In the spirit of many great philathropists, I hereby offer my own endowment: I will buy lunch for anyone who can reliably demonstrate a free energy device. However, I'm not real worried about having to pay out, since, as Heinlein observed, "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch", and free energy follows right behind.
Perhaps Heinlein's maxim could be extended as: There ain't no such thing as a free lunch, and anyone who tells you different is selling something. In the case of the moon, that something is expensive drinks, in the case of free energy, it's an "Investment Opportunity".
The inspiration for his entry comes from a friend sending me the Nullgrav website. This isn't anything new really, you'll find similar sites all over the web, promising you infinite energy and perpetual motion and telling you how stupid the science establishment is for not believing them. It is slightly more interesting in that it is located in L'anse, MI (a tiny town in the Upper Penninsula that I know quite well), but mostly it's the same as the rest. When you've gotten used to seeing these sites (and the glossy magazines and pamphlets that came before the web) you start to get jaded, and forget how easily people can be taken in. So here's the quick report: It's a crock, and will always be a crock. You want some proof? Here's the easy answer... They've been saying this crap for over 20 years now, but we all still have to put gas in the car. The 20 year figure only refers to "gyroscopic free energy devices", other perpetual motion schemes have been going for centuries.
Most of the site seems to be based on the work of this knucklehead, who, like all science knuckleheads takes Nikola Tesla as his inspiration. This isn't a knock on Tesla, but he does seem to attract crackpots as followers.
Knucklehead A (Bruce DePalma) had a conventional physics education at MIT. Of course, if you look closely at the resume he provides, it is fishy. He clearly states that he got his undergraduate degree in physics from MIT, and that he went on to graduate study in engineering and physics, but specifically avoids saying that he ever graduated. Some of the neat revelations you can get by delving into the site are his experience of realizing all at once that all the conventional laws of physics are wrong (this happened the first time he smoked pot), and his responding to a critic of his theories by saying that the natural disasters in the world represent God's anger at the skeptics.
His profile is not especially rare in this field. I first got into this when I was about 12, with a Discover Magazine article on Joe Newman. He made a pretty big scene in the mid-eighties talking about his free energy machine. Like most of these inventors, he refused to let anyone test it, and it was always "almost ready". He's still telling the same story now, almost 20 years later.
I'm a skeptic by nature, but I stay as open-minded as possible. But it's important to recognize the signs of pseudoscience. Many have done a better job than I can of describing those methods, but I'll offer a quick list.
1) If it looks too good to be true, it probably is.
2) If the science establishment/government/oil companies are fighting to suppress the truth, and that's why they can't show you it working, it's BS.
3) If no one can offer any justification for how it works except other websites and Free Energy journals, then there isn't any good justification.
4) If the new invention will revolutionize the world and change modern science, beware.
One of the most interesting new things I found in looking at this site is the focus on the X-Prize. Some of these people are just delusional, they want to believe that they can create a machine to revolutionize the world, and all the evidence in the world won't convince them otherwise. But the majority are in it to make easy cash on big promises. So using a high-profile science prize as your bait is pretty clever. If you haven't heard about the X-Prize, check it out. That is real new science, and it kicks ass. The idea is to offer a prize ($10M) for the first civilian (privately funded) space travel. There are rigid limits to what has to be accomplished, but it can be done in any way the inventors want. There are some really cool designs, using really interesting technology. If we are ever to achieve real space travel, it will come from private enterprise, not bureaucratic behemoths like NASA.
Related Links of Interest:
One of my favorite X-Prize designs
Skeptic Site on Dennis Lee and another, tied for the most famous of the free energy crowd with Joe Newman.
I also intend to do another more researched piece on Tesla.
Posted by ktismael at February 12, 2004 10:11 PM