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| Dear
Subscriber, |
|
Besides
the intriguing innovative inventions by our
notable physicist Secretary of Energy, Dr. Chu,
this Future Energy eNews also contains the first
announcement of Dr. Bernard Haisch's zero point
energy (ZPE) extraction invention for Jovian
Corporation. With DARPA funding this theoretical
investigation as well, it gains respectability and
should cause all of our subscribers to take zero
point energy more seriously. Basically, the
process involves sending a gas through a Casimir
cavity which is predicted reduce the ground state
of the hydrogen atom and release heat.
Interestingly, my published paper estimates a
similarly sized 10 cc box for extracting a similar
wattage from ZPE but with a solid state approach,
simply using zero bias diodes that directly
produce electricity.
http://www.integrityresearchinstitute.org/ZeroBiasDiodeArrays-Valone-SPESIF2009.pdf
Also
worth noting is the surge of FUTURE ENERGY
conferences in 2009! IRI can probably take credit
for introducing the phrase in 1999 with the first
COFE,
which was covered in Nature, Science, and other
fine publications. IRI still offers the only
conference where true futuristic energy concepts
are presented. Come to COFE3
in October and find out. Click on the
coupon at the end of this newsletter for a
discount on the registration
fee. We also have special prices
for
students.
Sincerely,
Thomas
Valone, PhD
President |
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| 1) Steven Chu's Energy Plan
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|
Kevin Bullis,
Technology Review, January 14,
2009
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/energy/22495/
At
yesterday's hearing, Obama's selection for
secretary of energy outlined his
priorities.
Steven Chu, president-elect
Obama's pick for secretary of energy, emphasized
the need to address climate change and decrease
reliance on foreign oil during his confirmation
hearing on Tuesday, January 13, and he backed off
of some of his earlier rhetoric against coal
(which he'd previously called his "worst
nightmare"). Here's a sampling of his take on key
issues.
Oil and gas, and
efficiency:
He tiptoed around the
issue of increasing oil and gas production on the
outer continental shelf and elsewhere, saying that
he supported it, but immediately qualifying his
statement. He said that only 5 percent of the
world production of oil comes from the United
States, implying that increased production won't
make much difference. Then he said, "The more
efficient use of energy in the United States is
the one big factor that can help us reduce our
dependency on foreign oil."
Nuclear:
It
has to be part of the energy mix, so we need to
figure out how to dispose of it. That means, in
part, some more research on recycling
waste.
Electric grid: A
"very crucial" part of the development of natural
resources. Steady winds and clear skies for solar
power are often far from big cities where power is
needed, so we'll need better electrical
transmission. Challenges: cost, state boundary
issues, siting the power lines.
Renewable
energy: "Renewable energy is
something we really have to work on as quickly as
possible . . . It will be my primary goal as
secretary to make the Department of Energy a
leader in these critical efforts." (Quote from CQ
Politics.) Chu's work as the director of the
Lawrence Berkeley Lab focused on advanced
biofuels, artificial photosynthesis, and solar
technologies.
Hybrids, electric
vehicles:
"These first electric hybrid cars
don't have the energy capacity and the battery
lifetime we need," he said today. "Let's push hard
towards more fuel-efficient personal vehicles."
(Quote from Earth2Tech.)
Coal, carbon
sequestration:
Coal is the most
abundant fuel source in the U.S., and the
dirtiest. But capturing the carbon dioxide that it
produces and burying it could make it cleaner. Chu
supports developing technology to do this.
"If the world continues to use
coal the way it is now, that is a pretty bad
dream," he said at the hearing, pointing out that
carbon dioxide isn't the only problem. In many
places, pollutants like sulfur dioxide and mercury
aren't captured, he said. "It is imperative that
we figure out a way to use coal as cleanly as
possible. My optimism as a scientist is that we
will develop those technologies to capture a large
fraction of the carbon dioxide that is emitted
from power plants and to safely sequester
it."
Related
Article
U.S. Energy Secretary Steven
Chu's Latest Experiment
Mark
Anderson
First Published January 2009 http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/jan09/7454
Chu's atom interferometer
could lead to GPS without the satellites
22
January 2009-The newly confirmed U.S. Secretary of
Energy, Steven Chu, is settling into his new job
in Washington, D.C., but he's still making waves
in his old job as a physicist. The former director
of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Chu
presents in his latest paper one of the most
promising developments yet in a fledgling quantum
technology that may within a decade power
satellite-free GPS, monitor earthquake zones, map
out undiscovered mineral resources, and search for
elusive gravitational waves.
The technology is based on the
85-year-old principle that particles of matter act
like waves. Chu's team, directed by physics
assistant professor Holger Müller, of the
University of California, Berkeley, nudged
individual cesium atoms up a spout and watched the
resulting patterns as the atoms fell onto a
detector below.
Like a water fountain, the
atoms' rippling patterns tell us something about
their paths. Choppy waves at the detector indicate
sputtering spouts of cesium, whereas smooth
sine-wave patterns reveal a steadier fountain.
However, unlike a water fountain, the waves in the
Chu group's atom interferometers originate in each
individual cesium atom. Each atom interferes with
itself to form the pattern on the
detector.
"Somehow you need to split the
matter wave and [then] recombine it," says Müller.
"The waves may be in phase [at the detector], and
that means you count lots of atoms. Or the waves
will cancel, in which case you find no atoms at
all."
The cesium atoms in Chu and
Müller's device start off trapped at the
intersection of criss-crossed laser beams,
confined by a magnetic field and at a temperature
near absolute zero. (Chu shared the physics Nobel
Prize in 1997 for developing such laser atom
traps.) The magnetic field is then turned off, and
the atoms slowly drift upward.
As the atoms drift, they are
also tweaked by infrared laser pulses from below.
The intensity of the pulses is just shy of being
enough to provide extra upward kicks. At such
delicate laser intensities, the laws of quantum
mechanics step in, essentially splitting each
cesium atom into two alternate realities. In one,
the laser can push the atom up. In the other, the
atom simply floats, unmoved by the light from
below.
Each cesium atom travels both
paths simultaneously, rising as high as a meter
above the atom trap, Müller says. But whether
boosted by laser pulses or floating up from the
release of the trap, the atoms are ultimately
pulled back to Earth by gravity. As the atoms
strike the detector, each atom's two alternate
paths are forced to recombine, providing the same
kinds of rich interference patterns that
converging beams of light trace in the making of
holograms.
The difference, Müller says, is
that atoms feel the pull of gravity, while light
feels almost none. "That makes an atom
interferometer much more sensitive to
gravitational effects than a [laser]
interferometer," he says.
Mark Kasevich, professor of
physics at Stanford University, is one of the
world's leading experts in developing applications
for atom interferometers. Kasevich, a former
graduate student of Chu's, says that Chu and
Müller have created a system that has given the
"best ever result" for the next-generation of atom
interferometers. "This is clearly the future,"
Kasevich says of the new research.
Kasevich says his lab is
developing geological applications for atom
interferometers that he expects to see in five
years or less. Such applications include using
differences in the strength of gravity to detect
underground water tables, diamond deposits, or
slight motions of tectonic plates that could
presage an earthquake.
Perhaps in 10 years, Kasevich
adds, these atom interferometers could lead to
breakthroughs in navigation technologies that
don't need satellites. Instead, a series of
microscopic interferometers would infer the
position from precision measurements of
accelerations and decelerations. Kasevich is also
researching atom interferometers as the basis for
"telescopes" that could detect gravitational waves
from orbiting pairs of black holes in nearby
galaxies or see the restless, rumbling dawn of the
early universe.
Müller says he's now finishing
a few other papers with Chu from research done
before the Energy Secretary's appointment to
President Obama's cabinet. Beyond that, though,
Müller says he expects Chu to set aside the atom
interferometer research for now and concentrate on
his primary passion: powering a productive planet
with as little fossil fuel as possible.
"[Chu]
is very ambitious and always very energetic,"
Müller says.
"Anytime Steve takes a step in a
new direction, he succeeds," Kasevich adds, "in
remarkable ways."
About the
Author
MARK ANDERSON is a freelance
science and technology writer based in
Northampton, Mass. In October 2008, he wrote about
the technological rescue and financial bailout of
the Gravity Probe B experiment.
To Probe
FurtherChu's paper, which has
been submitted to the journal Physical Review
Letters, can be found at the physics abstract
repository www.arxiv.org.
|
| 2) A Jaw-Dropping Ride, Batteries
Included |
| 2009 TESLA ROADSTER
Warren
Brown
Washington Post
Staff Writer
Sunday, January 25,
2009.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/23/AR2009012301591.html?sid=ST2009012601795
Let us begin with
definitions.
First, there is the circle. It is
round. It has circumference, the edge or outer
limits of its roundness. It has a center and a
radius, the latter being the straight-line
distance from the circle's center to its
circumference.
Next, there is the tangent. It
is a line that touches exactly one point of a
circle's circumference. That line can be an actual
line; or, for purposes of this discussion, it can
be the force exerted at any one point on the edge
of a circle in the exact direction of the circle's
rotation multiplied by the circle's radius.
Physicists and engineers call that force torque,
which is best understood in automotive terms as
engine twisting power and efficiency.
Torque well-delivered makes
things go. You can have all the horsepower in the
world. But if the energy from all of that muscle
gets gobbled up and lost in the generation and
transmission of twisting power, you'll have a car
that goes much slower and consumes more fuel than
it should.
Thus, we come to the genius and
excitement of this week's test car, the Tesla
Roadster. Tesla's marketers say the car delivers
100 percent torque 100 percent of the time. That's
a bit of a stretch. Something always gets lost in
the transmission and use of power.
But it is
reasonable to agree that the Tesla Roadster
delivers at least 90 percent of its torque at
least 90 percent of the time, which is far better
than the torque delivery of cars and trucks
powered by internal combustion engines.
The Tesla Roadster is powered
by batteries -- a dense pack of lithium-ion cells
that feed juice to a 375-volt AC (alternating
current) induction, air-cooled electric motor with
variable frequency drive.
That motor, which provides the
gasoline-engine equivalent of 248 horsepower and
276 foot-pounds of torque, powers the Tesla's rear
wheels via a single-speed, direct-drive
transmission. Judging from a day behind the wheel
of the car, that speed is fast!
There are people who praise the
Tesla Roadster for its environmental attributes.
It consumes no fossil fuels, spews no tailpipe
emissions and leaves a relatively minor carbon
footprint. But all of that is missing the point,
because those are also attributes of the decidedly
non-sexy, campus utilitarian, golf-cart-like cars
assembled by Global Electric Motorcars, a Chrysler
company.
Tesla, by comparison, is a
roadster's roadster. It's a head-turner,
jaw-dropper. It is sexy as all get-out. And, at
$109,000 a copy, it's pricey.
The Tesla Roadster deliberately
eschews utility and what many motorists deem
creature comforts -- such as power steering and a
power-operated convertible roof. Turning the
Tesla's steering wheel at low speeds requires good
arm strength. The car has seats for two people.
But whoever is sitting in the passenger's seat had
better buckle up and be prepared to hang on to his
or her gut.
The Tesla is built for one
purpose and one purpose only, which is to go as
fast and as far as possible on battery power,
which it does. It can run heartily for 200 miles
on a single charge, after which a 3.5-hour plug-in
in a washer-dryer-like 220-to-240-volt household
outlet is required to restore full battery power.
Slower speeds can yield a single-charge driving
range of up to 240 miles.
But here's betting that no one
slipping behind the steering wheel of the Tesla
Roadster will be inclined to nurse it along the
highway in pursuit of hyper-mileage. That is not
at all what the car is about.
Would you like to know what
smooth, nearly instant torque feels like?
Wheeeeeee! Drive a Tesla, even if you have to fly
to Tesla's Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters, to
get your hands on one for a day. You will never
again think horsepower is more important than
torque.
Nor will you have the same tactile,
emotional appreciation of automotive acceleration
that marked your enjoyment of high-powered,
internal combustion engines.
Wheeeeeee! If this is the
future of the automobile, I want it. Let's do
whatever we can to get the price down.
|
| 3) Ion Teleportation Scheme Could Scale
Up Quantum Computers |
Saswato Das
First
Published January 2009, IEEE Spectrum, http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/jan09/
Scientists have teleported the
quantum state of one trapped ion onto another a
meter away
A team of scientists is
announcing today in the journal Science that in
one of those bizarre demonstrations of quantum
mechanics it has managed to teleport the quantum
state of one ion onto another across a distance of
a meter. Though we're accustomed to thinking of
the Star Trek version of teleportation, what
physicists call teleportation is the exact mapping
of one particle's quantum characteristics to
another distant particle. That matters because
future quantum computers and quantum cryptography
networks need some way of storing data and moving
it around.
In the past decade,
physicists have shown that teleportation is
possible with magnetic fields, photons, and even
atoms. What makes the new results-by Christopher
Monroe of the University of Maryland and his
colleagues-interesting is that the team uses a
hybrid approach involving both atoms and photons
that fits well with quantum information networks
and quantum computers. Theoretically, Monroe says,
the technique they have invented can be extended
to distances as great as thousands of kilometers,
although all they have demonstrated so far is one
meter.
Raymond Laflamme, director
of the Institute for Quantum Computing, at the
University of Waterloo, in Canada, called it "a
very neat experiment and important milestone,
demonstrating very good quantum control and
bringing quantum teleportation one step nearer to
practical applications."
At the heart of
teleportation lies a quantum mechanics effect
known as entanglement. That phenomenon allows two
particles-such as photons, atoms, or ions-to be
linked in such a way that if someone measures the
quantum state of one object, the state of the
other becomes known as well. Entangled photons are
often used in experimental quantum information
networks. But while photons are easy to transmit
(after all, they move with the highest speed in
the universe), they are very difficult to store.
On the other hand, atoms and ions preserve
entanglement for a long time, but being massive,
they are much harder to move from place to place.
The beauty of Monroe's
approach to teleportation is that it is an
intelligent combination of the strengths of
photons and ions. His team used two ytterbium ions
confined in electromagnetic ion traps and cooled
by lasers. The goal is to teleport the quantum
state of one ytterbium ion to the other. Both ions
are prepared for entanglement by microwave pulses
and then zapped by ultrafast laser pulses. Each
ion subsequently gives off a photon, which is
entangled with the ion's state. Through a complex
series of steps, the system transfers the quantum
state of one ytterbium ion to the other.
Norbert Lütkenhaus, of the Institute for
Quantum Computing, says Monroe's approach "make
sense." He says that "this technique allows them
to couple ion traps in this optical way."
Monroe says the hybrid
approach will enable the creation of quantum
repeaters-still-theoretical devices needed to make
large-scale quantum cryptography networks-and will
also be useful for making quantum computers. His
group's design for scalable quantum computers is
to build multiple ion traps on a chip. The ions
act as quantum bits and can perform computations
when placed close together in a trap. However, to
get the result of one trap to a computation in
another trap without some sort of teleportation
would require the difficult task of moving ions
around on the chip. He says teleportation "may
well be the most scalable approach" to building
ion-chip computers.
Dick Slusher of the Georgia
Tech Research Institute, isn't so sure. "I think
that in principle it is true that this
teleportation process will facilitate scaling of
quantum computation," he says. "However, there are
many ways to accomplish this scaling, including
ion transport and error-correcting pulse
sequences. Teleportation may well turn out to be
the key process for scaling, but I think it is far
too early to be sure of this."
About the
Author
Saswato R.
Das is a science writer based in New
York City. In October 2008 he reported on the
launch of the world's largest quantum cryptography
network.
To Probe
Further
The paper in Science
describing the teleportation breakthrough can be
found here.
Monroe wrote a feature article for
the August 2007 issue of IEEE Spectrum about
ion-trap chip-scale quantum
computers.
|
| 4) Spinning Black Holes Are Ultimate
Cosmic Batteries |
|
New Scientist,
26 January 2009 by David Shiga,
issue 2692.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126924.700-spinning-black-holes-are-ultimate-cosmic-batteries.html
The MS0735.6+7421 galaxy has
given up some of the strongest evidence for jets
powered by spinning black holes (Image: NASA / ESA
/ CXC / STSCI / NRAO)
YOU wouldn't want to be
nearby when a spinning black hole lets rip. It now
seems they can store and unleash the energy of
billions of supernovae, with potentially
devastating consequences for their host galaxies.
Many of the supermassive black
holes that lurk at the centre of galaxies fire out
powerful plasma jets that extend for millions of
light years. Though the details of how these jets
are produced remain murky, there seems to be only
two plausible power sources: one is matter falling
onto the black hole, which can't explain all the
cases. The other source is the black hole's stored
rotational energy. Calculations suggest it should
be possible for jets to siphon off energy at the
expense of the black hole's rotation as long as
magnetic fields are present to connect the black
hole to any matter nearby. Persuasive evidence for
this has been lacking.
Now a team led by Brian
McNamara of the University of Waterloo, Canada,
has found what may be the strongest evidence yet
for jets powered by black hole rotation. It comes
from a galaxy called MS0735.6+7421 (pictured),
about 2.6 billion light years from Earth. In 2005
data on this galaxy from the Chandra X-ray
Observatory revealed the biggest outpouring of
energy ever identified from black hole jets.
Based on cavities the jets have
apparently punched through the surrounding gas,
the team calculates that in the past 100 million
years or so jets have put out 1055 joules,
billions of times the energy of a supernova. It
would have been next to impossible for matter
falling into the black hole to power these jets.
Supermassive black holes are messy eaters, leaving
behind many times more matter than they actually
consume but there is little sign that this
happened.
"It would have had to
essentially vacuum all of the matter that was in
that galaxy down into the black hole in a period
of 100 million years, and we know nature doesn't
work that way," McNamara says. "Accretion of
matter onto a black hole is very inefficient" ( www.arxiv.org/abs/0811.3020).
That leaves black hole spin as
the only other energy source. The black hole could
have been set spinning in the first place by
matter falling onto it much earlier in its
lifetime or in the course of a merger with another
black hole.
A huge amount of energy can
be stored in black hole spin, and if it gets
released again in the form of jets, it could have
profound effects. Black hole jets are increasingly
suspected of sterilising their host galaxies,
heating and blowing away gas before it can
condense to form new stars, for example.
Chris Reynolds of the
University of Maryland in College Park says this
strengthens the case that some jets are powered by
spinning black holes. But he says he is still
waiting for "definitive proof".
|
| 5) US Patent Issued For Extraction Of
Zero Point Energy |
DARPA Funds Zero Point
Energy
As of Feb. 4, 2009,
the company has gone through $200,000 in funding,
partially from POCi, as well as from DARPA and
some private investors.
The POCi funding covers the
design, construction and testing of a practical
and scalable energy harvesting system. The funding
is contingent on the satisfactory achievement of
certain scientific proof of principle milestones
relating to a prototype Casimir cavity device as
described in a current research grant to Dr.
Garret Moddel, Professor in CU-Boulder's
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
and an inventor of the technology.
The patent is based primarily
on papers published in the journal Physical Review
by Hal Puthoff in 1987 and Timothy Boyer in 1975.
Bernard Haisch, who is a
co-inventor, is quick to point out that this is
all purely speculative at this point and that they
have not yet been able to prove anything in the
laboratory. The sporadic signals they have seen
can't be ruled out as experimental error. That
said, the model is still "well worth pursuing".
It is a "high risk / high gain"
venture, he said, wanting to avoid the common
mistake of overselling and under-delivering.
They are presently (as of Feb.
4, 2009) looking for major funding of around $10
million to carry out more sophisticated testing.
Patent Description
A system
is disclosed for converting energy from the
electromagnetic
quantum vacuum available at any
point in the universe to usable energy
in the
form of heat, electricity, mechanical energy or
other forms of
power. By suppressing
electromagnetic quantum vacuum energy
at
appropriate frequencies a change may be
effected in the electron
energy levels which
will result in the emission or release of
energy.
Mode suppression of electromagnetic
quantum vacuum radiation is known
to take place
in Casimir cavities. A Casimir cavity refers to
any
region in which electromagnetic modes are
suppressed or restricted.
When atoms enter into
suitable micro Casimir cavities a decrease
in
the orbital energies of electrons in atoms
will thus occur. Such
energy will be captured
in the claimed devices. Upon emergence
form
such micro Casimir cavities the atoms will
be re-energized by the
ambient electromagnetic
quantum vacuum. In this way energy is
extracted
locally and replenished globally from and by
the
electromagnetic quantum vacuum. This
process may be repeated an
unlimited number of
times. This process is also consistent with
the
conservation of energy in that all usable
energy does come at the
expense of the energy
content of the electromagnetic quantum
vacuum.
Similar effects may be produced by
acting upon molecular bonds.
Devices are
described in which gas is recycled through a
multiplicity
of Casimir cavities. The disclosed
devices are scalable in size and
energy output
for applications ranging from replacements for
small
batteries to power plant sized generators
of electricity.
A 10cm X 10 cm parallel plates
separated by 10 micron non-conducting strips
aligned to form 5000 Casimir strips. Gas flow rate
of 10 cm/second would generate 21-210 watts. A
stacked set of 10 or more layers could yield 210
to 2100 watts (thermal) for a 10X10X10 cm
block.
A one cubic centimeter "sugar
cube" size block with 1.3 billion tunnels would
generate 2150 to 21500 watts (thermal). The 0.1
micron tunnels could be assembled a layer at a
time using microchip lithography and then
assembled into stacks. Other means of
manufacturing the channels could be possible.
United States Patent
7,379,286 Haisch and Moddel Quantum
vacuum energy extraction Patent The 21 page patent is here
Jovion plans to use MEMS devices or polymer
sheets to form the small Casimir cavities.
Francis Roarty [Unknown
Qualifications/Background]
Interpretation
Francis Roarty believes and
writes that the Jovion work is closely related to
Blacklight Powers Hydrinos. Francis also wrote up
his description at the science blog.
Francis seems to at least have
read the work of Blacklight Power and the
University of Colorado researcher at Jovion
closely. They are both talking about reducing
electron orbits using previously unknown means.
The reasons being given about how these changes
are occurring are very different. The University
of Colorado reasoning is based on quantum
mechanics while Blacklight Power applies a
variation on classical mechanics.
The physical result of energy
production can end up being the same even if only
one of the explanations is right. The experiments
could work even if both explanations are
substantially wrong or incomplete.
For Further
Information:
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