founded hydrocatalysis inc. 1 in 1991 . 2 founder randell l. mills headquarters 493 old trenton rd. cranbury township new jersey usa number of employees 20 fulltime 14 consultants 3 subsidiaries millsian inc. . website brilliantlightpower.com brilliant light power inc. blp formerly blacklight power inc. of cranbury new jersey is a company founded by randell l. mills who claims to have discovered a new energy source . the purported energy source is based on mills assertion that the electron in a hydrogen atom can drop below the lowest energy state known as the ground state . mills calls these hypothetical hydrogen atoms that are in an energy state below ground level hydrinos . 1 mills self published a closely related book the grand unified theory of classical physics and has co authored articles on claimed hydrino related phenomena . 4 5 critics say it lacks corroborating scientific evidence and is a relic of cold fusion . critical analysis of the claims have been published in the peer reviewed journals physics letters a new journal of physics journal of applied physics and journal of physics d applied physics . these works note that the proposed theory is inconsistent with quantum mechanics and that the proposed hydrino states are unphysical and incompatible with key equations that have been experimentally verified many times . in 1999 the nobel prize winning physicist philip warren anderson said he is sure that it s a fraud 6 and in the same year another nobel prize winning physicist steven chu called it extremely unlikely . 7 in 2009 ieee spectrum magazine characterized it as a loser technology because m ost experts don t believe such lower states exist and they say the experiments don t present convincing evidence and mentioned that wolfgang ketterle had said the claims are nonsense . 8 blp has announced several times that it was about to deliver commercial products based on mill s theories but has not delivered a working product . 8 contents 1 company 1.1 randell mills 1.2 funding 2 claims 3 experimental results 3.1 nasa 3.2 rowan university 3.3 european physical journal d 4 criticism 4.1 publications 4.1.1 new journal of physics 4.1.2 journal of applied physics 4.1.3 physics letters a 4.1.4 journal of physics d 4.1.5 ieee spectrum 4.2 opinions 4.2.1 robert l. park 4.2.2 steven chu 4.2.3 phillip anderson 4.2.4 wolfgang ketterle 4.2.5 michio kaku 4.2.6 peter zimmerman 5 legal threats to physicists 6 patent issues 6.1 uspto court case 7 see also 8 references 9 external links company the company originally called hydrocatalysis inc. 1 was founded in 1991 by randell mills 2 who claimed to have discovered a power source that represents a boundless form of new primary energy and that will replace all forms of fuel in the world 9 in 2008 mills said that his cell stacks could provide power for long range electric vehicles 10 and that this electricity would cost less than 2 cents per kilowatt hour . 11 blp holds several patents based on graphic modelling software . 12 randell mills randell mills is the founder and ceo of brilliant light power . funding by december 1999 blp raised more than 25 million from about 150 investors . 2 13 by january 2006 blp funding exceeded 60 million . 10 14 15 16 in december 2013 blp was one of 54 applicants to receive 1.1 m grant from the new jersey economic development authority . 17 among the investors are pacificorp conectiv retired executives from morgan stanley 13 and several blp board members like shelby brewer who was the top nuclear official for the reagan administration and chief executive officer of abb combustion engineering nuclear power 18 19 and former board member michael h. jordan 1936 2010 who was chief executive officer of pepsico worldwide foods westinghouse electric corporation cbs corporation and electronic data systems . 18 in 2008 robert l. park wrote that blp has benefited from wealthy investors who allocate a proportion of their funds to risky ventures with a potentially huge upside but that in the case of blp since the science underlying the offering was just wrong the investment risk was in park s view infinite . 20 claims mills first announced his hydrino state hypothesis on april 25 1991 in a press conference in lancaster pennsylvania as an explanation for the cold fusion phenomena that had been reported in 1989 . according to mills no fusion was actually happening in the cells and all the effects would be caused by shrinkage of hydrogen atoms as they fell to a state below the ground state . mills added that the increased proximity between the atoms would cause them to fuse sporadically and some of those atoms would be deuterium atoms a hydrogen atom with one extra neutron which would explain why there were occasional readings of neutrons . no experimental evidence was offered by mills at the time to support his claims which violate accepted nuclear physics . 1 21 22 23 in a 2007 review of cold fusion research researcher edmund storms put forward the hydrino model as a possible explanation for cold fusion . 24 experimental results nasa in 1996 nasa released a report describing experiments using a blp electrolytic cell . although not recreating the large heat gains reported for the cell by blp unexplained power gains ranging from 1.06 to 1.68 of the input power were reported which whilst ... admit ing the existence of an unusual source of heat with the cell ... falls far short of being compelling . the authors went on to propose the recombination of hydrogen and oxygen as a possible explanation of the anomalous results . 25 rowan university around 2002 the nasa institute for advanced concepts niac granted a phase i grant to anthony marchese a mechanical engineer at rowan university to study a possible rocket propulsion that would use hydrinos . 26 in 2002 rowan university s anthony marchese said that whilst agnostic about the existence of hydrinos he was quite confident that there was no fraud involved with blp and although his niac grant was criticised by park marchese said for me to not continue with this study would be unethical to the scientific community . the only reason not to pursue this would be because of being afraid of being bullied . 26 european physical journal d in 2005 i ovi and others published a paper describing experimental data and analysis of mills claim that a resonant transfer model rtm explains the excessive doppler broadening of the h line . i ovi concluded that the detected large excessive broadening in pure hydrogen and in ne h2 mixture is in agreement with cm collision model and other experimental results and that these results can t be explained by rtm . the collision model explanation for excessive broadening of the h line is based on established physics . 27 criticism publications new journal of physics in 2005 andreas rathke of the european space agency publishing in the new journal of physics wrote that mills description of quantum mechanics is inconsistent and has several serious deficiencies and that there is no theoretical support of the hydrino hypothesis . rathke said it would be helpful if mills experimental results could be independently replicated and suggested that any evidence produced should be reconsidered in the context of a conventional physical explanation . 28 one inconsistency of mills cqm with quantum mechanics regards its inability to be reconciled with the probability density function in quantum mechanics . rathke stated however while solutions of the schr dinger equation with n 1 indeed exist they are not square integrable . this violates not only an axiom of quantum mechanics but in practical terms prohibits that these solutions can in any way describe the probability density of a particle . 28 journal of applied physics in 2005 the journal of applied physics published a critique by a.v. phelps of the 2004 article water bath calorimetric study of excess heat generation in resonant transfer plasmas by j. phillips r. mills and x. chen . 29 phelps criticized both the calorimetric techniques and the underlying theory described in the phillips mills chen article . the journal also published a response to phelps critique on the same day . 30 physics letters a in 2006 a paper published in physics letters a concluded that mills theoretical hydrino states are unphysical . for the hydrino states the binding strength increases as the strength of the electric potential decreases with maximum binding strength when the potential has disappeared completely . the author norman dombey remarked we could call these anomalous states homeopathic states because the smaller the coupling the larger the effect . the model also assumes that the nuclear charge distribution is a point rather than having an arbitrarily small non zero radius . it also lacks an analogous solution in the schr dinger equation which governs non relativistic systems . dombey concluded we suggest that outside of science fiction this is sufficient reason to disregard them . 31 from a suggestion in dombey s paper further work by antonio di castro has shown that states below the ground state as described in mills work are incompatible with the schr dinger klein gordon and dirac equations key equations in the study of quantum systems . 32 journal of physics d in 2008 the journal of physics d applied physics published an article by hans joachim kunze professor emeritus at the institute for experimental physics ruhr university bochum 33 critical of the 2003 paper authored by r. mills and p. ray extreme ultraviolet spectroscopy of helium hydrogen . the abstract of the article is it is suggested that spectral lines on which the fiction of fractional principal quantum numbers in the hydrogen atom is based are nothing else but artefacts . kunze stated that it was impossible to detect the novel lines below 30 nm reported by mills and ray because the equipment they used did not have the capability to detect them as per the manufacturer and as per every book on vacuum uv spectroscopy and therefore the observed lines must be artefacts . kunze also stated that the enormous spectral widths of the novel lines point to artefacts too . 34 ieee spectrum in 2009 ieee spectrum magazine criticized blp concluding that most experts don t believe such lower states exist and they say the experiments don t present convincing evidence . it also pointed out that blp has made similar claims before announcing that it was on the brink of commercializing its revolutionary technology but failed to deliver . 8 opinions robert l. park since 1999 robert l. park emeritus professor of physics at the university of maryland and a notable skeptic has been particularly critical of blp . in 2008 park wrote blacklight power blp founded 17 years ago as hydrocatalysis announced last week that the company had successfully tested a prototype power system that would generate 50 kw of thermal power . blp anticipates delivery of the new power system in 12 to 18 months . the blp process 35 discovered by randy mills is said to coax hydrogen atoms into a state below the ground state called the hydrino . there is no independent scientific confirmation of the hydrino and blp has a patent problem . so they have nothing to sell but bull shit . the company is therefore dependent on investors with deep pockets and shallow brains . park 36 steven chu in 1999 steven chu nobel laureate in physics in 1997 said it s extremely unlikely that this is real and i feel sorry for the funders the people who are backing this . 7 phillip anderson in 1999 princeton university s physics nobel laureate phillip anderson said of it if you could fuck around with the hydrogen atom you could fuck around with the energy process in the sun . you could fuck around with life