Has university dropout done the impossible and created a perpetual motion machine?

[url]http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/300042[/url]

Steorn are also mentioned in the article.

Excerpt:

[i]"Thane Heins is nervous and hopeful. It's Jan. 24, a Thursday afternoon, and in four days the Ottawa-area native will travel to Boston where he'll demonstrate an invention that appears – though he doesn't dare say it – to operate as a perpetual motion machine.

The audience, esteemed Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Markus Zahn, could either deflate Heins' heretical claims or add momentum to a 20-year obsession that has broken up his marriage and lost him custody of his two young daughters.

Zahn is a leading expert on electromagnetic and electronic systems. In a rare move for any reputable academic, he has agreed to give Heins' creation an open-minded look rather than greet it with outright dismissal.

It's a pivotal moment. The invention, at its very least, could moderately improve the efficiency of induction motors, used in everything from electric cars to ceiling fans. At best it means a way of tapping the mysterious powers of electromagnetic fields to produce more work out of less effort, seemingly creating electricity from nothing.

Such an unbelievable invention would challenge the laws of physics, a no-no in the rigid world of serious science. Imagine a battery system in an all-electric car that can be recharged almost exclusively by braking and accelerating, or what Heins calls "regenerative acceleration."

No charging from the grid. No assistance from gasoline. No cost of fuelling up. No way, say the skeptics.

"It sounds too good to be true," concedes Heins, who formed a company in 2005 called Potential Difference Inc. to develop and market his invention. "We get dismissed pretty quickly sometimes."[/i]

Sounds interesting... so is there any followup to the January 28 demo?

Errr... RTFA comes to mind... I was reading the article in the context of the future test date. Sorry.

Another excerpt from the article:

[i]Heins has modified his test so the effects observed are difficult to deny. He holds a permanent magnet a few centimetres away from the driveshaft of an electric motor, and the magnetic field it creates causes the motor to accelerate[/i]

WhipMag anyone?

from speccy's link:

"It's now Jan. 28 – D Day. Heins has modified his test so the effects observed are difficult to deny. He holds a permanent magnet a few centimetres away from the driveshaft of an electric motor, and the magnetic field it creates causes the motor to accelerate. It went well.

Contacted by phone a few hours after the test, Zahn is genuinely stumped – and surprised. He said the magnet shouldn't cause acceleration. "It's an unusual phenomena I wouldn't have predicted in advance. But I saw it. It's real. Now I'm just trying to figure it out."

There's no talk of perpetual motion. No whisper of broken scientific laws or free energy. Zahn would never go there – at least not yet. But he does see the potential for making electric motors more efficient, and this itself is no small feat.

"To my mind this is unexpected and new, and it's worth exploring all the possible advantages once you're convinced it's a real effect," he added. "There are an infinite number of induction machines in people's homes and everywhere around the world. If you could make them more efficient, cumulatively, it could make a big difference."

>WhipMag anyone?

More of a Minato if he's holding it in his hand.

There's another page just in case you missed it:
http://www.thestar.com/Article/300041

"What I can say with full confidence is that our system violates the law of conservation of energy," he says.

Some more info http://science.blogdig.net/archives/articles/July2007/04/Free_energy_with_magnetic_reluctance.html

A little more here from somebody who met the guy:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3033#comment-244903

There's no mention of the device at Toroid tech.

These world changing technologies get terribly shy after their initial announcements don't they?

I think I understand what this guy is claiming, the collapsing field from the generator coil is being fed back to the drive motor, essentially adding to the motors own magnetic fields and thus increasing torque potential, in theory it sounds good, but it is also one of those things that seems just too simple to miss.

Thanks for your link to the forum sb2020 they seem to be quite a few knowledgeable people on it. http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3033#comment-244903

@RB So when are you going to disprove it?

Found this...
http://patents.ic.gc.ca/cipo/cpd/en/patent/2437745/page/2437745_20070315_description.pdf
The odd thing is missing pages.

This is Thane Heins with his device, which I seem to remember was posted on this or another forum some time ago.
http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/300042

[quote][cite] RunningBare:[/cite]

This is Thane Heins with his device, which I seem to remember was posted on this or another forum some time ago.
[url]http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/300042[/url]
[/quote]

Yes, by me, about 2 hours ago (scroll to the top of the page)

Speccy:

RunningBare:

This is Thane Heins with his device, which I seem to remember was posted on this or another forum some time ago.
http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/300042

Yes, by me, about 2 hours ago (scroll to the top of the page)

Thats what I get for a bad nights sleep, but in any case I have seen this before today.
Do not get me wrong, I'm not discounting it, in fact it's got me fascinated, especially since the article date is today, does not seem that shy to me sb2020

An excerpt from Trims link:

Heins confessed that the team is still trying to get the physics aspect of the technology, which he refers to as the Perepiteia Transformer, evaluated and published by a university. He says they have been trying for almost two years.

I think we see now why Pauls recommendation to have the WhiPMag reviewed by a professor is easier said than done.

I love this quote as previously posted in Grants Post:

Contacted by phone a few hours after the test, Zahn is genuinely stumped – and surprised. He said the magnet shouldn't cause acceleration. "It's an unusual phenomena I wouldn't have predicted in advance. But I saw it. It's real. Now I'm just trying to figure it out."

Kinda like what were doin' with the WhiPMag .

@Harvey

There maybe a connection, but a tenuous one, the whipmag uses ring magnets for the stators, this essentially makes them a single turn shorted coil, perhaps they are creating the same effect with a collapsing field, this maybe why other replications of the whipmag have had no success, the stators on ALs setup are loose, most of the replications I've seen have near perfect fittings in which case the stator would no longer be a coil but a solid cylinder.

This quote from the article is quite encouraging...

Contacted by phone a few hours after the test, Zahn is genuinely stumped – and surprised. He said the magnet shouldn't cause acceleration. "It's an unusual phenomena I wouldn't have predicted in advance. But I saw it. It's real. Now I'm just trying to figure it out."

Heins needs to make a youtube video and then get on here and start talking about it. Look at the publicity it got for Al, and he doesn't even want it.

At least Markus Zahn is not exactly an unknown
http://search.mit.edu/search?entqr=0&access=p&as_dt=i&courseName=&getfields=*&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&btnG.y=0&client=mit&q=zahn&departmentName=web&btnG.x=0&site=ocw&oe=utf-8&ip=18.7.22.160&proxyreload=1&proxystylesheet=http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/search/google-ocw.xsl&sort=date%3AD%3AL%3Ad1
Busy man.

@couldbe
From what I'm working out so far, Thane Heins is not looking to give this away but to get himself out of the situation he is in, we all know perpetual motion does not sell, so it is best he goes with highly efficient motor.

Here is the other article from the paper:

Holy crap, this is really scary,' inventor says of strange phenomenon


Feb 04, 2008 04:30 AM
Tyler Hamilton
Energy Reporter

It all began back in 1985, when Thane Heins, having studied electronics at California State University, started thinking about how magnets could be used to improve power generators.

But it wasn't until after the 9/11 attacks that he started seriously experimenting in his basement, motivated by the desire to reduce our dependence on oil and the countries that back terrorism.

Heins tinkered away, making what seemed like good progress, until one day in early 2006 he stumbled on to something strange. As part of a test, he had connected the driveshaft of an electric motor to a steel rotor with small round magnets lining its outer edges. The idea was that as the rotor spun, the magnets would pass by a wire coil placed just in front of them to generate electrical energy – in other words, it would operate like a simple generator.

The voltage was there, but to get current he had to attach an electrical load to the coil – like a light bulb – or simply overload it, which would cause it to slow down and eventually stop. Heins did the latter, but instead of stopping, the rotor started to rapidly accelerate.

"The magnets started flying off and hitting the wall, and I had to duck for cover," says Heins, surprised because he was using a weak motor. "It was like, holy crap, this is really scary."

By overloading the generator, the current should have caused the coil to build up a large electromagnetic field. This field typically creates an effect called "Back EMF," described as Lenz's law in physics, which would act to repel the approaching magnets on the rotor and slow down the motor until it stopped. Some call it the law of diminishing returns, or a law of conservation.

"Lenz's law is essentially magnetic friction, which is a form of resistance not unlike the wind resistance your car experiences when driving down the highway," explains Heins. More friction means more power is necessary to maintain a constant speed.

Instead, the opposite happened. Somehow the magnetic friction had turned into a magnetic boost. Back to the car analogy, it's like the wind moving from the front to the back of the vehicle.

Days later, Heins realized what...

(continued)

Days later, Heins realized what had happened: The steel rotor and driveshaft had conducted the magnetic resistance away from the coil and back into the heart of the electric motor. Since such motors work on the principle of converting electrical energy into motion by creating rotating magnetic fields, he figured the Back EMF was boosting those fields, causing acceleration.

But how could this be? It would create a positive feedback loop. As the motor accelerated faster it would create a larger electromagnetic field on the generator coil, causing the motor to go faster, and so on and so on. Heins confirmed his theory by replacing part of the driveshaft with plastic pipe that wouldn't conduct the magnetic field. There was no acceleration.

"What I can say with full confidence is that our system violates the law of conservation of energy," he says.

"Now, is that perpetual motion? Will it end up being that?"

[url]http://www.thestar.com/article/300041[/url]

Interesting, Speccy. Thanks for finding another comedic claim!

This is just as silly as other similar claims. In particular, if this quote is accurate:[quote]Anyway, Thane Heins, of Potential Difference Inc, contacted me recently with the claim that he and his company have developed a device based on a bi-toroid transformer prototype that in tests proved to be 7000% efficient. “This past weekend we gave a product demonstration (generator and transformer) to an international transformer manufacturer,” Heins told me, “Our transformer used 0.2 Watts in the primary and produced 14 watts through a 180 ohm - 25 watt resistor. We will be producing 1 - 7000 Watt toroids in the near future and even larger industrial ones.”[/quote]from:[url]http://tinyurl.com/2j7gkb[/url]

Claims of this size are extremely easy to test quickly, have been often made before, never pan out and always turn out to be some sort of fraud and/or measurement error. The guy apparently claims both mental and physical impairments. I suspect he screwed the pooch with the AC power measurement.

[quote]At least Markus Zahn is not exactly an unknown.[/quote]That's good. Let's hope he doesn't bamboozle easily.

[quote]@couldbe
From what I'm working out so far, Thane Heins is not looking to give this away but to get himself out of the situation he is in, we all know perpetual motion does not sell, so it is best he goes with highly efficient motor. [/quote]I don't understand why that apparently surprises you or why it's worth mentioning. Of course "perpetual motion does not sell" because it's often claimed, is very easy to test in the quantity usually claimed and never works.

He'd be happy if somebody did, even if the news was bad. His wife has kicked him out. He doesn't earn an income. He can't pay child support. The certainty would be welcome. "I've tried to quit many times, and thought if I could just be a normal guy I would have a normal life ... But I had this idea and I believe it works."

This is one thing I'm trying to avoid and why I took the open source route. Now if someone would just replicate the WhipMag, or at least examine it in a scientifically acceptable manner. Sigh.

@overconfident
Unfortunately, it's not unusual for people who can't succeed in the real world, sometimes through no fault of their own, to make bizarre and extreme claims. It gives them at least some transient attention and draws the focus away from their failures. Sad. And time-wasteful.

maryyugo:@overconfident
Unfortunately, it's not unusual for people who can't succeed in the real world, sometimes through no fault of their own, to make bizarre and extreme claims. It gives them at least some transient attention and draws the focus away from their failures. Sad. And time-wasteful.

Wow, thats an amazingly bleak outlook you have on life, in all possibility it is an error, but why dont we just wait and see before we start judging people on their life.

RunningBare:Thane Heins is not looking to give this away but to get himself out of the situation he is in, we all know perpetual motion does not sell, so it is best he goes with highly efficient motor.

If he thinks talking about it as OU is self-defeating, then if he made a youtube video with the thing doing something apparently amazing: like Al's video but better, but just talked about it as a highly efficient motor, and droned on a bit about a new configuration that makes better use of whatever...., everybody would look at it and say 'that guy must be kidding. That is obviously OU. Where do I get one'; and the video would put pressure on people to replicate it.

couldbe:
If he thinks talking about it as OU is self-defeating, then if he made a youtube video with the thing doing something apparently amazing: like Al's video but better, but just talked about it as a highly efficient motor, and droned on a bit about a new configuration that makes better use of whatever...., everybody would look at it and say 'that guy must be kidding. That is obviously OU. Where do I get one'; and the video would put pressure on people to replicate it.

Maybe he does not want it replicated by the public, maybe he is safe guarding it, maybe he wants to "gasp!" make money from it?

RunningBare:

Maybe he does not want it replicated by the public, maybe he is safe guarding it, maybe he wants to "gasp!" make money from it?

Everything I know about turning an invention into £££ I have learned here on the Steorn forum.

The process seems to include having a testing lab sign an nda and test it. Maybe Heins is too poor to do that, and driving to MIT from Ottawa to see the prof there was the best he could do in that way.

But wouldn't a youtube video be useful also? If he can whip up a bit of interest, maybe the testing lab would volunteer to test it for nothing? He's got nothing to lose.

couldbe:
But wouldn't a youtube video be useful also? If he can whip up a bit of interest, maybe the testing lab would volunteer to test it for nothing? He's got nothing to lose.

Hasn't worked yet for WhipMag.

(@RB, check your email or PM on fizzX.)

[quote]Heins tinkered away, making what seemed like good progress, until one day in early 2006 he stumbled on to something strange. As part of a test, he had connected the driveshaft of an electric motor to a steel rotor with small round magnets lining its outer edges. The idea was that as the rotor spun, the magnets would pass by a wire coil placed just in front of them to generate electrical energy – in other words, it would operate like a simple generator.[/quote]Anyone gonna try a replication?

overconfident:

couldbe:
But wouldn't a youtube video be useful also? If he can whip up a bit of interest, maybe the testing lab would volunteer to test it for nothing? He's got nothing to lose.

Hasn't worked yet for WhipMag.

If you are talking about Al's video, I don't know about a professional testing lab, but the response to the video was amazing: several people went into overdrive to replicate it (and failed). Some people are still at it, I guess, and are still talking about it here and elsewhere.

Here's a link to the patent:
http://patents.ic.gc.ca/cipo/cpd/en/patent/2437745/summary.html

Video of his device
http://www.g9toengineering.com/backemf/demonstration.htm

@rosco
Thanks for the link. Could be wrong but that appears to be an application rather than a patent.

@bare
[quote]Wow, thats an amazingly bleak outlook you have on life, in all possibility it is an error, but why dont we just wait and see before we start judging people on their life.[/quote]Bleak outlook on life? Nope. Just a realistic approach to ridiculous and badly formulated claims. A 7000% overunity device which is delivering electrical power into a load is extremely easy to test if you know how. This guy pretty obviously doesn't. The seemingly personal remarks stem from reading the descriptive article about this person and from personal experience with scams of the past, most notably, Carl Tilley's and Dennis Lee's.

And all of that is before we even get to Steorn. Where's the Steorn jury by the way? What are they doing after a year and a half or so?

[quote][cite] maryyugo:[/cite]
And all of that is before we even get to Steorn. Where's the Steorn jury by the way? What are they doing after a year and a half or so?[/quote]

Perhaps they have discovered secondary 'invisibility' effects?

[quote]Perhaps they have discovered secondary 'invisibility' effects?[/quote]

Hal9000:Video of his device
< http://www.g9toengineering.com/backemf/demonstration.htm >

Nice going, he has 7 videos. I downloaded part 5 and put it temporarily on my website, which may make for a faster download than from his site. I'll leave it up for a bit in case anyone wants to download it.

< http://couldbe.yi.org:8000/part5.mpg.zip >

It's about 100 megs.

I can't follow it as to what it is demonstrating but others here will be able to.

Hal9000:Video of his device
http://www.g9toengineering.com/backemf/demonstration.htm

Surprised there isn't more feedback from this one. I've just watched the videos myself and some of the claims they're making should be very simple to replicate for anyone with an induction motor handy and a handful of magnets...

One of the videos shows an acceleration and drop in power consumption of the motor by simply placing a permanent magnet near the motor's core. The other's show significant acceleration and drop in power consumption by channeling the back-emf of a generator into the motor's core...no fancy tricks by the look of it, so it'll be interesting to see who can replicate this one first!

Come on RB its seems just up your street. With a bit of luck you might be able to patent it in Europe.

trim:Come on RB its seems just up your street. With a bit of luck you might be able to patent it in Europe.

I'm looking at all the videos now trying to glean some information, if the layout is really that simple the only thing that would slow me down is getting the parts, induction motors of that kind don't come cheap I suspect, it is something I will consider, if I just happen on an induction motor at the local flea market then I might consider replicating, but in the end it comes down to that grubby stuff called cash

Here is part 6:

< http://couldbe.yi.org:8000/part6.mpg.zip >

Part 5 is now on YouTube:

[url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q18eSaiKMyc[/url]

Heins' description: "A MAGNETICALLY COUPLED 8 armature generator which ACCELERATES under load in violation of Lenz's Law and the Law of Conservation of Energy."

The video sizes are ridiculously large, there's no need for them to be > 100MB in size.

Parts 6 and 7 are being uploaded to YouTube now.

Here is part 1&2:

< http://couldbe.yi.org:8000/part12.mpg.zip >

[quote][cite] couldbe:[/cite][quote][cite] RunningBare:[/cite]Thane Heins is not looking to give this away but to get himself out of the situation he is in, we all know perpetual motion does not sell, so it is best he goes with highly efficient motor.[/quote]

If he thinks talking about it as OU is self-defeating, then if he made a youtube video with the thing doing something apparently amazing: like Al's video but better, but just talked about it as a highly efficient motor, and droned on a bit about a new configuration that makes better use of whatever...., everybody would look at it and say 'that guy must be kidding. That is obviously OU. Where do I get one'; and the video would put pressure on people to replicate it.[/quote]

You Tube videos are worthless if they don't entertain. I rather watch Fred Astaire.

Here's part 6 in streaming YouTube goodness:

[url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WrzCRimtHc[/url]

Heins' description:
"A split-phase induction motor which is accelerated SOLELY by an externally applied stationary permanent magnetic field. The acceleration is accomplished by the magnetic coupling of the permanent magnet to the motor’s rotor. The acceleration is caused by the permanent magnet’s magnetomotive force adding to the rotor’s magnetomotive force and increasing the rotor’s torque coefficient. This external force has NO ENERGY COST associated with it and it violates the Work Energy Principle"

While I might have been intrigued by the coils accelerating the motor, I find video 6 very suspect, you would not have the same dynamic interaction from a permanent magnet that you would get from an electromagnet(the coils).

Video 6 really not convinced at all. Appears as thoough the magnet could just be altering the postion of the shaft relative to the motor bearings and finding an area of lower friction.

Hmm, this man's heureka moment looks very similar to Steorn's "wind generator" story...

One of these days I'll look what magic happens if an electric generator-dynamo is driven by an electric motor...

And I always thought that inventors dismissed "self-blowing windmill" concepts too soon...

>You Tube videos are worthless if they don't entertain. I rather watch Fred Astaire.

[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWUtW_tMBmE]You can have both.[/url]

And part 7:

[url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wie2ZLWHUEk[/url]

Heins' description:
Erm, there isn't one really, not that I could find. It just says "Magnetically Coupled System, Octuple Armature, Acceleration" on the videos page.

[b]CONSERVATION OF INDUCTION[/b]
ABSTRACT
Conservation of electromagnetic flux changes.
[url]http://magnetmotor.go-here.nl/text/?conservation-of-induction[/url]