REVELATIONS IN SCIENCE: Is It Possible to Get Energy from Nothing

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Many of us believe that this idea was hopelessly discredited back in the Middle Ages. But, in fact — nothing of the sort! As recently as 2008, South African Michael Brady founded the company Perendev and received over $1,000,000 in actual payments for devices the company was supposed to produce. True, he was later arrested for unfulfilled orders, and the company went bankrupt, but the fact remains: he was paid over a million dollars for a perpetual motion machine — in our very own millennium!

It seems the insatiable desire to get something for nothing affects more than just participants in financial pyramids. Perpetual motion machines are not only being created but also successfully patented and — what’s more — sold quite well! Just out of curiosity, I typed perpetuum mobile into the search bar of my Amazon page — and got more than 1,000 listings, the cheapest priced at just €7.36. The ads say it outright: «perpetual motion machine» — no quotation marks… After that, I knew this was a story worth telling.

ETERNAL AND ANCIENT

n fact, the idea is far from new. As early as the 5th century, the ancient Indian manuscript Siddhanta Shiromani, written in Sanskrit, mentions the possibility of creating such a useful device. In antiquity, the problem didn’t receive much attention — likely due to the peculiar attitude of freeborn philosophers toward physical labor, which, in their view, was a task only fit for slaves.

But then came the Middle Ages, when new superstitions began to replace the old ones, and by the 8th century, a model of a true perpetual motion machine using magnets was already being demonstrated in Bavaria. So — did it work? The answer is simple: if it did, why was such a brilliant idea never replicated? That’s actually an extremely useful question when studying any kind of pseudo-innovation — ask it more often.

Around 1150, the Indian philosopher Bhaskara described his own version of a perpetual motion machine. It was based on a wheel with long, narrow vessels filled with mercury attached diagonally around the rim. Bhaskara believed that on one side of the wheel, the mass of mercury would always be greater than on the other, causing it to spin endlessly.

He apparently didn’t consider that the lighter quantities of mercury would be located farther from the axis, thus creating an equal but opposite torque. Unsurprisingly, no mass reproductions of this idea followed — curious, isn’t it?

This tempting idea also captivated some of the great minds of the time. Even Leonardo da Vinci wasn’t immune — his notes include at least six different designs for perpetual motion machines. But in the end, likely after conducting his own experiments, he became thoroughly disillusioned and wrote: «Oh, you seekers of perpetual motion, how many vain chimeras you have pursued! Take your place with the alchemists».

That said, among Leonardo’s papers, there is a sketch of a perpetual motion machine based on Archimedes’ principle, accompanied by a note: «Build the model in utmost secrecy and make a grand announcement of its demonstration». What could that mean? It seems da Vinci may have planned to secretly power the not-so-perpetual machine with water from an external source.

Could the great universal scientist really have done such a thing? Almost certainly — and more. The Renaissance was a time of wild and reckless spirits, so just imagine what the lesser-known minds were capable of…

THEIR GOLDEN AGE

A number of similar perpetual motion designs, reminiscent of Bhaskara’s concept, were constructed by 16th–17th-century mechanics. Mercury was typically replaced by ordinary rolling balls — gravity would conveniently arrange things so that, in any wheel position, more balls ended up on one half of the wheel than the other.

However, none of these models ever entered industrial production — on the side where there were fewer balls, they were positioned farther from the axis and exerted just as much torque as the closer, more numerous balls on the other side. As a result, the «eternal» motion came to an end rather quickly.

An even simpler design emerged — a chain of balls placed around an isosceles triangle. The longer side should always hold more balls, so they should constantly outweigh the others and keep the chain rotating around the triangle, right? Turns out — no. This scenario was analyzed by the brilliant Flemish scientist Simon Stevin. Since he initially assumed that perpetual motion was impossible, he didn’t waste time on futile labor, and instead derived the laws of equilibrium for bodies on an inclined plane — based on that very correct assumption.

Next came the so-called water-based perpetual motion machines. Their concepts were always the same: water pours from an elevated tank onto a waterwheel, which drives an Archimedean screw that lifts the water back into the reservoir, and so on, endlessly. Unfortunately, the end comes rather quickly — due to friction losses, the screw lifts less water than flows out from the upper tank, which eventually runs dry, and the perpetual motion stops.

Over time, more and more scientists and engineers came to understand that this kind of work was fundamentally impossible. But here’s the curious part — the number of perpetual motion inventors didn’t significantly decline and may have even increased.

For every honest researcher who accepted that the laws of nature forbid such a miracle — and saw no point in even trying — there seemed to be at least one and a half clever fellows whose only goal was to make their perpetuum mobile move by some barely detectable means, cash in big from a gullible patron, and disappear just in time.

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THE FIGHT FOR IDEAS

Inventors of perpetual motion machines, like many of their peers, sought to protect their creations. In 1635, the first British patent for a perpetual motion machine was granted. Soon after, the number of applicants eager to secure official recognition for their devices grew so large that the Paris Academy of Sciences couldn’t take it anymore and, in 1755, simply banned the consideration of any such proposals altogether.

One science fiction writer even joked that the perpetual motion machine had, in fact, been successfully invented long ago and worked perfectly until 1755 — when it obediently stopped functioning in response to the Paris Academy’s decree. Jokes aside, not everyone adopted such measures right away — for example, in the United States, patents for perpetual motion machines could still be submitted up to 1911. In England, it’s still not explicitly forbidden, and in 2006, two such applications had to be reviewed (and were promptly rejected).

A typical example of the career of a perpetual motion inventor can be seen in the biography of Johann Ernst Elias Bessler, a Saxon who went by the pseudonym Orffyreus. Born in 1680, he worked as a physician and clockmaker, studied alchemy and Kabbalah, and in 1717, demonstrated his perpetual motion machine to scholars and his noble patron, the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel.

The key component was a massive wheel about four meters in diameter, covered with waxed paper for added mystery. Court scientists examined the wheel and found no hidden mechanisms; they spun it and locked it in one of the castle rooms for two weeks. When the room was reopened, the wheel was still turning!

Word of Orffyreus’ invention even reached the Russian Empire. In 1721, when Peter I sent academician Schumacher abroad, he tasked him with trying to negotiate the purchase of the miracle wheel. Schumacher proposed an expert examination by two leading scientists who would swear an oath not to reveal the invention’s secrets. But Orffyreus, suspicious that critics might undermine his work «out of malice» and convinced that «the world is full of wicked people who cannot be trusted», declared he would agree to a sale only without any expert inspection — for 100,000 thalers in cash (which, at today’s silver prices, is roughly €2,700,000 — clearly, Orffyreus had no modest ambitions). While the negotiations dragged on, Peter died, and apart from 4,000 thalers from the Landgrave, the inventor received nothing.

Things went downhill from there. Skeptical patrons offered a reward to anyone who could expose possible fraud, and soon, Orffyreus’s maid confessed that she and the inventor’s brother had kept the wheel moving by tugging a cleverly hidden cord.

Upon hearing this, Orffyreus announced that he had destroyed the machine himself — in protest against such mistrust — so that the envious, unworthy of his genius, would not get their hands on it. In my view, it’s hard to imagine a more blatant admission of fraud: a true inventor would have tried to prove that the device worked honestly — not destroyed the evidence.

AND STILL, THEY KEEP COMING

One might think that by the second half of the 19th century, the flow of perpetual motion machines would have dried up. Thanks to the work of Joule, Mayer, and Helmholtz, the First Law of Thermodynamics had been formulated — and one of its many consequences was the complete impossibility of all the types of perpetual motion machines invented up to that point. Did this reduce the number of such «discoveries»? Quite the opposite! Moreover, their inventors began storming patent offices — sometimes even successfully (though perpetual motion machines with patents work no better than those without).

Hope briefly flickered with the idea of a perpetual motion machine of the second kind, in the form of a little demon who opens a gate for fast-moving molecules and closes it for slow ones — thereby heating one side of the gate and allowing work to be done. But Clausius formulated the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and it was soon proven that Maxwell’s demon would need a flashlight to distinguish the molecules and a lever to move the gate — consuming all the potential energy gain in the process.

Honest inventors striving to create a perpetuum mobile have practically disappeared — their attempts failed, and they gave up. But fraudsters soon drew the attention of serious scientists, who had little trouble spotting the modern equivalents of maids tugging on hidden cords.

When steamboat inventor Robert Fulton attended a demonstration of Charles Redheffer’s perpetual motion machine, he immediately noticed that the sound of the mechanism changed with speed and accurately concluded it was being powered manually.

With the approval of everyone present — except Redheffer — he began removing the thin wooden panels from the mechanism, exposing a hidden drive running into the neighboring building, where an elderly gentleman was turning a crank in the attic. Redheffer barely escaped, and that was the end of his «great invention».

Well, that was the 19th century. What about now? Unfortunately, the would-be inventors are still going strong. Even in the third millennium, they show no signs of stopping. We’ve already mentioned Michael Brady — and that’s far from the most surprising case. In 2020, Russian citizen Anatoly Shcherbatyuk was granted an actual patent for a perpetual motion machine and is now hoping to sell it for a hefty sum.

In 2009, the Irish company Steorn conducted a test of its own version of a perpetuum mobile. It turned out the device consumed more energy than it produced, and the company went bankrupt — but just wait, they’re not done yet…

In 2003, inventor Yevgeny Muryshev patented a new perpetual motion concept, and the city of Murom paid over 100 million rubles to install his invention in the district heating system. When it was later discovered that the device didn’t save any energy and the money was demanded back, Muryshev replied that, compared to the utility’s revenue, the amount was trivial. And if they didn’t like the results, they could’ve just turned the device off…

I’m afraid this is only the beginning — people may respect the laws of thermodynamics, but they certainly don’t believe in them. What’s coming next? Oh dear, oh dear…

LITERATURE

• A. Ord-Hume. Perpetual Motion: The History of an Obsession. Moscow, «Znanie», 1980, 158 pages.
• Ya. I. Perelman. Perpetual Motion Machines: Why They Are Impossible. Leningrad, House of Entertaining Science, 1939, 22 pages.

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