About Perpetual Machines

About Perpetual Machines

Were it not for the first law of thermodynamics, we could build perpetual machines of the first kind, as they are called, whose driving power comes from nowhere. Were it not for the second law of thermodynamics, we could build perpetual motion machines of the second kind, which would draw their energy from anywhere. For instance, a motor at room temperature could be driven by the air molecules that happen to collide with is piston. The impossibility of this is not immediately obvious, which is why it was not established until the 19th century and is still overlooked in many science fiction stories.

Numerous people who understand the second law as a principle governing heat engines can get bewildered about the wider applications. These involve entropy, about which science fiction has also perpetrated a great deal of nonsense. Actually entropy is a measurable quantity, though you need calculus to describe it mathematically. In any thermodynamic process where an amount of heat Q is exchanged at a temperature T (which may vary throughout the volume and during the time in which things happen), the increase of entropy is equal to the integral of dQ/T.

Now “increase” can be negative, that is, represent a decrease. When something occurs thermodynamically in a system, entropy can and often does decrease somewhere. However, it increases elsewhere, and the second law states that the total gain in entropy is always positive. That is, whenever a change involving an energy transfer takes place in a system, entropy always is greater at the end of the process than it was in the beginning.

A “system” can be anything: an atom, a molecule, a machine, a living organism, a galaxy, the cosmos as a whole, anything. But we must consider the entire system, not just a selected part of it.

An increase in entropy corresponds tp, or measures an increase in disorder, or a decrease in the orderliness of the system. Therefore, whenever something changes, we find there is less order afterward than there was before.

Here is a very rough example or analogy. Think of a house whose lady has brought it to absolutely perfect arrangement and cleanliness – not a single item of furniture out of place, not a speck of dirt or dust anywhere, Then her children come home from school and her husband home from the office, and the family starts using the place. Things happen in it The immaculate condition doesn't last long, does it?

True, next morning the lady can restore her dwelling to its former orderliness. However, to do so she must expend energy, both her own and the energy of whatever appliances she uses, such as a vacuum cleaner. That energy comes from the conversion of food in her body – or fuel in an electric generator somewhere – into disorganized gasses and masses. The house may become neat again, but the environment as a whole is more chaotic than it was.

This is not an argument against good housekeeping! It is simply a reminder that everything has its price.

All biological processes require entropy increase. Illustration by Elena.

Epilogue

Epilogue

By Poul Anderson

There was no soil, only sand, rusty red and yellow. But outside the circle which had been devastated by the boat's jets, Darkington found the earth carpeted with prismatic growth, a few inches high, seemingly rooted in the ground. He broke one off for closer examination and saw tiny crystals, endlessly repeated, in some transparent siliceous material: like snowflakes and spiderwebs of glass.

It sparkled so brightly, making so many rainbows, that he couldn't well study the interior. He could barely make out at the center a dark clump pf wires, coils transistors? No, he told himself, don't be silly. He gave it to Frederika, who exclaimed at its beauty.

He himself walked across an open stretch, hoping for a view even vaguely familiar. Where the hillside dropped too sharply to support anything but the crystals – they made it one dazzle of diamonds – he saw eroded contours, the remote white sword of a waterfall, strewn boulders and a few crags like worn-out obelisks. The land rolled away into blue distances; a snowcapped mountain range guarded the eastern horizon. The sky overhead was darker than in his day, faintly greenish blue, full of clouds. He couldn't look near the fierce big sun.

Kuroki joined him. “What d'you think, Hugh?” the pilot asked.

“I hardly dare say. You?”

“Hell, I can't think with that bloody boiler factory clattering at me.” Kuroki grimaced behind his faceplate. “Turn off your sonic mike and let's talk by radio.”

Darkington agreed. Without amplification, the noise reached him through his insulated helmet as a far-off tolling. “ We can take it for granted,” he said, “that none of this is accidental. No minerals could simply crystallize our like this.

“Don't look manufactured to me, though.”

“Well, said Darkington, “you wouldn't expect them to turn out their products in anything like a human machine shop.”

“Them?”

“Whoever... whatever made this. For whatever purpose.”

Kuroki whistled. “I was afraid you'd say something like that. But we didn't see a trace of – cities, roads, anything – from orbit. I know the cloudiness made seeing pretty bad, but we couldn't have missed the signs of a civilization able to produce stuff on this scale.” 

“Why not?” If the civilization isn't remotely like anything we've ever imagined?”

Frederika approached, leaving a cartful of instruments behind. “The low and medium frequency radio spectrum is crawling,” she reported. “You never heard so many assorted hoots, buzzes, whirrs, squeals, and whines in your life.”

“We picked up an occasional bit of radio racket while in orbit,” Kuroki nodded. “Didn't think much about it, then.”

“Just noise,” Frederika said hastily. “Not varied enough to be any kind of... of communication. But I wonder what's doing it?”

“Oscillators,” Darkington said. “Incidental radiation from a variety of – oh, hell, I<ll speak plainly – machines.”

“But - “ Her hand stole toward his. Glove grasped glove. She wet her lips. “No, Hugh, this is absurd. How could any one be capable of making... what we see... and not have detected us in orbit and - and done something about us?”

Darkington shrugged. The gesture was lost in his armor/  Maybe they'r bidding their time. Maybe they aren't here at the moment. The whole planet could be an automated factory, you know. Like those ocean mineral harvesters we had in our time” - it hurt to say that - “which Sam mentioned on the way down. Somebody may come around periodically and collect the production.”

“Where do they come from?” asked Kuroki in a rough tone.

“I don't know, I tell you. Let's stop making wild guesses and start gathering data.”

Silence grew between them. The skeleton towers belled. Finally Kuroki nodded. “Yeas. What say we take a little stroll? We may come on something.”

Nobody mentioned fear. They dared not.

Silence grows. Photograph by Elena.

No End to Science in Sight

No End to Science in Sight

We often hear that the end of physics is just a few years away – to be described as Michio Kaku once said, “with an equation less than one inch long.” Similarly, Nobel laureate physicist Steven Weinberg published a long essay in the New York Review of Books describing his “search for the fundamental principles that underlie everything.” He added, however, that “science in the future may take a turn that we cannot now imagine. But I see not the slightest advance sign of such a change.”

Scientists have been saying this sort of thing for more than a century. For example, in the late 1800s Lord Kelvin made the now-famous statement that physics was complete, except that “only two small clouds remain on the horizon of the knowledge of physics.” The two clouds were: first, the interpretation of the results of the Michelson-Morley experiment (which did not detect and effects of the widely hypothesized “aether”), and second, the failure of then-contemporary electromagnetic theory to predict spectral distribution of black-body radiation. These little clouds led to the discovery of special relativity, quantum, mechanics, and what we think of today as modern physics.

In 1975, at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, the same Steven Weinberg declared, “What we want to know is the set of simple principles from which the properties of particles, and hence everything else, can be deduced.” Then, at Cambridge University in 1980, revered astrophysicist Stephen Hawking told his audience, “I want to discuss the possibility that the goal of theoretical physics might be achieved in the not-too-distant future, say, by the end of the twentieth century. By this I mean that we might have a complete, consistent, and unified theory of physical interactions that would describe all possible observations.” Not only did this not happen, but I posit that it is unlikely to happen. As I write this, physicists are still struggling to explain newly discovered dark matter, dark energy, and the very surprising accelerating expansion of the universe (or, is it a change in the supposedly constant velocity of light?”).

To my mind, the most shocking example of a brilliant man saying something truly silly is a quote from A.A. Muchelson, after he showed that there was no aether, but before the discovery of relativity and quantum mechanics. Expressing the spirit of his time, he said, “The most important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplemented in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote.”

I believe that these “end of physics” statements are not only untrue, but misleading and logically impossible. Illustration by Elena.

The hubris of brilliant and famous scientists is still with us today. The issue is very important, because it shows what terrible trouble we can get into if we are totally lacking in awe, wonder, or spiritual questioning.

Great visionary scientists such as Einstein, Newton, and John Archibald Wheeler had no such lack. At ninety, Wheeler was still asking, “How come the universe?” In his writing, Einstein said that we “use our intellect to solve difficult problems, but the problems themselves come from another source.”

We may well ask: Will there be an end to mathematics? To biology? To history? Will the human mind withdraw from science? Does curiosity ever achieve completion? I think not. A thousand years from now, our current views of physics will seem as primitive as the phlogiston theory seems to us today. (In the eighteenth century, pholgiston was believed to be an element that caused combustion or was given off by anything burning; the notion has long since been discarded.)

Ancient spiritual and philosophical teachings with their roots in India and Tibet assert that consciousness has existed since the beginning of time. However, this consciousness has been unrecognized because of our ignorance of our own true nature. This seemingly radical idea of nonlocal connections is finding increasing acceptance in the data of modern physics, of all places. Thus, it seems appropriate to discuss the ways in which contemporary physics shows that there are “nonlocal” connections called quantum interconnectedness – that is, an instantaneous spanning of space and time. We can relate these data to similar ideas from Buddhism and other ancient mystical teachings, all of which claim that “separation is an illusion.”

Remote viewing is an example of nonlocal ability. It has repeatedly allowed people to describe, draw, and experience objects and activities anywhere on the planet, contemporaneously or in the near future. Although we do not yet know how tjis works, there should no longer be any doubt that most of us are capable of experiencing places and events that appear to be separated from our physical bodies by space and time. We can present the evidence from remote viewing experiments – our own as well as our colleagues' – showing the reality of these psychic abilities. We can describe how you can discover these abilities in ourselves and incorporate them into our lives, including detailed exercises from our remote viewing workshops.

The practice of remote viewing may reveal more to you than simply what's in a paper bag in the other room; it may reveal the nature of your limitless mind – who you really are. We can explore precognition, including what I consider to be the most important scientific fact from psychical research: It is no more difficult to describe an event that is to occur in the future than to describe an event occurring at the present moment – casting into doubt our understanding of causality itself.

We can also describe the data and techniques that people use to intuitively diagnose illness. Psychic diagnosis goes beyond the doctor who can make a correct “snap” decision as soon as the doctor sees the patient (some of them have the ability in certain cases to diagnose illnesses without ever seeing the patient, and in some other cases, distant prayer and distant healing, categorized as Distant Mental Influence of Living Systems or DMILS can be cited, as there exist the relationship between remote viewing and spirituality.

(Excerpt from Limitless Mind, a Guide to remote viewing and transformation of consciousness, by Russell Targ, author of Miracles of Mind. New World Library, California, 2004).

Remote viewing does exist. Photograph by Elena.

Brave to Be a King

Brave to Be a King

By Poul Anderson (excerpt)

Late that day he was in the hills, where cedars gloomed above cold, brawling rooks and the side road ont which he had turned became a rutted upward track. Though arid enough, the Iran of this age still had a few such forests. The horse plodded beneath him, worn down. He should find some herdsman's house and request lodging, simply to spare the creature. But no, there would be a full moon; he could walk if he must and reach the scooter before sunrise. He didn't think he could sleep.

A place of long sere grass and ripe berries did invite him to rest, though. He had food in the saddlebags, a wineskin, and a stomach unfilled since dawn. He clucked encouragingly to the horse and turned.

Something caught his eye. Far down the road, level sunlight glowed off a dust cloud. It grew bigger even as he watched. Several riders, he guessed, coming in one devil of a hurry. King's messengers? But why, into this section? Uneasiness tickled his nerves. He put on his helmet cap, buckled the helmet itself above, hung shield on arm and loosened the short sword in its sheath. Doubtless the party would just hurry on pas him, but...

Now he could see that there were eight men. They had good horseflesh beneath them, and the rearmost led a string of remounts. Nevertheless the animals were pretty jaded; sweat had made streaks down their dusty flanks and manes were plastered to necks. It must have been a long gallop. The riders were decently clad in the usual full white pants, shirt, boots, cloak, and tall brimless hat; not courtiers or professional soldiers, but not bandits either. They were armed with sword, bows, and lariats.

Suddenly Everard recognized the greybeard at their head. It exploded in him: Harpagus!

And through whirling haze he could also see – even for ancient Iranians, the followers were a tough-looking crew.

“Oh-oh,” said Everard, half aloud, “School's out”.

Hid mind clicked over. There wasn't time to be afraid, only to think. Harpagus had no other obvious motive for hightailing into the hills than to catch the Greek Meander. Surely, in a court riddled with spies and blabbermouth. Harpagus would have learned within an hour that the King spoke to the stranger as an equal in some unknown tongue and let him go back northward. It would take the Chilarch a while longer to manufacture some excuse for leaving the palace, round up his personal bully boys, and give chase. Why? Because “Cyrus” had once appeared in these uplands, riding some device which Harpagus had coveted. No fool, the Mede must never have been satisfied with the evasive yarn Keith had handed him. It would seem reasonable that one day another mage from the King's home country must appear; and this time Harpagus would not let the engine go from him so easily.

Everard paused no longer. They were only a hundred yards away. He could see the Children's eyes glitter beneath shaggy brows. He spurred his horse, off the road and across the meadow.

“Stop!” yelled a remembered voice behind him. “Stop, Greek!”

Everard got an exhausted trot out of his mount. The cedars threw long shadows across him.

“Stop or we shoot!... halt!... shoot, then! Not to kill! Get the steed!”

The Gothic Thoughts. Photo by Elena.

Evolution of Evolution

Evolution of Evolution

If we take a look at the process of evolution, many anomalies could crop up, but most have turned out to be explainable. Thus, Piltdown man was always an embarrassment, because he did not fit into onto any reasonable human evolutionary tree. At last chemical analysis showed that Piltdown man was a hoax. Without the great guiding principle of evolution in general, who would have paid attention to him at all?

Likewise, we have seen the evolutionary principle in sometimes tragically practical application today, as pathogenic microbes gain immunity to antibiotics through the selfsame process of natural selection that Darwin found. On a still deeper level, we find that we can best understand the details of protein chemistry as between different species (for instance, cytochrome-c) in terms of their differentiation through geological time; but it was the concept of evolution that caused researchers to look for such divergences in the first place.

So we have very briefly reviewed the development of evolutionary thought – the evolution of evolution, so to speak – and seen how fundamental it has become to biology. Now we must return to the comparison with physics, and to the philosophy of science in general.

As we have seen, theories are subject to disproof. Else they would have no meaning. (Thus, if I told you that space is pervaded by a fluid so subtle that no instrument or experiment can possibly detect it, you could not prove me wrong, but you would not be obliged to take me seriously, either. As a matter of fact, this is precisely what happened to the luminiferous etcher about which 19th century physicists had speculated. It turned out to make no difference whether the ether existed or not; therefore nobody had any further reason to imagine that it did exist).

Voyages from sun to sun will always be few, women's love for the shoes will always exist. Photo by Elena.

Thus many theories have fallen by the wayside. But some reveal themselves, in the course of time, to be more fundamental than that. They become basic principles, by which theories themselves are tested. They become touchstones by which observations are evaluated. They become a context within which everything else, in a given field of science, is understandable.

Examples within physics are the two laws of thermodynamics, already mentioned. Without them, we simple could not make sense of our observations of any process involving energy exchange. With them not only do we comprehend what we see, we are led to new discoveries.

For instance, back in the 1930s, physicists noticed certain curious features of recoil during radioactive decay. The energies and momenta did not balance our as they were supposed to. Either the principles of energy (and momentum) conservation were wrong, or else some ultra-tiny particle was involved, carrying off the excess. Rather than give up their basic principles, which were far too helpful to discard, scientists hypothesized that such a particle did exist: the neutrino. This idea proved fruitful in gaining more knowledge of the nucleus – although not until a generation later was the neutrino actually detected, and then only indirectly.

Granted, basic principles originate in empirical observations. Indeed, the laws of thermodynamics came out of grubby engineering work, and rather late in the history of science at that. Nor are the basic principles Holy Writ. They are subject to modification as our knowledge grows. Thus the separate principles of conservation of mass and energy were unified – modified – into the single principle of the conservation of mass-energy, by Einstein.

However, such principles become so fundamental that the complete overthrow of any of them would mean the complete overthrow of the sciences with which they are concerned. We would be practically back to Square One. It is therefore both understandable and sensible that scientists will not – cannot – set them aside without an absolutely overwhelming, and hence unlikely, body of evidence.

I submit that evolution is no longer a mere theory.

(By Poul Anderson).

Our very survival, let alone our eventual modernization, is in doubt. Where evolution will eventually lead us? Photo by Elena.