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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?
>>"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.
...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.
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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?
Although I agree with your statement for the most part, It is short sided to say "NEVER EVER EVER NEVER NEVER EVER". There have been a lot of things that scientist (and others) claimed could never happen, just to be proven wrong in the future (ie we can never go faster than the speed of sound). We have a few hundred years,if that, of "modern" science under our belts. In a few million years, our level of knowledge will be a lot closer to a caveman then a scientist. Never say never.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
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....
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.
Tidal power. Massive amounts of water moving towards and away from shore, pulled mostly by the gravity of the moon.
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.
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.
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make install -not war
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.)