There has been a new discovery recently on the properties of graphene, a form of carbon. When graphene is literaly one mollecule thick, it vibrates like a quartz crystal. What is so special about this? The vibration requires ZERO input energy. Thats right, zero. The graphine vibrations could potentially power not only watches and other clocks, but could potentially power every electronic device ever made as of yet and any and all devices in the future. A sheet about 10 microns across and 1 mollecule thick can be used to produce around 10 microwatts of electricity. This means it could potentially produce more energy if it was scaled up. This technology is literally the answer to both the hunger for electricity and climate change as it is made of carbon which is the main ingredient in the carbon dioxide mollecule; the carbon can be extracted from the CO₂ and can then be used as an indefinite power source! Could this be the first example of perpetual motion? Also, NASA's EM drive seems very promising as the world's first electric propulsion to be used in space.
Source: http://www.iflscience.com/technology/graphene-loophole-could-provide-clean-and-limitless-energy-in-the-future/
Please share this to anybody you can, and spread the word about this incredible discovery!

Color me extremely skeptical.

Here's the original paper.

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For a start, this paper was published more than a year ago. Why wasn't there any interest in it then? (Answer: it's nowhere near as far-reaching as you/they are claiming.)

The paper's own conclusions:So they observed interesting new behaviors of graphene sheets with possible applications in building nanoresonators. No mention of "free energy", because that's a preposterous claim.

In summary: just the kind of breathless, misleading kind of writing I expect from that web site.

This is one of the worst bits of science reporting I've ever seen. I can't believe an actual physics professor is claiming this could generate electricity.

First, there's nothing impossible about graphene. The reference to the supposed impossibility of graphene was actually to the difficulty of isolating a single sheet of the stuff. It's now been done. It's ridiculous to suggest it's still somehow impossible.

More importantly, the random fluctuations are just the normal thermal vibrations present in all matter. While individual atoms and molecules do have significant thermal energy at room temperature, you can't harness that energy. It's simply not possible. It's an obvious violation of the second law of thermodynamics. The same concept has already been analyzed in the form of Maxwell's demon. In this case, instead of trying to organize chaotic atomic motion into orderly atomic motion (i.e. decrease entropy), he's claiming that he can organize chaotic atomic motion into orderly charge motion. This is certainly a novel approach to a free energy device.

In this case, what keeps charges from moving from the graphene sheet onto the contacts? If you think the charge on the graphene sheet will stay put because it doesn't touch the contacts, you're wrong. In order for the tiny fluctuations of the graphene sheet to affect the contacts, the graphene sheet must be very close to the contacts. So close, in fact, that electrons will easily tunnel between the graphene and contacts. They'll even tunnel directly from one contact, through the graphene, and into the other contact. Insulation doesn't work at atomic scales. Nobody would love single-atom-thick quantum-tunneling-proof insulators more than Intel; quantum tunneling is a major problem for further shrinking of transistors.

So, quantum tunneling will make it impossible to maintain the charge on the graphene sheet unless you continually apply a voltage to the graphene sheet. Generating that voltage will consume any energy you do manage to generate.




EDIT: And the main ingredient in CO₂ is oxygen, not carbon. There's two oxygen, and one carbon. It's right there in the formula.

[quote="DrDnar"]
right, my bad!
what I meant is that carbon is extractable from CO₂, and the remaining mollecule is O₂ (the breatheable part of air)

*molecule ;D