[rollei_list] Re: OT - Formula One and Perpetual Motion
- From: Ardeshir Mehta <ardeshir@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2005 16:31:50 -0500
Akhil,
On Friday, January 28, 2005, at 10:49 PM, you wrote:
> Hello Ardeshir,
>
> SNIP
>
>> Okay, then explain why hybrids and turbine-powered race cars have
>> been banned by the authorities who regulate Formula One!
>
> Well turbos, 4-wheel drive, engines of more than 8 cylinders, CV
> transmission to name a few are also banned, movable aerodynamic aids
> are also banned.
>
> Whether or not a technology is banned has nothing to do with intrinsic
> merit, or lack thereof. It may have been done for cost control,
> safety, or any number of other reasons, including the need to keep
> racing close - albeit, not to NASCAR or IRL levels - for entertainment
> purposes.
Although you are right in a general way, in specifics that's not quite
true. Turbine-powered and hybrid cars have been banned SPECIFICALLY
because they would easily out-run the present ICE-powered cars. You may
do some research on this, if you wish: I already have. (I think the
magazine "Popular Science" - or was it "Popular Mechanics"? - had a
series of articles on this and related subjects a short while ago.)
The same thing, by the way, applies to cars with huge fans sucking up
air from underneath and thereby producing gobs of down-force even on
the slowest curves. They were banned because cars equipped with such
fans would easily out-distance the present cars.
>> PS: as for perpetual motion, I guess you've never heard of the atom,
>> in
>> which the electrons ARE in perpetual motion. Dear oh dear.
>
> This has nothing whatsoever to do with a perpetual motion _*machine*_.
Actually, that's not QUITE true. It hasn't been done YET, but that
doesn't mean it CAN'T be done. Since in PRINCIPLE perpetual motion
exists at the very tiny scale (and also at the very huge scale: when
was the last time you heard of a Galaxy in which all the stars were
standing still?), it ought to be possible to utilise this manifestation
of the principle. The scientists Rueda, Puthoff and Haisch - among
others - have been attempting to do so. The principle is based on the
Heisenberg equation, which specifies that even at absolute zero, an
object cannot be TOTALLY without momentum (and thus, without motion).
This is the root of the argument in favour of the Zero-Point Force, or
ZPF. (Note that it is the Heisenberg equation which explains why
electrons in an atom can never be at rest.) I even drafted a paper once
giving my own ideas on the subject of the ZPF, which can be downloaded
in the form of a .pdf file from
<http://homepage.mac.com/ardeshir/ModificationOfTheStrong....pdf>. But
it is a subject that does not originate with me. It is mainstream - or
nearly so - in modern cutting-edge physics.
If, by the way, we consider the Casimir Effect (if you don't know what
it is, it's described in my above-mentioned paper: it deals with
"virtual light" exerting and tiny amount of pressure on highly polished
gold plates), the Casimir Effect, as I was saying, is a manifestation
of a perpetual motion machine, which however produces too little force
to be a PRACTICAL source of energy. But my older son Cyrus, aged 18
now, and indeed others too, including (or so I understand - I may be
wrong) the scientist Hal Puhoff who used to do some work, I believe,
for NASA, have devised a way to utilise the Casimir Effect, at least in
principle. Cyrus's proposal is a tiny rotary device enclosed within a
light-tight box, with just one tube enabling "virtual light" to enter
it, which in PRINCIPLE ought to keep spinning indefinitely even in
total darkness and even at absolute zero with the help of the pressure
of the "virtual light" - and that, even if a tiny (and I emphasise,
TINY) amount of power were drawn from it constantly. In fact even to
make such a device, greater precision than is available at present
would be needed. But since the Casimir Effect DOES exist, and is in
fact measurable, the device proposed by Cyrus, if it can be made, ought
to work as envisioned.
Cheers.
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