PM has no Equal in Nature!

[LustInBlack]

Preston :

Who are you refering too ?!
I don't lack the faith .. ;]

[ken_behrendt]

LIB wrote:

A combustion engine doesn't work if there is no precise tolerance..

One would not think so if he could examine my first used car! LOL!



Anyway, people always seem to be trying to make a distinction between the natural and the artificial. The French philosopher, Jacques Monad, once stated that we could make the distinction by noting that natural structures were shaped by internal forces that were inherent to them and artificial structures were shaped by external forces which where not inherent to them.

For years, this simplistic definition satisfied me...but, only as long as I considered human beings as somehow separate from the universe. Once one considers humanity (and all lifeforms for that matter) to just be another subset of matter with certain properties, then the distinction between natural and artificial disappears.

For example, in some ancient cultures, the primitive people occasionally find well formed mineral crystals and, of course, they reach the erroneous conclusion that the flat, geometric faces of these crystals were cut and polished by invisible beings or gods. Thus, they consider the crystal shapes to be artificial.

Any adult who had a chemistry set as a kid has probably done that experiment where one dissolves copper sulfate in water and then lets it sit so that the water slowly evaporates. As this happens a "super saturated" solution is formed and beautiful deep blue crystals of copper sulfate form on the bottom of the container. Obviously, the crystal shape is being determined by unseen internal forces acting on the atoms of the copper sulfate and they condense on the growing crystal's exposed faces. One therefore declares these to be natural and not artificial.

However, the crystal would not have grown in the first place unless a human being collected the chemicals and set up the solution and container to begin the process! In fact, I once selected a nice, well-formed crystal from my solution, removed it, added just enough warm water to dissolve the remaining crystals, and then reintroduced my nice crystal into the solution. After a few days, I had a single crystal that was about the size of a quarter. By constantly turning it about as it grew so that each face spent about the same time in contact with the bottom of the flat container which prevented solution from reaching it, I would up with a nearly perfect "textbook" example of a copper sulfate crystal.

So, was my nice sapphire blue crystal natural or artificial?

I now realize that it, like me, was natural all the time. There really is nothing artificial in our cosmos...including gravity wheels.


ken

[ovyyus]

Ken, I think your 'natural vs artificial' commentary misses the point entirely.

[winkle]

could be we just don't care see pm in nature because it's not in the form of a turning wheel

nature does seem to lead the way

who would have belived this

http://www.ocrwm.doe.gov/factsheets/doeymp0010.shtml

[Fletcher]

There does not appear to be any example in nature that can used to replicate the principle of a gravity wheel. It may pay to pause & reflect why this might be so.

In order for organisms to move about they must have a means of locomotion. This means of locomotion must be able to adapt to various terrain conditions as well as resist the pull of gravity which could cause friction to make movement less efficient.

Now snakes & legless skinks etc can slide of the terrain very well so they simply contract musculature to achieve this in a rhythmic manner. So far no apparent disadvantage to this type of movement but lots of muscle required. Wheels & axles require, in the main, a flat surface to roll across. The advantage of an axle is the reduced friction co-efficient but the down side is they're not very good at climbing over rocks etc so they are less adaptive than say, legs with feet. The next generation of Mars Explorer's may well have insect type legs rather than traditional but limiting wheels or perhaps a combination.

An organism with legs can elevate itself up of the ground to reduce friction from dragging itself around. Secondly the legs can spread weight between them & generally negotiate over or around obstacles with ease, compared to a wheel & axle.

So imo it's not entirely surprising that an example in nature's mechanics doesn't exist. If we didn't have to climb mountains & all terrain was flat (like an ice planet) then probably nature would have come up with an axle instead of a rotating joint. Having said that there is a type of flagellate that circulates its tail for propulsion I believe.

P.S. it would be nice to wonder how a bird could fly then go do some experiments. This will take some abstract thinking, so is just a tad harder imo.

[KAS]

I remember watching a nature program some years ago in which a South American beetle knors its way into a bean and utilises it as a mode of transport.
It did this by jumping from one side of the bean to the other creating an overbalance resulting on a rolling action.
There were thousands of them rolling on the forrest floor with some even attempting an incline. I beleive they used the bean for protection.
The point is, evolution has discovered the benefits of overbalance as a means of propultion. Alas, the energy was supplied by the beetle and not gravity.

Kas

[jim_mich]

When I was a child someone gave me some Mexican jumping beans. When the beans were warmed by sunlight or a warm hand they would start jumping and would propel themselves slowly along in random directions. After a few months or so they quit jumping.

See Wikipedia for more details.

[coylo]

Joel what I believe Coylo is saying is if you tried to tap a planetary motion three will be consequensus that will eventually show up at some point in time. Planetary motion isn't perpetual motion anymore than a gyroscope spun by hand is to a microbe that lives only nanoseconds anyway.

That's right on the money, Michael.

Perhaps this thread would of been better served had I given it the title....
"PMM's have no Equal in Nature!"
Maybe then I could have avoided some of the confusion.

[ken_behrendt]

Who's to say what can and can not exist in an infinite cosmos?

Perhaps somewhere, maybe in a galaxy trillions of light millenia away, there are organisms that are only shaped like wheels. They have internal organs placed around the rim of their external cylindrical shells that contain cylindrical pieces of metal that are secreted within them as they grow to full wheelhood maturity.

Then one fine alien day, a maturing wheel creature begins to shift its internal weights about and it takes off rolling around its environment. Perhaps these bizarre creatures can reach a diameter of 12 feet and a width of several feet.

Occasionally, when two of the creatures meet, they communicate with each other via telepathy. Philosopher wheel creatures emerge and ponder the world around them.

One day, one of the wheel creatures tries to ascend to the top of fairly steep hill and is unable to do so. He tells another creature about his experience and comes up with an idea of building a device to climb the hill which will push itself up the hill using opposed pairs of extendable members.

The other creature says that this is impossible because, if it was possible, then surely there would be other things on their planet which had such structures...


ken

[Thomas]

YouÂ’re scaring me Ken.

Tom

[ken_behrendt]

Thomas...

My point was that, in an infinite cosmos, there will undoubtedly be many strange things which would shock us all if we knew about them right now. In time, as our ability to explore space progresses, our remote descendants will encounter all of these things and their existence will be added to the ever growing store of human knowledge.

I agree, however, that if would be nice if we could find mechanical systems in nature that display external work performing "perpetual" motion. Alas, there do not seem to be any on Earth. But, then again, if there were, then we would probably not be here now pondering the matter.

On other planets in our galaxy, there may or may not be natural examples of mechanical perpetual motion in the environment. But, I suspect that, when we finally do make open contact with nearby spacefaring extraterrestrial races, we will discover that some of them do, indeed, have and use "free" energy devices...and gravity wheels will be part of their technology.

Meanwhile, we have to get busy down here on Earth and try to find a working gravity wheel design.

Suppose that tomorrow a saucer landed in front of the United Nations Headquarters in New York City and some extraterrestrials alighted and announced that they wanted to have ongoing official contact and trade with Earth. It's embarrassing enough that we still do not have our own working saucers after collecting UFO reports for almost 60 years now. But, to make matters even worse, we still have not found Bessler's secret working gravity wheel design after almost 300 years!

Now what kind of impression would that make on our visitors?



ken

[jim_mich]

Thomas posting his comment caused me to read again Ken's alien story.

Then I got to thinking how a creature might have moved a metal weight within itself to produce propulsion.

Assuming this internal weight is near the rim at the bottom it seemed logical that a muscle must pull the weight along the rim shifting the center of gravity.

Then I thought, "How might this be done by using just gravity?"

It seemed logical that a cord be attached to the weight then looped through a pulley attached to the rim ahead of where the weight is at then looped up over a pulley near the axle and a hanging weight attached.

This would pull the weight forward causing an inertial reaction which propels the wheel forward and also leaves the weight out of balance causing the wheel to turn forward.

Now how to reset things and make it continious?

I'll have to work out the blasted bothersome details and test it to see if it might work!

And off I go on yet another "wild goose chase" quest...

[ken_behrendt]

Jim...

It might not be a wild goose chase!

For the last several days, I have been contemplating designs that would contain only four weights and which would solely use the vertical motion of two of the weights to produce horizontal motion in the remaining two weights.

Below I've attached a quick sketch of what I have in mind. No, it is far from complete, but shows what I am after.


See...even my weird alien scenarios can trigger ideas in people.



ken

[Thomas]

Hi Ken,

In your post to my response, you said that we would not make a very good impression with visiting aliens because, we did not have flying saucer technology or hadnÂ’t yet discovered BesslerÂ’s secret.

I think if intelligent life from another world ever wanted to intentionally make a presence on earth, it would probably not be good for us. Any beings that would be able to travel throughout the galaxy and visit our planet, would have technologies so advanced, they would make us look like we still lived in the Stone Age compared to them. I believe the tendency for any superior civilization is to conquer and exploit. Their point of view may be, improving a primitive culture by doing whatÂ’s best for them. How many times have we seen this in our past history?

Perhaps they will just observe us and leave us alone, because they know better. Just my opinion.

Tom

[ken_behrendt]

Tom...

No doubt that some small percentage of extraterrestrial visitors to Earth will be very advanced, both biologically and technologically, compared to present day human beings. We would have little in common with each other and prolonged contact would seem difficult or even pointless...but, even so, perhaps not entirely impossible.

However, I suspect that many alien races in "our" local region of space (perhaps within 100 light-years of Sol) are probably roughly at our level. Half will be a little more advanced and capable of interstellar space travel and the other half will not be capable of this and still using ground and low altitude aircraft for transportation. A very small percentage, like us, will be in a state of transition and just beginning to venture out into their solar systems.

Once we of Earth obtain the technology used in UFOs, we will be able to readily travel to neighboring star systems and will make contact with the beings living on their terrestrial planets. Trade and an exchange of knowledge will take place and Earth will probably be invited to join some sort of local federation of spacefaring worlds. It will be kind of like a United Nations of Space where various political and social issues will be discussed and voted upon. I think that much good could come from something like that.

Occasionally, we humans will visit worlds that are inhabited by humanoids who, by our standards, are primitive. Perhaps their level of technology will only be about the same as Earth's in the 18th or 19th centuries.

What will happen if this occurs? Well, it just might not be the best idea to give them working UFOs to use. If they are still warlike and overconcerned with lines on a map or the color of one's skin or shape of their facial features, one group of them might use any advanced technology we give them to try to dominate or destroy their neighbors and then Earth would have to bear the responsibility for equipping them to do this.

Most likely, we would only have limited contact with them and just maintain surveillance of their world and let them, on occasion view our craft as we soar through their skies.

By only being allowed to view our craft and their performances from a distance, they will then go on to develop their own science of ufology and begin to wonder how we manage to overcome the laws of gravity and inertia with such ease. In time, they will figure it out for themselves and be proud of their accomplishment. Hopefully, by then, they will have evolved morally and ethically enough so as to not use the new technology in useless warfare either on their planet or on the planets of their neighbors.

Space should be a realm where all aggressive actions are prohibited so that it can never be used to extend warfare from one star system to another. Thus, there should never be anything, in reality, that even remotely resembles the Star Wars saga.

Will that prove to be the case? I think that before the end of this century we will begin to know the answer...


ken