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ACTIVE MAGNETIC BEARING :-

Active magnetic bearing is a bearing which supports a load using magnetic levitation.

Magnetic bearings support moving machinery without physical contact, for example,they
can levitate a rotating shaft and permit relative motion without friction or wear.

In active magnetic bearings (AMB) a stable equilibrium is achieved by means of one or

more control loops.

The use of control loop for maintaining the gap between the shaft and bearing
differentiate the active magnetic bearings (AMB) from passive ones.

They are in service in such industrial applications as electric power generation and
petroleum refining e.t.c.

Wandering through StumbleUpon.coms science links often looks more like a drunken
stagger through the realm of crackpot science. The previous one I found, using
Coulombs law to get free energy, I passed along to Tyler to deal with as it deserved. The
latest contender, which is getting a lot of recent attention, is a so-called whipmag
device, which uses neodymium magnets to supposedly accelerate a disk to a high rate of
rpm with no external energy input. The video below the fold

I hate to waste time discussing such silliness, but the original video has been getting quite
a lot of attention (230,000 hits at the time I write this). The credulous website where I
originally found the video asks the question, Could this be the real answer to the energy
crisis?

My conservative response: almost certainly not. Before we discuss the device, lets talk
about the suspicious nature of the claims. The claims appeared first via an anonymous
user on the webforums of a company called Steorn, a leading Intellectual Property
development company. According to a credulous but very informative wiki that has been
developed on the subject, Back in July of 2007, Steorn embarrassed themselves by
hosting a world-viewing demo of what was supposed to be a free energy device that
defies the laws of physics as presently understood (wouldnt be the first time in history).
Unfortunately, their demo was botched. According to the Steorn website, their Orbo
technology can do the following:
Orbo produces free, clean and constant energy that is our claim. By free we mean that
the energy produced is done so without recourse to external source. By clean we mean
that during operation the technology produces no emissions. By constant we mean that
with the exception of mechanical failure the technology will continue to operate
indefinitely.

The sum of these claims for our Orbo technology is a violation of the principle of
conservation of energy, perhaps the most fundamental of scientific principles. The
principle of the conservation of energy states that energy can neither be created or
destroyed, it can only change form.

I give them credit for audacity: instead of reconciling their technology with the existing
laws of physics, they simply say that they can violate them at will. They are explicitly
stating that they can build a perpetual motion device, violating the first law of
thermodynamics.

With a failed demo, the company might have been in trouble, but then, according to the
wiki, Meanwhile, a couple of Steorn forum members began kicking around ideas for
how to build an all-magnet motor with no other motive forceThat video was posted
publicly at YouTube on Jan. 4, 2008.

So a company, presumably with investors, has a public failure in July of 2007;

miraculously, in January of 2008, some anonymous forum members produce a demo of a
working device that follows the same principles. If this doesnt make you suspicious, you
might be interested in a bridge I have for sale.

But what is the device itself, and how does it allegedly work? Some images are shown at
the following link, though I make my own picture below, for comparisons to come.
A rotating ring is outfitted with an even number of permanent magnets (8 rotor magnets
in this case), arranged with like poles facing one another. An odd number of other
permanent magnets (stators) which can rotate on their axes are fixed around the
perimeter of the ring. If the stators are aligned properly, supposedly they will attract an
approaching rotor magnet, giving it a boost. As the rotor magnet passes, the stator is
forced by magnetism to anti-align with it, making it repel the rotor magnet towards the
next stator. The stators are fixed with latches so they can only rotate in one direction and
cant accidentally repel a rotor theyre supposed to attract. The idea is evidently that the
stators will constantly be pushing the rotor magnets in the same direction, providing an
acceleration and, if possible, free energy.

Its an ingenious contraption; unfortunately, it cant possibly work, certainly not the way
it seems to have been designed. We dont even have to do a lot of analysis to show it;
similar devices have been built for centuries and all have failed. We dont even have to
go farther than the Wikipedia entry on perpetual motion, where one finds the following
schematic from Villard de Honnecourt (c. 1230):

The perpetuum mobile of de Honnecourt is presumably supposed to work by having a

constant imbalance of hammers on either side of the wheel, which would result in a net
torque on the device. In reality, the system will eventually end up with one hammer
hanging from the bottom and three on either side! de Honnecourt was writing well before
conservation of energy was understood, so his mistake is forgivable; others should not be
let off so easily. Numerous weighted wheel schemes have been developed over the
years, described as follows on Wikipedia: Moving weights are attached to a wheel in
such a way that they fall to a position further from the wheels center for one half of the
wheels rotation, and closer to the center for the other half. Since weights further from the
center apply a greater torque, the result is (or would be, if such a device worked) that the
wheel rotates forever. The moving weights may be hammers on pivoted arms, or rolling
balls, or mercury in tubes; the principle is the same.
Such machines fail because of some combination of the first two laws of
thermodynamics: the first law, which says that energy is conserved in a closed system
(you cant get something for nothing), and the second law, which asserts that the
entropy of a closed system always increases. A side effect, of sorts, of the second law is
that devices will tend naturally to wind down and stop, due to useable energy lost to heat,
friction, air resistance, and so forth.

Comparing de Honnecourts machine to the whipmag, one can already see that the
whipmag has a striking similarity in design: in both cases, a fundamental asymmetry of
the system will supposedly keep it accelerating.

One might argue that de Honnecourts crude device is mechanical, and arguments against
it dont apply to cool systems built on magnetism. One should then look at a device,
erroneously allowed a patent in 1979 (also through Wikipedia), by one Howard Johnson:
Does it look somewhat familiar? According to the patent description, it consists of A
permanent magnet motor comprising, in combination, a stator track defining a track
direction and having first and second sides and composed of a plurality of track
permanent magnets each having first and second poles of opposite polarity In other
words, we have a rotating ring of magnets and a fixed ring of magnets, which will
supposedly interact in such a way as to produce motion. This system has a number of
differences from the whipmag, such as the rotating exterior magnets of the whipmag, but
the general principle seems to be the same. The fact that no free energy has been
produced since 1979 should tell you the success of this device.

Johnson was somewhat, um, creative in his explanation of how the device could
overcome ordinary physical law. It is my belief that the full potential of magnetic forces
existing in permanent magnets has not been recognized or utilized because of incomplete
information and theory with respect to the atomic motion occurring within a permanent
magnet. It is my belief that a presently unnamed atomic particle is associated with the
electron movement of a superconducting electromagnet and the lossless current flow of
Amperian currents in permanent magnets. (Emphasis mine.)

And radically new physics would be required for this device, or the whipmag, to truly
provide free energy: conservation of energy of electromagnetic fields is well-
established.

But couldnt there be some previously undiscovered loophole in the laws of physics,
which this device takes advantage of? I now take a little digression and mention the
recent lawsuit filed to try and prevent the new high-energy physics collider (the LHC)
from going operational. The filers fear that the exotic energies produced by particle
collisions at the LHC might spawn mini-black holes which could gobble up the planet, or
spawn exotic new particle types that could eat the entire universe!
The official website for CERN ( European Organization for Nuclear Research) addresses
the issue nicely, in a way that should be mentioned more often:

Accelerators recreate the natural phenomena of cosmic rays under controlled laboratory
conditions. Cosmic rays are particles produced in outer space in events such as
supernovae or the formation of black holes, during which they can be accelerated to
energies far exceeding those of the LHC. Cosmic rays travel throughout the Universe,
and have been bombarding the Earths atmosphere continually since its formation 4.5
billion years ago. Despite the impressive power of the LHC in comparison with other
accelerators, the energies produced in its collisions are greatly exceeded by those found
in some cosmic rays. Since the much higher-energy collisions provided by Nature for
billions of years have not harmed the Earth, there is no reason to think that any
phenomenon produced by the LHC will do so.

In other words, the CERN accelerator isnt doing anything that hasnt happened in the
Earths atmosphere since the origin of the planet the only difference is that the
collisions done at the LHC will be in a location where they can be measured!

This is a good guideline when looking at the likelihood of dramatic violations of the
known laws of physics: The universe is a big, big place: if there is the remotest chance of
it happening, its probably happened already, lots of times.

A nice example of this is the laser, which is often described as a remarkable source of
light, not to be found in nature. (Im paraphrasing Goldfinger.) This is, strictly speaking,
true, but a close microwave analogy is observed all the time by astronomers, and is
known as an astrophysical maser.
The LHC wont destroy the universe, and one should view the claim of perpetual motion
with similar skepticism. If it were so easy to violate conservation of energy as to
assemble a nice collection of permanent magnets and spin them in just a certain way, I
would expect to see violations pretty much everywhere, to such a degree that nobody
would have ever even suggested conservation of energy in the first place! Someone may
yet find a way to cheat the universal energy bean-counters, but theyll need to do
something far more exotic.

Let me conclude with two observations. First, it is worth asking, how have attempts to
replicate the experiment been working out? To quote from the whipmag wiki again,

We expect that additional replications will continue to emerge, documenting,

characterizing, and improving on the effect, though the initial difficulty has put a
damper on the enthusiasm that initially ensued after Als first video was posted.

The design, apparently, is quite temperamental with very narrow tolerances. Not all
the original specs are known because Al did not source things from catalogues, but
basically used what was lying around in some cases, such as magnets.

(Emphasis mine, again.) Not surprising at all. A characteristic of a lot of voodoo

science is the fussiness and lack of repeatability of the experiments. (Speaking of which,
Bob Parks book Voodoo Science is an excellent resource for further understanding the
problems with perpetual motion.)

Finally, if you dont believe me, I think the following fellow does a very nice job of
summarizing the problems with the whipmag:

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6 Responses to Like a zombie, perpetual motion digs itself out of the

grave, again

1. Matt says:

April 22, 2008 at 3:50 pm

Great post! It is hard to ignore the laws of physics!

Keep up the great work!

-Matt
http://www.apocalypsesigns.com

Reply

2. overconfident says:

May 1, 2008 at 10:19 am

Well reasoned response. There are some subtle differences between WhipMag and
the examples you cite. But at least you have given the concept some thought.

Thanks,
OC

Reply

3. SolReka says:

August 21, 2008 at 10:20 pm

Great balanced post you wrote.

Regarding the whipmag device (I wrote the post you referenced to at the top of
post). The concept is what I found fascinating.
 The purpose of the post I wrote was to provoke debate, to engage people, and
more importantly, to let people know by spreading the word that such energy
devices could be the generation of tomorrows energy source.

As promised, an explanation of the way it's meant to work. Thought the first set of
pictures were sufficient to show the general idea. i guess my pictures aren't worth their
thousand words.

First I need to name all the parts so that things don't get mixed up. Pic 7 shows the four
main parts of the system; the magnets, the main supports, the slider guides and a slider
(inset).

There are 12 magnets, 2 frames and 6 sliders corresponding to the six radial arms. That
can be verified in pic 2. I have labelled each of the slider guides A - F starting with the
shortest in the bunch.

Assuming the system starts in the position shown in pic 7, the moment produced by guide
D about the pivot of the slider guides would be greater than that produced by guide A.
Moments in guides B and E would be equal just like in C and F.

The system starts to turn with the moment in A remaining constant while that in D
diminishes in a cosine fashion. This continues until F clears the lower corner of the main
frames.

Once F is on the vertical side, its moment also becomes constant while the moment
in C keeps rising in a cosine fashion. In essence, there would be two arms on the left
generating moments that are larger than what the two arms on the right are producing.

This system is meant to keep moving until A clears the higher corner and its moment
becomes equal to that of D again. In which case, the imbalance between C and F should
keep the system going.

Of course all these degrees of motion are possible only because the sliders allow the
magnets to move back and forth relative to the slide guides. Plus the only magnetic parts
of the system will be the main frames. Everything else should be non-magnetic

@Cherryman... thats true. Its essentally the same principle. What do you mean
by testdrived? These things should be built and verified. I really wish id paid
more attention while we were taking workshop classes. My loss I guess!!

Please everyone now's the time that your comments really matter. You know what it's all
about. If someone builds and proves it doesn't work then we'll all know one more way not
to try making gravity motors and we can all turn our minds to other options.