Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] Perpetual Motion Machine?

["Jonathan King" <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On 9/1/06, Stephen Montgomery-Smith <EMAIL:PROTECTED> wrote:
> My understanding (and I do admit I don't know a lot about him) is that
> Tesla's inventions, although they appeared magical, were completely in
> line with the known laws of physics.  So a scientist or engineer might
> at first express a certain disbelief, but after it is explained to him
> will go "wow, that's amazing!"

That was my take as well.

> The thing abotu perpetual motion is that a new invention appears quite
> frequently, and they never work.

Also, it is clear in many cases that the inventors/proponents of these
devices have no inkling as to why they should work, or (often) how to
measure what they do, and this dampens enthusiasm as well.

> I don't think that one can preclude
> that there is some way to get energy out of nothing, but it will require
> a complete rewriting of physics, and it will take a genius first class
> to do it, and probably the theory will be found before the practical
> application (e.g. like E=mc^2 which took decades to even partially
> implement).

Or, to look at it another way, it isn't that we fully understand the
physics of the universe. So there are a lot of people who are very
uncomfortable with the mathematics of renormalization as used in QED,
which is an amazingly successful theory; probably the single most
successful theory we have in any science. Estimates of the amount of
dark matter in the universe are similarly a point of raging
controversy, which I think could be potentially telling. There is
undoubtedly big physics out there still waiting to be discovered.

But getting free energy out of a system that just whirls magnets
around in a funny way seems rather dubious.

> These articles just seem so like previous articles that didn't pan out,
> that Bayesian analysis will firmly persuade one that this article is
> also a fake.

Hey; I thought you'd sworn that stuff off. :-)

jking

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