I'm incredibly disappointed that they tow her up to over 150 before she starts peddling herself. At that speed, the draft pulls you along with minimal effort, making the speed she achieved far less impressive. I've hit over 60 behind a semi truck with no tow in on a regular road bike as a teenager, and could have doubled that with the right gears. The hard part was getting up to speed and into the draft, once in it, I barely had to pedal to keep up, but had to pump my legs like hummingbird wings to add any speed because I ran out of gears.

I feel like any cycling pro could do much better, she doesn't even know her top speed unassisted to within ten mph, which indicates she's not an avid rider. A pro will be able to tell you exactly how fast they can go on flat ground with no wind.

So good for her, but it's far less impressive to me than the title implies.

Wow . . . the stock footage alone is so very awkward. Like the terrible CG car with no wind . . . . I loved the house one though.

>> ^Kalle:

One serious question that bothers me is.. why isnt it possible to use gravity as an energy source?
Would such a machine be a perpetual motion machine?


Gravity is REALLY weak. Like 36 orders of magnitude less than the electromagnetic force. 36 orders of magnitude is massive...larger the the total number of stars in the known universe. For instance, a fridge magnet is defeating the ENTIRE gravitational force of the earth AND the sun. Gravity makes for a great way to bind the macro-universe together, but it is shit as an energy source.

Also, gravity has only one polarity...and it doesn't turn off. So for the EM force, we have 2 poles that can be switched around via electrical current to make lots of different energy related things. But for gravity, you just have one ground state, and once you are there you need to input energy to get away from that ground state...no way around that. However, what has been done and is done in certain areas is to have a closed system where you apply energy at certain time and store that energy for later. The example most commonly used is in dams, where the will pump a large volume of water back up stream (potential energy) and store it (a gravity battery if you will) and release it as a later time when demand is high. This is always a loss based way to make energy; your going to spend more pumping it back up (heat loss and other losses including evaporation) than you will when you get it back...so it is just a way to cause demand shifting towards other hours with additional entropy.

You have 4 fundamental forces to draw energy from; and 3 of those are the only practical ones. Strong (nuclear) force, the EM force, and the gravitational force (the weak force is actually the force that powers the earths core, but isn't useful to use in power generation for a similar reason gravity isn't).

The EM force is what we use in internal combustion engines and electrical motors. Chemical reactions are rearrangements of the electron structures of molecules, which makes gasoline engines possible via liquid to gas expansion pressures. Generators deal with EM fields, polarity and current which is what drives thermal reactors like coal or can drive a car with a motor via conversation of stored electrical energy(just a backwards generator). Nuclear reactors deal with the strong (nuclear) force, and combine that with kinetic/thermodynamic forces of same flavor as coal and other thermal plants.

Even gravity isn't perpetual, the orbits of ALL celestial bodies are unstable. Gravity is thought and reasonably well satisfied to travel in waves. These waves cause turbulence in what would seem calm orbits, slowly breaking them down over time...drawing them closer and closer together. Eventually, all orbits will cause ejection or collision.


As to what energy is best, I personally believe in the power of the strong force, as does the sun . When you are talking about the 4 forces and their ability to make energy for us, the strong force is 6 orders of magnitude greater than other chemical reactions we can make. The EM force is not to much weaker than the strong force, but the practical application of chemical reactions limits us to the electron cloud, making fuels for chemical reactions less energetic by a million to a billion times vs strong force fuels. Now, only fission has been shown to work for energy production currently, but I doubt that will be true forever. If you want LOTS of energy without much waste, you want strong force energy, period. That and the weak force are the 2 prime movers of sustained life on this planet. While the chemistry is what is hard at work DOING life, the strong and weak force provide the energy to sustain that chemistry. Without it, there are no winds, there is no heat in the sky nor from the core, no EM shield from that core. Just a cold, lifeless hunk of metals and gases floating in the weak gravitational force.

Sorry for the rant, energy is my most favorite current subject



(edit, corrected some typos and bad grammar)

>> ^TheSluiceGate:

Not strictly perpetual: ocean currents are caused by winds, which are in turn caused by the earth's rotation. And the earth's rotation is slowing down, infinitesimally, all the time.
But your point is valid and there are many research programs to this effect: http://ocsenergy.anl.gov/documents/docs/OCS_EIS_WhitePaper_Current.pdf


No, winds are just currents in air that is 1000 times less dense than the surface water, and maybe only 10-100 times faster at best, their effect on currents small. The earth's rotation, the moon's gravity, the sun's heat, plus any underwater volcanoes and vents all supply energy into the system and the underwater topography funnels the effects of these to provide the startling display we have just witnessed.

>> ^DonanFear:

Actually, guns work BETTER in a vacuum because there is no air to slow down the projectile, no wind and possibly (if you're in space) no gravity to compensate for when aiming.


Warning. You need to either be secured to something, or have a thruster pack, because the gun will act as a propulsion source for you. I speak from personal experience.

Actually, guns work BETTER in a vacuum because there is no air to slow down the projectile, no wind and possibly (if you're in space) no gravity to compensate for when aiming.

>> ^Kalle:

On another note why is the gun so silent??

I'm going to assume you don't live in a snowy climate. Snow is great at just completely deadening sound. In winter huge snowplows regularly drive by on a road not 50 feet away, scraping the road surface with a 6-foot wide blade as they go, and I barely hear them in a quiet house. If you're in a remote area with no wind and fairly soft snow on the ground, the absolute silence can actually get to being uncomfortable.

The wind sock at 15 seconds seems to indicate no wind...though it is hard to be sure given the limited angle.

I'm quite amazed that even the ledges on the porch have snow stacked what looks like a foot high. No wind at all during all that time?

Floridians here would start to panic at the 0:07 mark.

I don't know. Doesn't seem overly foolish to me: it is a plane he's using, not a schoolbus. And he's not counting on his engine, just the physics and the known flight characteristics of his aicraft....which he probably knows like the back of his hand. Plus a skilled pilot should be able to land a plane with no power.

He picked a clear day, presumably little to no wind, and knew the area (I'm also going to assume he checked his takeoff slope for anything that would really mess him up). His landing zone was massive...lots of room for error. The takeoff was a bit weird, but running a plane down a hill to takeoff isn't unheard of either (bush pilots with ski landing gear do this all the time on glaciers for instance, albeit under power)

Actually, having flown with a few bush pilots myself, but almost seems a bit tame...those guys are generally nuts, and regularly fly in conditions that make this look like a walk in the park. ;-)

EndAll you are just wrong. I don't know if you understand how science works, but wind is a gradient of temperature. Nighttime when the "bloopers" segment may not be windy in Saudi-land. During the morning when the live CNN feed was being shown, there is more light, it is sunlight instead of floodlamps.

The backdrop is NOT a bluescreen, there is not video effects. You are saying they built an entire set of a wall of a hotel with multiple windows, a few plams, some bushs and some pine tree looking thing.

Dude, they pan out to show the entire wall behind them with the JVC TV. I saw no "wind generating fan".

THERE WAS NO WIND merely fat people dancing in the back of the plane.

Baloney. This kind of bull only makes sense to conspiracy theorists and people with lobotomies. There is no such thing as a magical mixture of air and fuel that will miraculously give cars 300MPG efficiency. Nor is it possible to give cars 100MPG, 50MPG, or anything else. The levels they are talking about are only possible under test conditions that cannot be duplicated in actual use. Sure, if you were on a 5 mile straightaway track with no wind, a perfect temperature, no traffic, no need to brake, a fixed MPH, and all the time in the world to accelerate REALLY slowly, coast when you want, no passengers, no air conditioning, and a dozen other favorable conditions... SURE you could probably achieve 75MPG or maybe even 100 under those conditions. Know what? You could probably get 75 to 100 MPG out of your CURRENT car under that kind of artificial circumstance (BTW that is called "Hypermiling"). But take that OPEL P-1 and put a family of 4 in it, a full load of groceries, in the middle of summer with air conditioning, on a windy day, in the middle of stop-and-go traffic and I bet it couldn't get 20 MPG. Wake up. There is no conspiracy. Auto companies aren't trying to 'bury' technology. The simple fact is that the technology does NOT exist on this planet in this dimension that will allow super-efficient MPG under REAL LIFE driving conditions. DUH!

>> ^Drachen_Jager:
If you're going the same speed as the wind there is no energy, no wind either. Once you're going faster than the wind the air will take energy away.

That's true if you're relying entirely on drag.

If we picture this device with no wind - then it just sits there. There's no energy to be transferred, fine.

However, if there IS any wind, in order to be stationary in it we must to be traveling as FAST as it, which means the wheels will be spinning on the road beneath, turning the propeller. A propeller turning in stationary air will provide thrust.

If you're going the same speed as the wind there is no energy, no wind either. Once you're going faster than the wind the air will take energy away.