2 ms·
"Daedalus"- who did the back pages of New Scientist, is said to have got the UK patent office to issue a patent for an entirely passive metro system based on th
by ggm 1y ago
"Daedalus"- who did the back pages of New Scientist, is said to have got the UK patent office to issue a patent for an entirely passive metro system based on this theory.
I believe it was a protest against beaurocracy, and to prove a point about it being illegal to patent perpetual motion machines. It wasn't (a perpetual motion machine) but it was based off "free energy" -it comes to a halt eventually.
- CamperBob2 1y agoIt's legitimate perpetual motion, but not a machine. In a vacuum the test mass will never stop moving, but you can't extract any work from the system if you want it to keep going forever. Technically you can't even look at it, because that requires bouncing photons off its surface. The resulting radiation pressure will slow it down eventually.