TheEEStory.com

satya and jam. The 112 ohm appears to be in 1 component and it's really in the device, and consistent with the rest of the patent. It's not a problem because there is very little current flow to each component. For a 350 Amp charge, it's 350/31,000 = 0.0011 amps.

If the internal resistance of one component is 112 ohms, it means that 1,000 electrodes in parallel have each a resistance of 112,000 ohms!
BTW, from the patent, the charge time of 5 minutes only applys to a direct connection from a bank of EESU to a single EESU at 3500 V.

jam, for parallel R=1/(1/R1+1/R2+1/R3+...)

Wier and Nelson worked in BT research for HDD surfacing since the early 90's. these guys are the leading experts on BT. When HDD manufacturer's went in a different direction, abandoning BT as a HDD element, Wier and Nelson stayed with their BT research. Apparently, seeing promise in what they were discovering.

trying to suggest that these guys are out of their field of expertise is nonsense. If anyone in this field can make this invention work, it is Richard Wier and Carl Nelson.

Already on this very blog there is conflict of knowlege between several very smart "experts" regarding the science of BT and capacitors. this shows that even people working in the field of research cannot agree.

so, there really is not a set of solid rules regarding this technology. I believe Wier and Nelson are writing a new book on Capacitors and BT science.

I think that since Nikola Tesla first invented the capacitor, there have not been a whole lot of changes. the use of BT as a dielectric being the most prominant.

Researchers have really just took for granted that certain laws applied and never really pushed this knowlege to the limit. then comes Wier and Nelson, who never really accepted these principals as solid. while trying to make a breakthrough for high capacity HDD storage, they discovered something awesome. and that is the secret they are not telling.

you all know the story from there.

seslaprime wrote:

I think that since Nikola Tesla first invented the capacitor, there have not been a whole lot of changes. the use of BT as a dielectric being the most prominant.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor#History

The capacitor was invented well before Tesla was born. There have been a lot of changes since then. The use of Barium Titanate as a dielectric is hardly recent, it's been around long enough to be considered the standard high K component of the X7R dielectric.

seslaprime wrote:

Researchers have really just took for granted that certain laws applied and never really pushed this knowlege to the limit.

If you look I think you'll find commercial capacitor companies spend a good deal of effort "pushing this knowledge to the limit", thus the introduction recently (the last decade or so) of high capacity ceramic capacitors with their well known low voltage breakdown and high dependence of capacitance on applied voltage.

Robert

sme's:
1)the plan as i understand is to charge the esu from home current at 110-220 over several hours, possibly have a second esu that charges over time and rapidly charges the auto esu. only "filling stations" connected to high voltage lines would accomplish a direct high voltage charge.
2)a wild thought; if you had a vacuum capacitor with the vacuum 19000 times as thick as the cmbt, could you store the quoted charge? if so, the energy is in the plates only. since the dielectric is only supposed to focus the electric lines through polarization, then the question is can a material exist that provides this amount of focus/polarization? Miller says no, Weir says yes, he made one and tested it.
3)I read that Nelson has a phd from MIT, not sure about Weir.
4)many sme's on this site and Miller sound like the very people who never could and never will invent anything, since they don't accept anything they can't personally derive from existing science. Thank heaven for rule breakers like Weir, Nelson, Einstein, Edison, etc.
5)still agree it's a big gamble, but never say never.

If Weir and Nelson were such successful experts in HD, why did their HD company lose 90% of their investor's money, despite having 16 lovely patents to their name?

larry -
1) more plausible I agree - 5kW for 10 hours and design + components + cooling are not too expensive - though still tricky given high power and voltage

2) OK - with dielectric 20k smaller and spacing 20k bigger the capacitance goes down to 1/(400,000,000) of original value - so you need a voltage 20,000 X bigger to store same energy. This would be entirely possible, but of course volumetric energy density is now lousy and also the voltage (40MV) is completely impractical.

To store this same energy you have a lower charge since E=QV and V is now much higher.

Best wishes, Tom

zawy, HDD business is very competitive and timing is everything. If you are late to the market and stay behind the curve, you lose. A lot of companies have lost a lot of money in the HDD business. Eestor is late with their EESU but late is not a killer in their present field, yet.

zawy wrote:

jam, for parallel R=1/(1/R1+1/R2+1/R3+...)

that's what I said : R = 1 / ( 1/112,000 + 1/112,000 +...)

but each electrode has a resistance of .063 ohms !!!!!

So R = 1 / 1000*( 1/ .063) = .015 ohm which makes more sense.

ee-tom
the point i was after is that it is possible to store this amount of energy on a plate; the argument is only whether a material exists that allows this with the plates 10um apart.

ee-tom, i don't know if you read my posts at the old site, but you might be interested to know that the number of electron-unit-charges times angstroms (my units of measuring dipole let's call it "units of eA") have to average 250 eA per unit cell that is 4x4x4 A. So if you have 100 charges being moved in each cell past the limits of their position and into the adjacent atom 2 A away, then you still haven't created enough surface charge to do what EEStor claims (using k=18,000, V/um=350, J/cc=10,000).

The last link i gave gives an "out" in that "virtual" charges are moving across the material due to breaking and forming covalent bonds. It probably isn't enough to add a lot. If i read it correctly, it may effectively make the Ti a +7 instead of +4 where i need a +500.

If the formerly-covalent charges are moving efficiently up the chain (no heat) then huge dipoles could be created that make the large, measurable surface charge, even though the charges themselves are not at the surface. The sum of the dipole moments is what makes the surface charge.

So imagine an e charge that has moved from the bottom cells to the top cells by covalent bonds breaking and forming. The average length of the dipoles could be 1/2 the length of the particles, 5,000 angstroms, giving me an eA of 5000, well above the 250 required to create what EEStor claims. We can just ignore any ion or electron cloud dipoles since they are <1% of what's needed.

y_po has said you can't have more surface charge than 1/10th e per angstrom^2. But surface charge is a measure of the total dipole moments beneath, not actual charges sitting on top. It is a "real" surface charge in the sense you can really measure it. There are never electrons by themselves sitting on the surface, but normally much smaller dipoles, limited to the length of the electron orbitals or ion displacement. My wild theory above could generate a much larger surface charge.

I would expect y_po to respond "Zawy for the 4th time, you can't have charges move without heat generated" but you know I have to keep modifying my theories to fit y_po's facts, so now I'm calling the new charges we've discovered "virtual" charges to protect y_po's reputation of telling the truth.

taa, my mama's upset that you don't like the name she gave me.

Last edited Sun, 10 Aug 2008, 6:49pm by zawy

Regarding thermal management, will someone please check this computation?
Data set:
Specific energy – 280 watt-hours/ kilogram
“the company's system claims a specific energy of about 280 watt-hours per kilogram”
http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.as...
Specific heat of Barium Titanate at 300 deg. Kelvin – 428.8 joules per kilogram per deg. Kelvin
http://www.ceramics.nist.gov/srd/scd/Z00743.htm
1 watt-hour =3600 joules
http://www.translatorscafe.com/cafe/units-conve...

At 99% charging efficiency - 280 watt-hours/kilogram x .01 = 2.80 watt-hours/kilogram gets converted to heat.

2.8 watt-hours/kilogram x 3600 joules/watt-hour = 10080 joules/kilogram
10080 joules/kilogram x 1 kg-deg. Kelvin/428.8 joules = 23.5 deg. Kelvin over a 5 minute span.

What am I missing here? This is definitely not in the realm of meltdown as Mr. Miller estimates. At the article mentioned figure of 99.9% efficiency, the temperature rise would only be 2.35 degrees Kelvin. Is the actual efficiency a lot less or is the 280 watt-hour/kilogram number wrong?

zawy,

I think I understand what you are doing.

I don't think this would ever give you big enough dipole. The problem is that your 500eA dipole is for charge moving along one 5kAngstrom column. This must be compared with 1k unit cells which give you 4keA total dipole. Now I agree that if you could get 1ke charge moving across column it would be quite something - but there is no mechanism for that.

If you allow any number of covalent bond electrons to move over this distance then things look rosier - but there is still the unfortunate fact that the eestor energy is larger than the total bond formation energy of the BaTiO3, so you would expect dielectric breakdown before the energy could be stored.

Also, the material must remain an insulator or your dipoles will neutralise through conduction. Are your moving covalent bonds going to create a conduction band?

Looking more widely than BaTiO3 this is an interesting mechanism for getting high permittivity. Obvious candidate would be organic semiconducting polymers which have long strings of C atoms with alternate monovalent & covalent bonds. These can actually turn into translationally symmetric wave functions with equal 1.5 valent bonds. Maybe this sort of material could have high permittivity and high saturation, but I really know nothing about all this so should not speculate?

This is not what Weir is doing!

BTW - people are working on finding polymers with high breakdown voltage and high permittivity. A well-argued paper doing this is on IEEE xPlore:
Mammone & Binder: Novel methods for preparing thin high permittivity polymer dielectrics for capacitor applications.

They were getting k of up to 50.

zawy, ee-tom,
sounds like you're still trying to store the energy in the dielectric rather than the aluminum. maybe semantics. humor me and look at energy being stored in aluminum plate only.

I like ee-tom's calculations for bond energy and how it might make my large dipole discussion irrelevant. As another approach similar to yours, I can use Young's modulus to show that you would need to stretch BT 60% to store that much energy. Certainly it would break the bonds and this is a more direct way of showing my covalent bond moving (to move charges) is not possible since those bonds are a fraction of the bonds behind Young's modulus.

Young's modulus BT = 60E9 N/m^2
U = 1/2 * Y*A*dL^2/Lo
U = 1/2 * 60E9*1*0.60^2/1 (direction of polarization)
U = 10E9 MJ/m^3 = 10,000 J/cc

That's 360 tons/cm^2 to get the energy stored that EEStor reports. I don't see any way around this. You don't even have to use a surface charge argument.

Stating the same thing in another way and as a check, my charge moving would have a lot of charges in the top half and a lot of "holes" in the bottom, being stretched apart by the E field. Doing a rough calculation using F=q*E, I get something like 500 tons/cm^2.

That seals it for me. Impossible.

Last edited Sun, 10 Aug 2008, 11:01pm by zawy

Larry, the energy stored as charges in the plates is the same as the charges without the dielectric. Divide by k.

3600 tons per square inch? Zawy, doesn't this line of argument also say that 10J/cc is "impossible", even though we know you can do that already?

10 J/cc would be the equivalent of 2% stretch instead of 60%. It would be 11 tons/cm^2 instead of 360 tons/cm^2. I meant cm^2, not inch^2. I also forgot to convert my newtons to kg. This Young's modulus method is far from an accurate, but it gives an idea of what kind of energy the crystal can take.

new edit: I did the calculation using U=1/2*Q*E and F=q*E and kg=F/10 to get a more accurate 56 tonnes/cm^2 for EEStor claims and 1.7 tonnes/cm^2 for the highest reported elsewhere.

Last edited Mon, 11 Aug 2008, 7:29am by zawy

zawy, i believe the force you refer to is more like a hydrostatic compressive force, equivalent to putting the material x 1000 feet under water. this does not destroy the material, the compressive force is balanced.

zawy wrote:

If Weir and Nelson were such successful experts in HD, why did their HD company lose 90% of their investor's money, despite having 16 lovely patents to their name?

Why did Abraham Lincoln lose every election he ever ran in, until he won the presidency?

There are similar examples thru history, including the history of science, of rule breakers failing and failing, then the breakthru.

Weir and nelson claim to have something new. They say it is an invention, or perhaps a discovery, of something that perhaps the scientific community has not seen yet. So overall, the community does not allow for it, because it's against the laws of nature as explained by the most modern theory in physics.

Fair enough.

But what about invention and discovery in science? It has happened. how did it happen? Science told Copernicus when he changed the Ptolemaic system--it's against the laws of nature, and established science said of Galileo and Kepler the same thing--against nature. Then they told Newton he was nuts.

Each one improved on the earlier system, and each time there are new physical laws that are uncovered, based on a newer theory that better explains phenomena than the older system. Yeah, the old system can still explain some phenomena, but it's akin to moving thru the air with prop planes instead of jet engines. Propellers work, sure, but this jet engine breaks the sound barrier.

And that becomes the new paradigm, and scientists use it and test everything against the new paradigm.

Until an anomaly comes along that established scientific law cannot explain.

I'm getting all this from my college reading of Thomas Kuhn's "Structure of Scientific Revolution"-- a scholar eestorblog mentioned earlier.

One telling experiment that Kuhn mentioned in his book was done by a psychologist. The psychologist took a deck of cards and flashed them to his subjects. They initially came up normal-- a black 10 of spades, a red 4 of diamonds, and so forth. However, he stashed in the deck a few black diamonds and a few red spades. The subjects would see the stashed card flashed, and they'd not believe what their eyes saw, since what they were viewing (a black diamond) was not what they were used to seeing. What their eyes were seeing their brain would not allow as a possibility.

Of course, the question is, and it is a LARGE question: did weir and nelson find something that will shift the paradigm? On the nano scale, where they're operating, did they stumble on new laws?

I'm not a scientist. But let's say I claim the EESU is everything Weir says it is. If I'm wrong, I don't know why. If I'm right, I don't know why. But SME's, you have to ask yourselves, do you know all that there is to know (and all that will be known) to say, for sure, yes or no? Sir Arthur Eddington, commenting on Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle in quantum physics, 1927 "Something unknown is doing we don't know what."

Aren't there some scientists out there who are willing to admit that perhaps Weir and co. have the chance of being right? Could it be that they've found a new way to store a huge amount of energy in a known device, release it slowly as needed and safely also, recharge it, and repeat the process--based on phenomena and a theory that you have yet to consider? And take your ego out of it, if you can because maybe Weir and Co just got lucky.

Schneibster, Christine, Zawy, Nekote, ee-tom, jam, shit--ok, even Y_Po, (and any other SME's that I may have missed), do you allow for the possibility that Weir & Co. could have stumbled on some black diamonds?

Weir will have his day. It remains to be seen what will come of it.

I'm sure we'll all be watching.

Last edited Mon, 11 Aug 2008, 3:37am by tonon

Good grief, Miller works for a competitor and asked for a sample of EEstor's powder! Of *course* Weir said no-- only an idiot would have given his secrets away for nothing!

It's not appropriate to dismiss EEstor's claims as "impossible" just because competitors can't figure out how they do it. Thomas Edison thought long-distance transmission of alternating current was impractical, too-- before Nikola Tesla developed the "high-frequency" alternator.

As far as "violating the basic laws of physics", what about a laser beam? All radiant energy dissipates over distance according to the inverse square law, right? Except a laser beam doesn't, at least not at close range. But try telling that to any physicist who'd never heard about lasers, and he'd laugh at you.

Mind you, I'm not saying EEstor has really captured the "holy grail" of energy storage. The smart way to bet would still be that they don't have what they claim. But in addition to maintaining a healthy skepticism, scientists are also supposed to keep an open mind. EEstor's claims aren't impossible-- merely unlikely.

Miller is not acting as a scientist in a neutral investigation. He's acting as a spokesman for traditional capacitor manufacturers, trying to spread FUD** about a disruptive technology which, if it works, will put him out of business.

**FUD = Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt

Last edited Mon, 11 Aug 2008, 3:44am by Darth Lensman Archive

One dificulty with science is that you can never say with absolute certainty that something is true of false. But Kuhn et al misunderstand this. We can and do make working assumptions with a very high degree of confidence, like "the sun will rise tomorrow in the East". This one, a better knowledge of astronomy tells us, is not quite 100% true since there could be a total eclipse as it was rising. Bayesian probability theory is the correct framework for quantifying belief, and it can in theory (though with very great practical difficulties) be applied to science to determine what should our belief in a theory be given evidence. And no-one can rule out future more accurate theories but the fact that GR gives a different answer does not stop Newtonian mechanics from predicting with a high level of accuracy what is the orbit of the moon about the earth.

I rate the prospects of Weir's claims being true as more likely than the sun not rising - but still very very unlikely (say 0.01%). And I give it this level of uncertainty because nothing is certain except maths. there could perhaps be some not understood mechanism for getting v high energy density in a capacitor - i rate this as 10% - so you see the intrinsic credibilty of Weir's claims (for me) is 1%.

All this is splitting hairs of course - I could just follow y_po and say "impossible!".

ee-tom is right. There are some confusions of reasoning going on here. Rationally you must work with probabilities since certainty is not possible. Is it possible Weir has something? Yes. Is it likely? No. Consider the following:

1) Other things being equal, it is much less likely that Weir has achieved a breakthrough than that it is likely. Most purported breakthroughs do not work out.

2) Experts in this area are very sceptical. This is not like Steorn where we have no idea what's going on.

3) One can imagine several scenarios in which Weir would be behaving exactly as he is behaving. Only one of those scenarios involved him actually having something.

4) There is no prototype but they are supposed to be building a production line. That's plain odd.

5) People are willing to put their reputations on the line to say this is nothing - when they have nothing to gain. All the people who say they have something, have a lot to gain by doing so (Zenn stock, continued funding etc).

Conclusion - On balance, it would be irrational to expect this technology to materialize as specified and it would be irrational to invest in Zenn stock.

Weir needs to build one. Put it in an opaque black box with power coupling attached. Have all these guys come to his office with all their measurement devices and charge the thing. If there is NOTHING which will hold a certain charge and if there is NOTHING which can charge this quickly or discharge in the way Weir states it does, then there is NO PROBLEM. Really, the only thing they need to be able to evaluate is exactly what is most interesting. Whether or not the 'thing' holds the amount of electricity he says it does, and whether it can be both charged and discharged in a useful way. The doubting scientists should be able to do that simply by measuring input/output electricity.

IF they put in the amount of energy Weir claims, and it comes back out, then he has it. As Miller repeatedly says, there is NOTHING with the energy density Weir claims. If there are no 'strings/wires' attached, then whatever is inside the box is doing the work. Be it an EESU or crushed pineapple. It doesn't matter.

Weir would be giving away NO SECRETS. NOTHING would have to leave his facility. And all this would be put to rest immediately. I would think this would solve the issue once and for all.

My opinion is that it won't work, which is why the timeline keeps slipping and useless 'PRs' keep being put out.

Doc wrote:

Weir would be giving away NO SECRETS. NOTHING would have to leave his facility. And all this would be put to rest immediately. I would think this would solve the issue once and for all.

Point well taken; however, Weir would be confirming the one fact that would unleash nearly infinite competitive research dollars in a New York moment...that fact...It Can Be Done.

Playing this cat and mouse game is exactly what I would do. Provide just enough to attract the few partners I need but leave enough doubt to discourage parallel research and competition. Personally, I would not release a thing until I was years ahead in the technology. Giving the world the confidence knowing that this can be done will shift so much human and financial resource so quickly...

And yes you are absolutely correct, "this would solve the issue once and for all." But, it only solves this issue for us curious onlookers. It solves nothing for Weir. It will unleash exactly what he does not want, potentially compromising what he and his family have poured their lives into for many many years.

I sold, making a much better profit than the rest of my stocks the last month or two. I'm 25% ahead of the market for the last 12 months. taa, i tell people where my investments go because some people invest based on my advice.

Why I sold:

Technical knowledge: We (all of us) were not able to find any excuse for how it's possible. We have 2 different ways of solidly predicting a theoretical maximum that agrees with current data: bond strength and surface charge.

Social knowledge: Weir has a history of losing his investors 90% of their money in the field he's supposed to be an expert in and held 16 patents: HD. "Worked for IBM" has been cited as a reason to trust, but we know nothing of his short time there. He also claimed to have worked for Xerox-PARC, but he only mentioned that once in a small newsletter in 1999, and yet it's suspiciously absent from more recent short biographies.

Cons for EEStor:

1) Weir does not have as much experience or education as thousands of people working on this for a lifetime.
2) Weir, to my knowledge, has never published a scientific paper
3) He does not hold a PhD
4) claiming Nelson is the genius behind it does not give any credence since Nelson's history is also a mystery
5) No one has ever stored more than 0.3% of what they're claiming
6) BT can't hold 56 tons/cm^2 (the final blow to all my theories trying to get around the surface charge or dipole limitation). In other words, i ran out of excuses for EEStor.
7) the only other significant business Weir started (Tulip Memmory Systems) lost their biggest investor (Streamlogic owned 60% of TMS) 90% of their $10 million investment.
8) Weir changed EE jobs something like 7 times, that we know of. Sometimes a good thing, but this time i think a bad sign.
9) the newest press release and subsequent Weir comments indicate a desire for publicity, but still not demonstrating a working prototype to outsiders.
10) it appears lockheed martin didn't invest any money. Somebody's upset with Miller for telling that.
11) a white paper writer for EPRI dismisses it after intensive research, claiming Weir just wants money
12) all the pros below are based on trust, the hallmark of a con

Pros for EEStor
1) KP
2) Lockheed
3) 4 patents saying it's possible
4) EEStor patents are internally consistent

Very good point, commonsense - maybe one that I've overlooked in saying that Zenn should be more forthcoming in the DD they have conducted.

This "doubt" about whether it can be done is likely preventing intense $$$ in trying to replicate the results. Lots of battery companies will be hurt badly or put out of business when/if Eestor comes out with product. Right now they can comfort themselves with listening to the "experts" saying it can't be done.

If Eestor produced data that converted the skeptics, literally hundreds of millions of $$ would be poured into the search for a comparable technology/method of matching the results.

Somewhat of a comparable situation... Viagra. Pfizer stumbles upon it by accident and starts raking in the cash. How long did it take for competitors to take a bite out of those revenues?

How Weir and Nelson's previous company lost investor's money:

Company #1
================
"In 1992, the Debtor [streamlogic] purchased an equity interest of approximately 27% of the stock of Titanium Memory Systems, Inc., formerly known as Tulip Memory Systems, Inc. ("TMS") [Weir and Nelson's former company], a start-up company formed to develop substrates used in the manufacture of computer disk drives. During 1994, the Debtor increased its ownership to approximately 60%, pending anticipated outside investment. In connection with its original investment, the Debtor agreed to guarantee the obligations of TMS to pay the acquisition cost of equipment. In order to consummate the sale of its disk drive business, the Debtor paid its $1.3 million guaranty obligation under the agreement with TMS. The Debtor discontinued funding of TMS in early 1996.

In June 1996, TMS was recapitalized, and in connection therewith the Debtor agreed to accept 1,498,645 shares of preferred stock of TMS, having a book value of approximately $0.14 per share, and a promissory note issued by TMS in the principal amount of $500,000, all in exchange for cancellation of TMS's debt to the Debtor in an aggregate, approximate amount of $10 million.

In May 1997, the Debtor sold all of its TMS stock, as follows: Approximately 749,322 shares were repurchased by TMS at a price of $0.20 per share, or $149,864.40, and the remaining 749,322 shares were sold to Titanium Metals Corporation, another investor in TMS, in exchange for cash in the amount of $149,864.40. At the present time, the Debtor holds the $500,000 note issued by TMS, which is payable in ten annual installments of approximately $50,000, beginning in 1998.

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/718865/0...

Titanium Metals also invested in TMS, "up to" $5 million beginning in 1997:

http://www.secinfo.com/dS5br.8k.d.htm

===================
Company #2
======================
"But the idea never took off, said Gary Hultquist, a venture capitalist who was CEO of Titanium X
Corp., a company Weir and Nelson founded in California.

The technology was never the problem, Hultquist said. The company simply couldn't narrow the gap between the cost of their disks and the benefit of their increased storage capacity. "I wouldn't put anything past them," he said.

Hultquist said Kleiner Perkins asked him about Weir and Nelson before making its investment in EEStor."

http://theeestory.com/posts/1382
=====================
A little internet rumor
==================

Posted by: HNCadet at June 27, 2008

"I've heard about this company before and in DD saw that a Richard Weir was there co-founder, if this is the same Dick Weir that was in the disk drive business up in Si Valley in the 80's & 90's I'd dig as deep as necessary into EEstor tech claims. Had the same level of claims about storage devices that never quite got into production. He's a brilliant guy and got things to "work" in the lab, but could never translate into production. "

After a quick search it is the same person and the partner Carl Nelson was also involved AND the Barium Titanate was an outgrowth of a magnetic storage medium they were touting to startup a verticle recording medium in the late '80's. That deal fell thru when GMR technology quadurpled storage densities of standard longitudinal recording systems. It's interesting that they kept working with the material until they found a market for it!! A newly invented Verticle recording today uses a sputtered metallic medium instead of particulate Barium Titanate. The actual particle manufacturer might be a better play than the battery user.......I recall that Pfizer was the manufacturer of all Magnetic recording Oxides back in the day..don't know if they still do? Other companies were all Japanese(surprised?).

http://www.billcara.com/archives/2008/06/bill_c...

Last edited Fri, 02 Apr 2010, 6:34pm by zawy

"5) People are willing to put their reputations on the line to say this is nothing - when they have nothing to gain. All the people who say they have something, have a lot to gain by doing so (Zenn stock, continued funding etc)."

From what I've seen, only Miller actually says "impossible". Others including Burke say they're skeptical, but allow for the possibility. IMO Miller seems angry, emotional - which makes me "skeptical" about his motivations.

As always the final result will not be about arguments. It will be about the thing working or not.