background preloader

World’s First Perpetual Motion Machine?

World’s First Perpetual Motion Machine?
Can this machine operate forever? Since at least the 12th century, man has sought to create a perpetual motion machine; a device that would continue working indefinitely without any external source of energy. A large scientific contingent thinks such a device would violate the laws of thermodynamics, and is thus impossible. Could it be that as a race, we don’t fully understand the laws of physics and such a device may indeed be possible? Norwegian artist and mathematician Reidar Finsrud is an outside the box thinker that has devised a machine that he believes achieves true perpetual motion. The dream is that if we’re able to produce perpetual motion machines, that we’d have tapped into the holy grail of sustainability: an infinite energy source. A device that requires no input to run that could be affixed to a generator would harvest free energy to power whatever we so pleased. What are your thoughts? Source: Finsrud Comments comments Related:  Quantum Shenanigans

Greg Giraldo - Last Comic Standing Physicists Achieve Quantum Teleportation of Photon Over 25 Kilometers For the first time, a team of physicists have successfully teleported a quantum state of a photon to a crystal over 25 kilometers away through a fiber optic cable. This effectively showed that the photon’s quantum state, not its composition, is important to the teleportation process. The team was led by Nicolas Gisin of the University of Geneva and the results were published in the journal Nature Photonics. The quantum state of the photon is able to preserve information under extreme conditions, including the difference between traveling as light or becoming stored in the crystal like matter. To test this and ensure what they were observing was actually happening, one photon was stored in a crystal while the other was sent along optical fiber, over a distance of 25 kilometers. The photon did not physically “teleport” as we are used to hearing about in science fiction, where someone’s body can moved from place to place in a matter of seconds.

Why Pot Makes You Feel Good Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com/takito August 18, 2013 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. Last week, CNN’s Dr. Here’s what he — and those studying the chemistry of marijuana — now understand. Marijuana makes chemical contact with human bodies through cannabinoids, which are chemical compounds in marijuana (cannabis). Just as there was a time when we didn’t know we had immune systems or hormonal systems, until 1988 we didn’t know that we had cannabinoid systems. The human body produces and utilizes its own cannabinoids, but the body can also utilize cannabinoids from external sources. Any woman who has had a hot flash can find an analogy in the hormone estrogen. Other women, during menopause, seek to balance their hormonal systems through the use of a synthetic estrogen (rather than a plant-based one) such as with the pharmaceutical Premarin. So, in this analogy, pot is to a yam what Marinol is to Premarin.

Hawking Radiation Recreated In A Laboratory A researcher claims to have produced a simulation of Hawking radiation, which if true will give physicists the chance to test one of Stephen Hawking's most significant predictions. In 1974, Hawking upended ideas about black holes with his theory that just outside the event horizon, particle-antiparticle pairs should appear as a result of the black hole's gravitational field. One of these would be drawn into the hole, but the other escape. Hawking's equations have won widespread support from physicists, and are a major contributor to his reputation. Now Professor Jeff Steinhauer of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology claims to be getting close. The fluctuations occur in pairs, modelling the particle-antiparticle pairs appearing around a black hole. In Nature, Steinhauer reported, “the observation of Hawking radiation emitted by this black-hole analogue.” Cowen notes that it is still unclear how well Steinhauer's creation models a real black hole. Image CC BY-SA 2.5

Thank you for Smoking Intro When Parallel Worlds Collide . . . Quantum Mechanics Is Born Parallel universes – worlds where the dinosaur-killing asteroid never hit, or where Australia was colonised by the Portuguese – are a staple of science fiction. But are they real? In a radical paper published this week in Physical Review X, we (Dr Michael Hall and I from Griffith University and Dr Dirk-André Deckert from the University of California) propose not only that parallel universes are real, but that they are not quite parallel – they can “collide”. In our theory, the interaction between nearby worlds is the source of all of the bizarre features of quantum mechanics that are revealed by experiment. Many worlds in existing interpretations The existence of parallel worlds in quantum mechanics is not a new idea in itself – they are a feature of one of the leading interpretations of quantum mechanics, the 1957 “many worlds interpretation” (MWI). First, its formalism is extremely remote from everyday experience. Heads or tails? Many interacting worlds Implications and applications

Speed Kills Your Pocketbook Researchers at Brown University shattered an electron wave function A team of physicists based at Brown University has succeeded in shattering a quantum wave function. That near-mythical representation of indeterminate reality, in which an unmeasured particle is able to occupy many states simultaneously, can be dissected into many parts. This dissection, which is described this week in the Journal of Low Temperature Physics, has the potential to turn how we view the quantum world on its head. When we say some element of the quantum world occupies many states at once, what’s really being referred to is the element’s wave function. A wave function can be viewed as a space occupied simultaneously by many different possibilities or degrees of freedom. If a particle could be in position (x,y,z) in three-dimensional space, there are probabilities that it could specifically be at (x1,y1,z1) or (x2,y2,z2) and so forth, and this is represented in the wave function, which is all of these possibilities added together.

Auto Brewery Syndrome - An Overview From a DUI Lawyer Can alcohol be created by the human body itself — without any drinking? Apparently so. In an interesting scientific article, two physicians at Union Memorial Hospital in Baltimore reported that they detected the odor of beer in three of their patients. “The presence of alcohol in human specimens containing glucose and yeast should come as no surprise,” the two physicians wrote. In other words, the body is manufacturing alcohol by itself — in some cases, enough to become legally intoxicated for purposes of driving — i.e., DUI. “Increasing evidence has emerged to show that endogenous ethanol does exist, the the concentrations seen have large inter-individual variations. How many folks, with “immaculately conceived” alcohol in their systems, have been arrested and convicted of DUI? Wrong. Even if you’ve had nothing to drink. If you need to consult with a DUI defense attorney in Southern California, call The Law Offices of Lawrence Taylor at 888-777-3449.

Scientists Discover a Jewel at the Heart of Quantum Physics Physicists reported this week the discovery of a jewel-like geometric object that dramatically simplifies calculations of particle interactions and challenges the notion that space and time are fundamental components of reality. “This is completely new and very much simpler than anything that has been done before,” said Andrew Hodges, a mathematical physicist at Oxford University who has been following the work. The revelation that particle interactions, the most basic events in nature, may be consequences of geometry significantly advances a decades-long effort to reformulate quantum field theory, the body of laws describing elementary particles and their interactions. “The degree of efficiency is mind-boggling,” said Jacob Bourjaily, a theoretical physicist at Harvard University and an author of the first of two papers detailing the new idea. Locality is the notion that particles can interact only from adjoining positions in space and time.

Louis C.K.'s Explanation of Why He Hates Smartphones Is Sad, Brilliant Yes, or you can view it as he keeps his kids from having smartphones in lieu of actually taking an interest in how his kids interact with other kids...not looking over their shoulders 24/7, but just seeing how they treat others and teaching them to not bully other kids. You can give your kid a smartphone and still be a good parent. I think he's chosen to manage one aspect over another. I suppose he could manage and observe his kid's use of a phone and hover all their social interactions but has decided not to. As I recall he even had a routine about taking television out of his kids lives too. Sounds like a self-righteous approach to parenting to me, then Except there's little if any reason for kids below a certain age to have a smartphone, and it does seem like most kids that have smartphones have one only because other kids have one. And that's the problem.

Related: