The College Dropout, The MIT Professor, and the Prepetual Motion Machine -- The Impossible Story of Thane Heins

News Type: Event — Seeded on Thu Feb 7, 2008 9:28 AM EST

Article Source: Toronto Star

science, electric, mit, motor, thermodynamics, college-dropout, prepetual-motion, thane-heins

Thane Heins is nervous and hopeful. It's Jan. 24, a Thursday afternoon, and in four days the Ottawa-area native will travel to Boston where he'll demonstrate an invention that appears – though he doesn't dare say it – to operate as a perpetual motion machine.

The audience, esteemed Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Markus Zahn, could either deflate Heins' heretical claims or add momentum to a 20-year obsession that has broken up his marriage and lost him custody of his two young daughters.

Zahn is a leading expert on electromagnetic and electronic systems. In a rare move for any reputable academic, he has agreed to give Heins' creation an open-minded look rather than greet it with outright dismissal.

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{"commentId":1444267,"authorDomain":"killfile"}

Killfile

Heins system works on what looks like a positive feedback loop. The Star has more information on his actual device here.

Of course, scientifically speaking this is almost bound to be hogwash... but, as the Creationists would say, Thermodynamics is "just a theory."

He's certainly got something there. We'll just have to wait and see what.

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3 votes

#1 - Thu Feb 7, 2008 9:34 AM EST

{"commentId":1446028,"authorDomain":"sphinx"}

Jack Huang

Indeed, claims of perpetual motion machines are a dime a dozen, just like claims of communicating with the afterlife.

The story about the positive feedback loop is interesting. At face value, it boradly sounds like 100%+ efficiency... but that's also been "shown" before countless times.

Oh well, even if all his invention does is improve electric motor efficiency, that's still going to be big.

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#1.1 - Thu Feb 7, 2008 4:38 PM EST

{"commentId":1444398,"authorDomain":"rascal2pt0"}

Rascal 2.0

Also how does it perform when given resistance in actual energy output. If the lifetime of the device doesn't create more energy than it takes to make it then its not worth it.

There are hundreds of plans for perpetual motion machines on e-bay...

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#2 - Thu Feb 7, 2008 10:09 AM EST

{"commentId":1446124,"authorDomain":"finalcut"}

finalcut

This is interesting if, for nothing else, he is getting people to try and figure out why it does what it does. He doesn't understand it and nobody else does either, yet - so it should be interesting to see how it resolves.

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#3 - Thu Feb 7, 2008 4:59 PM EST

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KILLFILE

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The College Dropout, The MIT Professor, and the Prepetual Motion Machine -- The Impossible Story of Thane Heins

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