Magnet Generator

[Doctorr Fabulous]

My whole point was:

The earth used to be flat. Now its not.

Perpetual motion couldn't be possible. Now they are thinking it might be.

Simply put NO.

First of all, do you have at least a Bachelor's degree in physics? If not, quite frankly you aren't going to understand the subtleties at play without literally hundreds of hours of intense, high level study. If you DO have a Bachelor's or higher in Physics, understanding that paper and the issues surrounding it will probably only take you a few tens of hours of intense, high level study. I'm not saying that to be insulting, to be elitist, or to call you stupid. I'm trying to point out that a lay-person's understanding of the words involved, the concepts involved, and the problem space are, in this case, completely inadequate to really get a handle on the meat of that paper. Let me provide some context by saying that: I majored in physics. I married a research physicist. My business partner is a research physicist. Of the group of friends I hang out with on a weekly basis, I am the only one that doesn't have an advanced (Master's or equivalent or higher) degree in a hard science. Discussing that paper today with people via email, I am basically only able to follow the peer-reviewed critique and commentary on the paper; the math and actual theory behind it are beyond me. It'd take a couple of weeks of working just on that paper to get to the point where I could feel I'd gotten around the whole thing. The PhD's I discussed it with both basically said that most of it was math they'd seen before but they'd need to set down for a couple of hours and work through it all to make sure that they understood it. Simply put, this is a specialist's topic in an already highly specialized field.

To address the paper directly though, here's my take on the issues:

1) It's theoretical only. And not in the sense that science uses the phrase "Theory of X". This is much more in line with the lay-person's use of theory as in "I thought this shit up and haven't tested it at all". Hypothetical would be another useful word to use instead in this case.

2) No one knows if it's even possible to build the apparatus to test this hypothesis, let alone what the results would be once the experiment was run. They're completely at the place where they're trying to convince people to throw tens of millions of dollars at them just so they can get to the point where they're sure they can actually build the thing.

3) There's valid criticism that the math for the hypothesis actually might describe an energized state vs ground state. That's HUGE. Saying there's motion in ground state is like saying you can fire and unloaded gun. Accidentally proving there's motion in an energetic state is like saying you can fire a loaded gun.

4) If all the hypothesis and math turns out to be correct, it still won't be a perpetual motion machine in the way the phrase is commonly used. What it will be is something that causes us to have to re-evaluate how we define time. The Laws of Thermodynamics aren't at risk here, the definition of time is.

5) Here's commentary on the paper by one of probably less than 100 people in the world really qualified to analyze the paper:

Time crystals may sound dangerously close to a perpetual motion machine, but it is worth emphasizing one key difference: while time crystals would indeed move periodically in an eternal loop, rotation occurs in the ground state, with no work being carried out nor any usable energy being extracted from the system. Finding time crystals would not amount to a violation of well-established principles of thermodynamics. If they can be created, time crystals may have intriguing applications, from precise timekeeping to the simulation of ground states in quantum computing schemes. But they may be much more than advanced devices. Could the postulated cyclic evolution of the Universe be seen as a manifestation of spontaneous symmetry breaking akin to that of a time crystal? If so, who is the observer inducing—by a measurement—the breaking of the symmetry of time?

How do you get an engineer to slap a mathematician?

"Well it works on paper."

[williaty]

How do you get an engineer to slap a mathematician?

"Well it works on paper."

By that time, the mathematician would have already shot the engineer for saying "Well, we don't know why it happens, but it worked for us on the last 5 we built".

[mough]

I've tried this myself, and spent countless hours trying to figure it out.

I still believe somehow it is possible, but it hasn't been done yet. You'd either need to be able to turn the magnets on and off, and current electromagnets use more power than it would generate, or.. you would need some type of magnetic resistant shield, which as of 2013 doesn't exist.

[williaty]

I still believe somehow it is possible, but it hasn't been done yet. You'd either need to be able to turn the magnets on and off, and current electromagnets use more power than it would generate

Still won't work. You cannot get more energy out of something than you put into it.

you would need some type of magnetic resistant shield, which as of 2013 doesn't exist.

Actually they do. For an example of a material that's only partially effective but is purchasable on a non-DoD-level budget, google "mu metal". It's used all the time when scientists want to keep a magnetic field inside or outside of something. There's other materials that are more effective, but they're MUCH more expensive.

[crypto]

I've tried this myself, and spent countless hours trying to figure it out.

I still believe somehow it is possible, but it hasn't been done yet. You'd either need to be able to turn the magnets on and off, and current electromagnets use more power than it would generate, or.. you would need some type of magnetic resistant shield, which as of 2013 doesn't exist.

nope. TANSTAAFL. This is, quite literally, one of those Laws of Physics.

If anyone figures something new out that contravenes that, they won't be conning people on Youtube, they will be the most famous scientist ever, and be lugging Nobel prizes around.

[maldon007]

This thread got me thinking of how awesome magnets are, I think I know how to make this magnet generator idea work, if it ever can. Think about your car engine, a series of up & down strokes, perfectly balanced and done with the least friction possible, to create rotary force. Why not just replace the "repulsive force" of the fuel/igniter chamber with high-strength magnets!

Yeah the rings are unnecessarily scraping around on the cylinder wall, so we change those out to a bearing arrangement, but otherwise the system is there, in place, to change the awesome power of magnets into free trips down the road. Opposing magnets will take advantage of the "slingshot" effect and save you tons on gas. You just have to make sure the power of the magnets doesn't exceed the original head pressure & you should be good to go. The starter gets it all going and the power of magnets does the rest!

Some sort of friction or magnet based "engine breaking system" will need to replace the throttle, it will work like the old gas pedal did, only pushing down on the "gas" (now called a "mag" pedal) will releases the "engine breaking system" to "rev" the engine. Of course a computer aided limiter is in place to make sure the whole thing doesn't just rev to infinity and blow apart... but hell, without all the heat, the new 'red line' should be 10% or 20% higher.

I guess you have to use the starter every time you stop at a light/drive-through, but big deal. But free magnet power should still charge the battery, just as outdated fuel power does now. Put in a heavier duty starter and battery, bam you got no more bills for gas refills baby!


If you are mechanical at all, you see the folly in this, magnets don't push harder than they are pushed... A magnet, dropped perfectly onto an opposing magnet doesn't bounce back higher than it's release point... An opposing magnet system is essentially just a spring, that's it, a very efficient spring..... No, not an OVER efficient spring, sorry. So saying you could replace compressed gas combustion with "springs" and still get power output is stupid, right? Yes, yes it is. Just a thought.

[mough]

I've tried this myself, and spent countless hours trying to figure it out.

I still believe somehow it is possible, but it hasn't been done yet. You'd either need to be able to turn the magnets on and off, and current electromagnets use more power than it would generate, or.. you would need some type of magnetic resistant shield, which as of 2013 doesn't exist.

nope. TANSTAAFL. This is, quite literally, one of those Laws of Physics.

If anyone figures something new out that contravenes that, they won't be conning people on Youtube, they will be the most famous scientist ever, and be lugging Nobel prizes around.

I agree, If someone makes it work, they'll be made for life. I refuse to believe it isn't possible. I'm not saying all the internet claims are true, because they aren't... but nothing in physics is impossible..

[Doctorr Fabulous]

I've tried this myself, and spent countless hours trying to figure it out.

I still believe somehow it is possible, but it hasn't been done yet. You'd either need to be able to turn the magnets on and off, and current electromagnets use more power than it would generate, or.. you would need some type of magnetic resistant shield, which as of 2013 doesn't exist.

nope. TANSTAAFL. This is, quite literally, one of those Laws of Physics.

If anyone figures something new out that contravenes that, they won't be conning people on Youtube, they will be the most famous scientist ever, and be lugging Nobel prizes around.

I agree, If someone makes it work, they'll be made for life. I refuse to believe it isn't possible. I'm not saying all the internet claims are true, because they aren't... but nothing in physics is impossible..

I'm something of an idiot as far as higher math and shit goes, but I'm pretty sure that physics says that there are soem things which are impossible.

[Crazy Wolf]

...I agree, If someone makes it work, they'll be made for life. I refuse to believe it isn't possible. I'm not saying all the internet claims are true, because they aren't... but nothing in physics is impossible..

OK, then give it a shot. However, for disaster preparedness purposes, you might want to include things that are tried and true in your preps, and leave the experimental physics for calmer days.

[crypto]

but nothing in physics is impossible..

There is a /lot/ that's impossible.

[procyon]

I'm pretty sure that physics says that there are soem things which are impossible.

It does. They are generally known as laws.
Doesn't mean that occasionally one isn't revised, but the laws for thermo are unlikely to be 'debunked' soon in a way most of the world would understand.

As for the article mentioned earlier - as others have stated it isn't a perpetual motion machine.

You won't be able to get any work out of it. In fact it is going to take a great deal of energy just to reduce the particles to a state where they have almost no energy. Technically, when compared to a system that includes more than just the particles in question - entropy will have been reduced in a local area by driving it up in the rest of the system.

Entropy is not 'disorder'. That is a common misconception.
Entropy is the loss of the ability of a system to do 'work', as defined by exerting a force over distance.
Not just things gettting 'jumbled' or 'messy'.

This group of particles will be unable to extert any actual force on other particles to do work. The amount of energy being invested into creating this state will satisfy the needs for therm to be satisified.

The other 'machines' hoping to create 'usuable' energy for no net input are BS.

[williaty]

I refuse to believe it isn't possible.

Then you have absolutely no understanding of science at all.

but nothing in physics is impossible..

Actually, all sorts of things are impossible. Quite a lot of physics is devoted to defining which things are possible and which are impossible. Pretty much every research physicist in the world is in the business of sorting out what's impossible in the real world.

Here's where I think you're getting screwed up: you're mixing together two things which aren't the same. There's a lot of things we haven't worked out yet, or hadn't worked out yet at the time they were discovered. Then there's the things that we're quite sure about, are well understood, well tested, and well explained. The first category, things we haven't worked out yet, does undergo a lot of change over time. The second category, things well documented, is nearly invariant. Discovery happens at the edges, not in the center, of our knowledge. Let me give you an example:

On July 5th, 1687, we knew everything we'd ever know about Classical Mechanics, which is the physics of sort of human-scale things (so billiard balls, humans, buildings, and planets) moving at sort of human-scale speeds (meaning between rest and low few tens of thousands of miles an hour). For nearly 250 years, that was pretty much all there was to physics. Then, suddenly, we started to be able to do science on things that WEREN'T human-scale and DIDN'T move at human-scale speeds. In the realm of the really, really big and really, really fast, suddenly General Relativity popped out. In the realm of the really, really small, suddenly Quantum Mechanics popped out. While you'd think these were totally new ideas of physics (and, really, they were) they didn't make Classical Mechanics wrong. Classical Mechanics is still dead-nuts accurate for human-scale things moving at human-scale speeds. We still use Classical Mechanics to analyze and predict systems every day, all around the world. Discovering General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics didn't suddenly make Classical Mechanics wrong. All that happened is that humans gained the ability to expand the edges, to look into new area that we hadn't been able to access before. When we got there, we found that we needed additional rules to explain the things we saw once we arrived.

Thermodynamics is SOLIDLY in the center of "shit we know". It's not going to be proven wrong or modified. We've got a LOT of theory and a LOT of empirical data showing that the Laws of Thermodynamics MUST be what we have proven them to be or our universe couldn't be what we see it to be. In this case, refusing to believe something that violates one of the Laws of Thermodynamics is impossible is simply choosing to be sadly ignorant.

[phalanx]

Damn.

Now that was one hell of a trip out behind the woodshed.

[procyon]

Thermodynamics is SOLIDLY in the center of "shit we know". It's not going to be proven wrong or modified. We've got a LOT of theory and a LOT of empirical data showing that the Laws of Thermodynamics MUST be what we have proven them to be or our universe couldn't be what we see it to be. In this case, refusing to believe something that violates one of the Laws of Thermodynamics is impossible is simply choosing to be sadly ignorant.

The only possible exception to this may be if you somehow come to know an omnipotent being able to do something on the lines of 'Genesis.'
Failing that, Thermo is set in stone.

Relativity is open to some revision, but is solid and nearly all data supports the current understanding.
Revisions involve obscure corner cases that likely will never occur in nature - and may be impossible for all intents.

Now Quantum, that is written in something more like jello. So much of it is just place holders trying to fill in what we have found, without any great understanding of it. It is still a field where large leaps in understanding are possible.
Quantum is awaiting its Newton/Einstein.

[williaty]

Now Quantum, that is written in something more like jello. So much of it is just place holders trying to fill in what we have found, without any great understanding of it. It is still a field where large leaps in understanding are possible.
Quantum is awaiting its Newton/Einstein.

Nah, honestly Dirac and the others of his era filled in a lot of the "middle" of Quantum. There's a lot of it that's pretty damned solid. There's also a lot of it that's waiting on empirical verification. However, the really big unknowns are what lies at the fringes (and beyond) of Quantum and what the rules are going to be to blend the edges of Quantum into the other things it butts up against like Classical and Relativity.

Now, if you want something REALLY unsettled that we know NOTHING about, start looking at gravity! That shit's a mystery!

[Das Sheep]

I wish I had a massive pile of gold.

This wont get me a massive pile of gold, wishing for it like that.

I wish I had a neat device that provided limitless energy return on a zero energy investment.

Because that some how makes sense.

In crazyville.

Would devices which created energy from nothing be neat?

Yea, right up until someone made one into a weapon.

Are they possible?


Nope.

Are they possible if you refuse to believe they are impossible?

Nope.

Refuse to believe you need to breath and spend some time at the bottom of the pool, and then realize that hey, just because I refuse to believe something to be true, or just because I really want something to be true, does not in any way make it so.

Did you know its possible to move a really heavy car 40+ miles with a gallon of gas? Poke a hole in a gallon of gas and walk 40 miles, let me know how much gas is left in that jug. You will probably loose more than 3 ounces per mile. Really smart people have already come up with crazy efficient engines. But even a very efficient engine still requires energy fed into them to run. A car engine requires gas, your body requires food. Mine likes Pizza.

[MarkW]

This is way off topic, but still somewhat relevant as it pertains to perpetual motion and helps to explain why it does not work:

On another forum someone had posted a youtube video of yet another free energy machine that had a ball rolling on a circular track. Someone pointed out that if you could hear it then it could not be perpetual motion, as a true perpetual motion machine has to be silent since if you could hear it where did the energy come from to make the noise?

Anyway, it is a good simple rule to remember.


However, in terms of "free electricity" I have mulled many years about building one of these:

http://www.angelfire.com/ak5/energy21/c ... harger.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Maybe sometime when I get a 1000 foot roll of wire I'll experiment with it, but at least in theory it looks like something that might "work" to some degree, I just do not have a clue how much.

[mough]

I guess me saying that anything is possible in physics, is that we only know what we can observe and test. What we can oberve and test here, might not be the same somewhere else. We are only a minute pinprick in all of existence. Lets say you lived on an atom, in a water molecule, in the ocean. Could you tell from your observations on that atom, what there is to know about the entire planet?

Take gravity. We see that mass attracts mass, so we call it a law. All evidence suggests this. We even have theories on how it works, with space being a sort of fabric that bends, forcing objects towards each other. The bottom line is we think this, but we do not know this. We simply don't know enough about space to know exactly for sure what is happening. I believe our theories are correct, and I also believe newton was right, but I don't know with absolute certainty.

You say I don't know anything about science, and in a way I would agree. I think that is the best approach for any scientist.

Back to the magnet thing. Someone said you can't get more energy out of something than you put into it. If that is the case, then where does energy come from? Energy has to have an absolute source, it didn't just appear out of nowhere, either that or it just appears out of nowhere. Either way, in some way shape or form, energy is created. If it is created, than it must have been created with less energy than the energy that used to create it, otherwise energy wouldn't exist. The energy we experience comes from the sun. What you eat, the oil we burn, is all sourced from the sun. Where does the sun get its energy? from the fuel it burns. Where did it get the fuel it burns? At some point in time all energy and matter came from something. The big bang? What caused the big bang? Matter and energy always existed? that is equally as impossible as energy being created from nothing.

My point? we don't know jack.

[williaty]

I guess me saying that anything is possible in physics, is that we only know what we can observe and test. What we can oberve and test here, might not be the same somewhere else. We are only a minute pinprick in all of existence. Lets say you lived on an atom, in a water molecule, in the ocean. Could you tell from your observations on that atom, what there is to know about the entire planet?

Take gravity. We see that mass attracts mass, so we call it a law. All evidence suggests this. We even have theories on how it works, with space being a sort of fabric that bends, forcing objects towards each other. The bottom line is we think this, but we do not know this. We simply don't know enough about space to know exactly for sure what is happening. I believe our theories are correct, and I also believe newton was right, but I don't know with absolute certainty.

You say I don't know anything about science, and in a way I would agree. I think that is the best approach for any scientist.

Back to the magnet thing. Someone said you can't get more energy out of something than you put into it. If that is the case, then where does energy come from? Energy has to have an absolute source, it didn't just appear out of nowhere, either that or it just appears out of nowhere. Either way, in some way shape or form, energy is created. If it is created, than it must have been created with less energy than the energy that used to create it, otherwise energy wouldn't exist. The energy we experience comes from the sun. What you eat, the oil we burn, is all sourced from the sun. Where does the sun get its energy? from the fuel it burns. Where did it get the fuel it burns? At some point in time all energy and matter came from something. The big bang? What caused the big bang? Matter and energy always existed? that is equally as impossible as energy being created from nothing.

My point? we don't know jack.

Oh. my. god. Just so full of fail. I give up since I'm not getting paid to be this guy's tutor.

[crypto]

I guess me saying that anything is possible in physics, is that we only know what we can observe and test. What we can oberve and test here, might not be the same somewhere else. We are only a minute pinprick in all of existence. Lets say you lived on an atom, in a water molecule, in the ocean. Could you tell from your observations on that atom, what there is to know about the entire planet?

Take gravity. We see that mass attracts mass, so we call it a law. All evidence suggests this. We even have theories on how it works, with space being a sort of fabric that bends, forcing objects towards each other. The bottom line is we think this, but we do not know this. We simply don't know enough about space to know exactly for sure what is happening. I believe our theories are correct, and I also believe newton was right, but I don't know with absolute certainty.

You say I don't know anything about science, and in a way I would agree. I think that is the best approach for any scientist.

Back to the magnet thing. Someone said you can't get more energy out of something than you put into it. If that is the case, then where does energy come from? Energy has to have an absolute source, it didn't just appear out of nowhere, either that or it just appears out of nowhere. Either way, in some way shape or form, energy is created. If it is created, than it must have been created with less energy than the energy that used to create it, otherwise energy wouldn't exist. The energy we experience comes from the sun. What you eat, the oil we burn, is all sourced from the sun. Where does the sun get its energy? from the fuel it burns. Where did it get the fuel it burns? At some point in time all energy and matter came from something. The big bang? What caused the big bang? Matter and energy always existed? that is equally as impossible as energy being created from nothing.

My point? we don't know jack.

This is so far off base its not even right enough to be wrong. Its just utterly inapplicable to science, and it's analogous to "Fucking Magnets: How do they work?"



If I get some time today I'll take your post apart and address it point by point.

[-zero-]

Simply put, everything costs something... There is nothing free... if you could conserve every energy loss and somehow put it back into the system... maybe then maybe you may get NEAR perpetual motion, problem is, there are losses incurred in capturing the lost energy... anyways... good luck.

[crypto]

Comments inline, in blue.

I guess me saying that anything is possible in physics, is that we only know what we can observe and test.

We can also derive meaningful data about the universe based on what we have observed in the past, for things we have not yet observed.

What we can oberve and test here, might not be the same somewhere else. We are only a minute pinprick in all of existence. Lets say you lived on an atom, in a water molecule, in the ocean. Could you tell from your observations on that atom, what there is to know about the entire planet?

Empirical data is empirical data and fundamental truths about interactions of substances, particles and energy have no reason to deviate unless something changes the context they interact in. We can see other galaxies and they look pretty much like ours. Theres nothing out there that would make hydrogen, for instance, not act like hydrogen in another galaxy.

Take gravity. We see that mass attracts mass, so we call it a law. All evidence suggests this. We even have theories on how it works, with space being a sort of fabric that bends, forcing objects towards each other. The bottom line is we think this, but we do not know this. We simply don't know enough about space to know exactly for sure what is happening. I believe our theories are correct, and I also believe newton was right, but I don't know with absolute certainty.

This is true. We don't yet know the fundamental mechanism of gravity, but we certainly know enough about it to make dead-reliable predictions about gravity or its absence. We can predict with pinpoint accuracy the future positions of planets decades out, with enough precision to repeatedly send spacecraft out to meet them. Regardless of our fundamental knowledge of /how/ gravity works at, for lack of a better term a quantum level, science has mastered how it works at a macro level. We can reliably shoot things at other things that aren't there yet, and wont be there for 15 years, slingshotting around a half-dozen other things that aren't currently there on the way to the destination. This is all grouped under 'things we know about gravity'.

You say I don't know anything about science, and in a way I would agree. I think that is the best approach for any scientist.

Back to the magnet thing. Someone said you can't get more energy out of something than you put into it. True. If that is the case, then where does energy come from? In the case of a magnet generator, it doesnt /make/ energy, you convert input mechanical energy (turning the rotor) into electrical energy output. This is how a generator works, and is the opposite of how an electric motor works. These are /thoroughly/ understood principles. Energy has to have an absolute source, it didn't just appear out of nowhere, either that or it just appears out of nowhere. Under classical physics, energy nor matter are created nor destroyed, but always conserved. Relativity changed this under certain extreme conditions, and permits matter to be converted to energy using a rather famous equation that a bored Swiss patent clerk came up with. Either way, in some way shape or form, energy is created. Energy is created during nuclear reactions, that's about it. in all physical and chemical reactions, it is merely converted from one form to another. If it is created, than it must have been created with less energy than the energy that used to create it, otherwise energy wouldn't exist. The energy we experience comes from the sun. What you eat, the oil we burn, is all sourced from the sun. Correct. Where does the sun get its energy? from the fuel it burns. Correct. Where did it get the fuel it burns? From the accretion of hydrogen and other elements over several billion years. At some point in time all energy and matter came from something. The big bang? What caused the big bang? Matter and energy always existed? that is equally as impossible as energy being created from nothing.

This is a pretty metaphysical question, but it is one of active hypothesis and research in its field of study. It's possible we'll never know.
My point? we don't know jack.

Your point, to be blunt, is ignorant. Not ignorant in a pejorative sense, but ignorant in a literal sense. The fact that science doesn't possess ALL the answers in no way invalidates the answers it DOES possess. Your belief that it does implies a lack of understanding about the world we inhabit, how science works, and how objective critical thought and discovery occurs. Please educate yourself, both you and the world will be better off for it.

I'd recommend you start with entropy and the gradual heat death of the universe.

[raptor]

Gang this thread is devolving from the OP's question into a completely off topic of ...well I am not even sure how to classify the discussion. I am glad it has stayed polite thus far. That said please keep the discussion to the OP's question...which BTW I think we answered long ago and can be summed up as:

[jdev]

Well, I certainly feel like I learned...........something, lol. Still processing it, but I'm just a college drop out that tries to make the big kids behave behind the fence. Still an interesting discussion to read, though.