Dear Robert,

Setting the electret on the magnet does only one thing: it sets in motion a flow of EM energy from that gadget, into the space around it.

The problem then is, how does one intercept and collect some of that energy in an external circuit, and then discharge the collected energy in a load to power it?

So at that point, once one has the energy flow, one investigates (1) how it can be intercepted and collected in some type of device or circuit,  (2) how the collected energy can be dissipated in a load, and (3) how that can be done efficiently enough that one gets more power in the load than one pays for intercepting, collecting, and switching.

The permanent magnet itself of course, being a dipole, pours out energy independently in the same manner.  So does the electret.  There is no problem at all in getting an energy flow from the vacuum; it's that simple. Every dipolarity does so, due to the broken symmetry of opposite charges --- such as on the ends of a dipole.  That is proven and well-known in particle physics since 1957.

However, there is a horrendous problem (because we've never even been taught to think that way) in the second and third parts of the problem

The purpose of the exercise is to show where the effort on free energy has to be spent: The problem is (2), and (3), not (1).

Oddly, so far as can be seen, absolutely no one at our universities etc. is working on problems (2) and (3), and none are considering any application of (1), even though many textbooks do admit that the arrangement of the electret and the magnet does indeed provide a Poynting energy flow.

To actually produce a working system, one has to do a great deal of study and research on that problem (2) aspect and then also tackle the problem (3) aspect.  In my forthcoming book, I give quite a few systems that have been tried and developed, what the operational method was or at least appears to be, and what results were obtained or reported reliably.

There is still no "kit of parts" that one buys at Radio Shack and assembles that will (1) pour out the energy for free, and (2) also handle the interception, collection, and usage problem (the second part) with sufficient efficiency.

The "crossed fields" exercise is just to impress one with how easy the first half of the problem (problem 1) is -- that is, how easy it is to get a real EM energy flow from the vacuum started and continuing indefinitely.  It also is intended to impress one with the difficulty of wrenching one's mind from the conventional teaching, when flatly confronted by a given steady EM energy flow, but then must work out for oneself what to do for "part 2" and "part 3"  to make a complete power supply that is also at COP>1.0.

Usually an inventor immediately translates that energy flow, due to broken symmetry, into a dipole (as inside the generator between the terminals, or between the poles of the magnet).  Physics already completely proves and recognizes that any dipolarity does indeed freely extract and pour out EM energy from the vacuum, and as long as the dipole is intact, it will keep on extracting the energy freely and without further cost.

The real problem is the second part and the third part.  Most inventors transform that second problem into the standard closed loop circuit: Suppose you connect two conductors to an electrical dipole (say, to the electret ends) leading to a little resistor and a capacitor in series. The moment you connect the wires, a tiny current will flow through the resistor into the capacitor, warming the resistor a little bit and charging the capacitor a little bit and then stopping.  Now you could switch the capacitor out of the circuit and across an external resistive load, and you will discharge a tiny bit of current and power from the capacitor through that resistor.  Not counting the switching costs, you have got a little "free work" in the first resistor when also charging the capacitor, and then you "shuttled" the energy collected in the capacitor across a separate external resistive load and did a little powering of that load (you warmed the external resistor just a bit).  Again, you could then reconnect the capacitor back in the circuit across the electret and the first resistor, and repeat the "energy shuttling" cycle.

Here's your "energy balance" on the operation done two ways: first, without counting the switching costs and just assuming that switching is free so that problem (3) goes away for the moment (we'll come back to that).

With each charge and discharge complete cycle, during the first (collection) half of the cycle you do some work W1 in resistor R1, and simultaneously store energy E1 in the capacitor C.  In the second half of the cycle you do some more work W2 equal to E1, in discharging the capacitor C through load resistor R2.  During that time, you obtained "free work" (switching costs not counted yet) of W1 + W2 = WRc, where WRc is the free work done in one switching cycle in the two resistors.

You can then repeat this complete "energy shuttling" cycle indefinitely.  If your switching costs really were free, you would have a real working model of a specialized open EM system, freely extracting and using EM energy from the vacuum. The COP would be COP = infinity, since once you yourself would not have to input any switching energy at all.

However, in the real world we are not "down home" yet, and we do not necessarily have COP>1.0 yet either.  In the theoretical world, one may assume negligible switching costs, but that is not a valid assumption in the real world, where we do have to pay something for switching and sometimes quite a bit. So now let us further consider the real world situation, where we cannot ignore problem (3).

Suppose I used the most efficient switching possible, with very little losses.  Suppose the total switching cost I must pay for one complete cycle is WSc.

Now you must compare WSc and WRc. There are three possible cases:

(1) WSc > WRc and COP = WRc/WSc <1.0.         

(2) WSc = WRc and COP = WRc/WSC = 1.0.         

(3) WSc < WRc and COP = WRc/WSc >1.0.

If you get case (1) (by far the most likely in the simple experiment here), then you have the standard underunity system that costs you more for switching the freely flowing energy and getting some work from it, even though the energy flow is still absolutely for free.

If you get case (2), then you have done an enormous development of reducing your switching costs, and that circuit "breaks even".  You get back in usable work as much energy as you yourself have to input to "run the switching of the system".  That is analogous to a "superconducting system", and while encouraging you need additional development to be practical. However, this is the MINIMUM stage you must develop to, to have anything interesting at all.

If you get case (3) by further development, then you have done an EXTRAORDINARY development of further reducing and minimizing your switching costs.  You are using less energy input for switching than you are getting out as useful work in the loads (the two resistors).  This is now a promising COP>1.0 system.

Suppose you get case (3), after much work on increasing the switching efficiency.

Now you have to try to make something PRACTICAL out of it, and go from a "laboratory curiosity" to a practical, useful device.

Here's one way you might proceed.

You check out all the timings for each of the functions going on, and time them all very precisely.  You find that you have enough "extra power" available to run a very efficient and small timer/synchronizer to sync the switching.  In short, you make the timing of the switching exactly matched to the little time intervals required to optimize each of the functions of your COP>1.0 device.  Suppose that you have reduced all this to a single integrated circuit chip, for argument sake.

After some investigation, you manage to get this very, very efficient timer/synchronizer chip to work properly, but all your energy budget is now used and you have no extra to play with further or to power additional loads.

But that is sufficient.  You find that you can replace one of the resistors with a very special little lamp (light bulb) you have found.

So you assemble all that into a very efficient little unit.  You set it up and start it going.  Now the little beast sits there and cycles freely, powering its little bulb, and continuing indefinitely until something breaks or fails, etc.

That would then constitute the successful development of a true "self-powering" free energy system.

It is an open system far from equilibrium in its continual exchange with the active vacuum.  Hence by the laws of disequilibrium thermodynamics of such systems it is permitted to exhibit COP>1.0, so you have not violated thermodynamics and this is not a perpetual motion machine.

You simply have been able to build the equivalent of an "electrical windmill" freely turning and powering a pump to pump water, in a a free electrical wind furnished by the system environment.

And particle physics already proves that the little dipolarity of the electret does indeed pour out a "free electrical energy wind", extracted directly from the vacuum. The opposite charges of any dipolarity are known and recognized to continuously absorb unusable (virtual) EM energy from the vacuum, transduce it into observable EM energy, and continuously pour out that real, observable, usable EM energy in all directions, for free.  You do not have to reprove something already proven by Wu et al. {1}, and for which Lee and Yang received the Nobel Prize {2}.

This illustrates the peculiarity of the process of thinking and research work one must go through, to go from "having the free electrical wind" available and going, to "having the free windmill also, turning in the free electrical wind and --- in this case --- powering a little light bulb freely.  Notice we also continually produced some heat in the resistors, so we used an example that had "some internal system losses" like real systems do.

Now the big question.  Is that a practical thing to think your way through???

The answer is yes.  While our present electrical engineering departments and textbooks do not know or teach how to do it, Tesla in his patented circuits did indeed do such "energy shuttling" in his actual patented circuits!  He was able to shuttle the potential energy around at will, thus doing the equivalent of what we thought our way through as an exercise.  However, one cannot see this peculiar action in Tesla's circuits by ordinary vector and tensor analysis.  One can clearly see it in an analysis using the electrodynamics modeled in a higher group symmetry algebra, such as quaternion algebra.

Dr. Terry Barrett, one of the leading electrodynamicists of the U.S., and also one of the pioneers of ultrawideband radar,  long ago rigorously demonstrated Tesla's unique ability to shuttle the potential energy in a circuit {3}.  He then went on to improve Tesla's method and apply it to communications, obtaining two patents {4, 5}.

So you see, our "idle exercise" is not quite so "idle" after all.  Something similar is actually being used in some arcane communication circuits today.

We just wanted to show what kind of "thought processes" and research one has to do in the search for overunity systems.  It is not the kind of research that is in the textbooks already, nor can one just trundle off down to Radio Shack and get a kit of parts and whip them together.

And when one goes through the relatively simple type of steps we described as a hypothetical example, to one's surprise the problem suddenly turns into some extraordinary mathematics and electrodynamics in higher group symmetry algebra, which very few universities teach and few electrical engineers know and use.

Best wishes,

Tom Bearden

REFERENCES:

{1}  C. S., E. Ambler, R. W. Hayward, D. D. Hoppes and R. P. Hudson, "Experimental Test of Parity Conservation in Beta Decay," Physical Review, Vol. 105, 1957, p. 1413.

{2}  Lee's Nobel address is given in T. D. Lee, "Weak Interactions and Nonconservation of Parity," Nobel Lecture, Dec. 11, 1957.  [In T. D. Lee, Selected Papers, Gerald Feinberg, Ed., Birkhauser, Boston, 1986, Vol. 1, p. 32-44].  See also C. N. Yang, "The law of parity conservation and other symmetry laws of physics," Nobel Lecture, Dec. 11, 1957.  From Nobel Lectures, Physics 1942-1962.

{3}  T. W. Barrett, "Tesla's Nonlinear Oscillator-Shuttle-Circuit (OSC) Theory," Annales de la Fondation Louis de Broglie, 16(1), 1991, p. 23-41.

{4}  T. W. Barrett, "Active Signalling Systems," U.S. Patent No. 5,486,833, Jan. 23, 1996.  A signaling system in time-frequency space for detecting targets in the presence of clutter and for penetrating media.

{5}  T. W. Barrett, "Oscillator-Shuttle-Circuit (OSC) Networks for Conditioning Energy in Higher-Order Symmetry Algebraic Topological Forms and RF Phase Conjugation," U.S. Patent No. 5,493,691.  Feb. 20, 1996.

Monday, August 05, 2002 2:23 PM
To: Tom Bearden

I bought a small electret microphone and sat it on top of a refrigerator magnet I had. Sometimes the electret eventually knocks itself over and sometimes it eventually forms a relatively strong bond with the magnet. I don't know where to go from here. The person at Radio Shack asked me what I was going to do with the microphone, and I don't know what I told him, but I felt uncomfortable telling him that I was simply going to set it on a magnet and observe what happens!

So, what can I do?