You may heard a lot about the term “free energy” recently and your reaction to it is still: “There is no free lunch!” or “Perpetual motion is impossible!”
You see? We tend to apply the principles we are familiar with in the macro world to things in the micro world. Most things we see with our naked eyes are tend to be motionless and needs effort or energy to make them move.
However, on a micro atomic level things behaves quite differently – it is hard for things invisible to our naked eyes to stay put because they are always in a constant motion. In other words, they act like dusts on the surface of sea water – as long the sea waves do not stop moving around, these dusts will not stop moving. So things of the micro level appears to be driven by a sea of energy around them, above and below it. In this case, the opposite is true: it requires effort, and lot of it, to stop them from moving.
This energy is there doing its work even if you lower the temperature to the absolute zero degree (Kelvin). This is the free energy we are talking about and that is why many scientists call it “zero point” energy. Because it is already there around no matter what, some call it “ambient background field” energy.
The problem with most people is, most people ignore this all-present and all-around sea of energy, just as they ignore the exist of God. Ignoring anything invisible seems to be our natural tendency. To prove the existence of this sea of energy, we only need have a way to tap into it and continuously draw energy out of it.
As another example, consider a glass tumbler filled completely with water (see picture on the right hand side). Using common sense, tell me, how much water can be poured out of the glass? For the purposes of this illustration, please take it that temperature, pressure, gravity, etc. all remain constant for the duration of the experiment.
The answer is: “the exact volume contained inside the tumbler”. Agreed. This is what present day science says. To be strictly accurate, you will never be able to pour all of the water out as a small amount will remain, wetting the inside of the glass. Another way of putting this is to say that the “efficiency” of the pouring operation is not 100%. This is typical of life in general, where very few, if any, actions are 100% efficient.
So, are we agreed with current scientific thinking then – the maximum amount of water which can pour out of the tumbler is the total volume inside the tumbler? This seems simple and straightforward, doesn’t it? Science thinks so, and insists that this is the end of the story, and nothing else is possible. This arrangement is called a “closed system” as the only things being considered are the glass, the water and gravity.
Well, unfortunately for current scientific thinking, this is not the only possible situation and “closed systems” are almost unknown in the real world. Mostly, assumptions are made that the effects of anything else around will cancel out and add up to a net zero effect. This is a very convenient theory, but unfortunately it has no basis in reality.
Let’s fill our glass with water again and begin to pour it out again, but this time we position it underneath a source of flowing water .
So, now, how much water can be poured out of the tumbler? Answer: “millions of times the volume of the tumbler”. But hang on a moment, haven’t we just said that the absolute limit of water poured from the tumbler has to be the volume inside the tumbler? Yes, that’s exactly what we said, and that is what current science teaching says. The bottom line here is that what current science says does in fact hold true for most of the time, but there are cases where the basic assumption of it being a “closed system” is just not true.
One popular misconception is that you can’t get more energy out of a system than you put into it. That is wrong, because the sentence was worded carefully. Let me say it again and this time, emphasise the key words: “you can’t get more energy out of a system than you put into it”. If that were true, then it would be impossible to sail a yacht all the way around the world without burning any fuel, and that has been done many times and none of the driving energy came from the crews. If it were true, then a grain mill driven by a waterwheel would not be able to produce flour as the miller certainly does not push the millstones around himself. If that were true, then nobody would build windmills, or construct solar panels, or tidal power stations.
What the statement should say is “more energy can’t be taken out of a system than is put into it or is already in it” and that is a very different statement. When sailing a yacht, the wind provides the driving force which makes the trip possible. Notice that, it is the environment providing the power and not the sailors. The wind arrived without them having to do anything about it, and a lot less than 100% of the wind energy reaching the yacht actually becomes forward thrust, contributing to the voyage. A good deal of the energy arriving at the yacht ends up stretching the rigging, creating a wake, producing noise, pushing the helmsman, etc. etc. This idea of no more energy coming out of a system than goes into it, is called “The Law of Conservation of Energy” and it is perfectly right, in spite of the fact that it gets people confused.
“Free-Energy Devices” or “Zero-Point Energy Devices” are the names applied to systems which appear to produce a higher output power than their input power. There is a strong tendency for people to state that such a system is not possible since it contravenes the Law of Conservation of Energy. It doesn’t. If it did, and any such system was shown to work, then the “Law” would have to be modified to include the newly observed fact. No such change is necessary, it merely depends on your point of view.
For example, consider a crystal set radio receiver.
Looking at this in isolation, we appear to have a free-energy system which contradicts the Law of Conservation of Energy. It doesn’t, of course, but if you do not view the whole picture, you see a device which has only passive components and yet which (when the coil is of the correct size) causes the headphones to generate vibrations which reproduce recognisable speech and music. This looks like a system which has no energy input and yet which produces an energy output. Considered in isolation, this would be a serious problem for the Law of Conservation of Energy, but when examined from a common sense point of view, it is no problem at all.
The whole picture is: Power is supplied to a nearby transmitter which generates radio waves which in turn, induce a small voltage in the aerial of the crystal set, which in turn, powers the headphones. The power in the headphones is far, far less than the power taken to drive the transmitter. There is most definitely, no conflict with the Law of Conservation of Energy. However, there is a quantity called the “Coefficient Of Performance” or “COP” for short. This is defined as the amount of power coming out of a system, divided by the amount of power that the operator has to put into that system to make it work. In the example above, while the efficiency of the crystal set radio is well below 100%, the COP is greater than 1. This is because the owner of the crystal radio set does not have to supply any power at all to make it work, and yet it outputs power in the form of sound. As the input power from the user, needed to make it work is zero, and the COP value is calculated by dividing the output power by this zero input power, the COP is actually infinity. Efficiency and COP are two different things. Efficiency can never exceed 100% and almost never gets anywhere near 100% due to the losses suffered by any practical system.
As another example, consider an electrical solar panel.
Again, viewed in isolation, this looks like (and actually is) a Free-Energy device if it is set up out of doors in daylight, as current is supplied to the load (radio, battery, fan, pump, or whatever) without the user providing any input power. Again, Power Out with no Power In. Try it in darkness and you find a different result because the whole picture is:
The energy which powers the solar panel comes from the sun. Only some 17% of the energy reaching the solar panel is converted to electrical current. This is most definitely not a contravention of the Law of Conservation of Energy. This needs to be explained in greater detail. The Law of Conservation of Energy applies to closed systems, and only to closed systems. If there is energy coming in from the environment, then the Law of Conservation of Energy just does not apply, unless you take into account the energy entering the system from outside.
Did you see? We are not living in a totally enclosed system at all. We are living in a sea of energy from where we draw power freely with us only doing the work of reaching out hands to receive it. If we do not know how to reach it, we have people around us who have done the hard work of creating tools for us to reach it.