The reader may find this document provocative. It is intended to be provocative.
It's often good to begin by examining basic assumptions. Many people talk
about energy, but only a few can explain clearly how the term "energy" is
defined in physics. Ask a non-scientist, or even a technician "What is energy?".
That person may point to a wall socket and say: "Energy is the stuff that
comes out there."
This isn't a useful answer because it describes how energy is experienced,
but not what energy is. If you put the same question to an
electrical engineer you will get a response resulting from pavlovian
conditioning: "P is I times V". This answer isn't much better than the previous
answer. The engineer gave you a definition for energy, but didn't explain
what energy is. Ask physicists about electrons, and you will learn
that they sometimes behave as particles, sometimes as waves, depending on
the method of measurement. This sounds fishy. You have learned how electrons
behave but you are not satisfied, for you haven't learned what they
are. The physicist may offer the fact that according to Einstein's
famous formula, the electron has an energy of 510983 electron volts. How
many? One electron? You may find that none of this is very helpful.
But "WHAT IS ENERGY?" you insist asking. The more you ask, the more answers
you get, all seemingly different. Eventually you learn that all answers give
descriptions of how energy can be transformed from one type to another,
and you will learn the laws of thermodynamics, but the original question
remains unanswered. Even the equivalence of energy and mass doesn't help
you out of this dilemma, it only leads to the equivalent question "What is
mass?" Finally you end up like the child who learns to terrify parents by
asking "What...?" and finally getting the answer "Because it is, that's
why" or "You are too young to understand this." Both answers are a poor excuse
for not saying frankly "I don't know either." This is the current situation
of physics and technology. We've become familiar with the notion that to
know about energy and how to use it is all one needs. We've stopped asking
"what?" and "why?" questions.
Science education in the schools and universities encourages and rewards uncreative application of formulas and recipes for calculating results and applying them to standard (and often idealized or unrealistic) situations. Students minds are crammed with the results of science. Little attention is paid to the process of science, the process by which scientists pose questions about nature, how they go about finding answers to those questions, and how they rigorously and skeptically test all answers against the unforgiving standard of actual experiment. After years of this, the weeding-out process leaves only a few survivors who have managed to achieve technical skills and some shaky understanding through a process which can be likened to osmosis.
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What is the anthropic principle?
Creationists abuse the principle for their "theory" and overlook that the extreme interpretation of the anthropic principle contradicts Occam's razor. Both principles cannot co-exist in their extreme, but in a weakened interpretation, they allow concludent insights.
The anthropic principle can be (ab-)used in any desired way. Of course, we could find both argument ideas, of which I prefer the second one, as it is not only a good application of the anthropic principle, but rather an indirect proof that perpetual motion machines tend to be impossible in our universe.
Let's talk about commerce. What is free energy? Well, you don't have to pay for. Humm. Can you imagine to live somewhere in the countryside, having a creek running in the backyard and getting a genereator for free, as otherwise it would be moved to the scrapyard? Construct a waterwheel by using waste wood - and - you have free energy!
Oops! You did not have that idea in mind? Why? I just talked about free energy. Your expenses are zero or say, only a few bucks. Then you get your electric energy for free and the sunshine (which basically is the reason of the creek keeping running) is also free.
I see. You don't want to use that old-fashioned stuff. You want to tap Free Energy from somewhere. You want to be member of the progressive party. And of course, you are willing to invest a fair share of money. There is a lot of inventors who want to tap your money out of your purse by promising free energy. Again I ask "what is free?" You have paid something for nothing! I understand that you want to wait for the results of those inventors. But keep in mind that most free energy machines are perpetual motion devices in disguise. Though they may eventually run eternally, you may also wait eternally for the return of your invest.
Who garantuees that in the end of the day there are no little green men coming along with their UFOs and threatening us for tapping their energy resources? You can imagine: those who are able to construct UFOs have more powerful weapons than our politicians' toys. And then we pay for tapping their "free" energy. Nice solution, being charged by little green men for the stupid idea of an inventor of free energy. Sometime in our correspondence, Donald Simanek coined the expression fee energy. Da**. Was that what you wanted?
It is a fascinating thing about perpetua mobilia. It is a very appealing idea to rid the world from the all-time energy problem by inventing a PMM. If it were not fascinating, this internet site would not exist. Many other sites as well.
Here we go. Every stupid moron can construct a perpetual motion machine. Assume, he succeeds. An operable, workable PMM is a great danger for the whole universe. Can you imagine what happens if a PMM runs forever? A PMM simply generates energy but that has to be used. If not, the machine would melt down soon or explode, as the energy stored in this device will heat it up or tear it apart by centrifugal forces. If you completely use the energy produced by that PMM, you will heat up the environment, causing more energy radiation into the space and finally heat up the universe, until the material of the machine melts and the process stops.
But there is a possibility for saving the universe. If it is possible to construct a PMM, it is also possible to construct a machine that anniliates energy! Just reverse the process the PMM uses to generate energy. It would be very useful. Some applications may be:
I've only used symmetry arguments. Now: is PMM possible? If so, by reversing the process, an energy annihilator would be as well.
Remark: Have you seen the movie Yellow Submarine? Remember the scene with the strange hoover beast that hoovers in everything? Finally everything has been hoovered up - except that hoover beast. And then the bizarre idea: it hoovers itself!
| Last update: 6 July 2003 / |
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