Some Knowledge

Any machine that produces more energy than it consumes is considered to be a perpetual motion machine.  Over the years there have been many proposals for creating such a machine.  The problem is that none of these devices actually work.

Energy in our universe is conserved.  You can not get something for nothing.  If you want to produce energy in some form, you will have to derive that energy from some other form.  Modern society runs off chemical energy for the most part, with some input from nuclear sources.  Most perpetual motion devices claim to extract power from static fields of force.  Gravity is perhaps the main force utilized by claims of perpetual motion, but magnetism is also employed.

The overbalanced wheel is perhaps the best known perpetual motion device.  In this device, weights are arranged on levers around the circumference of a wheel.  The weights are hinged and can swing out when the wheel is in one position and swing in on the other side of the motion.  The increased torque from the weights on one side of the wheel is supposed to drive the wheel to rotation.  What happens in practice is that the weights collect on the side of the wheel where they are closer to the pivot, and the wheel balances and does not operate as supposed.

Various people have invented perpetual motion devices from electrical components.  The most common of these inventions use an electric motor to drive a generator, that then supplies power to the motor.  Such a device can not possible work.  Motors and generators are not 100% efficient.  There are also mechanical losses in the bearings.  Other types of electrical or magnetic perpetual motion devices claim to use magnetic fields to force wheels to rotate or weights to move upwards against gravity and then release energy by falling.  Such devices can not in fact operate.

Energy is so prevalent in our society, but few people actually understand much about how it operates.  This leaves many people vulnerable to being duped by unscrupulous salesmen who offer investment opportunities in perpetual motion devices.  This is in fact an old form of fraud.  It takes some source of energy to get useful work out of a device.  In most instances, people who claim you can get something for nothing are trying to get some of your money for nothing.

The patent office will not issue patents for perpetual motion devices, because they will not actually work.  The laws of physics are proven with experiments and are not going to change.  It is through the study of physics that a person can understand the principles of energy.  There is nothing secret about scientific knowledge.  Any person who is interested can find out about how the world operates.  The universe works as a system of cause and effect.  Without some cause, an event will not happen.  Without some source of energy, a device will not give out energy.  It is a very simple principle that some people just refuse to acknowledge.

Even today, in the age of instant information, there are still people trying to sell perpetual motion devices.  Take for instance the HHO car fuel devices that are being sold everywhere.  These are a very inefficient example of a perpetual motion device.  In theory, these things take electrical energy from the car’s electrical system, use this energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, then burn the hydrogen and oxygen in the engine to make mechanical power to drive the car forward and generate more electrical power to split more water into hydrogen and oxygen.  An idiot could see how this can not possibly work.  A typical internal combustion engine is something like 5% efficient at extracting mechanical energy from combustion.  A generator might be 90% efficient at generating electrical energy from mechanical energy.  Electrolysis of water is seldom more than 50% efficient at converting electrical energy to chemical energy.  In this system there is a maximum efficiency of .05 x .9 x .5 = 2.25%.  To power your car by electrolyzing water into hydrogen and oxygen would require twice as much electrical energy as it would chemical energy from gasoline.

We all want to believe we can get something for nothing.  The fact is that everything has a cost.  Where energy is concerned, there is no way to avoid paying the price.  Perpetual motion machines are nothing but fantasies and are an example of faulty thought processes in their inventors.  There are many potential sources for energy in the universe.  Human trickiness is not a source of energy.  There is no way to derive energy from a machine that does not have a source of energy supplying it.  Perpetual motion is nothing but a hoax.

A nanoscale electrical device that changes resistance with an applied voltage has been fabricated by engineers at HP labs.  Announced in a paper published in the April 30 issue of Nature, the memristor is considered to be the fourth type of basic electronic component.

It is believed that the  memristor will revolutionize computing, as it retains its memory of state even when the supply voltage has been removed from a circuit.  Use of memristors in  memory circuits will allow the circuits to lose power without losing data, as well as save energy consumption.

First theorized by Leon Chua at UC Berkeley 37 years ago, the memristor was fabricated by Stan Williams at HP Labs in Palo Alto, California.  Formed from a 5 nanometer thick strand of semiconducting titanium dioxide sandwiched between two platinum slivers, the memristor changes resistance with the application of a certain voltage for a given amount of time.

The memristor opens the door for the creation of non-volatile memory and computers that do not need to be booted up when they are started.  The memristor only operates because of the unusual properties of matter at the nano scale.  It remains to be seen what new technology will evolve from this discovery, but the possibilities are great.

In certain stars, the high mass and lack of thermonuclear fuel lead to collapse.  As the thermal energy that supports the star is radiated away, gravity compresses the gas to higher and higher densities.  If the mass of the star is 1.5 to 3.0 times the mass of the sun, there is supposedly no atomic force that can resist the crush of gravity.  With or without a massive supernova explosion, the spent star will collapse into a black hole.

The radius of a black hole is defined by the event horizon.  The event horizon is the distance at which the general theory of relativity predicts that time will stop because of the intense gravitational field.  Black holes are in many ways artifacts of Einstein’s general theory of relativity.  Because light interacts with gravity, it is possible that there can be such an intense gravitational field that light will not be able to escape.

It is theorized that the entire mass of the collapsed star will shrink down to a point smaller than a sub-atomic particle.  This is the so-called singularity, where gravitational force and density all approach infinite quantities.  Nevermind that the singularity lies inside the event horizon, where time has supposedly stopped.  The singularity exists at some infinite time in the future.

Black holes are thought to accrete matter from the surrounding universe.  This can happen by the object drawing in gas and dust from the surrounding regions of space, or by the black hole coming close to a star and drawing gas from the star into it’s gravitational field.  Any matter or energy that falls into the black hole will become a part of the black hole.  Any information such as mass, momentum, or temperature possessed by the accreting matter will be lost to the known universe.

Black holes suck up all the matter that has an orbit that intercepts their photon sphere.  The photon sphere is a region around the black hole in which a photon’s path would be bent into an orbit around the black hole.  The photon sphere is typically 1.5 times the event horizon.  In theory, there is nothing to stop a black hole from growing to completely engulf the universe.  Contrary to popular belief, a black hole does not hoover up material from space.  Any object that can go into orbit around a black hole will stay in orbit.  As long as nothing causes the orbit to decay, the object will not be sucked into the black hole.

Many physicists have spent considerable time working up the mathematical theory of black holes.  There is some observational evidence for these objects actually existing in space, and at the center of galaxies.  Despite what you might read in science fiction, there is no way to survive falling into a black hole.  The only universe you will emerge into if you try to travel through a black hole is the land of the dead.

For a longer and more detailed essay on black holes, check out this Wikipedia article.

A magnitude 5.2 earthquake rocked southern Illinois and the surrounding area this morning at 4:38 AM Central Time.  There was some damage to buildings in Mount Carmel, Illinois, where a porch collapsed, and in Louisville, Kentucky where a cornice fell off a building.  The quake was felt as far away as Florida, with reports of earth tremors from Michigan to Georgia.

The epicenter of the quake was approximately 38 miles north-northwest of Evansville, Indiana, and lay at a depth of seven miles.  The earthquake occurred in the Wabash Valley Fault System, which is next to the New Madrid Fault.  A magnitude 4.8 quake occurred 10 miles due west of Evansville on June 18, 2002.  Another earthquake in the Wabash Fault occurred on June 10, 1987 near Lawrenceville, Illinois and was 5.1 in magnitude.

Researchers from Cleveland Metroparks Zoo have discovered a large turtle in a lake west of Hanoi.  Previously thought to be extinct in the wild, the Swinhoe’s Soft Shell Turtle is only known from three other specimens in captivity, two in China and one in a pond in the city of Hanoi.

There is a Vietnamese legend about a giant turtle that took a magic sword from the Emperor that had been given to him to expell the Chinese army.  The turtle in the Hanoi pond is believed to be this same turtle, and people consider it lucky to catch sight of this creature in the pond.

More information on this rare turtle can be found here, at Science Daily.  Efforts are being made to get the two Chinese turtles to reproduce, but it is not known if this highly-endangered species can be saved.

A 13 year old German schoolboy, Nico Marquardt, has calculated that the asteroid Apophis has a 1/450 chance of striking the earth in 2036.  He seems to have made some calculations concerning the possibility that Apophis will have its orbit modified by a possible collision with a communications satellite in geosynchronous orbit.  A news report and interesting discussion on this subject can be found here.

Apophis, believed to be made up of iron and iridium, is supposed to have a possibility of striking the Atlantic Ocean.  The resulting tidal waves and dust cloud would wreak havoc on the population of the earth.  This asteroid is 1049 feet in diameter and weighs 200 million tons.  That’s a big chunk of iron to be falling from the sky.

Even if there is actually a 1/450 chance of this object striking the earth, it is still a bit unlikely.  Not as unlikely as the NASA estimate of 1/45,000.  I have to wonder how sophisticated the calculations of a 13 year old are compared to NASA and all it’s computers, but apparently the agency is taking the boy’s work seriously.

Large objects have collided with earth in the past.  Anyone who looks at the moon knows what a meteor impact can do.  I’m not going to worry much about the possibility of asteroids striking the earth, there’s nothing I can do about it so hey, why get upset?

The planet in our solar system with the shortest year is Mercury.  Mercury orbits the sun once every 88 earth days, thus its year is 88 days long.  This is because mercury is also closest to the sun.  The greater the orbital distance from the sun, the longer the year on that planet.

I watched a program last night on the History Channel called “The Universe.”  On this program they talked about this planet orbiting another star.  This planet was so close to the central star that it’s orbit only took three and a half days to complete.  So, A year on that hot ball of gas planet would only be three and a half days.  This planet is named TrES-4 and more information on it can be found here.

The planet in our solar system with the longest year is Pluto.  Pluto takes 248 and a half earth years to orbit the sun.  Even though Pluto has been demoted to dwarf planet status, it’s still a planet of sorts, so it’s orbit counts as the longest year.

A planet’s orbital period only depends on its distance from the sun and the ellipticity of it’s orbit.  The greater the distance, the longer the orbital period, or year.  If the sun were more massive and the planets were at the same distance, the force of gravity would be greater and the planets orbits would have shorter periods.

It was possible to observe the orbits of the planets by comparing their positions in the sky with the background of stars.  The orbits of the planets were known long before they were explained.  Johannes Kepler derived an empirical formula for the orbits of the planets based on his observations.  He observed that a planet will sweep out an equal area with it’s orbit in an equal period of time.  This empirical law led Sir Isaac Newton  to derive his laws of planetary motion based on the law of universal gravitation he developed.

Because it is so close to the sun, it is hard to observe the planet Mercury.  Mercury can be seen sometimes just after sunset or before sunrise.  Because it moves so fast in the sky, Mercury was named for the swift messenger of the Roman gods, Mercury.

Kristen Byrnes wrote a long article last year about global warming and solar radiation.  She comes to the conclusion that the observed variations in global temperature are not due to changes in the level of atmospheric CO2, but are instead due to the changing solar radiation coming from the sun.

The Maunder Minimum was an observed minimum in sunspot activity that corresponded to the Little Ice Age in Europe and the world.  Instead of attributing global temperature increases to the burning of fossil fuel, this paper and website attempts to show that global temperatures correspond to changes in solar flux.  If you have some time to read a very detailed presentation, check this out.

It just seems obvious to me that the premise of this paper is correct.  Even Homer Simpson could understand this:  “Sun heats up, earth heats up.  Sun cools down, earth cools down.”

The energy that drives the weather events in our atmosphere all comes from the sun.  It is known that the energy output of the sun is not constant.  If the sun were to disappear the atmosphere of earth would condense and the planet would be a dark, frozen ball of ice.  In five billion years when the sun goes red giant, earth will probably burn up and evaporate into space.

It’s my opinion that global warming is a political issue designed to scare people and get them ready for the time when fossil fuel will be rationed and tightly controlled.  It is a fact that petroleum reserves are running out.  End of the world scenarios are popular in the entertainment industry.  Instead of trying to scare people that the world is going to end, scientists should be spending their time trying to think up new sources of energy so we do not have to rely on a limited resource.

Recent news has highlighted the release of bisphenol A from common polycarbonate plastic containers.  This has become a health concern for people, in that a lot of food is packaged in polycarbonate bottles and containers.  Baby bottles, plastic utensils, and other food containers are made of this plastic.  Such containers are labelled with a number 7 on the recycling symbol on the bottom of the package.

Here’s a site that goes into depth about polycarbonate plastic and bisphenol A.  While this site states that bisphenol A is not a problem at the levels observed being released from plastic containers, some people still have doubts as to the safety of this contaminant in their food.  Here’s another site that has a different outlook on the toxicity of this chemical.

There’s no doubt that small amounts of bisphenol A are present in a large number of people in the world from exposure to this chemical in the food chain.  What is not known is the effect this chemical has on health.  Bisphenol A mimics the effects of estrogen in the human body.  Such hormonal effects can be a source of concern for people who might consume small amounts of this compound.  Studies have linked bisphenol A to breast and ovarian cancer.

If you don’t want to be exposed to this chemical you should avoid eating foods or drinking beverages that come in plastic containers marked with the number 7.  Also, if you do consume foods from these containers, do not heat the foods in the containers, as elevated temperatures soften plastic and hasten the release of this chemical.

This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve read all day.  Apparently some person has come up with a design for a Fisher-Tropsch reactor that is supposed to turn garbage and organic waste into gasoline.  If you like to be confused and amazed that somebody would figure this all out, click here.

I seriously doubt this will ever solve the energy crisis.  Setting up a lot of small, high-temperature, high-pressure syn-fuel plants is not going to save the earth.  If this process were really that economic the petroleum companies would have set up plants long ago to turn coal into gasoline.  In fact, the Nazis used this same technology in World War II to provide motor fuel for their armies.

It’s well-meanimg that a person would want to save the earth from high fuel prices.  It might be nice to live in a world where we can throw our trash into a pipe and cook it and make fuel for our motor vehicles.  The problem is that small scale chemical plants are very inefficient and high pressure, high temperature reactors such as this are inherently dangerous.  It is probably a good thing that this person never constructed his own device.  It is probably a good thing that his instructions are so vague and confusing that no person could follow them to build this thing.

I have to say that I just don’t believe this whole Texas Tea Theory.  The best thing to do with garbage is either to burn it for energy or bury it in a landfill and let bacteria ferment it into methane.  Cooking trash up into synthetic gasoline would consume more energy than the trash contains.  This is why people don’t do these things.  In theory we could turn all our coal into gasoline by a similar process, but the cost would be pretty high.  Setting up your own chemical plant is not the answer to high fuel prices.