you say that mainstream quantum mechanics practitioners admit that they can’t explain this observation, or would you say that they claim to be able to explain it but their explanation is wrong?
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In response to your question about the sec, I don’t have an answer that will satisfy you. I can’t speak to whether it is a coincidence or whether there is some deeper meaning associated with the result that sec = 0.9975 seconds. But I think it’s rather a grand leap to assert that this somehow invalidates the entire body of Mills work, which you yourself admit you won’t study. Would you tolerate a student coming to you to complain that the math for the curl operator must be wrong but they have never bothered to learn how a vector works? I can’t debate whether the leaves are correct if you refuse to learn about the trunk.
In response to your question about QM’s failings: I already provided two glaring examples. There is no way for QM to predict the electron’s spin. It can’t because it’s starting out with a point particle with zero radius and therefore any spin it calculates must be zero. GUTCP’s orbitsphere model produces a perfectly accurate value of +/- 1/2 h-bar. Second, I can calculate in simple closed form equations all of the ionization energies for any ion with 1 to 20 electrons. I will send you my spreadsheet if you are interested. I submit that such a calculation is not possible under QM – and if it is, I would very much like to see it. I’ve searched.
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Why can’t you speak to whether or not it’s a coincidence? I explained why it is in fact definitely a coincidence, I am merely asking you to read what I wrote and reply to it.
If a student opened her course textbook to a random page and found a statement which was absurd nonsense, and pointed that out to me, I would not shake my finger at her and say she ought to read every single word of the book before she comes and bothers me! Quite the contrary! I would read the statement and discuss whether or not it was in fact absurd nonsense, and if I agree with her, I would thank her for her important discovery, send the class and author an erratum note, and I would immediately start being a lot more suspicious about every other statement in the textbook.
I am being that student. No I did not read every page of the book, and I cannot say for sure that there is no kernels of truth or insight anywhere in the book. Instead, what I did was carefully read certain sections from the book, and found that those sections had no kernels of truth or insight. If you read what I wrote in the blog post, I did in fact add that caveat: “I don’t think there is any kernel of truth or insight to be found in this book, at least in the sections I read.” Since you ask, no I do not expect that there is any kernel of truth or insight elsewhere in the book, though as they say, even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and with 1800 pages of text is possible that there’s something insightful.
Quantum mechanics is extremely capable of doing sophisticated calculations and predictions involving particles of any spin including 1/2, in fact that’s the majority of what people do in quantum mechanics. It’s true that modern physics postulates the charge, mass, and spin of the electron, rather than predicting them from scratch. String theory may someday predict it from scratch, but no one has figured out how to do those calculations yet. Other things equal, if there were a theory that were just as impressive and predictive as quantum mechanics but which did predict the electron spin from scratch, I would think that’s a point in its favor. However, Mills’s theory does no such thing. I believe that Mills multiplied and divided and added physical constants every which way until he eventually found a combination that randomly wound up close to the electron mass, and likewise that Mills brainstormed vague arguments until he eventually found one that justified the electron having spin 1/2. These are not predictions, they are not even a “postdictions”, they are pointless exercises with no relation to the field of physics. Even if he did have an actual postdiction of the electron mass and spin, I would weigh that unfavorably against the crowning achievements of mainstream quantum mechanics such as those listed here.
Ionization energies are indeed predictable from quantum mechanics, but if you want to be really really accurate, the math is very complicated, and certainly not what you can implement in a spreadsheet. See here or many other places. Of course if you don’t mind being only somewhat accurate (e.g. 3 significant figures instead of 100 significant figures), there are simpler heuristics that one can use, and I’m willing to believe that you have implemented one such heuristic in your spreadsheet.
Should we care that the exact calculation is too complicated for a spreadsheet? The goal in physics is to start with a few self-contained and universally-applicable assumptions, and apply them following strict and completely inflexible rules, and wind up concluding lots of true facts about the world. If it’s a long and mathematically complicated path to get from the assumptions to the conclusions, that doesn’t provide any evidence against the assumptions (although in practice, it suggests that maybe we would do well to search for approximate heuristics that we can use when we’re in a hurry). This is just like math: How complicated is it to get from the axioms of Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory to the classification of finite simple groups? Insanely complicated! Probably it would take tens of millions of pages if we wrote out all the steps starting from the axioms. Does that provide evidence that Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory is wrong and that we should be searching for different axioms? No, not at all, it just means that doing math can be hard sometimes. (Maybe there are reasons to use other axioms besides ZF, but this is not one of them.) Well, doing quantum mechanics can be hard sometimes too, but that doesn’t mean that the universe is not quantum mechanical.
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I appreciate you taking the time to make your arguments and I am reading them carefully. However, I disagree strongly that Mills has simply found a combination of factors that produces a spin of 1/2 h_bar, or for any of his other results. In fact, his results, including his calculation of spin, flow directly from first principles in an easy to follow manner involving the laws of Newton, Maxwell, Lorentz, Planck & De Broglie – i.e. purely classical physics.
BTW, I notice you didn’t respond to my conjecture about 137, which is a shame. Because I think that example demonstrates quite clearly how a purely classical approach to a Gedanken can produce an amazing insight. What Feynman missed was that alpha is the critical dimension of the spherical resonator cavity that can show infinite impedance to the 511kEV photon! It’s so simple and impossible to refute.
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While I’m not a physicist, I can understand English and I suggest you just debuncked yourself:
‘No I did not read every page of the book, and I cannot say for sure that there is no kernels of truth or insight anywhere in the book. Instead, what I did was carefully read certain sections from the book, and found that those sections had no kernels of truth or insight.’
Or more likely/logically, due to not reading and understanding every page in the book, you were not able to find or understand the kernels of truth that support those few pages you (therefore arrogantly) selected to criticise without proper research or understanding.
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Dear Zeb, you don’t have to believe me, but I did in fact try hard and in good faith to understand the parts of the book that I studied. If I ask you to read a 1000-page book, and every page you look at is full of statements that you know for a fact to be absurd nonsense, and full of fallacious reasoning, would you keep reading all 1000 pages, or would you eventually give up and quit? I suspect the latter. Thus, I don’t think your expectations are reasonable. If you demand that I waste countless weeks reading through thousands of pages of this nonsense, I might as well make an equally absurd demand on you: I request that you write a 300-page reader’s guide explaining all the incomprehensible aspects of the book, e.g. providing precise and quantitative and unambiguous technical definitions of orbifold and every other term, and explaining what’s the deal with Eq. (36.2) (as discussed in a different comment), and everything else. Let me know when you finish that. 😛
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Steve: Kaz was being a bit over-optimistic there. I am fairly sure that convincing devices will be revealed during 2019, or perhaps sooner, even though it could take a while to see real commercialisation. A century ago It was acccepted that automobiles kept breaking down but this seems unacceptable for new products, except for software, these days.
(Steve: I snipped out a paragraph of Peter’s general thoughts on physics and cosmology. I just don’t want this thread to become a forum for everyone to offer their own idiosyncratic theories of physics. Let’s keep discussion focused close to the blog post, the book, and Mills / BLP. Thanks for understanding!)
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In having an interest in unified field theories and doing some research, I have recently stumbled across the GUT-CP by Mills and am quite impressed by what I read on the website. I’m not qualified to review his book, although I have downloaded it and may give it a shot one day.
Nevertheless, I also stumbled across (Steve — SNIP, sorry but this is not a general forum on the countless fringe reimaginings of fundamental physics. Just Mills’s. You can discuss others at physicsforums, physics-stackexchange, fringe physics subreddit, etc. Sorry about that!)
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It’s interesting that you use the same argument against Mills book, in favour of QM, as he does in his book against QM, in favour of his CP equations.
You state:
‘What’s the difference between skillful reasoning and skillful rationalization? Skillful reasoning goes forward from premise to conclusion, while skillful rationalization goes backwards from conclusion to premise. Superficially, they look similar. But the all-important difference is that skillful reasoning only supports true statements, while skillful rationalization can support any statement.’
‘ Here we have an example of a conclusion (36.2) which is definitely a meaningless coincidence, yet it is supported by [something that looks like] a derivation that says that this meaningless coincidence is an inevitable consequence of the fundamental laws of physics.’
‘If he can derive an equation which is a random coincidence, he can derive anything, and therefore he is doing rationalization, not reasoning.’
Which is very similar to what Mills originally stated regarding the validity of quantum mechanics on page 9 of his book (Introduction / Three Atomic Theories):
‘It is possible to arrive at the Rydberg formula using the wrong physics. The statement “the results justify the means” is a fundamental argument for the validity of quantum mechanics no matter how strained the explanations or the consequences.
Consider that in fact, the mathematics of the three theories of Bohr, Schrödinger, and presently CP converge to Eq. (I.1) as the principal energy levels of the hydrogen atom.’
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I don’t think that’s exactly the same. My position is that there is a recognizable difference between “real physics calculation” and “making-it-up-as-you-go-along ad-hoc equation-manipulation” (see blog post), and that Mills is doing the latter. The difference can be recognized (with skill & practice) in the derivation itself, but even if you don’t have the skill & practice to do so, you can certainly tell it’s the latter in the special case when Mills “derives” a meaningless coincidence starting from fundamental laws of physics, which is why (36.2) is such a nice example.
I don’t know whether Mills agrees that there is a distinction between “real physics calculation” and “making-it-up-as-you-go-along ad-hoc equation-manipulation”. He doesn’t seem to be discussing it in that sentence you call out. In that quote, he’s just saying that you can get the right answer by coincidence from the wrong laws.
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steve: The reference you give for standard quantum mechanics predicting ionization energies for all atoms just finds an EMPIRICAL equation that fits the measured data. It is not derived from first principles like Mills’ theory, which predicts them to within the limits of experimental error using only standard physical constants, using a spreadsheet calculation, explained and reproduced at https://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/blacklightpower/images/5/58/BLP-e-4-25-2016.pdf/revision/latest?cb=20160427021229%20(https://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/blacklightpower/images/5/58/BLP-e-4-25-2016.pdf/revision/latest?cb=20160427021229) The fact is that wave mechanics only provides a qualitative explanation of how ionization energies change in the periodic table beyond hydrogen.
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