Goldes, 73, is chief executive of a small company called Magnetic Power Inc., which has spent years researching ways to, yes, generate power using magnets. Within a few months, he says, he might just have a breakthrough to report that could revolutionize where people get fuel. All we know is that we're seeing more energy output than input. Does Goldes realize what's he's saying -- that he's perhaps discovered a clean, inexhaustible energy source? "That's exactly what it appears to be," he answered. What Goldes believes he's done is produce power from what physicists call zero-point energy. In simple terms, zero-point energy results from the infinitesimal motion of molecules even when seemingly at rest. Normally, I dismiss such pie-in-the-sky pronouncements. But Goldes isn't so easy to shrug off. That's because he's also come up with technology called the UltraConductor. The research was funded in part by the Department of Defense, which invested $600,000 in the project. A handful of other companies worldwide are believed also to be pursuing zero-point energy via magnetic systems. One of them, InterStellar Technologies, is run by a former scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. According to Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine, the Pentagon and at least two large aerospace companies are actively researching zero-point energy as a means of propulsion.

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