🚀 go-pugleaf

Today's scientists stop reading, thinking, even breathing, as soon as
they bump into the idea that the second law of thermodynamics might be
false or that Einstein's 1905 light postulate might be false:

http://www.liferesearchuniversal.com/1984-17.html#seventeen
George Orwell: "Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as
though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It
includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive
logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are
inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of
thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction.
Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity."

So a number of fundamental questions simply cannot be discussed in
today's science. One of them is:

Why does immersing a constant-charge parallel-plate capacitor in water
drastically DECREASE (80 times) the force of attraction between the
plates while inserting a SOLID dielectric between the plates INCREASES
the force of attraction?

Pentcho Valev wrote:

http://www.physorg.com/news110191847.html
"When exposed to a high-voltage electric field, water in two beakers
climbs out of the beakers and crosses empty space to meet, forming the
water bridge. The liquid bridge, hovering in space, appears to the
human eye to defy gravity."

In a strong electrical field water dipoles are ordered in such a way
that thermal agitation of molecules produces a SPECIFIC PRESSURE
inside the liquid acting in the direction of the field (it is this
pressure that makes the water bridge described above "defy gravity").
In certain experiments this specific pressure can lift water: the
energy needed for lifting is in fact heat absorbed from the
surroundings. If lifted water is allowed to leave the field pushed by
the specific pressure (for instance, when water has been lifted
between the plates of a capacitor, the specific pressure could push it
through a hole in one of the plates), the liquid will form, ideally,
an eternal waterfall outside the strong field. Perhaps the device
cannot be of any practical use as a heat engine but still it violates
the second law of thermodynamics.

A few years ago, at the 2002 First International Conference on Quantum
Limits to the Second Law, I tried to draw the attention to the fact
that charged capacitors immersed in water develop a strange pressure
between the plates, a pressure that, on close inspection, seems to
violate the second law of thermodynamics:

http://link.aip.org/link/?APCPCS/643/430/1

http://www.wbabin.net/valev/valev2.pdf

The scientific community remained silent and hostile but now I see the
idea that capacitors can violate the second law has been developed
ever since:

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0912/0912.4818v3.pdf
"Recently (Physics Letters A 374 (2010) 1801) the concept of vacuum
capacitor spontaneously charged harnessing the heat absorbed from a
single thermal reservoir at room temperature has been introduced..."

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0904/0904.3188v4.pdf
"In this paper we describe a vacuum spherical capacitor that generates
a macroscopic voltage between its spheres harnessing the heat from a
single thermal reservoir at room temperature. (...) The author wishes
also gratefully acknowledge stimulating and encouraging discussions
with Prof. Daniel P. Sheehan (University of San Diego) during the
preparation of an early draft of the manuscript."

Bravo, Daniel P. Sheehan! You were hostile in 2002 but now I see you
have taken some notice of what I told you. Your triumph will come
soon:

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2009/dec/13/quantum-challenge-usd-professor/
"Clean-cut and middle-aged, a tenured professor at a conservative
Catholic university, Sheehan is hardly a rebel. Yet for years, he and
a few other physicists have been pressing peers to re-examine the
Second Law of Thermodynamics, one of the most celebrated and cherished
tenets of physics. (...) But Sheehan suggests big things are possible
if even the tiniest of violations can be proven, and ultimately
exploited in an economically feasible way. For example, it might
become possible to convert ambient heat into an infinite energy
source, he said."

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com