Friday 2 December 2011

Why gravity is a source of energy for continuous motion.

Following some comments on my last blog, I thought I'd make my case again here rather than adding to the 60 or so comments already in.

I realise that the vast majority do not accept the possibility that a gravity-wheel can be driven continuously just by the force of gravity alone as, I believe, Bessler's was. But if I state my case often enough, maybe enough people, cleverer than I, will take it on board and devise a better explanation. Until then...

My analogy that the force of gravity was similar in its action to the wind or a current of water, and it was therefore perfectly reasonable to believe one could use it as a source of energy, is routinely scorned by most people. They have taken exception to the above analogy, ignoring the fact that is just an analogy. An analogy is an inference based on the idea that if two different things show a similarity in one sense, it may be possible to draw conclusions about other aspects of the thing. It is a way of looking at something differently to try to understand it. I was not suggesting that gravity was in fact either a 'wind' or a 'stream'.

The argument against, goes something like this. Air is a collection of gases, flowing molecules - and water is similar - and when they impact on certain surfaces we can make use of them to drive machinery - but, on the other hand, because gravity is an attraction between two masses, and there are no physical particles available (such as molecules of gas) to impact on the machinery in a way we can use, it is said that it is not capable of supplying energy in the way that Bessler seems to have done. But Bessler did not know about molecules or the laws affecting gravity; he could only observe and experiment. His empirical evidence gave him the answer, and as he said, "these weights are themselves the PM device, the 'essential constituent parts' which must of necessity continue to exercise their motive force derived from the PM principle) indefinitely - so long as they keep away from the centre of gravity."

How anyone can read that sentence and not understand that it means he used gravity, is beyond me.  But of course as some have suggested he might have been lying or incorporating hidden meaning within the text -  or he didn't mean gravity alone.  But for me it is plain and simple and he used gravity alone to drive his machine.

What gravity is, and what air and water are, is not relevant to my argument; the only thing that matters is that wind can move objects of mass, a current of water can move objects of mass and gravity can move objects of mass. It doesn't matter how they do it, just that they do.

One of the arguments used against the possibility of gravity as an energy source is that gravity represents potential energy. It's there if you've already put in the work. There's potential energy in a book on a shelf because you've lifted it and placed it there. Once you use that energy, when the book falls to the floor, it's gone until you lift it back up again. This is true - and it also applies to wind and water currents. Again, the work has to be put in first to gain the energy output. Release a balloon in the wind and watch it get carried along by the wind, and then grab it and take it back to the starting point (upwind) to release it again. Or put a toy boat in a stream and the same thing applies. It will float downstream and you can pick it up and take it back upstream again.  Just because we have found a way of obtaining work from wind and water streams that converts the force of wind and water to rotational energy output, does not necessarily rule out the same potential conversion of the gravitational force.

And that defines a conservative force. Since the work done by wind and water currents can be reversed, i.e. the object moved can be taken back upstream, or upwind, to be released and able to be moved again, they are conservative forces, as is gravity.  Notice the word up in upwind and upstream, its a clue.

I might not be able to add any comments for a day or two next week as I'm off to Rome on Tuesday and I'm busy writing some notes for the interview.  I'll post a blog when I get back and tell you about it.


JC


96 comments:

  1. John ,now I think I understand what you are trying to say. You mean pressure difference is like gravity. At the end, what moves the molecules(this movement is also called diffusion) in wind and water is the difference between the local pressure levels.

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  2. John wrote;
    How anyone can read that sentence and not understand that it means he used gravity, is beyond me.

    Easy John, because there is more to weight than gravity. There is also inertia. Why do you insist on using the poor analogy of gravity-wind? Most people know what gravity is.

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  3. AND, Cont,
    John, when you describe sources of energy like wind, water etc. you still ignore to write that these motions of mass have continuation because they receive energy from radiation.

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  4. @ JC

    Good luck with your trip, John. Let's hope they produce one heck of a documentary to help promote interest in Bessler and his inventions. The more people working on finding a solution, the sooner it will come.

    Gravity is a difficult thing to come to terms with. Yes, we all "know" what it is in the simplest terms: of being a "something" that causes two objects with mass to pull together. HOW exactly that happens is another matter. Most likely, there is some sort of complex interaction going on between the gravity fiellds of both objects that produces the attraction. Maybe two interpenetration gravity fields are able to warp each other and that leads to the attractive force which wants to move the objects together in order to relieve the distortion in their individual fields.

    Alot of people don't know that Isaac Newton, despite what he wrote in the Principia Mathematica, DID have a theory as to what gravity was and how it produced forces on objects. He even came up with a design for his own PM machine! Yes, just like Bessler he was a mobilist and may even have done some research in this area of his own. I like to think of him as being a "closet mobilist" who had to keep his work on that and various other esoteric subjects secret in order to avoid being ridiculed and even ostracized from academia by his "peers".

    Newton suggested that the force of gravity which held objects down to the Earth's surface was actually due to a perpetual shower of invisible microscopic particles with mass that comes down from the depths of outer space. These tiny particles impact objects and thereby push them down to the ground. Obviously, the larger an object was, the more particles would be hitting it per second and the more gravitational force it would feel pushing it down. Thus, it would weigh more.

    His perpetual motion machine? Yep it was a wheel just like Bessler had but it would have worked much differently. It would have been a simple solid metal disk mounted on a vertical axle. But, one side of it would have a shield or roof over it that could protect what would be the ascending side of the wheel from most of the incoming shower of those tiny gravity particles. As a result the ascending side would get lighter and the descending side of the wheel, which would still be exposed to the full intensity of the incoming gravity particle shower, would still have its normal weight.

    Such a simple design would actually rotate continuously and, unlike Bessler's wheels, be capable of accelerating until it was destroyed by CF. It would also be able to output far more energy than Bessler's wheels ever did. Unfortunately, such a simple design was never achieved because no one has ever found any material that could block the effects of gravity.

    Bessler's admission that he had no discovered some new form of matter may be a reference to such a gravity shielding material and his comment a response to those of his contemporaries who thought he had found the hypothetical gravity shielding material that Newton wrote about toward the end of his life.

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  5. The discussion so far reminded me of Le Sage's theory of gravitation, which seems to come in and out of favour. The Wikipedia entry on it, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Sage's_theory_of_gravitation is good. It includes Newton's view of it, and even Lord Kelvin's idea of a perpetual motion machine exploiting it.

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  6. Correction:

    Above I wrote that Newton's PM wheel would have a vertical axle. Wrong. It, of course, would have to be horizontal just like those of Bessler's wheels.

    I sometimes wonder what a meeting between Newton and Bessler would have been like! I suspect that they could have been great friends. Newton could have afforded to pay Bessler the 4,000 thalers to learn the secret of his wheels and I suspect that Bessler would have trusted him to keep it confidential (Newton was actually a VERY religious man just like Bessler).

    I can imagine that upon viewing the interior mechanisms of Bessler's wheels, Newton would have realized that they were NOT violating any of his well known formulated laws of motion. He would see that the design, despite the drum's rotation, kept the CoM of its weights on the drum's descending side. Like Carl, Newton would have come away a believer in and supporter of Bessler and his invention. With his god-like reputation and backing, Bessler might have sold his invention in a mere matter of months!

    How would Newton rationalize what he was seeing in terms of his own particle theory of gravity? Simple. Since the CoM of the weights inside of a Bessler wheel was always located on one side of the axle, the "preponderance" of impacts from all of those incoming gravity particles would always be on the wheel's descending side. It would then HAVE to be heavier than the ascending side and thereby cause the wheel to remain in a perpetual state of rotation.

    If movies about Bessler ever become popular, I can imagine various "dramatized" versions wherein the above meeting takes place.

    Maybe JC's pilgrimage to the "Eternal City" (doesn't that mean the same as "Perpetual City"?!) could lay the ground work for such future films. (Didn't JC previously mention that there was an opera based on the Bessler story?)

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  7. When comparing gravity to wind and/or water, I like the analogy to wind better, for several reasons. Gravity has been shown not to be a constant, it differs all over the place on several locations on the surface of the planet. The same applies to other celestial bodies: the moon, for example, has rather extreme gravitational differences, at some locations as much as 40% different. It has something to do with certain electromagnetic properties of aggregations of matter - I'll come back to that.

    Despite the fact that we still don't know what exactly gravity is, I do believe that it is definitely a "electronic" phenomenon such as electromagnetism, but superluminal in nature - a bit akin the (mechanical) gravity theory of La Sage. Astronomers (van Flandern, et al) have often noted that gravitational effects seem to be instantaneous over enormous distances.

    Also, keep in mind that gravity shielding effects have been observed in labs before. And there is some evidence that by the end of WWII German scientists, working on Hitler's "wunderwaffen" (miracle weapons) had developed or were in the process of developing something akin antigravity (the "Bell" device). The process used cryogenics, supercooled counterrotating (!) drums of mercury and massive RF and electromagnetism. Although it sounds far-fetched like much of the garbage that circulates on the internet, there is quite a bit of hard evidence for it - not in the least the well-documented small-scale replication of the experiment in the US by a military contractor.

    For this and other reasons we shouldn't keep citing these so-called hallowed "laws". They have been broken so many times, as is (and should be!) the very nature of science. There are very few absolutes. Less than six months ago the very notion of reverse thermal entropy in exothermic reactions was considered absolute blasphemy because of the hallowed 2nd law of thermodynamics. Since about 8 weeks it is now proven to be very possible.

    Coming December 7, the 2nd law will bite the dust again, this time by a materials scientist by the name of Brian Ahern (senior MIT scientist). The major discovery is that energy localization at the nanoscale circumvents the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. Nature evolved to take advantage of these energy exchange mechanisms available only at this size scale (which is why ordered structures can be created from chaos, such as after the big bang.) This phenomenon was identified in 1996 as Oscillons in relation to Chaos Theory, but has never been clearly understood until now. In 1995 they made a major and fundamental discovery regarding nano-material properties. This is almost completely unknown to most technologists. All materials processed within certain tolerances experience very different vibrational modes than all other aggregations of matter. It also provides a concise explanation for the bioenergetics observed in all aspects in nature. It also appears that the phenomenon may account for and explains a persistent mystery regarding the unification of physics. More importantly, however, is the fact it now believed that this discovery explains how LENR (low energy nuclear reactions) are basically a new and unanticipated form of nanomagnetism.

    Just as gravity might be.

    Not that Bessler would be aware of any of this. The point is, however, that gravity until now never has been sufficiently understood. Nevertheless, since it most likely is a property of nanomagnetism, surely it can be influenced, manipulated, and exploited.

    And I wouldn't be surprised if it can be done mechanically. I liked Techno's ideas about the theory of operation with regard to the connectedness principle. We should focus on such concepts.

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  8. Anonymous said...
    "John wrote;
    How anyone can read that sentence and not understand that it means he used gravity, is beyond me.

    Easy John, because there is more to weight than gravity. There is also inertia. Why do you insist on using the poor analogy of gravity-wind? Most people know what gravity is."

    When I used the analogy of gravity-wind, I was using it to point to the fact that we are taught that because gravity is a conservative force it cannot be used as a source of energy. I was highlighting the fact that wind (and flowing water) is also a conservative force and yet it is used as a source of energy and therefore those who insist that gravity is a conservative force and state unequivocally that therefore it cannot be used as a source of energy, are wrong, wrong, wrong!

    JC

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  9. @ JC

    I don't think of gravity as a source of energy. The energy comes from the objects that gravity acts upon. For example, the energy that Bessler's wheels outputted came from their weights (remember mass and energy are the same thing), but without the Earth's gravity field to help liberate it, that energy would have stayed in those weights forever.

    From this one sees that an analogy comparing gravity and wind is, at best, a somehwat shaky one. Yes, like gravity, an object affected by gravity can begin to move, but in this case the energy does not come from the mass of the object, but rather from the wind's moving atmospheric atoms and molecules which, upon striking the object, impart some of their energy to it.

    Where did the wind's particles get their energy from? The Sun, of course. But in order to create winds on Earth (and the other planets in our system with atmospheres), our Sun must lose about 50,000 TONS of its MASS per second!

    I've always found it interesting that, via a maneuver called "tacking", it is possible for a sailboat to move INTO the wind even though it must follow a zigzaging path to do so. In this maneuver the boat's hull and its main sail are angled just right into the wind so that the incoming wind literally squeezes the boat's hull between the wind and the water on the opposite side of the hull. Since the hull's front end is more pointed than its back end, the hull is forced to try to relieve the increased pressure acting on it by sliding forward through the water. The pressure, however, is not relieved by this action and the hull will continue to travel forward into the wind at an angle so long as the wind is blowing and the boat's sail maintains the same angle to it. (I know about this maneuver because I used to play with model sailboats as a youth.)

    In thinking about tacking by sailboats, it struck me that what happened in side of Bessler's wheels was somewhat similar. The wheel acted like the hull of the boat. The wheel weights' offset CoM acted like the angled sail. And, the Earth's gravitational force acted like the wind.

    As long as gravity was present and the CoM of the weights remained angled away from its equilibrium point under a wheel's axle (the so-called "punctum quietus"), then the wheel would continue to move or in this case rotate.

    One must be very careful in forming analogies. Yes, in certain cases they can lead to correct insights about the performance of a system. But, they can also equally lead to false insights about a system. The "gravity is like the wind" analogy quickly breaks down when one considers the energetics of what happens when both gravity and the wind act upon objects.

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  10. I am constantly amazed at the inability of people to understand the wind & sailboat analogy and how it may be applied to gravity. Someone always has to remark that the wind is solar powered. Why this should matter to an analogy is beyond me unless the orator /writer just enjoys hearing his own voice.
    For anyone else who does not understand what is being said, the wind blows a boat in the same way as gravity bears down on a mass. In the case of the boat, sailors have learnt that the boat can be steered (tacked), and it can be made to travel in directions other than only forward with the wind. I believe that the same is possible for gravity. No discussion is necessary of the origins or causes of either.

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  11. Yet another correction (I definitely need more sleep!):

    In the 2nd paragraph of my last comment I wrote:

    "Yes, like gravity, an object affected by gravity can begin to move..."

    It should, of course, read:

    "Yes, like gravity, an object affected by WIND can begin to move..."

    Sorry about that.


    @ Great Bear

    I tend to repeat the equivalence of energy and mass because it is an easy one to forget for those still mired in pre-20th century physics. I repeat it because this equivalence is the ONLY way we will ever explain where the energy Bessler's wheels outputted came from unless we are prepared to acknowledge that his wheels were hoaxes. It would take some VERY powerful evidence to convince me of that!

    No one is denying that objects can travel against the normal direction that gravity pulls them. That happens everytime a lever raises a mass against the pull of gravity.

    But, when you say that "the wind blows a boat in the same way as gravity bears down on a mass" you form an analogy that quickly breaks down when one begins to extend it beyond a very few simple examples.

    For example, the force that gravity exerts on a massive object is independent of the shape of the object or its orientation in the gravity field. On the contrary, the force that the wind exerts on an object is proportional to the presented surface area of the object and the velocity of the wind.

    Wind, we know, consists of atoms and molecules undergoing a net translational motion in some direction. But, does gravity have such a particle structure? Newton suggested it might, but, ultimately, Who knows?

    The wind can be blocked from affecting the motion of an object. So far, I am unaware of any material that can do the same with gravity.

    My point is that the "gravity is like wind" analogy is a BAD one to make and that one should avoid drawing any further "conclusions" from it.

    I have been reading this "gravity is like wind" stuff for years now and, so far, I have yet to see it suggest ANY type of mechanism that could be used to explain how Bessler's wheels worked. To make yet another analogy, it is somewhat like beating a dead horse with the hope that it will suddenly rise and begin pulling one's cart. At some point one must acknowledge that the horse is dead, bury it, and then find a living horse to pull his cart.

    IMO, the "gravity is like wind" analogy is LONG overdue for burial!

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  12. The plain facts remain,.. Wind is an energy source and you can reap directly from it.
    Gravity is not an energy but an inert force that exerts a force on mass that may be used to store potential energy by virtue of height.
    Therefore the only way you can reap from gravity is to use it against itself to gain height.
    The only tool available to us for this purpose is angular momentum or CF.

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  13. "The wind can be blocked from affecting the motion of an object. So far, I am unaware of any material that can do the same with gravity."
    Mountains affect gravitational pull; on a bigger scale whole planets do, as does any massive body. In the Arctic it appears to act downwards, at the Antarctic, it appears to act upwards. At the centre of the planet, one theorises that there is no gravitational effect. The point is that no one yet knows what gravity is, whether it's attractive, repulsive or a wave. There are arguments for and against each of these, but what is apparent to everyone is that it is a directional force, just like the wind.
    It is the effect that is important, not what causes it, nor any of the other superfluities such as exposure size or the size of gas molecules. To the wind, sails are important and not ship mass, to gravity, mass is important not area. Of course you can go to a new level of pedantry by bringing in things like air resistance and claim that they affect motion, big volumes and areas fall slower than small areas, but this is largely unimportant to this discussion.
    Why not just accept the fact that a wind can push a sailing boat forward, and that the boat can be steered, likewise, gravity pushes a mass downwards, but again the mass can be steered e.g. put a ramp in the way.
    As for "those still mired in pre-20th century physics", let's not forget that this includes Bessler; this is all he had to work with and he succeeded. We've already heard from those who've moved to 20th century physics, and gone of at a tangent discussing nuclear fusion, neutrinos, and energy to mass conversions.
    Bessler didn't have these distractions, and Newton, at around this time was only beginning serious work on gravity.

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  14. " I was highlighting the fact that wind (and flowing water) is also a conservative force and yet it is used as a source of energy and therefore those who insist that gravity is a conservative force and state unequivocally that therefore it cannot be used as a source of energy, are wrong, wrong, wrong!"

    John where you are wrong, wrong, wrong is your continual refusal to admit that the cycles of wind and flowing water are completed because of the addition of real energy-heat. And wind and flowing water are not forces, ( there are only 4 forces ) they are energetic masses in motion created by the transference of energy.

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  15. @ technoguy, " (remember mass and energy are the same thing), but without the Earth's gravity field to help liberate it, that energy would have stayed in those weights forever."

    I have a plastic straw and a plastic fork. Can I then suck up my drink with the plastic fork? You have a poor understanding of physics. Gravity does not liberate the energy out of masss.

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  16. @ technoguy, let me continue.
    The ship sailing into the wind uses a lot more of the winds energy, because it's working against the winds resistance than a ship being pushed with the winds direction. If you can't get this you're hopeless.

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  17. @ technoguy. Allow mo to erase the | You have a poor understanding of physics comment" That was inaccurate and uncalled for. But the Gravity does not liberate the energy out of mass still stands.

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  18. Anon,..I'm afraid to disagree there.If you don't have the earth's gravity you can create it by using centrifugal gravity which costs nothing once you're up to speed.
    This type of wheel could also work horizonally.

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  19. Anon said, "John where you are wrong, wrong, wrong is your continual refusal to admit that the cycles of wind and flowing water are completed because of the addition of real energy-heat. And wind and flowing water are not forces, ( there are only 4 forces ) they are energetic masses in motion created by the transference of energy.)

    I repeat it doesn't matter for my argument, how wind and flowing water happen, all that matters is that they and gravity move objects of mass.

    But we can agree to disagree if you wish.

    JC

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  20. @ Anon, et. al.:

    I have said that energy and mass are the same thing and I don't think, in light of 20th century physics, that there are many who would disagree with that statement. That means that the mass of the weights in Bessler's wheels (tens of pounds at least) were equal to a tremendous amount of energy. Enough, if it was slowly extracted, to keep a wheel freely rotating for billions of years and, perhaps, constantly outputting tens of watts for at least millions of years!

    I also wrote that the energy associated with mass can only be "liberated" or used to perform work when gravity acts on the mass. Obviously, if one has no mass, then there is no energy that can be liberated and if one has no gravity then a mass that is present will not be able to fall and do work on its environment in the process.

    When a massive object in the vacuum of space falls toward a planetary body, the object does NO work because, as it falls through the vacuum, it just gains kinetic energy as it simultaneously loses gravitational potential energy. The loss of mass associated with the loss of gravitational energy exactly equals the gain in mass associated with the gain in kinetic energy. Thus, neither the energy nor mass of the falling object changes.

    However, as the object enters a planet's atmospheric layer things change. Now the object DOES do work as it descends and pushes atmospheric atoms and molecules out of its way. As soon as this happens, the object will begin to lose some of its energy and mass. At some point it will strike the ground and stop moving and it will no longer have the same energy and mass it had when it was moving through the vacuum of space toward the planetary body.

    During all of the above process, the planetary body's gravity field did NO work and lost no energy and no mass. Actually, it can't because it has NO energy or mass of its own. It only served to help the object out in space lose some of ITS energy and mass by enabling it to enter an atmosphere and push aside some atmospheric particles.

    The problem I think we have is one of language. We say that the planetary body's gravity field "exerted a force" on the object in space or "pulled the object down" to its surface. This language forces us to immediately ASSUME that it is actually the gravitational field that does the work performed by the object.

    A more accurate way to view what happened is to say that it was the OBJECT that pushed itself toward the planetary body and finally into its atmosphere. The planetary gravity field only permitted the object to do this and use its own energy / mass to do some work in the process.

    We can think of objects moving in a gravity field like trains running down a track. The tracks do not pull or push the trains along, they merely allow them to move in a certain direction as they, the trains, do ALL of the work of overcoming the air resistance and bearing drag that arises from their motion and thereby deplete their energy / mass in the process.

    So, we see from this that the Zen Buddhists were right all along when the say "The answers are contained in the questions". If we do not ask the right questions, then we will never get the right answers. Do we just accept that gravity has "windy" properties that move matter along or do we start putting the focus on the "condensed" form of energy known as mass and give it ALL of the credit for the motion of objects in gravity fields?

    I'm convinced that the latter is the ultimate reality of the situation.

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  21. @ John, "I repeat it doesn't matter for my argument, how wind and flowing water happen, all that matters is that they and gravity move objects of mass."

    Then admit it John, yours is a silly argument. What idiot doen't comprehend gravity moves objects?

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  22. @ technoguy, what you are not including is the fact that as a mass accelerates under a gravity field it is gaining energy-mass. Energy is not being liberated out or away from it. As it slows down its energy-mass is reduced. No matter how fast it has accelerated the effects are not noticible enough to make for instance 10 pounds become significantly greater.

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  23. @ technoguy, Because a gravity field isn't regarded as energy we would think that it isn't doing any work. But in fact as soon as a mass in motion meets resistance-air for instance, there is work being done. Your right there is a fault in language. So both the planet and the other masss gain energy-mass as they move towards each other. Kinetic that is. Where the potential has been reduced accordingly.

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  24. @ Anon:

    I must disagree with something you've stated. When two objects with mass fall or "gravitate" toward each other in the vacuum of space, OVERALL neither gains energy even though both are accelerating. EACH object will lose gravitational potential energy AND the mass associated with it as they both approach each other while EACH will simultaneously gain the corresponding equivalent amount of kinetic energy and the mass associated with it. Thus, there is no NET change in the TOTAL energy / mass of either object. If there was any change in their individual energy / masses, then that would be a violation of the 1st Law of Thermodynamics.

    If, however, the two objects can somehow push a third object (such as a cloud of gas particles) out of the way as they fall toward each other, then they will BOTH decelerate a bit and then lose some energy / mass in the process. The sum of what they lose will then be gained by the third object being pushed out of their ways.

    The physics of the 20th century forces us to view gravitational interactions in a new way that, initially, can seem a bit "counter intuitive". But, this view has, so far, been successful in rationalizing all of the phenomena to which it has been applied. I trust this view and have tried to incorporate it into my study of Bessler's wheels. Without it, the energy Bessler's wheels outputted seems mysterious and an obvious violation of the 1st Law of Thermodynamics. With it, we see that Bessler's wheels weren't violatiing any physical laws at all.

    Of course, while all of this is nice to know, it still does nothing to tell us HOW Bessler made his wheels work, but, at least, we can be confident that we are not chasing an illusion. He really DID have working PM gravity wheels!

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  25. @ technoguy. Classically mass is a measurement of volume,weight summing to density. With the scientists of Einsteins day that definition was expanded to mean energy density since all mass is compressed electromagnetism. Potential energy is just potential. The potential to do work. That's it. No work is being done with potential, not until the mass is moving and the definition changes to kinetic. An object lowered in a gravitational field does not loose mass, it only looses potential relative to the other body it is being referenced to. The reason you can't accelerate a mass faster than the speed of light is because as the mass goes faster and faster it's mass increases. All of this aside, what does any of this have to do with Bessler's wheel or explain how it works? It certainly doesn't prove he had a working pm machine. And if he did have a working pm wheel, you can rest assured it will be creating energy and some laws will have to be rereasoned.

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  26. Tangents and yet more tangents and we're back to modern physics and the energy mass interchanges…
    Take a step back and remember that Bessler did his work in the 1700's.

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  27. @ Great Bear

    Yes, these are all tangential issues. I only emphasize (some would say "harp on") the topic of energy / mass equivalence because it easily rationalizes how Bessler's wheels could have operated independent of their environments. They literally carried onboard the energy they would expend in the form of the mass of their weights. Knowing the details of gravitational action is NOT necessary to build a working PM gravity wheel. But, then again, neither is knowing where lead, string, or wood comes from important either.

    Yep, it was actually that simple. If Carl had seen the inside of Bessler's original small prototype model wheel and noted that it contained ANY sort of wound up mainspring and gears, he would have flipped out, accused Bessler of fraud, and then had him quickly ejected (literally!) from his castle! LOL! I suppose most of would have also if we were filthy rich and some low born con man showed up and tried to make a fool of us. That, fortunately, did not happen.

    Now back to Leupold's Weighted Lever wheel and the design type shown in MT 9, etc.

    In MT 13 Bessler comments that the design would be "very good for running if not so much friction was present...". This is yet, IMO, another mistranslation of what the text should read. It should read "very good for running if not so much COUNTER torque was present...".

    Where did that counter torque come from? Simple. It was the result of the CoM of the wheel's weights swinging under the axle and then onto the ascending side of the wheel as CW rotation began to take place. Bessler's whimsical suggestion to solving this problem was to locate a person at the wheel's 12:00 position who would manually lift the approaching weighted levers there with "lighting speed".

    Now, you "serious" Bessler wheel researchers out there, ask yourself if there is any other way of making those zenith approaching lever weights rise back toward their rim stops with "lighting speed". Find a way of doing that and you will be well on your way to your first WORKING Bessler wheel!!!

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  28. I also want to add that when two masses in a vacuum gravitate to one another there actually is work being done because there is resistance against the force of acceleration, inertia.

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  29. "@ technoguy, "ANY sort of wound up mainspring and gears, he would have flipped out, accused Bessler of fraud, and then had him quickly ejected (literally!) from his castle! LOL! "

    And what would have happened if Bessler did fool Karl at first, and then published his books telling all about how Karl was the only one who saw the inside of his machine and became his patron. What if after all of this the truth became known to Karl? A lord whose wisdom and ingenuity was regarded and counted upon by other nobility?

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  30. Forgive me if I pass but I prefer to deal with actual progress not theoretical jargon.

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  31. @ Anon

    I agree that the kinetic energies of the two masses accelerating toward each other will increase, but this is completely cancelled out by both of them losing the exact same amount of gravitational potential energy. Since there is no net change in the total energy / mass of the two body system and no energy / mass is transfered to anything "outside" of the system, I don't think that it is appropriate to say "work is being done" by the system just because its parts overcome inertia as they accelerate.

    Also, I consider it highly improbable that Bessler could have fooled Carl when he revealed the secret of his wheels to him although it is certainly not absolutely impossible.

    But, IF Bessler did something like that to get employment, lodging for his family, and an income out of the count, then he would have been risking spending the rest of his life in a dungeon somewhere (or worse!) if he was found out. Yes, Bessler had his "eccentricities", but he was not that crazy!

    I'm sure that Bessler had heard about another contemporary of his, an alchemist, who showed up at the court of some nearby nobleman and claimed he had a way of turning silver into gold. After collecting a considerable sum of money from the nobleman to further "refine" his method, it was discovered that he had perpetrated a hoax. I don't remember all of the details, but it involved using an actual bar of gold which had been thinly plated with silver. It was dropped into an acid solution and, voila, after a few minutes the alchemist pulled out a bar of pure shining gold because the acid had removed the coating of silver. All of the nobleman's advisors said that the alchemist HAD indeed found the secret of the "philospher's stone" and that the nobleman should fund his research so he could manufacture all of the gold he wanted.

    Eventually, the alchemist's trick was discovered and the nobleman quickly had his head parted from his body! I guess that taught the knave not to try that again!

    I suspect this story was the origin of the offer Bessler made to allow himself to be decapitated if, after selling his wheel, it should prove to be a hoax.

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  32. @ technoguy, it is regarded as work done because work is always applied force against resistance. Inertia is resistance. If you don't account for this in physics it's sloppy. The energy from this work is measured in the increase of the accelerating objects mass. Again, potential energy isn't work done, it's only what's possible. There is no increase in mass with two objects sitting stationary from each other with a quantity of potential between them. You're going to have to deepen your understanding I'm afraid.

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  33. Anon,..I beg to differ.Inertia is not resistance.Yes read my lips,inertia is a fundamental part of gravity.Inertia is never lost.Inertia can be converted into potential energy and then released later.
    The only work done is is when you have nothing left to use,period.

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  34. @ Anon

    I don't consider it "sloppy" not to describe the acceleration of the two masses toward each other as "work" because when we say "work is being done" we normally mean that one system is transferring energy / mass to ANOTHER system. In this example that is not happening and, during each object's acceleration, neither experiences a net change in its own energy / mass.

    However, I guess one could say that each mass is doing work on itself, but that is not usually what we mean when we say work is "being done" and it is not the language I would use. Again, this is a case were the language we use to describe things forces us to think about them in a certain way.

    BTW. Interesting how now that you've appeared "Doug" has suddenly disappeared...hmmm. LOL!

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  35. For anyone who wants to get back on track:

    "...Anyone who wants can go on about the wonderful doings of these weights, alternately gravitating to the centre and climbing back up again, for I can't put the matter more clearly."

    (Apologia Poetica, Johann Ernst Elias Bessler 1717)

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  36. @ Great Bear

    Yes, that is proably THE most important quote in all of the Bessler literature!

    In it Bessler is telling us HOW his wheels worked internally. The weights on a wheel's ascending side would swing in toward the axle and then, as indicated in MT 13, must then begin rising again toward the rim before they even reach the 12 o'clock position. In another part of AP where he is deriding Wagner he says that this second phase of motion of an ascending side weight takes place "in a flash" or very rapidly. Unfortunately, he does not give any hints as to exactly how this happens and even states that he does not want to "go into the details of how rapidly the 'superior' weight rises". We only know that it involved his Connectedness Principle which, apparently, involved cords that interconnected the wheel's weighted levers.

    I think the Connectedness Principle will eventually be found. It certainly won't be easy to do and will require the construction of hundreds of model wheels. One will have to determine which levers were interconnected by them and when during drum rotation, the sizes and shapes of the levers, and the role of the springs incorporated into the design. We certainly won't see the solution derived from anything currently on the web. But, someday, maybe the Bessler "community" will be abuzz with the news that some lone wolf inventor has finally duplicated Bessler's wheels and their internal mechanics such that the wheels he produces perform exactly as Bessler's did. I think when that day arrives we will all agree that his design, most probably, can be considered THE solution. Of course, some will deny it, but they will be in the minority and it will be up to them to find an alternative design that also works as Bessler's did. I wish them luck...they will need it!

    Hey, isn't JC off to Rome today to make that documentary on Bessler? I hope he has a pleasant and productive trip and that this documentary helps stimulate inventors in other countries to take an interest in Bessler's inventions. The more minds working on the mystery, the sooner that final day of revelation will come. I can't wait!

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  37. " In this example that is not happening and, during each object's acceleration, neither experiences a net change in its own energy / mass."
    Yes they do. How can you claim you pretend to quote relativity and mainstream physics and not realy understand all of this? Do a little research before responding as to why ( neutrinos not withstanding ) you can't accelerate a mass in a vacuum faster than light speed. It's because with each increment of acceleration the mass gains mass. Because that energy going into the masses acceleration has to go somewhere-it goes into the objects mass. But don't take my word for it, research it out. I'll give you one final small example as to why there is no mass increase in just potential energy. When you compare an object to the earth, and calculate the potential if that object should fall to the earth, were that object also to have a greater mass that came from it's potential, then you would also have to calculate that objects potantial to every other universal body in existence. Just beginning with the sun, since the sun is much more massive than the earth and much farther away, the objects potential compared to it's potential to the earth would be huge. And comparing it to every other possible object in the universe its potential would become infinite. And if it's mass was dependant on it's potential then it's mass would also be infinite. This all is really a no brainer. Potential is only what is energetically possible. If you won't research this out, then I am done. I have better things to do with my time than explaining physics and conversing with someone who wont bring it with them to the table.

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  38. I have no idea who Doug is. Paranoia? Diluting and diverting the conversation ( insert reasons why here ) really show me the type of person I am attempting to talk with.

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  39. I only see an excess of theory. Theories are needed, but the fundamental to support these theories is the experimental work. I prefer make experiments, with old and new things, wathever they are.
    I have noted that all people is just focused in replicate sucessfully the Bessler Wheel. It was absolutelly essential for our future, to focus the work in conceiving a system who permits extract useful work from gravity potential.
    I'm not focused in making a Bessler replication. By the reverse, I have conceived a new kinematics which if used in a good manner to build an mechanical system correctly, the result is an apparatus abble to extract great ammounts of usefull power from gravity. The work advances slowly, but the initial test model give me positive results (around 20x output!!). Nowadays I'm building a new one without less errors possible.
    Isn't, or it is something like this who all people try to find?
    Presently, my main question is not the possible excess of power that the system can give. The major problems which I see are political and economical. These are the great throubles to advance correctly with implementation of new technology to extract free energy from gravity (gravity is free, mechanisms no). But reduces exponentially the costs of energy.
    IS POSSIBLE CHANGING THE ENERGETIC PARADIGMA???
    Good help is welcome.

    Best,
    F M

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  40. @ Anon or "F M"

    You wrote:

    " 'In this example that is not happening and, during each object's acceleration, neither experiences a net change in its own energy / mass.' [This is from a prior comment of mine. TG]

    Yes they do. How can you claim you pretend to quote relativity and mainstream physics and not realy understand all of this? "

    It is YOU who are wrong. They do not experience any change in their energy / mass because they represent an "isolated" system into which and from which energy / mass does not travel. If they were experiencing any net change in their energy / mass as they both accelerated toward each other, then that would be a violation of the 1st Law of Thermodynamics. Even Bessler's wheels did not do that!

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  41. I'm on the sidelines for this one.

    John's "gravity is energy" theme has poked its head up so many times, I'm getting tired of typing the same explanations over and over for why it's not energy. It always ends up the same; the laws and formulas of motion and how they are misconceived; the laws of thermodynamics, open and closed and isolated systems and their misconceptions; and the conflicting definitions of work, force, torque, energy, mass, and matter. Especially mass and matter. (I might have forgotten something in that list, but you get the point.)

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  42. Ok, one comment. John's blog post said:

    Once you use that energy, when the book falls to the floor, it's gone until you lift it back up again.

    Release a balloon in the wind and watch it get carried along by the wind, and then grab it and take it back to the starting point (upwind) to release it again.

    It will float downstream (the boat) and you can pick it up and take it back upstream again.

    What do these have in common? Someone has to input muscle energy. They are reversible, yes, but it takes an energy external to the book/shelf system, the balloon/wind system, the boat/stream system to reverse them. The stream is under the influence of gravity. It will eventually make it to its lowest potential and remain there, just like any weight in a gravity field, until an energy external to the system in question reverses that lowest potential. In the case of the stream, the sun is the reversing energy. Blah, blah, blah.

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  43. Yes, tonight I'mn in Rome and tomorrow I go to Trevignano Romano, a small town by a beautiful lake, about 45 minutes outside of Rome, where my interview will be shot.

    But tonight I just want to say to Doug, as I've said countless times before, they all have one thing in common they all move objects with mass, and it doesn't matter how they do it, or where the energy/force/attraction comes from.

    JC

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  44. Ok one more.

    The stream wouldn't be able to move objects with mass if it wasn't being moved itself by gravity due to ITS position in the field. Once the stream reaches a pond, NO MORE DOWNSTREAM for it or anything in the stream. The same gravity is moving the stream that is moving anything in the stream, or that the stream moves: toy boats, turbines. The gravity doesn't care if the objects with mass are being buoyed along in water, or atmosphere or wooden wheels. Eventually, all the objects physically touch the earth exactly between their centers of mass, and we know the rest.

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  45. Lol, alright technoguy, one last time. We don't disagree from potential to kinetic being balanced. I'll do this from the viewpoint of the object traveling to earth and not as both objects traveling towards each other for simplicities sake. A certain object x miles away from earth has so much potential. This is only a calculation since at this moment there is no work being done. That potential represents all of that objects possible kinetic energy which includes the objects mass increase. Read that sentence again because that explains it all. As that object begins to accelerate under gravity there is work being done upon the object in displacing its moment of inertia. As that object begins to accelerate under gravity the mathematical units of potential decrease and the kinetic energy/mass of the object increases. All is balanced, there is no additional energy created. You are right in your understanding with that, but you err if you think that potential also means real world at the moment mass increase ( at least that is how it seems you think ) where it only represents the possible energy/mass increase should that object begin to accelerate. One is a virtual possibility ( potential ), one is a real world realization of that possibility or potential. One is merely calculation, one is actualization. All is balanced.

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  46. @ Doug

    I agree. The level of understanding of physical concepts one encounters on the web is truly lamentable (as is the level of grammar, punctuation, etc.). I attribute this to the sorry state of our educational system and students who would rather play video games than learn some math and science. No wonder the Chinese are poised to become the world's leading industrial power in less than five years. Their students take their educations seriously!

    @ JC

    Glad to read that you arrived in Rome safely. Hopefully, this documentary will ignite interest in Bessler and his inventions.

    The analogies you make about wind, streams, and gravity are accurate in one important aspect. For example, when a weight is lifted against gravity, it's energy / mass will increase and by an amount equal to what is lost by the lifter's body. When that weight drops back down to its starting point, it will lose exactly that amount of energy / mass which will be transferred to the air particles it passes through and the atoms of the surface it lands on. This demonstrates the "conservative" nature of what happens to the energy / mass content of objects in a gravity field. Incidentally, it also applies to objects moving in the wind or in streams!

    Bessler's wheels, however, had a design which allowed their weights to lose MORE energy / mass on their descending sides than they regained on their ascending sides. The difference in energy / mass between the weights on both sides of a wheel was what was outputted to accelerate all the structures of the wheel or any attached equipment. Hopefully, once we know what the "Connectedness Principle" was, we will be able to replicate his wheels and their performance.


    @ Anon

    The point I have been trying to make is that gravitational potential energy is just as real as kinetic energy even if it is not being used to accelerate an object at the moment. Gravitational potential energy is still energy and as such has a mass equivalent associated with it.

    When analyzing the total energy / mass of an object, we must add together the part due to its gravitational potential energy and the part due to its kinetic energy. When weights fall in a gravity field, their gravitational potential energy will constantly decrease and their kinetic energies will constantly increase...at least until they hit the ground. However, despite all of this, their total energy / mass will remain constant UNLESS it is drained off by them doing work on other masses in their vicintiy (such as pushing air, water, or soil out of their way).

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  47. @ technoguy, and I keep trying to tell you potential is just an accounting feature. It is not real energy, it's virtual-it's what's possible that's why it's called potential. There is no real energy to it, if you take into account what energy really is and per its definition-energy is ALWAYS work being done. Therefore what's possible energy is potential energy, or the potential for energy. Summed total in reference to a particular framework. Of course when an object becomes kinetic you substitute it's gain on one side of the math column from the potential on the other side of the column, provided the potential math figures are still in the same framework.

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  48. Technoguy I'm not adressing this part to you; I'm stressing these points over and over for the ignorant of physics because without a complete understanding it's all too easy for someone to be lead astray like with the gravity as wind analogy.

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  49. Ok one more
    Anonymous, what do you think about techno's theory about bessler's wheels losing more energy on the descending side than they regained on the ascending side; (and the conflict that presents with the conservation of energy)?

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  50. Doug,..I don't know about anon,but as far as I am concerned,if techno was right,you would not be able to call it perpetual motion any more.
    The reason being that sooner or later you're going to run out of mass,heh heh.

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  51. @ Trevor

    You're quite right. If a Bessler type OB wheel loses picogram quantities of mass from its weights with each revolution, then, eventually, the weights would be massless and the wheel would not even be able to output enough energy to overcome the air and bearing drag it experiences and would have to stop. However, that could take billions of years. It certainly is NOT "perpetual" in the absolute sense of the word, but for all practical purposes it would be. Assuming no part failures, such a wheel could run, perhaps, until our Sun finally entered its "Red Giant" phase, expanded, and then destroyed the Earth! (Hopefully by then we will have found another planet to migrate to.)


    @ Doug

    I know at first glance, this approach to rationalizing WHERE Bessler's wheels got the energy / mass they outputted can seem strange. But, why should it? The energy / mass is already there inside the weights of the wheel. Is it really that difficult to imagine that there is some "coordinated" motion of the weights such that they lose more energy / mass on their descent than they regain on their ascent? If the weights on the descending side fall faster than the weights on the ascenidng side rise at any instant, then it would seem that the outputting of energy / mass would be the inevitable result.

    I think that those that use the "conservative gravity field" counter arguement against the possibility of a working OB wheel tend to always imagine the weights on both sides of a wheel descending and ascending at the SAME rate at any instant. This, however, does NOT happen when the CoM of the weights is kept on a wheel's desending side during wheel rotation.

    Methinks you could be on the verge of becoming a "believer"!

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  52. That's what I'm talking about,tg, misconceptions. You use the same flawed analysis as John; take the parts of the question that support your argument and ignore the parts that cripple your argument. It's fortunate for us that real scientific analysis doesn't work that way.

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  53. Well anyway I think I have solved the problem.
    The solution is so simple I am ashamed to even show anyone.
    What I have found is that it takes a minimum of five weights for totally smooth transision of the power transfer.
    Two will work if you do not tax it load wise.
    Hold thumbs!

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  54. Doug, to answer the question you asked me, technoguy's idea is fantasy. It's quite similar to Ken Behrendt's ideas and I wonder if he's heard that from him. An object under acceleration gains real energy and mass ( and the potential that was previously calculated dimishes accordingly technoguy ). When that mass is stopped by whatever means the energy dissipates into those means.

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  55. @ Doug

    Well, it seems like I'm failing to convince you because you just refuse to even consider that the rotation of weights about their eccentrically located CoM will, indeed, cause the faster descending side weights to lose energy / mass faster than the slower ascending side weights regain it. But, I've studied this problem for many years and am VERY confident that that is exactly what happened inside of Bessler's wheels. Those that you believe are conducting "real scientific analysis" have never really considered the problem in this way. They see that the weights in an OB PM gravity wheel fall and rise through the same distance and their knee jerk reaction to this is that ALL of the energy / mass lost by the descending side weight must therefore be regained by the ascending side weights so that none is left over to accelerate the wheel or perform "outside" work. It is really THEIR analyses that are flawed, IMO!

    That being said, it is still up to we "believers" to prove our assertion with a successful replication of Bessler's wheels.


    @ Trevor

    Good luck with your five weight system. I have found evidence that Bessler's first two wheels only used SIX weighted pendulums each which might be the minimum required to which one can apply the Connectedness Principle. I'd be curious to see how you make it work with only five.


    @ Anon

    Yes, I know Ken Behrendt and have exchanged occasional emails with him over the years. His thoughts on this matter are very similar to my own and I can assure you are no fantasy. He is one of the more serious mobilists that I have ever encountered and last year he mentioned to me that by using various DT clues he had finally discovered what Bessler's Connectedness Principle was! But, unfortunately, he would not reveal all of the details about it to me. I only know that it involves some sort of web of cords or strings that interconnect the weighted levers within the drum. The levers must be precisely shaped and the cords attached to certain points on them. When one has the correct design, the weighted levers will automatically shift during drum rotation to keep the CoM of the design's eight weights on the descending side of the axle.

    I don't think the solution to the Bessler mystery will revolutionize the world, but it will at least make "real" scientists more open to the idea of "free" energy technology.

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  56. Trevor, I congratulate you on your hard work and perseverance.

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  57. Yes Trevor, congratulations.

    TG , the weights can only get their energy from motion. Gravity alone can't cause motion. By itself, gravity can only hold objects against the earth. It's really that simple. Your analysis is a fantasy like anon said.

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  58. Funny you should say that Doug,..With this perpetual motion wheel,pure gravity does cause motion,there's no other way to describe it.
    I can now see why Bessler's wheel created the noises that were heard,especially the knock on the side of the wheel going down.
    There's no CF required,no enertia,its just pure gravity and more gravity.

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  59. Doug wrote:

    "TG , the weights can only get their energy from motion. Gravity alone can't cause motion. By itself, gravity can only hold objects against the earth. It's really that simple. Your analysis is a fantasy like anon said. "

    Actually, I've been saying all along that gravity does NOT cause the motion of an object located in a gravity field. It is the conversion of the object's gravitational potential energy into kinetic energy within a gravity field that causes the object's motion which can then drain away the energy / mass of the object IF its motion through the gravity field also performs work on masses outside of the object. Gravity only serves to facilitate this process.

    "Fantasy"?! Not if one wants to finally have a rational explanation of where the energy / mass Bessler's wheels outputted came from.


    @ Trevor

    Interestingly, if the weighted levers on a wheel's ascending side began "climbing" back toward the rim on that side, but only completed the journey when they reached a wheel's descending side, then there would only have been ONE location where a weight would finally have made contact with its rim stop and that would have been on a wheel's descending side. No doubt, those "gentle" impact sounds on a wheel's descending side that witnesses reported were due to the weights making final contact there with their rim stops.

    For the Weissenstein wheel turning freely at 26 rpms and producing 8 impact sounds per wheel rotation, we are talking about 26 rotations per minute x 8 impacts per rotation = 208 impacts per minute or about 3.47 impacts per second! It must have been a VERY impressive device, indeed.

    The next question I would have is how long did the weights remain against their rim stops before they began to "gravitate" back toward the axle on the ascending side? Most likely they began swinging in toward the axle as they passed the drum's six o'clock position and not earlier than this.

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  60. I think the operation of the wheel shows positive feedback characteristics. Steady increase of speed, the external regulation... Whatever the solution is, it may look simple but it must be mind-bending and explaining of it must be not that easy.

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  61. tg"conversion of the object's gravitational potential energy into kinetic energy within a gravity field that causes the object's motion"

    That's a fundamental misconception if you ignore the conversion in the other direction. Gravity doesn't facilitate K to P. It resists it in equal measure, no matter the path; once the cycle is complete, the object's energy hasn't changed. And obviously, it hasn't "outputted" energy to anything external except in the form of friction: energy lost or "given back to the universe". The only energy that has been outputted was that which placed the object in a higher position in the field.
    Does that make it clearer?

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  62. @ Doug

    I didn't say that gravity "facilitated" the conversion of an object's KE into its PE, but, rather, the conversion of its PE into its KE. The conversion of an object's KE into its PE is caused solely by the momentum of the object itself when it moves counter to the natural "direction" of the gravity field.


    @ yellowson

    Remember that the internal mechanics of Bessler's wheels was something a "carpenter's boy could UNDERSTAND and build" after viewing if for a FEW minutes. It wasn;t some uber complex arrangement of gears or pulleys, it did not incorporate any exotic or "invented...new form of matter", and it was not driven by anything external to itself.

    What would one see if he could go back in time and sneak a peek at the interior of one of Bessler's TWO directional wheels?

    Most likely he'd just see that it was subdivided into two side by side wheels or "sub wheels" that each contained eight weighted levers. The weighted levers of each of these sub wheels at their respective 3 o'clock position would have their weights resting on wooden stops attached to the drum's rim that projected into the interior of the the drum (note that since the sub wheels are laterally reversed with respect to each other, the 3 o'clock lever of one sub wheel would be adjacent to the 9 o'clock lever of the other sub wheel and vice versa)..

    Since the CoM of each sub wheel's 8 weghts was located on the opposite side of the axle from the location of the other sub wheel's CoM, the CoM of all 16 weights would actually be directly under the axle and, consequently, there would be no torque present to rotate the drum in either direction.

    Giving the drum a slight push in either direction, however, would then trigger an amazing process to take place. There would be eight gravity activated locking mechanisms or latches that would at certain location fall into place so as to lock up all of the weights of the retrograde rotating sub wheel against their rim stops. After a single complete counter rotation, the CoM of that sub wheel's weights would be located at the center of the wheel's axle. That would then leave only the offset CoM of the sub wheel rotating in its 'preferred" direction to drive the drum (which hereafter is assumed to be in a CW direction).

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  63. Part II

    One would see the weights of this sub wheel gently contact their rim stops somewhere around the 3 o'clock position (making a slight thumping sound) and remain against them until they reached or passed the 6 o'clock position. At that point a weighted lever would begin swinging in toward the portion of the axle inside of the drum. A weighted lever would continue to "gravitate" toward the axle until it had reached the 9 o'clock position. Thereafter, the weighted lever would suddenly reverse direction and begin swinging back toward its rim stop. However, it would not finally reach its rim stop until is was again approaching the drum's 3 o'clock position.

    How did all of this weighted lever motion take place? One would notice that there was a fairly simple web of cords that interconnected the levers to each other in such a way that a lever beginning to rise at the 9 o'clock position was actually able to extract all of the energy / mass for its rise from other weighted levers as, during drum rotation, they dropped and lost energy / mass. One would also notice that the levers were not simple, but were specially shaped in order to 'facilitate' this process. If you could measure what was going on, you would find that the sub wheel's 8 weights were moving so that the weights that dropped with respect to their rim stops during each 45° increment of drum rotation were actually losing a little more energy / mass than was being regained by the weights that were rising back toward their rim stops during that increment. In other words, the sub wheel's weights were steadily LOSING energy / mass with each rotation and it was this continuous loss of energy / mass that allowed the giant drum to accelerate to a maximum terminal rotation rate or perform useful work "outside" of itself.

    As the sub wheel approached its maximum free running terminal rotation rate, you would also notice something else taking place. The CF acting on weights as they passed the 6 o'clock position was beginning to delay the levers as they tried to swing back toward the axle. They would eventually do so, but the delay would cause the CoM of the sub wheel's weights to rotate down almost until it was directly below the axle. At this location there was only enough torque to overcome the air and bearing drag acting on the drum and no extra torque to continue accelerating it.

    But attaching a device to the drum's external axle that slowed down its rotation rate would immediately cause the CoM of the sub wheel's 8 weights to return toward (but not quite reach) the location it had when the drum was turning at its maximum rate. Torque would then immediately increase to match the "load" put on the drum's external axle.

    As one viewed the "uncloaked" two directional wheel accelerate to its maximum terminal rotation rate, he would actually be seeing Bessler's "Connectedness Principle" at work. Through the use of interconnecting cords and specially shaped levers, he had found a design which would continuously maintain the CoM of a sub wheel's 8 weights on that wheel's descending side despite the fact that the drum containing the sub wheel was in a state of continuous rotation. It had taken Bessler ten long years of suffering to derive the design, but he had accomplished what no other mobilist before or since has done: a genuine WORKING OB PM gravity wheel.

    Want to duplicate Bessler's design? No problem. Just be prepared to, literally, become ANOTHER Bessler! But, you have advantages he did not have. You have computer modeling / simulation software to help you and the above general description of the design which IMO you should EXCLUSIVELY pursue if you want to have ANY hope of success (it is probably the most accurate general description of Bessler's wheels that you will ever find on the web!).

    Good luck!

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  64. tg "The conversion of an object's KE into its PE is caused solely by the momentum of the object itself when it moves counter to the natural "direction" of the gravity field."

    And that momentum is moving against the natural "direction" of gravity, continuously losing momentum to friction. Friction is a form of energy. Ergo, only in an ideal system, one with NO losses, will momentum become perpetual, much less provide overunity. The object's loss of momentum from friction is an ironclad, absolute guarantee. The loss can only be overcome by a form of energy, not a conservative force.

    Better?

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  65. @techno
    There is a big difference between "understand" and "UNDERSTAND"... Well, a bolt there, a nail here and let's add a pendulum and some levers voila! It was really simple. But let's explain how it works...A simple construction does not mean the working principle behind it is also simple. I don't know who said that the carpenter's boy comment but he/she might mean the construction was simple.

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  66. Techno will there be a time when you stop the garble-speak and talk real science? You would do yourself a world of service if you paid less attention to fantasy eccentrics and studied science. Or at least study the eccentric before you decide to take rest at his knee.

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  67. @ Doug

    Now you are saying that gravity is like friction??? No way! If gravity was acting like friction, then a weight dropping in a gravity field would never be able to trade in its acquired KE for its original PE and thereby rise to its starting height. Yet, this is exactly what a pendulum weight mounted on a frictionless fulcrum in a perfect vacuum must do after it is released. Maybe I misunderstood what you were trying to say?


    @ yellowson

    Well, I guess it all comes down to what one considers to be "simple".

    Bessler's "Preponderance Principle" is surely simple enough to understand. With the CoM of a two directional wheel's sub wheel always located on that sub wheel's descending side, that side would always be heavier than the sub wheel's ascending side. That is really the intended operating principle of ALL OB wheels is it not?

    As for the "Connectedness Principle", when we finally have all of the details of it, we will see that it only consists of sets of cords of various lengths that precisely interconnect a sub wheel's eight weighted levers. It really won't be that big a deal. Remember how Bessler complained that, when the secret was finally revealed, his critics would say that "there wasn't that much artistry in it"?

    Yes, it will all be so "simple" to understand AFTER we have found the same design that Bessler did. Up until that point, however, it will remain one of the greatest mysteries in the history of science!


    @ Anon

    After reading your comment, I was immediately reminded of that old saying: "Telling the truth is easy. But, getting people to believe you can be nearly impossible!". LOL!

    I can assure you that I HAVE spent MUCH time studying both orthodox science AND the Bessler mystery. I only offered the information I did in my last post to give the serious Bessler researcher (that's the kind that actually builds something in the shop or on a PC monitor) a direction to head in that will maximize his chance of actually achieving success.

    If one chooses to ignore or minimize my "friendly" advice, then that is fine with me. He will, howwever, IMO, be heading in "other" directions that, ultimately, will only result in a colossal waste of his time, effort, and money. But, that is his decision to make and I will still respect someone who chooses to do that.

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  68. Well, you almost understood what I said.

    Friction is resistance to motion. Once a two body system is stable, their center of masses can't get any closer together, and then their mutual gravity is a resistance to further motion. They will remain in that stable state until an unbalanced force acts upon them, and it doesn't take much force because we all know what a weak force gravity is. So yes, gravity would be like friction in that sense.

    The thing you missed, which I clearly stated, is the friction from air or surfaces is the guarantee that the weight will never rise to its starting height. KE lost to friction means the PE is less each time. There is no such thing as a frictionless environment. The pendulum will stop.

    The math equations for all this is based on this ideal situation. They provide the upper limit to measure against, so we can determine mechanical efficiency, etc.; the limit can't be reached in the real world.

    In your imaginary wheel, all of the connections between levers, weights, springs, cords (24, was it?), adds up to a lot of mechanical friction to overcome, which can only be overcome by supplying it with a form of energy. Gravity is, in this case, more friction, not energy. To paraphrase bessler, it would turn better if it was empty.

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  69. @techno
    Why don't you publish your ideas about the wheel on a webpage? I think you would express yourself more clearly on a webpage. You wouldn't be limited in this comments section. Same thing goes for Doug. Doug, you may want to explain what the renewable energy source is and why a mechanism based wheel is impossible. It would be good to read your ideas about the PM subject.

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  70. yellowson,

    I am saying a wheel of any kind isn't going to turn from gravitational force, it needs energy to do that.

    I don't want to open a new can of worms about renewable energy, I know there is no one that reads this blog that believes it's possible, so there isn't any point in belabouring it.

    There is no such thing as perpetual motion, because of ever-present friction forces.
    It would be much easier, and it would mean more, for you to research it on your own. There are many physics websites already. If you don't know any, I can show you some.

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  71. Techno will there be a time when you stop the garble-speak and talk real science?
    Right now I'm calling crap on everything about you, you fantasy based egomaniac. If you have the answers you boast you have why aren't you building the dam thing? I guess we'll start here.

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  72. Order! Order!!

    If we can't keep this professional, at least let's try to keep it friendly.

    I agree that all sorts of irrelevances and superfluities appear here, and some know no depths of pedantry and happily write volumes about them, while others are convinced that anything and/or everything won't work and go to pains to rub it in.

    But let's try to stick to the point.

    This forum should be an interchange if ideas. Not everyone will agree with everything, but once you start slapping people down for unique or quaint ideas, you stifle all the ingenuity and inventiveness that may one day make the world a better place.

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  73. So saideth the drunk who looked around for the bottle.
    ( joking )

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  74. @Doug
    May be you are right I am wrong. If you don't explain your idea we will never know. We have to be open-minded for finding the solution. I am trying to read every article about this subject nowadays. By the way I read Apologia last day. I think you should read it. Wagner was thinking it was impossible to build such wheel and he had some pretty good questions about the wheel. There are the questions and their answers from Bessler in Apologia. In th text, Bessler is furious, I don't like that attitude; but he sounds pretty convincing.

    @Bear
    Well said.

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  75. @ Doug

    In your last comment to me you wrote:

    "The thing you missed, which I clearly stated, is the friction from air or surfaces is the guarantee that the weight will never rise to its starting height. KE lost to friction means the PE is less each time. There is no such thing as a frictionless environment. The pendulum will stop."

    Well, I went back to that previous comment of yours and I could not find any mention of "friction from air or surfaces". In that previous comment you CLEARLY equated gravity with friction which it is NOT. If gravity truly acted like friction, it would be able to dissipate a rising object's KE all by itself which it can not and does not do! In a perfect vacuum, ALL of a rising object's KE will be turned into PE DESPITE the presence of a gravity field.

    I will, however, grudgingly admit that "like" friction, gravity will "facilitate" the decrease in the velocity of a rising object as that object converts its own KE back into PE.

    You also suggested that Bessler's wheels would, because of the large number of interconnecting cords involved, have so much internal friction that they would have to have an external source of energy to run.

    You forget that Bessler was a clock and organmaker and well acquainted with techniques for reducing friction to the bear minimum. For his wheels all surfaces in moving contact with each other would have been made of metal and well lubricated. No two cords within a wheel would have made rubbing contact with each other. And, the exterior rim of the wheel was a smooth and most likely polished cylindrical surface in order to reduce aerodynamic drag to near zero. In fact, although we determined that the Weissenstein wheel outputted only 25 watts of constant power, it may actually have outputted a few more watts which would have been sufficient to overcome any frictional forces acting on its parts during drum rotation. His wheels would have been easily capable of providing this extra power output without needing an external source of power.

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  76. Part II (I definitely need to keep my future comments shorter!)


    @ yellowson

    Yes, I have considered publishing my opinions about Bessler's wheels, but I would only do so if I could provide my readers with enough details about their inner mechanics so that they could actually build one and have it work. To do that, I will need the complete details of the Connectedness Principle and the "magic lever" design. Currently, I only have parts of these and not enough to publish so a wheel could be built from them. Also, I would not want to just post the complete solution on the web because websites come and go over time. Because of the greater details that would be involved (far more than in my previously posted "general analysis), I would reveal the design in a book which those interested enough could buy and use to guide their construction efforts.

    Another point you raised concerns Wagner's "critiques" of Bessler and his wheels. If anybody interested in Bessler hasn't read these, then he should. Wagner makes many criticisms of Bessler's wheels which WERE quite valid up to the point of the Weissenstein wheel duration test. After that wheel ran successfully for almost two months, all of Wagner's criticisms could be dismissed as irrelevant.


    @ Anon

    My advice to you is to not assume that anything YOU can not understand must automatically be "garble-speak" that others can not also understand. If I ever write anything you do not understand, simply ask for clarification and I will do my best to provide it.

    You ask why I do not build a wheel. The reason is simply that I do not yet have enough details to do so and I am not pretending that I do. I, however, maintain an ongoing effort to acquire those details. If and when I finally find them to my satisfaction, they will be revealed. I'd certainly hate to see the secret lost for another 300 years!


    @ Great Bear

    I am not offended if anyone decides to reject or minimize my analysis of Bessler's wheels and I hope they are not offended if I continue to believe that, by doing so, they will only wind up wasting their "time, effort, and money" on other approaches. The decision is theirs to make, of course.

    However, you can be sure that I would not have posted the analysis I did if I did not have some VERY good reasons to believe that it is accurate as far as it goes. I wish I could go into these reasons in greater detail, but this is neither the right time nor place for that.

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  77. By the way you guys,..This bessler wheel is not just perpetual motion,it's perpetual energy for work as well.
    My point is,don't even entertain things such as friction or wind resistance because if it can do a job of work,these factors are negligable.

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  78. Yellowson
    Once you understand why any type of wheel can't turn just from being in a gravity field, you're ready to understand renewable energy.

    Here is a search engine for physics websites:

    http://www.physics.org/explore.asp

    TG, my comment about air and surfaces:

    And that momentum is moving against the natural "direction" of gravity, continuously losing momentum to friction. Friction is a form of energy.

    I thought most people knew that "friction" was shorthand for "air and surface friction". Now you know, too.

    And you say:
    "In that previous comment you CLEARLY equated gravity with friction which it is NOT."
    That's not quite what I said. I said gravity resists motion, like friction is resistance to motion. Read it again.

    TG:" If gravity truly acted like friction, it would be able to dissipate a rising object's KE all by itself which it can not and does not do! In a perfect vacuum, ALL of a rising object's KE will be turned into PE DESPITE the presence of a gravity field."

    And, once again, there is no such thing as a perfect vacuum.

    Even if you could create one, what have you done? You've created an isolated system with a boundary impermeable to exchange of matter or energy, and you couldn't do much with it, could you?
    But the rub is it wouldn't be impermeable to gravity. Eventually, because of gravitational attraction, the pendulum stops, even in a perfect vacuum free of air and surface friction. So yes, by itself, gravity can dissipate all of an object's KE. It would just take longer.

    You agreed with this in your next sentence:
    "I will, however, grudgingly admit that "like" friction, gravity will "facilitate" the decrease in the velocity of a rising object as that object converts its own KE back into PE."
    So I guess you're on the same page now.

    Bessler might have been able to reduce friction in his wheel to a minimum, but you will have to grudgingly admit he couldn't eliminate it.

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  79. Doug wrote:

    "Eventually, because of gravitational attraction, the pendulum stops, even in a perfect vacuum free of air and surface friction."

    NOT True! The gravitational attraction is necessary to keep an "ideal" pendulum in constant motion indefinitely.

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  80. @Doug
    Don't worry I am very well aware of physics, thermodynamics, semiconductor physics etc. I accept that with current laws of physics the wheel is totally impossible. My problem is that Bessler is so convincing, I don't know, read his words, he says if the wheel turns out to be a hoax his head can be chopped off. My brain tells he was a fraud but my gut says he did it.

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  81. TG; it is true if you calm down for a second and think about it. Do you need to lie down? It's not a big deal that it's true anyway.
    The "ideal" pendulum would remain in motion longer the farther away it is from any source of gravity like the earth.
    That's the property of mass that we can't escape from; it attracts other mass. As much as we'd like to, we can't change it. We can't even identify its source. We can't turn it off, reverse it, shield it, use it for repelling other mass, or produce an anti-gravitational force. It slowly, inexorably, attracts.

    Yellowsun
    His head was protected by his own greed, hoax or not. No one was willing to pay his price for an alleged hoax or a genuine article. He painted himself into a corner.
    But you can follow your gut if you think he did it.

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  82. Technoguy, I have no problem understanding you. That's not the problem. You talk fantasy which I labeled garble speak. That's the problem. You don't think things all the way out. Take this statement for instance.-
    "NOT True! The gravitational attraction is necessary to keep an "ideal" pendulum in constant motion indefinitely."
    I see what your saying but it's fundamentally wrong. If you took out friction and provided the gravity never changed then the pendulum would swing until the matter decayed. But gravity isn't necessary to keep something moving, Newtons first law fits that description just fine. And gravity is always changing from the interaction of other gravitational bodies. Realistically this is true and it will always affect the pendulum.
    Ken's spider wheel is well over 5 years old. Ask him what's taking him so long. I'm sure he'll give you an interesting reply. Ken has an opinion on everything supernatural which he'll readily tell you he's an expert on. If you really want to get in his good book, tell him how gorgeous he is and how he looks at least 20 years younger than he really is. He'll waste no time telling you that's true and it all because of his mind power. Then go and take a look of a real picture of him and judge for yourself.

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  83. Doug wrote:

    "The "ideal" pendulum would remain in motion longer the farther away it is from any source of gravity like the earth."

    Now you're saying that a pendulum can work without a gravity field?! Arrgghh...I give up! That makes about as much sense as your "revelation" that friction is a form of energy!


    @ yellowson

    Follow your gut! There is absolutely no conflict in believing that Bessler really did construct a WORKING PM gravity wheel and did so WITHOUT violating any of our accepted laws of physics. You must think of the weighted levers inside of a Bessler wheel as being, via their interconnecting cords, maintained in a delicate state of equilibrium which just happened to place the CoM of their weights onto the drum's descending side. As the drum began to rotate, that equilibrium was momentarily perturbed, but immediately responsed by reestablishing itself so as to again place the CoM of the weights where it formerly was with respect to the axle. This process was instanteous and automatic and it WOULD result in the outputting of energy / mass from the wheel's weights with every drum rotation.


    @ Anon

    Well, at least you, unlike Doug, know that a pendulum requires gravity to stay in motion!

    As far as Ken B. is concerned, I've only exchanged emails with him a few times since he resigned from the BW discussion board back in 2006. He only recently began working with what you call a "spider wheel" design and only found the Connectedness Principle by accident last year.

    He has constructed hundreds of Working Model 2D simulations in an effort to solve the Bessler mystery and sends me and a few other serious mobilists periodic updates on his progress. Of all of the mobilists I have interacted with over the years, he has impressed me the most. Aside from his relentless Bessler research he is also the author of several books. I've never seen any photos of him on the web so I wouldn't know what he looks like. That's really unimportant, though. I want to know more about the Connectedness Principle he has discovered, but it looks like I'll just have to be patient.

    With the correct Connectedness Principle and the correct lever shape, Bessler's wheels WILL become a reality again!

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  84. No technoguy, Kens's been talking about his spiderwheel for over 5 years.

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  85. Hi. I talked with Kenneth several years ago. I don't think he used springs or was just starting to think of them but Bessler said he did. If you talk to him again technoguy tell him darryl said to say hi. I wonder if he still remembers me.

    Different anon.

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  86. As I thought, there's more than one anonymous here now. Please, guys, just choose "Name/URL" under "Select profile" and enter a name (ignore any brackets), post as before, and let us see who's saying what!

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  87. Do you think these anons are ashamed to be identified with the Perpetual Motion project?

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  88. @ Trevor

    Maybe they are :) Let's see!

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  89. As regards Friction, I'm inclined to side with Trevor here. If a wheel can produce a useful effort to do work, then friction and air resistance is unimportant. Yes it might detract a certain amount of energy but it's largely irrelevant to the additional power produced. As I think we all accept, Bessler accomplished this (and now Trevor), so why argue about things that don't matter. Friction and resistance can be terribly important when there's so little force produced that it might stop a wheel from rotating, but then again, no-one is out to invent something so weak or trivial.

    Any more news Trevor? Is it time for the rest of us to stop working now?

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  90. Great Bear,..I don't want to jump the gun.
    If I fail at least it's good news for you guys to be the first.
    Whoever said a pendulum will work better in space,is wrong.In zero gravity it will become an orbiting mass around its fulcrum.
    I'm sure you all agree,pendulums need gravity or a spring to polarise them.

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  91. @ Trevor

    Glad to read that you too believe pendulums need gravity to work. That makes three of us now. Our ranks are swelling! LOL!

    I look at "friction" as, loosely, any PROCESS that can drain off a moving object's KE and convert it into an increase of the energy / mass of something "outside" of that object. Yes, in most cases of interest to the mobilist it is due to actual physical contact taking place such as with the air particles involved in producing aerodynamic drag or the surface irregularities involved in producing heat when rubbing takes place. But it can also take a more subtle form such as when electrostatic or magnetic "coupling" takes place. And it could also even involve gravitational coupling that can occur when a massive moving object's gravity field begins to "tow" other masses along with it.


    Looks like we're starting to develop a case of "Anon Confusion" around here as the number of lurkers turning to active posters on this blog begins to pick up. C'mom guys, give those who comment here a break. Pick a username or your initials or something so we will know who is saying what.


    To the Anon who wants me to say "hi from darryl" to Ken B., I will try to remember to do so the next time I hear from him. He usually sends me one of his quarterly "updates" around this time of the year. Maybe I'll be able to get some more info from him about the Connectedness Principle and mention it here.


    If there are any lurkers out there who would like to post a comment, but don't know where to start, how about just telling us a Bessler quote that you have questions about or which you think is particularly important to solving the mystery?

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  92. Ok one more comment.

    The pendulum in space was already oscillating when you put it there. I thought that much was understood. The point being, motion stops, even in the near perfect vacuum of space, because you can't get far enough away from other masses to completely negate gravitational attraction.

    That's why isolated systems aren't ever truly isolated,like I said, because of gravity.
    The entire universe is considered the only candidate for an isolated system. Why? Because as far as we know, there isn't anything beyond its boundary for energy or matter to "escape" into.

    The pendulum doesn't need gravity for motion. That's a misconception. Don't you see? Its motion, once it has begun for whatever reason, would oscillate longer in less gravity.
    Gravity acts as an unbalanced force. It accelerates things towards each other. When the things reach an equilibrium, the accelerated motion stops. The things reach equilibrium even in the absence of friction. The pendulum in the vacuum is still attracted to the center of the earth, gravity always wins in the duel between it and motion.

    But what about orbits? Our planet is in motion, seemingly perpetually, because of the gravity between it and the sun. I know, but in case someone is wondering, eventually, after a very long time, the sun-earth system will reach that equilibrium. The sun has so much mass that the earth's "free fall" around it can continue for billions of more years.

    Here is a link to an image of the sun compared to the size of the earth, just for perspective of what we're talking about:

    http://www.universetoday.com/65591/which-is-bigger-earth-or-sun/

    Friction is a force that converts kinetic energy to thermal energy. I misspoke earlier, I'm sorry.

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  93. Yep yer right Doug. A pendulum can also be driven by a spring, it doesn't need gravity. For all who care you can call me Anon 101.

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  94. @ Doug

    Okay, I have ONE question for you.

    IF we could remove all of the matter from the universe EXCEPT for our pendulum which is mounted on a frictionless fulcrum (and there are NO springs involved!) and ONE nearby AIRLESS planet, would the pendulum oscillate forever once it was started by hand?

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  95. No. The pendulum will eventually stop because of the gravity of the nearby planet attracting the center of mass of the pendulum, which by definition, is under the fulcrum.

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  96. That is an interesting question. Gravity versus inertia. I think neither will win. If there is no friction gravity will continue to pull and inertia will continue to move. The pendulum will swing back and forth.
    Anon 101.

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The True Story of Bessler’s Perpetual Motion Machine.

On  6th June, 1712, in Germany, Johann Bessler (also known by his pseudonym, Orffyreus) announced that after many years of failure, he had s...