Perpetual motion machine examination rules, please.

[Simon Bridge]

I'll tell you what's perpetual--this thread. Jeez. Five years of jabbering on and on and, quelle surprise, none of the pmm builders have gotten any further.

The original posts concerned the question of when a device is sufficiently paranormal to be acceptable for the MDC rather than about specific proposals for testing. The question keeps popping up through the thread, and it is usually encouraged to post to an existing thread rather than start ones own. It's not really surprising that it keeps on going.

I suspect we will not see any entries in this category. Its just too difficult to produce even the proof of concept needed and anyone able to demonstrate a PMM actually doing useful work will be touring and displaying and, I suspect, scamming, instead.

 

[sailorboy]

Simon,
Is there a difference between paranormal and metaaphysical ?
If so, then PMM is something that would most likely be considered metaphysical. ie., a physical principle previously not understood.
An example of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics being violated is gravity. It routinely violates that law which is the most prominent reason given for PMM not being possible.
Paranormal from what I've become aware of is life after death, ESP, telkinesis, etc.
But finding a new understanding of a principle in physics I am not sure would be considered paranormal.

 

[TjW]

Gravity decreases entropy? News to me.

 

[Mirrorglass]

Simon,
Is there a difference between paranormal and metaaphysical ?
If so, then PMM is something that would most likely be considered metaphysical. ie., a physical principle previously not understood.
An example of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics being violated is gravity. It routinely violates that law which is the most prominent reason given for PMM not being possible.
Paranormal from what I've become aware of is life after death, ESP, telkinesis, etc.
But finding a new understanding of a principle in physics I am not sure would be considered paranormal.

Pardon me for answering a question not addressed to me, but the answer is that the way the terms are used here, there is no differences between "paranormal" and "metaphysical".

Both words refer to claims that, at the moment, are unsupported by scientific theory, and often seem to violate the known physical laws. Claims of telepathy and of perpetual motion are equally impossible - to our current knowledge, so proposing a system for one is no different from the other.

Moreover, were any claim to turn out trues, it would immediately stop being paranormal. If we found a telepath, telepathy would become a known phenomenon, just as finding a true ppm would make the first law of thermodynamics obsolete. Again, there is no difference. Further, any "new principle" or "understanding" that goes against our current views on physical laws is eligible for the Million Dollar Challenge.

Basically, if it's impossible, then it's paranormal, too, no matter what you call it. Very few of the people who believe in this stuff like using the word "paranormal" because of the negative connotations, but whether the word they do use is "paranatural", "metaphysical", "unknown" or one of the many others, they all essentially mean the same thing - something that the scientific consensus has deemed impossible.

 

[Simon Bridge]

Gravity decreases entropy? News to me.

A bodies entropy can decrease in an interaction, why would gravity be an exception? It's just that something else has to balance this out.

An example of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics being violated is gravity.

For which we need an example - all the ones I know of are in quantum mechanics, which warps a lot of things we think of as Laws. However, I'd be interested to see what you were thinking of.

Is there a difference between paranormal and metaaphysical ?

Why would it matter?

If so, then PMM is something that would most likely be considered metaphysical. ie., a physical principle previously not understood.

That would not be a commonly understood meaning of the word "metaphysical". I still don't see how adopting a different word makes any difference to the challenge.

An example of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics being violated is gravity. It routinely violates that law which is the most prominent reason given for PMM not being possible.

In context with the foregoing part of your post - do you mean that before gravity was understood, devices working by gravity would have been considered paranormal?

Put it this way - if you win the prize, and your device was later found to work by some hitherto mis or not-at-all understood principle in nature, we'd probably not want our money back. That the device turns out not to be "supernatural" in action would be a minor point of taxonomy. You'll only find yourself sued if you perpetrated a fraud.

Paranormal from what I've become aware of is life after death, ESP, telkinesis, etc.

Technically, any of these, if proved, would be examples of a currently unknown natural principle in action. So they are, by your own description, actually in the same class of phenomena as PMM.

But finding a new understanding of a principle in physics I am not sure would be considered paranormal.

It wouldn't be, no That is what scientists are trying to do all the time.

You have identified a philosophical issue with the definition of the challenge which also illustrates the main difference between a PMM and more usual forms of supernatural claims. Nobody is especially bothered by it because it is not a problem in practise - consider:

The Feynman, Schwinger and Tomonaga formulation of Quantum Electrodynamics would not have qualified for a MDC, though it did qualify for a Nobel Prize This, even though it produced some pretty wierd claims. OTOH: it would not have been submitted.

How far off the accustomed scientific track do you have to be to enter the challenge? As Mirrorglass observes:

Very few of the people who believe in this stuff like using the word "paranormal" because of the negative connotations, but whether the word they do use is "paranatural", "metaphysical", "unknown" or one of the many others, they all essentially mean the same thing - something that the scientific consensus has deemed impossible.

The people making the claims are unlikely to consider their quest "paranormal" or even "impossible". Such people should ask themselves: would one of us sceptics disbelieve the claim? If we would, then it is very likely to be good candidate material.

 

[Broes]

According to Stephen Hawkings, a black hole is an region in space where entropy has reached it's highest limit, it can no longer increase. I think that if this is true, falling into a gravity field thus increased you entropy.

 

[Simon Bridge]

According to Stephen Hawkings, a black hole is an region in space where entropy has reached it's highest limit, it can no longer increase. I think that if this is true, falling into a gravity field thus increased you entropy.

According to Stephen Hawking, the entropy of a black hole is proportional to the square of its Schwartzchild radius. This is called the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy and is currently supported by statistical mechanics. An empirical verification remains in the future.

It takes an infinite amount of time to fall into a black hole (as far as the rest of the universe is concerned) though. Thus, you won't see any increase in the entropy of a black hole in the lifetime of the universe. I'm guessing that is what you meant.

Naturally falling towards a black hole increases entropy.
For all process, the total entropy can only increase or stay the same.

 

[Psi Baba]

Nice thought expiriment...

- Create a PMM
- Attach the PMM to a energy-> matter transfer unit
- Shoot the thing into space
- Let the amount of energy/mass build up
- Watch it become a black hole

I tell you, PMM's are dangerous!!!!!!

That's why I always laugh when they brakes on their contraptions. Now that's optimism!

 

[sailorboy]

Simon said;
>> A bodies entropy can decrease in an interaction, why would gravity be an exception? It's just that something else has to balance this out.<<

Can you show where something loses it's potential because of it's own gravity ?

 

[Simon Bridge]

Simon said;
>> A bodies entropy can decrease in an interaction, why would gravity be an exception? It's just that something else has to balance this out.<<

Can you show where something loses it's potential because of it's own gravity ?

The question is not specific enough: it is not clear what you mean by "it's potential" or what you refer to by "it's own gravity". The passage you quote does not refer to potential in any way. I'll do my best...

How about: Metallic hydrogen in Jupiter's core. A crystal structure clearly has lower entropy than a diffuse gas... witness it's ordered state in comparison. Similarly, I hope you can see that hydrogen gas in Jupiter's atmosphere is at a higher gravitational potential than at the core. It got there under its own gravity acting on itself... but how can this be?

Without the math - oversimplifying:

A gas in, otherwise, free space is composed of molecules. Each molecule attracts every other molecule gravitationally. Should the mean separation between atoms decrease, then the total gravitational potential energy stored in the gas has decreased.

A gas undergoing gravitational compression typically heats up - as it heats up it radiates electromagnetically. As it radiates, it loses energy, restricting the number of available quantum states available to the gas... thus, it loses entropy. This does not violate any laws since the rest of the universe has gained entropy.

Aside: to be fair - it is not clear what TjW was referring to when he wrote the stimulus to my comment (May 23).