The Joe Cell : Modern Mythology in the Making

I haven't had a good healthy rant in a while, so perhaps I will today. I could rant about what is going on in Freemasonry in West Virginia but, last I checked, the rest of the blogosphere has that topic covered quite nicely. (For an excellent resource on the topic of PPM (perpetual motion machines) I highly recommend Donald Simanek's Pages. A highly entertaining site well worth a lengthy visit.)

I have really been enjoying using Google Reader. It is without question the best way to get content from the Web. While I am waiting for a long compile I will quickly browse through news feeds that I have subscribed to in various categories. Several of the news feeds I am subscribed to are related to energy technologies. Some of these sites are pretty out there as they mix compelling coverage of developments in solar and wind technologies with fringe topics like Free Energy.

I enjoy reading speculative and out-there stuff, I find it all quite entertaining. However, at times, some of it is so far out there and replete with such a mind-bogglingly stupid mythology that I am shocked when I see that a rabid audience of cult-like devotees are attracted to these schemes.

The main gathering point on the Internet for the spread of this modern mythology (Who's God is Nicolas Tesla) is the Pure Energy Systems Network which sponsors the repository for their mythos at the PSEWiki.

The major themes of free energy these days fall into a few categories.

Magnetics : Every child is fascinated by magnets. They are such fun and wonderful toys. However, it seems that some grown ups never got tired of playing with them. They build contraption on top of contraption to arrange magnetic fields in such a way that they believe that once they get the thing going it will begin to accelerate so they can bleed excess (over-unity) energy out of the device. Of course no one has ever built a working device based on these techniques and, of course, there is no scientific basis to believe one ever will. Nevertheless, that doesn't prevent thousands of hobbyists from building contraptions and uploading their videos to YouTube (I will provide links at the end of this post). Nor did it prevent investors from giving a company called Steorn millions of dollars to build such a device; a device which died an inglorious death when their widely advertised public demonstration was a flop.

Gravity: Things fall down. In fact, they accelerate when they fall down. In fact, we get lots of power from gravity as every hydro-electric dam runs on this principle. Still, there are some people who believe they can build a contraption that costs less energy to lift mass up then it releases when it falls down. These gizmos are called 'Gravity Wheels' and, apparently, there are a lot of devotees to this particular free energy scam. I will include links to YouTube videos below.

Electrolysis: (Sometimes called 'Water Fuel Cell') This one is kind of interesting. Electrolysis is a well understood process, both chemically and electrically, that involves splitting apart water into its component parts of hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen can then be burned as 'fuel', and can even be used in an internal combustion engine. Of course, it takes a lot more energy in the form of electricity to split the water molecule than can be retrieved by burning the resulting hydrogen oxygen mix. Nevertheless, there was one man who chose to see things differently.

The myth begins, and pretty much ends, with Stanley Meyer. Meyer was an inventor who claimed he had a water powered car (the car was not powered on water, it was powered on hydrogen which was produced from spitting the water molecule. Moreover, there is no proof he ever did this either.) Meyer's myth is elaborate and includes patents all over the world (the key patents expired last year so we should all be driving our water powered cars any day now). Other key elements involve the military contracting Meyers for top sekrit operations and a shocking and sudden death, allegedly by poisoning but, according to the medical examiner by a brain aneurysm..but the examiner may have been in on the konspiracy....). Who could have killed Meyer? Why the evil men who control the petroleum based fuel economy of course!

However, a funny thing happened on the way to Meyer's untimely death; before his death some of Meyer's investors sued him. During the course of the legal proceedings Meyer's device and vehicle were inspected by scientific experts who concluded that nothing was happening other than ordinary electrolysis in the device. The judge ruled Meyer guilty of fraud and he had to pay back his investors.

Of course, none of these little details bother the Meyer devotees. They are confident that anything negative ever said about the man was as a result of the evil konspiracy out to get him.

So, here is the science, if there could be such a thing, behind Meyer's device. According to the legend the key to produce over-unity electrolysis is to apply an electrical signal at a particular resonant frequency that interacts between a series of metal tubes or plates. When this configuration is all just right, not only does it produce incredible amounts of gas but, also, it produces not two hydrogen molecules and one oxygen but, rather, one H-H and one Oxygen. The ionized hydrogen pair is known as 'Browns Gas' (Oxyhydrogen) and packs an incredible wallop. (For the record, this is is not a wacky technology, devices with these properties are sold at industrial scale for welding.)

So, this particular free energy claim does bear some scrutiny since it isn't as wacky sounding as most of the others. However, in the end, the patents have been available for decades and in all of that time no one, and I mean no one, has ever created a simple easy to reproduce device that demonstrates even one tiny fraction of over-unity output. Moreover, most of the people involved in this field get obsessed with 'powering a car' when what they should be focused on is powering a small electrical generator. I rant more about this topic later...

(Since first posting this some new advertisements have started showing up at the top of my page. I encourage my readers to click on the link, or simply follow the following link to check out one of these excellent products. If any of my readers purchase one of these devices and install it on their car, I would love to hear about your experience; that is if you survive the experience.)

Cold Fusion: Remember cold fusion? I bet you do. Remember how it turned out to all be a scam and a lot of bullshit? Well, it seems that it is still around. There has been a lot of success at reproducibility in experiments and now the biggest arguments swirl around whether the output energy is a result of chemical or nuclear reactions. The underlying science behind this is a bit beyond me, but from what I gather the jury is still a little bit out on this one.

Joe Cell: Without question this has to be the biggest load of bullshit circulating the 'Free Energy' community these days. What is a 'Joe Cell'? Why, it's a gizmo invented by a guy named Joe. Who is Joe? Can't tell you, you see, if we tell you then Joe will get killed by the 'suits'. Who is Bill Williams? Why, he's a guy who replicated the Joe Cell but was threatened with death to himself and his entire family if he didn't shut up and destroy his work. (By the way, if you find my rant on the Joe Cell a bit 'harsh' I suggest you check the following link out on the Urban Dictionary, by comparison I think I sound quite reasonable.)

Are you seeing a pattern here yet? What is a Joe Cell? Good question. Apparently it's a device that you put 'treated' water into (from what I understand this is water that you meditate upon and give it good new age vibes or something). Then you 'charge' that 'treated' water with a battery. Next, you hook it up to your car. (Always the car isn't it?) Next, and this is the good part, somehow via magic, it powers your car with incredible energy. No fuel goes into your car, instead your engine implodes because of ions, kryptonite, or some other bullshit teleporting into the combustion chamber. Watch out though because, not unlike Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, your vehicle may go zooming off out of control and, sometimes, even levitate!! And, that's not all! The 'Joe Cell' can transmutate matter too!!

Actually, it was the 'Joe Cell' that led me off onto a rant. In fact, there is only one thing more 'out there' than the 'Joe Cell' and that is something called the 'Hutchison Effect'

Hutchison Effect: I don't have time to go into the entire saga of this particular bizarre and surreal mythology but I guarantee you it is quite entertaining and worth a read. I will include some embedded YouTube videos of the Hutchison Effect in action at the end of this post.

I'm sure I haven't touched upon all of the wacky Free-Energy 'technologies' out there but feel free to subscribe to an RSS news feed or browse the PESWiki for your own entertainment.

Now, finally, to the rant. Yesterday I subscribed to a Yahoo list server on the topic of the 'Joe Cell'. Today I ran through a series of messages by the 'Joe Cell' devotees, cultists, psuedo-scientists and self-professed inventors. After reading them I couldn't resist a good healthy rant which I will cross post here on my blog so that search engines can dig their fingers into and draw 'Joe Cell' fan-boys to my site so they can flame me with their levitating cars.

P.S. If it turns out I'm wrong and one of you guys really does invent a free energy device let me make clear (A) I will be happy to buy one so I can disconnect from the grid and (B) I will apologize, though I don't really expect it will come to that.

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I just joined this forum to find out what this 'Joe Cell' thing is all about. I have to admit, I'm terribly confused. I have read all of the available material online and, to be frank, it sounds like a bunch of nonsense. I have read up on the Stanley Meyer thing and at least that concept has some possible correlation with reality. His claim is merely that he found a more efficient method of performing electrolysis. Now, his claims went too far once he said he achieved over unity, which violates the laws of physics.

Recently some people have decided to wave their hands and claim these over unity results come from interaction with the 'Zero Point Energy Field'. Of course, in the context that these claims are brought up you can simply replace the phrase 'Zero Point Energy Field' with 'Magical Power Fairies'. It really doesn't make any difference. It reminds me of how all of the New Age magazines today are filled with references to 'Quantum Mechanics' to give a psuedo-scientific aura around their crystal hugging beliefs.

Stanley Meyer was proven a fraud in a court of law and no one has ever been able to reproduce a version of his device that achieves over-unity results.

Now, the conspiracy minded folks who flock to free-energy claims will talk about how these technologies are 'suppressed' . However, the best way to get past suppression in the internet age is to release everything open-source and in the public domain. So, why doesn't this happen? Is it because the crazy inventor who has this technology doesn't want to 'lose credit' for their work or 'lose their chance at millions of bazillions' of dollars? Well, isn't this just the most selfish attitude to possibly take? If this crazy inventor has a true, reproducible on demand, technology that could transform the planet earth and humanity as well I think he should feel some sense of responsibility and obligation to make it available to all, for free, and now!

So, to those who claim they have invented such a technology but choose to keep it sekrit for selfish reasons, I say shame on you Mr. Wizard, shame on you.

Now, let me get to my next pet peeve. What is this obsession with powering cars!!!! Cars running on water. Cars running on nothing.

WHO CARES ABOUT CARS!??

It is safe to assume that if someone claims they have a technology to power a car, what they are really saying is they have a technology that can power an internal combustion engine.

My question is why aren't all of you focused on getting your Joe Cell's and Stanley Meyer Fuel Cells to POWER AN ELECTRICAL GENERATOR!?! ?

Is it because it is so much easier to obscure the truth when you bring a car into the equation?

Look, if you power an electrical generator and claim you have over-unity then things are really simple. Start your device up, which should in turn power an electrical generator which, in turn produces electricity which you can feed back into the device to keep it running. Remove the power source you used to get the thing started and watch it run forever. If you can't do this simple task you sure as hell can't power a car engine!

In fact, the amount of energy needed to power a multi-ton vehicle is mind boggling compared to the much smaller amount of energy needed to power a few horsepower 1,000 watt generator.

I will be much more impressed when I see that kind of a demonstration. I really think the whole 'run a car on water' is an transparent rhetorical device to distract people from focusing on the fact that none of these gizmos actually work.

Now, let me return to the 'Joe Cell'. The claims for this device are fantastic beyond belief. In fact, they are patently absurd and smack of alleged paranormal phenomena. If you dare question any of it, of course you are reminded of the scary guys in suits who are out to 'git ya'.

Why are any of you wasting your time on this complete and utter nonsense? Have you lost all critical thinking skills somewhere along the way?

I am really quite surprised by all of this. Maybe I'll go grab some magnets and start making a skateboard wheel spin around so I can fancy myself on the bleeding edge of new energy research.

Really guys?

John W. Ratcliff

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Here is the first response I received from 'Bernie'
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John,

My suggestion to you is to do further reading. Just skimming the surface does not tell you what a JC is all about.

First of all, since it's possible to run an ICE without power applied to the cell, I guess it's definitely an over unity device by most peoples definition of over unity. But in reality it isn't, as it actually extracts energy from the environment and the molecules of water in the cell and converts it into a torsion field, which in turn impresses a field on an ICE such that gas is no longer required to make it run. In fact it's not the only device that will do this.

People work on cars because most everyone has one and gas prices are skyrocketing! Actually they aren't, the dollar is getting more worthless by the day, hence it takes more of them to buy gas. Several people are working to run small generators on JC's, but water cooled engines are easier to to run on the cells.

I suspect that a well funded lab could actually turn this JC phenomena into a serious solution to the global energy crisis in short order, but that would be contrary to the best interests of some very wealthy people who don't want to be force weaned off the trough that they've been feeding at for many years known as the petroleum industry. I tend to include most governments in that as well, as they've used taxation to slurp out of the same trough.

Believe me, this thing is real. Just drive around with working one sitting inside a car for a month and you would believe it as well.

Bernie

------ My response to Bernie ----------------------

Bernie,

Thanks for the reply. I did read about the topic and I found it all a bit silly. I heard claims of a car levitating and the transmutation of metals. I heard claims of cars running on no fuel whatsoever.

So, let's put the proof in place. Why not put a 'Joe Cell' on an electric generator and then produce free energy from that device. If you have enough power to run a car then clearly you could run a very big ass generator. I would love to get off the power grid big time. More to the point, a running electrical generator on a 'Joe Cell' with absolutely no other fuel of any kind, is a lot closer to the kind of convincing demonstration one would need to entertain these wild claims.

Sorry, but I'm more than just a little bit skeptical.

John

--- Here was an interesting reply from Viktor Lantos ---------------

Nice rant, I don't mean to "flame" or anything, but you overlook some stuff here. The obsession with cars, obviously, is because maintaining one costs a lot of money, usually in the form of gasoline. While overunity may not be achieved, getting a Joe Cell to run the motor on hydrogen/oxygen gas costs significantly less money and takes significantly less electricity to operate than refueling your normal car with gasoline or electricity.

Most people who go into such 'free-energy' experiments are people who have an open mind, and are willing to spend some time and money to have a little fun with an interesting project, which may or may not yield interesting results. Bear in mind that most great inventors were dismissed as idiots, and, while overunity may never be achieved, we at least have the right mindset.

I for one believe that one can obtain more energy from a system than one puts in, provided the energy comes from somewhere else. Quantum physics and Zero Point Energy did not arise because of a silly dream some lunatic had: just like scientists speculated that the earth was round, just like they speculated the atom existed, and just like they speculated that atoms were subdivided into smaller units, scientists today are speculating that such phenomena exist, and one should maintain an open mind and not ignore ideas which seems to be out of the ordinary.

Keep an open mind, don't dismiss ideas just because they sound ridiculous. That is all.

Good day - if I ever do manage to get my Joe Cell to generate free energy, I'd be happy to share my results with you. For now, it's an interesting project of mine.

----- And my response to Victor as follows ----------------

Thanks for the kind reply. I like to think I do have an open mind, otherwise why am I reading about all of this stuff. I have an open mind on the water-fuel-cell thing (ala Stanley Meyer) as well as cold fusion. I just don't like to keep my mind so open that my brains fall out. It was when I was reading the 'Joe Cell' mythology and heard about levitation, transmutation, and magical energy (not hydrogen) imploding the fuel chamber that I decided I should shove my brains back into my head.

My concern about any of this, open mind and all, is whether or not it is in fact a true phenomenon.

To do that, we have to get away from cars and focus on easy to reproduce definitive experiments that can be carried out by anyone.

In all that I have reviewed and studied to date, no such thing exists for any of the so-called 'free energy' technologies.

And, yes, you are correct. Quantum mechanics is real. And the zero point energy field is real. However, you cannot apply these two scientific topics (topics which require an advanced degree in physics and a mind blowing grasp of mathematics to even discuss intelligently) and use it as a magical elixer to explain any paranormal phenomena that you might experience.

Haven't you noticed how much the New Agers have been throwing the word 'quantum' into all of their psychic mumbo jumbo? That doesn't make their psychic mumbo jumbo any more 'scientific' in the process.

Likewise, you can't just shout 'zero point energy' as an explanation for any anomalous energy system.

That is not to say the ZPE might not have something to do with it, especially if the effect is 'real', but if you don't have the science to back that claim up you might as well stop talking about it. Science is conducted via a strict experimental and peer review process. Inventors tinkering in their garage really don't have anything to do with it.

My point is that if there is supposed to be any reality to any of these free energy claims, they must be submitted to the same exact process.

It doesn't do me any good if 'Joe' can levitate his car with a 'Joe Cell' unless I can buy a car levitation device at Walmart and have it installed by their mechanics.

Let's get down to the basic science of the matter. Create simple, irrefutable, reproducible experiments and then subject them to scientific scrutiny and peer review. I know, you might complain that 'mainstream' science wouldn't publish the work. However, today there are plenty of scientific journals devoted to alternative energy fields and a clear and simple reproducible experiment is going to be difficult to repute. Especially if it is in the public domain.

John

--------- And Bernie replies with an offer to augment a gas generator -------

Being a skeptic is good! I'm a retired electrical and was a very big skeptic when I got into this. Now I'm a believer.

If you'd like to provide me a "big ass generator" driven by an all aluminum water cooled engine equipped with a standard points based ignition system and adjustable carb(s) I would be glad to try to convert it for you. Suitable test engines are hard to come by any more, since the proliferation of EFI gas hogs. EFI engines can be converted, but the timing needs to be changed radicly, and most newer engines do not provide this capability.

The real value of a JC is in it's ability to be used as a booster in much the same way as hydroxy boosters are. They are actually better in that they don't even need to be plumbed into the engine and seldom need to have power applied. Figures of up to 40% mileage gains have been reported. I've personally gotten 15% on an EFI engine without any effort to fool the computer into reducing the fuel flow. If I tried to spoof the computer I could probably double that.

Bernie

Magnet Motor videos on YouTube









Gravity Wheel videos on YouTube






Stanley Meyer videos on YouTube










Joe Cell videos on YouTube









Hutchison Effect videos on YouTube (Great entertaining stuff!)