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MIT Prof Confirms Perpetual Motion Machine is Accelerating

thestar.com — College drop-out creates perpetual motion machine that has been vetted past an MIT professor that can't explain it. Thane Heins is nervous and hopeful. It's Jan. 24, a Thursday afternoon, and in four days the Ottawa-area native will travel to Boston where he'll demonstrate an invention that appears, though he doesn't dare say it, to be a perpetual

Who dugg this? Made popular Feb 7, 2008

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  • DeFex, on 02/07/2008, -9/+464imagine it works, and humans make lots of them for free energy, then one day we discover the "free energy" is actually the earths momentum. and we fall in to the sun .
  • rhkaloge, on 02/07/2008, -14/+417"In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!"
  • SkippyDoorknob, on 02/07/2008, -2/+219Boy, we'd have a nice hearty laugh that day, that's for sure!
  • japface, on 02/07/2008, -10/+210well for the skeptics out there, MIT is reviewing it, and according to the article the guys there currently cannot explain it. That doesnt mean MIT wont be able to find one, it just means that yes they are trying to review it. and like the article says no one wants to venture at calling it a perpetual motion machine because once that happens you get labelled a nutter. at the very least this could improve efficiency of motors, and at the very best open up a new endless energy source and a new area of science. either way its a digg.
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  • gaberowe, on 02/07/2008, -6/+119I've met Prof. Zahn and he's a smart guy, but this article is meant to be sensational--I'm sure he's rolling his eyes about this. Clearly if you think about the situation--bringing a magnet from away from the motor to next to the motor, you are adding energy to the system by doing that. The effect is probably a lorentz force acting in a strange way that is not expected. The typical thought is that permanent magnets next to motors slow down motors. I'm sure if you left the magnet there for a while it would slow down the motor. My bet is that his motor is actually a badly designed motor, and by adding the magnet he's actually making the motor's magnetic field distribution more normal. You can imagine a case where the poles of the motor are not properly spaced, and if you place a magnet near the motor the field changes and the motor is able to gain more energy from the other poles that are placed properly.

    The one thing that is nearly always common between this crackpots is that they always have little education and claim they don't need education or don't want their mind clouded by education. Education is not indoctrination--especially graduate level education. You choose what you want to learn about and you go after it. Time and time again, grad students find something interesting, then study it in depth and find that its possible to explain their strange observation in terms of classical or quantum physics.

    Almost all perpetual motion machines have magnets or motors and the main reason is that most people don't understand how you can have current and voltage out of phase with each other or that energy can be stored in a magnetic field. Time and time and time again, these guys always can't prove that the thing works without having some external force or chemical reaction running, or anything to that effect. So most people say why waste your time on this? Well people like Zahn are just very curious--doesn't mean that the thing is real though....
  • fluidfoundation, on 02/07/2008, -17/+121In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!!!
  • ashwinmudigonda, on 02/07/2008, -9/+102What a crappy article. There is so much ***** about his personal life and no technical insight as to what it is he is actually proposing. I wish someone would throw this writer to Oprah's show and get some technical writer to bare out the bones.
  • obliviousfool, on 02/07/2008, -6/+89http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogLeKTlLy5E&feature ...
    He has some YouTube videos. Anybody want to explain this thing? I don't get it.
  • astyler, on 02/07/2008, -6/+80For the record, any machine harnessing magnetic fields is not a perpetual motion machine. The magnetic fields decay over time and the energy gained is just the transfer of energy from the charging of the magnets.

    This is well known and the reason all perpetual machines utilizing magnets are immediately dismissed.
  • Otto, on 02/07/2008, -30/+104I've never seen a bigger load of crap in my life. Zero-point energy cannot be tapped into by definition, and the casimir effect proves no such thing as you say it does. Your very own links contradict you.

    Buried as idiocy.
  • lostarchitect, on 02/07/2008, -3/+69apparently, nobody gets it. that's the problem.
  • Etchii, on 02/07/2008, -10/+75A buddy and I got high and were talking about this idea. The way he explained it was a way to harness the vibrations the string theory describes to power devices. I loved the idea of wireless everything. Then we ate pizza and played video games. Good times.
  • diggeddugg, on 02/07/2008, -4/+67Great, now take some useful energy out of the system
  • HaSatan, on 02/07/2008, -10/+72Wow its almost been a week since there was a Perpetual Motion story...i was starting to get worried.
  • EtherGnat, on 02/07/2008, -0/+61No worries, they'll keep coming around.... and around.... and around....
  • slvrbullet87, on 02/07/2008, -1/+61Now thats what i call a sticky situation
  • HaSatan, on 02/07/2008, -15/+67Digg is in essence a Perpetual Motion machine. Except replace "motion" with "*****"
  • diggzoid, on 02/07/2008, -4/+54Apparently they are not claiming it's perpetual motion.....

    From the article: "There's no talk of perpetual motion. No whisper of broken scientific laws or free energy. Zahn would never go there – at least not yet. But he does see the potential for making electric motors more efficient, and this itself is no small feat."
  • Ceeman, on 02/07/2008, -26/+75From thestar.com huh. When I see this in a published review then I will get happy. I can make claims about anything. I also can fake a video and bring in 30 people to say they are from MIT. That all is not proof. It needs review under proper testing.
  • threepio, on 02/07/2008, -9/+58That'd be "The Toronto Star". You know - one of Canada's top three newspapers?
  • Servebot, on 02/07/2008, -5/+47thats the most intriguing comment ive read on digg ever
  • noahhoward, on 02/07/2008, -4/+44I could bring in 30 people to say they are from MIT too... this guy brought in 1 guy who IS from MIT. http://lees.mit.edu/lees/zahn_m.htm
  • bortis, on 02/07/2008, -12/+51The fact that "a" professor was, after a brief demonstration of the machine, unable to explain the effect he was seeing, is hardly a "confirmation" of perpetual motion.
  • DrummerAndrew, on 02/07/2008, -1/+39The WHOLE point of the article is that he IS looking for people to do a review under proper testing. He doesn't understand it. He wants people to even prove that it doesn't do what he thinks it does. Then he can stop ruining his life with it.

    Best of luck buddy.
  • Ajnag, on 02/07/2008, -11/+49This will never get recognition until its proven that he can make money from it. Then it will be "real". I actually hope he is successful so he can tell off his ex-wife (what a bitch I might add)
  • rpi22, on 02/07/2008, -24/+61The casimir effect (fixed)
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_effect
  • dudefather, on 02/07/2008, -2/+39prepare for unforseen consequeques
  • DreKor, on 02/07/2008, -1/+36also, gravity guns.
  • HaSatan, on 02/07/2008, -1/+35LOL! I guess you could say these stories never lose their momentum...
  • SQLDigger, on 02/07/2008, -1/+35Maybe she wanted a different kind of perpetual motion . . .

  • glock22ownr, on 02/07/2008, -2/+33I don't get why the article makes him sound so ... ill educated ... from the videos he seems fairly intelligent ... aside from not being the best speaker perhaps... but what geek is ?
  • noodlez, on 02/07/2008, -4/+36it looks similar to the last perpetual motion machine posted on digg.
    the thing is, solid magnets aren't magnetic forever, and they'll slowly demagnetize from stress. hypothetically, if this thing (or the last one posted) works, it would essentially use magnets as fuel, which is just a magnetic engine, not a perpetual motion machine.
  • DreKor, on 02/07/2008, -1/+33Your browser does not support Sanskrit. Please download it here.
    http://salrc.uchicago.edu/resources/fonts/availabl ...
  • Gunsdead, on 02/07/2008, -0/+31oopsie daisy!
  • shaundee, on 02/07/2008, -3/+33we've all been there man
  • elementop, on 02/07/2008, -0/+29An airplane mechanic once told a junior mechanic "pilots don't lie". What he was saying is that just because a problem that pilots report can't be duplicated in the shop doesn't mean the problem doesn't exist.
    Applied to this story: if this machine is, in fact, accelerating, it might possibly be caused by the machine extracting energy from somewhere else, we just haven't figured out where. Consider this, as a "for example". Three hundred years ago, no one could have explained how a simple transformer works. Electricity was an unknown, and even if it was known, how could the voltage in one coil be transferred to the other coil when there is no electrical contact between them?
    So, suppose this guy and the supposed MIT prof are legit...it doesn't mean they are breaking the laws of thermodynamics. Rather it means we haven't figured out where the additional energy is coming from. But yeah, it's *got* to be coming from somewhere.
  • Elliuotatar, on 02/07/2008, -2/+30Also merely spinning forever isn't really perpetual motion as people think of it. Apply any sort of friction, and something like those magnetic motors would quickly come to a stop, making it useless to power anything.

    Perpetual motion already exists. A beam of light shot into space will travel forever. A ball set spinning in space will spin forever.

    But anytime a perpetual motion device inventor claims to allow you to extract energy from that movement without slowing the thing down, then you're violating the known laws of physics.
  • RuthlessPirate, on 02/07/2008, -3/+31Bitches love Sanskrit.
  • marrstu, on 02/07/2008, -2/+29Now that's global warming.
  • LeCollectif, on 02/07/2008, -4/+31Thank you! From the seemingly single other person who RTFA
  • Stratochief66, on 02/07/2008, -0/+27Volts are not a unit of energy, they are a unit of potential difference. I can charge a capacitor up to 50V, then measure it with 2 seperate readouts without consuming or producing any energy. If he could measure an outputted amount of Watts, and use those watts to power something else, then I might be interested.
  • Skurt, on 02/07/2008, -8/+35Peter Griffin already invented it.
    A Treadmill, a Fat Kid and a Twinkie on a stick!
  • RedHerringHack, on 02/07/2008, -3/+29It is more likely that we will get a huge energy bill from the local Galactic Energy Authority. As soon as we put up our Galactic Mail Authority Approved Mailbox that is.
  • inactive, on 02/07/2008, -7/+33why the hate for this? people can dream right...I don't believe in free energy but I also know theories in physics have been turned on their head before...revolutions do occur. seems like there could at least be some useful innovations in efficiencythat occur in attempts to create "perpetual motion"...I can't understand why people would show disdain for this type of effort....are some people so disturbed by having their belief system changed that they express hate at those testing the theories even though the very act of testing may unleash new technologies that benefit mankind? Even the MIT guy is interested curiosu, even if it is nothing more than a good magic act...isn't that something fun to learn about?
  • inactive, on 02/07/2008, -2/+28I'm glad that LOL is universal.
  • Oea420, on 02/07/2008, -7/+32I mean, I'm no physics major...

    But if there is no external power supply, and it's accelerating, isn't that mission accomplished?

    (And is this some kind of alternate universe youtube? The comments are mostly well throught out questions and pertain to the subject of the video, what the *****)
  • DeFex, on 02/07/2008, -9/+33yeah they were trying those damned heavier than air flying vehicles for thousands of years as well. stupid impossible airplanes.
  • HaloZero, on 02/07/2008, -1/+25Hey, I think the wife had a right. He makes no income, he spends all his time on this invention that might or might not work. They have two kids and he's spent the past 20 years trying to build this invention. She is probably not a bitch.
  • Morol, on 02/07/2008, -1/+24"military remote viewers" ha ha ha...
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