sethoflagos

To the extent that if a machine exists that lost half it's 'bounce energy' in a week, there's every reason to suspect that with a little more investment that performance could be extended. And so on. You're adding heat to a closed system so the temperature rises throughout the cycle until there's no more incoming heat. And the expansion has hit your compression ratio so you don't see on the hot side what you've lost on the cold side.

Focus on the 'bouncing ball' assembly in the middle of the apparatus. If there are no losses from the system, the cycle can be described by the equation: U + EP + EK = constant where U is the instantaneous internal energy of the gas and proportional to it's temperature; EP is the instantaneous potential energy primarily due to the height of the ball in the tube, and EK is the system bulk kinetic energy realised in the instantaneous velocity of the ball. At rest, everything is at ambient temperature, the ball is stationary with no kinetic energy, and at some intermediate position where its mass is supported by the air pressure beneath. To start the process either the ball must be raised to the maximum height, minimum temperature position, or depressed to the minimum height maximum temperature position, and subsequently released. Both these actions require a significant input of work. The system can in principle then continue to oscillate between these points cycling between high and low temperature (either side of ambient) moreorless indefinitely. No physics is being broken so far. The problems happen when you try adding or removing heat to/from the device. The stored energy used to start the machine runs down. There is no free lunch.

No. The 1st Law treats W & Q as equivalent. The 2nd Law was introduced to help explain their observed differences. eg why it is possible to convert W into Q completely while the reverse is not true.

You claim to derive the 2nd Law from the 1st Law in this (unreviewed?) reference. However to do this you rely on the relation dU = dQrev = TdS, which is a 2nd Law statement. Therefore your claim is undermined by a very obvious fallacy.

One picture that I found comfortable is to firstly accept that the paths taken are simply governed by a form of least action (via Fermat's Principle of least time) - which I think is one way of saying that any potential deviation from Snell's law would be corrected by wave interference. Then taking a first law view, the total energy of the incoming light is transformed at the interface into a composite package of equal energy that now includes some level of induced motion in the local lattice electrons. This package, if viewed as a particle in its own right, now has some albeit small mass and therefore must adopt a sublight speed appropriate to the amount of 'baggage' it's now carrying. When leaving the medium the lattice field reclaims its baggage and returns its borrowed energy back to the reconstituted photon which continues on its way. I'm sure there's some phrasing here that I've got wrong but at least it's a process I can picture.

Much of what you say is correct which is why they got ignored for over a century. Compared to IC engines, they're more amenable to renewable energy resources (such as solar collectors etc); they can be very quiet; and as static devices they're quite competitive in cost with IC up to ~100 kW.

That's the most popular theory for what happened to Mars ~4 billion years ago.

Okay, so what would happen to say a waterworld planet tidally-locked to a red dwarf star. Could it be possible for a permanent iceberg to form on the dark side so large that it occupied a substantial proportion of the planets volume? If so, then gravity via buoyancy forces would seek to maintain a substantial elevation difference between the two hemispheres. As it happens, other issues might come into play such as ice changing phase to a higher density structure at depth could well be a limiting factor. But going back to Mars, the southern hemisphere is 2-3 km higher in elevation on average than the northern hemisphere for reasons no one seems entirely sure of. This would be consistent with the two hemispheres somehow having different average densities, though there are other possibilities.

Interesting thoughts. If we take the Martian volcano Olympus Mons as an example: a 22 km high pyramid of basalt formed mainly around 3 billion years ago that is certainly taking its time to dissipate. If vulcanism were somehow to restart on Mars, might it not follow the old channels and lines of weakness and extend Olympus Mons even further from isostatic equilibrium? Gravity may always be there lurking in the background, but if changes to surface topography are dominated by 'random' events (asteroid impacts are another obvious example) the long term trend towards regularity may not be apparent. Elsewhere in the solar system I think the 396 km diameter Mimas is the smallest body with a gravity strong enough to deform itself. On the other hand, isn't a sphere the optimum shape of a given volume for collision avoidance? That may provide some statistic bias towards 'roundish' shapes for smaller bodies.

And after so many years what do you have to show for all this effort but lame excuses for your failure to produce one single testable data point to back up your wild claims. Compare with the test results presented in the attachment. Hirata et al..pdf

Yet those best placed to make a fortune if there were any merit to your ideas decided that you were unemployable. And judging by the way you persistently misrepresent what I and others have actually posted here, perhaps they were having issues with your honesty too.

Your not in the kitchen, Tom. The adults won't let you play there any more will they because of what you did.

It's a few years since I measured sodium's cross-section to neutrons at Risley experimental reactor. When did you publish your refutation of https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/4482648, 'Evaluated Neutron Cross Sections of Sodium-23 for the ENDF/B File', USAEC, 1968.

There are quite a few mammals that typically will not survive into a second breeding season in the wild. Many, if not all of these can live for over two years in captivity, the Common Shrew included. So 'life span' is very dependent on context. The shortest average lifespans may simply reflect the highest predation rates rather than the animal's ability to survive longer if not preyed upon. The Common Shrew is often cited because it is a familiar animal to many in an influential part of the world. More so than say Mullers Giant Sunda Rat (Sundamys muelleri) of SE Asia which may be a better contender for some particular interpretation of your question. In many cases, there simply isn't enough research data available to provide any sensible answer. Long and the short: nobody knows (whatever you've read elsewhere on the internet).

Of course, there is cause for more optimism in some parts of the world, Ken. But when I see oil companies deliberately throttling back their domestic gas production, forcing power stations off the grid so that they can sell their premium priced imported gasoline to a population now dependent on their small inefficient generators, I think I'm just seeing callous exploitation. By US and EU companies with US and EU shareholders. Yes, the indigenous companies do the same but they're following practices long established by their 'former colonial masters'. I tend to plan for the worst likely outcome which sounds pessimistic but isn't really. Things often work out not as badly as that and I think that helps maintain a positive frame of mind. A certain situation may have a certain limited number of potential outcomes. You can acknowledge them and estimate their relative likelihoods without assigning an emotional value to each. Helps keep confirmation bias at bay. Applying this to the OP, we know that the climate is going to follow some trajectory within the spectrum of the various predictions of the climate models. Whatever our intellects and emotions tell us about the preferred trajectory and whether or not it can be achieved, it is clear that there are likely to be significant changes coming. My duty of care therefore became an issue of how well I'd equipped my children with the ability to adapt to a changing environment. And theirs in turn is to do the same as they raise our grandchildren. And I agree with you on revolutions. I wasn't making a serious case for it. I'd just been wondering what the possible outcomes might be if a former imperial power tried to transform itself back into the 'Golden Age' of the 1920s.

TLDR. This stuff is beyond you. Flick the switch on your tin foil hat from transmit to receive. You might learn something.

She's now a delightful adult. I hope she doesn't meet you either. Contact with the spineless and dishonest rarely proves positive.

From who? She has her mother's emotional intelligence coupled with my IQ. Effing nightmare. Absolutely nothing. IMHO Psychology has not progressed beyond eugenics. I prefer my own personal observation of a small population to the confirmation bias of an unscientific community. Are you calling me a liar, Peterkin, really? I know my daughter's date of birth, which house this conversation occurred in, and the date we moved to a different house. So I'm pretty clear on the timeline. Retract now, pretty please.

At a basic level, I saw both my children (1 of each) emerge into this world and there was no doubt as to their physical gender. Hormones had been in play in utero, so to imply that boys and girls are identical at birth seems absurd to me. I was generally around weekends only while my children were young, but I clearly remember conversations I had with them when they were 3 years old. Boy: I want some sweeties! Me: Your mother will be back soon. Have some patience. Boy: I want some patience now! Compare and contrast: Girl: Daddy, daddy, the ice cream van's here. Me: You can't have one. Girl: I didn't want one. I thought you might like one. This I suggest is an entirely different level of sophistication in manipulation. I know it's a population sample of two but the difference is staggering which is why I remember it so clearly. Furthermore, my daughter very clearly saw my wife as a competitor for my affections and could be openly hostile to her about it. My son showed had no corresponding behaviour pattern. He just sat building aeroplanes out of lego. For 'reasons' I'd actually 'like' behaviour to be more environmental then genetic in nature - it would certainly give more hope of change for the better in the future. But my own personal experience is that early psychological sexual differentiation appears to be strongly correlated with the presence or otherwise of a Y chromosome. It's an unfortunate fact that I've just had to come to terms with.

This is an important point. My career (chem eng) gave the opportunity to make a some difference to the environmental performance of the projects I was involved with by working 'on the inside'. But there is only so much rocking the boat you can get away with before it starts to work against you. No problems in the early days when there was quite the fashion for being seen to be environmentally progressive. But fashions change. Nowadays telling the project accountant to go fiddle with his calculator would probably lead to instant dismissal. The CEOs currently feel no pressure to pay attention to environmental matters around most of the globe because their shareholders most certainly don't care, and there is precious little political pressure being put on them. Could I green the Sahara? Yes. Lot's of sand there to make a shed load of dirty glass and a couple of billion solar panels. But no. No one will stump up the money. So I guess we're back to petty, ineffectual virtue signalling. It's the only option available to us. Short of starting a revolution.

I personally would prefer some more neutral phrase like 'Carnot coefficient'. Or just 'eta'. Remember that it is a standin for (QH - QC) / QH = W / QH for an isentropic process, and its inverse is the maximum theoretical amount of heat that can be transferred to a hot reservoir by a heat pump with a work input of W. Clearly, this inverse can be far greater than 1 for low temperature differentials and tends to be called the Coefficient of Performance (COP). Another neutral phrase. It's absolutely clear that COP is not an 'efficiency' in any normal scientific sense, but how should we express the actual real world efficiency of these machines? For a heat engine I think it ends up being actual work output divided by the closed path integral of TdS. A simplification (!) of this may be: Isentropic efficiency ~ Wact / (- THdSH - TCdSC ) evaluated for the reservoirs (SH & SC are numerically equal for the reversible case so conveniently cancel out). More than a bit of a challenge to measure accurately, though not so difficult to estimate fairly closely I think.

I can't give an authoritative reference, but I heard that cyanogen was involved. Cyanogen is quite a common comet constituent and since it can be formed by passing a spark discharge through a mix of acetylene and nitrogen, the mechanism may conceivably involve this overall reaction or the reverse one.

Compare with Wikipedia Same thing. I didn't mention the Carnot cycle in that post. Given the nature of the remainder of your post, let's close with a proverb.

For an ideal Stirling engine maximum compression occurs at the end of the cooling cycle with the working fluid at cold reservoir temperature TC. Conversely, maximum expansion occurs at the end of the heating cycle with the working fluid at hot reservoir temperature TH. This is the opposite case to most heat engine designs. I can see I wrote minimum pressure when I meant maximum so I've likely got a pair of subscripts reversed somewhere. I'll comb through it later tonight to check.

VC was originally fully compressed ie piston at BDC. VH volume fully expanded at TDC. They don't tie to hot and cold as such. Both are clearly defined by the geometry which is the salient point.