YouTube and the Modern Mad Scientist (hackaday.com) 223
szczys writes: Making change for $1.00 and getting $1.10 back. That's the premise of overunity, free energy, and perpetual motion experiments. Using money as the the analogy is fitting because these concepts are heavily aligned with scams trying to land a payday for their "research". But there is another branch of people working on them: tinkerers who believe they can actually solve the problem. Laws of thermodynamics say otherwise, but this isn't necessarily wasted time. Other breakthroughs are waiting to be discovered as these mad scientists try to remove all efficiency losses from their doomed systems. YouTube can be an interesting place to look for ideas on low-friction, high efficiency fabrication.
Accusation through misunderstanding (Score:5, Funny)
It may be that they're not intending to "break the laws" of physics at all, but discover/uncover new ones. It may be that "overunity" sucks energy out of some sort of sub-space field (intentionally borrowing from sci-fi, calm down) that we haven't yet discovered. It seems that the pundits are the source of most of the perpetual-motion misconceptions, rather than the tinkerers themselves.
They aren't trying to create "free energy" in the physics domain. They're trying to create "free energy" in the economics domain; if we can suck energy out of dimension X, then until we're bombed by the inhabitants of that realm it will appear as (economically) "free."
They're talking about "free as in beer" not "free as in freedom."
Re:Accusation through misunderstanding (Score:5, Interesting)
I came here to post the same thing... except that instead of sub-space sci-fi... I was going with mother nature... like your compass spinning when standing at magnetic north, I suspect they will stumble upon a method of extracting a minute amount of energy from the environment, and due to their lack of scientific understanding they will attribute it to perpetual motion rather than simple energy balance accounting. Then some scientist will come along and explain it in a few minutes and the "inventor" will be all sad because science crapped on their idea.
The bottom line is they spend years tinkering with an idea, that a scientist armed with a little math and chemistry can debunk in a matter of minutes... leaving the rest of the time to do real science.
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I suspect they will stumble upon a method of extracting a minute amount of energy from the environment, and due to their lack of scientific understanding they will attribute it to perpetual motion rather than simple energy balance accounting.
IMO it is equally likely that they will in fact have good ideas about where the energy comes from, but media pundits will invent a fake claim of perpetual motion to slander them. I mean, that is where things already are, they'd only have to keep saying the same things.
There was actually a propulsion device in that category tested by NASA recently. The inventor is probably wrong about the mechanism, but a valid hypothesis led to the (working) device. Then the media got started with it, and if you ask a rando
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I doubt the media can make it any worse than the explanations already offered by the perpmo crowd. If they had an actual scientific understanding of what was happening and allowed their work to be peer reviewed, then they would be.... wait for it... scientists.
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Not it was snake oil because "Nother's theorem".
Reactionless thrust means that momentum is not conserved and that means the physical laws are not uniform. The latter is a HUGE claim and so far all they have are some thrusts well within experimental error to justify what would be the result of the century.
Re:Accusation through misunderstanding (Score:5, Insightful)
Then some scientist will come along and explain it in a few minutes and the "inventor" will immediately claim that the scientist is working for Big Government or Big Oil or Big Solar or Big Pharma, or that the scientist is in league with aliens, or that the scientist is an alien in human form trying to prevent them from discovering the secret that makes UFOs fly. They will keep the same debunked machine going around and around in the conspiracy market for thirty or forty years, speak at conferences, and take any skepticism as proof that their alien hypothesis is right.
There, fixed that for you.
Re:Accusation through misunderstanding (Score:5, Insightful)
So ... what, we should watch every crank and snake oil salesman to see if they've uncovered any new physical laws?
No thanks, sounds like a colossal waste of time.
I mean, go ahead, try to find these new laws or watch these videos. But don't expect the rest of the world to treat it as anything credible.
Life is too short to listen to every crackpot theory as if it deserves it.
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So ... what, we should watch every crank and snake oil salesman to see if they've uncovered any new physical laws?
The most generous I can be is that someone may solve a useful problem in a novel way, while trying to do something else. Possibly elaborating the long list of potential and kinetic energy sources that exist in our environment that appear "free".
A common example of watches that never need batteries or winding. Yes, we know these aren't being powered by overunity/zeropoint black magic, but, watc
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A common example of watches that never need batteries or winding. Yes, we know these aren't being powered by overunity/zeropoint black magic, but, watches that don't need winding under generally useful scenarios... I'll take it.
So did I. The watch cost me less than 20 bucks, and all I have to do is replace the battery every five years or so. Beats the heck out of winding it every day. Magic! er, Science!
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I'm as healthy as a loon, anyways. Real loons can't type, though. What health problems do you have that you're worried about my health? How special a snowflake do you have to be to diagnose illness via proximity to electrons that were in proximity to my electrons?
If somebody makes an personal, insulting attack on some random unfortunate on youtube, and I had a cough, would that make it less lame? How about less stupid?
What I want to know is, why is this group of talking apes so upset that that other group o
Re:Accusation through misunderstanding (Score:5, Insightful)
This is along the lines of:
"If I keep tossing this coin, eventually it will disappear into thin air and magically turn into a unicorn".
Scientifically speaking, there's virtually no difference, in fact. There's experimentation, there's pushing for new science, and then there's just bollocks.
It doesn't work like that. You find something unusual ("Hey, this part of the air is slightly warmer than expected... I wonder if...") and investigate the cause, or you hypothesise more accurate explanations of what we can observe and try to predict something entirely new (which you can then confirm by a single good experiment).
You don't just insist that flipping enough coins will make magic happen which will cause enough anomalies that will break existing laws that have held through countless billions of experiments consistently.
You are literally suggesting discovering new science by brute force, in an infinite-sized universe, with infinite levels of precision available.
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Yes but its not brute force. Some of these things are orthogonal to each other. You can not understand magnetism and thermodynamics to the point that you think your crazy idea works, yet still not reject all of modern physics well enough to contribute to other fields in your mad quest.
I was going to make up a fake example....but I realize I have one.
A while back I had a passing interest in water torches. What is a water torch? It is an oxy-hydrogen torch which uses electrical current to produce its input ga
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However, they really have produced a lot of good info....in spite of their own stupidity.
So its not brute fore, because the problems they are solving are real, its just the problem they are trying so solve isn't....which means.... they will never stop solving problems trying to solve it....
Interestingly, the same is true of science.
Re:Accusation through misunderstanding (Score:5, Interesting)
One of my favorite sci-fi short stories had a similar premise. Some guy discovers a way to make an inter-dimensional portal. No one knows where the other end is, but it's blazing hot on the other side. Everyone starts building simple heat engines to harvest the energy. And all is well until .... ... the Devil sues the guy. Heat was being drained from Hell and was predicted to cause widespread problems. Epistemological (as opposed to ecological) disaster of biblical proportions.
Funny stuff.
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LOL if you remember the name, let me know. It sounds very familiar, but I can't place it.
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I would also be interested to know the title. You would probably enjoy a similar story by Asimov, "The Gods Themselves".
ROT13 semi-spoiler:
Gur uhznaf bcra n cbegny gb n havirefr jurer fhongbzvp sbeprf ner qvssrerag naq gurl vzcbeg znggre juvpu fybjyl nqwhfgf gb "bhe" ynjf naq eryrnfr raretl.
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It's worth pointing out that "conservation of energy" is not a property of the universe we inhabit. Sure, at human-tinkering scale it is, and these guys won't achieve over-unity, but in the greater scheme of things: energy is not conserved in general relativity.
Conservation of energy is mathematically equivalent to "current age of the universe is not an input to the laws of motion" (time intervals are unrelated). It doesn't work out that way in GR, mostly because the idea of "current age" doesn't apply.
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We don't even know if the Universe is a closed system, and the "Big Bang" is pure hypothesis since nobody has done an experiment to make sure that photons look the way we expect after 10 billion years of travel. Subtle effects we couldn't detect on Earth because of local noise might easily alter the implications of that sort of work. It is largely speculative, because it represents the edge-data of the sensors. Edge data from every type of sensor is low quality. If you really honestly apply the scientific m
Re:Accusation through misunderstanding (Score:5, Insightful)
It's worth pointing out that "conservation of energy" is not a property of the universe we inhabit. Sure, at human-tinkering scale it is, and these guys won't achieve over-unity, but in the greater scheme of things: energy is not conserved in general relativity.
Incorrect. Macroscopically, and in general relativity energy is conserved. In quantum mechanics it's still conserved on average, but not conserved for specific cases which then average out in the long term or over multiple measurements/outcomes. It is a fundamental concept and not only has never been shown incorrect, but is a required underlying concept for all of physics.
Conservation of energy is mathematically equivalent to "current age of the universe is not an input to the laws of motion" (time intervals are unrelated). It doesn't work out that way in GR, mostly because the idea of "current age" doesn't apply.
Relativity is odd that way. The mass of an object depends on it's total potential energy (a compressed spring is heavier). That concept of potential energy having some absolute total value, not just relative values to an arbitrary "floor", doesn't exist in "normal" physics. All that matters is potential difference (aka "force"). That change makes most of our intuitions, heck most of the stuff engineering is built on, wrong.
There is a floor in relativity, and that is in the reference frame at rest with respect to the object. The relativity aspect is that you could imagine a moving reference frame which only adds to the energy. I'm not sure what you are trying to say here. Suffice to say that if the underlying principles of physics and engineering were significantly wrong in everyday energy levels and scale, even at 15 decimal places, we wouldn't have gps or any number of practical functioning devices that show - yes indeed it is correct. We all know physics is wrong, but only at energy levels and scales that don't apply to humans.
Re:Accusation through misunderstanding (Score:5, Informative)
Not only is energy not conserved, but it keeps increasing as our universe full of dark energy keeps expanding.
This energy could be mined:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1995ApJ...446...63H
Again incorrect. When you total all energy in the universe, including that from gravitational fields it is likely zero [wikipedia.org]. It has always been zero, and will continue to be zero. Even if you were to somehow harvest dark energy (which btw only is a meaningful amount when you talk about millions of light years) you would essentially be bringing two masses together and is exploiting gravitational potential energy.
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Well it goes back to the ultimate question, if mass/energy/momentum is conserved, where did it come from in the first place? If creation of energy is forbidden, then creation itself is also forbidden, therefore there must be a way to create energy.
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And if they discover something that might lead to a new electrical generator, it will take 30 years to get to market and be tightly controlled by industry. You've in no way convinced me that the hobbyists are wasting their time. They have completely different goals than the people at the LHC.
Calling them monkeys just makes them sound cute. In Asian art, the monkey is often a symbol of fighting for the moral good. Like the monkey and the tiger, they have different goals. The monkey doesn't need to be philoso
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You're just handwaving, you don't actually have a calculation of something where there would be a discrepancy. If you had that, we could check it right now.
And if it turns out that the people at LHC are not even trying to build a home-scale electrical generation device, then it would be highly unlikely that they're spending their days checking the work of tinkerers. ;)
If you don't know, you don't know. If you didn't know, and said you did, that is a lie. You claim that these scientists are checking somethin
Re:Accusation through misunderstanding (Score:4, Insightful)
What distinguishes science and pseudoscience is the scientific method.
The quack inventors aren't using science to propose a new idea like a sub-space field, then creating a test to confirm it. They are usually building something that science can already explain perfectly, then hand-waving away the difficult bits, and drawing an unsupported conclusion. By contrast, when someone asks a question, writes a theory, then builds a device to test that theory -- that's not a quack, that's a scientist.
Example: The EM drive. While everyone was skeptical, it was real scenc. It dealt with an area of physics that there wasn't 100% agreement on, there was a written formula, and it was testable.
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Naw, Newton for example didn't use the "scientific method." Back then "peer review" meant it was like youtube; there was no gatekeeper, the Natural Philosophers (there were not yet scientists or a scientific method) like Newton would read the things other people actually said, and they would be weighed by responding with their own comments.
If you want science to be based on the scientific method, you'll have to throw away the whole framework we have now.
And in many ways, what Newton was doing was better tha
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Some of Newton's work on alchemy does belong in the pseudoscience bin.
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No, if you're selectively labeling failed experiments that way you've already fallen off the wagon.
That many of his experiments were successful proves that he was using some sort of process with non-zero potential. If you thought the failed experiments were pseudoscience, you'd be shocked at the actual scientific process.
Failed experiments are not less science-y than successful experiments. And in modern times, lead has been converted successfully into gold. Newton redeemed!
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I like the allegorical chemical photography example. "Photography is a hoax. You're doing some trick there in the dark where we can't see it. Whenever we try to develop your so-called photgraphs with the lights on so we can see what's really happening, the experiment fails."
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It may be that "overunity" sucks energy out of some sort of sub-space field (intentionally borrowing from sci-fi, calm down) that we haven't yet discovered.
We'll do that, and find that the process speeds along the Heat Death of the Universe, and that suddenly half of our Senators find something new to deny.
On the upside, we'll finally be able to pass meaningful legislation on Climate Change.
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Yeah, well. If we want "free as in beer" energy, I can give you specifics that work, and do something awful like you describe.
Just set up the electromagnet on a planetary scale, and suck electricity out of the Earth's motion. Sure, it will eventually slow the planet and ruin our orbit, but I won't live that long. If it works on a Prius, it will work on Spaceship Earth.
Or if that sounds like too big an engineering project, we could just tap into oceanic convection at the bottlenecks and use the oceans for hy
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Not sure why you were modded funny.
Most of the over unity devices claim the extra energy comes from the 'ether', ie some unnamed, undiscovered energy force that their special energy device can harness. A lot of great science was by accident or tinkerers. Some will be scam artists, some mentally ill, but most are probably just drinking their own cool aid; but I'm ok with that, because one day one of them might discover the real deal.
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If you read up on your Feynman, the "ether" is actually the closest to what quantum theory describes. According to that (the consensus theory), what we think of as "mass" is more like a bubble; like a negative pressure in an invisible medium. Different words than ether are used for historical reasons, but Feynman thought it was really funny the way people use the words.
The book Richard Feynman: A Life in Science explains it and gives the exact citations.
not break'n the law (Score:2)
This is not a closed system (Score:2)
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Any evidence for that ? (Score:2)
Once a PPM has been built we can discuss the merit of your statement. Until then I think it is safe to say that ppm are only a nice idea but impossible with the known evidenced law of physic.
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I just finished actually reading the article, (I thought it would be acceptable in this case since it is hackaday) and I realized more clearly the mistaken accusation they're hurtling.
The energy is presumed to be harvested from the physical magnets in most cases. You can indeed harvest energy in that way, weakening the magnet as you extract energy. If this is economically useful or not depends on very specific non-physics-violating math involving not only the devices themselves but also various supply chain
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Sure, but the examples given in this article aren't attempting to do that. Discovering a new and unknown source of potential energy would require basic physics research, not tinkering with magnets, something that is well understood to not be a source of free energy.
I'm one of these guys... (Score:5, Interesting)
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If you're just talking about highly efficient machines, we already know what the limits are to a large extent. A heat engine can never exceed the Carnot limit, for instance. All machines are entropy limited.
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we've come a damn long way, but to discount the people who came before, and gave everything names, isolated elements for the first time, and found out that this weird yellow sub
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Sure, you can build machines that store energy and release it slowly - or store it slowly and release it rapidly - or convert energy from one form to another. But the difference between that and a machine that'll run "perpetually" is more definitely a black and white distinction. The former is merely some kind of clever system - possibly interesting, possibly beautiful, possibly useful. But the latter would shatter the laws of physics and require a radical re-think of everything we think we know about th
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I lost the better part of an afternoon watching videos on mechanical storage of energy. It was kind of amazing some of the contraptions people had built that would raise weights or wind a collection of springs which would spin a generator as they wound down.
I seem to recall even seeing something being done on a larger scale involving old railcars filled with rocks at some old mine site. They tow empty rail cars a mile up a hill and fill them with rocks at the top and when they need energy they have some m
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I'm sure they're all hugely inefficient relative to batteries...
Being hugely (astonishingly) inefficient relative to batteries seems to be correct:
Why not just use the gravitational potential energy of a really heavy weight as a battery? [quora.com]
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I guess I'm enough of a dreamer not to be swayed by those answers.
Yes, lifting a single weight a zillion miles is impractical, which is why I think a clockwork kind of mechanism that lifted many weights a lesser distance makes more sense, like lifting two ton concrete slabs 50 feet, but hundreds of them. The power requirements of lifting the individual weights is less, allowing smaller amounts of excess capacity to be put to useful storage work as opposed to needing the entire output of the generation capa
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OK, doing some basic (likely wrong) math:
Wolfram Alpha says a 10 ton mass @ 30 meters has a potential energy of 741 watt-hours.
A megawatt-hour of electricity at 80% mechanical efficiency would require 1,620 masses to be lowered. If each mass required 10 square feet, that's 16,200 square feet of surface area. Call it 20,000 to include the spatial overhead of the rest of the system.
It's a lot of individual masses, but not a lot of area. Maybe it would make sense to make the masses larger to reduce the cou
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A lot of power companies use pumped storage. Pump water up a hill with excess power, run it back down when demand is high.
Energy bank (Score:2)
Invest your energy in my energy bank, and I'll give you 1% return yearly. You get more Joules out than you put in!
Somethin' from nothin' (Score:4, Funny)
Making change for $1.00 and getting $1.10 back. That's the premise of overunity, free energy, and perpetual motion experiments.
And any Republican tax plan: lower taxes == more revenue. [ No wonder they hate science and math. :-) ]
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Wow. You don't understand economics at all, do you?
Where do taxes come from? the Real Economy (outside the Government).
Every dollar taken out of the productive Real Economy and put into unproductive and wasteful Government Economy means there is less dollar for investment and growing the economy. Which means, in the long term, less economic growth and a lower tax haul.
Now , it is obvious that if you lower taxes too much you get less Government Revenue (as if this was a bad thing - when the State ste
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I read Atlas Shrugged, and I agreed with it when I was a teenager. When I grew up, I realized how silly it all was. As far as I know, no other writer calls taxes, "stealing", because they're not. It's simplistic, lazy thinking, and has been refuted countless times by countless people. I have no interest in re-hashing the same obvious arguments as to how taxes are not "stealing".
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Now , it is obvious that if you lower taxes too much you get less Government Revenue (as if this was a bad thing - when the State steals money from the industrious and innovative). Also, if you raise taxes too much it also strangles the economy too, resulting in lower economic growth which means lower tax take in the long term.
You'd think so, but check the US deficit and national debt during Republican vs Democratic terms and you'll see this isn't (necessarily) true. Our economy, debt and deficit have fared worse under Republican terms than Democratic. Perhaps this was a result of the Goldilocks effect you describe, maybe not. In any case, the Republicans want to substantially lower taxes on the Rich in the mistaken belief that they will reinvest that money into the economy, by hiring and expanding, when history and studies have
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I don't generally disagree with any of your points. However, before you idolize the Tea Party - or those that support them - too much, you might want to read The Truth About the Tea Party. [rollingstone.com] There's a lot of financial ignorance and hypocrisy lurking there... [short excerpt follows]
As Palin launches into her Ronald Reagan impression — "Government's not the solution! Government's the problem!" — the person sitting next to me leans over and explains.
"The scooters are because of Medicare," he whispers helpfully. "They have these commercials down here: 'You won't even have to pay for your scooter! Medicare will pay!' Practically everyone in Kentucky has one."
A hall full of elderly white people in Medicare-paid scooters, railing against government spending and imagining themselves revolutionaries as they cheer on the vice-presidential puppet hand-picked by the GOP establishment. If there exists a better snapshot of everything the Tea Party represents, I can't imagine it.
After Palin wraps up, I race to the parking lot in search of departing Medicare-motor-scooter conservatives. I come upon an elderly couple, Janice and David Wheelock, who are fairly itching to share their views.
"I'm anti-spending and anti-government," crows David, as scooter-bound Janice looks on. "The welfare state is out of control."
"OK," I say. "And what do you do for a living?"
"Me?" he says proudly. "Oh, I'm a property appraiser. Have been my whole life."
I frown. "Are either of you on Medicare?"
Silence: Then Janice, a nice enough woman, it seems, slowly raises her hand, offering a faint smile, as if to say, You got me!
"Let me get this straight," I say to David. "You've been picking up a check from the government for decades, as a tax assessor, and your wife is on Medicare. How can you complain about the welfare state?"
"Well," he says, "there's a lot of people on welfare who don't deserve it. Too many people are living off the government."
"But," I protest, "you live off the government. And have been your whole life!"
"Yeah," he says, "but I don't make very much."
Cheers.
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"Rolling Stone" ? you mean the Far Left rag that lionized the Tsarnaev's? *that* is your argument for wanting Big Government, financial bankruptcy and subsequent social collapse? all so you can avoid the economic FACT that decreasing taxes to around 23% produces a higher long-term tax take? wow, just wow.
No, obtuse guy I'm not arguing that. Simply pointing out that the Tea Party isn't all you think it is. Read *this* article, the interviews and reporting are sound. So, wow just wow, your fucking self. As far as your 23%, the effective tax rate is already less than then in the US for many (most?) individuals and most corporations pay *way* less than the official rate (if they pay any taxes at all).
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(a) My initial statement was meant as more of a joke - and was modded as such. (b) Republicans assume that lowering taxes - usually and mainly on the rich - stimulates the economy as those "job creators" reinvest that money back into the economy. History and studies have shown that not to be the case. Reducing taxes on the rich, just makes them richer. The way Republicans like to reduce taxes shifts the burden to the middle-class, who then end up paying for Government services used by not only the poor, bu
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Every dollar taken out of the productive Real Economy and put into unproductive and wasteful Government Economy means there is less dollar for investment and growing the economy.
You managed to beg the question twice in a single sentence. Impressive!
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It's not actually that hard to understand. 20% of a bigger number is better than 25% of a smaller one. (Or one that goes overseas to pay the 20% instead of staying here.)
Pretty sure "voodoo economics" has been well debunked by now, unless you're a Republican, who doesn't understand history and math.
They still play with magnets and coils because (Score:2)
they have yet to discover the power of monatomic gold! Once they do they will set aside their toys...
/. editors know less science than mad scientists (Score:4, Insightful)
The laws of thermodynamics only say: a heat engine can not be a 'perpetum mobile'.
Other perpetium mobiles might be possible, or not, who cares. They are certainly not covered by the laws of thermodynamics. Oh, you mean the law of energy conservation? Unfortunately, that is an universal law and strictly speaking not a law of thermodynamics (those guys have their own variation of it, as in 'the sum of all energies in a closed system is constant' etc.)
Getting boring meanwhile that 99% of all posts and articles containing the magic words 'thermodynamics' are either simply wrong or grossly misleading.
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Hmmm - Wikipedia has an article entitled "Laws of thermodynamics" and it says:
"First law of thermodynamics: When energy passes, as work, as heat, or with matter,
into or out from a system, its internal energy changes in accord with the law of
conservation of energy. Equivalently, perpetual motion machines of the first kind
are impossible."
"Second law of thermodynamics: In a natural thermodynamic process, the sum of
Re: /. editors know less science than mad scientis (Score:5, Interesting)
OK - so how about http://www.genchem.net/thermo/... [genchem.net] or http://www.physlink.com/Educat... [physlink.com] or https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k... [nasa.gov]
None of them are talking only about heat engines - they carefully point out that historically, thermodynamics was all about steam engines. But nowadays, it's realized that the laws are far more universal than that.
Not one of them talks about "the triple of volume, pressure and temperature" - that stuff is a tiny, tiny subset of what modern thermodynamics covers. You're still back in the Victorian era of steam engines.
Anyway - I'm done arguing with you. I guess that 99% of other people here agree with me.
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They are certainly not covered by the laws of thermodynamics.
The entire universe is covered by the laws of thermodynamics, therefore so are all things in it.
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No ... the only thing you can rightful say is: in the universe are plenty of spots and situations where the laws of thermodynamics is relevant.
Exaggerating this to 'the enter universe is covered' is nonsense.
The only thing you could argue (and likely would be wrong) is: the whole universe is a closed system, the total energy in the universe is constant (and finite?).
However that has nothing to do with topic, or has it?
YouTube "science" (Score:2)
About a year ago, I watched 100 randomly chosen "Science Demo" videos on YouTube.
80% of them were faked, misleading or failed to demonstrate some kind of wild claim.
Of the remaining 20% about half did a "Oooohhh! Cooooool!" kind of a demo - but didn't say what was going on.
So, honestly - you have about a one in ten chance of learning some actual science by watching YouTube videos - and about an 80% chance of being mislead by idiots. This is even worse odds than watching Fox News!
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So, honestly - you have about a one in ten chance of learning some actual science by watching YouTube videos - and about an 80% chance of being mislead by idiots.
While I appreciate your study, I feel your math, like the math of these videos, may be flawed...
Magnets (Score:2)
How to they fucking work?
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Same way babby is made.
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Much like the tides. Tides go in, tides go out, how does it work, nobody know.s. At least according to papa bear.
Also gyroscopes (Score:2)
For extra nuttiness, read the comments under any video on gyroscopes.
Thermodynamics and time (Score:4, Interesting)
Theoretically, everything will balance eventually. Eventually can be a really long time, but it's usually a really short time.
Show me HOW, kthanks. Perhaps I'd even pay a LOT (Score:2)
Are there ANY videos like that on YouTube? No, there's not (please, please d
"...low-friction, high efficiency fabrication" (Score:2)
I don't look on YouTube for this. I can get as much of it as I want from any of the political debates.
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Bravo. And me without mod points. Posting AC just in case more arrive.
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Or setting out to post AC and failing, which I seem to be developing as a minor specialty. Turns out I'd already posted in the thread anyhow, so nothing lost but a bit of dignity.
The sum total of energy in the universe is zero (Score:2)
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Lots-o-views (Score:2)
"Awesome builds", maybe... (Score:2)
...but no actual results. The number of videos with home hackers attempting to build an overunity device is simply staggering to me.
"laws" (Score:2)
Some "laws" of physics are mathematical in nature; that is, they are logically true, like the laws of arithmetic.
Some "laws" of physics are experimentally verified; that is, you can run experiments and observe the results directly, like inverse square laws at macroscopic scales.
The "laws of thermodynamics" aren't either of those; they are instead a statement about the non-existence of certain physical effects. As such, they are the weakest of the three kinds of laws
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Some "laws" of physics are mathematical in nature; that is, they are logically true, like the laws of arithmetic.
Some "laws" of physics are experimentally verified; that is, you can run experiments and observe the results directly, like inverse square laws at macroscopic scales.
The "laws of thermodynamics" aren't either of those; they are instead a statement about the non-existence of certain physical effects. As such, they are the weakest of the three kinds of laws. It would probably be better to call them "the conjectures of thermodynamics". In principle, there might by physical effects that allow you to circumvent those "laws".
Bollocks. The laws of thermodynamics can be shown to be statistically true and hold for all real world cases using nothing but the standard model and statistics. Further it has been rigorously tested for over a hundred years and not only has successfully predicted results but not once has been shown to be incorrect on macroscopic scales nor exploitable for free energy in any way on microscopic scales. In fact it can and has been shown that any attempt to circumvent the statical process requires more ener
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Within classical physics or standard quantum mechanics and finite systems, that's mostly true. Even there, it's not actually a law, because over very long time scales, you do get spontaneous entropy decreases, so those "laws" are simply statements about what you are likely to see, not what you are guaranteed to see.
We don't know whether it's true for black
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DREADCO FTW! (Score:2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
For fake perpetual motion machines, accept no substitutes!
Creating $1 and expecting $1.10 back ? (Score:2)
Like the basic business model of a bank ?
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look at one free energy video and they will top the suggested video for you for months.
Just watch more soft p0rn and kittens, those are more popular than snake oil and so can displace it.
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On the upside, some of them are mildly amusing. In a pathetic sort of way. I have a theory that the people making some of these are trying to out absurd one another or as a personal inside joke...
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This is slashdot not reddit, failboat, or twatter. We expect you to know about and use private browsing, or at least clear cookies on occasion.
Re: Wat (Score:2, Insightful)
Obligatory Mark Twain quote: "It's better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt."
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Yeah, the impracticality of a permanent moon-base also meant that the Space Race was a complete waste of time
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In a properly controlled environment near perpetual macroscopic motion is achievable (Simple - orbit two rocks around them selves in space away from other gravitational disturbances), but obviously you can't pull power from nowhere on a statistically averaged and continuous basis.