{"id":1162,"date":"2010-10-31T21:18:12","date_gmt":"2010-11-01T01:18:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scientopia.org\/blogs\/goodmath\/?p=1162"},"modified":"2010-10-31T21:18:12","modified_gmt":"2010-11-01T01:18:12","slug":"free-energy-by-switching-cameras-classic-repost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/2010\/10\/31\/free-energy-by-switching-cameras-classic-repost\/","title":{"rendered":"Free Energy by Switching Cameras (Classic Repost)"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is an edited repost of a classic. Back when I first put up the post about the genius theories of Engineer Borg, a commenter pointed me towards the website of a Dr. Tom Bearden<\/a>. Dr. Bearden is a veritable renaissance man of crackpottery: he hasinvented a perfect free energy system which has been quashed by a conspiracy of governments and corporations; invented a cure for all major diseases (again hidden by the strenuous efforts of corporations and governments); demonstrated the flaw in relativity… You name it, Tom has done it!<\/p>\n

Before I get to the details of that, let me give you a sense of the flavor of his site. Dr. Tom clearly believes that he is a genius of epic proportions, and that the entire world actually knows it. For example, he repeatedly talks about how his work was favorably reviewed by the National Science Foundation! Which means it’s brilliant! Only it was quashed by the Evil Government Conspiracy before he could demonstrate it! So I went looking for the supposed favorable review of his free-energy work. And I found it in his list of references<\/a>, listed as “National Science Foundation letter favorably reviewing Bearden Paper”.<\/p>\n

This looks interesting, right? A review from the NSF? So, click the link, and… The contents<\/em> of that link consist of a scanned letter from the NSF replying to an email sent by Dr. Bearden, which consists of a basic standardized form letter inviting him to submit an actual proposal, and warning that he’d better include some proof that his perpetual motion machine really works, and an explanation of how.<\/p>\n

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Moving on.. The heart of most of Dr. Bearden’s claims is that Maxwell’s equations have been deliberately corrupted to eliminate concepts like “negative resistance” which can result in electrical systems generating more power than they consume. Let’s take it from the beginning<\/a> (in so far as I can identify a beginning on his nightmarishly organized website). <\/p>\n

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\t“Maxwell’s” vector equations taught in university are actually Heaviside’s truncated equations, and are only a simplified version of what Maxwell originally wrote.<\/b><\/p>\n

The Maxwell-Heaviside theory of electrodynamics is now well over a century old, and is actually a serious truncation of Maxwell’s 1865 theory of 20 equations in 20 unknowns (those are specifically listed in the original published paper in 1865). Because it was “tainted” with a higher group symmetry algebra (quaternions), even Maxwell himself came under intense pressure to simplify it, after the publication of the first edition of his famous Treatise in 1873. Consequently, Maxwell was rewriting and greatly “watering down” his own Treatise, having finished rewriting and greatly reducing some 80% of it at the time of his death in 1879. The second edition and third edition, therefore, are NOT the original Maxwellian theory, but a very serious truncation.<\/p>\n

The further great “simplification” occurred by several scientists after Maxwell’s death, in the 1880s, and notably by Heaviside, Hertz, and Gibbs. The equations taught today at university as “Maxwell’s theory” are pale shadows, and those equations themselves are actually the equations and notations of Heaviside, further “symmetrically regauged” by Lorentz (which very neatly threw out all COP>1.0 EM systems taking their excess energy from the vacuum in the form of free asymmetrical regauging). At the time these altered Maxwell equations were adopted in general, it occurred in a short “debate” (mostly in the journal Nature) where the vectorists simply discarded the quaternists’ work, etc. It was not done by “sweet science”, but by sheer dogma and individual preference for “simplicity”.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This is a thoroughly mangled version of the history of Maxwell’s equations. Here’s a brief version of real history:<\/p>\n