PeeperStorm on 8/9/2006 at 01:19

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Big deal. He uses electricity (energy) to break water down into hydrogen and oxygen, then uses them to run a cutting torch. I like the reporter's breathless claim that the flame "turns hotter than the surface of the sun."

Nicker on 8/9/2006 at 06:27

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Thank you for agreeing with me. And your point is?

In fairness, I did provide a modern example (plate tectonics) of the same dismissive attitude by “real” scientists with diplomas and everything.


It seems to me there are a number of possibilities for Steorn. So far I count:
- they could be deliberate frauds.
- they could sincerely believe they have made an infinite energy machine but are misinterpreting their results.
- they could have actually done what they said they have.

In any case, they are offering to let many people test their machine. Barring some vast conspiracy to get all the participants to fraudulently deny the truth of their findings... either the inventors will be proven right or wrong.

It's no skin off my nose to wait until those tests have been done. I don't have money invested in the company and I am not here selling stock. Why several of you are taking such umbrage at my patience is a bit puzzling. So many knotted knickers.

All I said was - sounds fishy to me but if they are willing to put it to the test, I am willing to wait for the results - That's not bad science, is it?

Swiss Mercenary on 8/9/2006 at 17:19

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You do realise how easy it is to pull a half dozen smoke & mirrors tricks when walking people through your experiment?

People were convinced by Cold Fusion, too, you know.

No peer review of their work + no information released about how it works + ridicilous claim = bullshit, with a certainty of 100%.

People laughed at Galileo, Einstein, and Tesla. People also laughed at Bozo the clown.

If you want a real test, then they should send the blueprints to an impartial investigator, have them build their copy of the machine, and test it, rather then taking a group of laymen into a control room, turning on all the flashy lights, and playing ring-around-the-rosie.

Malygris on 8/9/2006 at 18:58

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LOL EINSTEIN

Agent Monkeysee on 8/9/2006 at 19:38

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The problem I have with this is the problem I have with any claims that are obviously unscientific bullshit being taken as scientific. Of course I would be a bad skeptic if I couldn't allow the possibility that they've actually discovered the means to overturn all physical law but the probability is so vanishingly small that to consider it with anything more than a passing disregard is to give it too much credit.

You probably think I'm being too harsh and I understand where you're coming from with these paradigms and revolutions and "how do we know we've been wrong before" sentiment and under different conditions those are laudible attitudes to maintain.

But the point I'm making that I'm not entirely sure you're getting is that our physical knowledge is complete enough that claiming an engine exceeds carnot efficiency is qualitatively different than claiming, say, rocks fall from the heavens or the continents glide on suspended plates. It is in fact qualitatively different from claming that light is both a particle and a wave, that we can never know both the momentum and position of a particle simultaneously and precisely, or that everything in the universe is made of vibrating strings.

All these claims, while fantastic and requiring a significant level of physical and theoretical justification before they should be accepted or rejected, still build upon and are compatible with known physical law. Even before there was any known evidence for continental drift there were not, there were not, any physical laws, theories, or convincing body of evidence that resoundingly precluded the very possibility of plate tectonics.
There simply wasn't enough evidence nor a convincing model to justify it, but there was no theoretical reason why a planet's crust couldn't form itself into seperate plates that drifted upon a magma layer.

That's where these perfectly efficient engine claims go awry. They're not merely proposing something that we simply don't have the resources to definitely say one way or another. A perfectly efficient engine directly contradicts fundamental physical laws that have been well-known and universally verified for over 200 years or more and establish the basis for nearly the entire body of modern scientific knowledge. This is not a scientific revolution. This is 2 + 2 = a bag of hammers.

And I really don't think you're getting that. If this were true it

WOULD

CHANGE

EVERYTHING

This is not equivalent to discovering that String Theory is true or that the aether exists or that intelligent beings have been visiting Earth. This is equivalent to discovering that Astrology is true, that dragons live among us, that magic exists, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. We would have noticed by now because if it were true the Universe would be fundamentally different.