The atom bombshell that is splitting opinion

The atom bombshell that is splitting opinion
By Robert Matthews
Published: March 9 2006 18:41 | Last updated: March 9 2006 18:41

Psychologists call it cognitive dissonance: the mental torment that comes from being confronted by two fundamentally opposed propositions. Deciding between them often provokes powerful emotions – just ask Dr Randell Mills, whose claims have a habit of triggering severe bouts of cognitive dissonance among otherwise perfectly rational people.


And no wonder: this medical student turned physicist claims to have debunked the textbook account of how atoms are put together – and in the process discovered a new source of clean, cheap energy.

By itself, that would provoke little more than eye-rolling boredom from scientists all too familiar with the grand pronouncements of cranks. The trouble is that not many cranks have had their radical new theories about atoms published in dozens of peer-reviewed papers in serious research journals, and the implications replicated in independent laboratories. And fewer still have won the support of big hitters from A-list corporations and hefty financial backing to match.

So which is it: is Dr Mills a crank or a genius? Faced with making up their minds, many scientists have shown the classic symptom of cognitive dissonance: spluttering rage (it is a safe bet that some are even now tapping out letters of complaint to this newspaper). They simply refuse point-blank to believe that Dr Mills could have found a form of atomic energy missed by the likes of Albert Einstein and Ernest Rutherford.

But – again in line with psychological theory – those with rather less investment in the current scientific paradigm tend to have fewer problems countenancing the other possibility: that Dr Mills really is a genius. Some have even gone as far as investing a total of $50m in his New Jersey-based company, Blacklight Power, whose board members include Neil Moskowitz, the chief financial officer of Credit Suisse, and Michael Jordan, chairman of Electronic Data Systems.

Not that Dr Mills cares about what mainstream scientists think about his ­theory: he is too busy extracting ever more insights from it – most recently, formulas describing the properties of molecules, something that has proved beyond the powers of quantum mechanics, the most successful scientific theory ever devised.

But then Dr Mills regards quantum mechanics as fundamentally flawed. Devised around a century ago in response to some baffling discoveries about heat, light and atoms, quantum mechanics is notorious for its counter-intuitive implications, such as the inherent fuzziness of atoms and the ability of energy to appear out of nowhere.

Dr Mills first came across quantum mechanics after graduating in medicine from Harvard and taking up post-graduate studies in electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Struck by the weirdness of the theory, he set about devising a radically different account of the sub-atomic world, based on ideas from Victorian physics.

In a series of papers published in academic journals, he argues for a new picture of the hydrogen atom, with the lone electron whizzing around a central proton replaced with a spherical shell of electric charge.

According to Dr Mills, this simple modification utterly transforms the physics of the atom. While all the successes of conventional quantum mechanics are kept, a whole raft of solutions to previously insoluble problems emerge – such as the predictions of the properties of molecules.

But most excitement – and controversy – surrounds Dr Mills’ prediction of a whole new source of atomic energy lurking within hydrogen. According to his theory, if atoms of hydrogen are heated and mixed with other elements, they can be persuaded to release over 100 times more energy than would be generated by combustion alone.

The implications are astonishing. For if Dr Mills is right, the water covering 70 per cent of the world could become a virtually limitless source of cheap, clean energy. Not surprisingly, many scientists are deeply sceptical, pointing to all-too-similar claims made for so-called “cold fusion”, another supposedly miraculous energy source whose existence was revealed by this newspaper in 1989, but which has failed to deliver on its promise.

Yet most of Dr Mills’ critics have probably never bothered to read any of his research papers. Some have, however, and have gone on to attempt the acid test of any scientific claim: replication by independent researchers. Among those to test Dr Mills’ ideas is a team led by Professor Gerrit Kroesen at the University of Technology in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. So far their results have confirmed that hydrogen atoms do indeed behave strangely in the presence of certain elements, in line with Dr Mills’ theory, and they plan to test the key claim of net energy output later this year.

While many scientists express doubts off the record, the fact remains that no one has published a knock-out argument against Dr Mills’ basic theory (though some claim it is so silly it is not worth a rebuttal).

Whether his theory is right is ultimately irrelevant, however. What really matters is whether hot hydrogen can be persuaded to give out more energy than it takes in, making it a viable power source.

The whole controversy will be resolved one way or the other by independent researchers either confirming or refuting Dr Mills’ claims. Or at least, that is what most scientists believe. In practice, things are not always so clear-cut. During the 1960s, many scientists claimed to have confirmed reports of the existence of “polywater”, a new form of H2O, which everyone now agrees does not exist.

On the other hand, many genuine breakthroughs have initially prompted outraged scepticism from experts.

What Dr Mills has already proved beyond doubt is that outsiders who threaten long-held beliefs can expect a rough ride – no matter how great the potential pay-off.

The writer is visiting reader in science at Aston University, Birmingham

THE ONES THE EXPERTS THOUGHT WOULD NEVER GET OFF THE GROUND... BUT DID

Some of the biggest technological breakthroughs were ignored or ridiculed by the scientific establishment when they first appeared:

■ When two American bicycle repairmen claimed to have built the world’s first aircraft in 1903, they were dismissed as cranks. Newspapers refused to send reporters or photographers to witness any of the flights. More than two years later, Scientific American magazine was still insisting that the story was a hoax. By that time, the Wright brothers had completed a half-hour flight covering 24 miles.

■ The claim of Irish engineer Charles Parsons to have developed a radically new form of marine propulsion was scorned by the Admiralty, until his steam turbine vessel made an unauthorised appearance at the 1897 Spithead naval review going at 37 knots – faster than any other vessel in the fleet.

■ The idea that atoms could be a source of energy millions of times more potent than coal or oil was dismissed by the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ernest Rutherford as “moonshine”. Even Albert Einstein struggled to accept the technological potential of his famous equation E=mc2.

■ During the 1950s, self-taught American physicist Stanford Ovshinsky found a way of creating materials lacking a regular crystal structure – an achievement dismissed as impossible by scientists. They are now standard components in devices ranging from flat-panel displays to solar cells.

■ While developing the technology behind the laser, American physicist Charles Townes was approached by two Nobel-Prize-winning colleagues who told him he was wasting his time and threatening their funding. Even after the first laser was built in 1960, it was described as “a solution looking for a problem”.

■ The Scanning Tunnelling Microscope (STM), invented by scientists at IBM in Zurich in the early 1980s, now plays a key role in fields ranging from biology to nanotechnology. But many scientists remained deeply suspicious of the claims made for the STM until its inventors won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1986.