Japanese Company Says Laws of Physics Don't Apply — to Cars

Fantastic Lad, among many others, points out another in a long series of claimed "powered by water" cars, this one by a Japanese company called "Genepax," which interestingly enough does not have so much as a Wikipedia entry. What's scary is the uncritical, even serious-sounding, presentation by Reuters of such extraordinary claims quite unbacked by extraordinary evidence. "Almost sounds too good to be true" isn't the half of it; if cars could be made which would run as "long as you have a bottle of water inside" to pour into the fuel tank ("even tea," repeats this report), not only would you know about the car, but you'd notice the long lines of people buying generators, laptops, and power tools that run on the same technology. The snippet Reuters is carrying says "Jun. 13 — Japanese company Genepax presents its eco-friendly car that runs on nothing but water. The car has an energy generator that extracts hydrogen from water that is poured into the car's tank. The generator then releases electrons that produce electric power to run the car. Genepax, the company that invented the technology, aims to collaborate with Japanese manufacturers to mass produce it." Fantastic Lad, deadpan, goes on: "Check out the Reuter's story and accompanying video. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't there some sort of conservation of energy thing happening in the whole 'separating hydrogen from water' game? I wonder what the real story is on this. Investment fraud? Magic?" Show your work; bonus points if you use Haiku.

Comments

Re:Screw water

[Geoffrey.landis]

The laws of physics apply to air conditioning too; basically they say that you have to reject heat somewhere, and the amount of heat you reject has to be more than the amount of heat that you move (that is, you can't use the rejected heat to run an engine to power the airconditioner).

You can use less energy to accomplish a job, but you can't use no energy. That's what these cars (apparently) seem to claim-- they are running on NO energy-- they (use energy to) split the water into hydrogen and oxyen, then burn the hydrogen and oxygen to get the energy to split the water, and have extra energy left over. This is not "refrigeration technology"-- this is magic.

With that said, let me say that I wrote "apparently" in the previous paragraph, because I haven't actually seen the Japanese text, only the news articles, and I know that news articles often miss a key point, or two-- for all I know this may actually be a perfectly functional car, and the reporter screwed up the article. It could be a fuel-cell car, for example, powered off the grid (which could be said to "run on water", although not in a perpetual-motion closed cycle.)

Re:Screw water

[osu-neko]

Yes, we all know the laws of physics apply to air conditioning. What GP was pointing out is that geeks like to "debunk" claims by claiming something violates the laws of physics when it fact it does not, they simply don't understand what's occuring.

There's not enough information in the Reuters article to validate or debunk the operation of this car. Therefore, a large number of geeks have made a large number of assumptions about what hasn't been said, then "proven" it impossible by showing it doesn't work under the set of assumptions they made. In short, they've proven nothing.

Re:Screw water

[DaedalusHKX]

An idea that i'd like to present is that, for the most part, even the oil system we have today, depends on burning more resources than it pulls out, but the costs are largely hidden from the consumer. The "energy" industry of today is largely the same thing. This shit we're burning today had to come from somewhere. Call it resources, call it a zit in the earth or magic beans, but the question is... how much energy is burned up moving this stuff around, refining it, marketing it, selling it, etc. I bet if you did the math like some have, you'd notice that liquid fuel extraction (petroleum based) you'd discover that a lot of it is wasted merely to further extract MORE of it. All in all, its a losing game either way. Perhaps less energy should be wasted debunking things based only on mere assumptions, and actually figuring something new out.

For a bunch of "geeks" and "science nerds" I'm seeing a lot of bullshit and very little science. If you don't have solutions, why don't you get together with someone who can think and come up with a few? Can't hurt, seeing as to how science has been reduced to verifying predominant dogmas and outright rejecting any other possibilities.

Strangely, if your dogmas were to be followed, quantum mechanics would've been an outright pipe dream. Strangely, as far as our current means go, this stuff has proven pretty eye opening, if nothing else.

Question to ask is: if we've been hoodwinked into believing so much other shit before, even by our teachers, from the world being flat, to flies manifesting on rotten meat, to the various other propagandas of our age... what else have we been lied to or mislead about? Instead of immediately debunking things based on preaching, perhaps a second look at "HOW" something might be done, would be eye opening, would it not? Almost like the arguments that free markets don't work, when a truly free market has rarely existed because governments have been quick to destroy them, lest people gain some measure of autonomy through exchanges of value based on consent, rather than lies, misinformation and government coercion and controls.

Try figuring out how it COULD be done, rather than bitching about something we all were taught in high school. By the way, I still remember my mathematics professor telling me that that there were no numbers other than positive and negative. Guess her education was weaker than mine and when I asked her about the posible results of radicals from negative roots, she turned pale white, having a kid explain to her how that stuff should work in front of her class. Yeah, that kind of shit is what makes me not believe that teachers, professors and doctors know it all. Most only know what they've been TOLD to know, and believe only what they've been TOLD to believe.

A guy that went by Teilhard de Chardin, long ago, said something to the effect of "in the cosmos, only the fantastic has a chance of being real."

Given that everything we once took to be science fiction or "tools of the devil" are now things we take for granted every day, perhaps the idea that energy is easier to extract than we've been taught by our establishment, may well not be as "unpossible" as we've been taught to believe. Frankly, I've seen entirely too many things in my life to think that its all as simple and cut and dry as school would have us believe.

That is why I simply said, if I see a working sample, or if I am asked to witness such a thing, I will gladly maintain an open mind. Why? I've seen too much weird shit in my life, survived lots of weird shit, and delved in places where I was told not to.