> Inventing a device that produces more energy than it consumes may 
> contradict the laws of nature. If that is the case it is impossible and 
> nothing can make it work.

A currently highly popular postulate is that the universe invented itself 
from utterly nothing creating its "laws" along with itself in the process. 
While I find that slightly unsatisfying intellectually, it does lend weight 
to any number of kooky ideas that suggest that anything can happen :-).

Of course "the laws of nature" are simply observations of what SEEM to be 
hard and fast rules about the reality of reality. At any stage that we 
observe something that violates the current rule set we simply realise that 
we were wrong and adjust the rule set. Of course (again :-) ) some "rules" 
seem to be very useful and very inviolable. Examples are the 3 laws of 
thermodynamics. Most easily remembered fwiw by rephrasing and thinking about 
a card game:

    You can't win
    You can't break even.
    You can't get out of the game
    :-)

So far EVERYTHING seems to obey these "rules".

Some fairly important rules suffer some grave indignities while we are 
looking the other way.
One such is the "rule" of gravitational attraction. IF we had an antigravity 
source on the surface of the earth it would APPEAR to violate the 1st law of 
thermodynamics and may allow us to fly off into space without (apparently) 
expending energy. Clearly (!) antigravity is impossible. But observation of 
large scale cosmological happenings reveals that gravity is not acting as it 
ought on extremely large scales in some places in the universe. We explain 
this by saying that there are forces (dark energy) and matter (dark matter) 
that we can't detect in any way so far EXCEPT that it is playing fast and 
loose with gravity. This COULD be seen as saying that the law of gravity is 
broken (but not in our neighbourhood) and needs replacing but nobody is 
seriously suggesting that - they just look for new "laws" instead.

In  a universe where we can't find 90% odd of the matter that seems to be 
present and measurements indicate that the sun seems to have gone out (or 
not, depending on which neutrino colour theory you subscribe to) and 
Schroedinger STILL can't find his cat, then we could do with a few new laws 
;-)

I very very seriously doubt that any of the many many 1st law violating 
claimants to perpetual motion and antigravity and the like are genuinely 
onto anything at all. But it is not inconceivable that one of these days the 
US patent office is going to have to reverse its stand on the patentabilityy 
of such devices. Of course, if the proponents of such something for nothing 
devices are actually on the right track then such action by the USPO may be 
rendered unnecessary by a very bright flash in the sky one day :-)


        RM

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