Posted by Davis Landstrom (195.93.49.14) on December 13, 2002 at 10:42:42:
Randi WOULD pay the $1,000,000 if someone built a working model of Bessler's wheel because it would be perpetual motion within the classical definition of the word. I shall elaborate, as you are well aware the earth's gravitational field is believed by the mainstream physicists to be a conservative force field, basicaly like a rubber band, you will only get it to do work if you work against it. A ball forinstance will only fall to earth if it has been worked on against gravity to raise it's mass to a certain height where it has the potential energy to fall back to the earth.
Because gravity is conservative and therefore NOT supposed to be able to provide any energy to a system then an engine powered by the pull of gravity would constitute a violation of the idea that gravitty was a conservative force or the first law of thermodynamics. Long standing ideas about physics would be overturned, new avenues of research would be opened by this most fantastic discovery and believe me Randi and Klieg would pay up.
The above by the way is why weight driven clocks and hydro electric power plants DO NOT constitute a violation of conservative gravitation or thermodynamics. In a weight driven clock you have to impart energy to the weight to raise it against gravity giving it potential energy which it will impart to the clock as it falls slowly back to the earth. In Hydro electric power plants the water at the top of the dam has been evaporated and given energy by the sun, it would have raised it's potential energy by rising as a solar heated vapour.
Needless to say THIS DOES NOT rule out the idea that gravity can be a source of energy, here is a thought exercise:
Imagine a mass of 1 Kg on the surface of earth, as that mass raises from the earth, by a rocket say, it gains potential energy in accordance with the equation PE= mass x gravity x height. Now immagine that this mass has now left the influence of earth's gravity field and is moving towards jupiter say, the mass will posses a large amount of potential energy at this point. Now the mass enters Jupiters gravity field, because jupiter is more massive than the earth it's gravitational acceleration is greater than earths therefore 'g' in PE = m x g x h will be greater so the mass will gain a 'boost' of potential energy as it enters jupiters gravity field. Where would this additional Potential energy come from? modern physicists would say that it was imparted to the mass by the kinetic energy of the planet, but if you think about it the same thing would happen even both earth and jupiter were absolute stationary relative to one another and the rest of the universe, gravity doesn't just go away if an object stops moving........food for thought.