Here is a 'thought experiment':

Image a society living in an environment strongly saturated with naturally
generated radio waves. These primitives know nothing about radio, although
they do have some basic understanding of electricity from a power point of
view. Now some enterprising individual is playing with some funny crystals
and is very surprised to find that he can extract small amounts of power
from what appears to be thin air.

The point is, that it may indeed be possible that there is some form of
energy in the universe around us that we just don't understand (yet?). We
just might stumble onto a means to convert that energy into a useful form,
without really understanding where it is coming from.

I am *far* happier with the idea of converting energy from a heretofore
unknown type to something useful, rather than creating energy from nothing.
The former doesn't break any rules.

Of course, I am sure most, if not all, of the current crop of 'free energy'
folk are kooks or quacks.

Bob Ammerman
RAm Systems


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Russell McMahon" <apptech@paradise.net.nz>
To: "Microcontroller discussion list - Public." <piclist@mit.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, September 22, 2004 4:54 AM
Subject: Re: [OT] Lifter design


> > Inventing a device that produces more energy than it consumes may
> > contradict the laws of nature. If that is the case it is impossible and
> > nothing can make it work.
>
> A currently highly popular postulate is that the universe invented itself
> from utterly nothing creating its "laws" along with itself in the process.
> While I find that slightly unsatisfying intellectually, it does lend
weight
> to any number of kooky ideas that suggest that anything can happen :-).
>
> Of course "the laws of nature" are simply observations of what SEEM to be
> hard and fast rules about the reality of reality. At any stage that we
> observe something that violates the current rule set we simply realise
that
> we were wrong and adjust the rule set. Of course (again :-) ) some "rules"
> seem to be very useful and very inviolable. Examples are the 3 laws of
> thermodynamics. Most easily remembered fwiw by rephrasing and thinking
about
> a card game:
>
>     You can't win
>     You can't break even.
>     You can't get out of the game
>     :-)
>
> So far EVERYTHING seems to obey these "rules".
>
> Some fairly important rules suffer some grave indignities while we are
> looking the other way.
> One such is the "rule" of gravitational attraction. IF we had an
antigravity
> source on the surface of the earth it would APPEAR to violate the 1st law
of
> thermodynamics and may allow us to fly off into space without (apparently)
> expending energy. Clearly (!) antigravity is impossible. But observation
of
> large scale cosmological happenings reveals that gravity is not acting as
it
> ought on extremely large scales in some places in the universe. We explain
> this by saying that there are forces (dark energy) and matter (dark
matter)
> that we can't detect in any way so far EXCEPT that it is playing fast and
> loose with gravity. This COULD be seen as saying that the law of gravity
is
> broken (but not in our neighbourhood) and needs replacing but nobody is
> seriously suggesting that - they just look for new "laws" instead.
>
> In  a universe where we can't find 90% odd of the matter that seems to be
> present and measurements indicate that the sun seems to have gone out (or
> not, depending on which neutrino colour theory you subscribe to) and
> Schroedinger STILL can't find his cat, then we could do with a few new
laws
> ;-)
>
> I very very seriously doubt that any of the many many 1st law violating
> claimants to perpetual motion and antigravity and the like are genuinely
> onto anything at all. But it is not inconceivable that one of these days
the
> US patent office is going to have to reverse its stand on the
patentabilityy
> of such devices. Of course, if the proponents of such something for
nothing
> devices are actually on the right track then such action by the USPO may
be
> rendered unnecessary by a very bright flash in the sky one day :-)
>
>
>         RM
>
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