Posted by Nick Hall (195.74.122.243) on May 08, 2003 at 02:49:02:
By the subject line, I do NOT mean it is time to ditch the quest for better energy sources - merely that the term "Over Unity" is deeply misleading....
I believe that Bessler's wheel was genuine but I do not believe it was "Over Unity".
The term O/U means an excess of output power over input power.
Bessler's wheel clearly gave output power, but if you added up all the input power, it would come to a slightly greater figure (depending on the friction / sound losses etc).
The key thing about Bessler's wheel was that he figured out a way _CONTINUALLY_ to extract energy from gravity - a "conservative force". That was his great discovery.
This certainly upsets ideas about conservative forces, but does not necessarily contravene the 'law' of the conservation of energy because gravity was constantly making good the losses AND providing the putput power.
At least, the above holds good in terms of the small scale situation of the experimenter with his wheel. I suppose you might argue that it does contravene the law of the conservation of energy on the large scale because lots of working Bessler wheels will give out energy that ultimately goes into the universe as heat and light. But I would still say that this isn't "O/U" because you are merely cycling energy from one source - "gravity" into another form....
In any event, it does raise interesting questions about entropy and the total amount of energy in the universe....
...IF gravity can be a source of energy, then it is either a finite or infinite source.
If the gravitational field on our planet can only provide a (very large but) finite amount of energy, then in principle it might be a bad technology because continual extraction will reduce the gravitational field (or cool the planet or some other unforseen effect). Admittedly, the total amount of energy that humanity might extract from such a large pool might be so small as to make no practical difference, but in principle the idea that gravitational energy resources might be finite is interesting enough to deserve more thought...
If the gravitational energy 'pool' on this planet is infinite, then it is presumably true for all the zillions of planets in the universe - in which case you have a universe supposedly with a fixed (but massive) amount of total energy, but which is populated with a very large number of infinite-energy sources - which is also 'interesting'....
So either way a working Bessler wheel, quite apart from its other benefits, will provoke a rethink on some fairly fundamental issues of physics and cosmology.
But to call it an "O/U device" will cause more misunderstanding than clarity IMHO.
Nick