Flamencology
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"It's bulletproof! Unless you, like, y'know, fire at it."
Perpetual motion machines
- Thread starter MarkydeSad
- Start date
"It's bulletproof! Unless you, like, y'know, fire at it."
Perpetual motion is possible, but perpetual motion machines are not.
Perpetual motion machines require energy to be removable from the system to do 'work' without impacting the machine. They run forever and produce work. Things like an atom's electron motion, which is perpetual, does not generate work or provide extractable energy, so it is not a machine. If one could harvest the energy from this motion in an atom, the atom would not continue at the same energy state as it was before. Most atoms are in a ground state and have no extractable energy as there is no lower state possible, which further complicates the getting free energy thing. One could extract energy from an atom not in a ground state, but then the atom would move to a lower energy state, and eventually a ground state where no more energy could be extracted. So the perpetual motion of electrons does not make atoms perpetual motion machines.
The universe, although vast and containing an insane amount of energy, is not a perpetual motion machine. Entropy rules, even on the scale of things as big and energetic as the universe, and eventually the universe will exhaust available free energy and 'stop'. So, although the scale might be billions of years, the universe has to follow the same laws as everything else.
Essentially, there is NO FREE LUNCH.
Perpetual motion machines require energy to be removable from the system to do 'work' without impacting the machine. They run forever and produce work. Things like an atom's electron motion, which is perpetual, does not generate work or provide extractable energy, so it is not a machine. If one could harvest the energy from this motion in an atom, the atom would not continue at the same energy state as it was before. Most atoms are in a ground state and have no extractable energy as there is no lower state possible, which further complicates the getting free energy thing. One could extract energy from an atom not in a ground state, but then the atom would move to a lower energy state, and eventually a ground state where no more energy could be extracted. So the perpetual motion of electrons does not make atoms perpetual motion machines.
The universe, although vast and containing an insane amount of energy, is not a perpetual motion machine. Entropy rules, even on the scale of things as big and energetic as the universe, and eventually the universe will exhaust available free energy and 'stop'. So, although the scale might be billions of years, the universe has to follow the same laws as everything else.
Essentially, there is NO FREE LUNCH.
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Fumbles
Communist Chocolate Hellhole
Bob411
thrumming with potential
I understand a perpetual motion machine is really, really, really unlikely but, I still have a problem with laws. I just think of classrooms times thousands, of students being taught, this is how it is / no need to look any further. Nobody asking what if. 500 years ago, everybody thought the world was flat.
BEACHBUM
Margarine Advocate
Maybe, maybe not. If we view the Universe as an isolated entity that has a beginning and an end that can be extrapolated from that then you are correct. However, that's a huge leap of faith considering that the Big Bang may well have been only one of an endless number of Big Bangs that are common cosmological events that occur over and over within an eternal and infinite Universe that had no beginning and has no end. What we still don't know is what exists outside the observable Universe and whether our known Universe is part of that, separate from it, finite or infinite. We know what we know because of what we can see from where we're standing. If in fact the Universe does turn out to be infinite then we've got a whole lot more looking to do and theories to conjure.
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Sure, but even in the cyclical models of many big bangs, the math doesn't ignore entropic run down, it simply transfers it to beyond the observable by evoking dark energy, brane spring theory, gravitational energy, or some unknown source of energy. Of course, it could very well be how the universe works, however, it doesn't violate any of the laws of thermodynamics and therefore doesn't constitute a perpetual motion machine. Energy still goes in for the contraction phase, even if one gets that energy from a theoretical source, and entropy still increases with each cycle...like a ball that bounces less high every time it hits the ground. One can make the problem infinitely complex and add variables beyond knowing to write off the entropy and put energy in from mysterious sources, but things then move from science to science fiction. In any model, it isn't a perpetual motion machine, as one doesn't extract energy from it, and in fact it requires energy input to operate. When I read these things I think that I am very glad I am not a cosmologist. Trying to know the unknowable and all that.
Oh, and please don't take my discussion as argumentative or angry. I know sometimes it sounds that way, and that isn't my intent at all. I thought we were having a perfectly nice conversation.
Oh, and please don't take my discussion as argumentative or angry. I know sometimes it sounds that way, and that isn't my intent at all. I thought we were having a perfectly nice conversation.
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BEACHBUM
Margarine Advocate
No offense taken. Didn't even cross my mind. I don't want to argue either because as far as the known and accepted laws of physics go you are 100% correct in all you say. My point is that all of those laws may well apply only to certain circumstances or sectors of what might be an eternal Universe. For all we know there are other physics yet unknown that exist throughout the proposed infinite Universe that, on a larger scale may modify, utilize and or counteract the physics we do know. My common sense (and that's all it is) leap of faith is that if the Universe is indeed infinite then all that constitutes it including its energy in some manner is infinite and perpetual as well.
Edit: And yes, there is science fiction here but then isn't science just philosophy proven?
Edit: And yes, there is science fiction here but then isn't science just philosophy proven?
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Elias Graves
Common misfit
All you need is a bicycle and a really big hill.
