"I would just like to know what an electron is." - attributed to Albert Einstein

Another amazing product from Claude Sonnet 5 was a result of giving it a group of files, including some that I wrote, mostly in defense of Dr. Mills' theory and claims.  I asked for a dialogue between two imaginary scientists with appropriate backgrounds in the standard model.  One of them, Dr. Kessler, is convinced that the support for SQM is strong and complete, although even he had to admit, SQM is not what we would like to see in a physics theory.  Dr. Marsh is educated like Kessler, but can see, by adopting a perspective rooted in 1926, that GUTCP should be taken seriously.  It is a dialogue that I can imagine being taken seriously by academics, although they'd probably never admit it.

Google's NotebookLM was used by me to discuss the essay by Schrodinger, Are There Quantum Jumps?, which is discussed in this recently produced Claude dialogue.  This essay has been a frequent subject of my thoughts and writing.  

I get a little nervous when I am communicating with people who are excited about something that Dr. Mills has done, because it is fun to believe in fantastic things, and fun seeking is a very bad way to be faithful to what is true.  It must not become an article of faith to believe in him and his theoretical and empirical claims, no matter how we may admire and believe in what he is doing.  To do so is not scientific.  Demos can be faked, and in no way do I wish to insinuate that Dr. Mills has faked anything, but also, I don't believe that he is incapable of error.  As an old physics professor friend liked to say, there is one way to get it right, and many, many ways to get it wrong.  

It is all too human to want to be right about something fantastic, to be able to claim to have been right before other people realized it is surely vanity and drives a lot of stupid wagers.  This is an adolescent yearning, but it's not necessarily a bad thing.  However, it needs scrutiny.

What Dr. Mills recently announced are things that I so want to be correct, but one can be forgiven for seeing them as utterly fantastic.  "ALL OF THIS IS A DREAM.  Still examine it by a few experiments.  Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature; and in such things as these experiment is the best test of such consistency." - Michael Faraday in his lab journal, 1849

I am reminded of the ancient Greeks, whose cultural apogee has not been matched in Western societies.  Modernity is knowledge and technology advanced far, far beyond them, but they did have physics and their physical philosophy (which was the name for physics until comparatively recently) divided their understanding of the world between physics and metaphysics.  The 'meta' was before and above the knowledge of the mere physical, no matter that that physicality was more accessible to human senses.  They accepted that metaphysics was by far more important of the two, that the physical was a manifestation of metaphysics.  Modernity has reversed those two subjects.  Literally, Mark Zuckerberg has created 'meta' as a pseudo substitute for reality.

What if the Greeks were right about that?  What if trying to explain all of reality as somehow being a manifestation of physicality is backwards?  What if consciousness is more real than the physical?  This may be a minority position among physicists, but it was held by great minds.  Consciousness is generally considered to be a "hard problem".  At the very least, we must remind ourselves of our limited nature, a nature which tends to warp perception in pursuit of selfish goals.

Max Planck (originator of quantum theory)

“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”

Erwin Schrödinger (wave mechanics)

“Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else.”

“The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are only one.”

Werner Heisenberg (uncertainty principle)

“The atoms or elementary particles themselves are not real; they form a world of potentialities or possibilities rather than one of things or facts.”

“Mind and matter must be governed by a common, universal principle... an interconnected unity.”

Eugene Wigner (Nobel laureate, measurement problem)

“It was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to consciousness.”

“The very study of the external world led to the conclusion that the content of the consciousness is an ultimate reality.”

Sir Arthur Eddington (astrophysicist)

“The stuff of the world is mind-stuff... the mind-stuff of the world is, of course, something more general than our individual conscious minds.”

John Wheeler (coined “black hole,” “it from bit”)

“No phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon.”

“We are participators in bringing into being not only the near and here but the far away and long ago.”

Sir James Jeans (physicist/astronomer)

“The universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine.”

David Bohm (quantum theorist, hidden variables/implicate order)

“Each person’s consciousness... is a projection of a single common ground, or... the implicate order.”

 

Fantastic is not bad.  It is a warning to tread carefully.  A 75 minute continuous SunCell run and a still from a video showing what appears to be what could be a full power output, yet no output power report.  The good new includes a report that disassembly of the cell revealed no degradation in cell components.  This certainly appears to be good progress.

However, as is obvious, a technician can order a solar power meter intended for just such purposes.  Measuring output power from the SunCell is a rather simple and reliable task.  Dr. Mills has stated that the input power is DC, so that is also a pretty basic measurement.  Surely, he is making such measurements and he knows what the power gain is.  He has given us those measurements in the past from devices that ran at high power for very short time, so there's good reason to suppose that such gain is observed here.  I can only speculate why he is not revealing it now, and I will leave such speculations to the reader.

What you believe is irrelevant compared to why you believe it.  To be correct and have no idea why is to get in the door and then have no idea what to do when you get there.