Perpetual Energy Machine Getting Lots of Attention 965
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.
Not really perpetual motion, though. (Score:4, Informative)
older story (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Mr. Madison... (Score:5, Informative)
No (Score:5, Informative)
US PTO standards (Score:4, Informative)
It would be possible to draw some energy from the earth's magnetic field, but not very much its not a very strong magnetic field.
Re:No (Score:3, Informative)
http://quthoughts.blogspot.com/2007/06/steorn-it-j ust-keeps-going-and-going.html [blogspot.com]
Blog post with a series of videos of a talk the CEO gave at UCD. The key premise of "fluctuations" does not, as I mistakenly suspected, seem to be the fluctuations of the earth's magnetic field after all, but rather the fact that the response time of magnetic domains is non-zero (they claim millisecond +) and that, by changing their system faster than the universe can notice, they can get around this whole pesky conservative field thing which does on in magnets.
So yes, magnets pushing on magnets, but VERY QUICKLY. That makes it more believable, right?
Re:As they say... (Score:2, Informative)
-Sosetta
Re:As they say... (Score:2, Informative)
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:Wanted: Anti-Stock (Score:4, Informative)
If you "know" that the share will lose value, the better (but riskier) alterative is to sell short. It requires you to find a broker that is able to lend you shares in the security in question, which you then sell. When (or if) the shares drop in price, you buy back a sufficient number to cover the amount you borrowed. The problem with shorting, particularly if the shares aren't highly liquid, is that the potential loss is unlimited (you lose the equivalent of any gain in value from you short the shares until you are able to buy them back). Experienced investors will therefore sometimes use call options as a protection. A call option give you the right to buy shares at a certain price at a certain time interval in the future - in other words the reverse of a put. The downside is of course that this protection will eat up a lot of your potential return. Because of the high risk, short selling is highly regulated.
Your better bet, literally, is to find a bookmaker that will take a bet on it, assuming you can find someone who'l give you good odds, and it's legal where you are. UK bookmakers tend to take bets on almost anything they believe they can reasonably calculate the risk of, or where they can pit their customers against eachother and only pocket the spread.
Re:As they say... (Score:4, Informative)
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, 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
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:As they say... (Score:1, Informative)
How is that an analogy? When NASA obtains "free" energy via orbital flyby of planets, the planet is theoretically slowed down by an infinitesimal, but still real, amount. Energy is conserved. Slingshot billions upon billions of deep space probes the same way, and, theoretically, you would eventually change its orbit because of the energy transfer that is occurring.
How in the heck is this analogous in the "electromagnetic field" realm? From what enormous electromagnetic field are they drawing off a tiny fraction? And if they are doing that, the field will be losing some energy as the device gains it.
Is it the Earth's geomagnetic field? By that measure, an average compass is a "perpetual motion machine", from which the energy used to rotate the needle could be harvested, but it still wouldn't amount to much as a practical power source, and it wouldn't be a "perpetual motion machine" in the classical, "In this house we don't violate the laws of thermodynamics" sense, just a natural magnetic field harvester.
And energy out of "nothing" is already known to exist (vacuum energy), but it seems that energy isn't easily harvestable, and may not be at all.
"Is this not by definition perpetual motion? It keeps on doing whatever until forever.... Pretty obvious folks."
But that is not in the sense that most people regard a perpetual motion machine [wikipedia.org] -- i.e. more energy out than is put in.
Re:Flawed... even down to the analogy. God? (Score:3, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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:3, Informative)
It's really semantics. Even agnosticism can imply two considerably (logically speaking) different positions. Classical agnosticism also makes an epistemologically unsound assertion: that one cannot know whether or not god exists. Modern agnostics however tend to simply say "I don't know based on available evidence." So now we have two definitions of agnostic.
One can be an atheist and still not assert the non-existence of god (a so-called weak atheist). In fact, it is not a contradiction to be both a theist and an agnostic, when one applies the classical definition of agnostic. I've also learned that, to some, agnosticism implies that one gives equal probability to the existence or non-existence of god, which is why I've begin to shy away from applying the term to myself.
It's therefore still possible for an atheist to conclude there is insufficient evidence to believe, and accordingly would adopt a world view that doesn't include God. This sounds a lot like agnosticism except when you consider that someone who says "I don't know if God exists but I believe he does" could get away with calling themselves agnostic, because agnosticism deals with the matter of knowledge, not of belief.
This essay [geocities.com] represents my opinions decently. I've lately begun shying away from labels like these because people have such differing notions.
Re:Flawed... even down to the analogy. God? (Score:3, Informative)
Atheism, however, is not restricted to those that assert the nonexistence of God. Its original meaning ("ungodliness") is no longer in common use. It has been applied to those that lack a belief in God, as well as those that assert the nonexistence (sometimes referred to as "strong" and "weak" atheism). Depending on your dictionary, you may have any of several definitions, but here's one that disagrees with you, and one that agrees:
wordnet: atheism [princeton.edu]
# S: (n) atheism, godlessness (the doctrine or belief that there is no God)
# S: (n) atheism (a lack of belief in the existence of God or gods)
Another word has come into use which perhaps more accurately reflects the second postion: nontheism (literally, "not theism"). This essentially equates to "weak atheism" or a lack of belief in God, without assertion. However, the "a" prefix is commonly used to mean "without," so "without theism" is a reasonable definition of atheism.
It would be nice if everyone used the same word to mean the same thing...but they don't. Most self-described atheists I know do not assert the nonexistence of God. Most theists I know consider atheists those who do assert the nonexistence (although from a Christian judgement point of view, the distiction is basically meaningless). Agnosticism is a more complicated topic than simple "absence of faith," and should not be used as an alternative to "weak atheism."
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.
Re:Finally, "Free As In Speech" Energy! (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, in Steorn's case, it would be free as in beer.
Re:Flawed... even down to the analogy. God? (Score:3, Informative)
Main Entry: atheist
Pronunciation: 'A-thE-ist
Function: noun
: one who believes that there is no deity
From Oxford:
Jacket image of the Compact Oxford English Dictionary
atheism
noun the belief that God does not exist.
-- DERIVATIVES atheist noun atheistic adjective atheistical adjective.
-- ORIGIN from Greek a- 'without' + theos 'god'.
So... I'll stick to my use of the terms, as they match up with the most authoritative sources.
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.
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:Power from the Moon's Gravity: (Score:4, Informative)
damn, now I'm gonna waste another lunch hour reading about interesting crap I'll never need :)
Re:As they say... (Score:2, Informative)
In a matter of a year or so, we'll see who the suckers are. The jurors who are currently looking at the technology (and that means being able to build it from scratch) are not small-time scientists. I've been in correspondence (since before the Steorn claim) with a respected scientist who has published in many of the top peer-reviewed physics journals and he has at least one colleague who is a juror in the process. They are world-re-knowned and respected. They (and 21 other labs/scientists) are under contractual obligation to publish their findings (whether yay or nay and all of the details).
So this will be quite interesting----hoax, misunderstanding, or real.
Re:What About using Gravity (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Power from the Moon's Gravity: (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Power from the Moon's Gravity: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Build your own perpetual motion machine! (Score:3, Informative)
Hawking radiation does not demonstrate perpetual motion in any way.
A quantum fluctuation can be seen as a particle and anti-particle popping into existance next to each other. If this happens at the brink of a black hole, and the anti-particle falls in, the particle goes in the opposite direction and can be observed as faint (Hawking) radiation. However, the antiparticle decreases the mass of the black hole, eventually causing it to evaporate, after billions of billions of years. Compare it to solar power - the radiation stops when the black hole runs out of mass, and the sun stops shining when it runs out of elements to fusion. The former is countless magnitudes harder to harness though, due to the low intensity of the Hawking radiation.
All in all, during hawking raditation, the laws of conservation of energy and momentum are conserved, and it doesn't go on forever either. E.g. there's nothing "perpetual" about it at all.
Re:Power from the Moon's Gravity: (Score:2, Informative)
Tadaa.
Re:Power from the Moon's Gravity: (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Power from the Moon's Gravity: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:As they say... (Score:3, Informative)
A couple of billion years ago, you'd be right, but the heat inside the earth today is sustained by radioactive decay. There's also some heating due to tidal effects as the planet gets tugged on by the sun and moon as it rotates. Heat from solar radiation doesn't really penetrate, but the warmer the ocean and the atmosphere are, the less heat escapes from the interior.
A neat paper on the Earth's heat budget is located at http://www.geo.arizona.edu/geo5xx/geo519.071/lectu res/Heat_Budget_Earth.pdf [arizona.edu].
The capsule summary:
* A variety of sources heated the Earth immediately during formation: gravitational collapse, adiabatic compression, and short lived radioactivities that quickly disappeared. Gravitational collapse may not have contributed much heat to the inner Earth because it could have been mostly dissipated during accretion, but this is uncertain.
* Today decay of U, Th and K produce something like 40-75% of the observed total heat flux from the Earth. Solidification of the core (heat of fusion) produces about 10%. Cooling of the ancient heat deposited in Earth's formation is 15-50% of the flux.
* So - there is a lot of uncertainty here. It is most likely that radioactive decay dominates over simple cooling of ancient heat today, but this is uncertain. If one includes core solidification as a form of ancient heat (it is latent heat of formation) then the likelihood of radioactive decay dominance diminishes and it becomes possible that ancient heat still dominates today.
TFA thinks it's bunk as well (Score:3, Informative)