Has college dropout done the impossible and created a perpetual motion machine?
Thane Heins is nervous and hopeful. It’s Jan. 24, a Thursday afternoon, and in four days the Ottawa-area native will travel to Boston where he’ll demonstrate an invention that appears – though he doesn’t dare say it – to operate as a perpetual motion machine. The audience, esteemed Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Markus Zahn, could either deflate Heins’ heretical claims or add momentum to a 20-year obsession that has broken up his marriage and lost him custody of his two young daughters. Zahn is a leading expert on electromagnetic and electronic systems. In a rare move for any reputable academic, he has agreed to give Heins’ creation an open-minded look rather than greet it with outright dismissal. It’s a pivotal moment. The invention, at its very least, could moderately improve the efficiency of induction motors, used in everything from electric cars to ceiling fans. At best it means a way of tapping the mysterious powers of electromagnetic fields to produce more work
