Could Exotic Matter Provide an Infinite Source of Energy?
September 15, 2009 By Lisa Zyga
Cover of the October 1920 issue of Popular Science magazine, painted by American illustrator Norman Rockwell. It depicts an inventor working on a perpetual motion machine.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Generally, scientists prefer to avoid the concept of perpetual motion. The idea of a machine that could produce movement that goes on forever, and using that movement to generate an endless stream of energy, is usually considered more science fiction than science. But recently, physicist Pavel Ivanov has investigated previous speculation that an exotic fluid with unusual properties could cause energy to flow continuously between different regions of space, resulting in a runaway transfer of energy. If an advanced civilization were able to construct a device to capture this energy, it might finally possess its own "perpetuum mobile" -- or perpetual motion.
Ivanov, from both the University of Cambridge and the Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow, has analyzed this possibility in a study accepted to Physics Letters B. The idea is that a one-dimensional exotic fluid, whose unique properties such as violating the weak energy condition in particle physics, leads to a scenario in which there is a light cone with regions of negative and positive total energies. Ivanov has calculated the equations of state which give a continuous energy transfer from the negative regions to the positive regions, resulting in what he calls “perpetuum mobile of the third kind.” However, Ivanov conjectures that theories “plagued” by solutions involving continuous energy flows should be discarded as inherently unstable.
The concept of exotic matter - matter that violates certain physical laws - is not new. Exotic matter is at the basis of many intriguing theoretical possibilities, such as wormholes, time machines, and even so-called cosmological doomsday models of the universe in which the universe’s energy density continually increases. Here, Ivanov shows that, in a class of models containing a certain kind of exotic matter, there could be ever-expanding regions of space with positive and negative total energies. Since the absolute values of the energies in both these regions grow indefinitely with time, the energy of the whole physical system is conserved.
“In the setting outlined in the paper, the perpetuum motion is a new effect, as far as I am aware of,” Ivanov told PhysOrg.com. “But the number of published papers on exotic matter is quite large, and therefore, there could be some papers on this unknown to me.
“There are so-called cosmological doomsday solutions where an expanding spatially homogeneous universe filled by an exotic matter evolves in such a way that the density, and accordingly, the energy density, grows with time,” he explained. “The energy density may even grow infinite during a finite period of time - the effect dubbed ‘the cosmological doomsday.’ However, the notion of total energy is, in general, rather ambiguous for the universe as a whole, and in any case one should accurately define and use the energy associated with a gravitational field when considering cosmological solutions, so in this case it is not clear (for me, at least) whether this situation may be called 'perpetuum motion' or not. In my case, the fluid expands in a flat space-time, where the notion of energy is well defined, so one can use standard definitions to classify solutions.”
In one variant of the model, a region of space filled with exotic matter could have a total energy that decreases indefinitely with time. This decrease could be due to hydrodynamical effects (from the moving exotic liquid itself), or it could be due to interactions with a conventional physical field carrying positive energy, such as gravitational waves. In such a case, the gravitational waves would be continually carrying away positive energy from the region, resulting in a runaway energy transfer. One possible physical model of this activity might be exotic matter concentrated on a one-dimensional line in three dimensional space, so that the one-dimensional motion of the line could produce gravitational waves that carry away positive energy from the system.
As Ivanov explains, this situation resembles the action of a perpetuum mobile of the second kind, where heat is transferred from a colder part to a hotter part of an isolated system. However, because the situation Ivanov investigates doesn’t deal with temperature, he refers to the hypothetical effect as a perpetuum mobile of the third kind.
Ivanov points out that, although it may be technically difficult to construct the runaway process involving the emission of gravitational waves, it may be easier to construct a process with even more exotic “ghost” matter, which has a negative energy density. For example, he considers a model of a rotating relativistic string with two monopoles at its ends emitting weak gravitational waves. With modifications, this model can be converted to a model of “ghost” matter interacting with gravity, with the length of the rotating string ever increasing with time, thus making the total energy of the string-monopoles system ever decreasing. The positive energy carried away by gravitational waves might be captured by an advanced civilization and put to whatever use they might have for it.
“I personally think that the emergence of perpetual motion in a theory may pose a difficulty for the theory, since this leads to infinite concentration of energy in some regions of space, which is dangerous,” Ivanov said. “Also, quite subjectively, I dislike the theories operating with fluids violating the weak energy condition; they contradict to my aesthetic feeling. Of course, this quite subjective point of view may or may not be correct.”
More information: Pavel Ivanov. “On the dynamics of exotic matter: towards creation of Perpetuum Mobile of the third kind.” To be published in Physics Letters B. Available at http://arxiv.org/abs/0909.0190 .
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1hour ago
The issue here is the expansion of the Universe would make this source more and more diffuse over time.
Theoretically this would be possible, technologically impossible (currently), but under no circumstances would it be perpetual in any sense of the word.
In the same sense, one could easily perceive a machine that extracts energy from the environment in other ways, perhaps using a device that appears to be as stationary/static as a hydroelectric dam. This is the essence of zero-point energy research: it's not to create "perpetual motion" it's to find other ways to harness the work the universe does for our benefit.
http://en.wikiped...e_Glocke
(All clear)
-Some good books on the subject. Whatever it might not be, it is however interesting as hell, I think. Its a way out of the box, escape from the cage.
@x646d63 - Even then you can increase the scope and say that it's a solar based power, and for every bit of energy you remove the less there will be to be used elsewhere.
It's an interesting point most people fail to see when they talk about "renewable" energy.
rays, etc. No one seems worried about "end times"!
Our "passing", or "conversion" is certain!
Physorg should have a "What If" section for interesting speculations like these and keep them separate from the actual here-and-now stuff (the actual science, I mean). Proof-of-concept or observation THEN article.
Anyone read Asimov's 'The Gods Themselves'? They figure out how to suck unlimited energy from a parallel dimension, but the thermodynamic price is the destabilization of physical constants in the space around earth. The effect spreads slowly until the sun goes nova.
A superconducting current does exactly this: A charge-carrier (localised electron-wave) borrows energy by means of Heisenberg's uncertainty relationship for energy and time: Then use this energy to move on to another position; and then returns this energy. If it were not for this perpetual motion mechanism we would not have had superconduction. By the way, Cooper pairs cannot move in this manner.
Furthermore, although this energy appears from a fourth dimension, it is not the same as the physically-impossible "vacuum-energy" postulated by the physically-impossible theory called "quantum field theory".
That'll be 'a perpetual motion machine of the FIRST kind'.
Superconductivity is not perpetual motion - it's dissipation-free motion. The same applies to superfluidity.
Why Arata's experiment weren't attempted to replicate?
No, that's a sufficient but not a necessary condition for something to be a PMM. PMMs of the second kind do not break the first law, they break the second(they reduce entropy in some isolated system; e.g. they would allow you to extract energy from ambient air to run a car indefinetly or produce air-conditioning that directly chills hot air by turning the thermal energy into a electrical power)
It's not that hard to understand.
I think this guy is working too hard to understand something so easy.
The energy source, which does exist, and accessing it would be perpetual by nature. Therefore, no energy created or destroyed and no 2nd law of thermodynamics violated. Entropy staying at zero....possible? Yes. At small levels of wavelength/high vibration. Become the atom or of the sub atomic state, and entropy will never come into being. Anything above that...quenching occurs.
Anything which can reflect the actual state of the vacuum is perpetual in some sort of way. Absolute Zero temperature is reflecting PM.
Vacuum energy is what all this is...there is no 4th dimensional accessing. This is actually beyond 3rd/4th....
PM can exist as long as the energy source exists to give PM life, and this energy source does exist, and it is in the vacuum.
STOP PISSING AROUND and accept it
Two reasons.
1. There is far too much noise that is not accounted for.
2. Even if the noise is inconsequential to the end result the amount of energy generated is negligible.
Actually, this is directly involved with 4th dimensional physics. Vacuum energy is generated by spontaneous existence which is theorized to be energy "borrowed" from other points in time due to quantum flux.
-Your comment on this article. I know this is OT but:This experiment was basically a repeat of earlier work with the addition of instruments which could record neutrons. I think the Navy grabbed it and academia squashed it because of its potential for strategic and economic disruption. Negligable does not mean unimprovable. Fusion is fusion and this is apparently it.The Censor trials; it does not seem to mind mild epithets or crudite but its judgment on content seems inconsistent; although it does seem to appreciate exemplary humor. And it zapped poor Thales... I therefore conclude the Censor is all too human.
And answer this little riddle. Two photons meet and cancel each other out. Now their combined energy is zero. What has happened to the energy?
The scientific community at large needs to dispense with the reservations on talking openly about higher dimensional physics on both the quantum scale and the macro level.
The reason why they believe and don't know is because there is too much noise in the experiment that is unaccounted for.
That's completely in line with my earlier comments on CF.
Would noise produce that three-particle pattern? Would some chemical process produce it? I think everybody is being very cautious on exploring these alternates (D2/palladium, polywell, z-pinch, muon-catalyzed) by restricting funding and giving super-critical feedback because they are potentially economy-ruining discoveries. This may change as economies improve. The fact that the navy was working on this under the radar is an indicator.
Which noise are you talking about at the case of Arata experiments? I can assure you, most theories in cosmology or high energy physics is based on much larger amount of noise.
Arata's experiment produced 1 degree centigrade of heat difference over 5000 minutes per liter of water.
That is absolutely negligible. As for noise, there was no neutron detection. Just the observation of helium. That's the noise.
http://nextbigfut...sis.html
Per the navy results
http://en.wikiped...d_fusion
I have great faith in the mysterious ability of science to discover extraordinary things, and the Power of Those In Charge to suppress them until the world can handle them.
Oh I agree that the 4th dimension is involved to some extent grabbing at the energy, but eventually you can be beyond the 4th while acquiring the energy.
Vacuum energy has spontaneous existence? On our side of the equation while looking at it, but from the vacuum's POV it is always present.
Quantum flux as in a natural fluxing of the vacuum state? That's fine. But artificially that flux would be as long as you would desire.
You and I don't know that the universe is finite. But say it does have a beginning and end, the time span is too great to worry about, and anything which can run a sufficient time underneath can be called PM.
As far as I know, atoms do not just disappear. They are recycled into other forms, but for them to disintegrate into nothingness, would mean a release of energy. Also then we would see a loss of mass (into energy), such as the earth, which is the oldest subject to study for us. Does the earth lose mass over billions of years or stay the same or gain mass? We can't answer that either.
A smaller example. Just regular hydrogen or carbon?
It gets sent back to the quantum vacuum field or perhaps it is converted into waste heat, causing the infrared background radiation.
Electrons are sustained by the vacuum field, that is where they get the energy. What you guys must do is bridge the 'creation' connection as to how does energy get from the vacuum and get to the electron and back and forth. Standing wave patterns do come to mind here. That the vacuum is sending EM to the electron and the electron is sending back, and it's a bouncing thing going on. More to it though, as we are talking about hyper dimensional physics as well involved with the sustaining of the electron (for example). All particles will share this entanglement.
The very idea of the circle is perpetual in nature. If you were to walk the edge of the circle and your energy being boundless/endless, you would walk in circles forever....which means perpetual.
Hyper-dimensions is actually simple geometry, but it hugely dense and primordial where it resides, beyond the 4th dimension. Like a Black Hole, this would have massive denseness in geometry (space-time of course as well) at it's heart, the singularity.
As one can say, look at the Earth, we receive Petawatts of energy from the sun on a constant basis, but that energy is too diffuse for us to collect (at this point in our technological prowess). The more diffuse energy becomes, the harder it is to collect enough to fill an increasing need.
It never happens, you cannot have two separate photons which meet at some point and follow the same path from there canceling everywhere from now on. They may cancel in some region only but to cancel everywhere they would have to follow precisely the same path from the source (and have opposite phase), and in this case they would cancel everywhere and there would simply be no emission.
Like the 'tune' of the universe is changing? As the universe gets larger, the vibration of the universe (overall) gets lower? Lower vibration = lower energy = diffused state. Interesting concept, but we don't have to worry about that right now. The energy is still quite astronomically high, and useful for mankind. Better than solar panels and nuclear Fis/fus and geothermal power sources. You would know when the 'diffused' state of the universe is critical...as you would prbably not see any stars or galaxies or any matter in any direction even with high power telescopes and such things. We would not see any stars from earth....for example.
No. Energy in one area will attempt to match the energy content of all other areas unless acted upon by an outside force. This is via Entropic Equilibrium. So if the volume of the Universe is increasing (Expanding Universe theory) and energy cannot be created (Conservation theory) then at some point in time the energy content of the Universe will be so diffuse as to be immeasurable beyond the planck length (logical progression given the above theories).
As for the end part, yes. That is the hypothesized state of the Universe after the Degenerate Age except, there would be no Earth at that time. Any remaining "Earth" pieces would have been swallowed by a black hole and subsequently evaporated away as Hawking radiation, or exploded forth as particulate gas and muonic energy from their death.
Then again we're talking almost a google years away.
And the electron does work with this energy from the vacuum. So we already have a conduit for this energy from nothing? Is there any indication that the content in a given vacuum region is diminished while it's energy is doing work out here or is the deficit negligable? Does hawking radiation or supernovae cause significant depletion? This is what the article above is using to increase the net energy content of the universe?
I suppose somebody somewhere has already asked and answered this question but I haven't seen it: instead of dark energy, couldn't the content of normal energy be increasing from some unknown source (exotic matter? Alien superspecies?) and the rate of acceleration is increasing as the universe struggles to accomodate it?
There are some thoughts about energy being generated but there are no definitive tests or observations that lend any creedence to this hypothesis.
1, the universe expanding but the backround radiation just 'sitting there' cooling, getting more diffuse. Do all photons roam about like bingo balls in an expanding machine?
2, The universe being bigger than we can ever see. Light cannot make it from one side to the other during the projected lifetime of the universe. Yet we can see back to the Big Bang, or at least to the beginning of light, when the universe was much smaller. I know thinking of what might be on the other side of that big ball of light is not the proper way of looking at it. But even looking back as far as we can, we cant see all of it from horizon to horizon so to speak.
Actually the only reason why we can do that is because the entire universe is the origination point for the big bang.
For example, take a piece of rubber sheeting and draw a big black dot on it with magic marker. Now stretch it in all directions. The dot just gets bigger and lighter, it doesn't move (unless you're bad at stretching rubber equidistantly).
How exactly is it "free" or "unlimited" when you're talking about removing Teravolts from flying particles with a fixed amount of inertia?
Secondly, how would you harness particulate inertia?
Yep, the "Great Attractor". Theorized as being an even larger black hole than we can imagine, a white hole, a wormhole, a bundle of exotic matter, and multiple other crazy things.
Another few thousand years and maybe we'll be able to see it.
"In other words, the Great Attractor is well established. The dark flow is controversial and could simply be a false dipole resulting from errors or too-broad assumptions in Kashlinsky's methods." From this link:
http://www.bautfo...low.html
-The universe has regions that can never be observed [?], but if Dark Flow exists we can infer whats there by its effects on objects we can see.
According to the Popsci article which I READ; "the source of the dark flow appears to be at least 46.5 Bly away, much farther than we can observe." between Centaurus and Vela -NASA scientist A. Kashlinsky...
While according to wiki the Great Attractor is "within the range of the Centaurus Supercluster that reveals the existence of a localised concentration of mass...somewhere between 150 and 250 Mly (47-79Mpc) (the latter being the most recent estimate) from the Milky Way, in the direction of the Hydra and Centaurus constellations."
So according these 2 sources these 2 phenomena appear to be different.
http://en.wikiped...ttractor
your second source is out of date. The actual Great Attractor is most likely the Shapely Supercluster. Which the majority of which is just out of our possible view. We can see what we think the core is at 650 mlya but recent measurements indicate it's likely that we're only viewing 5% of it's possible mass.
The original source I cited is the article in the oct issue of popsci. Are you arguing with the author or me? Forgive me but, are you this lax in checking references in teaching your students? I must point out that your sources are all invisible.
Not arguing. Describing. And you're right, my references are lacking. I'll rectify that. As for students, no otto, I'm not a teacher. You have asked me that in the past.
I would presume that the ZPE field is so high that any matter sustaining and entanglement is quite lower in proportion of energy exchange to the field it's self. We may be able measure, but you'd need point of reference at the ZPE field first off and then allow for discrepancy away from the baseline.
Supernova/Hawking rads, all work above the ZPE field, not at the field. Singularities work at the ZPE field.
quarks and other sub atomics particles as well.
The conduit is to SOMETHING, but we can think it is nothing. ZPE is something but of hyper dimensional order.