Scientists Claim To Tap The Free
Energy Of Space
Source: People Magazine / Energy/New Ideas section:
Subtitle: A promising new alternative energy source,
neglected in the U.S.,advances in the Far East
Physicist Bruce DePalma has a 100 kilowatt generator,
which he invented, sitting in his garage. It could power his whole
house, but if he turns it on, the government may confiscate it.
Havard educated DePalma, who taught physics at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology for 15 years, claims that his electrical generator can provide cheap, inexhaustible, self sustaining and non polluting source of energy, using priciples that flout conventional physics and are still not fully understood. His N machine, as it is called, is said to release the "free energy" latent in the space all around us. DePalma views his device as an innovation that could help to end the worlds's dangerous dependence on finite supplies of oil, gas, and other polluting fossil based fuels.
Deceptive Simplicity:
The DePalma generator is essentially a simple magnetized
flywheel, ie a magnetized cylindrical conductor rotating at high speed
with the help of a motor. His astonishing claim is that the present
verions of the N machine can generate up to five times more power than
it consumes. This, of course,
defies the basic law of the conservation of energy, which says that
the output of energy cannot be more than the input. Most physicists
simply refuse to look at DePalma's findings and dismiss his theories
out of hand.
Yet "proof of principle" for his invention was
apparently provided when a large N machine, dubbed the Sunburst, was
built in 1978 in Santa Barbara California. The Sunburst machine was
independently tested by Dr. Robert Kincheloe, professor emeritus of
electrical engineering at Stanford
University. in his 1986 reprot (presented to the Society for
Scientific Exploration, San Francisco, 6/21/86), Kincheloe notd that
the drag of the rotating magnetized gyroscope is only 13 to 20
perscent of a conventional generator operating at an ideal 100
ppercent effiiency, the DePalma N machine could produce electricity at
around 500 percent efficiency.
In Kincheloe's cautious summary: "DePalma may have been
right in that there is indeed a situation here wherby energy is being
obtained from a previosly unknow and unexplained source. This is a
conclusion that most scientists and engineers would reject out of hand
as being a violation of accepted laws of physics and if true has
incredible implications".
"The jury is still out on the DePalma N machine," says
physicist Harold Puthoff, a senior fellow at the Institute for
Advanced Studies in Austin, Texas. "It isn't clear where the reported
excess energy is coming from--wheater out of the elecromagnetic field
or as the result of some anomaly associated with rotating bodies in
terms of inertia. The DePalma machine needs to be replicated on a
broad scale to see if it actually
works. Though I'm rahter skeptical, I certainly would encourage
independent laboratory experimentation. While such a phenomenon would
have seemed to absolutely go against the law of energy conservation a
number of years ago, we now recognize that the potential for
extracting energy out of so called empty space is in fact a reality".
Not So Empty Space:
Puthoff, a PhD. from Stanford University, belives that a
new, non polluting energy source may be acheived by tapping the force
random fluctuaions jostling atomic particles within a vacuum.
Scientists now know that "empty" space seeths with waht are called
vacuum fluctuations: huge amounts of
energy that suddently burst forth, jiggling particles to and fro.
Puthoff has developed his own therry, zero point energy, in an attempt
to tap the abundant power found in the vacuum of space. He and
associates in a new company, Jupiter Technologies, may soon try to
manufacture zero-point energy machines.
DePalma described his N machine and outlined a theory to
explain its workings in a paper, "On the Possibility of Extraction of
Electrical Energy Directly From Space", published in the British
science journel, Speculations in Science and Technology (Sept 1990,
Vol 13 No 4). So far, the scientific establishment either has ignored
DePalma's controversial claims or remains unaware of them.
Patent *Not* Pending:
No one has ever obtained a patent for an N machine in
the U.S., although in the San Francisco area alone, there are some 200
patent applications relating to such devices. The U.S. Patent office
automatically denies a patent to any gizmo which purports to produce
more enerty than it consumes, on the grounds that its personnel are
not equipped to evalute such claims.
DePalma is quick to point out that the N machine is not a perpetual
motion machine, that mythical contraption long sought by frustrated
inventors. "The purpetual motion machine is only supposed to run
itself. It could never put out five times more power than is put into
it. Perpetual motion schemes used conventional energy sources, whereas
the N machine is a new way of extracting energy from space".
Other scientists-inventors who attempted to build and
operate free energy machines have been intimidated and harassed by the
U.S. government. At least one inventor had his device confiscated by
the Defense Department on the grounds that its free energy technology
endangered national security interests. This inventor was put under a
gag order, so that he could not even tell the press that his N machine
had been confiscated. This is ironic when one considers that the idea
for the N machine came directly from a famous experiment performed by
Michael Faraday in 1831.
U.S. Not Interested:
The U.S. energy monopoly, which pushes for the
development of oilm gas, coal, and nuclear power--while defunding
solar energy and other non polluting alternatives--apparently does not
want to see free energy emerge as a viable option.
Meanwhile, other countries, notably India and Japan, are
vigorously pursuing what might prove to be a technological
breakthrough. (is this yet one more example of the Invented in
USA/Made in Japan" syndrome, the outcome of American shortsightedness
and vested interests?) In India, eminent engineer Paramahamsa Tewari
is currently testing his invention,
called the Space Power Generator (SPG), which essentially replicates
DePalma's N machine. With 5 kilowatt total input, the SPG is
reportedly yielding 30 kilowatt electrical output (correspondence to
B. DePalma 8/13/90).
Tewari, a senior engineer with India's Department of
Atomic Energy-Nuclear Power Corporation, also directs the Kaiga
Project, India's largest atomic power facility, in Karnataka. He
freely acknoledges his dept to DePalma, who has shared his
experimental results with Tewari for many years.
According to Tewari, "The electrical power generatred by the Space
Power Generator is indeed commercially viable and shoudl be brought to
the notice of the general public." He has urged India's Atomic Energy
Commision to create an independent research group to advance free
energy technology. Tewari also credits John Wheeler, the prominent
American physicist and discoverer of the black hole, for his steady
encouragement. Wheeler, who had been searching for a mathematical
theory that would predict free
energty, appluded Tewari for his effors to develp such a theory, and
the two scientists corresponded for several years.
Japanese Interest:
The Japan Science Foundation, under Japanese government
auspices, awarded grants to two universities and one company to
produce models of the N machine and to investigate how it works.
Kazama Giken Corporation is commercially supplying small N machines
for research and educational purposes . Another Japanese company,
Panasonic/National, is also prusuing this technology. Shiuji Inomata,
Ph D president of the Japan Psychotronics Institute and seniaor
scientist at the Electrotechnical Laboratory in Ibaraki, has been
instrumental in sparking the interst of Japan's scientific community
in the N machine.
"One day man will connect his apparatus to the verty
wheelwork of the universe... and the very forces that motivate the
planets in theri orbits and cause them to rotate will rotate his own
machinary," predicted Nikola Tesla, the Croation born American
electrical genious whose discoveries and
inventions rival those of Edison. Proponents of the N machine believe
that it taps directly into a primordial energy source, meshing witht
the wheelwork of the cosmos.
A Wrong Turn:
"Electrical engineering took a wrong turn 160 years
ago," according to Tewari, referring to English scientist Michael
Faraday's pioneering work of the world's first dynamo. In 1831,
Faraday performed a series of experiments which led to the modern
electri induction generator, having two moving parts--a rotor anda
stator. Faraday moved a wire near the pole of a magnet, producing an
electrical potential across the ends of the wire. This induction
principle is used in all the electrical generators we use today. And
that's precisely what Tewari means by a "wrong turn."
In that same year, 1831, Faraday also performed a simple
yet ingenious experimetn with a rotating magnetized conductor. The
resulting phenomenon (free energy?) has yet to be explained in terms
of conventional scientific theory.
By cementing a copper disc on top of a cylinder magnet,
and rotating the magnet and disc together, Faraday created an
electrical potential. After pondering this phenomenon for many years,
he concluded that when a magnet is rotated, its magnetic field remains
stationary. Thus, he reasoned, the metal of the magnet moves through
its own field, and the relative motion is translated into electrical
potential.
Farady's experiments led him to the revolutionary
conclusion that a magnetic field is a property of space itself, not
something attached to the magnet, which merely serves to induce or
evote the field.
A Prototype:
Known for over 150 years, the Faraday homopolor
generator, as his contraption is called, has been viewed by a handful
of visionary inventors as a basis for evoking the free energy latent
in space. They see is as the prototype for a generator capable of
providing its own motive power with additional energy to spare. When
the world embraced Faraday's two piece induction generator, whose
drawbacks include mechanical friction and electrical losses, the
enormous potential of the Faraday homopllar generator was abandoned,
in the opinion of free-energy proponents.
Following in Faraday's footsteps, DePalma in 1978
speculated that free energy could be tapped from the matrix of space
simply by magnetizing a gyroscope. "I reasononed that the metal of the
magnetized gyroscope moving through its own magnetic field, when
rotated would produce an electrical potential betwwn the axle and the
outer edge of the rotating magnetized flywheel," he explains.
This insight led to his N machine, essentially a one
piece rotating magnetized flywheel, "Instead of having a rotor and a
stator, as do conventional generators, the n machine only has a
rotor.. Half of the flywheel is the norht pole, the other half is the
south pole. One elctrical contact is put on the axle, another contact
is placed on the outer edge of the gyroscope, and presto, electricity
is taken directly out of the magnet itself.
Idea Put to the Test:
For 150 years after Faraday's controversial experiment,
no one bothered to see whether or not a rotating magnet generator
would have to to the same amount of work as a conventional induction
generator in order to produce and identical power output. Then, in
1978, the aforementioned Sunburst homopolar generator was built. Tests
determined that is output power greatly exceeded the input needed to
run the machine, that it was much more efficent that an induction
generator. Opinions differ as to the exact mechansms by which the N
machine generates energy. In 1977 Tewari created a minor sensation
when he put forth the theory that space is filled with a dynamic
medium whose swirling motion is the sourc of all matter and energy. In
his Space Vortex Theory, more fully developed in his 1984 book, Beyond
Matter, the Indian engineer inventor postualted that a void lies at
the heart of the electron-- a void whose high speed roation within a
vacuum could produce energy from space. Tewari's theory is based on
the assumption that the electron has a definate structure, and is not
just a homogeneous
"droplet of charge".
According to Tewari, the movement of "voids" in the
spinning magnetized cylinder of his Space Power Generator liberates
free energy out of the space between the machine's axis and the
magnet. He readily admits that this soudns incredible, by the
yardstick of known laws of physics. Tewari says he never would have
developed his theory had he been trained as a
physicist rather than as an engineer, since his ideas differ so
radically from conventional physics.
"Tewari's explanation is perfectly possible," comments
DePalma. "He is attempting to conceptualize what's happening between
the atoms and where the energy is liberated."
Concept of Magnetism:
"My own approach," continues DePalma, "is that space is
all around us like the sea of water the fish swim in. The only way you
know it's there is to distort it in some way, and the simplest way to
distort space is with a magnet." DePalma maintains that his own
conception of magnetism as a distortion of a pre-existant homogeneos
field is "the first new thought on
the fundamental nature of magnetism since Oersted."
Having taught at MIT as a lecturer in physics for 15
years, DePalma grew increasingly dissatisfied with mainstream physics'
explanation of the way things work. His current view of the universe
would strike many conventional scientists as heresy.
For example, modern science says that energy is a
constant substance in the universe, and taht the conversion of energy
from one form to another will lead to the heat-death of the universe
eons from now. In contrast, says DePalma, "My cosmos is an open-ended
universe, one in which energy can be evoked from space itself. All
energy come from space," he maintains, "and
there are various prodcesses which can release this energy, the
simplest of whic is lighting a match or rubbing two sticks together."
Suppose you light a candle. The heat in the flame
derives from the releaes of latent heat stored in the wax, according
to the textbooks. Nonsense says DePalma. "The law of energy
conservation is pure assuption," he insists. In his theory, the heat
of a lit candle comes from space, and this substrate is slowly
consumed by the energy of space flowing through it.
When you drive a car, the heat latent in the gasoline is
extracted through burning, which propels the pistons. Right? Wrong
syas DePalma. His understanding of the process is that the
gasoline-air mixture, catalyzed by an electric spark, acts as a
"molecular antenna" to release energy from space. Heat energy thus
release cooks or burns the substance whih is evoking it in the first
place, producing exhaust.
Likewise, when a magnet is rotated in the N-machine,
DePalma theorizes, the electrical current comes from the space through
which the magnet is drawing its energy, not from the magnets
mechanical rotation.
DePalma's approaches to other basic phenomena are
equally unorthadox. In the mid-1970's he performed the "Spinning Ball
Experiment," which purportedly demonstrated that a rotating object
will fall faster or go higher than an identical non rotating object
with the same initial velocity. If true, these results fly in the face
of all knows physics. The experimental procedure is simple: Take a
steel ball bearing (the kind used
in a pinball machine), set it rotatig, drop it, and measure how fast
it falls. Compare its time with that of an identical but non-rotating
control ball.
DePalma explained his anomalous results in terms of free
energy added to the motion of the rotating object. Thse and other
experiments led him to forumulate radical new concepts of rotation,
gravity, inertia and motion in general building on the work of
pioneers in the fiedl. He published hsi findings on the Spinning Ball
Experiment in the British Scientific Research
Association Journal in 1976. He also outlined the Spinning Ball
Experiment to Dr. Edward Purcell, a Harvard physics professor, one of
the most eminent experimental physicists at that time. According to
DePalma, Purcell, after contemplating the experiment for several
minutes, blurted, "This will change everything."
Applying New Technology:
"Applied physics is not engraved in stone," says Don
Kelly, president of the Space Energy Association (SEA/US), a group of
engineers, scientists, and inventors dedicated to developing
free-energy technology. Today's free-energy scene encompasses a
bewildering array of devices, including N machine, Russian plasma
generators, a Swill hybrid converter (combining
free-energy components and solid state methods), permanent magnet
motors (PMMs), the multiple-coil Hubbard Generator, and various
hydrogen power systems.
A standout among the latter group is the "Enerex" H20
unit invented by Yoshiro Nakmatsu, known as the "Edison of Japan."
This prolific inventor--father of the floppy disk--claims that his
pollution free Enerex unit runs on tap water alone and can generate
three times as much power as a standard gasoline engine. An H20
splitter, the Enerex produces hydrogen as the working fuel.
Kelly notes that Germany, Switzerland, Japan, Korea and
the Netherlands all have active free-energy research associations,
with which SEA/US exhanges information. Nevertheless, he feels that
the nascent free energy technology
faces opposition in the United States from government agencies,
academics, and vested industrial interests. Kely envisions free energy
eventually gaining acceptance and application through a grassroots
movement of do-it-yourselfers aroudn the country. SEA/US publishes an
interesting quarterly newsleter, available to members. (Space Energy
Association/U.S. P.O. Box 11422, Clearwater, FL 34616; phone
813-441-3923; membership dues
are $35 per year).
Economics of the N machine:
DePalma Energy Corporation has not sold a single machine
yet. To build an N machine by hand, the company charges around
$500,000. Bruce DePalma claims that, if mass produced, the cost of hsi
machine would drop to a mere $400 to $500. He points out that a
typical 100 kilowatt AC generator costs a little over $100,000, and
add that an N machine putting out the same amount
of power could be manufactured for one trhird to one half the cost in
regular production. His goal is to set up technology sharing
agreements with clients who would manufacture his machine.
Surveying the variety of electro-magnetic free energy
units available or on the drawing boards, Don Kelly concluded that
most of them are plagued by fuzzy applied physics, lack of technical
and financial support, and "a distinct cost effectivness problem."
However, Kelly singled out the DePalma
N machine as "the mainstaty for this F/E category" and "the best of
the F/E units for its potential today." He gave the N machine a high
"KISS rating" (KISS=Keep it simple and stupid) due to the machines
simple, one-piece rotor performs better than today's conventional two
piece generators," says Kelly.