Hoax Museum Blog: Free Energy

Jydsk Atomic Power — Here's a hoax website from Denmark. It's Jydsk Atomic Power (in bad English via automatic translation here). I discovered the site through an article in a Danish newspaper (bad translation) that mentioned it, and also linked to my site. My Danish is a little rusty (nonexistent actually), but from what I can make out Jydsk Atomic Power claims to be overclocking their atomic reactor, thereby producing electricity with twice as much power. All electric devices drawing this double-strength power work twice as well. You'll be able to boil water on your stove in half the time! At least, I think that's what the site says. Any Danish speakers out there feel free to correct me.

Hoax Industries Enoon Car — Since I'm on the subject of free-energy cars, here's the ENOON Car by Hoax Industries. "The ENOON*-device is able to power a car for an
unlimited time period without the need of refuelling!" ENOON stands for 'energy out of nowhere.'

Water-Fueled Car — Earth2012 this month announced the launch of a major new project: they're going to build a water-fueled car. And they're soliciting donations to help them achieve this ambitious dream. Of course, a water-fueled car might raise a few skeptical eyebrows, but Earth2012 says the science behind their project is all very sound. The tank of their car will be filled up with water, but the water will then be converted onboard into hydrogen. So it's really a hydrogen-powered car, not a water-powered one. And hydrogen-powered cars, of course, already exist.

What makes my hoax detector start ringing when I read about their project is their description of the onboard water-to-hydrogen conversion process. From what I understand, it takes quite a bit of energy to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen. This has always been one of the major stumbling blocks on the road to a hydrogen economy (the cost of producing hydrogen). But Earth2012 says that it has developed a 'revolutionary way of creating hydrogen from water.' This involves vibrating the water at exactly the correct frequency, thereby causing the water to easily separate into oxygen and hydrogen.

Maybe Earth2012 really has developed this revolutionary new process, though the details they provide about it are awfully sketchy. But it all sounds an awful lot like a water-as-fuel hoax, of which there have been many in the past... one of the weirdest being Guido Franch's claims back in the 70s that he had developed a cheap green powder that, when added to water, transformed the water into gasoline. Franch gave a few demonstrations of his powder, though never under scientifically controlled conditions, and his credibility took a bit of a blow when he confessed that the secret of the powder had been given to him by a group of spacemen from the planet Neptune. The Straight Dope has an article about Franch if you're interested in reading more about him.

Update: Parazyte has provided a link to an article (in English) about Daniel Dingel, a Filipino man who claims that he invented a water-powered car back in 1969. The rest of the site is in German, but click here to see a video of Mr. Dingel driving around in his watercar.

Japanese Magnetic Fan — Kohei Minato, a Japanese inventor, has built an incredible new kind of magnet-powered electric motor. As this article on Japan.com explains, "Minato's motors consume just 20 percent or less of the power of conventional motors with the same torque and horse power. They run cool to the touch and produce almost no acoustic or electrical noise. They are significantly safer and cheaper (in terms of power consumed), and they are sounder environmentally." Sounds really great. Until you read down a bit more and get to this line, "it is feasible to attach a generator to the motor and produce more electric power than was put into the device." In other words, it's another perpetual-motion machine. Lots of discussion of this over at Slashdot. (Thanks, James).

Joseph Papp and his Submarine — Infinite Energy, 'The Magazine of New Energy Science and Technology,' has devoted its entire current issue to analyzing the work of Joseph Papp, the Hungarian inventor who claimed to have built some kind of fusion-powered engine that used noble gases as fuel (i.e. we're talking 'free-energy' technology here). In the 1960s he also claimed to have built a submarine that could travel at 300 mph, and in a test run of this craft he said that he travelled from Canada to France in 13 hours (the airplane ticket that was later found in his pocket debunked this claim). Infinite Energy has one sample article about Papp on its website. I've also got some pictures of Papp's submarine on my site.

Perpetual Motion Machine — Sandeep Acharya has shared with me his blueprints for building a machine that can convert magnetic energy into mechanical energy. He promises that it really works. Check it out for yourself.

Joseph Papp — A visitor named Heinz Klostermann sent me quite a bit of info about Joseph Papp, a Hungarian-born inventor who first claimed that he had built a submarine capable of traveling at 300 mph, and later claimed to have built a car engine that could run for six months without refueling. Heinz sent an article about Papp that appeared in the San Jose Mercury News in 1989, as well as an article apparently written by the physicist Richard Feynman describing a demonstration of Papp's engine. It turns out that Heinz has been working for the past three years to reinvent Papp's engine (the secret of how to build it died with Papp). If you have any info about Papp he'd like you to contact him at: [email protected]. Also check out the comments I've received over the years about Papp and his submarine.

The Hunt For Zero Point — Anti-gravity technology has been getting a lot of attention lately, on the heels of the news that Boeing is testing some kind of anti-gravity device. Salon reviews THE HUNT FOR ZERO POINT by Nick Cook, an editor at Jane's Defense Weekly. It's all about the US Government's classified research into anti-gravity technology. Sounds interesting, but it also sounds like the author got seduced by the idea that such technology might exist and began making some pretty far-fetched assumptions.

Loopholes in 2nd Law of Thermodynamics — Scientists find loopholes in the second law of thermodynamics. True believers in the possibility of a perpetual motion machine will love this.