From: Marty Galyean (marty@heavyreckoning.com)
Date: Fri Mar 24 2006 - 07:07:36 PST
Fred Martin wrote:
> Marty.....question....What if you owned a woods? I'm sure after this
> is worked on a while someone will hook up a bank of trees and power
> something like a house. Fred Martin
>
What I suspect is that the power he is tapping is simply the static
charge difference between the ground and that charge is collected in the
tree from the wind and such.
It isn't that the power isn't there, it is that it is so puny.
I can't believe the statement about being able to put as many nails as
you want into the tree and getting 'unlimited power'.
These 'free energy' schemes always fall flat on their face when they
start making statements that ignore the basic laws of thermodynamics.
There has been work attempting to trap the static charge of the
atmosphere for over one hundred years. The main issue is that there
simply isn't a lot of it there. Attempts to harness lightning are the
best example, think about it, lightning is just the discharge of this
static. I'm not saying that there isn't a small and highly distributed
power source there. But even with lightning, if you average the power
over time, the times when there isn't enough charge for lightning to
occur totally swamp the amount of power in the times when lightning does
strike in those brief discharges. So over time, the amount of power is
still pretty small. Respectable, but so decentralized as to be
impossible to harvest efficiently. Kind of like the solar advocates
(and solar does have its place) who like to point out the amount of
solar energy reaching the earth and such. So are we going to pave the
planet with photovoltaic panels? I think not. So the point is moot.
I'm saying:
(a) Many researchers have already 'been there, done that' and this is
far from a fresh idea.
(b) There isn't a whole heck of a lot of power there. Powering an LED
really doesn't impress me much seeing as how the typical household at
any given moment is using about a billion times more power than an LED.
But mostly, it was the conspiriatorial tone of the PDF when this is not
a new thing, nor is it being 'suppressed', and claims that fly in the
face of physics just annoy etc.
There might be some additional effect based on the chemical/battery
properties of the nails in the tree but the bottom line is that he is
still just powering LEDs. What would happen if you hooked up an LED to
an AC wall outlet? It would explode like a cartridge primer, that is
what would happen. Now if that LED exploded like that when he hooked it
up to a tree, I'd be duly impressed. And lumberjacks would wear rubber
boots and gloves. The order of magnitudes in power difference between
an LED and 'electric cars' or an entire house is astronomical.
All that said, I am a huge proponent of renewable power.
But I'd put my money on thermal depolymerization.
Check this out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization
Marty
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