THEORETICAL ANALYSIS OF PERPETUAL MOTION CONCEPTS

     Somewhat in the spirit of the above quotation an analysis is attempted of the highly controversial question whether a process could be devised such that energy is generated in apparent conflict with the first or second laws of thermodynamics as they are now defined. The phrase 'as they are now defined' is an important distinction, since it must be remembered that the nuclear reactors which produce perhaps as much as half of our electrical power today would actually have been regarded as perpetual motion machines by the foundering fathers of thermodynamics, unfamiliar as they would be with relativistic mass-energy conversion.

     A theoretical analysis of possible perpetual motion concepts is made using Noether's theorem as part of Patent Application PCT/SE96/00966. Symmetry properties of space and time seem, not surprisingly, to severely limit the prospects of constructing perpetual motion machines. The analysis seems to confine the regime - if any - of conceivable perpetual motion concepts to a special class of relativistic phenomena which involve accelerations of extended objects. Of particular interest are cyclic processes which involve accelerations which are simultaneous in different frames of reference in different phases of the process. A possible existence of an apparent perpetual motion concept in this regime would imply that Einstein's mass-energy relationship could be generalized into a more comprehensive principle (since energy "has to come from somewhere anyway"). A test-bed for experiments in this relativistic regime is proposed.

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