Free Energy?!?!

[Kulkulkan]

An Irish firm calims to have developed a technology that provides free energy and challenges others to test their claims.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060818/bs_afp/irelandscienceenergy

[Asmodai]

Weird. A friend just messaged me this link.

I do wonder how it actually works though.

[Kulkulkan]

Great news if true, but I bet this goes the way of cold fusion about 10 years back.  I think this new tech is the whole 'zero point' concept.   Basically, even in a complete vacuum, particles are said to pop in and out of existence, and zero point is supposed to be capturing these particles to create energy.  It would take a scientist to explain, and I'm from the humanities...

[Asmodai]

Well it breaks both the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics. I don't think just saying 'it's magnetics' will be really enough to satisfy people.

I think the energy may be coming from an unknown source or more likely just in really small amounts (ala Cold Fusion)

[Foxy Brown]

An Irish company that claims to have overthrown a key law of physics with an energy-from-nothing device has delayed a public demonstration indefinitely.

[thatguy]

As much faith as we put into the laws of science, there's still always the possibility that something about them is inaccurate--but that's the whole point of science, to continue testing things to know more about the physical world. Besides, it's not as if what we learn from textbooks is the end-all fact; think of how many times human kind's view of the world has been changed in the past. From Silicon Republic

“The law of conservation of energy has been very reliable for 300 years, however it’s missing one variable from the equation, and that’s time,” said McCarthy.

McCarthy explained to Silicon Republic that Orbo technology works on the basis that occurrences in magnetic fields do not happen instantaneously, and are therefore not subject to time in the way that, say, gravity is.

An interesting view on thermodynamics, in any case. And it's not as if science will ever progress with everyone standing on the sidelines saying, "nope, that's impossible".