First gained mainstream press fame toward the end of the 1980’s as a possible engine for the zero-emission car. Are over unity electric motors the wave of the future or just a product of bad lab work?
By: Ringo Bones
During the second half of the 1980’s, a number of garage tinkers manage to gain press attention over their inventions based on an electric motor - most of them involving the esoteric concept of magnetic monopoles - that runs on “free energy”. Through a cycle of “repression” and PR raves – probably due to their set-ups failing to pass rigorous scientific peer review – free energy devices manage to survive till this day. Often marketed as “suppressed” technology via the Internet boasting that their particular “free energy” device has been actively kept out of the mainstream market by powerful Washington crude oil lobbyists. But do electrical motors like these fulfill the promise of free energy by claiming that once started initially by a lead acid battery, they would run forever without the need to draw additional power? Or just the latest marketing triumph of their “creators” savvy for on-line peddling of suppressed pseudoscience-based rip-offs.
After hunting high and low via the Internet and 1980’s era education / educator’s journals which our modest public library still manage to stock, the “science” behind over unity motors could be traced – in my point of view – to uncorrected misconceptions of electrical engineering students performing lab work. Lab work which, unfortunately, their instructors failed to vet them properly over the problems of “erroneous data” that could crop up during their lab experiments. The “erroneous data” collected by the Class of ’77 and onwards to which their electrical engineering laboratory professors failed to vet them. Is probably - make that the main - reason why an overwhelmingly high number of electrical engineers of impeccable competence still pursue their Quixotic quest of over unity free energy electric motors.
I mean first and foremost of all, an overwhelmingly high number of electrical engineering students – even till this day – lacked the full grasp of what constitutes true scientific experimentation, correct electrical voltage and current measurement procedures, decent documentation of acquired data, and its decent interpretation. Add to that the “perennial issue” of confusing average current readings with true RMS (root mean square) current readings. They – the electrical engineering professors and their lab students - should know by now that ordinary alternating current or AC meters lie like politicians desperate for votes. Plus, there is this something that electrical engineers knew since the time of Nikola Tesla called counter-EMF, which still mystifies most people. Even those professionally certified electrical engineers whose day jobs involve electrical engineering related work and design.
Put them all together and you suddenly realize how difficult it is – make that excruciatingly difficult – to measure power to an acceptably accurate degree. Especially when it involves “strange” non-sine wave waveforms of AC currents, power in- power out nonlinearities due to counter-EMF, sparking, noisy signal waveforms, harmonics due to inherently dirty AC currents, stray magnetic fields several times stronger than the norm, reactance, and other subtle esoteric hidden effects like stray cable capacitance.
The Laws of Thermodynamics since time immemorial still does not allow something for nothing, let alone allowing humanity to break-even when it comes to the “energy game”. This conservation of energy law tells us that there is no non-nuclear process known by which energy can either be created or destroyed. Unless we manage to create a technology allowing us to manipulate the entropy levels of a power generating system, then probably a truly clean and free energy – though it might involve very substantial start-up costs – generating system could become a reality.
Showing posts with label Free Energy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Free Energy. Show all posts
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Does the Sun Power Everything?
Touted as the cleanest and only cost-free energy source, finding ways of getting our energy needs from the Sun can no longer be ignored. But is it stretching the truth a bit when we say that the sun powers everything around us?
By: Vanessa Uy
Currently it seems like every one is involved in the race to harness the energy that streams down on us from the Sun. Touted as the cleanest renewable energy which sends us light with no monetary costs whatsoever. It seems like harnessing the Sun’s radiant energy is the best thing for us since free money, but shouldn't we know more about our nearest star first before putting all of our energy security eggs in one solar basket?
Some might harbor the notion that the sun is renewable, actually it’s not. The Sun has been slowly dying for 5 billion years. And 5 billion years into the future, it will turn into a red giant star that would kill all forms of life on the Earth’s surface. But given the vast time scales – and we humans have only been around for less than a million years – it’s safe to say that the sun could be considered “renewable”. Who knows that a few centuries from now we could develop technologies that allow us to travel and colonize other Earth-like planets in other star systems, with the same ease as flying to a vacation spot 1,000 miles away like we currently do. Remember folks, our manned space program is there for humanity’s long-term survival. Our civilization could potentially outlive our Sun.
The ancient plants used the Sun’s radiant energy as they grow then later died hundreds of millions of years ago. Their (the plants and the ecosystem supported by it) long dead bodies are where our crude oil and coal comes from, hence the term fossil fuel. A mighty testament on how solar energy is stored and sequestered naturally, and these fossil fuels are still full of that solar energy made by the Sun countless of eons ago. The bad news is we are using it faster that nature can replenish back the supply. So we should find ways to extract power from the Sun directly.
Wind turbines, hydroelectric power, even wave power’s apparent renewable credentials are nothing more than the Sun powering our planetary weather and climactic system. Blowing air around that allows wind turbines to generate electricity. Our Sun heats up the water on the ocean’s surface evaporating it. Then sending water back to the mountains as rain that flows back to the rivers, whose flow is harnessed by hydroelectric plants before the water flows back to the sea, thus the cycle repeats again. Even the waves and sea currents that we are now learning to harness are ultimately powered by the Sun.
The radioactive elements we used to power our nuclear fission power plants can be traced back our Sun’s precursor which is several times its size. Given our current knowledge of Astrophysics, our Sun’s large precursor did not die quietly. It exploded into a supernova which during the several billionths of a second before blowing itself to bits, created of most of our planet’s supply of uranium. And because of this explosion, our Sun was eventually born. Even geothermal power owes its existence to the nuclear alchemy of a supernova explosion because our planet’s internal heat is nothing more than a natural nuclear fission reactor.
Given our current understanding of the Sun’s benefit to us – from the very distant past to the farthest recesses of our distant future – only leaves us with awe. And our current fascination in harnessing this cleanest source of energy that’s relatively free will only increase in quantity and sophistication as time goes on. The pre-Columbian civilizations of the Americas were really on to something when they decided to pay homage to and worship the Sun. The Sun really did make everything possible.
By: Vanessa Uy
Currently it seems like every one is involved in the race to harness the energy that streams down on us from the Sun. Touted as the cleanest renewable energy which sends us light with no monetary costs whatsoever. It seems like harnessing the Sun’s radiant energy is the best thing for us since free money, but shouldn't we know more about our nearest star first before putting all of our energy security eggs in one solar basket?
Some might harbor the notion that the sun is renewable, actually it’s not. The Sun has been slowly dying for 5 billion years. And 5 billion years into the future, it will turn into a red giant star that would kill all forms of life on the Earth’s surface. But given the vast time scales – and we humans have only been around for less than a million years – it’s safe to say that the sun could be considered “renewable”. Who knows that a few centuries from now we could develop technologies that allow us to travel and colonize other Earth-like planets in other star systems, with the same ease as flying to a vacation spot 1,000 miles away like we currently do. Remember folks, our manned space program is there for humanity’s long-term survival. Our civilization could potentially outlive our Sun.
The ancient plants used the Sun’s radiant energy as they grow then later died hundreds of millions of years ago. Their (the plants and the ecosystem supported by it) long dead bodies are where our crude oil and coal comes from, hence the term fossil fuel. A mighty testament on how solar energy is stored and sequestered naturally, and these fossil fuels are still full of that solar energy made by the Sun countless of eons ago. The bad news is we are using it faster that nature can replenish back the supply. So we should find ways to extract power from the Sun directly.
Wind turbines, hydroelectric power, even wave power’s apparent renewable credentials are nothing more than the Sun powering our planetary weather and climactic system. Blowing air around that allows wind turbines to generate electricity. Our Sun heats up the water on the ocean’s surface evaporating it. Then sending water back to the mountains as rain that flows back to the rivers, whose flow is harnessed by hydroelectric plants before the water flows back to the sea, thus the cycle repeats again. Even the waves and sea currents that we are now learning to harness are ultimately powered by the Sun.
The radioactive elements we used to power our nuclear fission power plants can be traced back our Sun’s precursor which is several times its size. Given our current knowledge of Astrophysics, our Sun’s large precursor did not die quietly. It exploded into a supernova which during the several billionths of a second before blowing itself to bits, created of most of our planet’s supply of uranium. And because of this explosion, our Sun was eventually born. Even geothermal power owes its existence to the nuclear alchemy of a supernova explosion because our planet’s internal heat is nothing more than a natural nuclear fission reactor.
Given our current understanding of the Sun’s benefit to us – from the very distant past to the farthest recesses of our distant future – only leaves us with awe. And our current fascination in harnessing this cleanest source of energy that’s relatively free will only increase in quantity and sophistication as time goes on. The pre-Columbian civilizations of the Americas were really on to something when they decided to pay homage to and worship the Sun. The Sun really did make everything possible.
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