Cool machine to look at. Guy is nuts.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'perpetual motion machine, perpetual motion, machine' to 'perpetual motion, machine, Reidar Finsrud, Norway, Norwegian' - edited by messenger

"Where is the power coming from?" is the wrong question. The power came from Finstrud when he started the machine going. The question is, "Why isn't the power leaving the machine?" Because it's rather efficient.

But it's not a true perpetual motion machine. Not close. First, it's losing energy in sound. Second, the parts will eventually wear to the point it will stop working. It may be the world's most efficient machine, and the closest to the impossible ideal of a perpetual motion machine, but it's not perfect. It will eventually stop.

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?

If you have an infinitely long slope or gravity well, then sure, you could have a gravity-driven perpetual motion machine.

>> ^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)

>> ^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?

There is a bottom to a gravity well (apart from Black Holes? I don't know ). Say you drop an object and harvest some of its kinetic energy as it falls...what do you do once it reaches the bottom of the well? You must exert energy to pull it back out of the well, and that energy is greater than what you gained from dropping it. In a sense a pendulum makes this transaction with every swing. It does it very efficiently, only losing a fraction of its energy with each exchange but none the less it does lose energy. In a sense we never truly generate energy, we simply move it around. We break chemical bonds and withdraw a portion of the energy that was needed to make those bonds. Whenever we put an object with any mass on a high shelf we use some our energy and give it potential energy. Should it fall from the shelf this potential is converted to kinetic. The most plentiful supply of locked away energy? Probably mass. The speed of light squared is a big number, as GeesussFreek says, the future is probably fusion. If we can convert just a tiny fraction of this planets mass to energy cheaply and safely then our energy problems are more or less solved.

Anyway, I hope that somewhat answered your question. Its one of those questions that on the face of it seems simply to answer but once I tried I realised it wasn't so easy

To me this object looks like an extremely efficient pendulum. I actually love its design. The fact the ball "orbits" is actually very apt. I don't think its perpetual motion, but if it really had been going at near constant speed for that long then it is still a very impressive piece of engineering. He should patent and start making more. I'd bet people would pay a pretty sum for a scaled down version sitting on their desk. I would. Even better, put a lightbulb in the centre, surround it with 8 concentric rings for each planet and tweak the weights/magnets so the balls orbit at approximately the right speed...that would be fucking sweet.

I still like the idea of tethering floating canisters to fly-wheel mechanisms in the ocean, using the energy of waves to generate electricity. Is it perpetual motion? No, because such a thing doesn't exist, but it's certainly long running.

@Kalle: Another machine that runs on gravity is an old-fashioned cuckoo clock. It uses a pendulum, yes, but that is to keep time. The energy comes from hanging weights which fall slowly (very slowly) as they deliver energy into the machine (mostly to overcome friction). When the weights reach the floor, somebody needs to come and pull them back up again, thus adding more (potential) energy to the system.

This guy has created an interesting sculpture, but it is not perpetual motion. He is certainly cheating--perhaps with weights hidden inside the central column; hopefully not with a hidden electric motor. He might know that he is cheating or he might just be fooling himself as a result of his stated ignorance of physics.

Great machine! Not perpetual motion but an artful piece of engineering.

I should point out we actually do use the weak force for energy production, that is what is going on in the curiosity rover, radioactive decay of Pu238...but it is one of the lowest power conversion ratios that you can do for electricity production (thermocouple). They are just really simple with no moving parts, but it ain't going to solve no energy crisis! We actually have infinite gravity wells via black holes, @maestro156, but you still can't generate perpetual motion from it. I would like to hear your idea on how you could, though.

I was oversimplifying. I don't know enough about the theoretical physics of black holes to know in what ways they are infinite. However, the only way I can think of to extract energy from the black hole is if you could put a wormhole at the center that led back to its lip, tapping the energy from falling matter through the resulting Escher's Waterfall.

@maestro156, Ya, the new understanding of the event horizon is that of annihilation, so once you hit that edge, your basically dead to everything outside the edge. That isn't certain...there is still a lot that we don't understand about BHs and singularities. With that said, scooping off high energy plasma near a black hole would be lots of energy

Thank you guys for all that information...

That stuff is incredibly fascinating.

That gravity is weak is someting my brain just wont grasp...



Just one more thing.. if the earths gravity is not infinite, than a rocket with infinte fuel, but low thrust, would eventually leave the planet???

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