[extropy-chat] Continued Energy for the Infinite Future

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On 4/29/07, A B <austriaaugust at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> For the sake of this post, I'm going to assume that
> our Universe is not going to end in a Big Crunch but
> will continue forever. I was trying to think of a way
> to continually produce energy for an infinite period
> (assuming that the Universe may eventually run out of
> use-able nuclear fuels, etc.) What about a giant,
> planet-sized generator of sorts? Construct a gigantic
> permanent magnet (with a decent amount of gravity)
> that has a powerful magnetic field. Then put wire
> coils attached to batteries or capacitors into a tight
> and fast orbit around the magnet. (Under typical
> conditions, a wire moving through a magnetic field
> will carry an electric current). Alternatively, you
> could also attach the wire coils "directly" to
> orbiting computers. It looks to me that all that is
> required is gravity (which I don't see going
> anywhere), and that nuclear protons don't eventually
> decay (Hasn't this already been tested with results
> indicating no decay?). No doubt, there will be far,
> far more efficient methods in the future, this is just
> a simple example. Does anyone familiar with physics,
> cosmology, or engineering know of a reason why this
> wouldn't work? I'd be interested to know.


What you're proposing is a kind of perpetual motion machine. One way it
would all come to grief is the magnetic braking effect which would cause the
satellite's orbit to decay. You can feel this easily if you take a strong
permanent magnet and run it along the surface of a copper or aluminium
plate.

Stathis Papaioannou
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20070429/cdb869cc/attachment.html>