# Thoughts on perpetual motion.

#### Antonio Lao

cronxeh said:
a body in motion will stay in motion unless an external force is acting upon it
Is this part of Newton's 1st law of motion? If it is then it is constant motion as that of constant velocity. Accelerated motion exist when there is a force.

But the modern view of spacetime's curvature does not clearly describe how this constant velocity can be achieved by objects other than photons.

#### bino

do you think there may be perpetual motion in magnets? no energy is put into the magnet and yet it does work by sticking onto the side of the fridge.

#### Chronos

Science Advisor
Gold Member
Try to avoid a classical view point. Intuition is not reality. You guys are stuck on a classical perspective that just does not work and does not explain observation. Loren, you know better. Science is hard. You understand the fundamentals, in my opinion. I think you should let go of the philosophical issues and return to the scientific part.

#### Antonio Lao

Chronos said:
You guys are stuck on a classical perspective that just does not work and does not explain observation.
But it is said by the Feynman's version of quantum mechanics that the process of sum over all histories of probabilistic paths: the classical path is the most probable. This is when and where the action integral is the least and the Lagrangian (difference of kinetic and potential energy) is practically zero.

#### Antonio Lao

Furthermore, path can only be defined classically. In QM, path (of an electron) has no meaning as in the problem of trying to understand why there are quantum jumps between energy levels.

#### pallidin

Having absolutely no shred of evidence even close to the idea of perpetual motion, this has, apparently, not deterred it's adherants.
Having seen nothing in nature they say, "well, maybe it is so"
Having no experiment to prove it they yet say, "it can happen"
Having nothing to go further on, they then say "you don't understand my theory"
When challenged to produce facts, they say "it can not be done now, or, there is not enough money, or..."
If you would nail them down to describe a qualitative experiment in support of their idea, they fall silent.

#### Antonio Lao

pallidin said:
Having absolutely no shred of evidence even close to the idea of perpetual motion
One of the mathematical evidences for PM can be found by using a periodic function as an example. The frequency (f) is defined as the inverse of the period (T).

$$f=\frac{1}{T}$$

as T approaches infinity, f approaches zero and vice versa. Note that frequency always exist and it even increase almost without bound as the period approaches the limit of zero time.

#### PRyckman

D=(c-v)t note that velocity is directional, and this represents space in the line ahead of the path

#### bino

do you think there may be perpetual motion in magnets? no energy is put into the magnet and yet it does work by sticking onto the side of the fridge.

#### Antonio Lao

bino said:
do you think there may be perpetual motion in magnets? no energy is put into the magnet and yet it does work by sticking onto the side of the fridge.
In current modern physics, the existence of magnetic field is due to the motion (PM?) of charged particles. But there are now at least three different kinds of charges: the electric charge, the weak charge, the strong or color charge. The motion of all these charges create its respective kind of magnetism, electric magnetism, weak magnetism, and color magnetism. The magnetism that caused fridge sticking might be just electric or combination of all three types.

Regardless of the type or kind of magnetism responsible for fridge sticking, the interaction forces are very much larger than the force from the surrounding gravitational field.

The mystery behind the explanation of charge to mass ratio remains. What is the independent meaning of charge or of mass? This still is not fully clarified in physics.

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#### mapper

If string theory were proven to be true and that everything that exists is made up of uber tiny small vibrating strings, wouldnt they be PMotion? Or wouldnt that be proof that Pmotion exists in nature? Do these strings stop moving at absolute zero?

#### bino

so do you think that someone might be able to construct a pmm useing magnets?

#### bino

the earth's motion around the sun is perpetual motion.

#### enigma

Staff Emeritus
Science Advisor
Gold Member
Different kind of perpetual motion, bino.

Earth's motion about the Sun is continuous. You're not taking any energy out or putting any energy in.

PPMs supposedly get more energy out than you put in: An impossibility according to the first law of thermodynamics.

#### russ_watters

Mentor
bino said:
so do you think that someone might be able to construct a pmm useing magnets?
No, it isn't possible.

#### mapper

Earth's motion about the Sun is continuous. You're not taking any energy out or putting any energy in.
On the basis of how tethers work, couldnt you construct a large enough tether from a point on earth reaching out to space. The energy output would be great and would last as long as our sun would burn or until the materials of the tether break apart from the stress. Although far from perpetual cause our sun has a finite life but still...

Could it even be possible to create such a device and how much energy could it generate if one could build it?

#### Epsilon Pi

Why are you so sure of what is or is not possible? When I see, some good physicists or mechanical engineers, making such a sort of dogmatic assertion, I think immediatly, the contrary must be true.

Some good physicists, too, are now thinking so seriously about ZPE, which certainly could be thought as sort of PMM, or a way to use that energy stored in that inherent magnetic field of the electrons that permeates all space...

Will it be possible? Nobody knows...most of our science, is so influenced by that second law and closed systems, that it really has paid so little attention to physical open dynamic systems; we really do not know what we will happen in the future, when they do.
Regards
EP

russ_watters said:
No, it isn't possible.

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#### Antonio Lao

In discussing perpetual motion machine, it is really necessary to clarify how energy is involved. There are two ways that energy can specify the type of PMM.

1. Energy production - continuous production of energy by the machine.

2.. Energy transformation - continuous storage and redistribution or conversion to other forms of energy.

In electrical circuitry, the example of the 1st type are called active elements such as batteries or voltage source. Examples of the 2nd type are called passive elements such as resistors, capacitors and inductors.

#### bino

enigma said:
Different kind of perpetual motion, bino.

Earth's motion about the Sun is continuous. You're not taking any energy out or putting any energy in.

PPMs supposedly get more energy out than you put in: An impossibility according to the first law of thermodynamics.
in some hair brained attempt by someone could we take a whole lot of wire wrap it around the moons path around earth or around the path of earth around the sun. then we would get energy from the earth magnetic field. it would be like a giant generator.

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#### mapper

^ yes, i agree we can get better at converting energy from what we do today, but im still having a hard time with something that lasts perpetually. Perpetually is the problem, it may last a long time, but that’s not forever. our moon orbit, earth orbit wont last for an infinite amount of time. Eventually the sun will burn out.. perpetually doesn’t exist here, but where im coming from is that even at a state of absolute zero atoms and whatnot are still moving ever so slightly. What gives them their energy to continue? string theory? are strings perpetual motion? ...if to be proven to exist...

what moves the strings... is there always an infinite problem? like the chicken or the egg scenario, what comes first and does something even need to come first? Or is our universe and the laws of physics as we know them also evolve? Making it so its near imposible to trace back what was or could be.

If there is something that causes the string to vibrate to create the molecules, to which particles and atoms, that make everything up in our universe? What makes the stings to do that. Is god still playin dice, but at now even a much smaller scale then quantum Mechs.? How small and giant scale can we even perceive? After all we have infinite to work with..

ive seen a thread on here about whether nothingness exists, which got me thinking... does infinite exist? If it does that has to be perpetual motion now wouldnt it... think about it for a moment...

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#### mysteryturtle

It has been mentioned that perpetual motion infers the ability to extract some form of energy from the system being studied. I do not think that really equates. Perpetual motion would by definition only be motion which is continuous. Withdrawing energy would be a wonderfull dream of energy hungry scientists; but that would be more than mere perpetual motion. That would indicate perpetual surplus energy generation, which is well beyond simple motion.

M

#### Epsilon Pi

I would prefer to differentiate between two kinds of fields:

- conservative such as those ones in batteries, capacitors, where the prevailing is the electric one, and

- non conservative such as in inductors, where the magnetic is the prevailing.

In the former there is no chance to think in terms of PMM, but in the latter, we can think in energy conversion, or in open dynamic systems such as in power systems, where we have a permanent conversion from hydraulic or gravitational, to magnetic to electric and so forth, for example; here there is no violation of the second law of thermodynamics; if we want to think about PMM, we must think having in mind those fundamental laws of nature, if we want to think in terms of science.
It is important to recall the "transformer", the one that makes it possible to use that energy at different levels and at large scale.

Regards
EP
Antonio Lao said:
In discussing perpetual motion machine, it is really necessary to clarify how energy is involved. There are two ways that energy can specify the type of PMM.

1. Energy production - continuous production of energy by the machine.

2.. Energy transformation - continuous storage and redistribution or conversion to other forms of energy.

In electrical circuitry, the example of the 1st type are called active elements such as batteries or voltage source. Examples of the 2nd type are called passive elements such as resistors, capacitors and inductors.

#### russ_watters

Mentor
Epsilon Pi said:
Why are you so sure of what is or is not possible? When I see, some good physicists or mechanical engineers, making such a sort of dogmatic assertion, I think immediatly, the contrary must be true.
The laws of physics are not a dogmatic assertion.

And mysteryturtle is right: ZPE, if harnessable, would not be perpetual motion. However, today's perpetual motion/free energy hoaxsters have been very careful to avoid claiming outright perpetual motion. Claims of harnessing ZPE (which contradicts the very theory that predicts it exists) is a common new perpetual motion hoax.

#### bino

if someone did create a pmm. the problem would be that it would take forever to test.

:rofl:

#### Antonio Lao

The crux of the matter is that there are two kinds of energy, the kinetic and the potential. Absolute potential energy is truly scalar (e.g. the Higgs fields) and absolute kinetic energy is truly vectorial (e.g. all other force fields). But relative potential energy and relative kinetic energy are tensorial which are just dimensional transformations of contraction and expansion of the scalar and vectorial property of space and time.

So for perpetual motion machine, the energy must be derived from an absolute kinetic energy. Only the energy of photons is truly kinetic but its mass must be zero. Yet in GR, we are not sure whether photon has no mass. This is because absolute energy whether potential or kinetic does not really exist in nature. But a relative energy of potential and kinetic can coexist in the form of a one dimensional quantization of spacetime.

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