The Water Engine

[cthulu2016]

Last edited Wed Jul 18, 2012, 02:49 PM - Edit history (9)

One of the great modern myths is the idea that a water-fueled engine suitable for powering an automobile was, at some point, invented and then suppressed by energy corporations.

It makes no sense as a story, but is resonant as myth. It speaks to a lost potential... almost like the loss of Eden. And it plays on the very real reality that businesses are not in it for the good of humanity, and that our lives are controlled by shadowy economic forces.

But as a story, a theory, an idea of something that could have happened in the real world, it's strictly comic-book.

First, water can't power squat. It takes more energy to break the hydrogen and oxygen apart than you can get from recombining them. That's why we have water in the first place. It is chemically pretty stable. It is possible to construct a hypothetical where a hydrogen engine could be cheaper to run than a gasoline engine... if the price of gasoline is $100/gallon and the price of electricity stays the same then using electricity to bust apart water molecules might be less $$$, but the process still consumes more energy than it releases. You would have to make the hydrogen at home, of course. The closed system of the car itself would have to produce more power to break up the water than it would get out of it, so the car would have to produce more electric energy than the energy the hydrogen gives up in burning. If that were possible (it isn't) you would have invented a battery-less electric car and the whole water thing would be unnecessary. And if you use tons of electricity to make hydrogen at home and then pump that into your car then that's a hydrogen engine and nobody has ever questioned that a car could run on hydrogen. (Hydrogen destroys engines, though, which is why we don't use it. Very reactive stuff, hydrogen.)

(When water powers a hydroelectric dam the energy is solar—the sun evaporates the water which then rains down at high altitudes where it has potential energy in the form of gravity urging it back downhill. The energy involved in getting the water uphill is much higher than it can generate running back downhill.)

Second, in the modern era there are not "lost" inventions. If conditions are such that X can be invented at the time, and there is a motive to invent it, then if one guy doesn't invent X then somebody else would invent X a short time afterward. No inventor is indispensable. Five years after Tesla's death we could speculate about things he might have invented that were lost. But ten years later? Fifty years later? No. If it is there to be discovered with the theory and engineering of the time it will be discovered. Many inventions wait a thousand years because there isn't the overall technological culture in place. Heavier than air flight on human muscle power, or even steam power, is not practical. But once the internal combustion engine came along there was a rush to invent the airplane. The Wright brothers had their equivalents all around the world. All the brilliant people throughout history failed to figure out evolution, but then two men at opposite ends of the world got the same general idea the same decade. Calculus was never invented for millennia, then suddenly invented in slightly different forms by two guys in different countries. Heck, even writing was invented completely independently three times. (Mesopotamia, China, Central America.)

If Alan Turing (who I greatly admire) had never lived the UK would have been a little less clever about breaking the German enigma codes in WWII, and the computers they built to do so would have been somewhat less effective, but it wouldn't have prevented the development of computers. If Bell Labs hadn't come up with the transistor someone else would have the next year or two.

(The reason we don't see the transistor invented 100 times is that once someone comes up with the thing all researchers in the field stop what they're doing and switch to working on improving it, not inventing it again.)

The US and Germany were both doing atom bomb research during WWII because the state of physics at the time showed that U-235 is readily fissionable, and the state of engineering at the time made isolating U-235 in quantity plausible. When Leó Szilárd realized a chain reaction was possible he wasn't laughed at. He said to other scientists, "Hey, U-235 could create a chain reaction," and they all fiddled with their slide rules and went, "Hey, you're right!" None of them had trouble understanding it. If he hadn't thought it through then somebody else would have a few months later. It was an idea whose time had come. And if the US and Germany had both squelched all such research then the A-bomb might have waited until 1947 or 1949. An atom bomb is the sort of thing everyone wants. And being miles ahead of everyone else means a few years. If Einstein had died in infancy then the description of relativity might have taken a few years longer, and that's GENIUS. A few years ahead is epic. If water has powers that our current physics and engineering can exploit then the water engine would have to be suppressed every few weeks... forever.

Third, a conspiracy to suppress all knowledge of something everyone in the world wants is an absurdity. China would be delighted to have a water engine. Everyone would. When their research points toward a water engine (as it would time and time again) do they kill all the scientists who saw the work? Why? To protect Exxon? It makes no sense to explain why X would want it to not be developed unless one can explain why everyone doggedly ignores the supposed capabilities of water. It would have to be an air-tight conspiracy of all business interests, and all governments and all scientists. Competing nations, competing companies, competing universities, competing scientists... all engaged in intentionally not discovering the greatest technology out there. It only takes one person to publish reproducible water-engine results on the internet for an hour and the cat is out of the bag. Yet somehow nobody ever does.

And this would be such a BIG idea to hide. A water engine would mean that either thermodynamics is bunk (the most shocking and wide-reaching discovery in centuries of scientific history) or else there is a novel and easily exploitable energy in molecular bonds of which we are utterly unaware, or a way to dissolve molecular bonds using little or no energy (either would be the biggest science story of our time). A water engine wouldn't just change engines, it would change all of science. It would alter everything we think we know, from cosmology to biology. Everything.

(And if the conspiracy is that good, why are we talking about it? Why do we "know" about the water engine at all?)

Fourth, economics. Even if the water engine could somehow be hidden for a generation, why? There's more money in owning it than hiding it. A water engine would be the most valuable patent in history, by a lot. If a guy ever takes a water engine to GM or Exxon they may well murder him, but not to suppress the engine... to steal it to exploit it themselves, and as fast as possible. The idea is worth almost infinite money, but if one guy invents it then it is known to be possible with contemporary technology, which means that another guy is liable to invent it independently tomorrow. So the race to exploit the water-engine technology would be the biggest corporate gold-rush ever. If Exxon owned the water engine patent they would be ten times as rich as they are selling oil. It is quaint to think their devotion is to oil. It is not. Their devotion is to money and nothing (perhaps not even cold fusion) would be worth more money than a water engine.

So an entity has the world's most valuable technology and choses to NOT patent it, to keep it secret? They leave the technology legally unprotected so anyone who happens upon the same idea (in almost any nation) can patent it and be the richest person on Earth.

[jberryhill]

1. The entire water engine story...

...is a fake story intended to distract everyone from finding about the air engine.

[HereSince1628]

6. aarrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!

[rug]

13. The problem with the air engine is it runs on carbon monoxide extracted from the air.

To be practicable, there has to be a means of injecting carbon monoxide into the air.

[jmowreader]

20. Actually, the air engine I've seen online runs on compressed air

And in case no one noticed, it takes a LOT of energy to compress air.

[jberryhill]

27. Not as much as it takes to compress water

[rug]

30. All you have to do is leave a pail out in winter.

[jberryhill]

32. It expands down to 4 Celsius

Ice floats, you know

[4th law of robotics]

45. First you have to convert it to a gas

then compress it as you would air.

[jberryhill]

47. Thomas Newcomen, is that you?

[Xyzse]

42. But...

Just hook up the Limbaugh gas bag and it provides methane, CO, CO2 and a whole lot of other combustible gasses, all you need is a light.

[trof]

50. And it's all a conspiracy against the Perpetual Motion Machine.

[Logical]

2. Most "believers" do not think too deeply. Many people do not have critical thinking skills. n-t

[2on2u]

3. Though this is different.... it is almost the same.

http://dev.blacklightpower.com/press/052212-2/

Cranbury, NJ (May 22, 2012) — BlackLight Power, Inc. (BLP) today announced a major breakthrough in clean energy technology, which experts agree holds tremendous promise for a wide range of commercial applications. The announcement comes on the heels of BlackLight’s recent completion of a $5 million round of financing to support commercial development of its new process for producing affordable, reliable energy from water vapor.

In six separate, independent studies, leading scientists from academia and industry with PhDs from prestigious universities including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the California Institute of Technology, confirm that BlackLight has achieved a technological breakthrough with its CIHT (Catalyst-Induced-Hydrino-Transition) clean energy generating process and cell.

The Process is fueled by water vapor that is a gaseous component of air and present wherever there is any source of water. The CIHT cell harnesses this energy as electrical power output and is suitable for essentially all power applications including transportation applications and electrical power production completely autonomous of fuels and grid infrastructure at a small fraction of the current capital costs.

[jberryhill]

7. Blacklight Power is... amazing

Serious people sunk money into that thing, and not a Watt-hour of energy has come out the other end.

I sat through one of Mills' presentations once, and couldn't believe anyone in the room was taking him seriously.

He will sue you if you call him a fraud, though.

[Zalatix]

14. There's his profit model right there.

1) Make a bogus claim. Sell a bogus idea.
2) Get called a fraud.
3) SUE!!!!!!!!!!
4) PROFIT!!!

[2on2u]

29. This truly is amazing.

http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-793467

The "extraordinary claim" met extraordinary tests, according to Prof. Henry Weinberg of the renowned California University of Technology.

"It would be irrational not to be very skeptical,” Dr. Weinberg said, and I was extremely skeptical. However, after having reviewed Dr. Mills classical theory, participated in experimental designs and execution, and having reviewed vast amounts of other data BLP produced, I have found nothing that warrants rejection of their extraordinary claims, and I encourage aggressive optimization and fast track development of a scaled up prototype,” said Dr. Weinberg. "To be able to use hydrogen from water as a cheap and nonpolluting source of power would represent one of the most important technological breakthroughs in history.”

>>Now, though, extensive research has refuted the criticism of quantum mathematicians. "As a direct result of this theory, Dr. Mills has been able to calculate, with great precision, bond energies and molecular structures that have been verified through experimental observation and reported in the literatrure," MIT scientist Terry Copeland said in his study of the theory and the hydrino power device.

"BLP has achieved a historic success for a technology that could be commercialized as an alternative form of power generation. Potential applications range from stationary power infrastructure including the large scale electric grid to to distributed and microdistributed scales and motive fuels infrastructure. The promise will ultimately be driven by economics," Copeland said.<<

[jberryhill]

31. Not one watt-hour of energy produced

[2on2u]

48. Not one street light until Edison figgered it out.... right? n/t

[jberryhill]

49. Not at all comparable

Edison found a lot of things that would work as incandescent light filaments, and there was nothing unsound about the notion of how an incandescent light would work.

BLP claims to have already "figgered it out" on the basis of a theory which, at bottom, is fiction.

Another key difference is that Edison did not rope in gullible investors to his development of the electric light bulb.

BLP has taken in millions of investor dollars since the 1990's on the promise that riches were "just around the corner" and has not produced a thing.

So, what happened to the "50 kW prototype" they announced back in 2008?

There's a sucker born every minute....

http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/05/their-back-blacklight-power.html

[cthulu2016]

51. A few observations

First, the piece is not a CNN article. CNN i-report online picks up weird stories for the heck of it. This one is from The American Reporter website and it is a flack piece for BLP, not any usual lind of journalism. Essentially a BLP press release disguised as a news article.

It does not note, for instance, that BLP has made the same predictions abut what they would do 'next year' for 20 straight years. And the hottest claims in the article are sourced to the BLP web-site.

The scientists quoted are not evidence of anything in particular... creationist websites usually have a couple of similar PHDs weighing in. Note that Dr. Weinberg's name links to the glowing bio of Dr. Weinberg on the BLP website.

The problem with hydrino theory is simple. We have never observed hydrinos. The most common element in the universe has a marvelous alternative form, and it is easy to get it into that form (as opposed to requiring temperatures equivalent to the big bang, or being on the surface of a black hole or something) but nobody has ever detected the form.

And this guy has never seen fit to show any hydrinos to anyone, nor any compounds formed with hydrinos. He says that is to protect his secrets... but what secrets? He has already published what hydrinos are, how they are formed, what unique compounds they make with other elements, the energy released in the formation of a hydrino...

It is all out there. Anyone who wanted to steal his work has been given all the information they need. They only thing nobody has been given is a sample of an actual hydrino... a thing that would not be giving away a secret, but that cannot be done because hydrinos do not exist.

Classic perpetual-motion con-man. These people are often self-deluded and end up faking data to show the bigger truth they "know" is out there... they think their fabrications are actually truer than the truth would be. They end up faking demonstrations to attract investors so they can get the funds to do the real demonstrations that they just know will work. Sad stuff.

[eppur_se_muova]

53. DUgle "Blacklight Power" in the E&E and Science forums ...

it's been much discussed in the past, with heavy doses of skepticism.

I remember the "catalyst" has changed several times.

ETA: My longest rant on this kind of claim -- http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=228&topic_id=34020&mesg_id=34194

"Free energy from water" has been posted to the E/E and Science forums waaaaay too many times.

When Googling either "Blacklight Power" or "hydrino", I always include "fraud" as a search term, to avoid the sockpuppet/woo sites.

[JFN1]

4. Very well said.

Discoveries are made over and over again throughout history, a fact we in our modern "top-of-the-food-chain" culture so often forget, as we perpetually and breathlessly rush to congratulate ourselves on our technological prowess...

[jberryhill]

10. The things that get "lost" are typically through obsolescence

Like the "mysteries" of "things made of big rocks" by ancient cultures.

Ancient aliens aside, humans had a LONG time to work with materials on hand, like rocks, and were no less clever than we are now. We don't know with certainty "how they built Stonehenge" or whatever, because whatever techniques they used would not be the ones we'd use to solve that problem.

I have advanced degrees in electrical engineering. If you hand me all of the parts for a vacuum tube AM radio, you'll get a lot of funny looks from me, but no radio. I have some basic notion of how vacuum tubes work, but wouldn't have the foggiest notion how to make basic amplifiers, oscillators, or other things out of them.

For all I know, vacuum tube electronics were built by a race of space aliens who visited earth for several decades of the 20th century.

[cthulu2016]

19. A remarkable method that doesn't occur to us...

is the almost infinitely labor intensive practice of using earthworks to erect a stone structure, and then remove the earth.

For instance, someone with a lot of available labor could build but the cross-bars on Stonehenge by burying the uprights in a huge ramp of dirt with the top of the uprights level with the top of the hill, then roll the cross-bars into place, and then remove all the dirt. I am not saying Stonehenge was built this way (unlikely in that case) but that it could have been. We would look at those stones trying to figure how to lift them up off the ground because the idea of "lifting" the ground instead seems ridiculously labor intensive.

An aside: If you haven't seen it, this guy's backyard stonehenge involves some fascinating engineering that is surprisingly non-labor intensive:

re: lost inventions. There have been plenty of lost technologies and techniques, but that is not plausible in the modern world. Our information storage and dispersal is too good now. But we know the Greek methods of calculating trigonometric values was lost for a good while—later Indian reference tables that seemed to add to earlier Greek work with log tables being extended to half degrees and quarter degrees turned out to be non-calculated approximations based on (calculated) Greek originals. And we can see that something vital was lost in stone carving... the Romans could not copy the balance of greek marbles. (They added little marble tree stumps and such to stabilize the figures or else they'd break off at the ankles.)

In a world where knowledge was concentrated in a small number of minds and scrolls and there was not a robust scientific culture and infrastructure things sometimes got lost.

But, as you say, most lost knowledge is lost to obsolescence.

[wandy]

52. And some things get lost to history with good reason. Early Color TV.

Dr. Peter Goldmark, had developed, some years before, a color television system for remote viewing of operating room procedures in hospitals. The principle was childishly simple: a rotating disk, approximately three times the diameter of the face of the kinescope, and divided into three segments, each with a transparent filter in one of the primary colors, would be placed between the kinescope and the viewer. A similar disk, placed in front of the camera lens, would rotate in synchronism with the display disk. Thus, a red field presented to the camera produced a red field to the viewer’s eyes: because of retention of vision, the rapidly-spinning disk, flashing the scene in the three primary colors one after the other—one complete revolution of the disk per frame of the action created the illusion of full color.

http://www.davidsarnoff.org/jac-maintext.html

Originally developed by Peter Goldmark for five-inch kinescopes, this approach has serious technical problems when used with larger picture diameters. For example, the horsepower needed to drive a disk rises nearly as the fifth power of the diameter; the control circuitry for maintaining synchronism becomes vastly more complex for more massive disks and drives; the sheer size of the disk becomes mind-boggling: a 19” picture requires a nearly five-foot diameter disk, driven by a ten-horsepower motor.

Imagen having that bast on you're desk for a PC monitor.

[edhopper]

5. Forget the water engine hooey

we should be concentrating on perpetual motion.

[GoneOffShore]

8. Substitute "Cure for 'any disease'"

And "Big Pharma" for the oil companies.

Same thing.

[cthulu2016]

21. Yes, but with a few wrinkles

The widely held idea that Pharma suppresses cancer cures in order to sell more chemo is nuts. A cure is a big deal.

A researcher goes to his boss and says, "I cured cancer" and they'll figure out a way to make money from that as best they can. You might as well make something, since someone in South Korea might find the same cure a month later.

Now, it is true that Pharma does less research on treatments that hold little profit potential. There may be some good treatments, or even cures, that have not been discovered because of money interests. But not discovered is quite different from suppressed.

(And most cancer research is government funded anyway.)

There are some human beings who would chose to suppress a cure for HIV/AIDS. (Fundamentalist preachers and such.) And a government could make a political choice to not search for a cure. But that is a far cry from the idea that a cure exists and has been discovered, but that is suppressed.

[longship]

9. Arthur Eddington, astronomer, spoke about this.

The law that entropy always increases, holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations — then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation — well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.

Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882-1944), a Cambridge Astronomer of some note

The water fueled car claimants are nothing but scams. There may be some true believers, but they are probably a vast minority.

Thanks for the post.

[GeorgeGist]

11. and so it goes.

it's always about money.
there is no other story line.
what feeble imagination you show.

[jberryhill]

12. So let's talk about money and imagination

Are Chinese scientists and engineers controlled by Big Oil? Or are they just stupid, and China likes to import oil? How about Cuba?

Scientists and engineers are quite imaginative the world over. Who has been keeping the "water powered car" a secret in India all these decades?

[Shankapotomus]

15. I'm not sure that's all true

Nothing was stopping the Native Americans from inventing the gun before the Europeans arrived and yet it never happened. They also had thousands of years to domesticate the buffalo into a beast of burden. Never happened. I could go on and on in both directions.

[progressoid]

17. Read "Guns, Germs and Steel"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel

Interesting take on the subject

[Shankapotomus]

24. Been on my reading list forever

I know, I have to get that. Saw the PBS special. Loved it. I did think there were other factors to technological progress the documentary didn't touch upon. Like the chrono/geographical influence on cultures and how one civilizations acheivements are added and compounded with the developments of subsequent civilizations. And how migration drives innovation because the change in environment sometimes requires adaptation.

Still maybe the book touches upon these influences where the documentary didn't...

[jberryhill]

28. "Connections" is another classic British series

[cthulu2016]

22. I considered getting into this in the OP

Not everyone will develop guns. To do so you have to have a culture of metallurgy and chemistry.

It is not that every culture will invent guns, but rather that within a culture where guns are invented the invention of guns would come naturally to a lot of people within that culture.

If you lack electricity and glass blowing and vacuum pumps the fact that a filament will glow when a current passes through it, and will be slow to burn up in a vacuum, won't occur to anyone. But a culture that has already developed those things will leap to the light-bulb quickly.

Though the North American indians did not ride animals, as soon as some escaped European horses came along they quickly became innovative horsemen without being taught. They used dragged sleds to have horse's carry cargo which seems silly, versus using the wheel. But wheeled carts are not obvious until there are roads (developed first for horse riders).

If indians had roads and wheeled carts pulled by people they would have figured out how to train buffalo to pull the carts because it would be an idea whose time had come. But for a zillion reasons, their cultures did not develop along the same lines as others.

One the other hand, for a different variety of reasons (many natural and geographical), they were incredible at domesticating plants. So much so that when Europeans got a hold of indian-developed plants the population of Europe expanded greatly.

[Shankapotomus]

25. And it follows then

that there is no way to know what we lack and what innovations we are not seeing. One acheivement builds upon the next and all require innovation to solve road blocks to achieving them along the way. We can probably build self-contained biosphere ships in space if we had the political will. But the fact that we aren't means we are missing out on a myriad of innovations that would need to be developed to overcome all the minor and not-so-minor obsticles in the process if building such space craft. So it's not necessarily true if something can be invented, it will be. Sometimes the go ahead for the massive undertaking that will require all that subsequent innovation, known and unknown, has to be given first.

[cthulu2016]

44. We do not disagree on that

If we had not made the political decision to go to the moon we would not have created the new context of all that research and certain things may not have been invented.

Before the telegraph nobody asked themselves whether those same wires could carry a voice, and so on.

My problem with the water engine idea is that we are to presume that it was invented in the context of 1930s, or 1950s, or 1970s (or whatever the story is) theory and technology, and without any billion dollar expenditures to invent it.

If everything was in place, culturally, for for one guy in his garage to make a water engine fifty years ago then it would have been invented many times since then.

The claim that is was invented, for real, speaks to the likelihood of it being reinvented. Not just that it was possible, but that it was possible for someone then, without many resources, etc..

But I agree that there are all sorts of things that are possible that are not invented, for one reason or another.

If someone says, "A car can run on water, but nobody has figured out how to do it," that would be very unlikely, but would not have the logical defects of claiming that somebody working alone many years ago did, in fact, make a water engine in the context of the technology of his era, and that nobody else ever did.

[1-Old-Man]

34. What you really need as a requisite to the development of guns is cowardice

No one ever invented a gun who was not a coward. Guns exist because people are afraid to confront their enemy face to face. The greatest coward the world ever produced is the sniper, at least until we came up with the Drone Pilot.

[Johnny Rico]

41. Most idiotic post of the day...possibly the week.

[Wounded Bear]

40. One of the postulates in GG&S....

is that humans have domesticated just about any animals capable of domestication, wherever they ended up in the world.

The fact that the Native Americans domesticated the feral horses released by Europeans shows that they could do it.

I believe the book postulates that the Buffalo is not really suited for domestication. It goes into fairly good detail on the characteristics of the animals that have been tamed and IIRC the American buffalo lacks in that regard. While they have been bred for food, they are not as suited as draft/transport animals.

Just wanted to throw down on a really good thread about conspiracy theories.

[lumberjack_jeff]

16. "Third, a conspiracy to suppress knowledge of something everyone in the world wants is an absurdity"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_encumbrance_of_large_automotive_NiMH_batteries

[cthulu2016]

23. That proves the point.

Here we are talking about NiMH batteries, so the knowledge is not suppressed.

I am not suggesting that financial interests do not shape research and sometimes lead to sub-optimal development paths.

But in the Water Engine world Dr. Masahiko Oshitani would have developed a super-duper battery that is not expensive and is not prone to fires, and GM would have bought the patent or had him killed, and today nobody would know how to make a working NiMH battery because nobody else would have invented such a thing.

I imagine there are many, many places on the internet explaining how a NiMH battery works and how it is made.

[lumberjack_jeff]

35. The knowledge may not be suppressed, but the application certainly is. nt

[jberryhill]

36. Bullshit

How does a US patent prevent anyone from doing anything in, for example, Canada?

Answer: it doesn't.

[lumberjack_jeff]

37. "Bullshit" suggests that you have some reason to disbelieve what I said.

The Ovonics patent is demonstrable proof that some organizations will suppress technology (information) for competitive reasons. It really doesn't matter where the patents are held; in those countries you are prohibited from selling the technology, despite the fact that the patent holder has no interest in marketing it either.

None of this has anything to do with overunity devices, or water engines or cold fusion or any other nonsense, but simply with that one sentence in the OP's statement.

Commercial interests DO suppress information and technology that people want. It may be an absurdity, but it's also a reality.

[jberryhill]

38. You aren't gettting the point

Aside from Stanley Ovshinsky's career of inflated self promotion, a US patent has zero - none, zip, zilch - effect on what anyone outside of the US may do or not do.

[lumberjack_jeff]

39. That's not a point of anything in the op. It's not germane at all.

I don't know in which countries Ovonics has a patent for technology that their commercial interest is in suppressing development, I don't really care to chase it down, and it's irrelevant anyway.

An incidence of >0 is disproof of the OP's claim.

It may be possible to manufacture, sell and use NiMh car batteries in Kazakhstan, but it doesn't matter in any practical way.

[jberryhill]

43. There is no US patent issued in 1990 which is in force today

Patents used to have terms of 17 years. As a transitional measure to the current 20 years-from-filing term, patents issued prior to the last revision are entitled to the greater of the two terms.

Hence, any argument that anything patented in the mid 1990's is being "suppressed" will be thoroughly irrelevant within two or three years from now.

There simply is no way to use patents to permanently block the commercialization of anything.

And, as amusing as you may have found Borat, there are significant economies outside of the US.

(a minor exception are certain pharmaceutical patents which can be extended in view of regulatory delay to market)

[progressoid]

18. I'm not saying is was aliens...

[Shankapotomus]

26. Also this

http://waterbattery.com/

[SidDithers]

33. DU rec...

This is one of the best anti conspiracy-woo posts ever made at DU.

Very well done.

Sid

[4th law of robotics]

46. I imagine it's the same kind of mentality that supports homeopathy

In that it's not one based on evidence and experts denying it only "proves" that there is a conspiracy to suppress this knowledge.

[eppur_se_muova]

54. Short version: water is the ASH/EXHAUST produced by burning fuel.

When a hydrogen-containing fuel is burned, the hydrogen combines with oxygen from the air, releasing energy and forming water, which can thus be thought of as the "ash" from burning. Trying to get energy out of water is like trying to burn ash. There is no more potential energy left to release.

(This won't stop people from being scammed by more "INFINITE SUPPLY OF FREE ENERGY FROM WATER!!!!" scams, but at some point, you have to realize that some people were born to be scammed.)