There seems to be a problem. Some people, myself included, believe that Bessler's wheel required the presence of gravity to work and have, somewhat confusingly suggested that it was a gravity-wheel. But the consensus is that gravity cannot be a energy source for the wheel. Bessler seemed to suggest that it was, so someone is wrong. Gravity is still not completely understood. We can describe what it does and how it effects us and from this we have, historically, deduced that it cannot be an energy source.
However, you can read what you like into Bessler's words but for me there is one clear message, gravity was an essential ingredient for the rotation of his wheel, or to put it another way, without it, he had nothing. He also stated, in my opinion, quite clearly that no other force was required to turn his wheel - other than an imbalance he generated with his moving weights. So how can we reconcile this with the belief that gravity cannot be an energy source?
I have often used an analogy which likens the wind to gravity and despite stressing that I was only applying the analogy to the actual interface between the wind and a windmill, and the force of gravity and some weights, many have pointed out the reason for the wind can be traced back to the sun's effect on earth. The energy source was not relevant to the analogy. The same reasoning applied to my analogy to a stream of water; again I only pointed to the actual interface between a stream of water and a propeller screw but again the source of the stream was offered to refute the analogy. Those who are aware of the late Eric Laithwaite (Gyroscopes and linear motor) will probably recall his employment of analogies in order to understand things in a more coherent way. I use them a lot to try to get to the heart of the problem. My point was that a force or stream or thrust was applied to rotatable surface when it was completely submerged within that force, stream or thrust and yet in all three cases the force was a conservative (or continuous) one and therefore apparently inaccessible as an energy source.
Curiously I realised belatedly, that the wind and gravity move in opposite directions. The wind moves because the air molecules of which it is composed tend to move from higher pressure areas to lower ones. One can conclude that the higher pressure areas contain more tightly packed molecules seeking a lower pressure where they can expand because they have become warmer. Gravity on the other hand, causes mass which is also composed of molecules, to be attracted to other larger and denser masses and the larger the mass the more powerful the attraction. One could assume that the larger the mass the more condensed the molecules might become and they respond to what Newton 'call action at a distance' and are driven to join the larger masses to add to their overall density. and to the strength of the attraction.
So wind molecules seek lower pressure and under gravity mass molecules seek higher pressure. But the mechanics that causes objects of mass to move towards each other, and towards larger ones, is invisible to us. Magnetism is only discerned with the naked eye with, for example, the iron filings demonstration. Gravity too cannot be seen but its actions are obvious. The moving molecules in the wind only react to pressure changes.. Pressure changes occur when there is warmer air present, due to the sun's heat. Warm air rises because it is less dense than colder air and since both are effected by gravity, the warmer air rises above the colder air where it can expand.
The actual substance (for want of a better word) which acts at a distance to attract objects of mass, is not the source of energy and I have never thought that it was. No, it is the action of the weights when moved by gravity which in my opinion can provide the energy to turn the wheel. Gravity is merely the enabler in the same way that the pressure variations in the air, which cannot of themselves provide energy, do cause the wind to blow and it is the resultant wind which provides the energy to turn the windmill.
JC
The essential difference between the Newtonian field view of gravity and the "wind" view of gravity is that the former is static and the latter dynamic. The dynamic view is richer and implicitly digs deeper into the physical nature of gravity.
ReplyDeleteThe establishment view of gravity is akin to a view of air pressure which is sublimely unaware that it is made up of a myriad of particle impacts at a mind-boggling small scale. Without this insight one thinks of pressure as continuous, for example. With this insight one knows that pressure is discontinuous and that the surface to which air pressure is applied is in continuous motion, albeit on a very fine scale.
It should be noted that even Newton considered the idea of action at a distance, nuts. Yet that is the notion that predominates on the BesslerWheel forums - with the honourable exception of John and yours truly. :-)
Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you:
But when the leaves fall silently
The wind is passing thro'.
Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I:
But when the apple hits your head
The wind has passed you by.
(with apologies to Christina Rossetti )
The swinging of the weights causes a wormhole in space to open at the tilt point of the weights , energy pours out from the wormhole when it opens which is employed to power the mechanism .
ReplyDeleteWormhole. That could mean anything. Bessler's wheel was likely powered by an interspatial flexure.
ReplyDeleteGravity is just the conveyer, mass is the substance by which the potential energy is conveyed.
ReplyDeleteWithout gravity, which is action at a distance, there would be no energy transfer.
All fundamental forces are mediated by a carrier particle - the family of so-called elementary bosons, one each for each fundamental force. So EM forces are mediated by photons, the strong nuclear force by gluons etc. The gravitational mediator is yet to be experimentally verified but the graviton is mooted as a place holder until a testable quantum gravity theory can be reconciled with the rest of the standard model (ie. unification).
ReplyDeleteSo action at a distance (not to be confused with Einstein's 'spooky action at a distance', concerned with entangled particle properties) isn't quite as inexplicable as one might think - rather, fields and their associated forces are described in terms of quantum energy exchanges - real, if miniscule and fleeting interactions between baryonic / fermionic matter (the corporeal, lumpy stuff) and gauge bosons precipitating out of the vacuum (the invisible fields and their respective forces).
The mechanical force we feel between masses under mutual acceleration (ie. attraction or repulsion) is a tactile manifestation of ambient quantum momentum, traded between the field-manifesting particles in quantised units of h-bar (derived from the reduced Planck constant).
So think about that in a practical sense for a second - suppose you're holding two attracting magnets apart; the force - the effective 'weight' between them - is a manifestation of negatively-signed packets of real momentum (as in the mechanical stuff) popping out of the vacuum and tugging the magnets together. When we separate them again, against this force, we're repaying the energy the vacuum has invested in forcing them together.
If we turn one of these dipoles around 180° then the sign of this ambient momentum being exchanged flips to positive, and we feel a repulsive force instead, however the same principle applies - the vaccum does some output work, and we do some equal and opposite input work to restore the masses to their starting positions. If however we let two magnets attract together and then do not spearate them again, then the vacuum has performed work, for free, that it hasn't been reimbersed for! The net thermodynamic energy of the universe has thus been reduced - some work has been done that will never be undone, and entropy has increased. While not useful to our ends, this is nonetheless an illuminating state of affairs, and with only slight modification we can envisage an interaction, if only hypothetically, in which the magnets might be separated against a lower force (or even zero force) compared to the closing force that brought them together.
This would be an asymmetric interaction - the field has output more work than we have input, literally, in terms of the vacuum having invested energy in a translation of masses that hasn't been fully reciprocated. The total thermodynamic energy of the universe has thus increased, at the expense of the total vacuum energy density.
Where does these vacuum-borne packets of energy come from? One popular answer is Heisenberg's uncertainty principle - the vacuum has a very high latent energy, and due to the stochastic nature of the wave function's evolution there's a non-zero chance of elementary bosons of any and all possible wavelengths spontaneously collapsing into definite values, before instantaneously disolving again, anywhere and everywhere, all of the time. They just pop out of nowhere then disapear again, repaying the vacuum energy invested in their transient actualisation... unless of course they inadvertently end up being spent in a mechanical energy exchange. This is the 'quantum foam' - the fizzing maelstrom of ghostly 'virtual' bosons responsible for the twin-plate Casimir effect, for example (in this case virtual photons), but also magnetic interactions, whether passive or electronic. In fact it's the same effect responsible for the EMF we call 'voltage' in electricity!
Besides Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, another, though less popular view of the provenance of these ambient vacuum energy exchanges (popularised in earlier decades by the likes of Feynman), is that the energy required to realise an actual functioning particle from the vacuum is "borrowed from time", be that past or future (the distinction probably being moot since few even support this view any more), and again, repayed when the particle almost instantly (ie. at lightspeed) dissipates again.
ReplyDeleteAs well as manifesting fundamental forces or attracting mirrors together, these quantum processes are also invoked to explain spontaneous particle-pair creation, a la Hawkings' radiation, where a particle and its anti-particle twin spontaneously emerge from nothingness, before mutually self-annihiliating and thus repaying their debt to the vacuum / time / probability or whatever. Again, per Hawkings' theory on black hole evaporation, if one or other of a spontaneously-created particle pair should fall across an event horizon, it can no longer mutually self-annihiliate with its twin, and the vacuum energy density has again been deprived of one unit of ambient momentum.
So the prevalent view is that this situation will not be markedly different for the garvitational mediator, if and when it is ever experimentally confirmed. As such, an asymmetric gravitational interaction will be one in which the mediator performs more output work (ie. more units of h-bar will be traded) as compared to the input workload returning energy back to the field source.
There's just one final point that needs reiterating (if i still have anyone's attention) - unlike asymmetric EM interactions, where an interplay of at least four separate but related variables determine the energy state at any given moment (things like permability, remanance, hysteresis and coercivity - and their inter-related rates of change), gravity and mass interactions have no such complications... the exchanges occur instantly, at lightspeed. This fact precludes feild properties unique to gravity from playing any key role in a potential asymmetry - in other words, there is no rational scientific reason why gravity in a working Bessler mechanism could not be replaced by any other force, since any asymmetry cannot depend on any special properties of the field itself - rather, it has to be the mechanism that accomplishes the asymmetry. Counterbalancing, of some kind, if not via a conventional counterweight, or some similar means of modulating the effective weight of a mass against a force. If gravity suffices, then so will any other force, and further, as its magnitude increases, so does the corresponding energy.
In summary, the classical view of gravity simply has no bearing with regards to the source of any resulting disunity. From the classical view alone, all we can meaningfully say is that energy has been created or destroyed. By definition then, such a description is incomplete, and there is no alternative but to look beyond to the underlying realm for a description of the source or sink.
Although it looks as though my latest attempts to justify any of this with a valid measurement have gone the same way as Trevor's (i feel your pain mate!), the THEORY is solid, and not-at-all mine.. it's just the inevitable implication of the standard model - there simply is no more consistent an interpretation possible, within the terms of standard physics. A classical asyymetry would be sinking or sourcing energy to or from the vacuum, via the unbalanced activity of virtual elementary bosons... and we'd be shuttling energy between the thermodynamic realm (that portion of the universe's energy that it was born with, and which is continually depleting towards eventual heat death, courtesy of the second law and time's arrow), and the energy of the vacuum's virtual broiling. The net energy of both is, in static terms, zero, but their deviation around that 'zero point' represents a gradient, like any other.
Vibrator:
DeleteFascinating. Utterly.
I am a follower of your informing offerings. Much of what you've written here, through these months past, I have saved.
As is the case with some with others, only, say, a few percent of what you explain can I 'get'.
To myself, the very most interesting part of your coverage has had to do with mineral magnetism.
Now, hypothetically . . .
If one were to discover - finally - a purely mechanical magnetic device which, by it's action alone (of asymmetric interaction), would of itself CYCLE, and thereby provide freely available, usable energy, given that, then WHAT might likely be any deleterious effect(s) of such an advent, as done upon the vacuum side, i.e. in terms of possible damage done it short- and long- term or, alternately not ??
Sorry for late reply, down in Barcelona living la vida loca...
DeleteI think the vacuum energy density will be depleted, and the 'thermodynamic energy' will have increased acordingly.
If the depletion is only limited to the EM field, then the strength of the fine-structure constant (alpha) will drop, locally, but eventually globally. This lightspeed-limited propogation of the change will be devastating, possibly ending the universe as we know it.
If instead the change is distributed amongst all gauge bosons, then the resulting perturbations will be that much more watered-down, though still likely cataclysmic. In short, if any or all of the fundamental 'constants' are interlinked in a transiently-stable homeostasis, changing one variable upsets the balance and a global phase transition will be precipitated as everything settles into a new equillibrium.
Steorn have already established the principals of such an asymmetry (temporal variance) so either way, we should eventually find out the consequences. I'm skeptical though that it could be entirely risk-free. For their part, Steorn seem to think they're really 'creating' and 'destroying' energy, without further consequence... which seems terribly naive, but then who wants to spoil a good party?
"within the terms of standard physics."
ReplyDeleteBut when someone (like me for instance ;-) shows that "standard physics" is inadequate then there will be a new standard. won't there!
Thank you for your detailed comments Mr V. I confess much of what you so lucidly describe seems, at least to me, to be slightly irrelevant to our quest. Please do not think I'm being irreverent or disrespectful, nothing could be further from the truth, I believe you have deeper grasp of the fundamentals of physics than most of us who are engaged in this research. I think that your comments were directed towards the notion of wormholes and action at a distance, when, for me, the answer to our research may have a much more fundamental or basic solution, not just basic but simple - one where we slap our head and say 'of course!'
ReplyDeleteJC
I've every confidence that the eventual solution will be 'kick-youself obvious' from a mechanical perspective, but the issue i'm trying to address is how a spherical gravity well (or any such field source) can accomodate a closed-loop trajectory having a non-zero net energy. From a statics perspective, this is all but a contradiction in terms.
DeleteYet gravity doesn't change over time, therefore if Bessler was for real (which i believe) then the only loophole is some form of transient counterbalancing which doesn't require a dropped mass - thus circumventing the afformentioned field symmetry.
However rather than neatly solving the problem of where the energy comes from, this just shifts the goalposts... for example while i cannot know what mechanism you may have in mind, i do know that it is fully in compliance with conservation of energy. If the mechanism works, then every step in the proces is fully dependent upon CoE, and no 'magic' occurs but in the summing of those fully CoE-consistent steps.
Again, if every step in the interaction depends upon CoE, then how can we suppose it is ultimately violated? Rather, we must shift our focus from the classical realm to the quantum.
This quantum view doesn't help us discover the asymmetry - it'll be purely classical in nature, obviously - but the ultimate question of where the energy is coming from cannot be answered classically. That doesn't mean there IS no answer however.
So call me cynical but while i do believe a gravitational asymmetry is the likeliest solution, i cannot accept that as a complete resolution, and surely the greatest lesson in this world is that there's no free lunch. Hence it won't be 'gravity' paying the bill but something more fundamental, of which gravity is but an epiphenomenon..
The whole 'gravity is not an energy source' argument isn't just some stubborn stick-in-the-mud; clasically, it is axiomatic. If an asymmetry is possible, we'll doubtless be converting vacuum energy into thermodynamic energy.
And this point also addresses your latest blog to some extent - most fundamentlly, a net output of energy must (ie. DOES) correlate to an increase in entropy, somewhere along the line. A working Bessler wheel would be increasing the thermodynamic energy of the universe, therefore we must anticipate that the entropy of some other, more elementary, field, has increased proportionately...