Slashdot Mirror
Perpetual Energy Machine Getting Lots of Attention
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.
There's a sucker born every minute.
Seriously, why is anyone outside of Art Bell and George Noorey even giving this guy the time of day?
I hear there's gonna be a demo on the Brooklyn Bridge. It just so happens I have purchased a deed to said bridge. Where's my cut?
If it draws power from fluctuations in the earth's magnetic field, it isn't perpetual motion any more than a tidal generating station, for example. It draws power from an external source, therefore it doesn't violate the laws of thermodynamics.
Breaking the Law of Conservation of Energy is a serious offense. One could find themselves in Guantanamo very quickly for breaking this law. The oil companies will not let this stand!
It's the 4th of July not the 1st of April.
Nice try, though.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
it is like Microsoft paying you for using Vista...oh! wait
What you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul
=======
Science -- Sealed, Delivered.
Unfortunately no one is interested in my machine that produces infinite dirty energy. :(
Do we really need to have a post for every single perpetual machine story that gets out there?
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A PERPETUAL MOTION MACHINE. NEVER EVER EVER NEVER NEVER EVER. Can we, as a species, please get over it?
Let's move onto the next topic, such as cold fusion or man-made global warming.
If these asses are pulling energy from Earth's magnet field (and if it looks like free energy, they probably are), somebody please stop them, we need it.
Here's an older story on Slashdot covering the same company and technology.
COLD FUSION
It's a typo - "allows the Orbo platform to 'consistently produce power" should be "allows the Orbo platform to 'consistently produce revenue".
Slashdot greenlights an average of 12 perpetual-motion-machine stories per year. That's in perpetuity.
Alright, prove it works and become a billionaire. Go on. Keep everything above board.
a chair sized bunch or junk could provide more power than a massive power plant or hundreds of acres of wind mills...
But really, they should almost have a permanent ban on perpetual motion machine stories. That may be one instance in which free speech can be rightly squashed.
Cheers
Who is this delectable creature with an insatiable love of the dead?
So I saw "Orbo" and thought of the stuff from Witch Hunter Robin, which seems to be made from witches ala Soylent Green. Great name, guys.
But, really, this is such flamebait. "The time variance in magnetic fields"? delta H/delta t? Who are you kidding? If it really does work that way, then you're getting your energy from the Earth's magnetic field in much the same way a spacecraft using a planet's gravity to get into a higher-energy orbit is actually decelerating the planet in question.
TANSTAAFL.
Clearly energy generation systems that turn alternating magnetic fields into energy are possible without violating thermodynmics. I just doubt that they could produce useful amounts of energy or we would be hooking generators to our compass needles.
everyone knows that by creating Orbos, the natives of Mars lost their magnetosphere and ensured their civilization's premature demise.
(fake science makes for fun ingredients for science fiction!)
Anything that truly allows you to get something for nothing would so drastically alter our understanding of reality such that many things we take as absolute truth would become unreliable (predictability and statistics would be meaningless.. we would have to accept the possibility of spontaneous creation of radiation and perhaps even matter..)
I don't know where they're getting their energy from, but I cannot even fathom the possibility that it defies the law of conservation of energy.
I have a Bridge in Brooklyn for sale, cheap!
>>"The only analogy I can give is if you had absolute proof that God wasn't real."
There's some really strong evidence that God isn't real. There's no strong evidence that PPM work. In fact, there's a number of things about the universe which strongly suggest that PPM are impossible, just as there's some things which strong suggest God is impossible. Really, even from a 'making an analogy' point of view: this machine is like having proof God exists.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
Except it doesn't do that, making your comment irrelevant.
I'm so glad I'm not an investor.
Heres how I see it: stories like this drive traffic to /. so they can stay in business and host real news. It's just embarrassing because /. is the site I tend to gravitate toward.
Despite the fact we had Roswell yesterday and perpetual energy today, I still find if I browse stories with the smartometer set to 5, there are some amazingly intelligent and well informed people who make up /.
Not the ones who believe in this crappolla though.Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
...from all the criticism and energy people waste their time on generating against this thing.
See conservation of energy isn't being broken.... and the source is perpetual....
My gagnomometer has pegged.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Mabye they aim to get an investor and run off with the money, laughing at how someone could fall for this, again!
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
Hummmmm. I wonder why no main stream news outlets seem to be picking up such a ground-breaking story?
Can't believe that 80% of the posters at Engadget think this has merit ... Looks like /. is useful after all!
I guess it is natural to expect that all the believers in scams like this never actually stop and think about it's implications.
You really really do not want to violate the conservation of energy, and especially not be able to create energy without it coming from somewhere else, and not because it would make oil companies unhappy. Hint: Imagine you could destroy energy somehow - what happens eventually? Now, move in the other direction. An ever increasing amount of energy on the planet that does not go away has some pretty serious consequences on our physical existence - think about it.
"The only analogy I can give is if you had absolute proof that God wasn't real." That's the worst analogy you could have picked on so many levels. Ontopic wise: Perhaps we will find energy that costs next to nothing in short term and at the end of it's lifecycle has ever increasing prohibitive cost. Again. ducks
Under the terms of a modified general public licence and for a nominal fee, Steorn's intellectual property will be made available concurrently to all interested parties, from individual enthusiasts to larger research organisations. Steorn is taking this bold move to accelerate the deployment and acceptance of its technology for both humanitarian and commercial products.
You see, previous failed attempts at perpetual motion often utilized magnets, but this machine has Magnets AND Time. And Time is cool.
But be warned, you may not be capable of understanding it:
http://www.timecube.com/
...they wouldn't need to convince anyone. They could just sell the energy, use that money to make a bigger device, sell more energy, lather, rinse, repeat. You don't need investors when you can print money.
There's no failure quite as dissatisfying as a complete and total solution to the wrong problem.
I was looking for that and you beat me to it. It seems Steorn's spin week is an annual event.
Just because the guy is saying he is generating free energy doesn't mean he's gone off the deep end. I can produce free energy by sticking a specially shaped piece of metal in the air. You say bunk. I say wind turbine. Now who's laughing? Maybe the guy is somehow tapping the ambient magnetic field of the Earth, or has tapped into the tidal forces caused by the planet's rotation, or maybe it is bunk. We'd have to examine the device to say for sure. However do just dismiss it out of hand is unscientific.
Mind you, the guy's website is short on details, and long on hype and begging for money, like most hoaxers. So, I'm not holding my breath.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
you can't patent a perpetual motion machine. That should keep it off the market.
What?
mister president, magnetic energy of earth has almost depleted. Without "so cheap" energy we are doomed to millennium of no electricity!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's a simple conversion:
Environmental Anxiety ==> Phase 2 ==> Perpetual Clean Energy
Unfortunately it stops working when people realize it has worked and lose their anxiety.
Sometimes at night I imagine the darkness is filled with horrible things with too many teeth, like Julia Roberts.
Is this just a bad memory? Or maybe someone slipped be a drug to erase it.
3
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/21/17325
You wouldn't say it was a perpetual motion machine. Rather, you would describe it as using a novel form of energy. Once you demonstrated it, and allowed them the ability to examine it, the product should sell itself.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
1. The machine consistently produces power from the Earth's magnetic field.
2. Point 1 implies that the machine defies the law of conservation of energy.
It is possible for point 1 to be true without implying point 2. In fact, if you assume that the conservation laws hold true a priori, then you can actually deduce some interesting properties of a device for which point 1 holds true.
Conservation of momentum and energy imply that drawing energy out of this device and using it to move something will cause a change in the Earth's motion. Specifically:
A) If you use it to spin something up, then the Earth's rotation will adjust to compensate.
B) If you use it to throw something, then the earth will be thrown in the opposite direction to compensate.
C) It should be possible to drive this device in reverse and actually put energy into the Earth's magnetic field, instead of drawing it out.
So lighten up a bit, people. This thing might actually be useful, even if it doesn't give you something for nothing.
A republic cannot succeed till it contains a certain body of men imbued with the principles of justice and honour.
I think at some point in the 19th century the US Patent Office decicded that to patent a Perpetual motion machine you would have to produce a working demo and have it run for a year and a day (they had a LOT of bogus claims). So if these guys think they can make one, time to build a demo and set it up for review.
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.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
It was scientific LAW that the world was FLAT. 'Science' got that one wrong, to.
... presumably a 4th July joke, replacing the April edition for obvious reasons.
On the other hand, Rudy Rucker in the 'Edge Question' 2007: "Endless free energy will flow from the subdimensions. And, by using subdimensional shortcuts akin to what is now called quantum entanglement, we'll become able to send information over great distances with no energy cost. In effect the whole world can become linked like a wireless network, simply by tapping into the subdimensional channel."
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
So why are you posting the story then?
Someone remind me why I keep reading this site again?
The majority of perpertual claims I've seen just displace energy in time (storage) and then release it later. The storage part typically not included in the calculations. Thermodynamics states that you cannot creat a perpetual motion machine. This proof is INDEPENDANT of the mechnism, be it electric, magnetic, nuclear, or some form of force/energy we have yet to discover.
No, I don't believe it either. But what if it were true? How would society change given a sudden complete energy independence (ignoring conspiracy theories about Shell or BP shooting the inventor)?
First, we could stop having any involvement with the middle east. Honestly, is there anyone besides the Arabians that would miss dealing with Saudi Arabia? Would global warming stop because CO2 was no longer a necessary byproduct of the most common energy source, or would it go up because every was busy converting their free energy into waste heat ("why yes, I'd love to have an 8-way Pentium 4 in my clock radio!")?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
The fact it's unveiled in the form of a 10-day exhibition at a 'museum' tells us something about the nature of this 'product'. Have a look at the Kinetica Museum (avoiding unnecessary Flash intro)
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 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.
While I am not sure the invention does work at all, but banning all discussion about some fact does not make the said fact go away, instead it will make sure that we will make no progress.
Let me remind you that until not so long ago every one was sure that the earth was flat and that it was the center of the universe. Today we probably have no proof that that of similar device will work but give it some time and someone will prove it. Even if this device works despite our current theories what is wrong with using it? A lot of medications for example work in mysterious ways but we keep using them. We also used fire for a very long time without understanding exactly how it works.
Why don't we keep an open mind?
Slay the dreamer is what I hear in many of your post. You should be ashamed of yourselves.
1) Invent perpetual energy machine 2) ??? 3) Profit
I wish there was a way to buy anti-stock in such ideas. In other words, make money off of its loss. Somebody told me there is something known as "puts", but they are generally configured for experienced career investors.
Table-ized A.I.
Shhuuurrrreeee there's a perpetual energy machine. And Uri Geller CAN really bend spoons using his mind. And Slyvia Browne CAN see the future. And Han didn't shoot first.
It is not truly a perpetual motion machine at all.
It may be an ingenious way to get energy for no fuel type cost, but that energy is coming from somewhere. Actually, the source is cleary listed: Natural variation in the magnetic field. What that means is that the earth, and other heavenly bodies have changing magnetic fields, which from high school physics we know can be converted into energy. Now, I won't waste any time looking up the proper math and physics principles at play here, but the long story short is that in order for electrons or physical devices to move and interact with a magnetic field, an opposite force is applied back through the magnetic field to the processes that create the field in the first place, and cause it to move.
Now we don't (as I understand it) fully understand all of the forces behind planetary bodies and the molten core of the planet moving, but I think it is safe to say that it is a rather large, but finite source of energy. The question becomes, will scaling this up to a cost effective sized system for commercial power generation ever draw enough energy from the earth to cause us problems in the long term? Or is the amount of energy drawn by this system to small to matter? (We are talking on geological/universal timescales here).
More Caffeine. NOW
You need capital for the first device. Then you can "...sell the energy, use that money to make a bigger device, sell more energy, lather, rinse, repeat."
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
People like you make me so mad! You and your perpetual energy smear campaign. Thermodynamics thermoshamammics. For Too long we've been governed by the laws of physics. Energy wants to be free (as in speech), man!
Global symbol "$deity" requires explicit package name at line 2. - If only $scripture started "use strict;"
No shit. So why are you posting this kind of idiocy?
Has anyone considered that this could be an ARG?
I know how the story unfolds. The device will work, by extracting magnetic energy from Earths own magnetic field. In a few years, Steorn will be one of the hugest and most profitable companies in the world, causing oil consumption to almost stop.
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.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
Before you flame me, this is a recount of my own personal experience, and I have never had anything but negative reception to this, and so I expect it will leave a bitter taste in the majority of your 'show me then ill believe it' mouths. So please, just humor me as a recap of my own experience and your welcome to your doubts. A friend of mines uncle is an inventor, he made a bicycle that uses magnets to achieve something similar. I've told my most trusted science buddies and of course none of them believe me. I however saw it go a very long distance(several miles) with only one single half pedal to start the motion, the points the magnets were placed would cause a constant rotation and constant motion for the bicycle, additionally it had some means of collecting the excess energy the motion was generating and storing it for uphill travel etc. (Yes, I did NOT see inside the black container attached to it so it IS entirely possible there was some sort of battery that was actually powering the device HOWEVER since this man spent the majority of his life working on this in his garage, and I trust him, I believe him in his word.) It seemed a completely logical technology to me when I saw it, and It worked wonderfully, however nobody would ever believe me when I told them of this event.
Perhaps now that something similar may be commercially available, I can distribute some well deserved I told you so's....
Your all well aware Energy will always exist in one form or another, it does not disappear it just changes forms, all perpetual energy should take in my assumption, is one method of using the energy to power something, and the resulting transformed state of the energy to be converted to the original form, or a cycle of multiple transformations where the energy in its state is used and then whatever using it in that way converts it to is used again until it reaches one of the original forms in the cycle. Now thats just a blunt assumption by my very uneducated mind, so before you go on a flame war with the scientific inaccuracy/non technicality of that, keep in mind thats just a blunt unscientific theory of an uneducated person.
Their story appears consistent when you check their web-site over time. See the web archive http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.steorn.net
If they don't have a first machine, and only equation, they have NOTHING. On paper I can fly to the moon with only a big 7 foot stick , 77 inches of blue string (MUST be blue) and 3/4 gallon of milk. They HAVE to have a physical demonstration of PMM/OU or they are one of those thousands of other scam artist (Stan Meyer, Mark Golde, Dennis Klein...) which pretend to have something they don't really have : PMM/OU, or are quite near, SOOOO NEAR, we only need a bit of reengineering, to get a final solution to the free energy problem (yeah, right). Steorn pretend they worked 3 years (now 4) on this and they would never have a ready machine ? No generator ? Nothing ? (YEAH. RIGHT.).
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
My guess is that they're not trying to ruin their own careers and reputations. More likely, their technology exploits flaws prevalent in electrical measurement devices today. These oversights are causing the apparent overproduction in energy.
I don't believe they're intentionally setting up a hoax. They plainly admit their technology violates conservation of energy, they're not downplaying the ridiculousness of that. They're not throwing around requests for funding... they said they would not solicit investing during the validation of their technology. After which, they say they will widely distribute the technology and allow others to build upon it Following validation Orbo technology will be made available via our online developers forum. This forum will allow everyone from a product developer to a research organization to understand and develop products based around our technology. Call me crazy, but I believe Steorn has no ill intent. They will be mistaken in the end, but it does not seem likely that they're trying to fleece investors and end their professional lives. Their company has been operating at a loss for several years (as the vast majority of tech startups do), not flourishing from their attention. And they haven't been asking for money. If it's an honest hoax (yeah, what?), then it's costing them a lot.
These cowboys gave a talk in our University in Dublin. They also wanted to film the talk, presumably so they could chop and change comments by the hostile audience and other learned speakers (experts in Thermodynamics and Magnetics). This quite sensibly wasn't allowed, but the talk went ahead anyway. However there didn't seem to be much behind the flashy powerpoint presentation. I think this is more of a scientifically-fictional pyramid scheme than anything else.
What the fuck? More proof that Slashdotters only read terrible, tasteless sci-fi.
The views of the readers here have all been expressed before on the Steorn Forum. This site, hosted by Steorn, can be found here: http://www.steorn.com/forum/.
"generator is going to keep running whether you utilize the energy output or not." :P.
Actually if we start drawing power on it, this would slow down the core of earth by counter reaction. Naturally how much we could draw before we could have a measurable effect I have no idea, nor the will to calculate
Good job promoting a shitty scam.
Yea, suckers. And they apparently all buy iPhones.
Geeze, do MacNuts believe everything?
Wow, FREE ENERGY.
I should sponsor these guys with the FREE MILLION DOLLARS I just won browsing around the web just a few min ago (currently just paid the advance fee and waiting for confirmation).
Man, I'm so excited. Free money and energy on the same day, I mean, what are the friggin odds??
...the law of Energy Conservation breaks you!
Man is the lowest-cost, 150-pound, nonlinear, all-purpose computer system which can be mass-produced by unskilled labor.
The world was flat due to ancient dogma. Since that times we've learn a decent amount and when something makes claims that that knowledge is broken, they better have pretty damn fine evidence to back it up.
So far Steorn have generated nothing but hype and hot air. If they want to claim our understanding is incomplete, the onus is on them the prove it, even if they don't have a theory themselves to explain their finds in repeatable experiments. Alas, nothing is published, no one can replicate their work, so their claim is bogus until proved otherwise.
Science has an open mind, that's how it improves and refines itself. When you find something weird, i.e. interesting, you document everything you did and replicate it. If there's nothing wrong in the method you publish the findings for others to repeat your work and validate it.
These people are not doing any of that, they're playing to the dumbed down mass media, because muppets "want to believe". History is full of such claims from joe average types (ok, these people used to build ecommerce sites, whoo fscking do). As of yet, these wonderful claims have not materialized.
Tomorrow will be another let down for the gullible, but there'll be an excuse waiting. There always is!
Violating the law of thermodynamics is completely impossible, period, end of story. The energy has to come from somewhere.
_ motion_machines
.... This sounds rather like the standard perpetual motion machine claim, rather than a breakthrough in thermodynamics/physics.
If the device (seems to) work at all, the only way it could is by getting the energy from some source or through some process not yet understood, but it still has to come from *somewhere*. Nowadays, the only areas like that not generally understood by the scientific community are subatomic processes and cosmological ones, yet the stated area of this "discovery" is basic electromagnetism like you get in high school. The odds of there being a basic principle of electromagnetism that leads to essentially "free" energy, that has not yet been discovered by the millions of scientists working in that field since it was first identified are essentially zero.
The two biggest clues as to this being a hoax or wishful thinking on the part of the inventor are:
1) A description of the process by which it works does not introduce, describe or seem to rely on, any new physics. (i.e. - cold fusion is much more likely)
2) A brief glance at the history of perpetual motion machines shows that a remarkably large percentage of them rely on the same principles espoused here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_perpetual
Chasing a magnet around a circle, unbalanced magnetic fields chasing themselves around circles, pendulums that are unbalanced by attraction to a magnet that moves around a circle, etc. etc.
Getting past the ad-heavy blogodreck, the company's actual web site is Steorn. There is a critical Wikipedia article on Steorn. The company has been making noises about this since last year.
Steorn says they can't patent the thing, and that's why they're so secretive, but the USPTO takes the position that perpetual motion machines are patentable. All they ask is a working model. Their official position is: "With the exception of cases involving perpetual motion, a model is not ordinarily required by the Office to demonstrate the operability of a device."
There have been some good fake perpetual motion machines. David Jones, who wrote as "Daedalus", for New Scientist, had a bicycle wheel on a stand which rotated endlessly with no visible source of power back in the 1990s. This was a really good demo. It was stolen from its display by some students, who returned it embarrassed that they couldn't figure out how it worked. It continued to rotate while they had it. One of his machines is at the Vienna Science Museum, still turning.
Maxwell's Demon called.
He wants a date for Thursday. Bring flowers.
Maybe you two together could tackle #3.
I think that most agree the perpetual motion is hogwash, but what if you could tap a force in nature that would never diminish (ie. gravity).
For instance.
Would it not be conceivable to create a (rather large) machine that had at the bottom a huge electrolysis tank where water was broken into its constituent components (hydrogen and oxygen). these gasses could then be piped to a height some great distance above where they are then burned to produce electricity. You would then have water at a great hight above the tank that could be allowed to fall through a series of turbines thus producing electricity. At some height the power produced by the falling water should overcome the net loss of the electrolysis process. Any additional height should produce extra power that could then be used for whatever we want.
Would this not be a viable way to tap gravity for the production of electricity?
Signed: Richard Easterling.
Sorry, I'm skeptical of anything which doesn't help me download pr0n faster from the innertubes.
Who is this delectable creature with an insatiable love of the dead?
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.
Wrong. The gravitational slingshot technique conserves energy, so it could not be the basis for a perpetual motion machine.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.
Don't be dense. Perpetual motion usually (as it does in this case) refers to a device that produces more energy than it consumes.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?]
I'm not an astrophysicist, but my understanding is that time also began in the big bang. It's not like one moment there was lots of mass and energy when there was none the previous moment. There was no previous moment.
Correction: you're not an intentional troll.No I haven't done anything but point out the truth and that isn't troll.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
This sounds a lot like Tom Bearden's MEG.
http://jnaudin.free.fr/meg/meg.htm
"Them"... the chosen ones who command the black helicopters and pink Humvees. Oh and Haliburton and the entire oil industry. Not to mention the worst of them: The International Tinfoil Hat Manufacturers Association.
Mumblemumblemumblemumble
Who is this delectable creature with an insatiable love of the dead?
We all know what will happen if it does not work. That's just plane boring to talk about. Also reading people make jokes about snake oil is boring too.
What's more interesting is to think of what WOULD happen if it were true. How would the politics of the world change? Would it plunge the world into war? Would peace brake out?
As a thought experiment independent of this being true how would the world change in 3 months, 6 months, 6 years if unlimited engergy was discovered?
This sounds like total BS to me.
You make it sound all scientific and such without being specific at all (just like the "inventors" as a matter of fact).
This is not a science project, nor an "investment group" and the application for a patent proves nothing at all.
This is a "device" being exhibited to the world for the first time in an Art Gallery for cripes sake!!!
Specifically, an art gallery well-known for edgy electronic "art" pieces. The odds are that this is a piece of performance art and nothing more.
In all the discussion of it on this forum, on Engadget and everywhere else, the authors of this fiasco don't even come close to describing anything in detail about any aspect of the device. It also closely conforms in form and function to a many many perpetual motion devices before it.
Having pulled some pranks myself and having been to art school, I can appreciate the idea behind it, but clogging up teh internets with this trash is a bit of a drag on everyone's time don't you think?
Why is this garbage even posted here? Is this site really run by idiots?
Infuriatingly stupid.
----------------- Oink. Moo. rarr! -----------------
I think that most agree the perpetual motion is hogwash, but what if you could tap a force in nature that would never diminish (ie. gravity). For instance. Would it not be conceivable to create a (rather large) machine that had at the bottom a huge electrolysis tank where water was broken into its constituent components (hydrogen and oxygen). these gasses could then be piped to a height some great distance above where they are then burned to produce electricity. You would then have water at a great hight above the tank that could be allowed to fall through a series of turbines thus producing electricity. At some height the power produced by the falling water should overcome the net loss of the electrolysis process. Any additional height should produce extra power that could then be used for whatever we want. Would this not be a viable way to tap gravity for the production of electricity? Signed: Richard Easterling.
I thought that this story came up last year, and it turned out that it was a scam to show how powerful their communications company is: i.e. how much press they can generate about the most obviously stupid idea they could come up with.
:-)
A guy I know in Prague did the same thing: he advertised a supermarket that gave away things for free, and all the adverts said "don't come, it's only a dream, it's not actually true"
and many many people went! It was only a billboard with a supermarket drawn on it. Very funny actually
here is the link: http://www.ceskatelevize.cz/specialy/ceskysen/en/
They will have 4 web cams on it and you can go take a look at it in person yourself. I have seen a few OU scams, but I don't remember anyone actually creating and publicly displaying a device and running it for 10 days straight in a public place with 4 web cams tracking it constantly. Remember super-conductivity - there was no theory to explain that for years but it worked experimentally perfectly well without one. I'll take a look with an open mind on this one I think.
In 2 year, people i the middle east will be having there damn stupid religious wars by throwing rocks at each other.
It's nice when someone who is getting billions a year supports your cause, but when that person revenue dries up, they won't retunr your calls.
If can fit into the trunk of a car and provide enough energy to operate the vehical, then you will see some profound effects on the enviroment.
War will still be there, but it will be cheaper,and use less personal..which is a good thing.
IF you can take advantge of quantum effects by changing the devices reference, then we ight actually see FTL, and Artifical gravity. Both of which would be very cool.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Good ole English confusing things and people again. We need to define some terms here.
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).
This team has their own investment money.
That's about the only part of it that is comforting to me: they're using their own investment money, or rather that they're NOT using government money. If people want to waste their own money, go at it. Fight "the man" (or whatever) with it. Prove a lot of the science throughout history has been wrong. Take your pick of goal. As long as it's YOUR money not mine! If they're right (which I HIGHLY doubt), then they'll be the richest people anywhere. If they're wrong, it'll come out as a scam sooner or later. Either way, not my money, and I can't do a lot about it either way anyways, so why stress about it?The only disturbing part to me is the "need" of many here to defend existing accepted physics theory. Personally I'm of the idea that if the existing laws are so great, they can stand up for themselves. Which I have little doubt is EXACTLY what will happen here. But a scientist must be willing to accept that anything that they "knew" could be wrong. A mountain of evidence and independent verification (many times over) will be needed to overturn anything so fundamental to our understanding of the world, but if it's done, I think that's great. Really I do, because it means that there's more to learn, and hopefully it'll bring about even more exciting discoveries.
But I don't expect it. It'll probably be proven to be a huge error or a deliberate fabrication. Any way it plays out, I'm just glad that it's private money, not mine!
It stay it is using changes in magnetic field, which is generate through earth rotation. It is using that change in magnetic field to create energy, kind of like wind power.
I'm rather skeptical myself, but since those guys are not exactly hiding behind some anonymous company, they may be sincere in believing they have invented the perpetuum mobile.
;-)
And if we are VERY lucky, it may be real.
So give it a few more weeks. Since Steorn have just announced they are ready for demonstrating their invention, its time for them to put up or shut up. Lets say until the end of August. If they can show proof by then, good. If not, I'll follow the others in this discussion who recommend to disregard them as frauds
C - the footgun of programming languages
The simple answer is no. Your system forms a closed loop and if you aren't losing mass at best you spend just as much energy getting the water back to the top as you gained from dropping it to the bottom. In reality you lose some energy through entropy, friction, etc.
This is a simple proof in Newtonian physics actually. Any integral of work over a closed loop in a gravitational field sums to 0 (in an ideal frictionless world).
"There's some really strong evidence that God isn't real. "
No, you can ont have evidence of something that doesn't exist.
What you can say it no experiment has ever produced a result.
Example:
A man next door is found stabbed to death while you were home alone sleeping.
Show me evidence that you didn't do it.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Erm, I hope this is a troll, but water masses *less* than its constituent hydrogen and oxygen, so you'd take more work to pipe them up than you gain from the falling water.
I am trolling
read the fine print
It's the loonies on the left that will fight this tooth-and-nail. I remember when Cold Fusion looked like it might actually happen. Clean, cheap energy in almost unlimited amounts. What happened? Jeremy Rifkin led the charge that any such development would be The Worst Thing Possible, because it would lead to more people since we would be able to make previously uninhabitable areas not only inhabitable, but even comfortable. I expect no less now.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Nothing to see, move along, move along, move along, move along, move along, move along...
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
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.
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
Barrier to entry for anybody to ever publish one of these stories should be having the "perpetual motion machine" turn a generator that powers a machine that makes more perpetual motion machines out of raw materials. When they can do that, then maybe we'll listen to their claims that there is no energy input.
If someone has been able to really make this work, well I'll be truely amazed.
Such a device does not have to be violating the laws of thermodynamics. For example, the device could be getting energy from somewhere via some mechanism we don't fully understand yet.
A hundred years ago nobody would have considered that you could get energy from mass via E=mc^2 and we'd be awfully arrogant as a species to think we have all of physics figured out.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I believe the poster was actually referring to Conservation of Slack. Slack can be neither created nor destroyed. That is why we must try to possess as much slack as possible in order to prevent it from being in places it does not belong.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Wasn't there something in that Roswell deathbed confession about a perpetual motion machine?
Did someone at the slashdot story submission approval have a brainfart? Why are they approving bullshit stories like the perpetual motion machines and Roswell? Somebody must feel they have to compete with Digg.
Santorum defined.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Tidal power. Massive amounts of water moving towards and away from shore, pulled mostly by the gravity of the moon.
Is it me or did everyone miss the fact that this is an ART EXHIBITION!? The guy just wants attention like every other artist. I'd say he's doing a great job at it, staying in character and everyone is talking about him. Its perfect as soon as its debunked he'll probably talk about how the whole thing was a social experiment on how people react to things they can't prove or some sh!t like that.
Stir the emotions of the technologists etc.
That's what it is.
Deleted
This particular one would not work. There are inefficiencies in every end of the stage that in all likelihood would add up to more energy lost than gained through the water falling through the turbine. The primary losses would be in the electrolysis and burning ends. Currently electrolysis of water has an efficiency of around 50%, give or take. Direct combustion of hydrogen to run a generator to supply electricity to run the electrolysis also has inefficiencies, as would any other technology I currently know of such as fuel cells. The efficiency of this end of the cycle would also be capped at around 50%. Study of Carnot heat engines would give a better insight into why this is the maximum under most reasonable circumstances. Overall the electrolysis/burning system would then be at maximum about 25% efficient. Other problems such as friction, efficiency of the turbine used for the falling water, etc would come into play such that I doubt that the hydroelectric dam style turbine would produce more than 3X the energy of the burning of liberated hydrogen and oxygen from the whole process. I haven't actually looked into those numbers to see how far the water would have to fall, but my gut reaction is that the drop would be large enough to make manufacture of such a system infeasible on any significant economic level.
Not to say that there is not some other system that could tap into gravitational energy, but my guess is that it would take a structure on the level of a space elevator to actually make it energy positive. And that would be a good idea anyways as lowering the ambient temperature of the top reaction end would indeed increase the efficiency of the Carnot engine portion of the system. However, frame dragging would probably be a much more practical phenomenon to exploit for energy once we are at that level of technology.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
A "free energy" machine is possible...there's vast amounts of power lying around the place if we could only convert matter simply/safely.
Looking at the picture in that article though, I doubt that's what he's referring to. He's just another loon with a perpetual motion machine.
No sig today...
You most definitely have existential belief that can't be proved.
Since your consciousness is completely in your brain, and your awareness of the outside world comes completely from your senses, there's no reason to believe that you're anything more than a "brain in a jar" connected to the matrix.
Worse than that, how do you know that anything outside your head exists? ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism ) After all, you already know dreams exist and that they are often indistinguisable from reality. By Occam's razor, the most logical assumption to make is that nothing outside your head exists.
Since proving that life is not a dream or that you're not connected to the Matrix depends on things outside your head, you can't prove either.
Now you could make the claim, "Well, I don't lose anything by believing in outside world and I have a lot to lose by ignoring the outside world (i.e. I could die)" but that's just another form of Pascal's Wager, which isn't a proof, just a mask for "faith". As is often pointed out, Pascal's Wager prevents you from living life to the fullest. Because of this "faith in the outside world", you don't even attempt to "escape the matrix" or "lucid dream your life the way you want it to be".
Whether that "faith" is a faith that the "universe not only exists by the laws are such that we could evolve to be what we are now" or that "faith" is the faith that we're essentially God's evolving dream (imagination is all that's required for creation in our own minds and nothing exists outside of God, so this is an apt analogy), is still irrelevant.
Faith is still faith.
Me, I'll stick to agnosticism of God and "faith" in the outside world.
Save the birds and the bees!
You can call it altruistic but you really need to
consider the long-term ramifications of an
infinite energy source.
If there was all of this abundant energy available,
it would be put to work, and the net result is heat.
Lots of it.
Homo Sapiens has already proven they can't manage
what they have now.
An infinite energy source would likely result in
massive global problems, likely not survivable.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
If it were true, does it occur to anyone that a simple perpetual motion machine might not be a good thing? If it were possible using readily available parts to produce a machine that produced more energy than it took in, and hence possible to generate unlimited amounts of energy, it would only be a matter of time before some psycho produced a blast that would rival the Chicxulub meteorite.
Whoa, my crackpot meter pegged with just the intro! Surely we can harness the heat from all this BS and solve our energy problems forever!
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
This attitude shows why you will always be single.
This demonstration has to do more than turn a wheel. It needs to turn a wheel, attached to a generator, creating enough current to light up a light bulb, all in a sealed enclosure.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Or are there really people that stupid and/or uneducated out there?
True, energy conservation, while stated as a law, is an observation and need not be true in all circumstances. It has, however, been very well tested and there is no indication at all that is may be inaccurate. On the other hand there is a large number of documented incidents were people fraudulently claimed they got around it....
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Not a troll. Just an inocent question. besides could you not fill the pipes with an inert gas that is heavier than either hydrogen or oxygen so that your hydrogen and oxygen would just naturally move to the top of the pipe.
I read the Steorn patent a while ago (the last time it was posted on /.), and I spotted the flaw pretty easily. The machine is meant to move a metal plate around to selectively block the magnetic field from a permanent magnet. If you could do that without using too much energy, then it would be a viable perpetual motion machine, but moving conductors around in magnetic fields takes precisely "too much" energy.
In hell, you will find a mountain of broken, feces-covered typewriters and a stack of copies of the First Folio.
What if you allowed gravity to lift the gasses by filling the pipes with an inert gas that is heaver than either hydrogen or oxygen?
In my experience if something seems too good to be true it generally is. I wouldn't get your hopes up.
What? Are you telling us to be skeptical? Shame on you! Who is paying you to hold back this technology! You've seen it and you still tell people don't "get you hopes up!" Do you have no principles! This is free energy man! It will get us off of Big Cheney's Big Oil Buddy's big oil industry! Cheney's been around for decades, making sure we never get free energy! Even Ayn Rand wrote about free energy. She believed it! Read her documentary work, "Atlas Shrubs". I once new a guy that had a machine that would replace the internal combustion engine with a hypervoltaic carbeurtor that would run on plain tap water! But Cheney stopped him! Forced him to file bankruptcy!
How much did Cheney pay you? Bush will not leave office, because Cheney will assassinate him. He will assassinate anyone who is behind free energy. Bush knows about free energy, and is about to sign executive order 1289 abolishing the big oil industry and giving free energy to everyone. But Cheney won't let him! Someone stop this!
It was Cheney and his Hallibuddies that blew up the World Trade Center! He personally fired a missile into the Pentagon to try to kill Rumsfield, but he missed! It's all true. It's all documented! All of the debunkers have been debunked, and those debunkers debunked, until we are left with the TRUTH! I heard it all on Alex Jones show. Cheney sacrifices little children at the Bohemian Grove and Bill maher watches! Alex Jones took an helicopter up and discovered aluminimum oxites so that proves that Cnehey will kill free energy.
The internal comubustion engine is UNCONSTITUTIONAL! There was a secret meeting in 1914 at Hyde Island where the oil men got together with the bankers and outlawed free engergy! this nation was founcted on freedom and we don';t have free engtery! This nation is not a corporation like they told you in the zionists schools its a sovereign confederations of colonies, and if you cross out the words "frederal reserve" on your dollar bills you will be free!
FREE ENERGY TO THE PEOPLE THE REVOLUTION STARTS NOW!!! DOWN TO THE LYING LAPDOGS OF LIBBY SLASHDOT!
So how is my post? Did I get the right amount of paranoia, spittle and spelling errors? Do you think the Truthers will finally let me into their club?
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
They had to release it 20 minutes ago (6pm ET), but they swiftly changed the message to say "Due to technical difficulties we will now be live from London on the 5th July."
What does that even mean..?
Jokers.
If they have technical difficulties it doesn't take a lot of effort to post a photo on flickr or the video on youtube, for Christ's sakes. The photo spread earlier is fake, and claimed to not be Orbo.
Over 8 million british pounds were invested in this company, and it's apparently all a giant scam, or joke.O
Let's not use any Energy that is not GPL'ed!!! Closed sources Energies are the cause of all evil!!!
"I think this line is mostly filler"
One more time, here are the rules.
1. You can't break even.
2. You can't win.
3. You can't quit.
While I will agree that "Nature hides in plain sight", any perpetual motion device violates the rules. About as close we could ever get to perpetual energy here on earth would be geothermal energy, but this is dependent on the Sun continuing to shine and the temperature on Earth not dropping to +3 degrees Kelvin.
I'm guessing this guy is reinventing the Motionless Electromagnetic Generator
In other words, yet another pseudo perpetual machine.
It is possible that this guy doesn't know his science, but I'm betting on a scam.
I hear that as a side effect it uses a revolutionary recursive routine to compresses *any* file stored near it down to 1 byte. Guaranteed lossless!
Nothing can stop Perpetual Energy machine!
Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to conviction
Note that the quoted part of the article says "time variation in magnetic fields". If there is a varying magnetic field, no laws of physics need to be violated to get energy out of it. It's not perpetual motion - it's extracting energy from whatever it causing the field to vary.
Brett
"consistently produce power, going against the law of conservation of energy which states that energy cannot be created or destroyed" 1- haven't magnetic devices like their's been made? 2- the devices don't create or destroy energy it just uses what's there like wind turbines. right? Any explanations
It can't produce usable power from the gravity/magnetic fields of the Earth, Sun, or galaxy. They're present, but they're all far too diffuse.
That said, it's not impossible someone figured out how to draw a very tiny amount of power, enough to perhaps make something tiny spin to show "it's working!"
But I'm guessing permanant magnets. Those Sonship guys were selling those forever, along with the magic laundry ball.
Some guy has a web page that says the real value of PI is exactly 3... why don't you splash that up on the front page? ;-)
DO NOT WANT
I'm sure I'll generate some controversey, but Good On Them! This is entertainment. Those REALLY in the know will ignore it. No harm done. Those less in the know will discuss it which is normally interesting for all the opinions expressed. Those least in the know will be conned, which is normally very amusing to everyone else. In the most unexpected scenario its actually true, in which case everybody wins regardless. So bar some embarassment over people being suckered when they should know better, which in reality is a positive learning experience, this is all great! More please!
~Pev
'consistently produce power, going against the law of conservation of energy which states that energy cannot be created or destroyed.' If your bullsh*t detector didn't beep like crazy when you read this line, there's no hope for you.
And i refuse to think about a specific scheme of magnets or wires flying around in funny schemes. If you move something magnetic into a magnetic field, the energy content of the field changes. You either put Energy into it or the Field decreases, if the magnet is dragged into it. One way to put energy back in the field is by increasing a coil current, the other is mechanical work you have to do by removing the magnetic thing from the field. To say it clearly: As long as we assume a homogeneus time of the whole space, invariant c, then there is no way to gain energy from a H=|B|^2+|E|^2 field. If the magnet wiggles to fast you will lose energy.
BTW: As long as they have the fucking scheme of them selecting the scientists and still no Peer review (a peer revie includes that you can not select who evalutes you work) nor are willing to publish, selecting scientists is just a PR hoax. No serious physicist would work under these conditions. Usually finding the flaws in a perpetuum mobile is a good exercise for first semester students.
Didn't Benjamin Franklin debunk this thing in his study of Mesmerism and the power of magnetism? More than two hundred years later and we still have magnetic scams. I'm also suprised that the USA still produces scams as amusing as the stuff Mark Twain used to write about - but since anti-intellectualism is the trend and education is in a poor state I shouldn't be suprised. A simple but thorough science education would help equip the next generation with better bullshit detectors.
If it's not, it's not going to work. Sorry, try again.
On the other hand, maybe this guy has found a novel way to extract energy from the environment. Time was, we didn't know how to turn sunlight into electricity. Now we do.
Time will tell.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Whether God exists depends on how it is defined.
Two working definitions I use as plug-in substitutes for "God", both of which definitely do exist, are "love" and "something we don't understand".
An easy one is the crystal radio. You're getting power from the transmitter. Make an array of crystal radios, on different frequencies, gang them together... hey, now you're getting a good deal of power!
The Earth's magnetic field wanders. Use that.
There are various gyroscopic-like things related to the Earth's orbit and rotation, particlarly having to do with things not being all planar. Use that.
I mean, even if we get >90% and eventually tweak this to 99.9999875%, would we be able to tell the difference?
My improvement idea for that.
Fuel cell at the top.
My Transformation Website
Kindle Books http://www.catprog.org/rev
Interactive CYOA http://www.catprog.org/st
Quoted from the article: "Update 5: Jeebus, what a non-event. Even though they wield supreme control over the laws of physics, Steorn had to cancel tonight's event "due to technical difficulties." We'd laugh if it wasn't so pathetically tragic. The live stream is now rescheduled ambiguously to the 5th July. Now move along folks, there's nothing to see here." Looks like this device is no different from any of the others, with the creators saying lines like, "Oops. It stopped. Must be some technical difficulties", or "Those wires coming out of my pocket? Those are just loose threads!".
The fundamentals of magnetics and gravity are not even yet well understood and definitely have not been understood for hundreds of years. Their behaviour is reasonably well understood, but not the mechanism behind them.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Plank time, baby.
That's how fast you have to be.
I call bullshit on the ignorant article
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Then you're actually talking about buoyancy doing the lifting, not gravity. Unfortunately, gasses don't tend to stratify, they tend to mix. So now you have the complication of separating your hydrogen and oxygen from your inert gas before they recombine on their own. Sorry to be a buzzkill, but you generally don't get something for nothing.... damn thermodynamics anyway.
The only(?) perpetual motion machines that can be built on a small scale are coriolis machines. Way back in the 19th and early 20th centuries is was a fad to build perpetual clocks with horizontally rotating pendulums that stole energy from the earth's rotation to power themselves. The amount of power extracted is very small though and requires careful leveling of the clock. Also, they won't work in the tropics or at the poles. They only work in intermediate latitudes.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Your great grand parents may very well have had a Coriolis clock on the mantel piece. Those devices extract a tiny amount of energy from the earth's rotation using a horizontally rotating pendulum so you never need to wind them - you just give the clock a slight shake to get it going and balance it carefully using a built-in spirit level and set screws. My grand parents had one. These are very delicate things of course and the effect is not useful for powering anything more than a jewel bearing clock, but that should teach you to never to say never, let alone shout it.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
One high tide is the ocean being pulled toward the Moon. Twelve hours later it's being thrown away from the Earth by centrifugal force. The Earth-Moon system rotates around a point 1,000 miles below sea level. Tidal braking is however why the Moon always faces the Earth.
This is the "Steorn" company's technology that has been floating around for almost 2 years now, they just renamed the product to Orbo. It is supposedly in scientific validation now. The only thing I say they have going from them is not accepting any outside investment or selling stock etc. So really, if it's a hoax, its the dumbest and one of the most expensive ones ever since they've spent millions on obtaining patents for the tech all over the world. I think they truly believe they have found free energy accidentally, whether they have or not..that remains to be seen.
"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." - Tennyson
Windmills harness the power of air moving under force from both solar and the Earth's rotation. One of the oldest transducers known to industry, after the waterwheel.
--
make install -not war
and who fills the pipes? maxwell's daemon?
There is a *surprising* update on their website about the live feed:
Update 4/7/07 23:30 - Due to slight technical difficulties we will now be publishing the live stream as of Thursday 5th July.
http://www.steorn.com/news/releases/?id=1001Is he willing to open up the design so anyone can duplicate his results?
No? Then he is a charlatan!
This is the one sure test of any bogus science!
I'll buy that!
Touche.
....if at least a few perpetual energy machines do actually work VERY WELL. They may not be perpetual, but work really darn well.
But then you have all these big power companies that can stand to lose a lot, if not all their profits, to that perpetual machine. They could possibly play a role in making these machines and inventors disappear off the face of the Earth. I recently watched a movie called "Who Killed the Electric Car", a documentary film. If you have not seen it, go rent it. Now.
I have to admit, the Law of Conservation of Energy is pretty solid. I am sure it will eventually be possible to make such a machine, but not in another several thousand years if not millions of years. The Law of Conservation of Energy will need to be revised. Look at how long it took us to get into Space when the first sentient humans first gazed at the Heavens. I am sure our ancestors thought it were impossible to go out into Space. Look at us now.
Give the human race some credit. We may not find a perpetual motion/energy machine now, but eventually. If we don't destroy ourselves first that is. Maybe someday we'll find The Creator (whomever you believe in).....no really. Perhaps The Creator is probably trying to make a perpetual energy/motion machine now I bet. After He/She/It succeeds, then we'll get the hand-me-down version. The simplest design tends to be the most logical and effective. It may involve a rock, some strings and a stick, who knows. But one thing is for sure, where there is a will, there is a way.
Now...where did I leave my time machine???......
Oh the whole reality of God debate is just shot through with absurdities. Is a poem untrue because it asserts an impossibility? Is a novel a falsehood because it's truths were imagined by an author and constructed from dreams and visions?
The theism/atheism/agnosticism discussion generally relies on such a limited understanding of what religion is that it becomes simply boring.
The truth of God is the truth of poetry and imagination and emotion. God texts are literature. You are free to argue that all literature is equally a religious text, or to say that your pleasure is to elevate one particular text to a place of particular importance in your life and culture.
Either way, the religious position is no different at root from the theater or literature... it is a collective decision to take a literature or book very seriously and to live out a version of the truths found therein.
Broadway theater is a place of a dozen separate religions, each experienced for a few hours, and each lasting as long as the show runs.
Some people prefer the silly truths, other people prefer the deeper truths, from within a given literature (eg. fundamentalist Christians and thoughtful Christians.) But the argument against religion always comes down to an argument against literature, poetry and imagination, and to a claim that the scientific method produces "truths" while literature poetry and imagination produce "lesser truths" or "falsehoods."
That in itself is a failure of the imagination, and proves that people haven't had very good liberal arts educations.
Scientific atheists waste their time trying to prove that poems are untrue, or that if they are "true", they are not true in the sense that really matters. Well excuse me but poetry might be even truer than physics, and it is certainly true in a different way from physics, and that is all that religion is and has ever been. Lived poetry. People choosing to live out a particular set of loved and communally shared poems.
Within the poetic religious domain there is plenty of room for argument about beauty and ethics and which poems produce more happiness for more people.
But just forget please about silly arguments about how poetry isn't as true as science because that is all that most religion versus science, theism versus atheism, debates come down to in my experience.
Peace.
Is this the joke where we wrap the skeletons of Edison, Watt, Ampre, Einstein, Newton, and the like with magnets - and then wrap copper wires around them to generate power by them turning in their graves?
Neil is that you? Yeah yeah, it's me... Neil...
Now if we could only harness dark energy, we could slow the universe expansion and power my computers at the same time.
'Time variance in magnetic fields'? Even if this wasn't simply a bungled up phrace (variance is something from statistics, he probably means 'variation' or 'variability' - or even 'fluctuation'), tapping energy from variations in magnetic fields is nothing new, nor does it violate any physical laws. Indeed, if you have a radio or tv, you are already tapping energy from 'time variations in the magnetic field': the radiowaves. Admittedly not a lot of energy, but certainly a lot more than what you would find in most natural fields on Earth. In fact, you can tap significant amounts of energy if you live close enough to a big radio transmitter; whether you are allowed to is another matter, of course.
About the only "free" energy that we can get is solar, especially spaceborne solar. Too bad no one wants to invest in it.
+++ATH0
Supposedly magentic viscosity (which has been known for 100+ years) make the magnetic interraction non symetric (fast out/slow in approach of the magnet) and that this somehow break down noether theorem in some configuration, allowing them to gain potential energy when they had none =>OU. This is what they say on their forum.
I think this is a bunch of hooey , and they have not demonstrated any configuration into which magnetic viscosity is ANYTHING but an energy-loss option.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Oh, this is just too much fun!
Everybody is cranking out lots of criticisms and such, but you just know everybody is still going to be paying attention on July 5th!
Typically with over-unity claims which actually make the news, there is a big press release and gab-fest, and then a few weeks later the inventor vanishes from view never to be heard from again.
I recall one gentleman in Japan, Kohei Minato, three years back who had managed to garner a lot of positive press with his funky spinning wheels. He had an Irish minister of some sort pay him a visit and descriptions of his free-spinning wheel are really cool. (The coolest item is in the last fifth of the page at the bottom.) He generated some modest interest in 2004 when a journalist was significantly impressed with his work and published an article (copied at the link above). I wonder what happened to Mr. Minato. I've not heard a peep about him since then. If he's in jail, it's not the kind you get put in for fraud, because then there would be some record of his being prosecuted. Perhaps its one of those special prisons they have for people who dare to tap into some forbidden energy source the petrochem companies don't want anybody to know about. There are tales of inventors being kidnapped at gunpoint. I know a guy who worked for an agency whose job it is to kill scientists. But hey, shhhhh. Stuff like is entirely not real. I'm only joking. Really. Joking. Shhhh. Plausible deniablility. Cuz the guy is just gone. There's nothing on the man that isn't three years old.
Well, actually, I did hear one peep. There was a fellow inquiring after Minato, claiming to have last seen him in Japan in December of 2006. Apparently, Mr. Minato has been offered a production facility in another country. But that could be just the background noise of the grand ol' internet. Who's to say?
Anyway. . , if this Orbo thing is a scam, you can bet it's a great one. Their showing has been really patient and well-crafted thus far. I'm so happy they're still around a year after their first announcement. I mean, think about how much effort is being expended here; it involves a large number of people who are all towing the line. Scientists, and production staff, and PR people. If this is a scam, it's much, much larger than any other over-unity claim, which usually only involve one or two people working in a garage. According the the wonderful world of wikkipedia, Steorn invited a democratically selected member of a forum to visit their facility, and they wowed her with a bunch of smoke and mirrors. This is so rich! Damn, I'm excited!
I wonder, if it's all scammy, how they've worked out how to not go to jail for fraud? Is it illegal to lie to your investors? Maybe they'll all claim it was just an elaborate test of the PR abilities, a cosmic joke to see who they could fool, and that really, no money changed hands. Who knows?
Or if they've got some kind of device on their hands which draws energy from somewhere else, like the Earth's magnetic field as some have suggested, then. . , hey, is that cool or what? They've done enough high-profile press work to perhaps not get vanished. (Though I wouldn't count on it.) Either way, Steorn is putting on a helluva neat show. This is pulp science at its best! It reminds me of my favorite period in fiction; the late 1700's, early 1800's, when steam and flying contraptions and "Watson, get the pistols!" was the way science was conducted. A showing of a revolutionary new technology in an art gallery? Are you serious?! Well, damn, let me get my top hat and cane! These days are sorely lacking adventure in science. Too few pith helmets and too much slick corporate chrome.
So, rock-on, Steron! I can't wait to see what you pull out of your hat! And if you actually have something genuine, a word of advice: Opensourcing it would keep you from getting killed by the Bad Men. If you don't have
I'm a good judge of character..and these guys strike me as, at minimum, sincere. I want badly for it to be true -- bring on the Holodeck next -- and replicators! I'm ready for the future!
However, the proof of the pudding is under the crust. Have a look a their Disclaimer, which says it all:
"Steorn and its suppliers further do not warrant the accuracy or completeness of the information, text, graphics, links or other items contained within the Materials or Ideas."
Indeed.
That is true. However, it is important to have balance. Slashdot is "news for nerds," but in recent years, it has reported on internet trolls, Britney Spear's beaver, and scammers' wild claims. There are certain things that just shouldn't be reported here, and unproven claims that we are pretty sure are impossible is one of them.
If you report everything, the noise-to-signal ratio will be so large that it will be unreasonably difficult to find anything of value. If I wanted to read about wild claims, I would go to crackpot.com. On the other hand, I did click on this story...
Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
"It stumped scientists for years. Finally, one exceptionally observant woman discovered, hidden in the base, a tiny cold-fusion reactor."
"You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson
Yes please, the 'logic' in GP post is all wrong.
"Perpetual Energy Machine Getting Lots of Attention"
Yes, aided and abetted by Slashdot.
Here's a clue, editors: if a story contains the phrase "perpetual [energy, motion]" then your best bet is to delete the submission immediately. Either that or file it in the correct "Monty Python foot" category.
is for them to enter it for James Randi's million-dollar challenge.
Those guys are very good at designing test protocols to weed out scammers and the deluded.
Peer-review in physics journals by all means, but let a conjuror get his hands on it first.
Cress, cress, lovely lovely cress
Apologies, Jim.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
Obligatory: http://xkcd.com/c123.html
It says on Engadget that the demonstration has been cancelled.
God, don't you understand? You and everyone else supporting solar energy will be the death of us all. If you use solar energy, YOU USE THE ENERGY OF THE SUN! You're using up the sun, and if you use up all of it, it'll blow out! What are we going to do THEN, mr. Smartypants?
Stop the insanity! Stop using solar cells!
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
Ok, I give up. How does one moderate the *original*article* as flamebait?
C
No; to get the hydrogen/oxygen to go into such a pipe at the bottom, you'd have to pump them in forcefully, with as much energy as it would take to move them up by other means. Seriously, creation of energy doesn't happen, and because mass is conserved gravity is never going to give you any; the amount you could. If you want free energy for human purposes, work on efficient solar panels, or nuclear fusion; there are plenty of places where we know there's enough energy if we can just solve the engineering problems of getting it. But gravity is not in itself a source of energy.
I am trolling
Not too surprised at this unfortunate rating you've recieved. You really do have to play to the system to get the mod points right and rise above the astroturfers, jokers and dim wits. I"m glad I was browsing at -1 as usual. Now I'm actually interested in this.
This company is an embarassment to the Irish people, please accept my apologies for being Irish at this time.
ok, at the risk of sounding terminally optimistic, lets wait until these claims have been completely debunked before we toss the idea to the dogs. At the very least, they didn't have to do a public demonstration of this phenomenon (lets call it that for the moment), yet they did and furthermore, the results of 22 independent international scientists will do more than even our most scathing sarcasm to invalidate these claims. I am course Irish and biased (:-}
prepare the survey weasels.
The concept of creation requires the existence of a spacetime continuum. When God created the universe, if there was a spacetime continuum God was into, then God was finite at the moment of creation.
It just shows how manmade religions are.
Impossible, as this goes against the laws of perpetual spamnamics.
Karma: Bad is the liberal way of saying this guy won't drink the kool aid here on slash dot. I wear my Karma with pride
G-Force music visualization
Steorn's spinning wheel demo doesn't prove much, as the parent points out. If, on the other hand, Steorn could boil a cup of water, it would be worth paying a lot more attention.
Permanent magnets have high internal (magnetic) energy. It is possible that the very small amount of energy needed to keep the wheel spinning is at the expense of a small reduction in the magnetisation of the permanent magnets.
Read some of his replies. This guy got the rating he deserved.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
Anyone who claims a device that violates the laws of thermodynamics should be ignored.
They are either lying or don't understand what's going on in their equipment, or both.
At least in this universe...
>>> "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."
Except if god exists outside of time and thus is immutable in 4-dimensions (and possibly changing in other dimensions). Thus god could still be "perfect" (by your definition of perfection being immutable). Your argument is like a flat-earther saying you can't sail west and get to the east - God doesn't need to change to accomodate the arrow of time because he already has perceived/permitted/manufactured the change and changed accordingly ahead of time. Your (and so I guess Spinoza's) argument is temporally bound and assumes that the god in question is also; ridiculous.
Anyway, that aside: If the weather today is perfect (for me, say I'm going skiing and want unblown snow) that doesn't mean that the same weather tomorrow is perfect (for me, when I'm going sailing and want wind and sun). The original state of the weather was perfect, the changed state of the weather is perfect (for me!), the state of "perfect weather" need not have altered if considered as a single form in a four dimensional space.
Oh and where in the Bible does it say God is separate? God, by the Holy Spirit is certainly _not_ defined as separate but instead is permeating (as an ether). Nor is God entirely singular, being triune. You open up the possibility by saying something must contain God (though outside of space-time what is containment?) to the notion of God containing both Himself and the universe.
PS: When you say God is singular, do you mean he has no "god-friends" or is this a reiteration of his immutablilty?
Why, pray tell, would we want to equip the next generation with better bullshit detectors? It's hard enough to pass our bullshit off as it is.
"I've spent my whole life figuring out crazy ways to do things. It'll work." -- Montgomery Scott, "Relics"
Seriously when you hear a claim of a perpetual motion machine, then at the instant that you hear the word magnet, you should think scam.
m50d got it right. If this had worked, there would be no need using electrolysis and all that stuff. Just fill a pipe with water and put a balloon (or something else with mass between that of air and water) in the system. The balloon goes into the pipe at the bottom, exits at the top, falls through a turbine and goes into the pipe again. Voilá, endless energy. Sounds a bit suspicious, doesn't it. The catch is of course, as m50d spells out, that the balloon cannot enter the pipe without expending energy.
I think you can simplify the laws of thermodynamics and why they are uncompromisable using common experience. For example, a mug of hot coffee in a room-temperature environment will never absorb heat from its cooler surroundings and become even hotter. Or, if you place a waterwheel half way down a waterfall, you can only extract at most half of the gravitational potential energy. I get the impression that the so-called inventors of perpetual motion machines look at the equations and say to themselves "oh that is just meaningless math mumbo-jumbo, I can find a physical means around them! After all, scientists have been wrong about stuff in the past!"
Lots of hype NO proof.
How about a real "perpetual energy" machine a la Newman's generator? It's not really a perpetual device, just uber efficient. I saw it featured on Beyond Invention on the Science Channel last night. Two interesting points; the government sabotaged his demonstration by grounding it and the patent office refuses to give him a patent for his design. He was also purportedly offered $200 million for the design, but refused without a guarantee that the generator would be produced for public use. He's had it scrutinized by dozens of scientists and engineers who've signed affidavits, so there must be something to it.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Mostly for two reasons:
1.) The very nature of perpetual motion requires the output energy must at least equal the input energy without an increase in entropy. Since such a process is forbidden under thermodynamics, it will always be quoted when someone claims to have violated it.
2.) Even though thermodynamics is quoted in many discussions of evolution, it is only ever by people who do not understand either and who are usually quickly and harshly corrected by people who do, making them less likely to bring it up in future discussions.
http://www.mhall119.com
Stop picking on Santa Claus! I bet he's up there with God now, shaking his head at you...it's coal for you this year buddy.
Oh really? Where, pray tell, do you pretend that Jupiter will land, should this occur?
Just... wow. Slashdot is full of nutcases!
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I'm no physicist, but I think the rough answer is that people would have to be really dumb to use the 2nd law of thermodynamics as an argument against evolution, not just because they'd be wrong, but because they'd be arguing against the existence of life in the first place. (Seriously - all living organisms have to stave off the effects of the 2nd law of thermodynamics, it's fundamental to their survival. The reason they don't violate it is that the processes involved create more entropy elsewhere.)
the geological magnetic flux at sealevel traveling through a footprint the size of the device (say 25 square feet) is not even close (by a few orders of magnitude) to the power that can be supplied by some alkaline batteries. Something like 1.2 webers?
So I don't think that's it.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I lol'd.
divided instead of multiplied there. So if due to the swirling magman in the Earth's core, if the magnetic field were to do a complete 180 (pole flip, not a variation) in one second (impossible), you could get an EMF of .00034 volts through a coil around that 25 square foot area.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
You need some edjamacatin' there AC : The second law does not apply to evolution because we have lots of energy coming into the system. Most of that is from the Sun, some if from the heat of the earth's interior. A perpetual motion machine has to create as much or more energy than it expends, with no help from the outside.
From TFA: Here we go, after months of doubt over claims of a magnetic machine promising "infinite clean energy," Steorn will be putting their wares on display for public scrutiny in London. A physics defying perpetual machine, if you will. Starting tomorrow, rumor has it that the Kinetica museum will host the Orbo device for a ten day long public demonstration of the technology. We're expecting a formal announcement at 6pm 11pm London (1pm 6pm New York). iPhone shmiPhone, this is going to be good. Update 1: Still nothing from Steorn yet, but Irish RTE News has also "confirmed" the impending announcement. Moreover, a "very simplified version" of the technology will be viewable by streaming media over the Intertubes. So get ready kids, they say you'll be able to watch janky video of a prototype "lifting a weight" from four different angles starting at 6pm London Eastern Time. Otherwise, you can view the device live at Kinetica from Thursday 5 July to Friday 13 July. Update 2: First picture of the mystical device! [Thanks, Jordy] Update 3: 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." Whoa. Link to demonstration site now added below. Update 4: Well, 6pm London time has come and gone. However, Steorn's site now says that the video will go live at 6pm "Eastern Time." Apparently, their demo is aimed at the US. A fossil-fuel Independence Day? Riiiiight. Update 5: Jeebus, what a non-event. Even though they wield supreme control over the laws of physics, Steorn had to cancel tonight's event "due to technical difficulties." We'd laugh if it wasn't so pathetically tragic. The live stream is now rescheduled ambiguously to the 5th July. Now move along folks, there's nothing to see here.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
"Will output up to 400%" :D
I think this claim sums it up.
400% of nothing must be Nullity^0 = Nada*nothing
Btw. Dont you love their lame excuse to canceling todays exhibition of the device?
Oh Contraire!
Nihilism means nothing to the dancing peasants
Well, just like the claims of atheists that the existence of God has been disproven, the Orbo machine is turning out to be a hoax.
BTW - to truly prove that God doesn't exist you would have to prove that our universe is a closed system that needs no outside agent to come into existence or to operate as it has since the beginnning of time, and THEN prove that nothing outside of the observed universe can exist.
Until you can do BOTH - the best you can show is that the existence of God is unnecessary to explain a particular phenomenon.
"The only analogy I can give is if you had absolute proof that God wasn't real."
How would that be a good thing?
He was specifically quoted as saying it contradicts conservation of energy.
Now perhaps it actually exploits changing magnetic fields (which require energy to change) in a way he doesn't actually understand, so he's claiming the energy is coming from no where, but my vote is it's a complete scam and he knows it.
I wonder if the inventor has been accosted by men in black suits yet ;)
Because in looking at Randi's rules for the $1M challenge (here), #12 states "This offer is not open to any and all persons. Before being considered as an applicant, the person applying must satisfy two conditions: First, he/she must have a "media presence," which means having been published, written about, or known to the media in regard to his/her claimed abilities or powers. This can be established by producing articles, videos, books, or other published material that specifically addresses the person's abilities. Second, he/she must produce at least one signed document from an academic who has witnessed the powers or abilities of the person, and will validate that these powers or abilities have been verified." (the rules have very recently -- as of just this past Sunday -- been revised, and I suspect this is one of the recent revisions.)
This space intentionally left (almost) blank.
It looks nothing like the REAL perpetual motion machine I designed and scratched on paper in junior high. If I just had any mechanical aptitude I would build it and make a lot of money.
http://www.astream.com/live/steorn/camera4.html Despite them canceling the demo yesterday, and saying they are closed today, some cameras are working . You can't see anything interesting except for the area where they will apparently mount the device. Oh, and apparently people who believe in Perpetual Motion machines use Apple computers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toe_the_line
=S
Atheism is a religion like being bald is a hair colour.
In my defense I was reading the thread backwards, starting at bottom (having accidentally hit "End" on the keyboard); I missed the parent and grandparent posts. I'm sure the satire would have been much more evident (and funny too) had I not read it so.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Well, you could show it to Muslims and make them stop blowing themselves up. Show it to Christians and get stem cell research off the ground. Show it to atheists and they would roll their eyes ('I saw that years ago').
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
> people would have to be really dumb to use the 2nd law of thermodynamics as an argument against evolution,
Or just be arguing to not-as-dumb people looking for a quick rationalization they don't have to think much about. I mean holy cow, google for "evolution peanut butter" and hit the youtube link. Anyone actually believing at face value the argument presented without having it boosted by denial, intellectual dishonesty, and cognitive dissonance, probably doesn't even have enough command of language to understand the argument.
Anyway, the earth is blasted by the sun with billions upon billions of joules of energy at every moment. Not what you would call a "closed system".
Maybe it's just cleverly harnessing all that pent up sexual energy out there and turning it into electricity. We don't notice it yet because they've only got a prototype, but if this is rolled out worldwide we'll all lose our libidos!
;-)
(I do take the piss here, BTW.)
"I hope you like Guinness, Sir. I find it a refreshing substitute for, er... food." Col. Jack O'Neil, SG-1
thanks!
From the Steorn site on 6th July 2007 5.00 GMT
"We are experiencing some technical difficulties with the demo unit in London. Our initial assessment indicates that this is probably due to the intense heat from the camera lighting. We have commenced a technical assessment and will provide an update later today. As a consequence, Kinetica will not be open to the public today (5th July). We apologise for this delay and appreciate your patience."
Scamming at its best.
Is it just me or does his site bear some resemblance to our friends at http://www.timecube.com/ ?
White background - check
Red and blue text with lots of bold and under-lining - check
Rambling, quasi-religious writing going against overwhelming scientific opinion - check
Laid out in one massively tall, single column page - check
Graphics stolen from a circa 1996 Geocities website - check
If we somehow combined these two, the offspring would be the crackpot ubermensch
"Cheeze it!" - Bender
I believe in Germany there exists a regulation saying that this kind of stuff cannot be patented - to shield the patent offices from the patent request of all those who "invent" some kind of perpetuum mobile (which are believed to be impossible to build ).
are there similar regulations know in other countries ?
regards