Hydrino Theory, Which Overturns Quantum Theory, Is In Turn Overturned By Doofusino Theory
by Scott Aaronson

On December 28, 1999, The Village Voice, long respected for its hard-hitting journalism and unimpeachable scientific integrity, ran a cover article entitled "QUANTUM LEAP" by Erik Baard. The article relates the epochal breakthroughs of Dr. Randell Mills of Princeton, NJ, a "Harvard-trained medical doctor who ... says he's found the Holy Grail of physics: a unified theory of everything." The article continues:

Mills says that with this new understanding he's produced clean and limitless energy and an entirely new class of materials and plasma that will reshape every industry in the coming decade. Mills also claims breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, cosmology, medicine, and perhaps even a form of gravitational jujitsu.

"I've made the electron real," the 42-year-old Mills says. "It's a revolution very fitting to the 21st century, in a chain of revolutions man has had with fire, steel, fossil fuels, and Maxwell's description of electromagnetism" ...

[Mills'] company, BlackLight Power Inc., formed in 1991, expects to receive in January patents on the energy and chemicals, which Mills says derive from the "shrinking" of the hydrogen atom's orbitsphere. BlackLight Power, with a research staff of 25, will submit its findings to premier scholarly journals by that time, he adds.

The key to Mills' groundbreaking theory is the hydrino, or miniature hydrogen atom with the electron pushed closer than usual to the nucleus. Converting an ordinary hydrogen atom into a hydrino releases ultraviolet light, a process that "can build pressure to turn a turbine for a generator or an engine, BlackLight Power notes in a marketing plan." Hydrinos can also react with other elements to form a cornucopia of amazing compounds, leading to "conductive, magnetic plastics that would revolutionize circuitry and aerospace engineering ... batteries the size of a briefcase to drive your car 1000 miles at highway speeds on a single charge, without gasoline ... incredibly powerful explosives or rocket propellants," and -- remember, this is science, not science fiction -- "super-strong coatings, some of which could make ships rustproof, dramatically reducing crew complements."

According to the prevailing orthodox establishment dogma of quantum mechanics, hydrinos can't exist, since a free-floating hydrogen atom is in a "ground state," with the electron as close as it can get to the nucleus. (In The Village Voice's apt analogy, "[t]elling physicists that they've got that wrong is like telling mothers across America that they've misunderstood apple pie.") But, as Dr. Mills has excitingly revealed, quantum mechanics is false. According to The Village Voice,

BlackLight Power boosters scoff that they've seen no practical application of quantum theory since the atomic bomb and nuclear power [how true!], and say they have little time for theorists who call Mills a charlatan while teaching that the fundamental laws of cause and effect are subverted at the subatomic level. Mills's camp responds: Fraud? Let's talk about fraud. Quantumists have us living in myriad dimensions filled with "probability waves" and unobservable "virtual particles" that flit in and out of existence, and they say we may one day slip through wormholes in space to visit other universes or go back in time.

In response to criticism from theoretical physicist Michio Kaku, Mills says: "I'll have demonstrated an entirely new form of energy production by the end of 2000. If Dr. Kaku has escaped our universe through a wormhole by then, I'll send my first $1000 in profits to his new address." Since the so-called "evidence" for quantum mechanics rests entirely upon gargantuan wormholes that are postulated to lie in the Earth's vicinity, this is truly an incisive argument.

But we must ask: now that hydrino theory has been incontrovertibly proven, what comes next? My purpose here is to announce that hydrino theory, as revolutionary as it was only a few months ago, must itself be superseded by the even more paradigm-smashing doofusino theory.

The recipe for creating a doofusino is simple. First pour two cups of chilled hydrinos into a greased pan, then add 3-4 tablespoons of polywater, a teaspoonful of magnetic monopoles, and a pinch of tachyons, dilute homeopathically until nothing remains, and finally stir thoroughly while chanting "Kumbaya" and wishing very hard. Assuming that it's an alternate Tuesday with Sagittarius rising and that you've been a good boy or girl this year, a doofusino will materialize and crawl out of the pan; you can recognize it by its fishy smell and its characteristic "duh-duh-duh" sound.

Doofusinos can react with many other elements, such as helium and californium, to produce a host of marketable products -- including even-cheesier macaroni, condoms only a single atom thick, and a spray to rust enemy ships, even if those ships are rust-proofed with hydrino compounds.

After I'd conceived of the doofusino, I wrote to Dr. Hubert K. Pickleston, a senior scientist at one of the nation's top research labs, to ask what I should do next. "Once you've developed your Earth-shatteringly brilliant scientific idea," Dr. Pickleston responded, "step one is to patent the idea, to prevent others from stealing it. Step two is to call a press conference, to tout the revolutionary nature of the idea and its virtually-unimaginable range of commercial applications. Step three is to found a company around the idea, to which you should attract as many high-profile investors as possible. Only after you've completed these preliminary steps should you even consider submitting the idea to a journal for peer review."

After reading Dr. Pickleston's letter, I knew that the test of doofusino theory would be in the marketplace, not the laboratory. "Applied scientists," The Village Voice notes, "have a rigorous standard in their work that is sometimes referred to as the Kmart Test. In other words, can the research at hand lead to an off-the-shelf product?" Doofusino theory, I am pleased to report, passes not only the Kmart Test, but also the "Blockbuster Test" (a major motion picture could conceivably be made about doofusinos), the "Psychic Friends Test" (phone psychics could claim to derive their powers from doof energy), and the "Britney Spears Test" (Britney Spears could sing a song entitled "Doof Me Baby One More Time").

On the other hand, what makes hydrino theory so impressive is not only its commercial applications, but also the number of deep scientific enigmas that it resolves. For example, besides leading to a Grand Unified Theory of particle physics, hydrino theory has disproved the Big Bang: "Mills argues that the universe is forever oscillating between matter and energy over thousand-billion-year cycles, expanding and contracting between finite set points. In fact, he says, the universe doesn't get much smaller than it is now." Doofusino theory augments this bold vision by postulating that the universe is forever oscillating between crunchy and creamy states, although it always remains peanut-buttery delicious.

But Mills' insights aren't limited to overthrowing our conceptions of the origin of the universe. Indeed, building computers with consciousness is a dream no longer:

Mills has stacks of proprietary research on artificial intelligence. In what he calls Brain Child Systems, Mills has done the math for a reasoning machine with consciousness. To advance the project, Mills may soon enter into a collaboration with the Institute for Simulation and Training at the University of Central Florida, which does the bulk of its work for the military.

But Mills wasn't thinking of the military when he began his work in artificial intelligence. Mills has a lifelong dream of making spaceships to travel at near light speed, and he says that only a mind with the switching rates of a computer could pilot them. A human brain, which Mills disdains as "wet processing," would fly into a rock before its owner could blink.

Designing computers that can pilot spaceships around rocks at near-light speed has, indeed, been a central goal of artificial intelligence since the field's inception in the 1950's. But once again, the achievements of doofusino theory trump those of hydrino theory. I've done the math (mainly multiplication and subtraction) for a reasoning rock with consciousness -- a rock clever enough to crash itself, kamikaze-style, into an artificially-intelligent near-light-speed spaceship before the spaceship's robo-owner could print "BLINK" to the console.

That one man -- Randell Mills -- has initiated scientific revolutions in at least four separate fields is not surprising. According to Dr. Pickleston, "After you've found an unlimited source of free energy, working out a Grand Unified Theory of physics only takes fifteen minutes. Likewise, after you've solved the mysteries of consciousness, intuiting the origin of the universe is mere child's play. You see, once you've solved any one of the great problems of modern science, you've pretty much solved them all."

From this perspective, however, Mills' credibility is weakened by the number of scientific Holy Grails he doesn't claim to have captured. Hydrino theory evidently has little to say, for example, about the origin of life, the 'P versus NP' problem of computer science, or the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence. Doofusino theory, on the other hand, can solve all of these problems and more, as will be demonstrated to everyone's satisfaction before the end of 2000.

But can doofusino theory achieve all this on a budget? After all, one of the chief advantages of hydrino theory is its lack of reliance on modern equipment. Shelby T. Brewer, a "former Assistant Secretary of Energy [and] top nuclear official in the Reagan Administration," praised Mills' self-published 1995 tome, The Grand Unified Theory of Classical Quantum Mechanics, in these words:

We now have an expensive standing army in American science, marching in place, with little creative, definable mission. Most of what passes for science is merely chauvinism -- who has the largest accelerator, etc.

Now along comes Randell Mills. Without expending billions or even millions or even hundreds of thousands of US taxpayers' dollars, Dr. Mills has apparently completed Einstein's quest for a unified field theory ...

Remarkably, Dr. Mills has developed his theory and its energy generation application as an entrepreneur -- without largesse from the US Government, and without the benediction of the US scientific priesthood. Because his enterprise does not suffer these two impediments, it just might succeed. If so, Mills will be the next Thomas Edison.

That US taxpayer dollars have not been spent on Mills' theory is a powerful argument for its validity. Yet much stronger still is the case for doofusino theory, on which no dollars have been spent, taxpayer or otherwise. In addition, doofusino theory lacks not only the benediction of the scientific priesthood, but even its very awareness. In light of these facts, I submit that if Mills will be the next Thomas Edison, then I will be the next Randell Mills.

To those who laugh at doofusino theory, to those who dismiss it as silly, I would like to remind you about an obscure clerk working at the Swiss patent office in 1905, whose ideas were also dismissed as silly. That clerk's name was Earl Johnson, and he worked across the hall from Albert Einstein. "Hey Earl," Albert would yell, "any new progress on your theory that sausages control the weather?"

In conclusion, because the new doofusino theory has rendered hydrino theory obsolete, I find myself agreeing with a gushing reviewer of Mills' book on Amazon.com: "The significance of this scientific landmark cannot be understated."

[Return to Writings page]