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Perpetual Energy Machine Getting Lots of Attention
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Wed Jul 04, 2007 01:46 PM
from the swimming-in-snake-oil dept.
from the swimming-in-snake-oil dept.
Many users have written to tell us about a magnetic machine promising "infinite clean energy". Engadget has the first picture of the device and is reporting that the announcement (along with a short video) of this supposed device will be released later tonight. "CEO Sean McCarthy tells SilconRepublic how it works. Namely, the time variance in magnetic fields allows the Orbo platform to 'consistently produce power, going against the law of conservation of energy which states that energy cannot be created or destroyed.' He goes on to say 'It's too good to be true but it is true. It will have such an impact on everything we do. The only analogy I can give is if you had absolute proof that God wasn't real.'" In my experience if something seems too good to be true it generally is. I wouldn't get your hopes up.
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As they say... (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, why is anyone outside of Art Bell and George Noorey even giving this guy the time of day?
Re:As they say... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:As they say... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a lot like when people used to let high school math coaches claim to have solved Fermat's Little Theorem. We all knew they didn't, but there's a lot to be said for the puzzle of locating the coaches' mistakes.
Now, like you, I think this guy is a snake oil shill, as opposed to someone making a legitimate error. Nonetheless, I find his device bizarrely fascinating specifically because I don't see his particular cheat just yet. And, as such, I'm glad to have exposure to the nonsense. It's fun.
Re:As they say... (Score:5, Informative)
We don't see anything of his just yet. This guy's made a lot of noise about how many people have been testing it but nobody seems to know anything about it. We don't even know if it really exists.
On the off-chance that it does exist: from the pseudo-scientific babble that he's been putting out, I'm betting that he's reinvented the magnet engine. People have been mistaking that for perpetual motion for years (it actually turns out to be running on fixed magnets, which become gradually demagnetised by the process, but so slowly that you don't notice in a small lab demonstration that only runs for a few minutes). Magnets are like batteries, just not particularly efficient ones. Magnet-powered engines are sneaky things - all the math looks like you're getting energy for free, because nobody ever remembers to incorporate the energy of the magnet itself into the equation (it's not in any high-school textbooks).
Re:As they say... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you invented something like that, you would be in secret negotiations with governments, militaries and major corporations. You wouldn't be wasting your time with youtube demonstrations and internet articles. You'd be involved in secret demonstrations with signed NDAs all around and massive bidding wars.
Re:As they say... (Score:5, Insightful)
An outside force you say. Would someone trying to steal its kinetic energy to generate energy possibly be such a force?
Just wondering.
Re:As they say... (Score:5, Insightful)
1) They fail to exhibit a schematic for the device. And no, this would not hurt their chances of getting a patent at least in US: they can get a provisional patent almost automatically, then spend a year improving their research.
2) They fail to submit to peer review of any kind. Again, it's in their interests to publish this as soon as they can, since this would also automatically establish their priority and give them a year to continue research and apply for a patent (and will not count as prior art for their patent for that one year).
3) They fail to do any kind of transparent demonstration of their claims. Now they won't even release a video that they filmed themselves! FTFA: "Well, 6pm London time has come and gone. However, Steorn's site now says that the video will go live at 6pm "Eastern Time.""
You're out to lunch (Score:5, Insightful)
This device which is really nothing more nor less than the exact same technology that NASA uses for orbital flyby which is how we get probes into deep space is just an application in electromagnetic fields rather than G fields.
Now as to those making jokes about the first and second laws of thermodynamics. If an object at rest remains at rest unless acted on by an outside force and an object in motion remains in motion unless acted upon by an outside force.... Is this not by definition perpetual motion? It keeps on doing whatever until forever.... Pretty obvious folks.
Of course those who oppose the idea that we can arrive at energy by some means such as this, openly preach to us that the whole universe erupted out of the head of a pin, [Big Bang anybody?] and are quite happy for all of its mass and all of its energy to have erupted out of nothing in that event. [Logic anybody?]
No I haven't done anything but point out the truth and that isn't troll.
Re:You're out to lunch (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:As they say... (Score:5, Informative)
Hmmm. I can think of two big perpetual energy machine scams and a couple of more down-to-Earth tech scams over the last couple of decades, and let me tell ya, this is is *absolutely* following the same pattern.
First up, Joseph Newman. Newman was around back in the 80's and claimed to have a device that -get this- uses magnets to generate unlimited power. The company was completely privately funded by angel investors. Quite a bit of money IIRC. Enough to travel around the US giving down-home-revival style shows about the device. He even made it all the way to the Tonight Show. So little difference here it's hard to tell the stories apart.
Next up, Madison Priest. Priest claims to have created a "magic box" (his words) that tapped into zero-point energy. He used this to create -get this- a video compression system! He planned on selling it to the cell phone companies, allowing them to send broadcast quality video over existing low speed channels. He worked up *serious* funding from a wide variety of investors, including Blockbuster, and gave numerous demos that were all apparently faked with hidden cables. Disappeared soon after.
Then there was the Great Oil Sniffer Hoax. An Italian guy named Bonassoli approaches Elf with a device he claims is a gravity wave oil detector. Ends up fleecing them for about $150 MILLION before they finally catch on. Disappears with most of the money soon after.
So:
1) lots of funding
2) public demonstrations
3) often with patents
Please demonstrate how this is any different, as you claim.
> Is this not by definition perpetual motion?
That's the clueless noob definition, yes. The real definition can be found on the wikipedia. Educate yourself.
> haven't done anything here but skewer about a thousand sacred cows.
Yes, I'm sure all the physicists out there are shaking in their shoes. "Oh no, someone on Slash called us dumb! Run for the hills, they're onto us!"
> accept that another opinion might exist.
I'm sure we're all perfectly aware that other opinions exist. After all, Shrub got re-elected.
Maury
Re:I've seen this pattern before (Score:5, Informative)
If you read the article, you'll see that that's what they claim -- that they "accidentally" stumbled upon this amazing technology.
It's quite rare that anything of any complexity is discovered by accident -- generally, science advances in small steps, not great leaps. In the case of Einstein, people (like Michaelson and Morley) were doing experiments whose results did not agree with the predictions of the prevalent theories of the day, and someone stepped in to explain why. It took us nearly 40 years to do anything like "convert matter to abundant energy" from those initial baby steps.
In the same way that monkeys randomly banging on keyboards don't produce fine works of literature, people messing around with simple machines whose fundamentals have been understood for hundreds of years don't suddenly revolutionize physics.
Of course, both are technically possible, but you'd be a shitty gambler if you bet on those odds.
Parent inaccurate (or english language inaccurate) (Score:5, Informative)
If an object at rest remains at rest unless acted on by an outside force and an object in motion remains in motion unless acted upon by an outside force.... Is this not by definition perpetual motion? It keeps on doing whatever until forever.... Pretty obvious folks.
English definition wise, yes, any object put into motion will remain in motion forever, or until acted on by an outside force. The problem is you cannot get anything useful like a source of energy out of it. Say you have a wheel you can start spinning with no outside forces on it. It will spin forever. Sounds great right? Now say you attach it to a shaft driving a generator. Free power forever right? No. Spinning the shaft to power the generator is now putting an outside force (resistance and all that) and your wheel will come to a stop eventually. Not too useful.
What perpetual energy/motion machines are supposed to do is provide more energy/motion than is being acted upon them from the outside force that is putting their motion/energy to work. Let me say it again another way, they create energy/motion out of nothing, and then the surplus is used for some kind of *work* (charge a battery, power a motor, etc. etc.) If they were creating energy/motion and you did not tap the power, then the device would speed up, and speed up, and continue to speed up to infinity.
What the inventor (and all inventor of perpetual motion devices claim) is that they have found some method of doing this. Creating something that creates energy out of nothing (as opposed to all other sources of energy, which require something. An engine requires fuel, a solar power requires sunlight (or other light) the light from the sun requires hydrogen and other elements to be spent or transformed in a nuclear reaction, etc, etc.
If a perpetual motion/energy machine is ever really devised, it will likely be found later on that the machine is simply running on an formerly unknown form of energy. (As mentioned on here in other posts).
Re:Use finesse (Score:5, Interesting)
And it doesn't break any laws of thermodynamics. Not more as a simple dynamo or a magnetic brake.
The only "catch" is that they tap the energy of Earth's magnetic field.
Build your own perpetual motion machine! (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't that what solar cells are? 'Practical' perpetual energy? I know there are issues with the breakdown of materials, and eventual cooling of the sun, but if you invented the solar cell and called it a 'perpetual energy' machine, then where would you be? Much like where this guy is I suspect, being called a scam artist before you even get a chance to exhibit, being ignored because you weren't in negotiations with governments and pushing for NDAs.
I'm hoping that this will turn out to be something similar. I'm hoping that the demonstration will show way of harnessing energy we previously mostly ignored or didn't use the same way. We've got geothermal energy mostly untapped, wave energy mostly underfunded and immense, practically immeasurable energy flung by the sun into space, benefiting nobody. It isn't as if the energy sources don't exist, we just don't have the technology to tap most of the big ones yet.
The way I understand it, perpetual energy isn't even really impossible, sub-atomic particles pop into and out of existence all the time and sometimes get separated, thus Hawking radiation and for all practical purposes, perhaps all purposes, demonstrate perpetual motion. The trick would be in harnessing them, tricky bit that, what with the black holes and all. If you figure out how to do it you'd get a lot of cool points.
Failing any of the big payoff candidates like black holes or tapping the sun, maybe you could harness the magnetic properties of the earth? I think they're mostly a product of the earth's kinetic and maybe heat energy, they aren't truly perpetual, but it would be a neat trick to actually find a way to use them.
Yes, I know, this has the earmarks of a scam, but why not wait until we get a chance to find out more before we dismiss it entirely? You're not spending anything but your time, and to my way of thinking, anything that makes you think and reconsider your notions of what is possible is not a waste.
Re:Build your own perpetual motion machine! (Score:5, Informative)
And your examples are not free energy. Hawking radiation subtracts from the mass of the black hole perfectly in accordance with E=Mc^2 (as far as anyone knows, at least; AFAIK it's never been measured). And a high-energy photon might well materialise into, say, an electron-positron pair, but the mass energy of that pair is still less than the energy of the photon. None of this vioaltes the laws of thermodynamics.
Re:As they say... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:As they say... (Score:5, Insightful)
On a side note, the demonstration has been canceled due to technical issues. I suppose "is impossible" would qualify as a technical issue.
Power from the Moon's Gravity: (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Power from the Moon's Gravity: (Score:5, Funny)
The same is true for harnassing power from the earth's magnetic field: there certainly will be side effects when too much power is taken.
Re:As they say... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure what you mean by the "energy storage" with natural magnets and rotational kinetic energy (Remember, the vast majority of ferrous material on this planet, and thus the source of the Earth's magnetic field, is in the core, not the crust), but there are techniques for using the Earth's magnetic field to produce energy. I saw a test of an apparatus on the NASA channel (Now that's good television) which used the spacecraft's movement through Earth's magnetic field to induce a current in a tether outside the spacecraft, which they then used to power stuff on board the spacecraft. But this was still not "free energy", because the magnetic field generated by the current interacted with that of Earth and decreased the spacecraft's velocity and altitude (as expected by NASA engineers and the law of conservation of Energy). This was mostly recoverable, though, because feeding current the other way through the cable increased the spacecraft's altitude again. The only way to get current out of a magnetic field is to move charged particles through it, which is convenient, because everything is made of charged particles. Energy must be expended to get those charged particles in motion in the first place, and once the current has been generated, the kinetic energy of the charged particles drops to zero.
My point is, even by harnessing the kinetic energy or magnetic properties or what have you of the cosmos, you do affect them in a small way. Try that fly-by trick enough, and Jupiter will fall out of orbit. Some energy in space looks "free", but in actuality it's really just "insanely cheap" energy.
Re:As they say... (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, there is a way to "tie gears to the planets". Tidal power extracts the kinetic energy of the earth's rotation using the moon as a brake.
Finally, "Free As In Speech" Energy! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Finally, "Free As In Speech" Energy! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:As they say... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:As they say... (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. But who decides what is signal and what is noise? Majority? This machine is most likely a stunt or scam. But so is the "Global warming" myth but that doesn't stop articles about it.
Wading through the noise is not pleasant but you get to choose what is noise and what is signal. It is this wading and deciding that truly makes you informed. Not right but informed. The alternative is that a few censors get to rule what is noise or signal. Decisions based on the views of an uninformed majority (The earth is flat) or the views of a few with an agenda. Either way, without noise you never know what the signal is.
Re:Flawed... even down to the analogy. God? (Score:5, Funny)
Sorry --- old Fortran joke.
(For the youngsters out there: in "traditional" Fortran, variables didn't need to be explicitly declared. Those starting with the letters i to n were integers. The rest were reals.)
Re:Flawed... even down to the analogy. God? (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, I hear there are people who think believing in strings is equivalent to believing in a god.
Re:Flawed... even down to the analogy. God? (Score:5, Funny)
String: No, I'm a frayed knot.
*ducks*
Re:Flawed... even down to the analogy. God? (Score:5, Informative)
The gist of the argument is thus: the premise of most monotheist religions is that God is singular, perfect, and omnipotent. However, the Torah/Bible/Quaran also ascribes to him qualities such as loving his creations and wanting them to live a just life. These views are contradictory. First, the premise that God is separate from his creations implies that God is finite. The premise that God is finite screws up a lot of assumptions. If God is finite and separate from his creations, then the two must be contained in some greater thing, and this greater thing would be more perfect than God, by virtue of being a superset of him. Moreover, if he's finite, that opens up the possibility that he is not singular. Second, something which is perfect must logically be immutable. Any change in the state of a perfect thing would render it imperfect, or imply that the original state was not perfect to begin with. Thus, God cannot love anything, or want anything for his creations. He cannot think, feel, reason, or want, because all of these things imply mutability. Indeed, perfection and omnipotence are incompatible, because action implies change!
It's very hard to logically reconcile these concepts while still believing that God sent his son to die for our sins, because he wants humanity to be saved. The traditional mono-theistic religions basically give up on the idea of God as perfect and omnipotent in order to maintain the "big man in the sky" idea. Spinoza couldn't deal with that, he posited instead that God was infinite and immutable, not just being a separate entity in the universe but being the entity of which the universe itself was an expression. The problem with this idea, though, is that you can't expect such an entity to answer your prayers, to offer opinions regarding reproductive practices, etc.
Re:Flawed... even down to the analogy. God? (Score:5, Informative)
Agnosticism is more properly defined as the belief that god is unknowable, or that the question of whether or not there is a god is not a proper question. Sort of a "we can't know so don't ask" position.
The definitions are quite often mangled such as you have done. Start hanging around on Pharyngula.org to get a better idea of what atheists are all about.
Sure. (Score:5, Funny)
Lisa, get in here! (Score:5, Funny)
Mr. Madison... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Mr. Madison... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Mr. Madison... (Score:5, Interesting)
"That's just completely incoherent - the law of conservation of energy is that the total energy in a closed system is constant OVER TIME. How can it possibly leave out time?"
Hell effing yes. dE/dt = flux through the boundary, that's conservation of energy. If the system is isolated, the righthand side is zero, but it is still a statement about energy AND TIME.
Rock on, you crazy thermo-knowing poster. Rock on.
Re:Mr. Madison... (Score:5, Informative)
http://quthoughts.blogspot.com/2007/06/steorn-it-j ust-keeps-going-and-going.html [blogspot.com]
He gave a talk in UCD the other week, this blog has links to the youtube videos. Check out the second video. About 4 or 5 minutes in, he switches over to talking about some unsolved questions in physics. Turns out, there is no dark matter or dark energy. Apparently it's trivial to fix this problem by incorporating "time variance" in Newtonian Mechanics, which is what they had done with their Orbo deviece. What exactly the nature of this time variance is, or what the nature of the solution is is unfortunately not forthcoming though.
Re:Mr. Madison... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Mr. Madison... (Score:5, Funny)
older story (Score:5, Informative)
do we want to end up like Mars? (Score:5, Funny)
(fake science makes for fun ingredients for science fiction!)
If it were real... (Score:5, Insightful)
Dead giveaway... (Score:5, Interesting)
Right across the top is their angle on events:
Between Shows > Our Next Show : starts July 5th, world's first free-energy demonstration
However, despite it being a piece of entertainment, the company are serious. See this story [www.rte.ie] from Ireland, where they are based: "The company stumbled upon the technology while working with wind turbines to power remote surveillance CCTV cameras for ATM."
They discovered it by accident! That's how all the best inventions are conceived.
The Future (Score:5, Funny)
Steorn's main geomagnetic extraction complex will, over time, develop into a city, and then into a gigantic megalopolis, which people will call simply "Steorn". The Steorn megalopolis will be circle-shaped, powered by eight gigantic Orbo generators (also delimiters of the city's eight sectors), and divided into two vertical levels, the lower scum one, where low wage workers live, and the high one, were executives, rich people etc. live and work.
Over time, a quasi-religious movement will develop affirming that Steorn's consumption of geomagnetic energy is actually causing Earth to die, and the most fanatic among these will form an eco-terrorist movement dedicated to the destruction of all Orbo generators. The funny thing is: this movement will be actually correct! Worse: not only will Steorn be in fact slowly destroying the world, but they will have also developed advanced genetics research on an alien found years before, using these discoveries to genetically enhance their own self-defense troops.
The history of our future proceeds in many details, but I'll make it short. Suffice it to say that one of these troops will discover all about his increased abilities, the alien, the Orbo generators destroying Earth, and will decide to accelerate the process, by causing a meteor to strike Earth. Earth itself, in a move indicating some kind of self-awareness, will fight back by redirecting its own geomagnetic field against the meteor, destroying it. The collateral effect of this, however, will be a magnetic induced disease over humanity, who will slowly start to die. A cure will be found, but not before much damage happens.
Due to all of this, the world will realize they must stop using geomagnetism as a source of energy, turn off all Orbo generators, and finally turn back to that old means of power generation left behind decades ago: petroleum. So much, in fact, that even the former leader of the anti-Orbo eco-terrorist group will become one of the earliest investors in oil extraction and oil-based energy production.
Then history will repeat itself.
Re:The Future (Score:5, Funny)
(by the way, when do the Chocobos become involved?)
Beware of this company (Score:5, Interesting)
Coriolis machines (Score:5, Interesting)
No (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not really perpetual motion, though. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Stop It (Score:5, Interesting)
We need a magnetic field. But isn't like there is a finite amount of energy stored that you are using up like a battery. The magnetic field is powered by a gravity generator and that generator is going to keep running whether you utilize the energy output or not.
The big question is how much energy would you have to draw from the earth's magnetic field it makes any significant different. When you consider how tiny the global energy demands are compared to the actual energy stored in the stable matter of earth, I have a feeling that the result will be a very substantial amount.
Re:Not the only game in town (Score:5, Funny)
Is your machine called "the internet"?