Energy Is Free, Perpetual Motion Is Fallacious, Steorn Should Not Release Their Findings

UPDATE Mon 26-Feb-2007 : The Verbose Philosopher Recants. The following article no longer reflects the Verbose Philosopher's views.

"For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." The diligent student identifies two consequences of this law :

1) There is an unalterable universal centre of mass;
2) Energy can be created at will;

The first of these two conclusions is tenuous, based on the assumption that matter and energy cannot be cross-converted.

The second of these conclusions is laughable, defying the law of the conservation of energy.

However, the second of these conclusions is easily demonstrated. Indeed, energy can be created at will.

The implications are staggering, but not as staggering as you might first expect.

Theoretically, if the universe evolved from a big bang (which it clearly did not), then it will end in a huge smash-up. This is an inevitable consequence of gravity's infinite reach and unrelenting pull. If we can create energy at will, surely humans could create a spacecraft to propel themselves in opposition to the force of gravity, and thus escape the doom. But free energy cannot create propulsion without reaction mass. "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." You can create all the energy you want, but you can't use that energy to go somewhere without flinging fuel, exhaust, parts of the spacecraft, or other expendibles out the back of your craft. Sooner or later, these fleeing humanoids will run out of reaction mass and join the giant squish soup that the universe will become.

So free energy does not mean unlimited propulsion, nor escape from ultimate doom.

That said, free energy does change a lot of things.

I first came upon the principles of free energy in my teenage years - roughly ten years ago. I am the only person I know of in the entire world claiming to understand the principles behind it. However, I am not the only person in the world claiming to be able to demonstrate it with ease.

Every now and then I check up on the web to see if anyone else has discovered the obvious - the inescapable conclusion of Newton's law of momentum - the ability to create energy at will.

Of course, there are ten kadzillion "PMM (Perpetual Motion Machine) Enthusiasts". Some of them are tantalizingly close, yet frustratingly far, from the obvious. It's kind of amusing to see their designs, and their almost religious dedication to perpetual motion. Some of them mighty close, but they're missing some mighty obvious principles that are sitting just under their nose.

For starters, let me make it abundantly clear : "free energy" is NOT "perpetual motion". PMM enthusiasts often confuse the creation of energy and the creation of movement. "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." Machines designed to levitate and fly around, unaffected by environment, atmosphere, or gravitation, are an impossibility. And that is relatively simple to demonstrate with maths.

But energy - the ability to create abundant truck-loads of energy, at-will - that's simple, and again, very easy to demonstrate with maths.

So what is it that PMM enthusiasts are missing? I could tell you. Let's say #1 it is obvious; and #2 it is a fairly direct consequence of the particular Newtonian law I keep harping on about in this article. The diligent student can discover the rest, as have I.

But perhaps the principles have already been discovered. Only in the last hour or so I stumbled across Steorn, a company in Ireland which claims to have accidently found an arrangement of magnets by which they can produce unlimited power.

Check it out yourself : http://www.steorn.net/en/technology.aspx?p=5.

Curiously, they stumbled across it by accident, and only a few years ago, whereas I 'discovered' it in the search for it, and about ten years ago.

I am presuming here that they are as good as their claim. And I won't be surprised if they are.

What's interesting is that they stumbled across it, and have no explanation for it. Well, until this day, I thought I was the only person who both knew how to do it and understood the physics of it. Perhaps I am no longer the only one who knows how to do it, but it does sound like I'm still the only one who understands the physics of it.

It all ties in very neatly to cosmology, one of my myriad favourite topics, and it was partly to outlay a proper framework for understanding the free energy phenonemon that I commenced writing my series of articles on Biblical Cosmology.

Yes friends, energy is there for the taking. It can be done with magnets. It can be done without magnets. It can be done with any attractive or repulsive force, including gravity, magnetism, pressurised liquids, and probably even springs and other elastic materials. It can possibly even be done with centrifugal force.

The key is so simple that I would only have to say a few words, and those frustrated students so diligently seeking the elusive would, with a little further thought, see it for themselves.

So why will I not utter the magic words?

Simple. I think it 90% likely that Steorn have, as they claim, stumbled across a practical way of easily creating energy out-of-nothing. Now, I understand the cosmological implications, the theological implications, and the likely sociological implications of this. Let me say, free energy is not the ultimate panacea it may initially appear. I've been sitting on the secret myself for these many years, for the simple reason that a rapid proliferation of free energy generators is not actually in humankind's best interests. In the event that Steorn proves mistaken, it will be better that the secret remains just that - a secret.

"What great dangers lie in so great a power?", you ask, incredulous and indignant. I chuckle to myself and think "Poor fools - they don't even understand the physics of it and yet they assume it's 'clean, green, and beneficial'".

However, the skeptic will not be sated be the mere claim of good reasons for the non-proliferation of this technology. And so I will give a partial reason here. A full discussion of the several problems requires disclosure of the operating principles, something I am not willing to engage in here and now. So please excuse me for only giving details of one part of one of my significant concerns, as follows :

Energy is easily created and introduced to the globe. What then? It is employed for propulsion, manufacturing, or by some other means, ultimately resulting in a net increase in the heat on the surface of the earth.

Consider it : if every house had a free-energy-generator out-the-back, and ran all the lights all day, and left all appliances and computers running at all times, and stopped worrying about energy ratings for refrigerators, washing machines, fans, etc, and if industry went bananas with unlimited supplies of power, guess what? We would rapidly (and somewhat irreversibly) increase the surface temperature of the earth.

So much more can be said on this topic, but I refrain. If Steorn prove to actually have discovered the technology, and a practical model becomes widely known, then with some dissappointment I will be more willing to ellucidate the world with the underpinning physics, and a fuller discussion of the dangers of this technology.

But if - as I hope, but doubt, will be the case - Steorn is yet another of the also-rans, convinced of success but sincerely mistaken, I will happily return to my Hobbit-hovel and mind my own business.

Related links :

Steorn website

A video interview with Steorn

UPDATE Mon 29-Jan-2007 : I've run through some maths, calculating the amount of thermal energy received on an ongoing basis from the sun, and concluded that, even with a 100-fold increase in global power consumption, and replacing all existing electrical power generation plants with 'free energy' devices, we would be adding energy to the earth at a rate WELL UNDER 0.1% of that added by the sun. In short : I no longer hold that the Steorn device risks overheating the earth. I continue to have other reservations with the technology - I still continue to think it best for humankind if Steorn prove mistaken - but unfortunately I must leave that as an unsupported opinion in the public eye.