"FREE ENERGY"
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

                                       1997 W. Beaty

• 1. WHAT'S A "FREE ENERGY DEVICE?"

• 2. AREN'T THEY ALL JUST "PERPETUAL MOTION" MACHINES, AND IMPOSSIBLE EVEN IN PRINCIPLE?

• 3. ISN'T THERE A CONSPIRACY TO SUPPRESS THESE DEVICES?

• 4. AREN'T MOST F/E DEVICES REALLY JUST SCAMS TO RIP OFF GULLIBLE PEOPLE?

• 5. WHERE CAN I BUY ONE TO POWER MY HOME OR CAR?

• 6. WHY DO SO MANY PEOPLE INSIST THAT F/E DEVICES ARE REAL?

• 7. BUT.. BUT.. *PLANS* FOR F/E DEVICES ARE FOR SALE!

Q1: WHAT IS A "FREE ENERGY DEVICE?"

1. A device which collects energy from a source that's not recognized by contemporary science.
2. Another name for "perpetual motion machine."
3. A device which collects energy at zero cost.

For example, when Becquerel discovered that uranium ore would fog film plates, he had discovered a "free energy" device. When physicists eventually explained this in terms of the radioactivity of unstable elements, uranium stopped being "free energy."

So, whenever a successful device is first attained, but before most people stop their hostile disbelief, and before scientists track down the true source of the unexplained energy, then the device can be called a "free energy" machine.

Q2: AREN'T THEY ALL JUST "PERPETUAL MOTION" MACHINES, AND IMPOSSIBLE EVEN IN PRINCIPLE?

In my experience the main problem with this topic is "politics." The politics greatly interferes with the research. Some professional scientists are greatly embarrassed by any important discoveries made by amateurs. They fervently hope that "free energy" reports indeed are always crackpottery. If some uneducated tinkerer discovers, say, "Fire-II," it makes the entire scientific communicty look like idiots. Second, overly-zealous skeptics may wish to ridicule all claims of successful "free energy" devices, and place them into the wastecan labeled "Perpetual Motion Crackpottery." But both of these behaviors throw the baby out with the bathwater. Anyone who stumbles across a method for (for example) extracting energy from the Zero Point Fields, will at first glance appear to be claiming the existence of perpetual motion. If a non-scientist amateur discovers an unexpected source of energy, how can that amateur hope to convince anyone to take their claims seriously? How can they convince the experts to actually review their evidence? Their voice will be hidden among the voices of the fast numbers of crackpots and con artists. Therefore we should take care to never automatically reject all "free energy" reports before inspecting the evidence. That after all is the central characteristic of science: actually inspecting the evidence.

"Only a fool of a scientist would dismiss the evidence and reports in front of him and substitute his own beliefs in their place." - Paul Kurtz

On the other hand, "perpetual motion" crackpots really do exist in large numbers. And scammers will try anything to win your confidence and get their hands on your money. Nowdays they attempt to hide behind the name "free energy" or "overunity." How can we sort the lunatics from the maverick heretical scientists? We can use the same methods science has aways used : take a hard and honest look at the PHYSICAL EVIDENCE; at the experimental results. It doesn't matter if a person is a PhD physicist or an unschooled backyard experimenter, their physical evidence will show if their discovery is real.

Q3: IS THERE A CONSPIRACY TO SUPPRESS THESE DEVICES?

Here's an analogy. Is there a conspiracy to keep women and minorities in low-paying jobs? No, there is just wide-ranging prejudice and sexism, and the bigoted employers need not "conspire" together.

To the people who are victims of sexist behavior, it may seem as if employers are conspiring against them. But bigotry is not a conspiracy. Instead it is a sort of psychological disease which spreads through groups of people. Bigots might all act the same, and we might become "infected" with bigotry, but obviously no secret organization is needed for bigotry to spread. We don't have to join a secret society in order to become a practicing sexist.

In other words, suppression usually has nothing to do with conspiracies. If a minority group complains that people in positions of power are keeping them down, should we accuse the victims of crackpottery; of promoting a Conspiracy Theory? Obviously not. (And anyone who made such an accusation is probably a bigot himself.) Similarly, if an inventor complains of suppression, and critics respond by accusing them of making conspiracy theories, then it's not the inventor who has mental problems; it's the critics.

Prejudice against the "Free Energy" research field is directly analogous to sexism. There really are people who behave as "science bigots," who hate all fringe/maverick researchers, and who constantly attack FE adherents. They smear the field with derogatory names and use fairly underhanded tactics to discredit the research. They counter any complaints with accusations of paranoia. (If you complain about the hostile actions of scoffers, you must be a Conspiracy Theorist?!!! Yeah, riiiight.) And yet, the scoffers believe that their behavior is proper. They're convinced that "science" needs to be defended against the Hoards Of Crackpots. They're convinced that it's a WAR, and in war, any kind of dishonest underhanded tactics become acceptable. If tomorrow I were to publicly announce that I was attempting to duplicate some inventor's claimed "overunity device," I would expect to receive smug laughter and sneering putdowns from most reputable scientists who chanced to hear about it. If my income depended on peer review by other scientists, I would expect to have the funding for my legitimate projects called into question. But this intellectual suppression is a result of belief systems, not of conspiracy. Sneering scientists know, WITHOUT EXAMINING EVIDENCE, that I must be some sort of deranged crackpot. They take "justified" action in preventing my incompetent waste of federal funding. But what if they're wrong? The problem is not that crackpots might waste funding. The problem is that "crackpots" are condemned without any fair hearing (usually without any hearing at all.)

Was it a conspiracy which threatened great unconventional discoveries of the past? The scientists who derided and dismissed plate tectonics, flying machines, black holes, spacecraft, television, etc., they didn't belong to any conspiracy. Do the scientists of today ridicule free energy? Well, history teaches us that ever was it so. If a new discovery is totally outside of contemporary science, it will usually be disparaged by scientists. If it later is proved to be genuine, the scoffing scientists silently accept it, hope that nobody notices their earlier sneering, and they might even claim that their disparagement never happened. History shows many instances of this process. Yet apparently the lessons of history have no impact on the behavior of these "suppressors of dissent."

No conspiracy is needed to explain why a widespread group of people will exhibit identical styles of prejudice and ignorance. Perhaps some genuine F/E devices might be suppressed, but look to human nature for the cause, not to secret conspiracies.

On the other hand, a few inventors have reported actual harassment, among them H. Moray, John Bedini, Floyd Sweet, Kawai, Dr. Paul Brown, and Richard Clem. Adam Trombly had his homopolar machine patent placed under a federal Secrecy Order, as did Shoulders and Flanagan. Teuro Kawai's magnetic motor was taken over by the japanese mafia. Attempts at active suppression occasionally do occur, but these are not the major force keeping FE devices off the market. Look to bigotry and the human need to gather together in groups to ridicule those who do something new and different.

Q4: AREN'T MOST F/E DEVICES REALLY JUST SCAMS TO RIP OFF GULLIBLE PEOPLE?

The majority of F/E researchers really are honestly pursuing the goal of New Science which makes "fuelless" portable energy sources possible. Some have even advanced to the point where they need funds to properly develop their discoveries. However, since scams are so very common and widespread in this field, investors in F/E companies should be extremely wary. They should expect to lose their investment, and never risk their life savings. After all, longshot-betting is risky, even if it sometimes does give large returns! And long-shot betting is far more risky if a particular field has just as many scams and con-artists as the used-car business, or the old prospector in the bar out west who tries to sell you a map to a lost gold mine.

It's not hard to detect a scam. Honest companies give full disclosure of all details so that anyone can successfully duplicate their hardware. Scammers carefully keep everything secret and unproven. Honest researchers are only slightly untrustworthy, and they make mistakes. After all, they're human. Scammers keep all their mistakes carefully hidden, and they inspire your total confidence (that's why it's called a "con game.") Honest companies can give you the names of independent researchers and test-labs who can verify that the invention really works. Scammers only give you testimonials, or long lists of very sensible reasons why the invention is still unproven and/or secret. In short, if it's secret, if it's "being suppressed by the government," then it's a scam. Simple.

Some skeptics claim that ALL free energy reports are scams. They are wrong, and they probably have a hidden reason to be making this claim. However, the same is true of people who insist that all OU/FE devices are genuine, and convince you that no NO F/E scams exist. Look for their hidden agenda. Both the extreme promotors and the extreme detractors have emotional investments in their loudly touted 'facts.' The real truth is somewhere between. People who are interested in the truth won't make such confident blanket pro/con declarations about "free energy."

Q5: WHERE CAN I BUY ONE TO POWER MY HOME OR CAR?

No successful F/E machine exists.

Q6: WHY DO SO MANY PEOPLE INSIST THAT FE DEVICES ARE REAL?

The main problem is simple: people are screwy. We specialize in lying to ourselves. It's very easy to talk yourself into believing that your FE device works fine ...yet you never consider trying to power your vacation cabin out in the woods. (If you tried that, you'd instantly expose the fatal flaw. So for some strange reason you never try it.) But since you've spent years of work in creating detailed theories and building sophisticated prototypes, you feel free to start presenting workshops and selling plans and DVDs to other people. You display your non-working device at FE conferences. You believe in yourself and your device, yet you've actually become a scammer, since you're selling something that you've never yourself used, and which doesn't actually work.

Another problem is similar; researchers can encounter results which can be interpreted two ways: results which support our FE theories, or results which hide a fatal flaw. For example, storage batteries contain large amounts of energy in their metal plates, but this energy must never be tapped, for it would dissolve the plates and ruin the battery. If a FE device contains storage batteries, it becomes possible to extract large amounts of unexpected energy ...by slowly destroying the batteries. Yet experiments with the device produce unexpected energy output. Doesn't this prove that your FE theory is correct? Maybe it just shows that you've discovered the hidden energy that all batteries must contain in their metal support structure. The solution is simple: avoid batteries like the plague! The amount of energy in a "totally discharged" battery is large, and it's unknown. Using batteries in a FE prototype is stupid, instead just use banks of capacitors. Or, if you succeed with batteries, make damn sure that the capacitor-run version works too, and perhaps drop all work on your battery version.

Yet if we look at the field of FE research, all of the apparently successful researchers are basing their success on storage batteries! That's profoundly insane. Batteries are a huge red flag for dishonest inventors lying to themselves (or for running intentional scams.) And this shows a critical fact where FE devices are concerned: if someone has an FE device running alone with capacitors (or better, with no storage device at all,) that's a great breakthrough. No other researchers can demonstrate such an advancement. (Well, unless it's a scam being run by a microwave beam or similar.)

Q7: BUT.. BUT.. *PLANS* FOR F/E DEVICES ARE FOR SALE!

Yet some mail-order companies sell plans for working free energy devices. THESE ARE A LIE AND A RIPOFF! The companies pretend that the plans really work. They don't say "experimental only," or "speculative," or "unproven device". Some companies even suggest that their devices could power a home or a car. But they cannot even run a flashlight. Their prices are high, which might be reasonable if the devices were real. But since they don't work, the high price is simply a way to maximize the ripoff.

Also, many of these "plans" companies have lifted their product from free sites online. Yes, they're taking alt-science articles off various websites, adding a large price tag, and putting it in the mail to you. (If we just use Google, we can avoid their AMAZING DEAL OLD PRICE $99 NOW REDUCED TO ONLY $49.99!!!!!

If you've been ripped off by one of these "plans" companies, you can lodge a complaint with the Federal Trade Comission in the USA, and if the plans were sent through the US Mail, you can complain about mail fraud (a federal offense, literally.)

FTC complaint form
ftc complaint assistant

See: mail fraud, or online scams and fraud
overnmentguide.com

US mail fraud complaint form
Postalinspectors

Suppose it was 1890 (long before the Wright brothers.) Would you buy plans for a "genuine" flying machine that lets you soar over your friends' houses? If so, you'd be the victim of a scammer. Or suppose it was 1930, would you buy plans for a "genuine" atomic generator to run your home? Of course not. Neither would you buy a formula for turning lead into gold, or buy magic pellets that turn water into gasoline. And you'd laugh at anyone who tried to sell you a map to a lost gold mine, since you know that it's a scam. Only a dimwit would fall for such well-known ripoffs. The ripoffs are obviously designed to get money from victims. If the claims were real, then the sellers would be using their discoveries to become wealthy. They wouldn't be messing around with sales of crude plans to billion-dollar discoveries.

In exactly the same way; you'd better not pay $80 or even $10 for "real" free energy plans. Think about it: if someone can make a successful FE machine, WHY ARE THEY SELLING PLANS? Why don't they just build the fully-functional devices and sell them? Become famous overnight like the Wright Brothers did? Simple: since their machines don't work, the FTC would put them in jail immediately if they sold the fake devices. But if they only sell plans to the gullible, they can get away with it. When a hobbyist builds the device and it does not work, the seller can blame the hobbyist for not doing it right. The hobbyist then has no proof that the plans could ever work. See, plans are great for scammers. The feds will go after fradulent products, but plans are too fuzzy, it's too hard to tell whether the price is a ripoff or not. So "vote with your wallet," and don't send any money to these dishonest "plans" companies. If you already have wasted money, then contact the URLs above. Mail-order ripoffs are a federal crime, so it should be easy to get a very quick refund. Also remember: if nobody complains to the FTC about dishonest companies, then the scammers can go on for years without being stopped.

On the other hand, there are a couple of HONEST companies which sell mail-order booklets and information packets at reasonable prices. They provide information for amateur researchers. They just quietly provide a service without all the screaming hype. They NEVER sell expensive secret plans for "real" gravitational energy generators or fuelless motors which can run a home or car. For these companies, search Google for Rex Research and BSRF (Borderlands Science). And check out the large archive of free information on Keelynet.com