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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?
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.
In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
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
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Science -- Sealed, Delivered.
Unfortunately no one is interested in my machine that produces infinite dirty energy. :(
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.
It's a typo - "allows the Orbo platform to 'consistently produce power" should be "allows the Orbo platform to 'consistently produce revenue".
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!)
>>"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.
...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....
...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 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
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.
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;"
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.
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
If you "know" that the share will lose value, the better (but riskier) alterative is to sell short. It requires you to find a broker that is able to lend you shares in the security in question, which you then sell. When (or if) the shares drop in price, you buy back a sufficient number to cover the amount you borrowed. The problem with shorting, particularly if the shares aren't highly liquid, is that the potential loss is unlimited (you lose the equivalent of any gain in value from you short the shares until you are able to buy them back). Experienced investors will therefore sometimes use call options as a protection. A call option give you the right to buy shares at a certain price at a certain time interval in the future - in other words the reverse of a put. The downside is of course that this protection will eat up a lot of your potential return. Because of the high risk, short selling is highly regulated.
Your better bet, literally, is to find a bookmaker that will take a bet on it, assuming you can find someone who'l give you good odds, and it's legal where you are. UK bookmakers tend to take bets on almost anything they believe they can reasonably calculate the risk of, or where they can pit their customers against eachother and only pocket the spread.
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.
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....
Funny you should say that. Because this IS not a perpetual energy machine, but is actually just using a "novel form" of acquiring energy.
And it doesn't break any laws of thermodynamics. Not more as a simple dynamo or a magnetic brake.
The only "catch" is that they tap the energy of Earth's magnetic field.
By reading this signature you agree to not disagree with the post you just read.
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).
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.
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.
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.
Buf if the magnetic field gets weaker, the compasses stop working, and the boy scouts can't use them to find their way in the forest. Won't someone pelase think of the children ?
Oh, and we'll all die horribly under the particle bombardment of solar wind, but first things first.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
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!
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.
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
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 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.)