FEET Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Tesla's 'Wheelwork of Nature'

Throughout space there is energy. Is this energy static or kinetic? If static our hopes are in vain; if kinetic — and this we know it is, for certain — then it is a mere question of time when men will succeed in attaching their machinery to the very wheelwork of nature. - Nikola Tesla, 1892

Static or kinetic?

From the assumption that the electric field propagates at a finite speed, we explain that a circulation of energy between the vacuum and the propagating field(s) exist and is therefore part of ZPE.

Tom Bearden has made a number of video's as well as an article copy in which he explains how he thinks electrical circuits are actually powered.

Here's a simple explanation of what powers every electrical circuit. When we crank the shaft of the generator and rotate it, the rotation transforms the input "mechanical" energy into internal "magnetic field" energy. In that little part of the circuit that is between the terminals of the generator and inside it, the magnetic field energy is dissipated on the charges right there, to do work on them. This work (expending the magnetic energy) forces the negative charges in one direction, and the positive charges in the other direction. [...] That's all that rotating the shaft of the generator accomplishes. None of that input shaft energy was transformed into EM energy and sent out down the powerline, as electrical engineers assume.
Not to worry, energy does get sent down the power line but not from the generator shaft energy or its transduction. Essentially then, all the energy we put into the shaft of the generator is dissipated inside the generator itself, to push the positive charges in one direction and the negative charges in the other. The separation of the charges forms what is called a "dipole" (opposite charges separated from each other a bit). That is all that the generator does. That is all that burning all that coal or oil or gas does. It heats a boiler to make steam, so that the steam runs a steam turbine attached to the shaft of the generator, and turns it -- and therefore forcing those charges apart and making that dipole between the terminals of the generator.

This is a very important principle to understand, even though Bearden is a bit off, IMHO, and it is very hard to get this straight. It does take energy to separate the charges and that energy is used to change the configuration of the electric field. The field is not the same before and after a separation of charges has been done, so the applied energy is converted into a form of energy that can perhaps be described as a stress, a disturbance, of the overall electric field. And when the charges flow trough the circuit, one way or the other, the same amount of energy is released to the circuit as the amount of energy needed to separate the charges. If really "all the energy we put into the shaft of the generator" would be "dissipated inside the generator itself", big generators would heat up like hellfire.

Imagine a room with a fan and a door. When the door is opened, the airflow, wind, generated by the fan pushes against the door and tries to shut it. While opening the door, you have to push it against the air flow, which costs you energy. You can get that same amount of energy back, when you use the pressure of the airflow pushing against the door to do work, like cracking a peanut. However, the fan is not powered by the energy you have spent to open the door, it is a separate energy flow that is powered by something else. In this analogy, the door stands for the charges (mass) that move around and can be used to do work while the airflow (wind) stands for the electric field that causes the charges to move around. The only thing is that the door is the fan. So, we get all those little fandoors we can push around and as long as we keep using the same fandoors to create the airflow and to do the work, we will never ever be able to extract more energy from the airflow than we have spent ourselves to open the door.

So, these fandoors (charges) are really wonderful things. You open the door and mother nature (the vacuum) spins the fan and gives you a flow of energy you can use. Now the good news is that you can not only use this free energy to get your door shut again to do work, you can also use it to push on your neighbour's door. The bad news is that your neighbour's door also has its own fan, which has the nasty habbit of blowing in the other direction, that is, it will oppoze your airflow, which makes it very hard and certainly not straightforward to get a foot between these doors and keep the air flowing without paying for it. So, if you may have had the idea of taking an electret, a piece of permanent polarized material that continuously emits an electric field (the airflow) for free, to induce a current in a nearby wire, you're in trouble. The charges inside the wire will oppoze this exteral field and neutralize it faster than you can blink your eye and then the party is over. So much for that one.

So, are the engineers right and is Bearden wrong after all?

Well, the engineers are right in that you do convert mechanical energy into potential electric energy by opening the door against the airflow. But, Bearden is right that the dipole that has been created is a energy source. That energy source puts out energy in the form of a electric field, real energy that is converted from ZPE or whatever into a "static" electric field, mostly to be sent into space without ever being used, except for that part that is needed to close the door again.

To sum this up: besides the energies that are normally considered, there is a second energy flow that is totally being ignored. And that is interesting, because if the law of conservation practically holds for the first flow (the opening and closing of the door) it means we can use this second, hidden, energy flow (the fan) for free! This also means that electrical circuits can never ever be considered being "isolated systems", so if you want to throw "law of conservation" stuff into the equation, you have to make damn sure that whatever energy is being exchanged by the electric field with the environment can be neglected in the case at hand. In other words: electrical circuits are always interacting with the environment, even though you can often ignore that when doing energy conservation calculations. But let's read a littlebit further in Bearden:

So we "see" the dipole as if it were just sitting there and pouring out real EM energy continuously, in all directions, like a spray nozzle or giant energy gusher. We don't see the input energy from the vacuum at all! But it's there, and it's well-known in particle physics. It's just that electrical engineers -- particularly those that have designed and built all our electrical power systems for more than a century -- do not know it.
So, according to proven particle physics and a Nobel Prize, the easiest thing in all the world is to extract EM energy from the vacuum. All you wish. Anywhere in the universe. For free. Just pay a little bit once, to make a little dipole, and that silly thing is like a great oil well you just successfully drilled that has turned into a mighty gusher of oil without you having to pump it. The dipole just sits there and does its thing, and it pours energy out forever, for free, as long as that dipole continues to exist.

Well, it may be right that particle physics says it's easy to extract EM energy from the vacuum, but that does not tell us how we can use that, nor how we can engineer systems that are able to make use of this unknown, or better: overlooked, territory. Where is that energy? Where does it come from and where does it go?

The answer to these questions can be found in the paper Conversion of the Vacuum-energy of electromagnetic zero point oscillations into Classical Mechanical Energy by the German Professor Claus Turtur. In the chapter "A circulation of energy of the electrostatic field" (pages 10-14) he makes a straightforward calculation of the energy density of the static electric field surrounding a point charge using nothing more than Coulombs law and the known propagation speed of the electric field, the speed of light, and shows that there must be some kind of energy circulation between the vacuum and charge carriers:

If electrostatic fields propagate with the speed of light, they transport energy, because they have a certain energy density. It should be possible to trace this transport of energy if is really existing. That this is really the case can be seen even with a simple example regarding a point charge, as will be done on the following pages. When we trace this energy, we come to situation, which looks paradox at the very first glance, but the paradox can be dissolved, introducing a circulation of energy. This is also demonstrated on the following pages.
The first aspect of the mentioned paradox regards the emission of energy at all. If a point charge (for instance an elementary charge) exists since a given moment in time, it emits electric field and field’s energy from the time of its birth without any alteration of its mass. The volume of the space filled with this field increases permanently during time and with it the total energy of the field. But from where does this “new energy” originate? For the charged particle does not alter its mass (and thus its energy), the “new energy” can not originate from the particle itself. This means: The charged particle has to be permanently supplied with energy from somewhere. The situation is also possible for particles, which are in contact with nothing else but only with the vacuum. The consequence is obvious: The particle can be supplied with energy only from the vacuum. This sounds paradox, so it can be regarded as the first aspect of the mentioned paradox. But it is logically consequent, and so we will have to solve it later.

[...]

Important is the conclusion, which can be found with logical consequence:
On the one hand the vacuum (= the space) permanently supplies the charge with energy (first paradox aspect), which the charge (as the field source) converts into field energy and emits it in the shape of a field. On the other hand the vacuum (= the space) permanently takes energy away from the propagating field, this means, that space gets back its energy from field during the propagation of the field. This indicates that there should be some energy inside the “empty” space, which we now can understand as a part of the vacuum-energy. In section 3, we will understand this energy more detailed.
But even now, we can come to the statement:
During time, the field of every electric charge (field source) increases. Nevertheless the space (in the present work the expressions “space” and “vacuum” are use as synonyms) causes a permanent circulation of energy, supplying charges with energy and taking back this energy during the propagation of the fields. This is the circulation of energy, which gave the title for present section 2.2.
This leads us to a new aspect of vacuum-energy:
The circulating energy (of the electric field) is at least a part of the vacuum-energy. We found its existence and its conversion as well as its flow. On the basis of this understanding it should be possible to extract at least a part of this circulating energy from the vacuum – in section 4 a description is given of a possible method how to extract such energy from the vacuum.

So there we are. Unless we are to assume that the static electric field propagates with an infinite speed, the static electric field (the airflow in our fandoor analogy) is on the one hand powered by the vacuum and on the other hand it powers the vacuum. And at least part of the energy in space / the vacuum, referred to with names as "Zero Point Energy" (ZPE), virtual particle flux, the Dirac sea, Orgone, etc., is not only fueled by the electric field, it is continuously converted back into an electric field by each and every charged particle in the Universe, which makes the electric field a source of energy from a practical point of view, just like the light coming from our Sun.

150 nW in comparison to loss of 3 nW

https://www.psiram.com/en/index.php/Claus_Wilhelm_Turtur

Turtur-Rotor / electrostatic fan wheel motor of Turtur Turtur88.jpg Test in vacuum

Between April and December 2008, Turtur conducted privately funded experiments on a "fan wheel motor" invented by him which, in his opinion, was powered by inexhaustible vacuum energy but at the same time required applying high voltage (1-30 KV) which, however, is not considered in the Casimir effect. Without high voltage, the impeller would not move. A successful replication of his experiment by other scientists is unknown as of yet (December 2009). Austrian Harald Chmela (Borderlands), at suggestion of Martin Tajmar, attempted a replication in a vacuum but failed[12].

Turtur used several slightly differing designs. Aluminium foil glued to balsa wood is used as material for the propeller which swims in a water bath on small styrofoam, with which it is connected by a conductive element. Due to high voltage between the electrically conductive impeller and a diametrically charged plate, Coulomb forces arise which turn the fan to a position of energy minimum (direction of rotation is undetermined at first). Afterwards. the fan is expected to start rotating. The direction of rotation is said to be always the same, while angular velocity is said to depend on the high voltage applied.

According to his own estimates, an observed performance of 150 nW(nano Watt) of the engine in air and water bath with rotation times of 1-16 minutes were seen, yielding a few kilovolts. The usage of the high voltage power supply is unknwon, but he mentions a current limit of 50µA for his vacuum experiments. A high voltage power supply built by Turtur was said to have been used in the experiments and Turtur stated that he was not able to keep the output voltage constant. A replica by an Italian inventor at 38 KV yielded high voltage fluctuating currents up to 7 mA[13]. Later experiments in vacuum with an oil bath of vacuum-oil(a special kind of oil) are said to have required higher voltage of 16-30 kV and yielded just an average current of 0.1 pA in vacuum (about 3 nW power) with additional peaks of several picoampere. Rotation speed was said to be slower in vacuum with a circulation time of 2 to 3 hours.

Vacuum tests: at Otto-von-Guericke University in Magdeburg, Turtur conducted experiments in vacuum in cooperation with the local technician Wolfram Knapp, after critics had pointed out that his construction just showed Biefeld-Brown effects. He put the impeller into a sour cream cup of the brand Milbona, which swam in oil. The impeller was connected to the high voltage power supply by a wire. According to his own report, rotation speed decreased. A pressure of 10-3 to 10-5 Millibar was applied; a further decrease of pressure would have resulted in boiling oil and was avoided. The vacuum oil used was of the type "Ilmvac, LABOVAC-12S" with a vapor pressure of 10-8 mbar, a 40 degree (C) viscosity of 94 mPoise. Mechanical power output in vacuum was not measured and also experiments were not conducted without oil or water bath.

According to his own report[14], no ongoing rotation over an arbitrary number of revolutions was seen in vacuum and the number of revolutions was not reproducible.

The implications of that are staggering. It means that the law of conservation of energy does not apply to 'isolated' electrical systems, because they are not actually isolated. After all, Turtur shows that energy is being extracted from the active vacuum by each and every charged particle and thus every electrical system in existence in the Universe.

Interestingly, Nikola Tesla already said the exact same thing in 1891:

Nature has stored up in the universe infinite energy. The eternal recipient and transmitter of this infinite energy is the ether. The recognition of the existence of ether, and of the functions it performs, is one of the most important results of modern scientific research. The mere abandoning of the idea of action at a distance, the assumption of a medium pervading all space and connecting all gross matter, has freed the minds of thinkers of an ever present doubt, and, by opening a new horizon—new and unforeseen possibilities—has given fresh interest to phenomena with which we are familiar of old.

Based on all this, it is clear that we need to look at electrical systems in a different way, we need a way of thinking that does account for the energy source that is really powering our systems. In a way, we need a similar change in our models as the change from Newton to quantum mechanics. While Newtonian mechanics can still be used in mechanical engineering most of the time, at some point they are no longer valid.

In the same way, the current electrical engineering model is fine for most applications where it suffices to consider only the door part of our fandoor analogy, that is, by considering electrical systems basically as an analogy of hydraulics, which is literally just a variation of Newtonian mechanics. However, if you want to be able to utilize the energy source the electric field provides, there just ain't no way to do that without taking the energy exchange between an electrical system and the vacuum completely into account. And that means we have to go back to field theory instead of describing our systems in terms of concrete components, the so-called lumped element models, especially in the case we are dealing with resonating coils. This is explained by James and Kenneth Corum points in Tesla Coils and the Failure of Lumped-Element Circuit Theory:

In the following note, we will show why one needs transmission line analysis (or Maxwell's equations) to model these electrically distributed structures. Lumped circuit theory fails because it's a theory whose presuppositions are inadequate. Every EE in the world was warned of this in their first sophomore circuits course.
All those handbook formulas that people use for inductance, L, inherently assume applications at frequencies so low that the current distribution along the coil is uniform. The real issue is that migrating voltage nodes and loops are not a property of lumped-circuit elements - they are the directly observable consequence of velocity inhibited wave interference on the self-resonant coil. Lumped element representations for coils require that the current is uniformly distributed along the coil - no wave interference and no standing waves can be present on lumped elements.

So, we need to consider the fields and that also means we need to realise that the nature of these fields is dynamic and not static. In the old Newtonian model, we consider the voltage across an impedance to be the cause for a current to occur, which in our fandoor anology would be the pressure that the door "feels" being enacted by the airflow on its surface, while in reality it is the airflow (the electric) field that acts upon the door and not the pressure itself. In other words it seems like the "pressure" the electric field enacts on our components is static, hence the name "static electric field", while in actual reality this force is a dynamic force, something flows along the surface that creates the pressure. Tesla already realised this in 1892:

There is no doubt that with the enormous potentials obtainable by the Use of high frequencies and oil insulation luminous discharges might be passed through many miles of rarefied air, and that, by thus directing the energy of many hundreds or thousands of horse-power, motors or lamps might be operated at considerable distances from stationary sources. But such schemes are mentioned merely as possibilities. We shall have no need to transmit power at all. Ere many generations pass, our machinery will be driven by a power obtainable at any point of the universe. This idea is not novel. Men have been led to it long ago by instinct or reason; it has been expressed in many ways, and in many places, in the history of old and new. We find it in the delightful myth of Antheus [Antaeus], who derives power from the earth; we find it among the subtle speculations of one of your splendid mathematicians and in many hints and statements of thinkers of the present time. Throughout space there is energy. Is this energy static or kinetic! If static our hopes are in vain; if kinetic — and this we know it is, for certain — then it is a mere question of time when men will succeed in attaching their machinery to the very wheelwork of nature.

It is nothing less than a shame that even more than a hundred years later, we still burn fossile fuel for our energy, basically because of arrogance, selfishness and ignorance. Still, the question remains the same. It is a mere question of time... Anyhow, there basically is a deeper cause we have to account for: the electric field itself, which is present everywhere in the Universe. With that in mind, we continue with Bearden:

The external (attached) circuits and power lines etc. catch some of that available EM energy flowing through space (generally flowing parallel to the wires but outside them). Some of the flowing energy is intercepted and diverted into the wires themselves, to power up the internal electrons and force them into currents, thus powering the entire power line and all its circuits.
However, the power system engineers use just one kind of circuit. In the standard "closed current loop" circuit, all the "spent electrons" (spent after giving up their excess energy in the loads, losses, etc.) are then forcibly "rammed" back through that little internal section between the ends of the source dipole (between the terminals). These "rammed" electrons smash the charges in the dipole away, and destroy the dipole then and there.
It can easily be shown that half the "caught" energy in the external circuit is used to destroy that source dipole, and nothing else.
For more than a century, our misguided engineers have thus used a type of circuit that takes half of the energy it catches, and uses that half to destroy the source dipole that is actually extracting the EM energy from the vacuum and pouring it out of the terminals for that power line to "catch" in the first place! The other half of the "caught energy" in the powerline is used to power the external loads and losses.
So half the caught energy in the power line is used to kill the source dipole (kill the free energy gusher), and less than half is used to power the loads. It follows that our electrical engineers are trained to use only those power circuits that kill themselves (kill their gushing free energy from the vacuum) faster than they can power their loads.
Well, to get the energy gusher going again, the dipole has to be restored in order to extract the energy and pour it out again.
So we have to pay to crank the shaft of that generator some more, to turn that generator some more, so that we can dissipate some more magnetic energy to re-make the dipole. We have to work on that shaft at least as much as the external circuit worked on that source dipole to destroy it. So we have to "input more shaft energy" to the generator than the external power system uses to power its loads. Since we pay for the input shaft energy, we have to keep on burning that coal, oil, and gas etc. to do so.
All our electrical power systems are "suicidal" vacuum-powered systems, freely extracting their useful EM energy from the seething vacuum, but deliberately killing themselves faster than they power their loads.
All that the burning of all that coal, oil, gas, etc. accomplishes is to continually remake the source dipole, which our engineers insure will then receive be killed by the system itself faster than the system gives us work in the load."

Now isn't that interesting, half the caught energy in the power line is used to kill the source dipole, and less than half is used to power the loads? Think about it, how can that be?

There is an essential difference between the Newtonian analogy we use in electrical engineering (closed circuits) and the actual reality. The analogy of a capacitor in hydraulics (Newtonian analogy) is a piston moving back and forth in a closed cylinder wherein gas is pressurized. And here's the difference: Imagine moving the piston inwards, pressurizing the gas, and put the thing on your workbench. The piston will immediately move back, because of the gas pressure. Now charge a capacitor and put it on your workbench. See the difference? The capacitor will just sit there, keeping it's charge. In other words: our hydraulic analogy is unstable, it 'wants' to release it's energy, while our actual electrical component is stable when 'pressurized'. It will only 'release' it's energy when something external is being done. It has to be disturbed, because the charges in a capacitor actually attract one another, which makes them like to stay where they are. So, when 'discharging' a capacitor, as a matter of fact, these attraction forces have to be overcome. And that does not release energy at all, it costs energy to do that. So, it actually takes the same amount of energy to charge a capacitor as the amount of energy it takes to discharge the capacitor.

It is undoubtedly because of this that Steinmetz wrote, already in the beginning of the twentieth century:

"Unfortunately, to large extent in dealing with dielectric fields the prehistoric conception of the electrostatic charge (electron) on the conductor still exists, and by its use destroys the analogy between the two components of the electric field, the magnetic and the dielectric, and makes the consideration of dielectric fields unnecessarily complicated. There is obviously no more sense in thinking of the capacity current as current which charges the conductor with a quantity of electricity, than there is of speaking of the inductance voltage as charging the conductor with a quantity of magnetism. But the latter conception, together with the notion of a quantity of magnetism, etc., has vanished since Faraday's representation of the magnetic field by lines of force."

So, it may seem that the conservation law holds when considering electrical circuits in their 'prehistoric' analogy, in actual truth this is only the case because the interactions with the environment, the active vacuum, balance one another out. In reality twice the amount of work has been done than seems to having been done!

Summary

Any charge continously emits an energy field, an electric field, spreading with the speed of light, which is the real energy source that makes our circuits run. This energy-field, generated by the charges in our wires, is not created out of thin-air. Since there is a continuous flow of energy out of every charge, there also is a continuous flow of energy going into every charge. And that is where the energy eventually comes from, right from the vacuum itself. For our purposes, it doesn't really matter how the energy that ends up in the electric field is being taken out of the vacuum. It may be ZPE, it may be a "virtual partical flux", it may be anything. It doesn't matter, because we don't need to know.

All we need to know is that somehow, some form of energy flows into each and every charge in the universe and this energy flow is continuously converted into an outflowing electric energy field by each and every charge in the universe, 27/7, 365 days a year, for free.

And this is the basic concept to understand. The electric field comes for free, as long as you keep the charges separated and don't disturb them.

So, where does all this leave us? We can spend the effort of turning the shaft of a generator, which will separate the charges in the system we want to power and creates a dipole. When we do this, we do not actually store energy in the dipole, we change the configuration of the electric field. When we subsequently send those same charges trough the system we want to power, it is the active vacuum, the environment, which is kind enough to provide us with the energy that is needed to kill the dipole we have created to be able to power our load and with the energy to actually power our load as well. As we have seen, this is an exercise with a closed wallet from our point of view. The load receives the exact same amount of energy that we have put in the system ourselves as mechanical energy, apart from the losses. So, all things considered, the Newtionian analogy we use in electrical engineering is perfectly valid and applicable. Except for one tiny little detail.

We change the configuration of the electric field when we operate an electrical circuit and since we eventually get the same amount of energy back trough our load while doing this, this means we can actually manipulate the electric field for free, just by powering our circuits the way we always do. Get the point? While we are opening and closing our fandoor, we influence the airflow in our neighbourhood without having to pay a dime for that in terms of energy! That means we can manipulate our neigbors fandoor for free. So, all we need to do is figure out how to use our free manipulative power to put the fandoors in our neighborhood to work such that it is the environment that delivers the energy to power the neighbors load, just as it powers our load. In other words: we have to manipulate the electric field in such a way that charge carriers in the environment of our systems are moved around in such a way that they perform useful work, in such a wat that it isn't us that provides the energy, but someone else: the electric field itself. That means most of all that we have to make sure that those neighboring charges don't end up in our circuit, since then they will kill our dipole and we will have to pay the price, and secondly that we have to make sure that we don't disturb the charge carriers that make up our voltage source.

Let's take a look at how three inventors managed to do just that by using the power of resonance. You can find that part after the intermezzo with some interesting references.