You could blow up Venus, assemble the pieces into a mile-thick spherical shell around the Sun, then cover the inside with solar panels. Give the sphere a spin that matches the Earth's orbital speed, and make a hole about twice the diameter of the Earth pointed in Earth's direction. That way you'll still get sunlight.

Now, connect a large L-bracket to the equatorial geostationary space elevator so you can hook up the really long extension cord to the Dyson sphere (the socket must be far enough up or down [north/south] that the Moon won't hit the wire as it orbits).

As an added bonus, the sphere has a slight inward gravity on the outer surface thanks to the slow spin, so you can use it for habitation when the population balloons into sextillions (the surface area is approx billion times larger than Earth's). It'll even hold an atmosphere if the Earth-facing hole has a collar around it (to prevent air from falling in).

No reason at all why it won't work.

This time with my real name..

I wasn't only referring to perpetual motion. Actually, I had never heard of it when I built my would-be-wheel. Haven't had physics class yet.

And I'm not talking about "creating" energy, or energy for "free". Come on, there is a constant force pushing everything on the planet towards it's center. Every peice of weight added to the planet takes away from it's rotation, so I doubt an energy mechanism is going to hurt something.

I think it's actually sad that we aren't able to come up with something that uses that force to generate energy. I actually feel sorry for my own species because of it's ignorance.

LOL - no flames, please. I'm half kidding around.

Sorry about the double post. Imposssible to delete that AP, right?

I'm not a fool. Maybe crap with physics and math, but I have talents. I'm not pretending to be the only guy on the planet who knows how to do it. If it's not possible (by human definition), then it's not. But our brains can only go into so much depth at this point. It's still too much for us :)

I wish I understood how someone could just say "impossible". I'm not trying to disprove anything. I just don't like to rule things out based on my math instructors and the "laws" of physics. Heh, maybe I am a fool, then.

This thread was fun, but now it's getting distasteful. So I'm outta here. Worth a try I guess :)

I think it's good that i tried all that things when was a child...

For instance,i tried using both magnets and gravitation.As i know,magnets are quite unlike gravitation(opposite to how it's usually explained to childs) (Check how force of magnet falls with distance.Nothing like 1/r^2).

So,it's good to try to make free energy... at least you will see your wheel in stable position.

Usually such things are drawn in unstable position,and it really should turn to stable position,and humans just see "it should turn",not "it should turn and stop".

As about relation to gamedev, it's known that it's possible to model real world physics very well,with high precision. And, if that wheel should turn,it should be simple to make computer simulation programs that using same laws will calculate power,etc. BUT. Before getting to making that program you instantly see that it can't spin well in any correct simulation....

when you know physics laws you just know that no matter what path each stick on your wheel have,if it's returns to same position,it does not produce energy,if laws are right(and,one chance you have is to check if laws are right,not by making wheels because wheel have extremely small precision). We just know that in each law,energy are conserved,it are conserved in stick,in stick joint,in each atom of the wheel,in gravitation field.So it will not produce energy

(well,strictly speaking,thermodinamically and statistically conserved).

Actually your wheel will requir significant force to spin it.For me it's just friction device that makes friction from loosing energy when stick are instantly stopped.

Quote:
Think of it as wave fronts rather than beams. Behind the hole two new wave fronts will form, but they will originate from the same point and being 180 degrees out of phase, so they will cancel each other out at every point behind the hole.

im not talking about a small hole, more a gap, which the waves can pass without interacting with the hole itself.

if you claim no light passes trough, then this is also a flaw in the conservation of energy, since then we could make energy disappear by just making two out of phase lightbeams cross.

as for the magnets example... i dont think it has to do with thermodynamics. its funny though: when you heat the magnet, where does the potential field energy go? its not too hard to imagine that magnetizing it would cost more electricity when the potential energy created is bigger though, probably something to do with induction.

this made me think btw. maybe the enormous restmass/energy of a particle is merely the potential energy it has with the entire universe. after all when youre destroying mass youre destroying potential energy and it has to go somewhere, ditto for creating it. it makes sense that the energy needed to create a gravity field/mass is much bigger than for a magnet, since magnetic fields fall off at a much higher rate.

omg im going to win a nobel prize, or are there already theories regarding this?