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Talk:Perpetual motion machine (view source)
Revision as of 13:45, January 2, 2007
, 13:45, January 2, 2007no edit summary
My guess is that it may well be possible today to build a system in which the rate of energy loss is so slow that it can be predicted continue to run for hundreds of thousands of years if the apparatus remains intact; thus the limiting factor in how long it runs is not the apparatus itself, but unrelated external catastrophes (an asteroid hits it, the building it is in collapses in an earthquake, funding runs out and someone pitches the apparatus in the trash, breaking it, etc. etc.)
My guess is that it may well be possible today to build a system in which the rate of energy loss is so slow that it can be predicted continue to run for hundreds of thousands of years if the apparatus remains intact; thus the limiting factor in how long it runs is not the apparatus itself, but unrelated external catastrophes (an asteroid hits it, the building it is in collapses in an earthquake, funding runs out and someone pitches the apparatus in the trash, breaking it, etc. etc.)
Probably the place to look for one of these things in real life would be the gyroscopes used in inertial guidance systems.
If the word "forever" is taken ''literally,'' then I don't know how you answer the question, because beliefs about the future lifetime of the universe change every generation or so. If the word "forever" means something like a mathematical limit—then I think the answer is: according to current understanding, it is possible to build a machine that will run ''indefinitely'' long, or as long as you like, receiving no external energy and performing no external work, where the actual limit on the running time is set not by the construction of the machine itself, but by the probability of external catastrophe.
If the word "forever" is taken ''literally,'' then I don't know how you answer the question, because beliefs about the future lifetime of the universe change every generation or so. If the word "forever" means something like a mathematical limit—then I think the answer is: according to current understanding, it is possible to build a machine that will run ''indefinitely'' long, or as long as you like, receiving no external energy and performing no external work, where the actual limit on the running time is set not by the construction of the machine itself, but by the probability of external catastrophe.
I think. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith]] 08:44, 2 January 2007 (EST)
I think. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith]] 08:44, 2 January 2007 (EST)