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Selling the Free Lunch[/siz]
Image: JOHN McFAUL
In recent decades crackpot inventors have focused on a variant of perpetual-motion machines known as free-energy devices or over-unity generators. These contraptions supposedly output more power than they take in, generally by drawing on an implausible font of energy hitherto unknown to science. The motionless electromagnetic generator discussed last month is a good example [see "There's No Stopping Them," by Graham P. Collins; Staking Claims]. At first it appears to be based on misconceptions about magnets, but it turns out the inventors have published a physics paper describing a "higher symmetry electrodynamics" that would allow infinite energy to be extracted from the vacuum by their device.
Limitless energy is more marketable than mere perpetual motion. Many over-unity promoters are outright scam artists, putting on public appearances to drum up investment money or to sell franchises and making it onto TV news shows with gullible hosts.
Perpetual motion holds a special place in the world of patents. Until 1880, a miniature working model was required for a U.S. patent to be approved. With the industrial revolution in full swing, that requirement became impractical to administer and the rule was rescinded--with the notable exception of perpetual-motion devices.
Yet "working" models of over-unity devices have occasionally fooled technically trained people at the U.S. patent office and elsewhere. A common trap for the unwary is that measuring electrical power with a meter is a difficult operation when there are sharp spikes of voltage or current or even just when the voltage and current are out of phase. In an infamous case that dragged on for years in the courts during the 1980s, Joseph W. Newman sued the patent office to try to reverse the rejection of his Energy Generation System Having Higher Energy Output Than Input. A court-appointed "special master" concluded that tests at universities had verified the excess power output, and it took new court-ordered tests by the National Bureau of Standards (what is now NIST) to establish that the machine's efficiency never exceeded 80 percent.
Currently a mechanical engineering professor at Rowan University is conducting a NASA-funded study to build and test a Black Light Rocket Engine. The Black Light process is the brainchild of Randell L. Mills, a medical doctor, whose Grand Unified Theory of Classical Quantum Mechanics holds that in a hydrogen atom the electron can drop to a state lower than the lowest state allowed by quantum mechanics, which would release vast amounts of energy. Mills's patent for extracting this energy was granted in February 2000.
The same month that news of the Rowan study broke, the American Physical Society, rather like King Canute trying to command the tide, issued a statement announcing its concern that "misguided or fraudulent claims of perpetual-motion machines and other sources of unlimited free energy are proliferating. Such devices directly violate the most fundamental laws of Nature, laws that have guided the scientific advances that are transforming our world."
The U.S. patent office may have been stung into action by recent negative publicity and complaints about ludicrous patents. Reportedly, the commissioner of patents will order a reexamination of the motionless electromagnetic generator patent. In August the office announced that patent examiners are to receive "expanded training to build and reinforce their knowledge and skills," which will be tested regularly. Patent office workers can't all be Einsteins, but perhaps now more of them will be Homer Simpsons. As he scolded his daughter Lisa when she built a perpetual-motion device: "In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics."
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Image: JOHN McFAUL
In recent decades crackpot inventors have focused on a variant of perpetual-motion machines known as free-energy devices or over-unity generators. These contraptions supposedly output more power than they take in, generally by drawing on an implausible font of energy hitherto unknown to science. The motionless electromagnetic generator discussed last month is a good example [see "There's No Stopping Them," by Graham P. Collins; Staking Claims]. At first it appears to be based on misconceptions about magnets, but it turns out the inventors have published a physics paper describing a "higher symmetry electrodynamics" that would allow infinite energy to be extracted from the vacuum by their device.
Limitless energy is more marketable than mere perpetual motion. Many over-unity promoters are outright scam artists, putting on public appearances to drum up investment money or to sell franchises and making it onto TV news shows with gullible hosts.
Perpetual motion holds a special place in the world of patents. Until 1880, a miniature working model was required for a U.S. patent to be approved. With the industrial revolution in full swing, that requirement became impractical to administer and the rule was rescinded--with the notable exception of perpetual-motion devices.
Yet "working" models of over-unity devices have occasionally fooled technically trained people at the U.S. patent office and elsewhere. A common trap for the unwary is that measuring electrical power with a meter is a difficult operation when there are sharp spikes of voltage or current or even just when the voltage and current are out of phase. In an infamous case that dragged on for years in the courts during the 1980s, Joseph W. Newman sued the patent office to try to reverse the rejection of his Energy Generation System Having Higher Energy Output Than Input. A court-appointed "special master" concluded that tests at universities had verified the excess power output, and it took new court-ordered tests by the National Bureau of Standards (what is now NIST) to establish that the machine's efficiency never exceeded 80 percent.
Currently a mechanical engineering professor at Rowan University is conducting a NASA-funded study to build and test a Black Light Rocket Engine. The Black Light process is the brainchild of Randell L. Mills, a medical doctor, whose Grand Unified Theory of Classical Quantum Mechanics holds that in a hydrogen atom the electron can drop to a state lower than the lowest state allowed by quantum mechanics, which would release vast amounts of energy. Mills's patent for extracting this energy was granted in February 2000.
The same month that news of the Rowan study broke, the American Physical Society, rather like King Canute trying to command the tide, issued a statement announcing its concern that "misguided or fraudulent claims of perpetual-motion machines and other sources of unlimited free energy are proliferating. Such devices directly violate the most fundamental laws of Nature, laws that have guided the scientific advances that are transforming our world."
The U.S. patent office may have been stung into action by recent negative publicity and complaints about ludicrous patents. Reportedly, the commissioner of patents will order a reexamination of the motionless electromagnetic generator patent. In August the office announced that patent examiners are to receive "expanded training to build and reinforce their knowledge and skills," which will be tested regularly. Patent office workers can't all be Einsteins, but perhaps now more of them will be Homer Simpsons. As he scolded his daughter Lisa when she built a perpetual-motion device: "In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics."
Source