I've been researching and building Bessler's wheel for so long, I no longer consider how extraordinary is the thing I will achieve if and when it works, or anyone else who hopes to be successful, instead of me! For an extraordinary thing it will be, make no mistake - inventing a machine which requires naught but gravity to feed it!
I understand why the prevailing consensus of opinion rules strongly against such a concept and yet man's instinct is that this will work! It is that same intuition that informed us that a heavier than air machine could fly, when experts predicted it wouldn't. "Radio has no future. Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.
X-rays will prove to be a hoax."
-- William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, British scientist, 1899. Probably the largest source of wrong predictions today, concern global warming, but I'm not even going there! On the subject of erroneous scientific predictions, I think that the presumption that gravity-driven machines are impossible will become one of the most famous.
Scientific misconceptions are usually accepted beliefs that were founded on inaccurate arguments that sometimes have little basis in actual scientific fact. Scientific misconceptions can also
refer to preconceived notions based on religious or cultural
influences. Many scientific misconceptions occur because of faulty
teaching styles and the sometimes perplexing nature of true scientific
texts. Some topics, like evolution
are hamstrung with so much moral interpretation that the truth is rarely
revealed and the majority of common knowledge regarding the topic is
erroneous.
What is so curious about the Johann Bessler case is that he went to great lengths to prove his claims, improving his wheels, inventing and reinventing new tests to prove that he was not a liar. All who attended the tests believed him, how could they not? The evidence was so irrefutable; the tests so conclusive; what else could he have done - other than show the internal workings? But science ignored Bessler's claims and even ignored the word of a man of proven integrity who knew the secret too, confirmed the inventor's claims and supported him.
The key to understanding why it was thought impossible in Bessler's time, lies in the difference between what we mean now by perpetual motion and what they meant 300 years ago. Because the word gravity, as I have said many many times, simply means heaviness, it was not recognised as a force but rather as an intrinsic feature of all things on earth. Heaviness did not convey the feeling that one could tap into it as Bessler claimed. Since it was not separable from the thing having heaviness, how could it be used separately?
Sir Isaac Newton said that any two bodies in the universe attract each other with a force that is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. Note that word "force"; in physics a force is any interaction which tends to change the motion of an object. According to Voltaire, at the time of Newton's death in 1726, even "after 40 years since its publication, his ' Principia' had not 20 readers outside of England", so it is little wonder that any suggestion that gravity might provide the necessary impetus to rotate Bessler's wheel was misunderstood or not believed, and yet Newton himself drew a design for a gravity-driven wheel, so he must have considered the possibility.
So in Bessler's day, perpetual motion meant something which would run continuously without any additional force being added - a closed system. No wonder the scientists of the day dismissed it; a closed system that needed no energy input and yet kept running and doing work! Perpetual motion as a closed system is pointless, even if it were possible. Today I think of Bessler's wheel, not as a a perpetual motion device, but as something which will run continuously as long as it is fed energy, energy such as the force of gravity, or the energy we obtain from burning fossil fuels in cars, planes and ships. There is no difference and yet we don't deny those latter devices will run continuously as long as they have fuel to burn and don't break down, but they are not what we understand as perpetual motion machines. There is of course the small but important detail, can gravity be tapped in the same way that gas can? Science says no - Bessler says yes!
JC
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You acknowledge that the crux of the matter is that a closed thermodynamic cycle yields zero net energy, concluding correctly that by definition, then, Bessler's wheel was an open thermodynamic system.
ReplyDeleteHowever there can be nothing more contentious in explaining this conclusion than to proffer that gravity constitutes a form of energy - since, in classical terms, energy is by definition the product of force and displacement.. and as the force of gravity remains constant, and the weights in a vertical loop must (it seems) travel equal distance up as down, in any reasonable understanding such a system remains quintessentially closed and equitable in terms of input and output energies.
In other words, the only attempt at an explanation that isn't going to dig us into a deeper sceptical hole is one that'll explain how the system can be open - specifically, how it can be 'asymmetric' between input and output FxD integrals.
Bar revealing a working design, explaining how and why these two values can vary is the ONLY way to challenge this conceptual impasse.
One kg times one meter times gravity on the ascending side is precisely equal to the same quantity of energy one meter to the right on the descending side. We can't simply gloss over this immutable fact, not least by falling foul of the psuedo-sceptics' favourite criticism of appearing to conflate force and energy..
Additionally, something that's been bothering me lately regards Karl's supposed validation of the internal mechanism that you mention above, in relation to Bessler's answer to a direct question on this issue on page 296 of your AP edition:
"The first question is:- “Has it ever come about that a person of
eminence has seen the interior of my invention?”
To this I answer - no."
How are we to reconcile this seemingly stark self-contradiction, since my understanding is that this was written after Karl's putative validation of the mechanism..?
The comment you quoted from came, as you say, from Bessler's Apologia Poetica, which was written and printed just prior to his arrival at Kassel, and therefore before Karl was given access to the wheel, although negotiations for his patronage had been established. A position had been offered and accepted but it was dependent on Karl's approval of the machine and this had not taken place the time of publication.
ReplyDeleteJC
Ah thanks for clarifying - i should've checked the dates but hadn't got round to it - i just noticed AP is already singing Karl's praises as a patron so assumed the disclosure had already happened.
DeleteAnother good blog topic. Everyday the earth is bombarded with energy from the Sun and I recall reading that in order to supply that continuous flow of energy, something like 50,000 tons of mass must be lost by the Sun every second and radiated off into space as the energy contained in photons of various frequencies. That is, as hydrogen nuclei inside the core of the Sun fuse to form helium nuclei, each helium nucleus is very slightly less massive than the two hydrogen nuclei from which it formed. What happens to that "lost" mass? When a very small percentage of those photons from the Sun reach Earth, they heat the materials they are absorbed by and then cause a very slight increase in the masses of the atoms in those materials.
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to Bessler's wheels, much the same process is occurring, but it require no fusion reactions to take place. Weights and levers swinging in on a wheel's ascending side lose a tiny bit of mass from the subatomic particles composing their atoms and the energy associated with that lost mass is then used to accelerate a wheel or power some device attached to its axle (which then slightly increases the masses of the subatomic particles of its atoms). That transfer of mass does not, of course, involve the use of photons as happens with the energy Earth receives from our Sun.
Scientists do not currently accept the possibility of working imbalanced pm wheels, because there are currently no working models for them to study. Hopefully, there soon will be. I had a mini-breakthrough with my Bessler research late yesterday and, finally, I might have a design that will continuously keep the center of mass of its weights and levers where it is supposed to stay: on the descending side of the wheel. I have another "acid test" scheduled in another day or so, and, if successful, this could be "it" at long last. I'm now on model # 1045! Also, I took a nap yesterday and, as I dozed off, I suddenly had an idea, almost a vision(!), for a magnetically assisted Marquis of Worcester wheel which I now can not get out of my mind. It's very simple, but I don't think anybody has considered it before. If my Bessler research is not successful by the end of this year and I am finally forced to retire from it, then this new approach to the marquis' wheel will be the first thing I will be working on!
I find the propostition that, say, a box of warm particles has a greater mass than when cold somewhat contentious. We could just as well use the example of a compressed or tensioned spring, and i'd be equally doubtful of this interpretation.
DeletePut simple, to take your example, the equivalent energy of the net mass difference following the nuclear reaction is accounted for by the photons emmited, and then absorbed by whatever incident particles. The KE of these particles, in turn, is increased. Invoking a corresponding mass increase, equal to that of the originiting nuclear discrepancy, would be counting the same energy twice, adding it from nowhere.
And besides, any increase in relativistic mass, if that were to be invoked, resides within the vacuum until it is made manifest by some kind of photo-electric interaction. It's a notional mass increase, and not a material one that could be measured. As such, the increased intramolecular tension in a compressed spring, say, is an effect of the EM field acting between the point charges of the constituent particles. It's this feild that hosts any increased equivalent mass, in terms of relativistic momentum of virtual photons that WILL manifest when the mechanical tension is released... but which has no embodiment prior to this actualisation.
At any rate, i don't think it helps your theory on teh energy's provenance since the descending weights (the output energy of the interaction) already have their energy increase all accounted for (the whole point of the excersize being that they're moving more than can be classically explained) - and conversely, the weights on the ascending side (the input half of the mechanical interaction) have correspondingly less energy.
Thus the anomolous output energy is the result of this disunity between input and output halves of the interaction - a classical asymmetry.
And from the classical perspective, the energy has simply been created (or destroyed, if we run our asymmetric interaction in reverse).
The need for further explanation only arises when we cannot accept this apparent first law violation; which we shouldn't, of course - just as in Rutherford's original experiments, or the 'detection' of neutrinos in the lab (where missing energy is taken as de facto proof of un-detected particle emissions), we must conclude that any evidence of a 1st law violation is simply evidence that a system we thought thermodynamically closed is actually open.
And it is this that leads us to the real paradigm shift - that the fields responsible for the forces are mediated by virtual particle exchanges that can be asymmetric, thus sinking or sourcing energy to or from the vacuum.
We haven't detected gravitons yet, or whatever vrtual particle is responsibe. Maybe all forces are the result of virtual photon exchanges. What's certain however is that if a force performs more work on one side of a mechanical interaction, and that much less on the other side, it is whatever manifests the field posessing the force that has footed the bill.
In a nutshell, if gravity varied, automatically, over time, and we drop a mass when it's heavy then retreive it when it's light, then the source of the gain is the force/time delta, and in turn whatever manifests that force or its natural variation. Looking to nuclear interactions is an extrapolation too far, and simply redundant...
It's great that you're still feverishly beavering away and gaining new insights and i don't mean to be overly-critical, but i think if you consider the objections i'm raising you'll come around to similar conclusions re. the ultimate energy source here..!
Yes, I know it sounds strange, but it's one of the consequences of relativity theory and, supposedly, has been verified in various experiments. When the two hydrogen nuclei fuse together to form a helium nucleus, the kinetic energies and masses associated with the two hydrogen nuclei will be transferred to the helium nucleus. As a result, it may take off rapidly in some direction or spin or do both. But, there is a separate change in mass, or rest mass, that is caused by the energy / mass carried away from the fusing hydrogen nuclei by the photons of gamma radiation they emit. The result is that, if the mass of the stationary helium nucleus is compared to the sum of the masses of stationary hydrogen nuclei, the mass of the helium nucleus will be seen to be slightly less by an amount equal to the amount of mass associated with the energy of the emitted gamma ray photons.
DeleteIn Bessler's wheels, the weights swinging in toward the axle on the ascending side would lose gravitational potential energy and the mass associated with that. Of course, that energy / mass was not really lost. Almost all of it would be absorbed by the springs connected to the levers holding the weights and those springs would increase in mass by a tiny amount as they stretched. From 9:00 to 4:30 of a rotating wheel, the opposite process was taking place simultaneously. The springs attached to the levers were contracting as they moved the weights closer to their stops on the inside of a drum periphery. These springs would lose energy and mass by transferring them to the weights and levers being shifted and this transfer would result in the center of mass of all of the weights and levers being raised a bit. This rise in this center of mass would take place at the same rate that the rotating drum would try to lower it. But, although there was no net motion in the center of mass, the reality was that it was actually in a continuous state of free fall! This process then allowed the energy / mass acquired by the shifting weights to be transferred to all parts of the wheel that were in rotation. If nothing was connected to the wheel's axle, then this increase in the energies and masses of the wheels parts would cause the wheel to continuously accelerate until a speed was reached at which point the centrifugal forces acting on the weights and levers interfered with the shifting process which then allowed their center of mass to swing down and drop to a point almost below the axle. If, however, an external machine was attached to the axle, then some of the energy / mass being transferred to all of the parts of the accelerating wheel would also be transferred to the parts of the device and these would then begin to move.
We all talk about how we intuitively "know" that an imbalanced wheel must turn continuously. But, I have found that the actual physics of the process is a bit more complicated than one might imagine. In Bessler's time, explaining how such a wheel could work was not possible because of the relatively primitive state of physics back then. Now, after Einstein's work, it is possible to rationalize how such a wheel would work.
In rereading the above I realized that it actually can be a bit confusing; a sort of Rube Goldberg type transfer of energies and their associated masses from one part to another within a wheel. Granted that is the case, but there is a much simpler overall process going on. Basically, all of the energy / mass being lost by the weights and levers swinging in toward the axle on a wheel's ascending side between the 6:00 and 9:00 positions actually flows out equally to all of the moving parts of the wheel. That, of course, raises their rotational kinetic energies and also increases their masses by a very tiny amount. When an outside piece of machinery is connected to a rotating pm wheel's axle, some of the wheel's rotational kinetic energy and the mass associated with it then flows to the outside machine to raise the energies of its moving parts as well as their masses. In this model for how an imbalanced wheel works, we have to think of the energy and mass of its various parts having the properties of a fluid which will flow from a region of concentration to a region of deficit. This energy flow model is still used in the science of thermodynamics to describe how heat energy can flow from a hotter to a cooler body. I see no reason why it can not also be used to rationalize how Bessler's wheels worked (and, hopefully, will soon work again!).
DeleteYou're missing my point which as that the oft-quoted increase of mass as a function of increased classical PE is a misappropriation of SR and the whole principle of mass-energy equivalence.
DeleteA raised weight does NOT (cannot!) have a proportionatley increased mass. Aside from counting the same energy twice (as explained previously), consider the case where we dig a 1 meter pit next to a weight resting on the ground. Has the weight's mass increased? Or how about that of the net system of weight plus hole?
This reductio ad absurdum just highlights this popular misgiving. The same point applies to a compressed spring or whatever.
Consider your explanation - the mass of the weights must be reduced in proportion to the energy extracted; so where does this mass go? Considering conservation of information, it cannot go anywhere can it? Besides, how would nature decide what materials to reduce - the weights, or their connecting levers, springs or the wheel structure itself?
I appreciate your efforts but must maintain that lifting a weight 1 meter onto a wheel or table cannot increase the system's mass anymoreso than digging a 1 meter hole in the floor next to the weight. Only when the falling mass impacts something else does this relativistic momentum increase come into effect.
At any rate, unless your disappearing matter were somehow able to maintain 'magic number' nuclear weights as progressivley more information vanished, it'd be producing alpha particles and prodigious heat radiation.
The only place to look for the energy source is within the field actualy performing the excess work..
I managed to give "acid tests" to two more variations of my current design today and they both failed miserably...still no center of mass location stability. I'm now certain that all of my levers are perfectly coordinated with each other, but I just can not seem to get my ascending side weights and levers to shift fast enough so that the center of mass rises at the same rate that the rotating wheel wants to make it fall. Most frustrating and I think the solution ultimately involves finding the correct attachment points for the springs to the levers and drum and the correct spring constant values to use. The clues I've found become very ambiguous about these details. It's almost as though Bessler knew this was the final step some future pm wheel seeker would have to complete in order to achieve success and he wanted to make that final step a very difficult one. Solving the Bessler wheel mystery using his clues is sort of like carefully picking your way through the locks on a series of ever stronger security doors only to be confronted by a final door made of solid chrome steel and two feet thick! Oh well, I'll keep at it at least until the end of this year. If I don't make it through that final door by then that will finally convince me that I'm not the one destined to solve this mystery. Once I accept that reality, I will no longer research the subject.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, I still can't get the design for that gravito-magnetic version of the Marquis of Worcester's wheel out of my mind. The design is so simple that I'm starting to think that it must have been tried in the past and shown to be useless. But, of course, I will need to see that with my own two eyes before I fully believe it. In preparation for the building of the wm2d version of it, I've managed to make some nice little models of those ferrite disc magnets that behave exactly like the real thing. They have a north and south pole face and I've been having fun putting two of them into a long tube with their north pole faces in contact and then running the simulation. The upper magnet will then be repelled and rapidly shoot up inside the tube, bounce up and down in the simulated magnetic field, and then finally flip over and be quickly pulled down into contact with the bottom magnet as their opposite pole faces contact. Really amazing what you can do with wm2d by using your imagination. Also, now that I've got the models for two of these little magnets, I can copy them and then create as many as I need. A lot cheaper than having to buy them. Also, it's a simple matter to increase their strengths to make them perform as would neodymium rare earth magnets. However, I'm going to build the first version of the magnet assisted marquis' wheel using the weaker model ferrite magnets. If the principle this device uses to stay imbalanced during rotation is sound, then it should work with only weak magnetic fields being used. Stronger magnetic fields will, however, make the imbalance greater and result in a higher startup torque on the axle. Also, like Bessler's wheels, this device is subject to the disruptive effects of centrifugal force and will reach a maximum rotational rate. Thus, it can not continue to accelerate until it tears itself apart.
PS Happy Thanksgiving Day to those that celebrate it. I give thanks everyday for just having another day of life!