(Hypothetical) Perpetual Energy is discovered/invented. What breaks?

[Mastikator]

That's kind of a loaded argument. That's really not the kind of pollution that solar or nuclear produce. Nuclear produces hazardous radioactive materials, and IIRC photovoltaic solar has some issue with the spent panels containing toxic heavy metals or something. That said they both only pollute a small contained area (which is probably the reason why nuclear looks worse than it actually it; it's pollution is concentrated enough that you can see its effects) and the solar one could probably be mitigated entirely by either using the other type of solar generation or by developing better processes for recycling burnt out panels. And I don't think wind produces any pollution at all of any sort (although I'm sure if there was enough of it it could disrupt wind patterns or something and slightly modify weather patterns). Wind is probably the best one environmentally (and hydroelectric is proabably the worst; it disrupts fish migration and water and weather and renders an area one quarter the size of the chernobyl exclusion zone completely uninhabitable simply as a result of normal operation (Lake Mead 247 sq.mi. vs chernobyl exclusion zone 1000 sq.mi.) and honestly Lake Mead probably caused a more significant disruption to natire)

You're probably thinking of arsenic and lead. Those are toxic waste products of solar panels. The answer is of course recycling. Recycling is like cleaning your house, it's not a nice bonus feature, it's something you absolutely must do or you'll live in a pile of garbage that will kill you. The fact that most of the planet is desperately failing at recycling is another reason why the ocean will be dead before 2100, or why humans may be on the path to the stone age before 2200. We're certainly not going to be burning coal by then, civilization will have collapsed from the ever growing weight of climate change.

[halfeye]

The thing with nuclear power is that a few (basically two) severe incidents have shaped the opinions of most of the people

Three:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_...sland_accident

There was a film too, which probably made people more jumpy about nuclear power. Turns out the film was made before, but release at about the time of the event.

It is kind of like with airplanes: they are by far the safest means of transport (due to extreme norms and loads of work put in by countless engineers), but those rare accidents are flashy and catch people's attention.

The quote about planes is always about passenger miles. How old are you in miles? Do you have any idea how old you are in miles? I don't have a clue how old I am in miles. The thing about planes is that they are very fast, so of course they cover a lot of miles. They might also be safest in terms of passenger hours, but it wouldn't be by half so big a margin, so the airlines don't say.

[Radar]

Three:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_...sland_accident

There was a film too, which probably made people more jumpy about nuclear power. Turns out the film was made before, but release at about the time of the event.

True - forgot about that one. And movies in general are pretty awful at showing how things really work - a lot of realism is thrown out the window for the purpose of a dramatic plot.

The quote about planes is always about passenger miles. How old are you in miles? Do you have any idea how old you are in miles? I don't have a clue how old I am in miles. The thing about planes is that they are very fast, so of course they cover a lot of miles. They might also be safest in terms of passenger hours, but it wouldn't be by half so big a margin, so the airlines don't say.

Sure they want to show themselves in as good light as possible, but the metric of safety per mile does have a lot of merit. After all, when you travel from A to B, the distance is the constant parameter - not travel time.

[Strigon]

Sure they want to show themselves in as good light as possible, but the metric of safety per mile does have a lot of merit. After all, when you travel from A to B, the distance is the constant parameter - not travel time.

If anything, it puts even greater weight on airplane safety, since they're (usually) the most direct form of travel.
So, in addition to being the safest way to travel X number of miles, they also produce the fewest traveled miles relative to the straight-line distance. Sure, you may have to make a transfer along the way, but even that's nothing compared to all the turns your average highway makes.

[Rater202]

Okay, so lets get back to the original topic.

Here's a more specific scenario.

When I was younger, a friend and I were talking about the things we'd do if we could go to fictional universes and bring stuff back to the real world.

At the time, my local power company was doing some... Let's say, shady things, so I said I'd go to the Dragon Ball World, steal one of Dr. Gero's perpetual energy generators, and hook it up to the grid from my house—thoughts of forcing the local power company out of business and to just give me all of their assets to take over the power company myself filled my head, but I imagine that it's a lot more complicated than that and regardless that's not what we're here to discuss.

So... What breaks if I actually try that?

Gero's perpetual energy generators are small enough to fit inside a human body, can completly and utterly replace almost all of a body's metabolic needs(per the mangaka, android's 17 and 18, who are mostly organic, need to stay hydrated but that's it,) and prevent the person from every feeling tired while allowing them to generate enough energy to easily outpace people who are powerful enough to casually destroy entire planets all without ever getting tired.

Off the top of my head, I'm imagining that the best-case scenario involves a massive power surge that fries the entire grid and everything connected to it, but... What's the worst case scenario for something that is continuously generating planet explliding levels of energy many times over ex nilho.

[Tvtyrant]

Okay, so lets get back to the original topic.

Here's a more specific scenario.

When I was younger, a friend and I were talking about the things we'd do if we could go to fictional universes and bring stuff back to the real world.

At the time, my local power company was doing some... Let's say, shady things, so I said I'd go to the Dragon Ball World, steal one of Dr. Gero's perpetual energy generators, and hook it up to the grid from my house—thoughts of forcing the local power company out of business and to just give me all of their assets to take over the power company myself filled my head, but I imagine that it's a lot more complicated than that and regardless that's not what we're here to discuss.

So... What breaks if I actually try that?

Gero's perpetual energy generators are small enough to fit inside a human body, can completly and utterly replace almost all of a body's metabolic needs(per the mangaka, android's 17 and 18, who are mostly organic, need to stay hydrated but that's it,) and prevent the person from every feeling tired while allowing them to generate enough energy to easily outpace people who are powerful enough to casually destroy entire planets all without ever getting tired.

Off the top of my head, I'm imagining that the best-case scenario involves a massive power surge that fries the entire grid and everything connected to it, but... What's the worst case scenario for something that is continuously generating planet explliding levels of energy many times over ex nilho.

Short run: It destroys everything around it.
Long run: It continuously generates energy and mass until it collapses into a black hole.

[Bohandas]

Okay, so lets get back to the original topic.

Here's a more specific scenario.

When I was younger, a friend and I were talking about the things we'd do if we could go to fictional universes and bring stuff back to the real world.

At the time, my local power company was doing some... Let's say, shady things, so I said I'd go to the Dragon Ball World, steal one of Dr. Gero's perpetual energy generators, and hook it up to the grid from my house—thoughts of forcing the local power company out of business and to just give me all of their assets to take over the power company myself filled my head, but I imagine that it's a lot more complicated than that and regardless that's not what we're here to discuss.

So... What breaks if I actually try that?

Gero's perpetual energy generators are small enough to fit inside a human body, can completly and utterly replace almost all of a body's metabolic needs(per the mangaka, android's 17 and 18, who are mostly organic, need to stay hydrated but that's it,) and prevent the person from every feeling tired while allowing them to generate enough energy to easily outpace people who are powerful enough to casually destroy entire planets all without ever getting tired.

Off the top of my head, I'm imagining that the best-case scenario involves a massive power surge that fries the entire grid and everything connected to it, but... What's the worst case scenario for something that is continuously generating planet explliding levels of energy many times over ex nilho.

That would only hapoen if it lacked any means to regulate it's output, which doesn't sound like what you described.

The main issues would be social. It would, as you said, ruin the business model of the power company. They'd be ruined. But that wouldn't matter. Does it matter that we no longer have a place for lamplighters or handloom weavers? No. And this wouldn'tnmatter either

[sktarq]

Short term: You'd put the power company in a pickle. But may not actually put them out of business. Because they may not even make money in generating power. Some make money in distributing power. So the power company would just pay you the costs of the fuel and maintenance guys at any power plants they own or stop paying for power at other stations but still be in business just fine. And if you did want to take over the company, you may be able to but then you'd spend a lot of your times worrying about replacing transformers, rights-of-way, regulatory hurdles, etc.

Medium term: assuming you are able to lower the price of electric power in your region with your shenanigans you'd see various industries that have high energy costs as a major part of their needs flock to the area. Aluminium smelting, crypto-coin mining, data centres, possibly other larger computing centres similar to data centres (some AI system perhaps), people who work with plasma in general, those who HAVE to rely on induction heating for metalwork, in theory perhaps those who want to strip carbon from CO2 (get it up VERY hot, run over a catalyst-send it on its way (probably with a heat exchanger) if the energy is cheep enough. Electric car sales go up, oil sales decrease but don't end, banks that have large loans to power generating facilities, oil companies, etc may have some serious issues which in tern could cause major disruptions for at many years before the above industrials rise to dominance.

[Anymage]

In our energy conserving universe, nothing stops me from setting up a series of mirrors and lenses to collect more of the sun's power and beam it back to a central location on earth. Universally the energy is balanced, but locally that's pure bonus energy. There are risks of the beam slipping and burning something, much like an out of control infinite energy generator will melt down and/or go boom, but those can also happen with existing energy generation tech if we're careless. If you could magic up a local infinite energy generator it wouldn't immediately cause the universe to start to unravel or anything like that. Over an arbitrarily large amount of time it will generate enough extra energy to significantly warp the shape of spacetime, but over the course of your life it probably won't be noticeable; some quick googling and back-of-the-envelope math says that the total global energy consumption is equivalent in mass-energy to one elephant, and that's peanuts on the scale of planetary masses.

Potential misuses of the perpetual energy generators to serve as bombs, the social ramifications of putting power companies out of business, the geopolitical ramifications of massively overturning our fossil fuel requirements, and the ramifications of being that much closer to post-scarcity are all going to have a much larger impact on people's lives. Those aren't really physics questions, and people's guesses how those factors will all play out say more about the person making the predictions than anything else.

[Rater202]

Well, then I think that sociopolticoeconomic ramifications are beyond the scope of this thread and possibly against forum rules.

The physics answered... Unless anyone has more physics to talk about I think my questions are answered.

[erikun]

What breaks?

Everything.

If there was some sort of perpetual energy device, then that would necessitate some sort of perpetual energy physical interaction which generates the energy. Unless we're talking about a literal magic machine, then the device must be using some sort of physical process - even if exotic, like quantum or relativity or dark matter quarks - to produce the energy. And the problem with having a perpetual energy physical process is that, outside the controlled use in a dedicated machine, it can easily turn into a runaway process.

I suppose that it might be possible to have some sort of device which requires certain factors to operate for perpetual energy, but as a mechanical device would melt down if it produced too much on its own. Something like a large, planet-sized device which uses gravity to power a specific reaction, but which requires its specific tubing to re-route processes in a way that a normal clump of gravity-bound matter would not operate. Such a thing could produce continuous energy from nothing (using part of that energy to re-combine whatever elements back into their original configuration outside) but would fail and melt down if scaled up too much or ran too heavily.

I should note that there are a lot of processes which might look like perpetual energy, but are not, simply because they take energy from a system which would be "wasted" into entropy otherwise. Things like water dams or solar panels are an example, as they are using part of the energy from a specific source (the sun, in both cases) and turning it into electrical. Neither would work without the sun, even if that source of energy isn't going to be disappearing in any reasonable time frame. A machine which converts gravitational energy into electrical energy would operate under the same principle - even if placed around a black hole, it would still be taking energy from a physical processes which will eventually end, and so wouldn't be considered a perpetual energy machine.

At the time, my local power company was doing some... Let's say, shady things, so I said I'd go to the Dragon Ball World, steal one of Dr. Gero's perpetual energy generators, and hook it up to the grid from my house—thoughts of forcing the local power company out of business and to just give me all of their assets to take over the power company myself filled my head, but I imagine that it's a lot more complicated than that and regardless that's not what we're here to discuss.

So... What breaks if I actually try that?

Short Term: You get free electricity bill. The power company probably spends a bit less fuel on electrical production, since they're now getting some extra energy from somewhere, and there's no law saying they need to pay you for such things if you decide to hook your own generator up to their network. They might stop by to see why your meter is reading negative all the time, so that might cause you personal problems - but not really related to how the perpetual energy generator works.

Moderate Term: This is going to cause issues with downed power lines in your area. Power companies are going to want to shut off the power in such situations, and you keeping such lines "live" in those conditions would be a concern.

Long Term: Heat generation is going to be a concern. Even if your generator is perfectly fine, the wiring connected to it is going to constantly be heating up. This is perhaps a display of why perpetual energy isn't necessarily terrible, since one small generator on one large planet could dissappate energy well enough to not be a major concern. However, you would have problems if things drying out and combusting and just generally melting down in the system connected to the generator. Plus, depending on how exactly the generator is producing energy into the wiring connecting to it, you could have a problem with it simply igniting the surrounding environment and being unable to be contained since it keeps producing the energy needed to maintain the heat/fire involved.

[Yora]

Does anyone know why Dark Energy does not violate thermodynamics? The hypothesis is that it is an energy intrinsic to space, that makes space expand without being diluted itself in the progress. That means the total amount of Dark Energy in the universe is constantly increasing, which means a constant addition of energy to the universe.

[halfeye]

Does anyone know why Dark Energy does not violate thermodynamics? The hypothesis is that it is an energy intrinsic to space, that makes space expand without being diluted itself in the progress. That means the total amount of Dark Energy in the universe is constantly increasing, which means a constant addition of energy to the universe.

I have no idea. Perhaps because space expands so the density of energy per unit volume of space stays static (that's entirely a guess)?

[Anymage]

Short Term: You get free electricity bill. The power company probably spends a bit less fuel on electrical production, since they're now getting some extra energy from somewhere, and there's no law saying they need to pay you for such things if you decide to hook your own generator up to their network. They might stop by to see why your meter is reading negative all the time, so that might cause you personal problems - but not really related to how the perpetual energy generator works.

Moderate Term: This is going to cause issues with downed power lines in your area. Power companies are going to want to shut off the power in such situations, and you keeping such lines "live" in those conditions would be a concern.

Long Term: Heat generation is going to be a concern. Even if your generator is perfectly fine, the wiring connected to it is going to constantly be heating up. This is perhaps a display of why perpetual energy isn't necessarily terrible, since one small generator on one large planet could dissappate energy well enough to not be a major concern. However, you would have problems if things drying out and combusting and just generally melting down in the system connected to the generator. Plus, depending on how exactly the generator is producing energy into the wiring connecting to it, you could have a problem with it simply igniting the surrounding environment and being unable to be contained since it keeps producing the energy needed to maintain the heat/fire involved.

Come to think of this, connecting your own generator of whatever energy output and fuel supply to the grid, whether a basic gasoline powered home generator or a magic thingamabob that could power the whole city perpetually, might be an interesting tangent. That's more boring engineering than breaking thermodynamics or essential symmetries of nature, though.

Does anyone know why Dark Energy does not violate thermodynamics? The hypothesis is that it is an energy intrinsic to space, that makes space expand without being diluted itself in the progress. That means the total amount of Dark Energy in the universe is constantly increasing, which means a constant addition of energy to the universe.

I remember a bit back that Noether's Theorem was a thing to talk about, and the upshot is that conservation laws and universal symmetries are intrinsically bound to each other. If you have one, you have to have the other.

On sufficiently galactic scales, dark energy does break symmetries that we normally take for granted. As such, conservations that we take for granted don't necessarily hold either.

[Tvtyrant]

Does anyone know why Dark Energy does not violate thermodynamics? The hypothesis is that it is an energy intrinsic to space, that makes space expand without being diluted itself in the progress. That means the total amount of Dark Energy in the universe is constantly increasing, which means a constant addition of energy to the universe.

The big bang long since disproved that particular law of thermodynamics. I think there will probably turn out to be some law that the amount of energy/mass is permanently locked to the amount of space, and actually the universe expanding is making the universe and not vice versa. There wasn't a big bang, there was a big bubble.