Ships, cars, aeroplanes, rockets and just about anything that requires
fuel to move can be adapted to run on water, according to claims made this
week at a conference on marine technology in Southampton.
Anthony Griffin, a retired Royal Navy admiral, described patented apparatus
developed in the US to perform the supposedly impossible task of splitting
water with a tiny current into hydrogen and oxygen, which can be burnt.
Griffin was in the Navy for 42 years, and for the last five was in charge
of the development and construction of the Royal Navy鈥檚 new vessels and
weapons. He retired in 1975 and is now a close friend of Stanley Meyer,
the US inventor of 鈥榟ydrogen fracturing technology鈥�. He is convinced that
the process works despite the lack of an explanation for it. 鈥業t鈥檚 a simply
awesome development,鈥� says Griffin, who hopes to apply the technology to
boats so that they 鈥榮ail on their own fuel鈥�.
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Meyer developed an electric cell in which concentric cylindrical electrodes
of stainless steel are bathed in ordinary tap water. He claims to split
water by passing low currents of around 0.5 milliamps through the cell at
voltages of 20 000 volts in extremely short pulses at frequencies of between
10 and 20 kilohertz.
Meyer, based at Grove City in Ohio, says that these electrically polarised
conditions strain and break the covalent chemical bond between hydrogen
and oxygen, liberating the two gases. Simultaneously, he says, the latent
energy trapped in the atomic nuclei called 鈥榸ero point energy鈥� is liberated,
accounting for the extra energy.
鈥業t only uses energy that鈥檚 already there in the hydrogen atom,鈥� says
Meyer. 鈥業t鈥檚 not a perpetual motion device.鈥� He is developing a device to
enable ordinary cars to run on water fuel, and that he has tested the technology
successfully on a dune buggy.
Orthodox scientists express scepticism, preferring to be anonymous to
avoid any 鈥榤edia circus鈥�. One engineer suggests that the energy came from
the electrolytic decomposition of the stainless steel electrodes, and that
the car probably ran on the battery supplying the current. One theoretical
physicist concedes that zero point energy does exist, but believes it is
untappable: 鈥業t sounds to me like rubbish.鈥� Another agrees: 鈥業鈥檝e never
heard of anyone finding a way to get it out.鈥�
Meyer says that his technologies have been taken seriously by NASA and
the Pentagon. Griffin says Meyer has received death threats from the oil
industry.
