Has college dropout done the impossible and created a perpetual motion machine?
Tyler Hamilton
Energy Reporter/ TheStar.com/
Feb 04, 2008 04:30 AM
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 operate as a perpetual motion machine.
The
audience, esteemed Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor
Markus Zahn, could either deflate Heins' heretical claims or add
momentum to a 20-year obsession that has broken up his marriage and
lost him custody of his two young daughters.
Zahn is a leading expert on electromagnetic and electronic systems. In a rare move for any reputable academic, he has agreed to give Heins' creation an open-minded look rather than greet it with outright dismissal.
...
It's now Jan. 28 – D Day. Heins has modified his test so the effects observed are difficult to deny. He holds a permanent magnet a few centimetres away from the driveshaft of an electric motor, and the magnetic field it creates causes the motor to accelerate. It went well.
Contacted by phone a few hours after the test, Zahn is genuinely stumped – and surprised. He said the magnet shouldn't cause acceleration. "It's an unusual phenomena I wouldn't have predicted in advance. But I saw it. It's real. Now I'm just trying to figure it out."
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.
"To my mind this is unexpected and new, and it's worth exploring all the possible advantages once you're convinced it's a real effect," he added. "There are an infinite number of induction machines in people's homes and everywhere around the world. If you could make them more efficient, cumulatively, it could make a big difference."
Driving home – he can't afford to fly – Heins is exhausted but encouraged. He says Zahn will, and must, evaluate what he saw on his own terms and time. What's preventing the engineer from grasping it right away, he says, is his education, his scientific training.
Step by step, Heins is making progress, but where it will all lead remains uncertain.
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Read the whole article: http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/300042
A perfect example why an organization such as my proposed Xtreme Science Foundation (and its XS-NRG Prize) is necessary and well overdue. The people seem to agree with me - see the Survey. [Vlad]
