Xenosis

From what i understand of the Electrodynamic tether (or whatever the exact name of the effect is) you are not really getting that energy for free, you are sucking it away from the earth's rotation. So in the shortterm and small scale it is perfectly fine, but if you created a large scale generator or used it extensively you could eventually stop the earth or its magnetic field :) which would be kind of bad...of course it would probably take thousands of years..but still, I wouldn't want that to even come close, i would rather have a big gaping hole in the ozone first :) But all this info is a bit old and dusty, I think it has been about a year since i read the artical in Scientific American that talked about this. I don't think we will see any perpetual motion machines working off conventional forces and energy source, if one is created it would probably be from something like the "strings" that were mentioned earlier, or some other quantum effect. Otherwise you are just pulling the energy from some other source.

I cannot even begin to touch the technical aspects of this, but I would just like to say this... Just assuming for a moment that someone did create such a device it would be extremely unpractical, there would be nothing stopping you from falling through to the center of the earth, correct? the only way you could do this would be to also remove gravity's effect on the object. at which point you now have to solve two very large problems...

Just to throw another thought into the mix about when is war justified, many have mentioned boosting to the economoies of the two parties involved, but what about innovation? Most of the things that we take for granted now days, technologicly wise, were brought about because of war like computers, the internet, planes, medicine. If you do want to come up with a cost of war then what about the subsequent good that they create, not just in the lives they save directly. as for if a war, or war in general is good and just, that will depend solely upon the person answering the question I think, because if they have a different outlook on life and society in general then they could very well think the opposite of what you think is "right." Take for example a society that values the group over the individual, to them the human cost of war is less, if it means a bettering for the whole. To them, the war is "good" as long as what the society gains from it outweighs that with which they lose, and in some circumstances, losing humans lives would be a good thing, in any sort of resource shortage for example. To the question of is war part of human nature? I would have to say yes, to me it is really only an extension of survival, for one thing or another, wether it is our society/freedom, our lives, or for needed resources. It could be seen as "survival of the fittest" on a far larger scale, group B has resource 1 that group A needs, so group A attacks group B in mass. Are there better ways to get resource 1, absolutely, but are there any easier ways of getting it? Probably not, for example, you could bargain for it, or enter into some sort of agreement, but those mean giving up something you have, and has some value to you (since the other group wants it). those are just some different things I was thinking about while reading this that were not brought up.

...I didn't think they could...thats the only reason I would think that my explination would be true, and if they could pass through them...whats from stopping them from going through everything? walls, and what not I will have to read up on that later, I have class in a few...but I would think that photons would have to interact with matter, for example, from the process behind lasers. maybe I just used bad terminology, but I think that the photons would have to interact with the atoms in the matter

not to get off topic..but I just wanted to answer this question is all... That is not entirely true, if I understand it correctly, It all has to do with the density of the matter that the light is going throuugh, since photons cannot pass through atoms, they are bounced around, thus travelling a further distance then the straight path that would be possible in a vacuum. so microscopicly, the speed is still the same (distance/time), but macroscopicly(is that a word?) the speed is slower, since we cannot see the light bouncing around, we only see it enter the matter at t=0 and exit at some other time. I drew a diagram that shows what I am talking about...just don't make fun of my paint ing skills :)

HI hi, Just joined this site, came across it from doing some searching/worship of google, which I completely forgot now, but just started browsing around, and there are some very interesting threads in here, and seems to be a nice place. So...I joined, fancy huh? anyways, a little about me? I am only in my second year of College, at Oregon state, working on a engineering physics(basicly applied physics...I think) degree and Mechanical Engineering as well. I don't really have any fancy stories to tell you, I could make one up if you guys would like, let me know if thats the case :) anyways, thats about all I can think of to say right now, but nice to meet you all (preemptively?) and see you people around Later, Ian