Man ignites saltwater: possible alternative energy source?

INCREDIBLE.

That is really something. I'm curious as to what the by-product of that burning is - concentrated salt water or just water?

Don't point it at the ocean!

I'm at work at the moment and can't view the video. Accordingly, the phrase "he was trying to cure cancer and accidentally ignited seawater" is, at least right now, wondrous. No doubt there's a prosaic explanation that actually makes sense, but right now I'm imagining a mad scientist hard at work on this in his secret basement lab, in between inventing a warp drive and fine-tuning his weather machine.

No.

Okay, point by point.

1. The cancer treatment - There is no reason nanoparticles of metal would be attracted to cancer cells in particular, or even to believe that they would be taken up by cells at all. This simply wouldn't be nearly as effective as current cancer treatments, and couldn't possibly be a cure.

2. Burning salt water - If he's just breaking up the water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen, we already know how to do that with electricity. Unless his machine is radically more energy efficient (which they neglected to mention in the piece), it's not solving anything. He's just required us to add salt where we never had to before.

3. Water is not an element. This is a nitpick, sorry.

4. Water burning devices are announced several times a year, and reported on whatever local station (and now the Internet). None of them has revolutionized anything so far, and the stories always sound just like this - no numbers, no theory, interviews with people who have no relevant expertise (a polymer expert?), and the discovery is always made by a retiree tinkering outside his actual field of knowledge, usually "by mistake."

If this device is ever mentioned anywhere again besides conspiracy-obsessed, largely unreadable free-energy websites claiming this guy died mysteriously because he didn't return their phone calls, I will be surprised.

TV stations should know better by now than to report this crap, but they're still so impressed by fire they'll believe any stupid story about where it came from. As for the legions who post links to those stories, you have no excuse. If you have the brain power to operate a door you should see right through this sad old man's delusions.

(Sorry, it just drives me up the wall that anyone buys into this. I recognize you all might have just thought it was funny, and in a way it is, but I've seen too many "smart" people believe it to laugh anymore.)

Short version: he had a theory that radio waves could heat up and kill cancer cells while leaving healthy cells unharmed. He found that his device would heat up salt in salt water, causing it to ignite. Old news. Keanu Reeves figured this crap out 10 years ago.

Hmm. Wouldn't the salt in the people ignite too?

...We have some kind of salt inside us, right?

At the end, they say he's willing to sell it to a company.

If it works, I can see an oil company buying it, and throwing it in a warehouse not unlike the end of Raiders....

Great, now saltwater is going to be three bucks a gallon too!

If I put saltwater in my car, won't it rust the crap out of it?

Ceramic tanks.