What the H-Effect is purported to do is nothing short of extraordinary. It is said to cause objects to defy gravity, cause metal to spontaneously fracture, cause dissimilar materials to fuse (such as metal and wood), and other strange phenomena. Hutchison has captured the effect on video many times, and claims to have demonstrated it for scientists from U.S. Army intelligence. But the claims are mired in doubt because the effect is not reproducible, even by the discoverer himself.
Hutchison is a bit of an eccentric, conducting his experiments in his apartment using surplus Navy and Army electronic equipment. His living space is absolutely crowded with oscilloscopes, digital readouts, gauges, switches, lights, receiver dishes, chains, and all manner of hardware. His supporters often liken him to the brilliant scientist and inventor Nikola Tesla, and in fact it was during an attempt to reproduce one of Tesla’s experiments that the H-Effect was said to have been accidentally discovered.
Hutchison’s experiments utilized multiple electrical coils called Tesla coils, as well as a static electricity machine called a Van de Graaf generator. How these high-voltage devices work in concert to create the H-Effect is uncertain, but supporters believe that a hypothetical electromagnetic wave called a scalar wave allowed Hutchison’s apparatus to tap an exotic energy called zero-point energy.
Zero-point energy is the energy present at zero degrees Kelvin zero Kelvins, the temperature at which all activity in an atom supposedly ceases. It is also called vacuum energy because it is descriptive of the energy in a perfect vacuum, where no light or matter is present. In this state, random electromagnetic oscillations can still be observed, meaning that there is still some amount of energy present. Essentially, the concept of tapping zero-point energy assumes that the universe is saturated in a constant background energy which we cannot observe because it is present everywhere, even within ourselves and our measuring devices. If such energy exists, it could be an enormous amount… it is theorized that there is enough energy in the volume the size of a coffee cup to completely boil away Earth’s oceans.
One suggestion made by skeptics is that Hutchison uses an electromagnet on the ceiling, and places hidden pieces of metal inside objects so they will be attracted to the magnet. He could then film the objects with an upside-down camera as he powers down the electromagnet, making the objects on film appear to float up and out of the shot when in reality they are falling down to the floor. Many of the videos include conspicuous objects in the scene which do not move (such as an old broom), which could be deliberately attached to add to the illusion that the camera is not upside-down. Critics also point out that the videos do not show what happens to the objects after they levitate.
One particularly damning piece of evidence against him is a video he produced for a television special which shows a toy UFO levitating and jumping around wildly. A string is clearly visible in the upper left-hand corner of the video, wiggling in sync with the UFO’s movements. At first Hutchison claimed that it was a wire which was part of the apparatus, but later he confessed that he was “creative” with the footage because he has been unable to reproduce the effect since 1991.
Given that Hutchison’s claims are outlandish and his credibility damaged by admitted fakery, it is likely that the effect named for him is complete claptrap. Carl Sagan famously said that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” and Hutchison offers no such evidence aside from easily faked videos and unsubstantiated claims. But much valuable science has been done by eccentrics who are mocked by the rest of the scientific community in their time… so it is possible that his claims are indeed valid. Science is half skepticism and half open-mindedness, so as much as I doubt the veracity of Hutchison’s claims, at the same time I would be delighted to be proven wrong.
Suggested by Debbie Hall
Links:
I thought no scientist has ever been able to create zero degrees kelvin, although I know they’ve gotten pretty damn close(within a few thousandths of a degrree), in a controlled environment using lasers to slow down molecules, so I’m wondering how he was able to(or claims to) tap the zero point energy that comes with it…?
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!
CanadianNate said: “I thought no scientist has ever been able to create zero degrees kelvin, although I know they’ve gotten pretty damn close(within a few thousandths of a degrree), in a controlled environment using lasers to slow down molecules, so I’m wondering how he was able to(or claims to) tap the zero point energy that comes with it…?”
You don’t have to have something at 0 degrees kelvin to extract zero point energy, The definition of it is just the energy that is left when you cool something to 0 degrees kelvin.
In the linked WMV demonstration video of the levitating thing with the blinkey-red light PAY CLOSE ATTENTION TO THE UPPER-LEFT HAND CORNER…. The pendulum-like oscillations of the “levitating” object become clearer than the fishing-line. :)
And still and interesting read!
I was worried for a little bit… but glad that you had some nice skepticism going on… :) Yes, it’d be very cool, but without replicability, I can’t personally spend too much time on this…
Btw, can anybody actually satisfactorily explain what the heck a “scalar wave” is? It gets mentioned heaps in the fringe ZP, kealynet, etc circles, but I’ve never seen a real scientific explaination of what it actually is. I understand the term “scalar” in reference to geometry, and “wave” is obvious, but put them together and it doesn’t appear so obvious to me.
The general population has this romatic idea of some lone genius in a basement who turns science on its head. It’s never true. This may have been true in the dawn of science where a lot of discoveries did not need advanced equipment or manpower, but it’s not true now. Every breakthrough requires unbelievably expensive equipment and is built on the work of others. Note that this does not count conceptual discoveries such as relativity or math theories.
The guy is just a salesman with crap to sell. Just film some neat footage, talk about rewriting science, add a few big words that few people know the meaning of, then add a conspiracy theory or two, and people will just eat it up.
CanadianNate said: “I thought no scientist has ever been able to create zero degrees kelvin, although I know they’ve gotten pretty damn close(within a few thousandths of a degrree)”
Within a few trillionths of absolute zero actually. The record holder is currently 100pK (10^-10).
esoteric said: Btw, can anybody actually satisfactorily explain what the heck a “scalar wave” is?”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalar_wave
I tried to read one of the referenced sources at the bottom, and a lot of it sounded made up and didn’t make any sense.
As an observer, that looks pretty BS to me. But hey, I’m not a scientist.
I always thought that the proof of something was that it had to be reproducible
Yup it does sound like bogus to me. The picture in the article seems to show a hidden spoon soaked with ice cream being elevated probably by a magnet.
To me, this guy looks like a shaved wedding-dress guy than a scientist. http://www.snopes.com/love/revenge/weddress.asp
that guy looks like a fraud to me
Don’t judge a mad scientist by his hair.
He looks less like a scientist and more like a roadie.
Besides, he’s Canadian. ‘Nuff said.
white_matter said: “Besides, he’s Canadian. ‘Nuff said.”
ohh nice! you’re going to get it now
The picture of our “genius” included in the article made me laugh so hard. It reminds me of some science fiction movie from the 80′s. Or the inside of the De Lorean from Back to the Future. Hahaha. I can’t stop laughing.
If this really is ‘anti-gravity’ why would the objects go up? I would imagine that an object, suddenly released from the bonds of gravity, would start moving in a straight line relative to the spin of the Earth, yes?
SparkyTWP said: “Every breakthrough requires unbelievably expensive equipment and is built on the work of others.”
This is not necessarily true. Discoveries tend to lie in a direction that’s understandable to us at the time, but the science is always there. For example, take those novelty clocks you can power with a potato. Scientists weren’t looking for energy in potatoes, but once the fine details were discovered and understood, they could pick one up and say, “Check this out! Energy!” …but if you went back in time, told them to focus their efforts on potatoes and citrus fruit, they’d make the discovery using household items.
I’m very, very confident there are energy sources just waiting to be found, and once they are, they will be accessible through very simple means. Whether they are discovered that way is unknown, but it will always be a possibility.
White_Matter: please keep your racist remarks to yourself (and no, I’m not Canadian, but I have good Canadian friends).
Damn it, for a minute there I thought someone stumbled onto one of the world’s greatest discoveries of all time…too bad it smells like Snake Oil (to me), although I’m certainly no scientist.
In matters of the paranormal and weird science, I like to defer to The Amazing Randi. Although he doesn’t seem to have explored Mr. (Dr.?) Hutchison’s work, it doesn’t look like he thinks much of it. See: http://www.randi.org/jr/121302.html. The comment on Hutchison is near the bottom of the article. As always, your article on Hutchison is DI!!
…what do you want from a guy that has a likeness to Emo Phillips or Dr. Who?
As for zero degrees kelvin…every guy knows how cold this is and how easily this temperature can be reproduced in real life…in particular while dating!
I am going to step out on limb an predict (based on his appearance) that in 1991 Hutchison did perform this experiment sucessfully, at least he “thinks” he did. I am also going to speculate he was quit “baked” at the time. :)
mrbiotech said: “In the linked WMV demonstration video of the levitating thing with the blinkey-red light PAY CLOSE ATTENTION TO THE UPPER-LEFT HAND CORNER…. The pendulum-like oscillations of the “levitating” object become clearer than the fishing-line. :)
And still and interesting read!”
Did you even read the article?
“One particularly damning piece of evidence against him is a video he produced for a television special which shows a toy UFO levitating and jumping around wildly. A string is clearly visible in the upper left-hand corner of the video, wiggling in sync with the UFO’s movements. At first Hutchison claimed that it was a wire which was part of the apparatus, but later he confessed that he was “creative” with the footage because he has been unable to reproduce the effect since 1991. “
Furnace said: “For example, take those novelty clocks you can power with a potato. Scientists weren’t looking for energy in potatoes, but once the fine details were discovered and understood, they could pick one up and say, “Check this out! Energy!”
Yes, but this is hardly groundbreaking. The voltaic pile (which uses the same chemical reaction to make electricity) was invented over 200 years ago.
What I was trying to say was that the discovery of something revolutionary such as a new force or energy source would probably not be discovered in some guy’s apartment, mostly for the fact that forces that can be observed on the human scale have already been described very well with current theories. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but I would be very skeptical about it.
Currently, all the candidates for a new possible force are in the very large distance scale, such as the Pioneer anomaly or Dark Energy. In the end, I think both of these could be explained by modifications to existing theory or from new observations rather than creating a new theory.
Look, dammit, just because someone is “baked” at the time doesn’t mean they didn’t make the ice cream fly around the room……wait, what?
wileybot said: “I am going to step out on limb an predict (based on his appearance) that in 1991 Hutchison did perform this experiment sucessfully, at least he “thinks” he did. I am also going to speculate he was quit “baked” at the time. :)”
LMAO
We don’t know that much about Zero point energy so it’s possible he did do the experiment but since then conditions have changed. I heard about a reaction that someone discovered and it could only be replicated in some labs this was because the glass test tube that the person used had trace elements of carbon that acted as a catalyst in the reaction whereas other labs used different glass so the experiment didn’t work.
1.21 gigawatts!! Great Scott!!
I bet where he’s going, he doesn’t need roads.
Luke…beware of the Dark Side.
…Rocks are the most intelligent beings on this good earth and in all the universe. There is no mathematical expression they cannot compute. There is no algorithm they cannot solve. And perform calculations at speeds even faster than the most super of all supercomputers today. They do however…have a lousy input/output system. Remember pet rocks?
Everyone leave Lazlo alone. He’s this close to winning that RV and all those other fabulous prizes, and taking that wierdly hot blonde off into the sunset as Tears for Fears plays in the background.
I think he was an idiot for releasing that video.. seriously.. did he even WATCH it?
1c3d0g said: “White_Matter: please keep your racist remarks to yourself (and no, I’m not Canadian, but I have good Canadian friends).”
Lets see: African-American, Caucasian, Latino and…Canadian? Canadian is a race now?
If you’re going to use words like us big boys use, make sure you use them right.
Idiot.
BTW, the Kelvin temperature scale is not measured in degrees. Therefore, the correct way to state absolute zero is “zero Kelvins.” Other temperatures using this scale are read in the same manner, e.g., 350 Kelvins, 19 Kelvins, etc.
In my opinion DamnInteresting is at its best when it covers phenomena that are a) little-known and b) indubitably true. Covering items like the Hutchison Effect that are probably false detracts from the rest of the site. A bit like hearing a great urban legend and then finding out it’s false….
Overall a great site though!
There is no spoon……eh
Oh, and I kinda have to believe the Canadians are a race….extraterestrial race, but a race none the less….
; )
John Hutchison, stop fooling around with strings. Your true calling in life is impersonating Mr. Spock.
Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.
Bah. Crackpots like this are a dime a dozen. Check out the KeelyNet.
Admittedly, **UNPROVEN CLAIMS** are usually interesting, but I find stuff like this dull. My BS detector goes crazy when somebody claims to be able to do things that are silly, like make irons stick to their hands or mix wood and metal.
I question his taste in ice cream.
I wonder if he has several sea bass hooked up with laser beams.
White_Matter: shut your stupid little trap before someone does it for you. Jerk.
1c3d0g said: “White_Matter: shut your stupid little trap before someone does it for you. Jerk.”
watch out white_matter, I feel a scalar wave coming! rawr
A scalar wave seems to imply its a wave with no direction… but couldn’t that just be a badly observed standing wave?
http://news.scotsman.com/scitech.cfm?id=16902006
another viewpoint said: “As for zero degrees kelvin…every guy knows how cold this is and how easily this temperature can be reproduced in real life…in particular while dating!”
ROFL – I usually don’t get the jokes in here as you have to understand too many “basic” scientific STUFF.
I’m a scientist….Well not really, I lied……**shifty eyes**
That just goes to show that we know very little about magnetism.
mapquest
That video looks really sketchy.
“Essentially, the concept of tapping zero-point energy assumes that the universe is saturated in a constant background energy which we cannot observe because it is present everywhere, even within ourselves and our measuring devices.”
The name for phenomena that show no spatiotemporal variation is: nonexistent.
paalexan’s comment is most interesting. big words that say one thing: Some ‘thing’ that is always exactly the same, no matter where it is found, everywhere, does not really exist. This is really an amazing thought, but what about some basic building block, that is existent everywhere? Does the quark not exist simply because a quark is always exactly the same everywhere? or are you inclined to assert that they are only ‘the same’ according to present knowledge… if so, according to present knowledge this zero-point energy does no exist in the same sense that the quark did not exist 40 years ago. This guy, Hutchinson, is obvioulsy a quack- he admitted to forging some video ‘proof’. But, the concept of zero point energy does not belong to him. And it is a pretty amazing conpect.
I recall the “scalar wave” theory postulates the existence of longitudinal electromagnetic waves. So far, only transversal waves have been observed, and as far as waves go, this is an anomaly, so “naturally” they must be there and we just don’t know how to observe them
This is brilliant! This man has come up with a proven and repeatable way of saving energy by utilizing a type of energy that is not really understood by the general public. He saves so much energy, not having to work for a living. Truly brillian.
While I’m not sure I can say that I think he’s actually produced the effect, I think whatever he says creates it, is true.
I like the cut of your jib. You should be a door-to-door door and doorbell salesman.
Didn’t anyone notice the “experiment” was set up in a box? With a camera mounted to it? With the box turned upside down?
That would explain why the drop forms on one side. The box flippage action causes this, along with image blur. It would do the integrity of this site well to have this article removed.
AzureKevin said: “That video looks really sketchy.”
Hutchison looks sketchy himself…
Go to about 1:45 into the video. Is it just me, or does it look like they are just using a thin stick with a ball on the end to pull out the liquidy, ice creamy looking stuff?
Maybe Rosie O’Donnell is hiding under the table, and the ice cream is defying gravity trying to escape.
Weird… When I first heard of the H-effect I interpreted it as using energy to match the frequency of the object, and slowly increasing it until the mass turns into energy therefore coming closer to light, or higher frequency giving it the ability to float. Which I wouldn’t call zero point energy.
SparkyTWP said: “The general population has this romatic idea of some lone genius in a basement who turns science on its head. It’s never true. This may have been true in the dawn of science where a lot of discoveries did not need advanced equipment or manpower, but it’s not true now. Every breakthrough requires unbelievably expensive equipment and is built on the work of others.”
Though I don’t think you could be more wrong. I believe “Expensive Equipment” is nothing without the mind behind it. The only thing holding us back technologically is the human brain. I also strongly believe the universe of information is at our finger tips if we could only open up our minds enough to access it.
You can trust my judgements on this issue. The U.N. scientific community has issued a strong statement of consensus backed by correlational data to prove I am, in fact, a “scientist”.
The string was not moving the UFO, but rather was also levitating. The scalar wave causes the objects to move in a fashion which, to the unscientifical mindly, looks contrived.
I duplicated this experiment by tossing cats out of highrise buildings. They all crashed to the ground, thereby proving the experimental datum. Oddly though, the surviving cats avoided me at all costs afterward. Something to do with electro-magnetic polarity? Scalar wave experiments such as this have an attractive-force-property regarding policemen and spca agents. They are probably Canadians. I’ll get back to you when I better understand this phenomenon better.
Lastly, Canadians and midgets cannot be trusted. You might wonder “but kenfo, what about Canadian midgets?”. That is a double negative and can not occur outside the realm of the event horizon of a super massive black hole, and then only for a pico-second. Here is a clarifying link: http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4109/446/1600/MC967.jpg This is me with one of my cat subjects. You don’t see any Canadian midgets, do you? Well then, there you have it.
Marius said: “If this really is ‘anti-gravity’ why would the objects go up? I would imagine that an object, suddenly released from the bonds of gravity, would start moving in a straight line relative to the spin of the Earth, yes?”
Yeah it should… at a right angle from the acceleration (gravity). Along the equator the earth spins at 1,670 kph… I don’t think you want play with anti-gravity….
This guy is a nut-case. But, actually, many great scientists are/were. Hutchison’s not one of them however. Look through his site & forum & you’ll see what I’m talking about. Some of his worshippers are “scientists” that have invented “levitation” devices, which work on the concept of the Joules-Lenz Law….only they don’t realize that what they ave “invented”, was known about 175 years ago.
He also offered his entire lab on Ebay a short while ago for $8 Mil….no bidders. The 3 simultaneous auctions for the same thing looked to have been put together by an illiterate 8th-grader.
Hutchison IS an inventor, who stumbled onto something he thought was neat. Only he doesn’t realize that his inventions are things that other more reputable scientists have known about for decades….mostly electro-magnetism. He then joined the “Free-Energy” & Conspiracy-Theory-For-Everything-Crowd, which opened up a large audience willing to believe anything he could show them….& they will also pay to see him levitate his toy UFO’s with a piece of string & make bars of metal glow red-hot by hooking them to a welder, so he quickly learned to take advantage of this.
Oh yeah…he also has “solved” the mystery of the Ark of the Covenant & actually made one that worked, along with a few other things we don’t quite have the answer for……shades of Ron Wyatt.
White-Matter wrote: “Lets see: African-American, Caucasian, Latino and…Canadian? Canadian is a race now?
“If you’re going to use words like us big boys use, make sure you use them right.
“Idiot.”
Good advice, White_Matter. Any idea when you intend to follow it yourself? Latinos don’t comprise their own distinct “race,” either. They’re caucasian.
Moron.
If he’s referring to a wave in a scalar field, that’s different from a wave with no direction. The scalar field itself has no directional element: a pressure field is a scalar field, because pressure has a magnitude component but no directional component. A temperature field is the same way. There could still be a wave in a pressure field or a temperature field: I’m pretty sure you can think of sound waves or a shock wave from an explosion as a wave in a pressure field. Those sorts of waves in a scalar field will have a direction of propagation; it’s the field that has no direction.
First of all… wait, no, I’ll get back to ‘first of all.’
Second, thank you kenfo for injecting some airtight logic into this comment section. I appreciate it, personally.
But first, why does race become an issue here? Canadians are not a race; they are just colder than us Americans. They approach zero Kelvins sooner than most because of the jet stream, but are overall a decent people. I do not think name calling is exactly the kind of forum in which most of the Damn Interested care to participate. IMHO
Keep it clean, keep it interesting. *shrug*
I personally love Hutchinson’s hair. It’s very “scarecrow.”
“[Due to excessive links or the presence of certain words that smell of spam, your comment has been placed in a temporary holding cell. If it's not spam, it'll show up right here real soon.]”
Hey, just because I live in Hawaii, doesn’t mean everything has to do with Spam!
That ufo video was absolutely hilarious. Why wouldn’t he angle the camera away from the string. If you didn’t see the video yet maybe you should this guy is such a joke.
I just thought this was kinda funny: don’t people conventionally put their names at the end of their comment?
Ted
He made yor mum float xD
Beep beep beep! Crackpot alert! Although i love the guys idea’s. BTW, how do i get my hands on old navy & military hardware? Is it still possible post 9/11? Who pays his power bills and where does he live cause i certainly dont wont to be living anywhere near this guy for fear of a horrible electrcution death!