TVSF - The Very Special Forum!

Larry wrote:Pardon my bluntness, but Europe is not the place to be during the wrenching economic dislocations that will be triggered by declining world oil and natural gas production in the near future. European leaders are well aware of this. This is one of several reasons why the Western European countries are world-class energy conservers. They're hoping for a relatively soft landing.

That's actually one of the reasons *for* moving to Europe in my book... but I gotta admit, I hold a really different view of situations than most.

Petroleum, and fossil fuels in general, including natural gas, was obsolete as an energy source 80 years ago. Through chemical engineering, it's possible, although not at all energy efficient at this stage, to make gasoline out of AIR, if we absolutely *had* to. But we don't have to.

Look.. classical physics is just plain wrong in some areas.. Maxwell's equations have a built-in assumption of symmetry in reactions.. That symmetry, however, is *not* required in the real-world. Magnetic monopoles have been proven to exist in laboratories.. Hell, the earth's own magnetic field is the result of a tri-pole system, and there are several working technologies going back decades that utilize the seething background of energy that lies behind and between elements of the physical, classical world... energy that Quantum Physics is already working heavily with.

One of the reasons why Europe is going to be a good place to be is simply that they have more reason *not* to buy into the hydrocarbon myth. There are no less than 20 separate, demonstrable overunity technologies in the USA alone... there are several others in Europe, and Canada.. it's just that the circumstances are not yet bad enough for governments to challenge the "powers that be" of the rich elites by embracing this technology. The stuff works, and its mostly harmonically based, although the media through which those harmonics are employed varies upon the specific technology in question. It's all functions of the basic notion of "superstring theory" that quantum mechanics tells us is responsible for 10th dimensionality.. (quantum mechanics is a bit wrong still on exactly how that all works... but well, that's for another post... the main ideas work for now)

Tesla developed a system for nearly unlimited, clean power back in the 1920's.. but Edison's friends among the rich and powerful ruined his reputation and lead a pogrom against him that is still being carried out to this day.. In the 1930's, General Electric's chief engineer, Gabriel Kron, invented a "Negative Resistor" in conjunction with Stanford University and the US Navy.. A normal resistor takes organized current and dissipates it into disorganized energy... dispersing it into the background.. a negative resistor takes that disorganized background energy and converts it into organized current.. simply reversing the process.

In the 1960's, a frequency converter using 64 transistor stages and sophisticated feedforward and feedback mechanisms was developed by Westinghouse for use on the Minuteman missles.. This converter generated more energy than it produced.. so much so that it burned out the output side electronics in the missiles, causing them to critically fail in the field... The Army came down hard on Westinghouse executives, who came down hard on the engineers, who wound up stuffing some extra resistors into the units to keep them from producing output energy that was measured at 105% of input energy... Westinghouse *did* however quietly patent the technologies used...

So while the whole "active vaccume" energy systems are decried by supporters of the status quo as "impossible"... they're not new, they've been used before, and the people in power *KNOW* they work.

So perhaps if things get bad enough, somebody might wake up and be willing to spit in the eye of the rich and corrupt who continue to exploit the current systems.. in order to save millions of lives. It'll happen in Europe *long* before the corrupt assholes who run the USA will ever think about it.

I took the liberty of moving this posting, because it's important enough to warrant a new home of its own. Here's my initial response.

Carl Sagan wrote:

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

You made the extraordinary claim for multiple Over-Unity Devices (OUDs) having been invented here on Earth. If someone claims that UFO aliens have invented such a device, I couldn't dispute the assertion; it may even turn out to be vacuously true! I would love to see extraordinary evidence for the existence of even one such device of terrestrial origin.

I am aware that such claims are frequently made in cyberspace. I checked out a few OUD links from a yahoo group that I participate in, and didn't see anything that I could take seriously. However I admit to having some OCD tendencies. Maybe I have a Border Collie gene!

As you're undoubtedly aware, there has been a lot of wishful thinking and outright fraud in this area. However the existence of wishful thinking and fraud does not prove that all OUD claims are bogus.

I didn't see any links in your posting. If I googled on the subject, I would probably be deluged with links. But you have obviously given greater attention to the subject than I have. So please pick out the most convincing OUD link that you've come across. We could analyze it together.

I don't see this thread as being limited to potential energy technology that violates the law of conservation of energy. We can also talk about more arcane stuff as well. Maxwell's Demons, Dyson spheres, telluric currents, concentration and temperature gradient cells--it's all fair game!

Ok, Larry.. Lemme start you off with this one.

Motionless Electromagnetic Generator

It's Tom Bearden's device. Yeah, there's a lot of shit being talked on the net about Bearden... mainly mudslinging between his supporters and skeptics... The theory behind the MEG, however, appears quite sound to me, and depending on the quality of the materials used and fine-tuning of the unit, should be more than capable as an overunity demonstration. I personally haven't seen testimonials of anybody who's actually built one and said "it didn't work and here's why".. I have seen testimonials of people who have built them and had them achieve successes with overunity output values.

You can also get some more info at Tom Bearden's Website.

More, but by no means all, working, buildable "free energy" devices can be built by the plans and patent info available on Greg Bendini's website..

Bendini and Bearden have co-written books, and worked together on their researches. I personally consider them to be two of the real "leaders" in terms of research on this subject. Their primary thrust is in terms of magnetic monopole motors and generators.

Apart from that, I also give credence to Stanley Meyer's system for overunity production of hydrogen.. He's the dude who's been widely (and pretty much unfoundedly) reviled for his whole "water powered car" thing. Problem is... the technology works, and you can make a crude version of it out of components from an old computer monitor. It's a scalar harmonic version of electrolysis, in a nutshell.

There's a guy in Georgia who's developed a "water hammer" method of heating water that produces slightly overunity energy in terms of heat vs the energy put to drive the motor... I can't remember his name off the top of my head, but he's got a company selling these units to supply forced water heating for homes and businesses...

There's a fellow in California who spent 2 years in federal prison because he developed an overunity heat-exchanger.. and is now suing the feds because he was imprisoned without trial or charge...

Lots of technologies out there, even going back as far as Tesla.. I'll dig up some more info as I have time. I just don't keep all of this stuff on the tip of my brain, as I've got a boatload of other interests/projects

Yeah, there is a lot of fraud and wishful thinking out there... I'll freely admit that. But I'll also state unequivocably that not all the fraud and wishful thinking is being done on the part of the Free Energy Advocates.

If you look at the research that was done on Cold Fusion, for example... You remember that big hullabaloo over the Fleischmann and Pons experiment back in 1989? There was this *HUGE* hue and cry raised denouncing these two researchers in every major media outlet possible...saying that their results were a fraud... The US Department of Energy organized a panel that "didn't find the evidence persuasive", and essentially said that the results couldn't be possible as they flew in the face of everything that their previous nuclear experience told them...

Then throughout the 1990's and 2000's.. there started to be papers published in peer-reviewed scientific journals that were *verifying* the success of the Fleischmann-Pons experiment... The subject was being discussed at scientific conferences... In 2004, the DOE set up another panel... this time not so categorically slandering the research.. but just saying that they saw "no reason to pursue a federally funded research program" for it. A very vocal chunk of the academic and scientific community still just dismisses it with a scoff, but there are some very major research institutions now that are proceeding where Fleischmann and Pons left off, and they have succeeded enough that they're getting research funding from the private sector.

But you have this a lot with scientific research. Academia and the science community that is so tightly bound to it, has this unfortunate tendency to be very inertia-based.. It takes *forever* for ideas to become "Acceptable" to them, even when those ideas are correct and scientifically sound.. A great many scientists and academians... and even government regulators, will just dismiss something as "impossible" because it doesn't fit with their worldview and challenges their previously held "expertise".. without ever trying it, or looking at the data seriously.

On a personal level, I'm not going to *absolutely* swear to this stuff without building it myself... But there's some really convincing evidence out there.. like the "Methernitha Cooperative".. a religious commune that produces all of its electricity via a machine they call the "Testatika"... they're a little "poofy" for my tastes.. but they're not hooked up to the grid, and nobody's seen them building a power plant or hauling in large amounts of fuel for more conventional generators....

But in terms of this sort of thing, and "building it myself".. As soon as I get some of my business bits here built up a little more so that I have some free cash, building a MEG prototype is one of the top things on my project list.

You raise several interesting points. I'll try to address them, one posting at a time. Let's start with Cold Fusion.

Pons and Fleishmann were hasty in publishing their original paper in the Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry. There was some obvious sloppiness. One of the "data points" used in constructing a graph was an educated guess, rather than an actual measurement. That, plus silly personality clashes, plus less-then-ethical conduct on the parts of both pro-leaners and anti-leaners, plus reproducibility problems, plus the paradigm shift that would be necessary if Cold Fusion--as described by Pons and Fleishmann--was for real, led to quite a brouhaha. Surprise, surprise! Conventional wisdom carried the day.

Obviously, the coal industry would not be pleased if commercial Cold Fusion power plants could replace all coal-fired plants 10 years down the road. Not so obviously, if fairly pedestrian electrochemistry could significantly reduce the activation energies necessary for various nuclear fusion reactions, and if tritium replaces part of the deuterium, we may have a proliferation problem involving poor man's H-bombs in the near future.

The jury is still out on the scientific merits of the case. For me, the reproducibility issue is the biggest hurdle. A secondary and related concern is that the mindset of some scientists is similar to that of lawyers.

In a criminal trial, a good lawyer never asks the witness a question, unless he already knows the answer! Similarly, some scientists are reluctant to perform experiments unless they already have a pretty good idea of what the outcomes will be. A lot of time, effort, and expense could go down the drain, in the face of publish-or-perish pressures at many universities.

Some scientists are not eager to emulate Captain Kirk, and "to boldly go where no man has gone before", because that would be too much like alchemy. However I don't want to overstate that difficulty.

Some pharmaceutical chemists are already alchemists! There are significant reproducibility problems with crystalization. Alchemy notwithstanding, there is a constant search for new crystal forms of drugs. Why? A new crystal form of an oral medication may dissolve slower than the old, and may provide more of a sustained release effect. More to the point, the new crystal form of the old drug can generate a brand-new patent.

Meanwhile, Cold Fusion research is continuing, because the potential long-term payoffs are huge. Regardless of the eventual outcome, watching the fur fly, as science, economics, and politics collide in the Cold Fusion arena has been entertaining! One minor point: If Pons and Fleishmann are essentially correct, their results are a variation on a theme, which has absolutely nothing to do with over-unity power generation.

Well, I'm not going to sing the praises of Pons and Fleischmann... I'm just pointing them out as evidence of what I consider an "defense mentality" on the part of not only the scientific establishment, but on the part of the political and media establishment as well... simply in that if something challenges the "conventional wisdom", it gets mercilessly shredded, lives and careers get destroyed, and those we are supposed to consider to be "experts" have a tendency to deride and dismiss often without bothering to examine and experiment.

There have been researchers who have lost teaching positions at universities because word got out that they were working on some kind of "non-standard" research.. be it in the area of zero-point energy or another equally "unconventional" field.. Not because they were bad teachers, but because the University felt that it was damaging to their reputation or would hinder their ability to get grants for other projects.

In terms of "conventional wisdom carried the day".. no, I don't think so. I think "scientific cynicism" carried the day, coupled with a pogrom against P&F.. The core idea behind Science, at least as I see it, is to find new Truths.. the whole idea of "formulate hypothesis, experiment, validate or reject hypothesis, publish"... it's to learn more about the ways the universe works. The whole intent is to push forward the boundaries of understanding.. Yet I've heard serious, apparently well respected, scientists on national TV saying "Science isn't about Truth, it's about Consensus"... which is the biggest pile of shit I've ever encountered! Even "I Had Bigfoot's Baby" claims are more worthwhile, because at least they have humor value, and there is some kind of positive benefit to flights of fancy..

Here's the thing... even if I'm wrong about the technologies being workable and demonstrable.. even if I've been thoroughlly hoodwinked by a bunch of shady characters and con-men who are simply out to make a buck by propagandizing to the would-be believers.. We're up against the wall in terms of energy.. not only here in this country, but across the globe. We all, as humans, need better, cleaner, cheaper energy production, and anybody with half a brain knows that the volatility of our energy infrastructure (economic and otherwise) is pretty quickly closing in on the "critical mass" point.

The USA is currently engaging in spending trillions of dollars blowing up brown people in the middle east, just because our lunatic president has a "violence chubby"... We spend billions of dollars in government subsidies shoring up the Nuclear power industry, which overall is less energy efficient than burning wood and leaves us with high-level radioactive waste that will continue to be significantly dangerous for thousands of years... we've dropped billions into research on Hot Fusion.. and in the decades of doing so, it's not put a single watt of power into the power grid..

Yet we have absolutely *ZERO* effort by our government to actively seek out new innovation in power production, unless it comes from some multibillion dollar megacorporation and doesn't actually involve any real *innovation*. This produces a giant "WTF???" in my mind.. couple that with all the threats that have been made against researchers... both university affiliated "professionals" and independant "inventors"...

"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark"... as Shakespeare would say..

Now, I know Cold Fusion has nothing to do with overunity power generation.. but it *is* a remarkable break from the "status quo"... I cited it simply because it's an excellent example of the problems faced when trying to evaluate this stuff. Anything "new" or "challenging" gets mercilessly attacked, regardless of merit, by academians and government officials who are held to be the "gatekeepers to respectability". The only way to "prove" any of this is simply "to build it and see".. And if i didn't already know the answer.. I'd be asking "If we can spend trillions to kill civilians in other countries, why cant' we drop a few million on honestly investigating technologies that may possibly prove effective at solving the *real* problems we all face?" If I didn't already know the answer...

BTW.. I have no problem with Alchemy... lol. If you want to get right down to it, Alchemical principles are the reason behind the controversy over Cold Fusion, in terms of my understandings.. The people who expect it to work, get it to work.. the people who expect it to fail, have it fail. If even 1/10th of what quantum physics research tells us is true, the notion that human mental energy can impact physical "reality" becomes a bit of a no-brainer.

Druegan wrote:There's a guy in Georgia who's developed a "water hammer" method of heating water that produces slightly overunity energy in terms of heat vs the energy put to drive the motor... I can't remember his name off the top of my head, but he's got a company selling these units to supply forced water heating for homes and businesses...

If I've understood you correctly, the Georgian's claim is plausible. We already have commercially available heating devices that have more than 100% First Law efficiency under the proper operating conditions. At present, the Second Law of Thermodynamics is the limiting factor for their efficiencies.

I own such a device. It's an Amana heat pump. Basically, a heat pump is a bass ackwards air conditioner. It cools the Great Outdoors, while heating your house. Heat pumps have been around for more than 30 years.

In the climate of California's Central Valley, a conventional, above ground heat pump is more energy efficient than burning natural gas for heat. For the colder Winters in Ohio, burning natural gas would be more energy efficient than my heat pump. If you wanted to save energy by converting to a heat pump, your system would need to be underground, and would be considerably more expensive than mine.

Here's a link for a website that's very skeptical about Tom Bearden and his delusions of grandeur. If you have questions about specific points raised there, I'd be happy to discuss them with you. However in some cases, my background may not be equal to the task.