The Perpetual Motion Paradox

A basic fact of technology and physics is that a perpetual motion machine is impossible. Perpetual motion simply means that a device keeps going indefinitely, with no additional input of energy. No one has ever succeeded in building a perpetual motion machine and patent applications for any such machine are generally not accepted.

But yet perpetual motion is all around us. The earth keeps rotating, as it has for billions of years, without any input of energy. The sunlight falling on the earth has nothing to do with it's rotation. The earth revolving around the sun once a year is another example of perpetual motion. In fact every orbit and rotation in the universe, including that of galaxies, is perpetual motion.

Newton's Law of Motion that an object at rest will remain at rest and an object in motion will remain in motion, until acted on by an outside force, supports perpetual motion. The universe literally runs on perpetual motion, so how can it be impossible?

The concept of perpetual motion is actually about information. The amount of information, in other words complexity.

What counts is that humans are at a higher level of complexity than our inanimate surroundings. When we construct any technology we are taking materials from our inanimate surroundings and imposing our own complexity on them.

Another basic rule of physics is that energy can never be created or destroyed, but only changed in form. This sounds like, once we have used energy in one from, we should be able to reuse it in another form. It would be wonderful if, given the price of fuel, once energy had been expended to run a vehicle, it could then be used for something else. But unfortunately that is not the case.

In order to understand why we can't reuse energy, as the rule that energy can never be created or destroyed but only changed in form makes it sound as if we should, think of our higher level of complexity as being a "cliff" above the level of our inanimate surroundings. 

The rule applies only to energy in the inanimate surroundings. When we build technology we are imposing our higher level of complexity on our surroundings so that our technology is at the same higher level of complexity as we are. All energy ultimately comes from the inanimate surroundings. We cannot create energy as the rule states. Once we have used energy, such as to run a car, the energy "falls off the cliff", returning to the inanimate surroundings and we cannot readily get it back in a form that is useful to us.

This is why perpetual motion is all around us but we cannot make use of it in our own technology. We are at a higher level of complexity, relative to our inanimate surroundings. When we create technology we are imposing our own complexity on materials from our inanimate surroundings. Our higher level of complexity can be compared to a cliff. Once we have used energy, in our technology or our own bodies, the energy "falls off the cliff" and we cannot reuse it, even though the scientific rule that "energy can never be created or destroyed but only changed in form" seems to indicate that we should be able to.

It would be a preferred lower energy state if we were at the same level of complexity as our inanimate surroundings. Our inanimate surroundings is always "trying" to pull us back down to it's level. We need basics such as food, clothing and, shelter to maintain our higher level of complexity. Upon death our inanimate surroundings have finally succeeded at bringing us back down.

All technology is at the same level of technology that we are. Each example of technology has an inner and an outer component. The two components always add up to our level of complexity. A car seems to be much more complex than a cup but the cup has more of an outer component. A cup appears simple but to really understand it we have to understand why the human body would need a cup to drink and how we would hold and drink from the cup.

It makes no sense for us to have a higher level of complexity than our surroundings unless we also have free will. Making use of free will requires that we have senses, and the ability to move and react to what our senses tell us.

Living things can be at the same level of complexity as our inanimate surroundings so that they do not require free will. These are plants. But plants must be far more intricate than our inanimate surroundings, meaning more complexity per mass, because the inanimate surroundings, by it's very definition, do not have the complexity to sustain life.

An inanimate object, such as a rock, does not have definable dimensions, no top or bottom or front or back. A plant has one definable dimension, a top and a bottom but not a front and back. A living thing with free will has both a top and a bottom and a front and back. We cannot imagine a living thing as much more complex than we are as we are more complex than a plant. But if there was it would have a definable difference from side to side.

Our brains are more complex than our bodies. If they weren't we wouldn't be able to recognize each other. Notice that our brains have a side-to-side definition, the left brain and right brain, while our bodies don't.

The Decline Of Global Democracy

The proposed judicial reform in Israel has incited massive protests as an assault on democracy. I have long been alarmed at the general decline of democracy in the world as a whole. We thought that 1989, when the Berlin Wall came down, was the triumph of democracy. We now see that it was actually the peak of democracy, which has been in slow decline ever since.

Let's review what freedom is all about.

The vast majority of people would prefer to live in a "free" society. But there are two slants on freedom, "freedom to" and "freedom from". A simple example involves smoking, should people have "freedom to" smoke or should they have "freedom from" secondhand smoke?

Democracy is like an exercise program in that it is difficult but we are better off if we do it. Dictatorship has never gone away because there are always people who find it easier to let someone do their thinking for them. The ultimate "freedom from" can be to let someone else do your thinking for you.

One issue with democracy is that it is possible to be a democracy on paper but it is someone outside the electoral process, or even someone outside the official government altogether, that holds the real power. Maybe there is a certain group or family that is able to arrange it so it is their members that always hold the important positions of power.

A striking difference that I notice between dictatorships and what most people would consider as "free" societies is in the nature of the laws. "Free" societies tend to have laws that are clear and well-defined while dictatorships tend to have laws that are subjective and open to interpretation.

We should all be law-abiding citizens. But there is such a thing as having too much respect for authority. People in positions of authority are made of the same kind of flesh and blood as everyone else. They make mistakes and are sometimes vulnerable to corruption. A hallmark of dictatorships is that someone in a uniform is always right. Dictators really like people who have unquestioning respect for authority.

Another hallmark of dictatorships is the leader having a security organization that answers directly to him and to which he can issue orders without answering to anyone. This is outside the ordinary command structure and is sometimes referred to as a "Praetorian Guard". The real reason for it is to discourage a coup by the leader's own armed forces.

Many have wondered why America has so many different police departments. The answer is "freedom". There is no single powerful security organization that a potential dictator might seek to gain control of. Britain works in a similar way, with no national police force. Some western countries do have national police forces.

Dictators usually come to power through the democratic process but then find a way to seize more power. A popular route to dictatorship is for a president to amend the constitution to make himself "president for life", or for the indefinite future.

We tend to prefer people who don't complain about things over people that do complain. But complaining is part of the mechanism that keeps a society free. If people never complain about anything you can be sure that they will eventually lose their freedom. Dictators really like people who just do what they're told and never complain.

Democracy goes against human nature because we like to think that we are special. But what democracy basically means is that no one is special. Everyone has inherently equal rights. If we want to be special we have to earn it, and we have to earn it as an individual. No one should be special just because of who they are.

Dictators don't like individualists and people who think for themselves. Every dictator promotes a strong sense of community. It is much easier to control a society where people think as a group, as well as where "everybody knows everybody else's business".

Dictators prefer people to socialize at community events or in the marketplace. This makes it easier to see who's friends with who and helps to preclude private socializing that might result in people plotting to start a separate church or a political party that might threaten the dictator's authority.

Part of the difficulty of being free is that if we are free, because we live in a free society, then the people around us must also be free. We want to be free but we want the people around us to think like we do and "fit in" with us. But freedom means that the people around us might think completely differently from us and have no obligation to agree with or to "fit in" with us. Freedom does not mean to agree but to agree to disagree.

Being free means being exposed to "fake news" because the only way to be free of potentially "fake news" is to give someone the power to decide for us what is and isn't "fake news". But then that person would have the power of a dictator and we would no longer be free. This is just one of the prices of being free.

Freedom is not a panacea. Freedom itself will not bring about a paradise because it only allows us to be more of what we are. How well freedom works depends on what we are. Freedom is just better than not being free.

If we bring a group of people to a free society who are not able to handle freedom they will tend to make the "community" into an unofficial collective dictatorship. There will be "unwritten rules", beyond the written law, and the less able to handle freedom they are the more "unwritten rules" there will likely be.

A major disadvantage of dictatorships is that people tend to be promoted based on "who you know", rather than "what you know". Giving people jobs based on their friend and family connections ultimately weakens the society.

I see a true sign of democracy as being the ability of anyone to get a phone without registering the phone number.

For more about freedom there is the compound posting "The Meaning Of Freedom" July 2021.

The Four Points System Of The Basic Forces

There are four basic forces that govern the universe. These are gravity, electromagnetism, the Strong Nuclear Force and the Weak Nuclear Force. What I notice is that each starts out with what we could call four "points" but then arranges the points in different ways. Let's start with electromagnetism and gravity.

THE INVERSE SQUARE LAW FOR ELECTROMAGNETISM AND GRAVITY 

Has anyone ever noticed that both light, which is a form of electromagnetic radiation, and gravity operate by the Inverse Square Law, but that the two cannot be directly compared? The Inverse Square Law simply means that, if an object is twice as far away, it will have only one-quarter of the brightness, apparent angular diameter or, gravitational force.

But yet light and gravity, with regard to the Inverse Square law, simply do not compare directly. I find that gravity is cumulative, but light is not, and that is why the two operate by different rules within the Inverse Square Law. The force of gravity links to the structure of the entire universe, while the intensity of light does not. This reveals a lot about how the universe operates.

The gravitational effect of massive objects are stronger than is to be expected, if we used the same logic as with the rules governing light. The larger the object, the more out of proportion is the gravity. The gravity of a massive object includes it's orbital energy and gravitational attractions to further gravitational nodes to which that object is connected, and which extend throughout the entire universe.

Consider that, from earth, the sun and moon appear as about the same angular size in the sky. The moon is 2.4 times as dense as the sun. If gravity operated in the same way as light, with regard to the Inverse Square Law, then the force of the moon's gravity on earth would be 2.4 times that of the sun.

Yet, the reality is that the gravitational force of the sun on the earth is 169 times that of the moon.

Now, suppose that there was an observer on the moon. The earth would appear in the sky as having four times the angular diameter of the sun. The earth is also more dense than the sun, 3.37 times as dense. Using the same logic as with light, this should mean that the earth's gravitational effect on the moon should be 13.48 times that of the sun.

Yet, this is not the case. The sun's gravitational effect on the moon is actually 2.08 times that of the earth. The sun is 400 times as far from the moon as the earth. using the Inverse Square Law, 400 squared is 160,000. but the sun is 333,000 times the mass of the earth, and 333,000 / 160,000 = 2.08.

Very clearly, although both gravity and light operate by the same Inverse Square Law there are great differences between the two which require special explanation. My conclusion is that gravity is cumulative throughout the universe, while light is not.

CUBE ROOT FOR GRAVITY

What I have found is that the differences in gravity, with regard to the Inverse Square Law, is proportional to the cube root of the difference in mass. This is what makes the behavior of gravity different from that of light, even though both operate by the same Inverse Square Law. When the gravitational effect of a larger object is compared to that of a smaller object, as seen from a third object, the larger object will have a gravitational force out of proportion to the rules of light by an amount equal to the cube root of the relative masses of the larger and the smaller distant objects.

If A x A x A = B, then A is the cube root of B. Cube means three because a cube has three dimensions that are multiplied together to get it's volume. The cube root of 27 is 3 because 3 x 3 x 3 = 27.

The reason that we use the cube root of the mass difference between objects in space of different mass, rather than the direct mass difference itself, is that the massive object is more linked by it's stronger gravity to the branches of the universal gravitational structure. The mass proportional difference between the two distant objects is reduced to it's cube root because outside gravity from the galactic center acts on all three objects. The sun has a gravitational relationship with the center of the galaxy, which is in turn linked to our Local Group of galaxies, which is linked by gravity to the spurs and filaments making up the structure of the entire universe.

Let's have a look at an example, the effect of the sun's gravity on the earth relative to that of the moon.

The sun is 27 million times the mass of the moon. The cube root of 27 million is 300. The moon is 2.4 times the density of the sun, and the two are about the same angular size in the sky. 300 / 2.4 = 125, yet we know that the sun's gravitational force on the earth is 169 times that of the moon.

The reason that the sun's gravitational effect on earth, relative to the moon, is somewhat more than 125 is that the earth is a concentrated point as seen from the sun, while it has an angular diameter of about 2 degrees as seen from the moon. This makes the sun's gravitational pull on the earth relatively more concentrated than that of the moon, because it is less dispersed.

Another factor why 169 is more than 125 is that since the moon is also in the sun's gravitational field, and the sun's gravity on the moon is stronger than the earth's gravity, the sun's gravitational force on the earth is also acting through the moon, although pointing toward the sun and not toward the moon. 

That is what I mean by gravity being cumulative. The moon's gravitational force on the earth does not act through the sun in the same way because the distance from moon to sun, and back to earth, is so great and the moon's mass is so utterly insignificant, relative to that of the sun.

CONCLUSION ABOUT GRAVITY AND LIGHT

The cumulative gravity of the entire universe is why it does not operate by the same rules as light. This is why the sun and moon appear as about the same size in the sky, the moon is actually 2.4 times the density of the sun, yet the sun's gravitational effect on the earth is 169 times that of the moon. The sun's greater mass gives it a stronger link to outside gravity, the center of the galaxy, and this outside gravity acts through the sun. The directional alignments of the earth, sun and, moon with center of the gravity matter little. The effect of the sun's gravity is proportional to only the cube root of the mass difference because the earth, moon and sun are three objects and all are ultimately under the gravitational effects of the center of the galaxy.

Light, unlike gravity, is not cumulative and so the two operate by different rules, even though they both operate by the Inverse Square Law.

GRAVITY WITH ONE POINT, ELECTROMAGNETISM WITH TWO

Gravity is always an attractive force, it attracts matter together. There is no such thing as repulsive gravity. We could thus say that gravity starts with one point.

Electromagnetism, in contrast, has both an attractive and a repulsive element. This is because there are negative and positive electric charges. Opposite charges attract while like charges repel. We could thus say that electromagnetism starts with two points.

Now suppose that each basic force had a total of four points. This explains why gravitational strength ultimately operates by the cube root of the mass, even though it falls off with distance by the square root. The strength of electromagnetic radiation, in contrast, operates always by the square root. Gravity is affected by the depth of the mass of an object while electromagnetic radiation is affected only by it's surface.

Gravity, starting with one point, has three points left. That is why it's strength operates by the cube root. Cube means three and it has three points left. Electromagnetism, starting with two points, has two points left. That is why it's strength operates by the square root. Square means two and it has two points left.

THE STRONG AND WEAK NUCLEAR FORCES

What about another of the basic forces, the Strong Nuclear Force? This is the force that operates only within the nucleus of an atom. It is the force that first binds quarks together into protons and neutrons, and then binds those together into the nucleus.

The Strong Nuclear Force is more complex than gravity or electromagnetism. It operates by a system that scientists call Quantum Chromodynamics. This means color, although the colors are representative and not real colors.

Each quark has a color although not, of course, a real color. The quarks combine with other quarks in such a way that their colors add up to zero, or colorless. The color of each quark can change. Quarks receive and emit gluons, which are the messenger bosons of the Strong Nuclear Force. Gluons also have colors and a gluon can change the color of a quark that receives it.

Quarks can combine to form composite particles, called hadrons, but only as long as it causes their colors to cancel out, or sum to zero. Antiquarks, the antimatter equivalent of quarks, have their own colors, known as anti colors. 

Quarks have partial electric charges. An up quark has a charge of + 2/3 and a down quark has a charge of - 1/3. Two up quarks and a down quark make a proton, with a net charge of +1. Two down quarks and an up quark make a neutron, with a net charge of zero. But this fits as part of Quantum Chromodynamics.

The three colors for matter are defined as red, green and, blue, with the three together summing to zero. Antimatter has it's three anti colors, with a color and it's anticolor summing to zero. This makes possible three quarks or antiquarks coming together to form protons, neutrons and their antimatter counterparts. It also makes possible a quark and antiquark of the opposite color combining to form a meson.

But what is important here is that the number of colors in Quantum Chromodynamics is three. The Strong Nuclear Force is not known to operate by the Inverse Square Law, as gravity and electromagnetism does. Rather it operates by the one-dimensional exchange of gluons. The range of the Strong Nuclear Force is extremely short, only within the nucleus of an atom.

What do you notice here? The three colors plus the one-dimensional exchange of gluons equals our four points. Just like gravity and electromagnetism the Strong Nuclear Force conforms to the four points.

The other basic force is the Weak Nuclear Force. This force is involved in the radioactive breakdown in heavy atoms that are less-than-stable. But the Weak Force has been linked to electromagnetism in the so-called "Electroweak Theory". It is believed to have separated from electromagnetism when the temperature in the early universe dropped below a certain point.

Just as the three colors, of Quantum Chromodynamics, are used to represent the Strong Nuclear Force, so these four points can be used to represent all of the basic forces. Each of the forces has four points but arranges them in it's own way with regard to the number of elements in the force and how it operates across space.

Peace Between Iran And Saudi Arabia

Peace was achieved between Iran and Saudi Arabia this week, with the mediation of China, and diplomatic relations are in the process of being restored. The question is why these relations were broken in the first place. Both countries stand for conservative Islam, although one is Sunni and the other Shiite.

Ironically the two countries did have good relations when Iran was ruled by the Shah, before the Revolution of 1979. Even though the ideologies of the two were much further apart than they are now. Saudi Arabia was a conservative Islamic society but the Shah of Iran was much more secular and open to western influences.

As I have pointed out here before the relationship between these two countries is an ideal example of the importance of kings. Honestly I have been following world events since childhood and it was only in the past few years that I realized how very important kings are. A way of doing things that has been around for thousands of years is not suddenly going to go away overnight.

The French Revolution, of 1789, opened the modern political era and the world has been reenacting it ever since. The revolution overthrew and guillotined the king and queen. An unintended consequence of the French Revolution was that it resulted in the rise of the prototype of modern dictators, which was Napoleon.

When Iran was ruled by the Shah both it and Saudi Arabia were ruled by kings. The 1979 revolution in Iran, which was very much a reenactment of the French Revolution, overthrew the Shah. Even though the two countries were now much closer in ideology this put them on opposite sides of the French Revolution, and their relations have never been good ever since.

Kings are far more important in the relationships between countries than most people realize. As I stated I have been following world news since childhood. We would have dinner while the news was on television. When I got older I would follow world events like many people would follow sports. But it is only in the last few years that I have realized how very important kings really are.

Here is a link to the posting "The Theory Of Kings":

www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2022/04/the-theory-of-kings_28.html?m=0