Poll: Perpetual Motion. Will we obtain this technology in this century?

[Zacharine]

I'd like to point out, if I could, that laws are based on observation, though. It is within the realm of possibility that our powers of observation are as yet imperfect, and perhaps we're missing something.

But not on this scale. If we are missing something, then it is on the quantum level (and going to Plack lenght stuff allows for all kinds of weirdness). Because we know the speed of an object has no effect on entropy.

So yes, perhaps we missed something - like we possibly missed the apples that fall upwards or the lead that spontaneously transforms into gold. That is the scale of error we are talking about when it comes down possibly finding a solution to actual perpetual motion machines.

Moreover, it's common practice to dismiss claims of perpetual motion out of hand, without even examining the claim.

Because anyone who claims perpetual motion is unequivocally wrong. Just like someone who claims they've found a chemical that turns lead into gold is known to be wrong. We do not need to examine the claims to know that perpetual motion cannot happen on macroscopic scale that we live in (where it would do any good), and thus it is known a priori that their claim has no merit on that front.

That's the practice that bothers me. Some devices behave oddly, and while they may not be true perpetual motion they may be a more efficient means of converting energy, and thus bear investigation.

Of course. This is always the case. There is always more to learn. But there is a gap as large as the Grand Canyon between a machine that behaves oddly, and a perpetual motion machine. Just like there is a similar gap between something going at relativistic speed and going faster than lightspeed, between merely high efficiency and perfect efficiency.

And anyone who has any knowledge of the issue and thus any competence to tell if a machine is behaving oddly or not, knows this distinction. And thus will never, ever, call it a perpetual motion machine. Rather they will the press/scientific community that 'Hey, this thing is behaving oddly! Perhaps we should investigate" rather than "Hey guys, I've invented a perpetual motion machine." The first statement is the result of an inquisitive, honest mind. The second a low-level hack who wishes to swindle people out of their money or has zero understanding of entropy.

 

[Zacharine]

Would a machine that keeps itself going for as long as the earth has gravity be considered a perpetual motion machine?
the earth has a lot of motion energy, we may be able to use some of that

the sun is a fairly abundant source, you could only ever consider the machine to be truly permanently stopped when the sun goes out.

also it is possible to avoid friction with magnetism

A perpetual motion machine, by definition, is a machine that requires no influx of energy from outside once it has been initiated and will continue function to infinity (presuming it never gets damaged).

A machine that will run three billion years without an outside source of energy would not be a perpetual motion machine - it still has a point in time where it would stop from lack of energy.

 

[ReverendJ]

Snippy snip snip snip

Well said, sir. I'll stop arguing a point I know to be false out of a spirit of fun.

See, I'm the sort who doesn't want to live in a world where unicorns exist; I want to live in a world where they CAN. If they were properly real, they'd be just another animal, and we'd have any number of mundane details about them (gestation time, etc). At times, I let this get the better of me, and I start attempting to piece together logical arguments for illogical ideas. However, in the future I'll steer clear of the most depressing edict in all of science.

Seriously... good show. I usually never cede.

 

[Housebroken Lunatic]

Completely impossible in this universe, never going to happen. There is no such thing as a 100% efficient system, energy will always be lost in one form or another.
Im surprised there are people who still believe perpetual motion is possible, or that it is possible to travel faster than the speed of light.

Main flaw in your argument, humans can't make this happen. Sure you're at least mostly right, but you're answering a different question: does perpetual motion exist at all?
The question here is can humans create perpetual motion. To which the answer is no.

Well technically you answered the same question. You didn't point out the impossibility for humans to create perpetual motion, you said:

"There is no such thing as a 100% efficient system, energy will always be lost in one form or another."

That's a statement that covers a lot more than mere human invention. A system doesn't have to have been invented, systems occur naturally and can be observed as well. I argued that the universe itself COULD (once again: guesswork since no one really knows if the universe will keep expanding or collapse unto itself after reaching a critical point) be a 100% efficient system IF it's gonna collapse, because all the mass/energy won't have anywhere to go. Not even heat would reasonably be able to escape a big crunch, but would be lumped together with all other forms of energy and matter.

Also, after reading some of your other posts, I'm going to point this out to you: mass can be converted into energy and vice versa. Example: when you heat something, the mass increases. "Mass is the total energy of all internal degrees of freedom"
If you're going to make arguments concerning complete conservation of mass and energy (and black holes) you need a lot of knowledge of quantum physics to actually be right

That's nothing you need to point out, my other posts haven't conveyed that I would be unaware that mass can be converted to energy and vice versa.

Comedian Bill Hicks put it pretty well: "Matter is just energy CONDENSED to a slow vibration" (not an entirely serious statement since it was a part of a joke, but it's pretty useful for illustrating the relationship between mass and energy and that their respective forms can and are converted into oneanother).

And as for being right about black holes, yes knowledge of quantum physics help, but one also has to acknowledge the fact that quantum physics isn't a science that hasn't recieved it's fair share of criticism (both well founded as well as badly founded criticism). And even the famous theory of Hawkings radiation from black holes is still just a theory which is primarily based on mathematical equations.

I've admitted to engaging in guesswork throughout my entire argument (since that is pretty much the only thing one CAN do), but the fact of the matter is that both quantum physisists as well as cosmologists have to engage in a lot of guesswork in their studies as well.

This doesn't mean that im trying to equate my own conditional guesswork to scientific theories, but I believe that in order to keep things in perspective it is important to recognize the shortcomings of current science as well as learning to distinguish between which principles and theories that are the most confirmed from the ones that are still pretty "fringe" and cutting-edge at the moment.

The true scientist have to have a sort of intellectual humility in order to be a decent one. The lack of intellectual humility is something you tend to find among the religious where they basically makes statements that "God" created everything.

 

[xdom125x]

Like many before me have stated, perpetual motion is in direct violation with the 2nd law of thermodynamics. So it is for all intents and purposes impossible.

 

[Zacharine]

Snippy snip snip snip

Well said, sir. I'll stop arguing a point I know to be false out of a spirit of fun.

See, I'm the sort who doesn't want to live in a world where unicorns exist; I want to live in a world where they CAN. If they were properly real, they'd be just another animal, and we'd have any number of mundane details about them (gestation time, etc). At times, I let this get the better of me, and I start attempting to piece together logical arguments for illogical ideas. However, in the future I'll steer clear of the most depressing edict in all of science.

Seriously... good show. I usually never cede.

That is the beauty of Science! There not a whole lot that is actually impossible, but those few things that are can be fairly easily shown to be such.

Besides, there is nothing wrong with constructiong logical arguments for illogical ideas as long as you know they are illogical ideas.

I do it myself all the time in the Theist Discussion Group

 

[Housebroken Lunatic]

I do it myself all the time in the Theist Discussion Group

Is that the kind of group where people try to explain that Santa Claus exists and that the's got some science-fiction technology to prevent him from burning to cinders in the attempt to deliver Christmas gifts to each and every child across the world in one single night?

 

[Vault101]

My brother gets thease weird Ideas somtimes when he is board, he got this crazy Idea that you could acheve perpetual motion with a pipe and some marbles, He's smarter than me and even I told him how it wouldnt work

 

[Another]

I Plead the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

Basically any machine will always loose energy is some form of either heat or friction. So you could have an advancement in efficiency so that if you were to, say use one liter of gasoline to start a motor, it would keep going for a long time, but could not be perpetual.

I actually modeled the energy loss in a series of motors for an Engineering analysis class, best efficiency was ~45% and it was a Stirling Engine. The gas engines I tested were on the level of about 17%, and diesel engine was about 22%. These all vary of course, from engine to engine. I was doing the tests on some friends cars and a stock Stirling Engine the university supplied me with. Can't remember most of the makes and models, but I know the diesel was an old school beetle.

 

[Sicram]

Unless we somehow can drain one of the 10 paralell dimensions (there's apparently 11 in total) we won't have anything that "creates" energy.

 

[Another]

I actually modeled the energy loss in a series of motors for an Engineering analysis class, best efficiency was ~45% and it was a Stirling Engine. The gas engines I tested were on the level of about 17%, and diesel engine was about 22%. These all vary of course, from engine to engine. I was doing the tests on some friends cars and a stock Stirling Engine the university supplied me with. Can't remember most of the makes and models, but I know the diesel was an old school beetle.

That sounds like it's on par with what's expected. I think more modern diesel engines can approach 35% efficiency at best, but petrol engines are limited to about 20%. The problem with Stirling engines is that there's never been all that much development on them, even though they've been around for something like 250 years. I think the Carnot cycle limits efficiency to somewhere on the order of 50% anyway, even with a hypothetical thermodynamically-reversible engine.

Your totally correct. That was in the paper that went along with the model I programmed. I did the Stirling engine and Carnot Cycle as baseline comparisons. Carnot being ideal, and Stirling being the current maximum.

 

[DPutna17]

Nope never not unless we can find away to get rid of friction. Clean fusion energy is the future not perpetual motion. Though even fusion energy won't be perfected for a long time.

 

[iseko]

impossible. The most efficient way of converting one energy source into another is in the human cell. Making ATP from glucose. And that's only about 47% efficient.

The very notion of perpetual motion is impossible. Any physicist can tell you that. It's not about finding a way to make it work. Loss of useable energy to entropy is unavoidable.

 

[Zacharine]

impossible. The most efficient way of converting one energy source into another is in the human cell. Making ATP from glucose. And that's only about 47% efficient.

The very notion of perpetual motion is impossible. Any physicist can tell you that. It's not about finding a way to make it work. Loss of useable energy to entropy is unavoidable.

Electrical engines convert electricity into mechanical energy at roughly 90% efficiency, give or take a few percent units based on design and manufacturer.

But those are pretty much as optimized as they can be. There isn't anything blatant left to improve.

 

[Zacharine]

I do it myself all the time in the Theist Discussion Group

Is that the kind of group where people try to explain that Santa Claus exists and that the's got some science-fiction technology to prevent him from burning to cinders in the attempt to deliver Christmas gifts to each and every child across the world in one single night?

Not quite, but almost

We discuss things like souls, afterlife, reincarnation, the universe, metaphysics and all in between. I'm one of the few non-believers of any kind over there

 

[Steve Fidler]

Completely impossible in this universe, never going to happen. There is no such thing as a 100% efficient system, energy will always be lost in one form or another.
Im surprised there are people who still believe perpetual motion is possible, or that it is possible to travel faster than the speed of light.

Consider that, also, for Perpetual Motion to be useful it would have to output higher than 100% efficiency.

 

[chuketek]

I always have a small head slapping moment whenever I see these sorts of threads, but more or less all the good arguements have already been made.
So I thought I'd contribute this article by the late great Isaac Asimov to counter the arguement that because we upgrade our understanding of the universe over time our current understanding of it is obviously wrong.
Isaac Asimov - The Relativity of Wrong [http://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm]

Also my 2 cents on the matter:
Free Energy: I work in the field of particle physics, we routinely destroy energy to create matter and vice versa and there are some theories on how it may be possible to create matter without creating the corresponding amount of antimatter. This was previously thought to be impossible but with a sufficienctly high energy density it may actually happen.
So it may be possible (if incredibly unlikely) that someone in the far future unearths a process which bypasses "normal" physical laws to create energy/mass from nothing. The problem is that such a process would certainly require incredible energy densities to achieve. Whilst in the distant future it may be feasible to construct a machine to take advantage of this, I can guarantee you that it is not possible to whip up such a device out of spare parts and/or magnets.

Magnetic Motors: Magnetic motors make no sense whatsoever. The misunderstanding most people have about magnets is that magnets attract along their field lines, not true, they attract or repel along the GRADIENT of their field lines. That is to say that the field lines need to be dispersing or converging to attract or repel, i.e. the magnetic field strength gets weaker or stronger. So in order to make something move you need to have the magnetic field get stronger or weaker the more you move in a direction. To make something move in a closed loop then you would need a magnetic field which gets continuously stronger or weaker the more you go around. You can't do that with a static field because you need to go back to your starting point. Electric motors work by moving the field strength in a wave, but doing this uses energy.
If you want to convince yourself of the field lines thing try getting a tubular solenoid and putting a magnet in it. If magnets simply repel along field lines then if you put the magnet in one end of the solenoid is should travel along the field lines and shoot out the other side. In reality it is attracted to or repeled from (depending on which way round you have it) the point of highest magnetic field density at the center of the solenoid. It'll oscilate around that point until it stops due to air resistance. You can make a coil gun by turning off the solenoid as the magnet passes the central point, but altering magnetic fields takes energy, it isn't free.

Entropy: It may eventually be possible to reverse entropy somehow, I certainly hope it is! (Another great Asimov essay [http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html]). But this isn't really free energy, it's just the collection of ambient heat. It would be a great way of collecting energy and would be perpetual motion, but it's not *making* energy. Plus it'd have the same problems as mentioned above for Free Energy.

 

[9Darksoul6]

The problem with the the concept of perpetual motion is that it's not just impossible on a physical level (like time travel) which would only reflect our present understanding and/or ignorance of the universe (I don't know, maybe we will be able to time travel someday: who am I to comment on such things?), but also on a logical level.
Even the most basic level of knowledge on energy/thermodynamics will make you see how flawed and paradoxal the ideia of perpetual motion is.