FDeck said:
Thanks, interesting and creative works. But at least thanks to them, they've made efforts to prove what has never been mathematically and scientifically disproved. Then, the possibility is still open.
While philosophically you are right of course in that in science one can never ultimately prove anything before it is done, practically, no, the possibility is not open *unless we use physical processes/effects/phenomena which have never been studied before* and hence must be quite exotic things.
For the many years that I dwell scientific internet discussions, I've met a lot of crackpots who also think that "the possibility is still open" and that the only activity of the "establishment" is to "impose their rules" on what people should think and what not. They think that "the first law of thermodynamics" is some arbitrary principle that not-too-open-minded scientists tell themselves, after a limited number of observations where they *didn't manage* to break it, and hence generalize it to a "universal principle", while in fact, one just had to be a bit smarter than them to find a thing that DOES violate it. And because "they" weren't smart enough to think of it, now they "prohibit" it.
In fact, no. The first law of thermodynamics, or the law of conservation of energy in a gravity field, or the law of conservation of momentum or whatever, is not, although it is formulated that way, just a "denial of possibilities" postulated by some closed-minded set of arrogant scientists. No. It is the result of a precise understanding of how different phenomena work. It is in fact a *calculation*. It is *positively used* to find out how things work, not just to tell what doesn't work.
For instance, in Newtonian gravity, we know the force of gravity: F = -G m1 m2 / r^2 .
Well *from that formula* one can *calculate* the work done by a cyclic movement *no matter how many masses take place in the movement*. We know all the forces (they all are a sum of the above formula, right ?). And one can mathematically prove that for a cyclic motion, the sum is 0 for the work done by that force. It is a mathematical deduction, *once the formula for the force is given*. Even if not all individual designs are checked.
It is like the mathematical proof that even integer numbers must have as a last digit, a 0, a 2, a 4, a 6, or an 8. One can prove this mathematically. One doesn't have to check each even number individually.
Trying to find a design with cyclically moving masses that doesn't have all the gravitational forces have 0 work is the same as trying to find an even number that doesn't end in a 0, a 2, a 4, a 6 or an 8.
The thing is, for *all known forces* in nature, ultimately (on the microscopic level), we can prove a similar theorem as for the forces of gravity. It didn't need to be so, but it turned out to be so (we now also have an understanding from the structure of spacetime *why* this is so, but that doesn't matter here). So *all known forces* in nature have, on the microscopic level, 0 work for a perfectly cyclic operation. And from that, and some statistical arguments, one deduces the first law of thermodynamics.
It's not just that people have done 300 experiments, didn't succeed in getting out more than they put in, and decided that this was now a "law of nature" and beware those who dare to say otherwise. No. We know *why* it is the case.
The only way to violate this, is to come up with something that acts according to an as of yet totally unknown interaction force. All known forces will result in the first law. We already checked the maths. Well, another way to violate it is by using a known law of interaction, but claiming that the formula for its workings is wrong. That gravity doesn't go as G m1 m2 / r^2 for instance. But that would mean that all calculations as of now, which correspond to known experimental results, used somehow the wrong formula, but nevertheless came up with the good result in the end.
That's why a system with just weights, magnets, pulleys, strings and so on will *never* violate the first law of thermodynamics, because the individual forces used in the device are known forces, and those *have* formulae which DO lead to conservation of energy. One doesn't have to check all the possible designs individually (just as one didn't have to check all the even numbers individually).
