Here’s the entire interview with Donald Simanek from this week’s Art in Paradise story about perpetual motion machines:
1) Is it safe to assume that nature will allow a machine that runs for an unusually long time without input of energy? Are the kinds of ideas that perpetual motion inventors pursue likely to yield any advances of that kind?
Nature provides examples. The motion of planets around the sun persists for a very long time without energy input because energy losses from dissipative processes are so small. Undisturbed stable atoms do not lose energy. The closest thing to a perpetual motion machine is a flywheel on very low friction bearings. Any attempt to “improve” the wheel by adding clever gimmicks to it invariably degrades its performance. So inventors of “overbalanced wheels” are destined to failure, for even if they could eliminate friction entirely they would only get a very long running wheel, and using the wheel to do work will slow it to a stop.
2) Why do you think this pursuit is particular to men?
Frivilously one could observe that it is an example of the peculiarly male quest for “More power!” Historically it might only be the fact that scientific pursuits have been the domain of men, with women discouraged and excluded by social factors. The occupations dominated by men often utilized mechanisms and machines, those left for women tended toward domestic duties. Initially men dominated tasks requiring human and animal power, but they had a lazy streak and tried to figure ways to make these tasks easier. If in the 18th century a woman had proposed an innovative idea in physics or engineering, would anyone have paid attention? (Yes there were a few.) But, honestly, I don’t know the answer.
3) Do you ever find yourself tempted to pursue an idea, despite knowing it won’t work? Why do you find these machines fascinating?
I can’t recall ever being tempted, at least since I was a child. Children often believe things work by some sort of “magic”. Some never outgrow that. But how do we “know” whether something has a chance of working? We can try it, and fail. Or we can use what we know about the workings of nature and the fact that nature operates by regular and reliable processes to rule out some things as impossible. For example, it’s impossible to choose a walking path from A to B and back again that is downhill all the way. You can’t make a triangle with equal sides and unequal angles. You can’t make a circle in a flat plane with circumference 10 times its diameter. Most people realize that it would be foolish to suppose these to be possible. But the impossibility of perpetual motion and over-unity machines is impossible for the same reasons, it’s just more complicated to reach that conclusion. The reason lies fundamentally in the geometry of the universe and the symmetries in its processes.
But there are ideas that conventional “wisdom” declares impossible based insufficient reasons. “Man will never fly” has been cited as an example. Of course, without mechanical aid we can safely rule out human flight. Likewise we can rule out anyone jumping from earth and over the moon using only a pogo stick. But with the aid of machinery, flight was achieved.
So can we say absolutely that over-unity machines will never be built? Could there be an as-yet undiscovered principle that allows it, at least somewhere and sometimes? Scientists haven’t yet learned everything there is to know. What we can say is there’s absolutely no evidence for the possibility of over-unity machines, and not even a clue in all that we know about nature to even suggest it as a remote possibility. All the evidence is against it. Human time travel and teleportation fall into the same category. So if someone thinks such goals are worth pursuing, he’s left with nothing as a starting point, and no clue as to how to proceed or where to look. Any person who is tempted to spend time or money on this should ask why he thinks it possible (what’s the evidence?), and should realize that nature does not bend its own rules to satisfy our wishes and desires.
Very often the motivation is what I call the “Mechanical Illusion”. An idea for a machine looks so superficially plausible that one is tempted to think it might work.
Even people with some experience with machines can be stumped by a cleverly constructed diagram, just as we are deceived by artistic illusions even when we know they don’t represent reality.
Why are these fascinating to me? I’ve long been interested in examples of human error, especially those that are beliefs or convictions passionately held without evidence or even in the face of contrary evidence. Beliefs in religion, flat earth, hollow earth, ether theories, circle-squaring and the other classic “paradoxes” of human thought. These are examples of the human desire for answers. A little of this trait is good, for it stimulates scientific inquiry. But it can be carried to excess if not tempered by healthy skepticism.
You can check out Simanek’s Museum of Unworkable Devices here.
