The Flat Earth Society
Other Discussion Boards => Technology, Science & Alt Science => Topic started by: optimisticcynic on October 07, 2009, 07:20:57 AM
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Do you think that we will ever be able to decrease the total entropy in the universe? if so How? My bet is quantum generators that use Brownian motion. At least I have not read anything that says it could not work. I also would like to here if anyone knows how energy from virtual particles affects the total entropy in the universe.
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Do you think that we will ever be able to decrease the total entropy in the universe?
Nope.
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I know on really small scale it can be lowered. I figure a way to get energy from heat(note not difference in heat such as generator do now) would be a really small magnet in a coil of wire. Brownian motion would move the magnet generating current. with some diodes and a wall of them it seems possibly to get turn heat into electricity. again this is just what I thought it seem to me. if there is a reason this can't happen I would like to here it.
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Do you think that we will ever be able to decrease the total entropy in the universe? if so How? My bet is quantum generators that use Bernoulli's motion. At least I have not read anything that says it could not work. I also would like to here if anyone knows how energy from virtual particles affects the total entropy in the universe.
l2Asimov
http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html (http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html)
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I know on really small scale it can be lowered. I figure a way to get energy from heat(note not difference in heat such as generator do now) would be a really small magnet in a coil of wire. Bernoulli's motion would move the magnet generating current. with some diodes and a wall of them it seems possibly to get turn heat into electricity. again this is just what I thought it seem to me. if there is a reason this can't happen I would like to here it.
Just to clarify, are you proposing we try to use chaotic virtual particles in order to push a magnet through a wire?
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Do you think that we will ever be able to decrease the total entropy in the universe? if so How? My bet is quantum generators that use Bernoulli's motion. At least I have not read anything that says it could not work. I also would like to here if anyone knows how energy from virtual particles affects the total entropy in the universe.
No
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If the Universe has a maximum value of entropy, entropy is just as likely to increase as decrease across time. For some reason, a very large downward fluctuation in entropy coincided with the Big Bang, and the Universe is still recovering from that fluctuation. The second law of thermodynamics is a consequence of the fact that the Universe started out in a large downward entropy fluctuation.
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Eventually, another large downward fluctuation may happen, probably long after the heat death of this one, giving birth to a Universe where interesting things happen.
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I know on really small scale it can be lowered. I figure a way to get energy from heat(note not difference in heat such as generator do now) would be a really small magnet in a coil of wire. Bernoulli's motion would move the magnet generating current. with some diodes and a wall of them it seems possibly to get turn heat into electricity. again this is just what I thought it seem to me. if there is a reason this can't happen I would like to here it.
Just to clarify, are you proposing we try to use chaotic virtual particles in order to push a magnet through a wire?
No two separate thoughts. on a really small scale although recently it has been proven to work on things up to the size of a red blood cell you get a particle moving randomly due to changes in pressure. every now and then one area gets a little hotter then the average and every now and then it will push a particle in a certain direction. this is getting useful energy from heat. Second I messed up I meant Brownian motion.
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Do you think that we will ever be able to decrease the total entropy in the universe? if so How? My bet is quantum generators that use Bernoulli's motion. At least I have not read anything that says it could not work. I also would like to here if anyone knows how energy from virtual particles affects the total entropy in the universe.
l2Asimov
http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html (http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html)
That was beautiful.
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Do you think that we will ever be able to decrease the total entropy in the universe? if so How? My bet is quantum generators that use Bernoulli's motion. At least I have not read anything that says it could not work. I also would like to here if anyone knows how energy from virtual particles affects the total entropy in the universe.
l2Asimov
http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html (http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html)
Brilliance. Asimov was a genius.
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The level at which we'd have to function in order to change the Universe's level of entropy would be insanely complex and unimaginable in terms of scale.
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the op does not know what entropy is.
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How do you figure he doesn't?
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the op does not know what entropy is.
That was useful. either say what I "don't understand" or something that is useful towards the discussion.
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the op does not know what entropy is.
That was useful. either say what I "don't understand" or something that is useful towards the discussion.
I just said. You don't understand entropy.
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on a really small scale although recently it has been proven to work on things up to the size of a red blood cell you get a particle moving randomly due to changes in pressure. every now and then one area gets a little hotter then the average and every now and then it will push a particle in a certain direction. this is getting useful energy from heat. Second I messed up I meant Brownian motion.
I can't imagine ever creating a machine that was perfectly efficient at reusing energy, and therefore I can't imagine preventing entropy from increasing by radiation (like heat) escaping. I feel like at most, we can to slow it down or speed it up. However, You're talking about a complete reversal, and I can't see how we could ever accomplish that.
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on a really small scale although recently it has been proven to work on things up to the size of a red blood cell you get a particle moving randomly due to changes in pressure. every now and then one area gets a little hotter then the average and every now and then it will push a particle in a certain direction. this is getting useful energy from heat. Second I messed up I meant Brownian motion.
I can't imagine ever creating a machine that was perfectly efficient at reusing energy, and therefore I can't imagine preventing entropy from increasing by radiation (like heat) escaping. I feel like at most, we can to slow it down or speed it up. However, You're talking about a complete reversal, and I can't see how we could ever accomplish that.
here this explains Brownian motion fairly well. it seems to me that you could use it to get energy directly from heat.
http://xanadu.math.utah.edu/java/brownianmotion/1/
it would not need to be 100 percent efficient in order to reduce the entropy in a closed system.
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Eventually, another large downward fluctuation may happen, probably long after the heat death of this one, giving birth to a Universe where interesting things happen.
Just out of interest, how do you define entropy in a Universe where you effectively live inside a shrinking event horizon? Since the expansion of the Universe is accelerating, the amount of matter we can have causal contact with should be decreasing (since the most distant objects will recede faster than c)... does that mean that eventually the Universe will end up smaller than the Planck length ('the Big Rip'), leading to the very idea of entropy being meaningless?
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Would dark energy be able to rip all things apart? My understanding is that dark energy will eventually put all galaxies out of causal contact with each other, and eventually all matter will fall into black holes. Then all the black holes will evaporate due to Hawking radiation, leaving nothing but the vacuum and stray photons and elementary particles.
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Would dark energy be able to rip all things apart? My understanding is that dark energy will eventually put all galaxies out of causal contact with each other, and eventually all matter will fall into black holes. Then all the black holes will evaporate due to Hawking radiation, leaving nothing but the vacuum and stray photons and elementary particles.
The version I read was that DE will continually increase in strength, initially moving the galaxies out of causal contact, then the stars, then in a very rapid sequence solar systems, planets and everything down to the scale of the Planck length, where physics becomes meaningless and anything goes.
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What makes the matter in our universe to exist? It is, in brief, the continuous motion of some tiny particules (no need to go on for the details). Then one may wonder and what makes the matter of these tiny particules to also exist. Logically, it has to be the continuous motion of some tiny tiny particules (as taking the square of tiny for example :) ). May we can go on till we reach to the tiniest particules (tiny to the power of infinity) that we are able to imagine?... because if it happens that their motion has to stop... you can tell me what could be next ;D
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What makes the matter in our universe to exist? It is, in brief, the continuous motion of some tiny particules (no need to go on for the details). Then one may wonder and what makes the matter of these tiny particules to also exist. Logically, it has to be the continuous motion of some tiny tiny particules (as taking the square of tiny for example :) ). May we can go on till we reach to the tiniest particules (tiny to the power of infinity) that we are able to imagine?... because if it happens that their motion has to stop... you can tell me what could be next ;D
Physics on a scale shorter than the Planck length ceases to by meaningful, so there is a natural limit to what we can say about the fundamental nature of the Universe at present.
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You are right. That is why scientists will need a long time to realize that the limits (shortest or largest) of our universe are not the limits of our whole existence. In fact that explains why they didn't find yet the real mechanism of gravity by which a force (hence energy and power) is applied thru what is supposed to be a vacuum though in its real space there are a huge number of carriers belonging to the tiny tiny particules (in the least) which cannot be observed other than by calculating their supposed characteristics and effects. For instance and since about 30 years, I was expecting to hear the discovery that transforms electrical energy to a mass gravitational field. Perhaps it is already done but not revealed openly. I couldn't be interested to join such a research because I would surely need to work for some bosses too hence to lose my actual personal freedom in every minute of my life. The good news is... sooner or later someone in the world will do what I missed to do ;D
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I'm pretty confident if my boss believed I had a way of controlling gravity with electricity, he'd let me work on it!
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I believe many scientists are already working on it to build what could be called an artificial mass and anti-mass as well. The first application of it would likely be for air transportation using dish-like planes so that the interactive fields can use their below surface effectively. Then solving how to move horizontally would be rather a simple matter for such planes. In any case these new planes cannot be made practical before the common use of the atomic or nuclear batteries which are in a rapid progress lately (that is why terror and wars were created lately so that oil can be sold at rather very high prices for many years and since 2001 before it becomes a second source of energy in the near future :-X )
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Riiiight.
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Would dark energy be able to rip all things apart? My understanding is that dark energy will eventually put all galaxies out of causal contact with each other, and eventually all matter will fall into black holes. Then all the black holes will evaporate due to Hawking radiation, leaving nothing but the vacuum and stray photons and elementary particles.
The version I read was that DE will continually increase in strength, initially moving the galaxies out of causal contact, then the stars, then in a very rapid sequence solar systems, planets and everything down to the scale of the Planck length, where physics becomes meaningless and anything goes.
I think that's phantom energy, which is different from dark energy in that its equation of state parameter w is greater than one and could change.
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I think that's phantom energy, which is different from dark energy in that its equation of state parameter w is greater than one and could change.
I confess that's a new one for me - the last I heard was the distant supernovae had shown a trend not only for expansion, but for accelerating expansion. If the acceleration remained constant, then ultimately causal contact would be lost even between quarks in a neutron... Still, it's been a few years since I did any cosmology so maybe DE has been subdivided by now.
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I think that's phantom energy, which is different from dark energy in that its equation of state parameter w is greater than one and could change.
I confess that's a new one for me - the last I heard was the distant supernovae had shown a trend not only for expansion, but for accelerating expansion. If the acceleration remained constant, then ultimately causal contact would be lost even between quarks in a neutron... Still, it's been a few years since I did any cosmology so maybe DE has been subdivided by now.
Yeah, here's wiki to save the day. The Big Rip (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Rip)
If w < -1, then the scale factor of the universe will become infinite at finite time in the future and the expansion will become powerful enough to rip apart all particles. I'm not sure if dark energy would do the same thing given enough time though. Dark energy is extremely weak on everyday scales.
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So does any one think Brownian motion could be used to decrease the amount of entropy in a closed system?
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So does any one think Brownian motion could be used to decrease the amount of entropy in a closed system?
Maybe if you plug it into a Bambleweeny 57 sub-meson brain tied to an atomic vector plotter, you could.
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Does anyone have anything constructive to add? I figured they could make an AC generator by having a magnet in a coil of wires. obviously it would have to be a small magnet but it seems if you had a lot of them and some diodes you could make energy from heat.
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Does anyone have anything constructive to add? I figured they could make an AC generator by having a magnet in a coil of wires. obviously it would have to be a small magnet but it seems if you had a lot of them and some diodes you could make energy from heat.
Yes, you can make electrical energy from heat. Its called a turbine. Two questions:
1. Where are you planing to get the heat from?
2. How do you want to utilize this energy (power small devices, or run a submarine)?
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Does anyone have anything constructive to add? I figured they could make an AC generator by having a magnet in a coil of wires. obviously it would have to be a small magnet but it seems if you had a lot of them and some diodes you could make energy from heat.
Yes, you can make electrical energy from heat. Its called a turbine. Two questions:
1. Where are you planing to get the heat from?
2. How do you want to utilize this energy (power small devices, or run a submarine)?
No a turbine gets energy from differences in heat. I am talking about converting heat into energy not differences in heat.
So to answer 1. the heat that is present in the environment.
2. nano machines.
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I think that you would benefit from a basic physical mechanics course, but I think I get what you are trying to say. I hope all of this isnt too arcane for you.
First, I think you are talking about turning heat into electricity. Remember that energy is a very loose term. So, could we turn this heat into electricity, yes, of course we can. There are in fact semiconductor devices that do just that. If you apply a current to them they heat up, and if you draw current out of them they cool down. You see these used in medical devices and lab environments where there is a requirement to maintain a constant temperature in a system.
The big problem with how you are viewing this is the principle of conservation of energy. Heat is just a measure of energy in a given system. If you were to remove this heat to make electricity, you would reduce the amount of energy in the system and the object would get colder. You would need an outside source to replenish this heat, or you would rapidly run out of energy in the system.
Take the example of the turbine I mentioned earlier. A turbine does not generate electricity from the difference in heat, as you said. Rather, a turbine is simply converting potential energy, in the form of heat, into mechanical force used to turn a generator. Turbines need not be diriven directly by heat either. Hydro-electric plants use turbines, as do some wind farms.
However, lets stay with a heat driven turbine. A nuclear reaction is a great source of heat energy. If this reaction occurs in a tank of water, the water will become super-heated and turn to steam. This steam, which has now expanded in size and therefore pressure, can be used to do the mechanical work of turning the turbine. It looses some of its heat in the process, and is eventually condensed and returned to the tank where it is re-heated by the nuclear reaction. Conservation of energy has not been violated because the total energy of the system, including the electricity generated is still the same.
Doing something similar to power generation at this scale in the nano world becomes tricky. First of all, you cant use magnets and coils for motors or power generation (which is just a motor in reverse), because transient inductance in the wire tend to eliminate any electro-motive force you hope to generate. As if that werent bad enough, even the small resistances of wires start to play a huge part, and we have yet to find any viable super-conducting material that operates at anything approaching room temperature.
Also, if you wanted to rectify the source voltage you would have a problem with the diodes. The best diodes available have a voltage drop of .3V and an internal resistance of about 10k Ohms. Any AC that you dumped into them would be dissipated as heat, provided you could even overcome the voltage drop.
Its a great idea you have there, but I dont think investors will be lining up any time soon. But if you figure it out I will certainly be on board.
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No a turbine gets energy from differences in heat. I am talking about converting heat into energy not differences in heat.
So to answer 1. the heat that is present in the environment.
2. nano machines.
Ask yourself this question: is what you are proposing some form of perpetual motion machine? If yes, it's impossible, if no then it may be technically feasible.
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No a turbine gets energy from differences in heat. I am talking about converting heat into energy not differences in heat.
So to answer 1. the heat that is present in the environment.
2. nano machines.
Ask yourself this question: is what you are proposing some form of perpetual motion machine? If yes, it's impossible, if no then it may be technically feasible.
Everything has a reason. if it is impossible I want to hear why it is impossible.
the second law of thermal dynamics does not hold up on extremely small scale. I was wondering if we could use it to decrease the level of entropy in a system.
second do you know anything about this.
First of all, you cant use magnets and coils for motors or power generation (which is just a motor in reverse), because transient inductance in the wire tend to eliminate any electro-motive force you hope to generate.
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I don't really understand what you are saying (you are generally pretty terrible at explaining your ideas), but I think you are suggesting a variant of a thought experiment called Maxwell's demon.
There is a box of gas with an insulating wall dividing the box into two halves. There is a tiny hole in the center of the divider, where a clever little nanodevice only allows fast molecules into the right half from the left half and slow molecules into the left half from the right half. Over time, fast molecules accumulate in the right half and slow molecules in the left half. The temperature of the right half increases and the temperature of the left half decreases, in apparent violation of the second law and generating all the free energy in the world. However, in reality the second law will not be violated because the entropy produced by the nanomachine to segregate the particles exceeds the decrease entropy caused by the segregation of the gas. Some detailed calculations have indeed shown this.
Similarly, I think your little nanobots exploiting transient fluctuations in entropy will have the same problem.
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I don't really understand what you are saying (you are generally pretty terrible at explaining your ideas), but I think you are suggesting a variant of a thought experiment called Maxwell's demon.
There is a box of gas with an insulating wall dividing the box into two halves. There is a tiny hole in the center of the divider, where a clever little nanodevice only allows fast molecules into the right half from the left half and slow molecules into the left half from the right half. Over time, fast molecules accumulate in the right half and slow molecules in the left half. The temperature of the right half increases and the temperature of the left half decreases, in apparent violation of the second law and generating all the free energy in the world. However, in reality the second law will not be violated because the entropy produced by the nanomachine to segregate the particles exceeds the decrease entropy caused by the segregation of the gas. Some detailed calculations have indeed shown this.
Similarly, I think your little nanobots exploiting transient fluctuations in entropy will have the same problem.
Brownian motion rough explanation
In 1827 the biologist Robert Brown noticed that if you looked at pollen grains in water through a microscope, the pollen jiggles about. He called this jiggling 'Brownian motion', but Brown couldn't work out what was causing it. The first of the three papers that Einstein published in 1905 finally came up with an explanation.
Everything around us is made up of atoms and molecules: the chair you're sitting on, the food you eat, the air you're breathing. The idea of atoms has been around since the time of the ancient Greeks, and a century before Einstein, the great chemist John Dalton had suggested that all chemicals were made of tiny invisible molecules, which in turn were made of even tinier atoms. The problem was that there was no proof of their existence, until Einstein looked into the problem of Brownian motion.
Einstein realised that the jiggling of the pollen grains seen in Brownian motion was due to molecules of water hitting the tiny pollen grains, like players kicking the ball in a game of football. The pollen grains were visible but the water molecules weren't, so it looked like the grains were bouncing around on their own.
Einstein also showed that it was possible to work out how many molecules were hitting a single pollen grain and how fast the water molecules were moving - all by looking at the pollen grains.
Importantly, Einstein's paper also made predictions about the properties of atoms that could be tested. The French physicist Jean Perrin used Einstein's predictions to work out the size of atoms and remove any remaining doubts about the existence of atoms.
My idea is to use Brownian motion to power to move a magnet in a coil of wire. EireEngineer pointed out a couple of problems but no problem that says it will not be possible in the future. I still need to look up what he said about
because transient inductance in the wire tend to eliminate any electro-motive force you hope to generate.
P.S. believe it or not I am much more understandable in person
here is a interesting article on decreasing entropy in a system
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2572-second-law-of-thermodynamics-broken.html
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How will the random jiggling of a tiny magnet produce net power? The current in the wire would just be noise.
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How will the random jiggling of a tiny magnet produce net power? The current in the wire would just be noise.
I figured that a couple diodes could work. although todays diodes aren't good enough I figure eventually they will be. Unless there is some law that says they can not get good enough.
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There is a limit, because the diodes themselves are made of atoms, which would exhibit a fundamental random noise.
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How will the random jiggling of a tiny magnet produce net power? The current in the wire would just be noise.
I figured that a couple diodes could work. although todays diodes aren't good enough I figure eventually they will be. Unless there is some law that says they can not get good enough.
In order for the jiggling to produce anything menaingful it would have to maintain a constant frequency as well. And I am still wondering where you are planning to get this heat from?
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There is a limit, because the diodes themselves are made of atoms, which would exhibit a fundamental random noise.
I understand that but this can work on things up to the size of a red blood cell and move it a good distance. Seems it could make changes above the random noise level.
How will the random jiggling of a tiny magnet produce net power? The current in the wire would just be noise.
I figured that a couple diodes could work. although todays diodes aren't good enough I figure eventually they will be. Unless there is some law that says they can not get good enough.
In order for the jiggling to produce anything menaingful it would have to maintain a constant frequency as well. And I am still wondering where you are planning to get this heat from?
Not trying to produce anything meaningful. I am aiming to reduce the total entropy in a system. to see if there is a way to stop the death of the universe caused by it all reaching thermal equilibrium. best way to do that is to turn heat into a different form of energy.
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Hmm, I have no problem with entropy increasing until the universe "dies".
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Hmm, I have no problem with entropy increasing until the universe "dies".
I would like to keep it going a little longer. I do believe there is something besides the body but I don't know if it needs the universe or not so I would like to keep it around.
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Hmm, I have no problem with entropy increasing until the universe "dies".
I would like to keep it going a little longer. I do believe there is something besides the body but I don't know if it needs the universe or not so I would like to keep it around.
Well if there is something beyond the body, I'm not really concerned about it surviving the end of the universe. It's a long time already, and delaying the inevitable a little bit more to extend the existence of that small piece of me doesn't really concern me. I wouldn't mind not existing if I didn't exist.
As for your case, if it truly transcends the stacked reductionistic systems of "biology/biochemistry/chemistry/physics", I doubt the laws of universe would apply. And what energy could this spiritual self need? Should we be heating corpses in their graves? I can't imagine something beyond our reality needing material conditions.
That's actually something I've always taken issue with... the idea that something can transcend physical causality, and yet can still have a discernible physical influence. And before we completely corrupt another thread, this second paragraph was rhetorical. ;)
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Hmm, I have no problem with entropy increasing until the universe "dies".
I would like to keep it going a little longer. I do believe there is something besides the body but I don't know if it needs the universe or not so I would like to keep it around.
I wouldnt worry about it too much. The universe will still be here long after humans arent.
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Read this. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownian_ratchet)
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Read this. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownian_ratchet)
wouldn't it be able to keep producing power if you had the ratchet side in a vacuum? it would take energy to make it a vacuum but as long as the seals are good wouldn't it work?
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Read this. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownian_ratchet)
wouldn't it be able to keep producing power if you had the ratchet side in a vacuum? it would take energy to make it a vacuum but as long as the seals are good wouldn't it work?
I think you missed the point. In order for it to work the ratchet would have to be so small itself that it would start exhibiting Brownian Motion itself, negating the mechanical force generated. It has nothing to do with drag forces.
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Read this. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownian_ratchet)
wouldn't it be able to keep producing power if you had the ratchet side in a vacuum? it would take energy to make it a vacuum but as long as the seals are good wouldn't it work?
I think you missed the point. In order for it to work the ratchet would have to be so small itself that it would start exhibiting Brownian Motion itself, negating the mechanical force generated. It has nothing to do with drag forces.
no there wouldn't be any Brownian motion in the ratchet area if it was a vacuum.
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Still Not getting it. A simple way to visualize how the machine might fail is to remember that a ratchet and pawl small enough to move in response to individual molecular collisions also would be small enough to undergo Brownian motion as well. The pawl therefore will intermittently fail, allowing the ratchet to slip backward.
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Still Not getting it. A simple way to visualize how the machine might fail is to remember that a ratchet and pawl small enough to move in response to individual molecular collisions also would be small enough to undergo Brownian motion as well. The pawl therefore will intermittently fail, allowing the ratchet to slip backward.
Isn't the Brownian motion due to the molecules of gas/liquid in the ratchet area? if you remove the gas the ratchet wont fail because there will not be any gas in that are to create Brownian motion.
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No, its due to motion in the paddlewheel side.