Posted on 01/22/2002 5:43:47 AM PST by blam
Heat is evolved until the electrode is saturated. Same as the catalytic hydrogen scavenger in the city natural gas line.
Oh yeah? I had a busted bathroom fixture once. That thing ran forever. Unfortunately, rather than making me a fortune, it cost me one.
I suspect the voltage of a battery varies with temperature, and partially draining a battery will raise its temperature. Not to mention a simple trick that is possible -- drain some energy into a hidden battery. When it's time to do the voltage check, use the hidden battery to produce a short-lived voltage boost. You can do this with a minimum of engineering expertise, and without violating any known physical laws. Voltage is a poor test of available energy.
Simple stuff, this. But, I guess that was your point...?
I'd be suprised if the inventer of such a machine would tell us how it works. If it were put, under observation, in the middle of nowhere, far away from any power sources, and made to run a maximum load for, say, a week, I'd be convinced.
I think perhaps you belong at another forum, perhaps DU. The simple lession discovered by Adam Smith is that the profit motive always works better than altruism in producing useful inventions.
History is full of attempts to hide production or technology to corner a market -- pineapples, tulips, lava lites -- all kinds of critical things. The trade secret is a recognized way of protecting an invention. But it just doesn't last. There are too many bright people with too many conflicting interests to keep free energy secret.
The worst thing is that this particular demonstration has absolutely no credibility at face value -- even if every word of the story about the demonstration is absolutely true, there is nothing mysterious to explain.
I am almost certain that a similar device was being talked-up down in Australia or New Zealand within the past year or two. Who knows... Newman might be involved behind the scenes. He has made no secret of his desire to see his invention accepted *somewhere*, if not in the United States. His own credibility is shot to Hell, so it makes sense that other people (Newman's "believers"?) are out in front now. It makes me wonder where it will turn up next.
The notion really riles you, doesn't it?
In the case of a free energy device, already invented whether motivated by profit or not, and whereas such a device would for all practical purposes lift a growing mantle of tyranny beginning to cover the world; and whereas the public announcement of the development of such a machine would move the powers behind the tyranny to suppress it at all costs, including buying the inventor off for a fantastic sum or assassination, that would be the time to forget any previous profit motive and altruisticaly bestow it on the world and people everywhere.
History is full of attempts to hide production or technology to corner a market -- pineapples, tulips, lava lites -- all kinds of critical things. The trade secret is a recognized way of protecting an invention. But it just doesn't last. There are too many bright people with too many conflicting interests to keep free energy secret.
In the special case of a gift to humanity, the corner-the-market strategy wouldn't exist. The only strategy would be to get it out as widely as possible as soon as possible, in detail so that any recipient could make one himself. In this particlular case, there would be no protection of any invention or keeping of any trade secret.
I'm conservative, limited government type, and I believe wholeheartedly in capitalism in its commonsense form, but if I were to stumble onto a free energy device in my tinkering or started off to develop one on purpose, and succeeded, I would exclusively consider the process I described, because riches are ashes in the mouth when your basic liberties are gone.
Of course you're wrong -- they get the energy from you!
It is completely unreasonable to believe that a device that can be made with off-the-shelf components by a relatively untrained person could be kept secret with any amount of effort.
Some of the recent devices have even had diagrams published. It's all garbage.
Besides, no Irishman would pass an opportunity to destroy England's economy. You appear to have no idea how much different groups hate each other and how far some would go to ruin someone else. Money can only buy off certain kinds of people.
Bu I digress. The published "demonstration" has nothing mysterious about that requires explanation. When Houdini makes an elephant disappear on stage I may not know how it it's done, but I'm comfortable believing that it does not require a rethinking of physical laws.
Oh! (smacks forehead). I should have thought of that.
A noted scientist once said long ago, "Everything that can be invented has already been invented." (his name escapes me right now)
That's proof, to me, that they don't have anything.
It is completely unreasonable to believe that a device that can be made with off-the-shelf components by a relatively untrained person could be kept secret with any amount of effort.
It could be kept secret enough in the time between success/ drawing specs/putting specs in form for distribution and and actual release in my senario. After release all points would be moot.
Repeat, I'm not talking about this particular case. I'm assuming the reality of a working, world shaking device, as free energy would be, and the only way I see that it could be made to benefit all peoples and not just an elite group.
In my estimation, if this guy has actually done it, which he probably hasn't, he has seriously screwed up.
Indeed. Something of this nature would have such a profound impact on the world in general, and world economies in particular; that that would be the only way to get it out to the public. Publishing for all the world to see, full detailed plans on how to build, operate and maintain such a device. Otherwise governments, companies, or someone else is gonna come along and kill it, and most likely you (a bullet is cheaper than lots of cold hard cash) along with it.
Still, work continues on so-called free energy. I was surprised to learn that a patent has been issued on a device for collecting energy from a vaccum. You can read about it at Understanding Zero Point Energy
My point is that hundreds of these claims have been made over the last century. Has everyone just screwed up? Exactly how much intelligence does it take to protect your idea with some kind of distribution scheme triggered by an unpleasant reaction from the illuminatii?
My second point is that no one has made a public demonstration that shows anything worth explaining.
[shrugs] Simple stuff is my point exactly. My only suggestion is that what get called "free energy" devices might not be such things at all. They might be something as simple as a water wheel or a hydro electric plant but operating on some "other" kind of "fluid"...
To use, say, old terms, if there is something like the "ether," then presumably there might be _natural_ concentrations of the ether, natural "flows" of one kind or another. What nowadays gets called a "free energy" machine might just be a way of tapping into such natural, spontaneous and emergent imbalance in the ether.
If such a view of physics turns out to be true, then what we call free energy devices are, really, no more exotic, no more difficult to understand than a windmill or a waterwheel. Only instead of harnessing visible, material water, these devices would harness the ebb and flow, or circulation, of (insert cosmic theory here) -- the ether, zero-point energy, quantum flux, space-time matrix, etc.
This isn't my favorite tin-foil speculation, but this kind of approach to "free energy" machines seems so straightforward that I'm surprised it doesn't get pursued more often.
I mean, nobody calls a water wheel a perpetual motion machine, but there are some in the world that have been in operation for generations. It's just that the stream or river is very visible. Nobody calls, say, Niagra Falls a perpetual motion machine -- but once the capital investment of such a place is paid off, it is "free energy" and it will continue producing for a long, long time.
If some "ether" theory eventually proves to be true, there may be "streams" of ether that can exist for generations. There may be the ether equivalent of waterfalls -- ether falls -- which manifest kinetic energy just ripe for the harnessing. Or there might be the ether equivalent of weather systems -- ether storms -- which can be "farmed" the same way wind farms use wind mills to harness wind energy. (Again, once the capital investment is paid off, such operations present the _appearance_ of free energy, but without the nasy labels of perpetual energy...)
(And, if such a physical theory does underlie what get called free energy machines, it would go a ways toward explaining why so many crap out after seemingly successful demonstrations. i.e., imagine some guy invents a badly designed windmill -- on a _really_ windy day, the thing generates power. He thinks he's a wizard. Then, who knows, he might go weeks or months with no wind and he'd think his device is worthless. Similarly, if some dufus accidently creates a rough device for tapping into, say, a flow in the ether, and for a while it works but the the stream changes or peters out, whatever, and the guy is left holding what amounts to a bizaro paperweight... Not because the device itself is worthless, but just because the underlying motive source has changed... Just like a bad windmill the day after an unusual wind storm...)
Mark W.
Still, one must not totally discount the value of dreaming (its just that I don't think we should base public policy on it). I'll be honest and admit to indulging in such whimsical flights of fancy. My pet notion, which I have discussed on FR before, involves ushering in the hydrogen age and the replacement of carbon-based fuels. The Achilles' Heel of hydrogen-based systems has been the production of the "fuel" (really an energy transport medium)from electrolysis of water, but you need an energy source, and some (not me) find that unacceptable. But, why not use thermal cracking? What is the thermal source? Why, sunlight, of course. Too diffuse? Well, yes. So, intensify it. With what? Why, a sunlight-pumped laser, of course. Now, not being a laser physicist, that's easy for me to say, another matter entirely to do. If only someone would help me build one of sufficient power to do the job on a large scale...
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