The consequences

As stated before, anyone with high school physics background could tell you that a perpetual motion machine (PMM) is in contradiction to the first law of thermodynamics, and therefore in contradiction to reality. As for magnetism, where a lot of research in PMM (or rather: “Over unity” more than 100% efficient engine) has been done, they might be able to explain you the eight Maxwell (+ one Lorentz forze) equations that govern all electromagnetic behaviour and comply perfectly with the laws of thermodynamics. However, if they have not studied the way these equations got their shape (or were not imaginative enough to speculate the consecueces of the fact) their just might have missed the implications of the tiny little fact that these equations are about aggregate averages, and no particular case needs to follow them. It’s easy to ignore this, since the phenomenon is well beyond our everyday life and partly clouded by the quantum effects anyway.

As a result, from what I have understood from these equations, they actually allow the construction of a “Zero energy pump,” rendering it “merely” a practical problem. (Actually, IIRC some scientists even designed such a pump a few years back and filed for patent – they said they couldn’t build it, but theoretically it would work.) So, the theory of magnetism actually gives us a reason to believe that a PMM is possible. If Orbo works, it’s a proof of concept. If not, it might be a question of time, forever technically impossible or just utterly impossible.

We need to remember that the “laws of nature” have been “bent” and even “broken” before. Superconductors bend the notion of resistance (which again in a way boils down to the notion of the aggregate). At a time it was a “law” that every wave had a medium in which is travels. Michelson-Morley experiment proved the absense of the “ether”, the hypothetical medium for electromagnetic radiation. This first counterexample forced us to “rewrite” a “law of nature”. In a similar way, until now all we have seen seems to fit with what we call the first law of thermodynamics. If we make new observations, we need the revise that, in a similar way we needed to revise newtonian laws of gravity with the emergence of the theory of relativity.

My concern, however, is that sometime in the near future we figure out how to make a PMM. So, let’s take it as yesterday’s news that Orbo technology in fact works and can be easily, widely and scalably applied. Without us really understanding its consequences.

They themselves seem to believe they have broken the First Law of Themodynamics (FLT). But let’s assume that they are wrong. That somehow it is possible to both have a PMM and for the FLT to hold. As far as I understand, the same Maxwell equations that suggest the loophole for PMM also allow this consideration. On the other hand, from our experience we have a good reason to believe the FLT holds. What if it still does, in the “aggregate level”, even if we were unable to concieve what that “aggregate” means in this context.

Part of the Orbo validation project is to validate that the apparatus used does not provide an energy source to the mechanism. If on the aggregate level it would lose some mass, it might be detectable. (Remember, E=mc², so any “given out” energy would be corresponded by mass m = E / c² .) But what if the energy would not be taken from the device, but from (for example) the entire universe according to (say) the inverse square law? Would that be detectable? Would anyone even think of trying to detect anything but the “obvious” (that the device itself does not wear, and thus the energy source is “constant”).

Again, who cares about one little PMM itching the universe. Universe is big, and its size and mass alone should be enough to absorb the itch. This is just the kind of thinking that got us in the mess we are in now.

Let’s start with little. Landfills are not a problem, there’s plenty of room. And we can spit all our dirtwater to rivers and seas, surely they are big enough to take that. And so what if we build a steam engine: some smoke, loads of wealth, we gain so much and lose so little. Hey! Let’s make T-fords on mass production, it’s better if everyone can afford a car! All of this before anyone had heard of carbon dioxide levels.

My fear is that Orbo will be considered as a panacea for our current energy crisis. To give us vast amounts of energy without fossile fuels. Solve the world hunger problem. Prove Thomas Malthus wrong, again. And so on. All the while, all these billions and billions PMM:s confusing the spacetime around here.

We were right when we though the world is big enough to take our waste. We were right then. But then we multiplied, or rather: exponentiated. The world didn’t. And only much later we came to know the consequences of our actions; what follows from our addiction to fossile fuels. And now, if PMM proves to be true, I see us more than willing to do the same again: solve our problems with CO2 with free energy not understanding its consequences.

Above I suggested a possible threat of free energy from magnetism: its effects to the surrounding reality on levels too subtle for us to currently understand. They may be negligible to us now, but may chance the world in ways we never expected it could. The same has happened before – in fact is happening all the time in the form of the global climate change. In the scenario laid out above, if we start to see the reality shred into pieces only when there are 100 billion little shredders out there, we will be facing a similar problem we are facing now with CO2.

Given our present capacity of production, we soon might be able and willing to produce vast amounts of these devices in no time. We have demand for them, and the popular acceptance is there as well. What we lack is the understanding of the results of large scale deployment of such technology. Questions that were better asked before than after.

So, if we are to keep up with the news, we should not ask if it is possible to create free energy. Not even if we should do that, or when. The question is, why we are so eager to do what we can, without stopping for a blink to think if the next turn will take us to a dead end with no return and where will this desire of ours take us.

And this – mes amis – is what we need Science Fiction authors for.