http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/18/steorn-inventors-of-infinite-energy-destroyers-of-laws-of-ther/elfin buddy said:
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Free Energy?
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elfin buddy said:
It popped up on an xBox site and is being discussed in Steorn's forums. Something about similarities in certain aspects of logos, among other things...I think people are really reaching for that one...
I'm waiting for this stuff to come on the market. Cheap to produrce and cheap to install. It's a damned good solution, expecially if they get the efficiency up to the targeted 10%
Perpetual motion ... hmmm. Initially, I'm skeptical about something that undermines four years of studying physics at university; but if it does seem to work, I'd be happy to use it (afterall, it won't be the first rewrite of physics).
Anyone know anything more about this technology - 'magnets and crystals' is a bit vague (but then i guess they're not going to reveal anything till they've got their patents sorted)?
I'm not sure about energy wars mentioned elsewhere (apart from the obvious middle east resource wars), I think there'll just be a slow economic transition: my chemical engineer friend went to a BP/other oil company conference where they were showing off all their new technology - much more efficient&cheaper than oil/petrol. But do they release it? No - they'll make as much money they can out of the last drops of oil before they roll out their new tech
Anyone know anything more about this technology - 'magnets and crystals' is a bit vague (but then i guess they're not going to reveal anything till they've got their patents sorted)?
I'm not sure about energy wars mentioned elsewhere (apart from the obvious middle east resource wars), I think there'll just be a slow economic transition: my chemical engineer friend went to a BP/other oil company conference where they were showing off all their new technology - much more efficient&cheaper than oil/petrol. But do they release it? No - they'll make as much money they can out of the last drops of oil before they roll out their new tech
andrew050703 said:
This one is cute. The first thing I thought of when I saw the word "magnets" was this thing. And surprise surprise, one of the Steorn patent applications is for none other than a shielded magnet mechanism.
Heard the CEO interviewed on radio here, and at least he sounds genuine enough. He was joking about the amount of rumours circulating already, especially mentioning Halo 3, and saying how they've received a fair amount of abuse.
It could be an oversight on their part, but perhaps (hopefully) they've stumbled onto a previously unknown phenomenon; so that in this case no energy is actually being created, but a previously unknown energy that needs to be considered, whether it be a result of the Earth's magnetic field, or its rotation, or mischievous microscopic flying monkeys....
There's a very large photo of one of the prototype apparatuses Here
It could be an oversight on their part, but perhaps (hopefully) they've stumbled onto a previously unknown phenomenon; so that in this case no energy is actually being created, but a previously unknown energy that needs to be considered, whether it be a result of the Earth's magnetic field, or its rotation, or mischievous microscopic flying monkeys....
There's a very large photo of one of the prototype apparatuses Here
not again...sigh
Have you guys forgotten all about cold fusion???
Every tenth year or so you hear this story about some guy that have invented the perpetuum mobile (produces more energy than that is added). This has been going on since medieval times and still no cigar.
This is complete nonsense.
Have you guys forgotten all about cold fusion???
Every tenth year or so you hear this story about some guy that have invented the perpetuum mobile (produces more energy than that is added). This has been going on since medieval times and still no cigar.
This is complete nonsense.
Why are people confusing the word "FREE" with money? I hope its jokingly.
FREE in terms of "energy"; that is a "force" that does "work".
So, it means FREE as in what we percieve as "free" because it didnt "cost" anything, in terms of energy.
1st law of thermo says you put X in you cant get SUM > X out of the equation, ever.
So free, would be you get more than you "paid" for in terms of initial energy.
Talking about "FREE ENERGY" if only we could harness it, is not even close to what this is all about. I agree, we need to tap the molten core of the Earth and turn that heat into power. Thats free monetarily, but the cost to get it would turn into a cost to the consumer.
I dont know if this is possible, but if you believe in the laws of thermo, you know it cant be true. but we also knew that you couldnt turn matter into energy, or that you cant go smaller than a proton/neutron/electron, and look where we are today. it takes radical thinking to change the face of physics. A paradigm shift in "The Way the Universe Works", could make this a reality.
FREE in terms of "energy"; that is a "force" that does "work".
So, it means FREE as in what we percieve as "free" because it didnt "cost" anything, in terms of energy.
1st law of thermo says you put X in you cant get SUM > X out of the equation, ever.
So free, would be you get more than you "paid" for in terms of initial energy.
Talking about "FREE ENERGY" if only we could harness it, is not even close to what this is all about. I agree, we need to tap the molten core of the Earth and turn that heat into power. Thats free monetarily, but the cost to get it would turn into a cost to the consumer.
I dont know if this is possible, but if you believe in the laws of thermo, you know it cant be true. but we also knew that you couldnt turn matter into energy, or that you cant go smaller than a proton/neutron/electron, and look where we are today. it takes radical thinking to change the face of physics. A paradigm shift in "The Way the Universe Works", could make this a reality.
Falsifying the laws of thermodynamic basically implies that all knowledge we have about physics can be disgarded. This has never happened before. All other major "break-throughs" have been refinements of previous theoretical models. Newton still holds on macrolevel.Sdashiki said:
The fact Newtonian Physics works for large objects but not on the quantum levels at least tells me there is more than Newton to think about when you want to "explain the universe"....
can we do Star Trek stuff yet? not with our current understandings, but if you somehow are to understand something different, cant you?
can we do Star Trek stuff yet? not with our current understandings, but if you somehow are to understand something different, cant you?
Just had another thought...
If it does work (& who cares how) why don't they just show their electricity bill for the last few months showing proof of concept - i.e. does it work to the extent that it actually works, or does it 'work' in that they have odd yet reproduceable results that suggest power can be generated
If it does work (& who cares how) why don't they just show their electricity bill for the last few months showing proof of concept - i.e. does it work to the extent that it actually works, or does it 'work' in that they have odd yet reproduceable results that suggest power can be generated
of course there is... nevertheless, the newton mechanic is still valid as an approximation. period. Nothing has been falsified.Sdashiki said:
Trust me when I say this is complete nonsense. Just google "cold fusion" and you will see the last brainiacs that thought they "had it". I think they made their their "break-through" discovery around 1998 or something.andrew050703 said:
short resume: two(?) chemists claimed to have initiated fusion in a test tube at roomtemperature, hence the name cold fusion. Note: the biggets problem with fusion is the high temperature (much hotter than fission, at plasma)
People (media) actually believed these guys had done something truly amazing and the laws of physics had to be changed (sounds familiar?), until someone with half of a brain realized that both guys would have been dead within a couple of hours from the radiation if they actually have succeeded. case closed.
It was 1989, and recent articles suggest that there might have been a grain of truth to the concept but likely not to their "discovery". I attended a detailed debriefing in grad school, and they were throughly debunked. However, as I said, the theoretical possibilities of the concept seem to have gained some favor recently.Dr.Gargoyle said:
Ops, ten years off... I am getting older faster than I care to admitjsw said:
Still, it is highly unlikely that we will see a complete paradigm change in physics, particulary since the laws of thermodynamic has been validated innumerable times through various experiments. CERN are more or less validating the laws of thermodynamic daily.
Dr.Gargoyle said:
granted, Pons & Fleischmann's press conference was premature & a bad idea (instead of going through peer review), but this seems different - they're saying 'we've got something we don't understand but we're only engineers. can we have some real scientists to prove us wrong?'
If they don't, no one loses - & if they do, you're not going to lose credibility over testing something are you?
BTW, cold fusion does work (using muons rather than electrons), but takes more energy than it uses, so a bit of a no-brainer
As I have written a couple of times before, if you want to challange the laws of thermodynamic you need to have some serious proof. I doubt any serious scientists will bother to falsify them, for the same reason you dont see scientist out disproving ghosts, telekinesi, telepathy, and whatnot.andrew050703 said:
It is just a waste of time, since you "know" the setting is flawed.
Moreover, science is always a race after new discoveries (read publications), I doubt people are eager to waste their time on what more or less all of them percieve as a wild goose chase. I seriously doubt that showing the flaws in what these guys claimed to have shown will make it to a journal worth the time.
Dr.Gargoyle said:
Yeah - guess you're right. As I wrote earlier, there must be something not quite right for them to not just commercialise it, so maybe its just some anomalous effect that can be explained with existing theories, but can't really be used as a power source.
jsw said:
This would of course involve stealing your neighbors extension cord first. You can't use your own or it's not free.
There is a lot of research being done into fringe technology like this. Ever hear about Stanley Meyer, the inventor of the water powered car? He made a proof-of-concept vehicle, a buggy modified to run solely on water that never needed recharging, just refilling with water. He invented a low-current electrolysis method that inexplicably produced more energy out that went in to split apart the water molecule. Rather than force currents through water, it employed high frequency electric fields in the milliamps range. Watch the google video: http://tinyurl.com/ms8dc
So why haven't you heard more about this? Because when he got close to mass-producing conversion kits that would allow regular cars to run on water, he ran out of a diner shouting he had been poisoned and fell over dead. That put a stop to his ventures. But there is still info on him if you search the web.
So why haven't you heard more about this? Because when he got close to mass-producing conversion kits that would allow regular cars to run on water, he ran out of a diner shouting he had been poisoned and fell over dead. That put a stop to his ventures. But there is still info on him if you search the web.
If that was true, Stanley Meyer would top the Fortune 500 list. Hell, he would have all the places from 1 to 123,568.montom said:
To see this, let us assume for a minute that this guy is a super genious and he somehow came up with an idea that managed to overthrow 200 years of extremly throughly tested theoretical models.
How much would that idea be worth just considering the number of cars in US?
There are approximately abourt 200 million cars in us. Let us assume that each car consume about $5 worth of gas per day (That figure is of course much higher).
That means Stanley Meyers invention, in US only, would be worth one billion dollars per day.
This engine could of course be used to produce electricity. Hence all our energy needs all over the world would be fixed with just a pint of water.
Now consider how much that would be worth.
I think I will stop here, since I think you can see where this is going.
Bottomline, it was a hoax. period.
Dr.Gargoyle said:
i drive ~15 miles a day, my car makes 30 miles per gallon, a gallon is ~ 3 bucks. so i consume $1.50 ad day. how do you get much more than $5?
besides, yes it's either a hoax or stupidity.
clayj said:
I shudder to think what would happen to us if we did this. It's already known that if you blanket a desert with solar panels you'll lower the ambient temperature significantly and drastically alter the local environment. I wonder what it would be like to affect something on a planetary scale.
People that commute to work normally drive much longer than 15 miles. Heck, the average "normal" driving distance in sweden is 40 miles per day and that is at $6/gallon. I doubt that the normal american car gets 30 miles on a gallon. Still I could be wrong. Also note that we can walk or bike if we want to go to a place which in most places in US is more or less impossible.andiwm2003 said:
Bottomline: more than $5 per day for gas in US doesnt seem like an unrealistic assumption. Still it is just an approximation, but in my eyes a very moderatly set approximation.
I am pleased though that we both find the water fuel nonsense.
If you had objected to that I would be worried.