Letter from Bob Bass to Dr. Shelby Brewer, August 9, 2000.
August 9, 2000
Dr. Shelby Brewer
2121 Jamieson St.
Alexandria, VA
Dear Dr. Brewer,
Having read your resume on the Blacklight Power website I am convinced that you
seem to be the most credible person on their Board of Directors [Ph.D. in
nuclear engineering from MIT, very high-level experience with nuclear power,
etc. in both govenment and industry].
My motivations are NOT malicious; my unrequited ambition is to become a "knee-
jerk Christian" which I am far from attaining, though I turned 70 years of age
today. I was Prof. of Physics & Astronomy at BYU (1971-81) and am now an
"inactive" Mormon planning to become a Roman Catholic and starting their RCIA in
September.
If Dr. Randell Mills goes through with the announced Morgan Stanley plan to
raise $1 Billion from an IPO, it may constitute LEGALLY "Fraud on the Public"
unless and until there is FAR better evidence that Dr. Mills has not deluded
himself than is available anywhere that I can see, and in 1996 I talked to him
on the phone about mathematical mistakes in his 1992 book and got rewarded by
him hanging up on me. Last weekend I sent him the following NON-MALICIOUS
critical letter but so far he has declined to address the points I bring out.
You have a legal responsibility [could be sued later by irate investors] to
exercise ADEQUATE Due Diligence regarding this matter; please read my letter to
Randy carefully and then direct him to either reply point-by-point and line-by-
line (without evading the issues by obfuscation, which, I am told, is his
standard practice on the web), or else jeopardize your confidence that he has
not fooled himself. Also please forward a copy of this letter to Randy's lawyers
and (most importantly) to Morgan Stanley's lawyers and confirm to me that both
sets of lawyers have received it.
Clearly Dr. Mills has exceptional creative imaginaton, but it could be that it
is in the field of "science fiction" rather than real science.
I am NOT a "jealous competitor" which he will undoubtedly tell you I am. It
would not bother me in the slightest if he becomes "richer than Bill Gates" [to
quote Art Rosenblum] or more celebrated than Einstein [whom I met personally
alone for 15 minutes in 1950], so long as his work turns out to be correct. He
has certainly made at least one important EMPIRICAL discovery (but instead of
following through on it he keeps changing the mode of exploitation and pushing
the moment of truth farther into the future -- an ever-receding horizon).
However, it is far from clear that he has made ANY theoretical advances, as you
will find out by asking him to reply to my critique below --- which as a Ph.D.
in nuclear engineering you will certainly find easy enough to understand
yourself.
Hoping that you will follow through on your moral and legal duties before the
public gets so disillusioned by "new energy ventures" that even solidly
factually-based R&D cannot get funded, I am
Sincerely,
Bob Bass
P.S. Why does it take "6 months" to get a gyrotron delivered? When I needed
gyrotrons for a proposed "low tech" [gas-pressure confined, microwave-sustained
charge-separation {inertial-electrostatic} boundary- layer insulated] controlled
thermonuclear fusion reactor (my Patented "Plasmasphere" whose patent expires
next year) we got a FIXED PRICE Bid from Stone & Webster that they could
assemble it anywhere in the world "within two weeks" [after 6 months to order
parts] for $5 Million, and I don't recall that the gyrotron microwave beam
generators were among the few things that needed a 6-month lead-time to order.
My recollection is that companies like Varian Associates either have them
available off-the shelf or can rapidly deliver custom-designed units of every
possible wavelength and any power from milliwatts to megawatts with no sweat.
(The reason that we never tested my invention is that Edward Teller wrote me
that even if my theory was correct, it would surely take "at least 10 years and
cost at least $10 Billion" to verify it, at which point my VC pulled out.) My
300 MW_thermal Plasmasphere reactor would have a plasma diameter of only 9 cm
(although the gas blanket to moderate the neutron efflux would have had to be
many meters in diameter) and use pure deuterium rather than D+T. Some
scientists at Stone & Webster published a computer simulation showing via the
Boltzmann-Vlasov Equation that my boundary-layer theory is correct; this was
published in "Fusion Technology" a decade or two ago. Although I just turned
70, if I live long enough I am going to prove that Teller was wildly
exaggerating in order to protect LLNL from looking foolish when another laser-
sparked approach made their ablative-compression D-T- pill scheme look pitiful.
But in the interim I believe that Cold Fusion (CF) is what humanity needs for
domestic & commercial power generation, based upon my solid, crystalline
MetaStable Deuterium (MSD) pellets (manufactured via the interim step of
converting deuterium gas, via pressure ionization rather than thermal
ionization, to the state of a Liquid Metallic Plasmoid -- as demonstrated in a
sequence of photos by my friend Nitro-Nobel Laureate Melvin Cook on the cover of
J. Applied Physics about October, 1957 and mentioned in his ACS monograph and
other book on physical chemistry of high-explosives [Krieger Pub. Co.]; see
appended Summary of my paper with S. Gleeson for ANS Winter Session in
Washington, D.C. this coming November.)
Email from Bob Bass to John Farrell, August 9, 2000.
From: Bass, Robert W (IDS)
Sent: Wednesday, August 09, 2000 5:05 PM
To: 'John Farrell'
Cc: 'Art B Rosenblum'; 'Hal Fox'; 'Erik Baard';
'Eugene F. Mallove'; 'George Miley'
Subject: Randell Mills' non-reply to my "re: Jan. 2000 Edn. of Mills' book"
Dear Dr. Farrell,
I know from talking with you on the phone back about 1996[?] that you are a
sincere, honorable and reasonable person.
Sadly, I cannot say the same about your former student Dr. Randy Mills; even his
biographer, Erik Baard, has conceded (I am told) that Randy does "bristle" at
criticism and, I infer from gossip, cannot engage in a normal give-and-take
conversation with another as an equal. You probably remember that I complained
to you that when in 1996 (after reading his 1992 book and finding myriad errors)
I had asked Randy on the phone a difficult question he just hung up on me.
You have said on the internet something like "Randy pushes the science harder
than I would...". What do you mean, exactly, by push? Do you mean that he
"overstates" his scientific case?
You have also said the same about his "pushing" the business harder than you
yourself would. What exactly do you mean? That he "overstates" his business-
prospects case?
You may remember that I told you that in addition to passing the Patent Bar Exam
and being licensed to practice Intellectual Property Law before the USPTO, in
Utah [where I was a Prof. of Physics & Astronomy, 1971-81] I had passed a public
exam on Corporate Finance Law which licenses me to draft Registration
Prospectuses for (intrastate) IPOs, and I warned you in '96 that in my opinion
if Randy did not become more cautious he was going to end up being sued by his
investors and possibly going to jail. On the last page of his new book he says
that (in view of his prophesied expectation of Artificial Intelligence robots
replacing mankind?) "we are all living on Borrowed Time: make the most of it!"
I believe that this may be a "Freudian slip" showing that in his unconscious
mind he knows that HE is "living on borrowed time" and is trying to "make the
most of it" [until the hard truth catches up with him?].
His book reminds me of a Potemkin village: why many pages of photographs of
expensive buildings and expensive equipment when a single stand-alone demo
(which he told Art Rosenblum more than 3 years ago he expected "within 6
months") would suffice? Why a massive tome containing hundreds of pages of
standard identities & standard mathematical manipulations, none of which are
directly relevant and none of which lead to any new DEDUCTIONS, but are merely
window-dressing just copied out of standard texts? (The truly new ideas are all
pictorial/intuitive/conceptual rather than rigorously mathematical and could
have been presented in a few pages: why 800 pages except to "persuade by image"
& "convince by intimidation"?)
Randy complains about "a competitor," Bob Park of the APS, for slandering him,
but then he does the same thing for which he criticizes Park, and
ignorantly/incompetently slanders his own competitors [who started the Cold
Fusion furore into which he voluntarily entered] by calling them pursuers of a
"failed" effort to induce nuclear effects in tabletop electrochemical devices.
Why don't you read carefully from cover-to- cover the new book by MIT-educated
engineer Charles Beaudette (on which, after retirement, he worked full time for
6 years getting to the bottom of the matter & getting all salient facts
straight) and then advise Randy that he is damaging his own credibility by
referring to Cold Fusion as a "failed" effort?
Can you get him to reply to my critique of his book line-by-line without
obfuscation? Several people have urged me to post my open letter to Dr. Mills
on the hydrino study group website, because then there is a chance that Randy
will reply. But someone else who reads that e-debate regularly wrote me that
"his debating style is to introduce myriad irrelevant facts & figures in order
to dilute the issues;" another person wrote me that "he doesn't dialogue like a
scientist wanting to learn the truth, he debates like an evangelist trying to
recruit converts." (There is nothing wrong with his believing passionately that
Quantum Mechanics is misinterpreted/misconceived -- I share his passion as
regards the same opinion -- but opinions are not a basis for an IPO.) [I
visualize the electron as a point rather than a soap-bubble; the reason that
statistics enters is not because the Copenhagen Interpretation of {crypto-
Buddhist} Bohr is correct & "God plays dice," but simply because Bohr et al
NEGLECTED to include the "jittering" effect on electron motion of the summed
Coulomb forces from all charged particles in the universe, which have a zero-
MEAN but a non-zero-variance; and I have PROVED that my concept is viable by
starting with Newton's dynamics and Coulomb's Law {plus theconcept from SED that
explains why the jittering particle absorbs as much energy from the background
as it radiates, when it is in a Bohr orbit}, and by use of the Fenyes-Nelson
Stochastic Mechanics (SM) I have DERIVED both Schroedinger's Equation AND
simultaneously the correct value of Planck's constant {not introduced as a new
constant of nature as in conventional QM!} in the attached paper on Zero Point
Fluctuations published last November.]
If the rumor that Randy won't dialog with sincere, non-malicious critics, is
true, and if he raises $1 Billion from the public by holding out dreams as
realities, then this will lead to a Fiasco of unprecedented proportions. Don't
you feel any responsibility to get him to face up to the fact that my criticisms
are NOT malicious but are serious points from a well-qualified mathematician
pointing out numerous fatal mathematical mistakes/fakery/bluffery in his
equations, cited by exact page and by exact equation number? This is NOT
emotional rhetoric; this is an OBJECTIVELY presented challenge to put-up-or-
shut-up.
Sadly,
Bob Bass
Email from Bob Bass to Randell Mills, August 6, 2000.
From: Bass, Robert W (IDS)
Sent: Sunday, August 06, 2000 1:33 AM
To: 'Randell Mills'
Cc: 'John Farrell'; 'Hal Fox'; 'Erik Baard'; 'Art Rosenblum'
Subject: Jan. 2000 Edn. of your book
Dear Dr. Mills,
I just happened to stumble upon IE # 17 and read attentively the interesting
interview which you gave to Art Rosenblum on & before June 19, 1997.
Your hypotheses sound plausible and your attempts to provide evidence from e.g.
solar astrophysics for the existence of hydrinos sound convincing.
Somewhere I saw posted by your former teacher Dr. Farrell the exact wording of
the referees' reports which denied him his admittedly "desperate" attempts to
publish your astrophysical evidence. I am unalterably certain that those
referees have done a wicked and evil thing and deserve obloquoy! Also I am
totally certain that the USPTO has engaged in criminal wrongdoing in allowing
outside influence to get one of your Patents yanked AFTER the Examiner had
approved its issuance and given you an issuance number! Presumably "overzealous
prosecutor" Bob Park or someone of the same ilk is behind this egregious crime
at the PTO.
But the fact that I _KNOW_ that the Establishment has not treated you fairly nor
given fair consideration to your new ideas does NOT, alone, prove that your new
ideas are valid.
Unfortunately, I should have left off reading the 1997 invervew, and recalling
the year 2000 matters in the preceding paragraph, with concluding that you had
an made an interesting hypothesis (use the Rydberg formula E = - E1/n^2, n = 1,
2, 3, ... with novel allowance of n = 1/m, m = 1, 2, 3, ...) and had found
seemingly closely confirmatory evidence, and envisioned ingenious potential
practical applications.
Sad to say, however, this made me think that maybe you really _had_ done what
you claimed and caused me to invest a day in studying the first 81 pages of the
January, 2000 Edition of your massive book.
In the 1997 inteview you repeatedly stated that you had "derived" your theory of
fractional quantum numbers. At the beginning of the book you state that using
the Haus theory enabled you to "derive" a new theory of the Hydrogen atom which
not only provides the standard Bohr orbits but "predicts" your new fractional
orbits.
You had 160 Stockholders in 1997 to whom you are accountable. I believe that
this gives you a moral _obligation_ to answer sincere, non-malicious criticism
from an open-minded and competent person. I think that your empirical discovery
of 'excess energy' in aqueous potassium carbonate electrolysis by nickel
cathodes is an extremely important discovery, and I would be overjoyed to see
your vision of "new energy" from hydrogen super-chemistry come true; I am NOT
wedded to any existing Establishment doctrine in physics and in fact I agree
with your (Einsteinian) position that QM is very
incomplete/defective/misinterpreted. I was _hoping_ that your printed
"derivations" in your book would be valid, and am disappointed to have to report
otherwise.
I have a B.A. from Johns Hopkins in Physics (in my junior year I took the
standard physics courses for beginning graduate students) and a Ph.D. in
mathematics and at BYU where I was a full Professor of Physics & Astronomy for a
decade (1971-81) I taught a one-year grad course on E&M from Jackson's book,
which you frequently cite. Also I have published original work depending upon
both theoretical and numerical solution of your principal tool, the Helmholtz
wave equation. (My issued Patent on the optimal magnetic bottle configuration,
the BYU Topolotron, exploits very sophisticated knowledge of the Helmholtz wave
equation.) There is no doubt that I am equipped to understand theoretical
derivations in this field.
Your basic idea is quite original and for all I know may well be true; likewise
I am favorably impressed by the way you worked out the theory of non-radiative
collisional energy transfer to predict the astrophysical spectral lines, etc.
Your numerical work is correct & demonstrates both dedication & diligence.
Moreover, the "coincidences" in Table 1, page xv, ought to be enough to gain you
a very respectful hearing, if not ultimately nomination for a Nobel Prize.
So I started reading your book, "ready to be convinced."
Unfortunately I find that your first 81 pages are just an elaborate rehearsal of
well-known identities that add _nothing_ to the credibility of your hypothesis
and most assuredly in no conceivable sense can be said to constitute a
"derivation" of your theory.
You claim that the Haus 4-D Fourier Transform theory of EM radiation will enable
you to recover the Bohr atom theory and also predict your new fractional quantum
numbers. But (after rereading a copy of the Haus paper and the first 81 pages
of your book ) I have looked in vain for any kind of validation of your claim!
Does Haus agree that his theory can be used to derive the Bohr orbits? If you
had done that it would have been a very remarkable achievement and would provide
a new entry into atomic physics.
Please point out the equation number and page number where you have done this,
if I am mistaken, and I will stand corrected.
Unfortunately, it looks to me as if you have fooled yourself. You have sneaked
in Bohr's angular momentum postulate with no warning by using the de Broglie
wavelength [eqn. (1.46) on page 41], which alone can be used to derive the Bohr
atom, and therefore its use means you are using circular "reasoning," i.e. you
are begging the question.
Worse yet, when you "seek a physical interpretation" of the standard
Schroedinger wave-function psi, and write down the eigenvalue equation
H.psi = b.psi [your (I.37), p. 10]
you state that "b is an _arbitrary_ constant" (and used italics on _arbitrary_).
Sadly, nothing could be farther from the truth. The whole point of an
eigenvalue equation is that the eigenvalue b is NOT arbitrary, but is determined
by the boundary conditions. Everybody thought Schroedinger deserved a Nobel
Prize because when he merely demanded that psi go to zero, as distance r from
the origin becomes unbounded, in such a way that the absolute value of psi is
square-integrable [your (I.29), p. 8], then that very vague "normalization" kind
of boundary condition forced b to take on ONLY the countable set of values that
yielded the Rydberg-Bohr orbits.
In using a delta function delt(r - r_n) in the Haus approach, you are leaving
the orbits to be fixed by some extraneous consideration. But with no
justification you say "consider the case wherein b = the Rydberg formula!" There
is absolutely NO logical difference between this pseudo-"derivation" and between
saying "let us consider the postulate that in the Rydberg formula fractional
quantum numbers are allowed."
Why are you wasting pages regurgitating hundreds of pages out of standard
textbooks when this elaborate rehearsal of standard identities and standard
manipulations does not add one iota to the logical coherence or plausibility of
your new hypothesis?
I have not found one line in your book where you DEDUCED anything by
mathematical argument. It is clear that one hundred percent of your reasoning
is intuitive, and either verbal or pictorial or both, and that the mathematics
is written down only to provide an appropriate environment or context within
which you may insert your new postulates in such a way that the non-diligent
reader gets the _impression_ that your postulates have been "derived" or
"proved" from more basic postulates.
To say that the QM of Schroedinger & Heisenberg depends upon their introducing
"postulates" [which is true enough] whereas in contrast your theory is "derived"
from "first principles" is blatantly mistaken! You too are introducing new
postulates the same as is required in all non-classical theories, and because of
your new postulates your theory is hardly "classical" [except in the broad sense
that you believe that the same laws should hold in the microworld and the
macroworld (with which I happen to agree)].
Furthermore, please explain how you can use both equations (1.43) and (1.45)
without having claimed that 2.pi = 1 (or admitting that you divided by zero, a
well-known logical fallacy).
Please explain the "relativistically corrected wavelength" (1.45). Is this
intuitive? Is this your own idea? Has any other author ever done this? If so,
please cite the reference.
You now state that you have $10M in cash on hand. Why cannot you afford to HIRE
your former teacher Haus, upon whom you state repeatedly in both interview and
book everything you have done depends, and pay him to study your book line by
line and either agree or disagree?
Not all living theoreticians are closed-minded. Can you point to one single
theoretician in the world today who disagrees with what I (sadly) concluded
above?
In conclusion, I too feel "burned" by CETI having convinced me that their 1995
public demo of a thousand-to-one power "gain" was real and important, whereas
the rumors I hear now are that they cannot duplicate that feat again themselves.
But your public comment that the discrepancy between CETI's rosy predictions and
later reality (announcement of only 10-to-50% excess power) lowers their
"credibility" in your eyes leaves you vulnerable to their saying the very same
kind of thing about you.
In June, 1997, more than 3 years ago, you were saying that you expected to have
a stand-alone power generator "within 6 months." Now THREE YEARS have passed and
I am told that you are waiting ANOTHER 6 months for delivery of some unavailable
gyrotron component. Is it not fair now for the public to say about you what you
said about CETI? Why have you manifestly spent "thousands of hours" (juding by
the amount of material in your book) on esoteric peripheral matters like DNA,
Neural Networks, artificial intelligence, nature of consciousness, cosmology,
gravitation, etc. instead of keeping to the implicit promise to your 160
stockholders of 1997 that you are developing a stand-alone power generator? A
single stand-alone demonstration, however, crude and usuitable for being a
prototype for serial production, would suffice.
I haven't read all of the postings on your website, but those I did read surely
did not "confirm" your hydrino allegations; they essentially said, you paid them
to do certain tests and they did it and left the interpretation to you.
Anyone with million$ to spend can find innumerable external commercial
contractors eager to accept money to perform tasks. What is lacking is any
evidence (please point to it if I have overlooked it) that anyone of independent
_thoughtfulness_ has become convinced that any of your claims have been
validated.
According to the Guinness Book of Records, Joe Girard is the world's most
successful Salesman. If you read his book, which I have done, he openly advises
"good salesmen" to out and out deliberately lie to potential customers in order
to make a sale. Others like him advise, "always sell the SIZZLE, not the
steak."
With all due respect, Dr. Mills, your novel ideas, if correct, will constitute a
great blessing to mankind, which I will be the first to applaud _when
independently DEMONSTRATED_, but I am sad to say that all I perceive now is a
vast amount of sizzle but no steak.
Regretfully,
Bob Bass
P.S. If I am mistaken, send me email addresses of any theoretically competent
supporters/allies. I hope to God that I am mistaken but it seems to me that
your stance is that of a "guru" who can tolerate talking to no one but acolytes.
As an M.D. you most know that the medical diagnosis of anyone who has grandiose
ideas, but refuses to tolerate give-and-take discussion with others as equals,
is paranoia. And the legal definition of anyone who knowingly raises IPO money
by holding out dreams as realities is even less happy.
=======================================
Dr. Robert W. Bass
Engineer III
Identification Systems Department
BAE SYSTEMS
44414 Pecan Court
California, MD 20619
Phone: (301) 863-0687
FAX: (301) 863-0755
e-mail: robert.w.bass@baesystems.com
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Aug. 28, 2000.