Re: First Law????

["Donald E. Simanek" <dsimanek@EAGLE.LHUP.EDU>]

On Sat, 23 Jan 1999, Jim Green wrote:

> > From the APS News Brief page:
>
> ===========================================================
> 4. PODKLETNOV GRAVITY SHIELD: NASA INVESTS ANOTHER $600,000.
>
> The Small Business Innovation Research grant went to Superconductive
> Components in Columbus, OH to make a 12-inch superconductive disk for an
> experimental shield. It's a coveted Phase II award, which goes to the top
> projects.
>
> A 6-inch shield built under Phase I didn't work (WN 15 May 98), but NASA,
> which has been working on this for 4 years, hopes a bigger one will. The
> Columbus Dispatch quotes a NASA official: "Let your imagination run wild.
> What could you do if you could cut gravity 50 percent or negate it
> altogether?"   Well, for one thing you could build a perpetual motion
> machine, in violation of the First Law of Thermodynamics.
> =====================================================
>
> Anyone know what this is about???
>
> Anyone want to comment on the understanding of Thermo at the APS????

Sure. This looks like a bit from David Park's periodic news briefs, and
knowing his tongue-in-cheek style, I'm not surprised at the wry comment at
the end. He's saing that *if* you could make a partial or complete gravity
shield, you *could* make a perpetual motion machine which would turn
forever *and* produce some useful work output. So, there's good reason to
doubt that the gravity shield idea could actually be achieved.

But, I ask, would a gravity shield (if possible) actually make a perpetual
motion machine possible? If so, let's see your design of the machine.

        -- Donald

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Donald E. Simanek
dsimanek@eagle.lhup.edu                 http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek
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