free energy?

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

http://www.cosmiverse.com/beaten04010202.html

interesting, but it *is* april fools day.. thoughts?

Keeks

Does seem a bit much, but the patent was filed with the US patent office in Septemper 2000. Patent info can be found on the US patent site. http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html Search for patent no. 6,362,718

Seems like a lot of trouble to go to for an april fools.

Must check into it a bit more

Moriarty

It does seem very suspect, but again the patent was filed a while ago. Dosent necessarly mean it works if its got a patent, but it adds a bit of credibility.. Would be nice, wouldnt it?

Gargoyle

I'll be the first person to take a scientific crack at this one. I'll go on the record as saying that I think this machine will not work. If anyone else sees anything wrong with this analysis from a physics point of view, please speak up. My work involves growing thin films. As such, I don't deal much with thermodynamics these days.

With that caveat out of the way, let me say that I'm almost sure that device violates the laws of thermodynamics. Thermodynamically speaking, draw a box around the device. If the total energy out is more than the total energy in, you have violated the first law of thermodynamics. The site claims that energy is conserved in "the fourth dimension". This argument doesn't make much sense since Energy / Time = Power. In other words, units of energy have inherently nothing to do with time. If they are stating that "energy is conserved in the fourth dimension", what they are really saying is that they are borrowing energy from the future in a nonequilibrium process. Not getting off to a very good start there.

From a nonscientific point of view, I will say additionally that its not a good sign that one of their 2 references is rense.com. Some quick browsing through their archives reveal many far fetched stories with little or no credible evidence to support them.

Anyway, back to the scientific analysis. They claim that the device funcions by tapping into the electromagnetic waves throughout space. While this does exist, a static magnetic field is a conservative force field from which no energy can be obtained. This is frequently the reason why perpetual motion machines based on magnets are unworkable. Now they may claim that the magnetic field energy is fluxuating due to such factors as the earth's rotation about the sun, etc. I don't go for this, however, because while I'm certainly not an expert on zero point energy, most physicists do believe that zero point energy is very low...certainly unable to overcome the energy that would be lost within such a device.

Anyway, that's my answer and I'm sticking to it. Anyone else care to take a crack at it?

Paulj

Hey....dont ask me but take a look at this:
http://jnaudin.free.fr/html/megdsqth.htm

and further links can be found at:
http://jnaudin.free.fr/html/meg.htm

Gargoyle

I must admit that I didn't try to plod though their 60+ page paper on the MEG. I only read the description given by the link. I am a little curious after having read a bit more about it, but I don't currently have the time to plod through the paper and review their work.

In any case, I will say that the laws of thermodynamics are laws for a reason and have always prohibited COP >1 devices. Now along comes this group claiming the have a machine that can run at COP = 5! That's such a wild statement that flies in the face of everything in the history of technology that it MUST be met with a huge amount of skepticism.

When I get more time, I'll try to go through the paper and see what else I can learn. In absense of reading that, I'll still say that I don't believe it will work based on the long history of perpetual motion machines that have not worked.

Gargoyle

Does no one else here have enough of a background in Thermodynamics and Electricity and Magnetism to comment on this?

Victor

Originally posted by Gargoyle
Does no one else here have enough of a background in Thermodynamics and Electricity and Magnetism to comment on this?

I don't, but remember:

. energy in + matter in = energy out + matter out

It is an April's Foll after all.

Gargoyle

Actually, after looking into it, it is quite a bit more than an April Fool's joke. I am VERY skeptical, but curious.

I wish I had more time to look into it but I'm doing too much these days to get into this stuff heavily.