Speculations

beenthere

Joined Apr 20, 2004
15,819
I moved this to its own thread. The original is kind of a work in progress - http://forum.allaboutcircuits.com/showthread.php?t=31448

The arguments are very speculative. We can't be particularly concerned with such effects in biological mechanisms, as none are known to exist. I find the ratcheting paddle wheel a bit bizarre - it is powered, if you will, by the energy of brownian motion, and has no place in any perpetual motion definition.

The first post in the linked thread gives reasonable conditions for any perpetual motion device at all - it must be able to run itself if the claim is true. That is really the sole determinate of any such device.

I will edit that first post to include a better definition. Perpetual motion devices, as first expounded, were mechanisms that were said to be able to turn forever having once been set in motion. Ripley's Believe It Or Not museum in New York has a very handsome exemplar or such a wheel turning in a display case. Many expamples may be found on the internet.

The distinction is that the current breed of gadgets are nominally electronic. They either produce enormously more electrolyzed output than modern physics says is possible, or more electrical power out than is neded to operate the device. In that sense, they are not moving continuously (perpetual motion).

However, they claim to produce more than they need to operate, so they must be able to run themselves, with some output left over, to satisfy the claim. If the device can't do that, it is no more than a scam. This is a very easy test. There can be not ambiguity as to the outcome.

Anyone can speculate about this or that, and for any length of time. The expression of that speculation, in this case an actual perpetual motion device, has never turned up.

Regardless, although it seems far out, if this gross excess heat could be used to generate electricity, and this electricity could be fed back into the machine ("thermodynamic" cycle, involving nuclear reactions), I could visualize a machine capable of breaking the entropy barrier.
I strongly suspect that accounting for the heat produced will only just equal the energy fed into the system to begin the process.

The interesting news out of Sandia National Labs seems to be raising photovoltaic cell efficiencies to 40.7%, with an increase of up to 58% possible. Google articles do not turn up mysterious energy releases.

There is a bottom line here - working hardware is needed to back any claim. Almost, maybe, just possibly, and so on are not up to the mark.
 
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