The whole thread on rectification of room temperature heat into electric power brought back memories of my days reading a newsgroup on free energy. Quite a few unsuccessful ideas popped up. But the one that caught my interest, the dry ice laser, almost looked like it would work.
The laser consisted of a transparent chamber, with a half silvered mirror on the front and fully silvered mirror on the back, into which blackbody radiation from the surrounding room entered and interacted with carbon dioxide molecules from a piece of slowly warming dry ice. Eventually, the molecules become saturated with the radiation and start producing a laser beam. After a while everything warms up to room temperature and the process of producing a laser beam stops. Place a sharp ten micrometer bandpass filter around the chamber of the laser and, in theory, the filter will block thermal radiation slowing the warming process and releasing tremendous quantities of free energy.
Of course I had my doubts. Don't real laser require electrical power, not heat, in order to operate? And if energy can easily flow into the chamber, then surely that same energy can just as easily flow back out of the chamber again. Then again, I have heard reports of a mysterious Mars laser that adsorbs heat from the sun and produces a beam. So who knows, it might actually work.
The laser consisted of a transparent chamber, with a half silvered mirror on the front and fully silvered mirror on the back, into which blackbody radiation from the surrounding room entered and interacted with carbon dioxide molecules from a piece of slowly warming dry ice. Eventually, the molecules become saturated with the radiation and start producing a laser beam. After a while everything warms up to room temperature and the process of producing a laser beam stops. Place a sharp ten micrometer bandpass filter around the chamber of the laser and, in theory, the filter will block thermal radiation slowing the warming process and releasing tremendous quantities of free energy.
Of course I had my doubts. Don't real laser require electrical power, not heat, in order to operate? And if energy can easily flow into the chamber, then surely that same energy can just as easily flow back out of the chamber again. Then again, I have heard reports of a mysterious Mars laser that adsorbs heat from the sun and produces a beam. So who knows, it might actually work.
