The Columbia Critic

A place to debate anything we want to. We'll talk Columbia campus issues. We'll talk up the homosexual problem. We'll talk China. And we'll talk without resorting to partisan rhetoric. We may be left. We may be right. But we aren't going to be quoting any party line. We're leading the discussion. But feel free to chime in. Hannity and Colmes this is not.

Sunday, August 20, 2006

rethinking the paradigm?

Irish company Steorn claims they have developed a method of using the interaction between magnets to produce energy. This energy is "free and unlimited", a statement that flies in the face of accepted modern physics. Could it be that we are violating conservation of energy or are we using a fundamentally flawed paradigm about energy creation? Perhaps we aren't creating energy out of thin air but rather converting energy from one form to another by means of a perfectly efficient transfer method.

Steorn has challenged academics to verify their findings and well... if no flaw is found we could be living in a drastically different world. This is beyond an energy dependence problem where the US and China are consuming increasingly huge amounts of energy, this could change the balance of international wealth. I can see the countries that stand to lose from a discovery like this is those middle eastern economies that are entirely oil dependent. Middle eastern nations like Saudi Arabia have long been warned that their dependence on oil exports was a flawed policy, one that would doom them when their oil reserves ran dry. Oil reserves running out is a outcome that can be prepared for, a change in sources of energy could render their presence obsolete. Can you imagine the social unrest caused by rapid economic change? Terrifying.
Link

1 Comments:

  • At 6:08 PM, Blogger Sean said…

    This would be quite incredible if true. But I have heard similar claims before - the 1989 Cold Fusion Experiments of Fleischmann and Pons comes to mind. This sounds like a bluff made in an attempt to get their work published - or perhaps as a pure retaliation for being turned down by multiple journals. I would be interested in seeing their work actually published if it is indeed determined not to be rubbish.

     

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