"free" energy

[Colophon]

That’s a hellava lot of unsprung weight.

I assume that’s not really a problem with a bus. I doubt we’ll be seeing Ferrari adopting this technology any time soon, though.

[Mangetout]

@Princhester

That’s a hellava lot of unsprung weight.

Quite; the motor itself also seems rather vulnerable to the elements; what happens when the whispering wheel passes through a deep muddy puddle, or is exposed to spray from salted roads? Sealed bearings are possible, but this would require quite a large one.

[octothorpe]

OK, i’ll buy all the arguments concerning the inefficiencies in deploying a conducting tether to generate electricity. And also thank all of you for doing your best to eradicate my ignorance on such matters. However, before i bow out of this discussion totally, i will leave you with a link to the Tethered Satellite System overview in case anyone is interested in what NASA and ASI hoped to accomplish.

[spingears]

@Dijon Warlock

Not free energy, but the OP reminded me of the whispering wheel, which I’d read about last year. Anybody heard of this, know of it, think it sounds like it will work, IS it working, etc.?

Article is dated: "The whispering wheel by Thijs Westerbeek, 15 december 2003
Today is some 9 months later. It must not have been the whopping success anticipated.

Anticipated performance always look better in prospect than results in the final analysis.

Anyone have an update?

[chorpler]

@Padeye

For the record I will state that no one can design a refrigerator that doesn’t make the kitchen a bit warmer <snip>

Okay, this may be somewhat of a hijack, I’m not sure. On the subject of a refrigerator that doesn’t make the kitchen warmer…

In the Asimov book Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain, the miniature submarine they use to cruise around the patient’s body is cooled (to the best of my recollection) by the nuclear reactor that powers the ship. The reactor gives off particles that zip off into outer space, and one of the Russians says that, in effect, they have the whole of outer space for a temperature sink, despite being surrounded by hot body-temperature blood.

Ah, here’s the relevant part, fairly early on in chapter 38:

Morrison stirred uneasily, straining at the constraint of his seat belt. He said, “But if we are in the bloodstream, which is at a temperature of thirty-seven degrees Celsius, we’ll --”

“Our temperature is conditioned. We’ll be quite comfortable,” said Kaliinin. “Really, Albert, we’ve thought of these things.”

“Perhaps you have,” said Morrison, slightly offended, “but I haven’t been privy to those thoughts, have I? How can you condition the temperature when you don’t have a cold sink?”

“We don’t have one here, but there’s outer space, isn’t there? The microfusion motors give off a thin drizzle of subatomic particles which, under miniaturized conditions, have a mass of very nearly zero. They therefore travel at virtually the speed of light, penetrating matter as easily as neutrinos do and carrying off energy with them. In less than a second they are in outer space, so that the effect is of transferring heat from within the ship into outer space and we keep cool. Do you see?”

“I see,” muttered Morrison. It was ingenious – but perhaps obvious, after all, to those used to thinking in terms of miniaturization.

I always wondered if, even without the miraculous Planck’s-constant-shrinking miniaturization technique that Asimov’s Soviet characters developed, a generator that produced neutrinos (or some other particles, or photons, or whatever, as long as it could pass through matter fairly easily) could really be used to cool off the surrounding area in that manner. If so, you could have a refrigerator that wouldn’t warm up the surrounding kitchen … just the universe in general.

I never really understood how it would work even in the book; how does a nuclear reaction that produces particles that shoot off into space manage to cool something off? Don’t the particles get their energy from the nuclear reaction, not from environmental heat?

[Polycarp]

@A Monkey With a Gun

Running an extension cord from my next door neighbor’s outlet when he wasn’t looking worked pretty well.

That’s exactly why the proper formulation of that statement always includes “in a closed system”!!

[GorillaMan]

@chorpler

I never really understood how it would work even in the book; how does a nuclear reaction that produces particles that shoot off into space manage to cool something off? Don’t the particles get their energy from the nuclear reaction, not from environmental heat?

You never understood it in the book because even there, it doesn’t make sense.