Self Contained Power Source?

McOSEN writes "Your Server Cabinet could have a 100% self sustained power source. It's called Parallel Path Technology and it's being coined as a revolution in the magnetic motor industry. From Segways to Vacuum cleaners to Server Cabinets. The article talks about the technology but doesn't exactly lay out specifics."

Anyone want to buy a bridge

[rahmrh]

Electric motors are already 80-90% efficient, while this might make it closer to 100% it won't go over, unless someone discovered some new laws of physics. Given that they attempt to make the claim of greater than 100% I suspect the entire thing is full of crap.

Ahh Physics

[TheUnknownOne]

So the first lines of the article basicly claim it's a perpetual motion machine, and than later in the article it says this is impossible. Wonderful when even the articles contridict themselves. I really enjoy the part where they state that they recieved a patent, like it actually means something.

Perpetual motion machines

[isomeme]

Why is it that every new PMM for the last two decades has involved permanent magnets? Is there some kind of mad-scientist cabal that decrees these things? Will the fashion turn to something else soon, like, I don't know, materials so bouncy that they rebound with more energy than they hit the surface with? (Name that classic SF story.)

Seriously: Editors, please shitcan perpetual motion machines before we have to waste precious seconds on them. When a real PMM is possible, you'll know it's happened because suddenly the universe will have stopped working properly, and you'll be instantaneously and very thoroughly dead.

Mod article down

[the eric conspiracy]

Why are we bombarded by these nonsense articles? This sort of thing should be recognized as B.S. by even a reasonable competent High School student.

Re:Yet Another Bogus Science Story

[Anonymous Coward]

The Open Source Energy Network is full of bogus stories. They should learn their thermodynamics and stop whoring for slashdot visitors.

Re:Yet Another Bogus Science Story

[mad.frog]

Even if it didn't fit past articles, this one alone should be grounds for an indefinite suspension of story submission rights (for both submitter and editor).

The slogan here is "news for nerds", not "news for people who have no knowledge whatsoever of the basic principles of physical science"...

Correct!!!

[BarnabyWilde]

"The article talks about the technology but doesn't exactly lay out specifics"

The one true statement in the post!

What's it got to do with "Server Cabinets"? Absolooly... nuthin'.

Re:Perpetual motion machines

[drgonzo59]

People who do not have a particularly good relationship with math and real science are fascinated with the "crazy" and "wonderful" action at a distance. Much like my cat is fascinated at the strange red dot that is there moving but then disappears all of the sudden, when I turn the laser point off. These kind of people will say stuff like "OMG! Wow! Look Ma! Two pieces of metal attract each other and they are not even touching!" Then of course they make the obvious step from there and say "Aha! I know, I bet I could build a perpetual motion machine, I'll be famous and solve the world's energy problems..." As they get older they don't necessarily get smarter, they just make their designs more complicated and use a lot of buzzwords, then they apply for patents, and people just like them from the patent office grant them those patents, then they create websites, attract investors and become famous.

What is most sad about the story is that it appeared on the front page of Slashdot. "News for nerds" turned into "News for idiots". This leads me to believe that if even the supposedly scientifically minded Slashdot editors and submitters are willing to believe such crap, the general public will probably be even easier convinces.

Sad, sad, sad... I blame the primary education in this country.

Re:Perpetual motion machines

[DerGeist]

The reason for all the commotion about permanent magnets is their seemingly unending supply of energy. From a simplistic point of view, this could mean an easy path to a PMM. Example: you can envision putting a magnet on your fridge. It sticks until you take it off. Put a piece of paper on your fridge, it just slides to the ground. The magnet has to exert force all the time to keep itself from falling, right? What if we could harness this incessant force somehow? Great Scott, we'd have a perpetual motion machine! Of course, in real life this doesn't work because a constant magnetic field doesn't actually do any work -- a changing magnetic field does, but you need to sustain this change somehow, which does take work. So to sum it up, it's highly unlikely that permanent magnets are secretly PMMs just waiting to be discovered.

Sadly Misunderstood

[goodie3shoes]

It's clear that the writer of TFA didn't understand much about what (s)he heard/read about this. I'm sure that the developers of the technology make no silly claims about greater than 100% efficiency. More likely, this is just an improvement on existing technology that gives, perhaps, somewhat better efficiency, or higher power in a smaller size, less weight for a given power, etc. Any of these would be good, but violate no physical laws.

Re:Yet Another Bogus Science Story

[deglr6328]

oooh but just think, if you had a subscription you could've seen it even before the rest of us! ha. ScuttleMonkey has along with that other new editor, managed to flush any last vestiges of science story reputability this place ever had down the toilet long, long ago. This has got to be like the 50th bogus pseudoscience artice from "opensourcenergy" alone he's posted. I would be shocked to learn that /. even has a dozen subscribers left at this point. Who in thier right mind would actually pay to be insulted like this?

You emphasized wrong words

[ingo23]

"The technology claims to be able to increase magnet motor efficiency substantially, even over the 100% barrier."

How to make a small fortune in the stock market? Start with a big one.

Want to increase efficiency over 100%? Start with a motor that has 40%, make one that is 80% efficient - you got 100% increase!

Re:You emphasized wrong words

[MindStalker]

Read it again. The adverb is substantially. So the question is "How much are they increasing efficiency?" The answer is "Substatially." The then elaborate that total effiency is over 100%. Technically I'd agree with you though, if the word Barrier wasn't there, it implies and increase over a specific known barrier, thus is the 100% efficiency barrier.

Let say I was to say

"This will increase your runnning speed substatially, over 4 minutes in a mile"

You could assume to you would be cutting 4 minutes from your mile.

If I were to say

"This will increase your runnning speed substatially, over the 4 minute mile barrier"

The assumption would be vastly different.

Re:You emphasized wrong words

[__aaahtg7394]

Good point, there is an ambiguity there. However, I stand by my reading of it.

100% isn't a barrier if it's a relative increase, as you correctly point out. It is a barrier if you're talking about absolute efficiency. By talking about it as a barrier, the author almost certainly intends for us to read it as "100+% absolute efficiency."

I'd be happy to be corrected by anyone affiliated with the posted site, but until then, I strongly believe that they're talking about a motor that's more than 100% efficient. Which, given a few caveats as discussed in this thread, is accepted as impossible by mainstream science.

Is it me or does this article smell?

[TheHawke]

Had to get out my hip waders just to get past the first paragragh. Another article with lots of Bull$hit Bingo words in it. The fraudsters love to play mind games containing magnetic fields and it's quick flux fixxer-upper. Small wonder that the geomagnetic poles are trying to swap ends, the North Pole has just about had enough of hearing about it, conned the South Pole into thinking that it's place is better.

Even the title reeks of faddish words. Remember last year's warm fusion fraudster? This year is mirroring Cell processors and the tech that it uses.

It makes me wonder who is really submitting these articles to Slashdot.

^ Mod Parent Up ^

[Anti-Trend]

They're absolutely right. The submitter was wrong about the subject matter, and the subject matter obviously had many misonceptions about how the technology works (greater than 100% output... WTF?) But here is a look at how the technology actually works. [osen.org] It seems to be a motor that is simply more efficient, which is indeed a positive and achievable goal.

Re:Yet Another Bogus Science Story

[LurkerXXX]

Because ScuttleMonkey thinks crystals, pyramid power, and Intelligent Design, are more valid science than the laws of thermodynamics.

Re:HOW IT WORKS and DOESN'T WORK

[goombah99]

Nah the force issue is irrelvant. if the only thing that mattered here were the material strenght forces then you siply make the motor smaller to cahive the same torque. So that's not the point.

the key point it if there is any net gain at all. The static force analysis simply does not give the answer. As I said adding a spring would do exactly the same thing as adding a permenant magnet. But then it becomes obvious that there no net gain because the you had to pay the effort of loading the spring.

Since they rely on this static argument without giving a dynamic argument it seems like bullshit to me. My bullshit detector is further raised when they present the finite element calculation to back up the static arguments. It's a huge calaculation that backs the worng argument. this is just plane weird. it looks like a delberate attempt to inject bamboozle ment into it. Do they know what the hell they are talking about? Then where's the dynamic analysis?

Re:Anyone want to buy a bridge

[chuckw]

And if you'd looked into it a *BIT* more, you'd know that this technology (PPMT) has nothing to do with free energy or perpetual motion. Flynn has been done a profound disservice by the cited website. Check out his website [flynnresearch.net] for the real scoop. Nowhere in there does it say anything about free energy. What he has is simply a very efficient motor that can act as a generator when an *EXTERNAL FORCE* is applied to the shaft.

Re:Yet Another Bogus Science Story

[ceoyoyo]

:) You can't get energy from magnets. No, a magnetic field is not energy.

The iron filings move because you're moving the magnet. Don't move the magnet? No little iron filings moving.

The exception is when you first bring the magnet close enough to the filings to make them move. They will move towards the magnet. That movement is due to their potential energy (energy of position). Now, why don't we harness that? We'll just move the filings away and drop them again... oh, wait, that will take the same amount, or more, energy as we get out. Okay, let's turn off the magnet and them move them away. Oh, wait, you can't turn off a permanent magnet. Okay, we'll use an electromagnet! Oh, wait, the electricity it takes to run the electromagnet is equal to or more than any energy we get out. Oh well.

Re:Yet Another Bogus Science Story

[Keith McClary]

We should be able to rate stories by bogosity, and it should not be limited to 5. This one should be in the thousands.

Actualy

[autopr0n]

Actually Slashdot's traffic trippled [alexa.com] just a couple months ago. At least among IE uses with the alexa toolbar installed.

Kind of weird, and annoying given how crappy this place has become. No one with any authority cares about the site at all. It's pretty lame.

I pose that opensourceenergy.org articles....

[Super Happy Fun Chem]

are immediately dumped into the trash. Its not even journalism. When I went to high school, the school newspaper was better written. At least they would check the facts and care about accuracy (somewhat). EVERY article that I have seen from opensourceenergy has been debunked in about 20 posts on slashdot, and even before we have our morning coffee! Its that bad. Just... junk it. And senior mods need to sit Scuttlemonkey on their knee and explain the birds and the magnetic flux density to him.

Re:Perpetual motion machines

[Rick.C]

Example: you can envision putting a magnet on your fridge. It sticks until you take it off. Put a piece of paper on your fridge, it just slides to the ground. The magnet has to exert force all the time to keep itself from falling, right? What if we could harness this incessant force somehow?

You know, I think you may be on to something... a suction cup sticks to a window in much the same way! We all know that suction cups work on the principle of "vacuum" (and we're not talking sweepers, here). Outer space is full of this "vacuum" stuff. If we could get some investors to back us, we could build a space ship that could go out and collect all this free "vacuum" and bring it back to Earth.

We'd solve all of our energy problems!

Re:Basic Forces and Zero Point Energy

[AmonRa1979]

The power lost in the electromagnet in this scenario is only due to the resistance in the electromagnet. If you were to do this you would notice that the electromagnet would heat up and that heat would account for the energy lost from whatever energy source you used to power the electromagnet. This is the only power loss as long as the other levitating magnet is remaining stationary. Now for the electrons repelling each other; the energy comes from bringing the electrons closer together. So, in order for the electrons to repel each other again, some amount of energy has to be exerted in bringing the electrons close together again. Energy is completely conserved in this situation. Just remember... force is not energy. It also doesn't take a supply of power to maintain a force. While there are problems with our understanding of the universe, this is not one of them.