While I agree with your general sentiment, I am always immediately
skeptical of anything which claims, or even remotely appears, to
violate the second law of thermodynamics.

The lack of even the most basic understanding of the second law of
thermodynamics by such a large percentage of the general population is
I believe what Olin is poking fun at here.  It is, in many ways, the
only way a scientific person can cope with such people.

-p.


On Sat, May 14, 2011 at 6:50 PM, Dr Skip <drskip@gmail.com> wrote:

> Laws were meant to be broken..... ;)
> (and I really like your answers Olin...)
>
> Seriously though, the sciences are often advanced by 'revolutions' in
> thought. In medicine, which deals with essentially a complex system,
> small details often change large results and ways of thinking about
> what's happening. What we CAN say, is that X appears to always happen
> when acted upon by Y (generalized for lots of assertions) under Z
> conditions. How Z is described or understood is very important and all
> possible permutations can never be tested, usually.
>
> Think Einstein's effect on Newton's and Kepler's work for one.
>
> Now, not that I hold out much hope for perpetual energy, it is good that
> there are a small number of folks trying those untested conditions out
> there. I'll digress a minute - maybe using a certain shape container
> makes it work. Off-hand, it may not seem to make a difference, but we
> all know the electric field is different between a conductor and a
> cylinder or one and a cube. Maybe that small difference brings something
> into play that alters the outcome. Many might dismiss the difference as
> irrelevant in most cases, or in this case. And who would have
> intuitively accepted Yagi and Uda's way of focusing electromagnetic
> waves at first?
>
> It is also good mental exercise to re-evaluate such things to some
> degree. Mathematics, which is a sister to physics, often advances by
> inspiration and discovery rather than incremental plodding along.
> Perspective or approach often make the difference. The fun part is that
> in physics you can touch something too.
>
> So, IMHO, discussing such is good. Showing why it won't work is always
> the easy part. Making a working model is the tough part. We should be
> glad there are people trying to do the tough part out there. Sometimes
> they actually do it.
>
> Remember Copernicus, who resisted openly publishing his views, not
> wishing to risk the scorn "to which he would expose himself on account
> of the novelty and incomprehensibility of his theses."
>
> -Skip
--=20
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