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Perpetual Energy Machine Getting Lots of Attention

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the swimming-in-snake-oil dept.

Many users have written to tell us about a magnetic machine promising "infinite clean energy". Engadget has the first picture of the device and is reporting that the announcement (along with a short video) of this supposed device will be released later tonight. "CEO Sean McCarthy tells SilconRepublic how it works. Namely, the time variance in magnetic fields allows the Orbo platform to 'consistently produce power, going against the law of conservation of energy which states that energy cannot be created or destroyed.' He goes on to say 'It's too good to be true but it is true. It will have such an impact on everything we do. The only analogy I can give is if you had absolute proof that God wasn't real.'" In my experience if something seems too good to be true it generally is. I wouldn't get your hopes up.

17 of 965 comments (clear)

  1. As they say... by Seumas · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

    1. Re:As they say... by stonecypher · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Seriously, why is anyone outside of Art Bell and George Noorey even giving this guy the time of day?
      Because several times, legitimate scientists have said this, really believing what they were saying, and the resulting systems were frequently quite difficult to understand in terms of deciphering the flaw.

      It's a lot like when people used to let high school math coaches claim to have solved Fermat's Little Theorem. We all knew they didn't, but there's a lot to be said for the puzzle of locating the coaches' mistakes.

      Now, like you, I think this guy is a snake oil shill, as opposed to someone making a legitimate error. Nonetheless, I find his device bizarrely fascinating specifically because I don't see his particular cheat just yet. And, as such, I'm glad to have exposure to the nonsense. It's fun.
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    2. Re:As they say... by Seumas · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Here is how you know when a perpetual energy machine is fake (aside from the fact that it is supposedly a perpetual energy machine):

      If you invented something like that, you would be in secret negotiations with governments, militaries and major corporations. You wouldn't be wasting your time with youtube demonstrations and internet articles. You'd be involved in secret demonstrations with signed NDAs all around and massive bidding wars.

    3. Re:As they say... by profplump · · Score: 4, Insightful

      unless acted upon by an outside force

      An outside force you say. Would someone trying to steal its kinetic energy to generate energy possibly be such a force?

      Just wondering.

    4. Re:As they say... by dinther · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Why would you want to remove a story you perceive as untrue? It sounds just as ridiculous as religious folks wanting to remove posts that God doesn't exist. The statement is made and now you either ignore it or deal with it. Don't call for this statement to be denied to others after you received it.

    5. Re:As they say... by megaditto · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I accept that other opinions exist, but that's not the point here. The point I am making is that these guys are apparently pushing out a vaporware at best or more likely a large-scale scam:

      1) They fail to exhibit a schematic for the device. And no, this would not hurt their chances of getting a patent at least in US: they can get a provisional patent almost automatically, then spend a year improving their research.

      2) They fail to submit to peer review of any kind. Again, it's in their interests to publish this as soon as they can, since this would also automatically establish their priority and give them a year to continue research and apply for a patent (and will not count as prior art for their patent for that one year).

      3) They fail to do any kind of transparent demonstration of their claims. Now they won't even release a video that they filmed themselves! FTFA: "Well, 6pm London time has come and gone. However, Steorn's site now says that the video will go live at 6pm "Eastern Time.""

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    6. Re:As they say... by immel · · Score: 5, Insightful

      We do harness the kinetic energy of the larger bodies of the solar system for practical use. One more obvious use of this is tidal power (generated by slowly affecting the kinetic energy of the Moon, IIRC, and harnessed by small turbines in coastal areas). One less obvious use of this is the planetary flyby technique used by spacecraft. By decreasing the velocity of Jupiter by [insert mathematically insignificant number here], a small space probe can go into a Jovian orbit at one velocity and exit this orbit at a significantly higher one in a different direction while using virtually no fuel.

      I'm not sure what you mean by the "energy storage" with natural magnets and rotational kinetic energy (Remember, the vast majority of ferrous material on this planet, and thus the source of the Earth's magnetic field, is in the core, not the crust), but there are techniques for using the Earth's magnetic field to produce energy. I saw a test of an apparatus on the NASA channel (Now that's good television) which used the spacecraft's movement through Earth's magnetic field to induce a current in a tether outside the spacecraft, which they then used to power stuff on board the spacecraft. But this was still not "free energy", because the magnetic field generated by the current interacted with that of Earth and decreased the spacecraft's velocity and altitude (as expected by NASA engineers and the law of conservation of Energy). This was mostly recoverable, though, because feeding current the other way through the cable increased the spacecraft's altitude again. The only way to get current out of a magnetic field is to move charged particles through it, which is convenient, because everything is made of charged particles. Energy must be expended to get those charged particles in motion in the first place, and once the current has been generated, the kinetic energy of the charged particles drops to zero.

      My point is, even by harnessing the kinetic energy or magnetic properties or what have you of the cosmos, you do affect them in a small way. Try that fly-by trick enough, and Jupiter will fall out of orbit. Some energy in space looks "free", but in actuality it's really just "insanely cheap" energy.

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    7. Re:As they say... by node+3 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Technically IIRC, this would not violate the laws. There is an outside force acting on it in the form of the magnetic fields. The real test of the devices is if it can create more power before the magnets degauss than it takes to create the machine and magnets. That depends. From the description it sounds like just another impossible machine. The only way it could both operate as described and fit what you are saying is if they are tapping into the Earth's magnetic field and drawing energy from it.

      On a side note, the demonstration has been canceled due to technical issues. I suppose "is impossible" would qualify as a technical issue.
    8. Re:As they say... by dinther · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "Giving credibility to stories like this lowers the signal-to-noise ratio."

      Agreed. But who decides what is signal and what is noise? Majority? This machine is most likely a stunt or scam. But so is the "Global warming" myth but that doesn't stop articles about it.

      Wading through the noise is not pleasant but you get to choose what is noise and what is signal. It is this wading and deciding that truly makes you informed. Not right but informed. The alternative is that a few censors get to rule what is noise or signal. Decisions based on the views of an uninformed majority (The earth is flat) or the views of a few with an agenda. Either way, without noise you never know what the signal is.

  2. If it were real... by Chris+Snook · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...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.

    --
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  3. Re:Mr. Madison... by Coryoth · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That's just completely incoherent - the law of conservation of energy is that the total energy in a closed system is constant OVER TIME. How can it possibly leave out time? Worse yet, the law of conservation of energy actually spills out as a consequence of Noether's theorem, and the time symmetry of the laws of physics -- that is, the fact that the laws of physics should be the same today as they will be tomorrow. CoE is, in a sense, a consequence of time.
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  4. You're out to lunch by p3d0 · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Mods, don't be blinded because he started his post with "at risk of Karma".

    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.


    No I haven't done anything but point out the truth and that isn't troll.

    Correction: you're not an intentional troll.

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    1. Re:You're out to lunch by syntaxglitch · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Don't be dense. Perpetual motion usually (as it does in this case) refers to a device that produces more energy than it consumes. Well, really it just refers to a machine that runs forever without energy input, which implies either nonconservation of energy, or some sort of process with no losses to friction or other effects that runs forever on inertia. The latter would be just as interesting in many ways, and certainly also violates the laws of physics, but it's not really the same thing.

      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. The usual analogy is "what's north of the north pole?" Not only time itself but all the laws of physics "began" at the big bang, so forget causality and conservation of energy as well.

      Correction: you're not an intentional troll. No, actually, I'm pretty sure he was being 100% intentional there.
  5. Build your own perpetual motion machine! by ancientt · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Isn't that what solar cells are? 'Practical' perpetual energy? I know there are issues with the breakdown of materials, and eventual cooling of the sun, but if you invented the solar cell and called it a 'perpetual energy' machine, then where would you be? Much like where this guy is I suspect, being called a scam artist before you even get a chance to exhibit, being ignored because you weren't in negotiations with governments and pushing for NDAs.

    I'm hoping that this will turn out to be something similar. I'm hoping that the demonstration will show way of harnessing energy we previously mostly ignored or didn't use the same way. We've got geothermal energy mostly untapped, wave energy mostly underfunded and immense, practically immeasurable energy flung by the sun into space, benefiting nobody. It isn't as if the energy sources don't exist, we just don't have the technology to tap most of the big ones yet.

    The way I understand it, perpetual energy isn't even really impossible, sub-atomic particles pop into and out of existence all the time and sometimes get separated, thus Hawking radiation and for all practical purposes, perhaps all purposes, demonstrate perpetual motion. The trick would be in harnessing them, tricky bit that, what with the black holes and all. If you figure out how to do it you'd get a lot of cool points.

    Failing any of the big payoff candidates like black holes or tapping the sun, maybe you could harness the magnetic properties of the earth? I think they're mostly a product of the earth's kinetic and maybe heat energy, they aren't truly perpetual, but it would be a neat trick to actually find a way to use them.

    Yes, I know, this has the earmarks of a scam, but why not wait until we get a chance to find out more before we dismiss it entirely? You're not spending anything but your time, and to my way of thinking, anything that makes you think and reconsider your notions of what is possible is not a waste.

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  6. Power from the Moon's Gravity: by MDMurphy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Tidal power. Massive amounts of water moving towards and away from shore, pulled mostly by the gravity of the moon.

    1. Re:Power from the Moon's Gravity: by History's+Coming+To · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And there was me thinking that the tides every twelve hours were caused by
      1: The moon pulling a bunch of water towards it (tide 1) 2: The centripetal force caused by the fact that the centre of rotation of the system is off-centre with relation to the centre of the Earth (tide 2) A 3m shift in tectonic plates every day is going to cause a bunch of earthquakes isn't it?

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  7. Re:Yes and No by Matt+Edd · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Twelve hours later it's being thrown away from the Earth by centrifugal force. It's actually the Earth being pulled away from the water.