Peenie Wallie: Perpetual Motion (Again)

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February 07, 2008

Perpetual Motion (Again)

Thane Heins has supposedly created a perpetual motion machine. I'm really happy for him. Reminds me of Joseph Newman of Lucedale, Mississippi. I saw his perpetual motion machine down in New Orleans in 1984. I went so far as to tell the mayor of Vidalia, Louisiana that the world's energy problem would be solved in the immediate future by the perpetual motion machine. This was before Joe Newman took a child bride, ran for president, and left the state.

In 1989, Stanley Pons and Martin Fleishman reported that they had achieved cold fusion in a test tube filled with Palladium and Deuterium (heavy water). I remember how they hastily called a meeting at the university I was attending and the physicists tried to answer all the breathless questions as best they could. Well, that was 19 years ago and, last time I checked, we weren't breaking ground on any Cold Fusion plants.

I'm not saying these guys are frauds or con men. I just think that they're sort of mad scientist hacks. People trying to do the impossible in the lab. I personally don't believe it's possible, but I'm in no position to tell them to stop trying.

This new "perpetual motion machine" that Thane Heins has cobbled together looks a lot like the one Joseph Newman had set up in New Orleans 24 years ago. It looks like a high school science fair project some gifted kid cobbled together in his parent's garage with a bunch of magnets and flywheels and wires hanging off of it. Plus, there's lots of scientific jargon being tossed around to bamboozle the crowds.

I'm not going to get excited about it this time around. I'm too old and jaded to fall for these fast-talking shade-tree mechanics any more. The proof is in the pudding.

If it really puts out more energy than it takes in, then you ought to be able to get it going, unplug it, and let it run itself. This seems intuitively obvious, but when I pointed this out in New Orleans 24 years ago, they were saying nonsense like "...well, the output is DC and it runs on AC..." or some crap like that. Just a bunch of smoke and mirrors of course because, if it truly puts out more energy than it takes in, it certainly ought to be able to run itself once you get it going, wouldn't you think? And if it can't produce enough power to run itself, then what good is it?

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