YumYum

This story seemed interesting so I thought I would share it with you all.

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Researcher sets saltwater on fire

Last winter, inventor John Kanzius was already attempting one seemingly impossible feat -- building a machine to cure cancer with radio waves -- when his device inadvertently succeeded in another: He made saltwater catch fire.

A test tube full of saltwater fuels a flame.

TV footage of his bizarre discovery has been burning up the blogosphere ever since, drawing crackpots and Ph.D.s alike into a raging debate. Can water burn? And if so, what good can come of it?

Some people gush over the invention's potential for desalinization or cheap energy. Briny seawater, after all, sloshes over most of the planet's surface, and harnessing its heat energy could power all sorts of things. Skeptics say Kanzius's radio generator is sucking up far more energy than it's creating, making it a carnival trick at best.

For now, Kanzius is tuning out the hubbub. The retired radio- and television- station owner says the saltwater stuff is interesting, but a cancer breakthrough is what he's really after. Diagnosed with leukemia in 2002, he began building his radio-wave blaster the next year, soon after a relapse. His lifelong fascination with radio provided further inspiration.

Radio station antennas, he knew, can turn a bystander's metal eyeglasses toasty warm. If he could seed a person's cancerous cells with nanoscopic metal particles and blast them with radio waves, perhaps he could kill off the cancer while sparing healthy tissue.

The saltwater phenomenon happened by accident when an assistant was bombarding a saline-filled test tube with radio waves and bumped the tube, causing a small flash. Curious, Kanzius struck a match. "The water lit like a propane flame," he recalls.

"People said, 'It's a crock. Look for hidden electrodes in the water,' " says Penn State University materials scientist Rustum Roy, who visited the Erie, Pennsylvania, inventor in his lab in August after seeing the feat on Google Video. A demo made Roy a believer.

"This is discovery science in the best tradition," he says. Roy thinks the sodium chloride in the water may weaken the bonds between the oxygen and hydrogen atoms, which are broken free by radio waves. It's these gas molecules that are igniting, he explains, not the liquid itself. Tests show that the reaction disappears once the radio waves stop. Roy plans to conduct more tests to get to the bottom of the mystery.

Meanwhile, researchers at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center have made progress using Kanzius's technology to fight cancer in animals. They published their findings last month in the journal Cancer.

How it works:

1. A generator emits 14-megahertz radio waves.
2. The waves bombard a solution of regular table salt and water.
3. Exactly what happens next remains a mystery, but one theory posits that the sodium chloride may weaken the bonds between the strong oxygen and hydrogen atoms in water. Radio waves break apart the bonds and liberate flammable hydrogen gas molecules.
4. A match ignites the hydrogen, generating an intense flame.
5. The resulting heat powers a simple engine.

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Firegoat7

Very Bizarre

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"...A thorough knowledge of the elements takes us more than half the road to mastership" - Aron Nimzowitsch

Arrogant-One

From the sounds of it, it would be carbon neutral energy source because, by using a different fuel source, one comprise of hydrogen, oxygen and salt's basic elements of sodium and oxygen, then presumably the by-product of the combustion process would have to be one of these elements or compounds comprised of these elements.

But I could be mistaken. Its been a few years since I studied chemistry.

Best

AO

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... for it is always the person not in the predicament who knows what ought to have been done in it, and would unquestionably have done it too . . .

~ Charles Dickens novel ~

Iconoclast

This is STUPID!

1. If he has produced a few ignitable bubbles of hydrogen, it is no more than a party trick.
2. Assume #12 true, then, you will find that the energy required to create the trick is more than the energy recovered.

In today's western society, English literacy is disappointingly mediocre, maths literacy is horribly low, and science literacy is scarily close to zero.

I blame religion for teaching that there is such a thing as the metaphysical. Belief that it exists alters people's minds so to be open to accepting the impossible - magic, miracles, and micromanagement.

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Noddy

Well, I am uncertain. Pick up a rock. Drop it. What? It broke? Wow, that's a lot of kinetic energy! This could be a vast energy resource!

Exactly the same principle here. You're starting with water, and ending up with, guess what? Water. It's a state function. It don't matter how you get there, if you end up where you started.

Except, of course, that in the real world you always lose a bit as heat.

Iconoclast

TB, you are prolly a nice bloke, but maaaaaate, you need to become scientifically literate. A net positive on the energy balance sheet of a test tube of sea water in a microwave oven is tooth fairy madness.

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The group is hopeless without its individuals.

Fischer-Fan

there is no need to burn anything, there was a way discovered 60 years ago 20x overunity, you can produse energy in your own home, and stay off the grid, and not to depend on power companies, it is all possible, and it is extreamly simple, but do you think energy dept, and energy comp will let you????
there are tons of patents, on renewable energy, and overunity, but almost all belong to power comp, why did they buy it out, and burried them? if they are hoaxes, and worthless, would they even pay attention?????

it isn,t technological problem, but political,

if one really wants to stay off the grid, and produce his own energy, he needs to do it, and be quiet.

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Patzer see check, patzer give check! - Bobby Fischer

Iconoclast

Evidence please. Not much passes under my radar, so I am not expecting a single varifiable example.

And if I am not quiet, will someone silence me?

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The individual is hopeless without the group.
The group is hopeless without its individuals.