Commenting on some week-old news
Those guys at Steorn in Dublin... mental. The story is kind of dead now but it's too crazy not to write about.
It's the kind of story that should be dismissed out of hand because what they're proposing is, to use my first-year tutor's word, entirely unphysical. It's a concept that shouldn't even be entertained, yet I can't help following the story because of that little "what if" feeling - that there could be something so momentous out there that it would remake the world.
Quick recap: they claim to have discovered a way to generate "free" energy through the clever positioning of magnets, i.e. when they align their system correctly, it has more than 100% efficiency. You get out more than you put in; somehow energy is being pumped out when there is no source for it. A couple of weeks ago they took out a full-page ad in the Economist, challenging the scientific community to prove them wrong. They are to assemble a "jury" of 12 sceptical scientists who will have access to the technology to see if, and how, it works.
It seems hugely likely that before long it will turn out to have been a hoax. I don't know quite why, but there's a rumour that it's a publicity stunt for the X-Box 360. Discounting that possibility, and the likelihood that it's a scam or just plain wrong, what would it mean...
No petrol needed for cars. No coal, oil or gas needed for power stations. A completely new frickin' physical theory of everything. I mean, when fundamental changes have been made to physical theories (I'm thinking relativity, quantum physics), they have had to apply under some sort of boundary conditions (near light speed, ultra-tiny, respectively). But, without knowing the details, this stuff appears to be going on at a regular macro-level using regular magnets. They were trying to develop high-efficiency motors for use in monitoring devices, something like that. Thus far, the law of conservation of energy is only broken in nuclear reactions, and it's been shown that the more general law of conservation of mass-energy holds here, under the famous E=mc^2. Are they suggesting a modification to that?
I could go on, but you get the picture.
Read more!
It's the kind of story that should be dismissed out of hand because what they're proposing is, to use my first-year tutor's word, entirely unphysical. It's a concept that shouldn't even be entertained, yet I can't help following the story because of that little "what if" feeling - that there could be something so momentous out there that it would remake the world.
Quick recap: they claim to have discovered a way to generate "free" energy through the clever positioning of magnets, i.e. when they align their system correctly, it has more than 100% efficiency. You get out more than you put in; somehow energy is being pumped out when there is no source for it. A couple of weeks ago they took out a full-page ad in the Economist, challenging the scientific community to prove them wrong. They are to assemble a "jury" of 12 sceptical scientists who will have access to the technology to see if, and how, it works.
It seems hugely likely that before long it will turn out to have been a hoax. I don't know quite why, but there's a rumour that it's a publicity stunt for the X-Box 360. Discounting that possibility, and the likelihood that it's a scam or just plain wrong, what would it mean...
No petrol needed for cars. No coal, oil or gas needed for power stations. A completely new frickin' physical theory of everything. I mean, when fundamental changes have been made to physical theories (I'm thinking relativity, quantum physics), they have had to apply under some sort of boundary conditions (near light speed, ultra-tiny, respectively). But, without knowing the details, this stuff appears to be going on at a regular macro-level using regular magnets. They were trying to develop high-efficiency motors for use in monitoring devices, something like that. Thus far, the law of conservation of energy is only broken in nuclear reactions, and it's been shown that the more general law of conservation of mass-energy holds here, under the famous E=mc^2. Are they suggesting a modification to that?
I could go on, but you get the picture.
Read more!
posted by Peter at 09:45
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