Poll: Perpetual Motion. Will we obtain this technology in this century?

[rvbnut]

Hey everyone!

Driving home from work today I was thinking to myself about the rising petrol prices in Australia (land I call home. Love the beaches!!! We need an R18+ rating for video games :-( grrr). Sorry. Anyway.

I was thinking about perpetual motion and if we will ever find a way to invent this technology in this century. If so, what do you think it might be based around? I think that in this day and age, we should be able to invent this technology. I mean, come on, if some regular, ordinary people can invent a motor that runs off old vegetables, grass, beer (although why would you want to use beer I don't know); surely our smart, intelligent scientists can come up with a motor that is run by, say a magnetic motor or something right?

So as you can see I think we will have a magnetic perpetual motor. I leave it up to my fellow escapists to see if they agree or disagree with me and to see what crazy inventions they might add to the table.

 

[Katherine Kerensky]

Just had to search through my bookmarks, but you might find this interesting > http://www.infoniac.com/hi-tech/latest-invention-perpetual-motion-device-that-produces-power-from-gravity.html

 

[IBlackKiteI]

I don't want to explain why, but I really do not think its gonna truly happen, definitely not this century.

 

[rvbnut]

Just had to search through my bookmarks, but you might find this interesting > http://www.infoniac.com/hi-tech/latest-invention-perpetual-motion-device-that-produces-power-from-gravity.html

Very interesting. I like it!

 

[khiliani]

um, perpetual motion, for all intents and purposes, impossible. everything creates some sort of sound or heat or something.

 

[MikeyW]

Not sure about magnetic as any magnet powerful enough to be of any practical use would probably have to be electro, hence needing outside power.

What we needis someone to find a way to harness potential energy. Run a car with a chunk of lead under the hood. (Pseudo Science ahoy!)

 

[ResonanceSD]

1. Learn what entropy is.
2. Stop being silly
3.

 

[ReverendJ]

I'd just like to state for a moment that the French Academy of Science declaring that they would no longer entertain perpetual motion devices was absolutely no fun whatsoever. I vote for yes, if only because this crap is entertaining and we should encourage it.

 

[TRR]

Completely impossible in this universe, never going to happen. There is no such thing as a 100% efficient system, energy will always be lost in one form or another.
Im surprised there are people who still believe perpetual motion is possible, or that it is possible to travel faster than the speed of light.

 

[Sonicron]

Reminds me of the weird desk ornament from Iron Man 2.

In theory, and from what I remember from science class (admittedly, that was long ago), perpetual motion is impossible due to energy laws.

 

[rvbnut]

I was thinking about perpetual motion and if we will ever find a way to invent this technology in this century. If so, what do you think it might be based around? I think that in this day and age, we should be able to invent this technology. I mean, come on, if some regular, ordinary people can invent a motor that runs off old vegetables, grass, beer (although why would you want to use beer I don't know); surely our smart, intelligent scientists can come up with a motor that is run by, say a magnetic motor or something right?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_thermodynamics

Obviously haven't learned about this in physics class yet. Essentially, it makes perpetual motion absolutely impossible under the laws of physics in our universe. You can't create energy out of nowhere, and there will always be friction or heat or something that takes energy away from the system.

I fell asleep in that physics lesson

But those laws are only bound to what we know of. There could be some technology that has yet to be discovered or invented. I found by reading Flatland, epic book by the way, that it is extremely hard for someone to try to even think about let alone comprehend something that is completely foreign to them. So we may stumble our way across this technology or something that breaks our current laws of physics

 

[Sjakie]

yes we will find a way. because that is what humanity is about: finding our way.
But it will probably be much different then anyone in this day and age can imagine.

 

[subfield]

Hi,

I don't think so. First of all, whatever it is cannot be mechanical in any way, because there would be friction somewhere, and therefore losses (recall first law). That rules out a giant amount of possibilities, as in the "motors" you suggest, but also pulleys, weights, centrifuges, and basically anything with connecting parts where one of those parts is moving.

If it's not mechanical, whatever system you are describing would have no change in entropy as it operated (or that it would decrease). Basically this means that any state it began in, it could return to EXACTLY that exact same state at some time t_0 + delta_T in the future, or alternately, became more ordered as time went on. If you had a machine that did that, and you could extract energy from the process and not mess up that periodicity, seems to me you would be doing magic, not science. Looks like you would be violating the first law again.

It would be cool though.

 

[Korolev]

Not a chance - and even if you could have a perpetual motion machine, you couldn't use it for anything since taking any energy out of the machine would cause it to lose motion. I'm pretty damn sure it's impossible to build one, and I am damn sure that its impossible to use one for any practical purpose. If you could, you'd have infinite energy, and that makes no sense at all.

 

[ZephrC]

Seeing as how perpetual motion is generally defined to mean something that breaks the laws of physics, I'll go ahead and say we probably won't see it anytime soon. Just my guess though.

I mean, if you just define perpetual motion as moving something perpetually, well, the relevant question is what you intend to move it relative to. There are lots of things you could have move relative to the Earth for the rest of the life of the universe (or at least Earth) just by launching them into space.

If you want magic energy from nowhere though, you're probably going to be waiting a while.

 

[rvbnut]

If you could, you'd have infinite energy, and that makes no sense at all.

Why would it make no sense at all? I think it would be fair for the inventor to have their infinite energy for creating the technology to save the planet and reduce the hole in our wallets

 

[veloper]

This reminds me of that hypothetical scenario, if we could make a portal gun for real.