Renewable Energy and the Riddles of the Universe

For some reason, I have come across a great number of reports recently of people claiming to have solved the riddles of the universe. As I’ve written elsewhere, I try to review all such suggestions with an appropriate mixture of respect and skepticism. I want to be enlightened enough to listen to ideas and appreciate them honestly, but not gullible enough to believe utter gibberish.  I also appreciate that pseudoscientific garbage can be the product either of crackpots (who, by definition, believe in their stories) or charlatans, who, again by definition, do not).

As long as the subject matter isn’t health-related or represents business fraud, claims like these represent no real danger to society beyond wasting people’s time, and thus I believe people have the right to make such statements.  But I also think that society has the right—if not the obligation—to write these people off as nuts.

If you’re interested in pursuing this line of reasoning yourself — or even if you’re just looking for a good example of what I mean — you can go to YouTube and listen to some of the talks of Marko Rodin; he seems to be a text book example. I’m sorry if I’m being too harsh or brief, but he does not make any sense to me whatsoever; this seems like complete tripe, and thus, to me, he’s firmly rooted into the crackpot/charlatan category (though I’m not sure which).

On the other hand, take David Wilcock, who dispassionately and intelligently discusses the 2012 phenomenon (end of the Mayan calendar) , visitation from extra-terrestrials, crop circles, etc.  Personally, I don’t find people like this and their attempts to unravel great mysteries to be crackpots at all.  I think we need some explanation of these gigantic and incredibly complicated phenomena other than a few drunken Englishmen stumbling home through the wheat fields from the pub Saturday night.

At this point, you may be wondering what this could possibly have to do with renewable energy.  Well, it seems possible to me – I might even say probable — that cutting-edge physics – the stuff that defies our intuition and that blasts our existing paradigms of exploration to bits – will someday make revolutionary contributions to energy — and I think we have to be alert to and accepting of them.  Further, I’m prepared for the fact that some of these new principles will strike all of us as quite bizarre.

So let’s talk about some of these aspects of modern physics.  What about zero point energy (which clearly does exist) btw? Regardless of how cold you get a substance, it still has energy, due to the Heisenburg uncertainly principle. If the particle stopped completely, you’d now exactly where it was, and that can’t happen. So there is always some kinetic energy involved with every particle in the universe. But no one has presented a credible explanation of how that energy is in any way available to harvest as useful work. Will it happen some day? I’m not sure, but it most certainly will not be soon.

What about quantum entanglement? Certain pairs of particles – whether they’re separated by an Angstrom or a galaxy – transmit information to and from one another instantly. Does this have ramifications for energy? Some say it’s possible. Most of the people I find most credible simply don’t see it.

What about cold fusion? As I’ve wrote in my Three Brass Tacks reports, I think there is credible evidence both that cold fusion exists, and that it has a reasonable trajectory for actual utility here several decades hence. But it will take a huge investment of resources that I see as unlikely in the realities of today’s world.

Having said all this, from what sources are breakthoughs most likely to issue?  From the Ph.D.s in the great universities, or from people who have no formal training in the subject?  To me, this study of paradigm-shattering is an interesting one.  People working too close to a subject tend to think in narrow and traditional ways, cut off from creative, new ideas.  As I like to say, they tend to “breathe their own exhaust.”  But people who really have no understanding of the subject are hard-pressed to ask themselves meaningful questions and pursue a breakthrough in a way that makes sense.

And the neat thing about scientific exploration is that a lot of it happens by accident, where some genius finds a previously unseen correlation between two subjects that had appeared to be completely unrelated. Thus it’s possible that the secret to an infinite supply of useful energy will come from someone who had set out to mix a better martini.

Personally, my money remains on existing, idiot-simple technology that we’ve known about virtually forever (e.g., solar thermal) and are just now coming across the imperative – as well as breakthroughs in materials science – to make feasible.  In any case, I try to keep an open mind — and I urge you to do the same.