A few years ago John Hutchison startedle his neighbors in Vancouver by carting old consoles of Tesla coil equipment onto his apartment elevator almost every week. And when he starts up his array of electromagnetic devices, a bar of steel rises from the floor to float in midair until it hits the ceiling and bursts apart — a phenomenon Hutchison calls the “Hutchison effect.”
No one knows exactly how the Hutchison effect works. But it certainly produces some baffling phenomena, such as object levitation, the fusion of dissimilar materials and anomalous changes in metals’ properties. Hutchison says the effects are caused by tapping into Zero Point Energy, which physicists believe exists at the absolute zero temperature of space and gives off energy in the form of electromagnetic waves.
Despite his claim that the Hutchison effect can be used to power cars, Hutchison hasn’t produced enough electricity to run his apartment or the equipment in his lab. He’s also gotten into trouble with the authorities several times, including being raided at gunpoint by Canadian police.
Several physics experts have tried to replicate the effects, and some, such as Ken Shoulders, a leading theorist on charge clusters and their role in the Casimir effect, have even managed to achieve some of the unusual localized heating observed during Hutchison experiments. But others say there is no plausible explanation for the Hutchison effect. Even if there were such an explanation, the fact that the effects occur only in certain metals and not in other, identical materials would indicate that something is wrong with the theory.
