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YouTube and the Modern Mad Scientist (hackaday.com)

Posted by samzenpus on from the warm-up-the-water-engine dept.

szczys writes: Making change for $1.00 and getting $1.10 back. That's the premise of overunity, free energy, and perpetual motion experiments. Using money as the the analogy is fitting because these concepts are heavily aligned with scams trying to land a payday for their "research". But there is another branch of people working on them: tinkerers who believe they can actually solve the problem. Laws of thermodynamics say otherwise, but this isn't necessarily wasted time. Other breakthroughs are waiting to be discovered as these mad scientists try to remove all efficiency losses from their doomed systems. YouTube can be an interesting place to look for ideas on low-friction, high efficiency fabrication.

3 of 223 comments (clear)

  1. Accusation through misunderstanding by Aighearach · · Score: 4, Funny

    It may be that they're not intending to "break the laws" of physics at all, but discover/uncover new ones. It may be that "overunity" sucks energy out of some sort of sub-space field (intentionally borrowing from sci-fi, calm down) that we haven't yet discovered. It seems that the pundits are the source of most of the perpetual-motion misconceptions, rather than the tinkerers themselves.

    They aren't trying to create "free energy" in the physics domain. They're trying to create "free energy" in the economics domain; if we can suck energy out of dimension X, then until we're bombed by the inhabitants of that realm it will appear as (economically) "free."

    They're talking about "free as in beer" not "free as in freedom."

  2. Somethin' from nothin' by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 3, Funny

    Making change for $1.00 and getting $1.10 back. That's the premise of overunity, free energy, and perpetual motion experiments.

    And any Republican tax plan: lower taxes == more revenue. [ No wonder they hate science and math. :-) ]

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    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
    1. Re:Somethin' from nothin' by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 1, Funny

      It's not actually that hard to understand. 20% of a bigger number is better than 25% of a smaller one. (Or one that goes overseas to pay the 20% instead of staying here.)

      Pretty sure "voodoo economics" has been well debunked by now, unless you're a Republican, who doesn't understand history and math.

      --
      It must have been something you assimilated. . . .