Adam D Trombly
Adam D. Trombly | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 1951 |
| Residence | Aspen, Colorado, United States |
| Nationality | American |
| Known for | New Energy; Closed Path Homopolar Generator; Project Earth |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Physics, geophysics, atmospheric dynamics, electromagnetic systems |
Adam D. Trombly (born 1951) is an American inventor, self-described physicist and environmental activist. He is best known within the New Energy and free-energy communities for the "Closed Path Homopolar Generator," an electrical machine he and a colleague patented in the early 1980s and claimed produced more electrical energy than was supplied to it. He is the founder and director of Project Earth, an environmental research and advocacy effort. His energy claims are outside mainstream science, which regards over-unity ("free energy") devices as inconsistent with the law of conservation of energy.
Biography
Trombly has described a family background in science, stating that his father was a biochemist and Air Force officer, his mother a blood specialist, and his sister a biophysicist. He counted the designer and futurist R. Buckminster Fuller as a friend and mentor, and credits Fuller with encouraging him to maintain a "synergistic, global view" across multiple disciplines.
Trombly presents himself as an expert in physics, atmospheric dynamics, geophysics, rotating and resonating electromagnetic systems, and environmental global modeling. Independent commentators have noted that no academic degrees from accredited institutions have been publicly documented for him.
He has served as Director of Project Earth for the Institute for Advanced Studies at Aspen (later also based in Maui, Hawaii). In 1984 he received an endowment from R. J. Reynolds III in support of the Project Earth work. In later years he has been an outspoken advocate for action on environmental degradation and climate change, and a public critic of reliance on fossil fuels.
Scientific contributions
In 1979–1980 Trombly, with colleague Douglas Kahn, designed the Closed Path Homopolar Generator, a variant of the homopolar (Faraday disk) generator intended to route magnetic flux through a low-reluctance return path. An international patent application was filed through the Patent Cooperation Treaty (Application No. PCT/US81/01588) and published on 24 June 1982 as International Publication No. WO 82/02126, assigned to the Acme Energy Company of San Rafael, California.
Trombly claimed the device could generate substantially more electrical power than was required to run it, citing figures such as 250% efficiency. He has stated that the United States patent application was rejected and that a government secrecy ("gag") order was subsequently imposed on the work in 1983. A design derived from the patent was later tested in India, where Trombly reported that Paramahamsa Tewari, then associated with the Tarapore Atomic Power Station, obtained results indicating an efficiency above 250%.
With colleague David Farnsworth, Trombly reported demonstrating a solid-state device (variously described as a piezoelectric resonance generator or over-unity transformer) in New York City in June 1989, claiming an efficiency ratio of 54:1, after which he addressed a gathering at the United Nations.
These claims are not accepted by mainstream science. Over-unity and "free-energy" machines are generally classified as perpetual-motion devices, which violate the first and second laws of thermodynamics. Independent evaluation of homopolar generators built from Trombly's design—including testing associated with the Kirloskar Electric Company in India—reported no excess ("free") energy and only the small output expected from conventional electromagnetic effects.
Abstracts
Media
- - DePalma N-machine 1/18 (Video Commentary)