Free energy!

DublinEvents wrote:

Let's hope these folks can rid our world of the ever mounting energy crisis and set humanity free from battling over limited energy resources. By the way, a fusion reactor project in France is also promising almost free energy. It's magnitudes safer than fission reactors since no plutonium is produced as a waste product.

I'm hoping that this last statement was made tongue-in-cheek, fusion has been a pipe dream for a long time and is looking that way for a good few years. As for Steorn....a slickly produced PR stunt/scam at best. Why else would the CEO be pimping it in the Economist as opposed to a scientific journal - maximum exposure to a wealthier audience, thats why. Methinks once they've captured enough outside investment you won't be hearing much from them again.

Ice_Box wrote:

Members have to sign an NDA.

No problem then, since I'd imagine there's feck all to disclose

Aye most likely charlatans, although hopefully not ehh..

The only way I can see for viable (well after the initial outlay and regular maintance costs) free energy (not Zero Point) would be wind turbines generating to perform electrolysis on water, collecting and burning the hydrogen produced..

it would be a self sustaining system, assuming it was wet and windy :rolleyes:


If anyone could knock up designs, specifications and design the processes needed so I can build a system to do this, t'would be much appreciated

Dr.F

cavedave wrote:

Magnetic forces do no work

or so says that blogger

What have these maxwells equations ever done for me? Most of the arguments for free energy devices seem to be
A: it does not work according to known laws of physics. But plug it into the national grid and become an instant zillionaire proving me wrong
B: I know my perpetual motion machine generates electricity but I have not bothered to plug it into the national grid because then the fillings in my teeth are part of a big oil conspiracy.

It is quite sad because there are many areas of interesting research that people are scared to go near because they will be labelled a crank. For example there does seem to be an effect on time of birth and personality but research into this based on light, diet etc is shown to "proves astrology" so it is an area that is commonly ignored. There are many "cold fusion" techniques where a very small area is made very hot indeed, but you cannot study cold fusion so you have to call it table top fusion instead.

cavedave wrote:

What have these maxwells equations ever done for me? Most of the arguments for free energy devices seem to be
A: it does not work according to known laws of physics. But plug it into the national grid and become an instant zillionaire proving me wrong
B: I know my perpetual motion machine generates electricity but I have not bothered to plug it into the national grid because then the fillings in my teeth are part of a big oil conspiracy.

It is quite sad because there are many areas of interesting research that people are scared to go near because they will be labelled a crank.

What makes a crank is not a claim that they have discovered some new phenomena in an area that has not been studied before, but rather a claim that they have discovered a phenomena is a regime that has been studied intensively and thoroughly and no such effect has every been observed.

We know the physics of how magnetic fields behave and interact with matter for the types of energy scales, and space time curvature that we find in a lab. You _cannot_ find a way to build a perpetual motion machine like this, as the physics which we know govern it do not allow for nonconservation of energy.

If you said that energy might not be conserved on the scale of a Planck length in the vicicity of a gravitational singularity for particles with energy more that10^100 Joules, then that would be a different story. We've never been able to do experiments in that regime, so we cannot absolutely rule it out.

cavedave wrote:

It is quite sad because there are many areas of interesting research that people are scared to go near because they will be labelled a crank.

Thats not entirely true. People won't go near it because they won't get funding for it and then complain vociverously. These complaints they make themselves are typically where the reason "labelled a crank" comes from.

For example there does seem to be an effect on time of birth and personality but research into this based on light, diet etc is shown to "proves astrology" so it is an area that is commonly ignored.

Any time someone uses the term "prove" in relation to a non-scientific field, whilst discussing science, you can safely assume they are misrepresenting something. Science doesn't prove anything.

Furthermore, even the allegation that there seems to be this correlation suggests that study has been done. How else could this claim be made? Well, it could be a completely baseless "I think the correlation exists" claim, which would be akin to someone saying "I think there is an actual basis to some of this astrology stuff and would like to have research funded to look into it". In such a case, yes, you will get ignored by mainstream science.

There are many "cold fusion" techniques where a very small area is made very hot indeed, but you cannot study cold fusion so you have to call it table top fusion instead.

And? Renaming something means you get to do the research.

Its an important point, though, because it can be compared to your first one.

"I think there is a basis behind astrology" gets renamed to "there appears to be an influence by light conditions, time of birth, various other factors, and the resultant personality" and still doesn't get funding.

Stuff-that-isn't-cold-fusion gets renamed to something-other-than-cold-fusion and does get funding.

This would suggest that the "rename to get funding" hypothesis is incomplete or incorrect. Similarly, the "labelled a crank" hypothesis.

What makes the Steorn guys cranks (in my book) is the completely unorthodox way in which they have set about trying to gain "scientific acceptability". They claim that no-one would touch their stuff with a bargepole for peer-review because of this same alleged fringe-science-bias. Then , having gotten the publicity, by their own admission there were no shortage of scientists actually saying "sure, I'll quite happily review it".

Did Steorn turn around and say "I guess we were wrong, we can actually find people willing to scientifically validate our work"??? No, they didn't.

They instead established a system of (alleged) validation where they (allegedly) hand-picked the reviewers from amongst the (alleged) list of applicants, got them to sign NDAs, only allow (alleged) findings to flow back through their own publicity channels.

I deliberately use the term alleged repeatedly above, because the claims cannot be verified at this time. Steorn themselves are the single source of information regarding these claims. Given that what is at stake in the first place is Steorn's credibility, they are one source who's information cannot be accepted without verification.

Now here's the thing....

Lets assume that sometime in the coming years, Steorn actually deliver the goods, turn science on its head, and deliver clean free energy for all. I will be absolutely delighted to be wrong but will argue that my skeptical position was still the right oen to take and will be right far more often than it is wrong.

I'm pretty sure that their supporters, or those repeating some contentless mantra like "keep an open mind" will feel the same should they be wrong - that they're right to consistently lend their support to all of these claims, and as each one falls, they're right to "keep an open mind" when the next one comes along, because sooner or later one of them will pan out.

If only I could play poker against people taking that mindset. "Hey, I've got nothing, but you know, until the last card falls and I see that I've lost, its possible that I have the best hand, so I'm right to keep putting money in the pot".

And before you argue that there's a difference between putting money into something and believing it may have merit, I agree, there is. People not willing to put money into something don't really believe in it.

Many are just not willing to stand by their lack of belief, preferring instead to criticise others (like those who fund science) for not putting their money into something they don't believe in either.

Its simple. If you believe in the likes of Steorn, then find a way that you can given them your money rather than complaining that science is unfairly stacked against funding such people.

If you think you have better things to do with your money...well...what exactly is it that you're complaining about?