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Free energy?

Yoink said:
Or can we just assume that any "free energy" thing we read about in the business pages before reading about it in a science journal is nonsense?
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Yes, we may safely assume just that for the simple, good and sufficient reason that anyone who uncovers such a marvel would in very short order not want for anything material ever again, regardless of what publication route they followed. In fact, the scientific community's imprimatur would probably hasten the process along, given the cold fusion fiasco: following the accepted route of peer-review is more likely to cause scientists to take the thing seriously than an out-of-the-blue article in a business magazine.

ETA: I see tsg beat me to it.

'Luthon64
 
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Yoink said:
I take it as read that this is hocum, but I'm wondering: is there any legitimate reason why these "free energy" guys never do choose to go the route of legitimate scientific journals rather than press-releases and news conferences to the non-scientific media?

What I'm getting at is this: say you suddenly discover that you have a source of infinite free energy in your pantry (no, not your pants!). From the point of view of maximizing your economic advantage (let us assume you're averagely selfish) would you be wiser to incorporate, patent, and market and leave the scientific community's confirmation to follow? Assuming that what your discovery revealed was a fundamental aspect of the physical world that could be exploited in a number of different ways, could you in fact develop a patent that would prevent other people from exploiting the same thermodynamic loophole without needing your approval? Might you gain some patent-protected time by going directly to market before publishing your findings?

Or can we just assume that any "free energy" thing we read about in the business pages before reading about it in a science journal is nonsense?
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If you read Bob Park's book Bad Science, you'll get a blow-by-blow of how the "discoverers" of cold fusion at the University of Utah went the mass media route instead of the publish-and-replicate route. They got a lot of high level attention right away -- big splash on the morning news shows, big Utah political bigwigs trying to appropriate money for more research, etc. But it all fell apart when other scientists tried not only to replicate the results, but merely to understand the experimental protocol and the alleged data.

Bringing your discoveries to the general public without waiting for basic verification from other experimenters is bad sign.
 
Bringing your discoveries to the general public without waiting for basic verification from other experimenters is bad sign.
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Oh, it is obviously a bad sign. That's not really the point of my question, though. What I'm asking is whether there could ever be a rational defense of going "directly to the media." That is, assume you really, truly have developed tabletop cold fusion. It works, you can replicate it, you're running your lab happily on the output. Now, you sit down for a planning meeting: your scientist partners as well as some business advisers. Is there a plausible argument that someone might make that would say: "look, we're going to be millionaires whatever happens here, but if you really want to make Bill Gates look like a shoe-shine boy, the way to go is to release this to The Economist rather than start with peer-reviewed journals"?
 
Yoink said:
Or can we just assume that any "free energy" thing we read about in the business pages before reading about it in a science journal is nonsense?
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I wouldn't go so far as to say that a press release automatically makes it nonsense. I'm sure someone, somewhere, can point to data that went press-release-first that turned out to be valid[1]. But I would hazard a guess that it's the exception rather than the rule. At the very least it makes it much more likely to be nonsense.

I would speculate that the vast majority of findings that go press-release-first fall into one of 3 categories:

1) Those that really don't understand the scientific process or the importance of peer review and have therefore likely made a fatal mistake somewhere.
2) Those that know their findings won't hold up under review and are looking to fleece some investors.
3) Those trying to gain support for a political (or other) agenda.

The first rule of science stories in the news is, if it's new enough to be news, it hasn't been around long enough to go through peer review. If it's been through peer review, it's too old to be news.
 
Regarding the release vs. science issue:

WHat I'd do is:

Find some of my fellow scientisits that I thought I could trust. Either some I knew well, or some that had a reputation for integrity.
Take them aside, tell them I have some highly confidential research, and see if they'll agree to replicate/verify my findings while keeping quiet about it. If they seem amenable, then I tell them what it is, and offer them a seat on the board of Unlimited Energy, Inc. (or as much research money as they want).

Then, once I've had some people verify my results (to make sure I'm not fooling myself, as well as add credibility) we all publish, patent and go to market.
 
Cyphermage said:
It is likely they are confused, but I don't automatically discard claims like this without examing them. I've never been fond of thermodynamic laws.
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I've never been fond of the laws of gravity, which is why I can fly.
 
atari24 said:
I've never been fond of the laws of gravity, which is why I can fly.
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Actually, the reason you can fly is that it is properly called "The THEORY of Gravity." It's only a theory, it hasn't been proven. You know, like "The THEORY of Evolution." If it's only a theory, then other theories are just as valid, you know, like creationism?

Me, I say gravity works because the earth sucks. If you can get it to blow instead, then you can fly.

Woo-woo.
 
Captain Trips said:
Actually, the reason you can fly is that it is properly called "The THEORY of Gravity." It's only a theory, it hasn't been proven. You know, like "The THEORY of Evolution." If it's only a theory, then other theories are just as valid, you know, like creationism?
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Exactly. We need to teach the theory of inteligent atraction in physics class along with this newtonian stuff. "Becuase god does/did it" needs to be an acceptable answer in all science classes in this country.
 
I predict some less than scientifically astute persons will put fundage into this whackoff stuff. It's sometimes very tempting to pull something like this to take the money of the undeserving stupid and put it to good research use.
 
They're too late I've already done it! (see avatar)

I have a get rich quick scheme and I want to sell it to you rather than get rich from it :confused:
 
atari24 said:
I've never been fond of the laws of gravity, which is why I can fly.
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The Universe was produced by a small fluctuation in absolute nothingless, and it is likely that if we compressed it while heating it sufficiently to glue all the broken symmetries back together, everything would cancel and we'd get absolute nothingness back.

So at a fundamental level, conservation laws are more like conservation suggestions. It is also very likely that entropy can be thwarted by deterministic nanoscale machines.

Like Noble Gas Chemistry, no one ever tries these things because everyone "knows" they can't work. It will only take one widely advertised counterexample to change this situation.

While it's unlikely Steorn will be this counterexample, I still like to examine all such claims in detail, lest I miss the one that actually works.
 
Foil! Ooo, can I have some? My hat is getting all crinkum-crankum...
 
Did anyone watch the video these guys put out?

video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1784833525509845733

Now, I only have GCSE (school-leaver's) physics, but even I know that "when you go to the top of the hill and come down again", you haven't gained energy, merely converted one sort of energy into another, and then into a third...
 
Ririon said:
Like xenon fluoride? :)
http://www.webelements.com/webelements/compounds/text/Xe/F2Xe1-13709369.html
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Exactly like Xenon Fluoride. For years, every chemistry book in the world said "The Noble Gases form no compounds, because their electron shells are full." Then someone acually tried to make some compounds, using fluorine, which forms compounds with every other element of the periodic table. Quelle surprise!

Noble gas compounds are bound only by Van Der Waals forces, in which the electric dipole moments that the electron clouds induce in one another have a small attraction to each other. This bonding mechanism was poorly understood back when there were no known Noble Gas compounds, and the tendency to think of all bonding in terms of ionic and covalent led people to exclude the possibility.

I always think of this whenever people say things about the Second Law of Thermodynamics or mass/energy conservation or overunity generators.
 
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