"Forbidden Energy" wins XPRIZE Visioneering contest

[Ivy Matt]

This is not exactly news, but my mind was occupied with the crowdfunding campaign when it came out:

http://www.xprize.org/visioneering

What is Visioneering™?

Each year, corporate leaders, philanthropists, heads of innovation and XPRIZE Trustees gather for a multi-day Visioneering workshop to brainstorm, debate, and prioritize which of the world’s Grand Challenges might be solved through incentivized prize competition.

This year’s Visioneering workshop was held on May 15-17. The winner?:

“Forbidden Energy” – The development of radical, even controversial, alternative sources of energy

It appears from several accounts that the “forbidden energy” sources the winning team had in mind were cold fusion and zero-point energy. The significance of all this is that the winning concept has a shot at being developed into an actual XPRIZE. Of course, it remains to be seen if the XPRIZE foundation actually launches a “Forbidden Energy” XPRIZE, and if the rules are broad enough to permit concepts that are alternative, but not really “forbidden” (by whom or what: an international conspiracy? the laws of physics?) Even if it may not be necessary, it would be nice to see a nuclear fusion XPRIZE along the lines of what Robert Bussard proposed in the mid-’90s.

Here are a couple stories by participants in this year’s Visioneering workshop:

http://www.fastcoexist.com/3030775/thinking-big-is-the-easy-part-my-weekend-dreaming-up-the-next-xprize

How I Almost Got to Decide the Next XPRIZE

[Breakable]

I talked with someone from X-Prize about “energy density” prize and “fusion energy prize”. I was quite clear about cold fusion not being real, so I hope this is not something that has come out of that.

[vansig]

setting aside opinions on whether any particular “forbidden energy” project is real or not,
the winning submission ought to be one demonstrated to actually work.

[meemoe_uk]

I take it you are aware that the best contender for tapping zero-point-energy is…. Focus fusion research groups. Only they are capable of getting near the quantum critical electric field of 1.6*10^18 V/m via a collapsing micro-plasmoid. If Eric gets this new funding he’s after, I hope he can find time and money to at least do a small investigation into the application of dense plasma foci to tapping zero point energy. It’s the ultimate power source.

[Joeviocoe]

meemoe_uk wrote: I take it you are aware that the best contender for tapping zero-point-energy is…. Focus fusion research groups. Only they are capable of getting near the quantum critical electric field of 1.6*10^18 V/m via a collapsing micro-plasmoid. If Eric gets this new funding he’s after, I hope he can find time and money to at least do a small investigation into the application of dense plasma foci to tapping zero point energy. It’s the ultimate power source.

If Lerner were to even mention a side project involving Zero Point Energy… he will likely be accused of having lost confidence in Fusion, and just going after something even more far-fetched.

How much energy can be actually extracted (in MegaJoules) from 1 cubic meter of empty space??? Not much, even if free energy (no mass/energy conversion like fusion). Fusion is a MUCH better prospect as an energy source than ZPE.
Just because the infinitesimally small picojoules of energy contained in a cubic meter of space is completely free…. doesn’t mean it can be extracted, nor useful, nor preferred over larger amounts of power generated from a Mass=Energy conversion reaction like Fusion.

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