A 'self-acting' Engine Or Machine

We need a new way to get more energy.

In a combustion engine, there was enough heat-energy in the medium. But only a small part of it was available to operate an engine.

Besides, the energy was obtainable only at a very slow rate.

Clearly, the problem was to discover a new method to:

• utilize more of the heat-energy of the medium
• draw it away faster.

I read some statements from Carnot and Lord Kelvin saying that it is impossible for an inanimate mechanism or self-acting machine to cool a portion of the medium below the temperature of the surrounding, and operate by the heat abstracted.

These statements interested me intensely.

A living being could do this very thing.

My early life experiences had convinced me that a living being is only an automaton or a “self-acting-engine”.

I concluded that it was possible to construct a machine which would do the same.

Imagine a thermopile consisting of metal bars extending from the earth to the outer space beyond the atmosphere.

The heat from below, conducted upward along these metal bars, would cool the earth or the sea or the air, according to the location of the lower parts of the bars.

It would create an electric current circulating in these bars.

The two terminals of the thermopile could now be joined through an electric motor. Theoretically, this motor would run on and on, until the media below would be cooled down to the temperature of the outer space.

This would be an inanimate engine which would be cooling a portion of the medium below the temperature of the surrounding, and operating by the heat abstracted.

DIAGRAM b. OBTAINING ENERGY FROM THE AMBIENT MEDIUM

A, medium with little energy; B, B, ambient medium with much energy; O, path of the energy.

But was it not possible to realize a similar condition without necessarily going to a height?

Conceive [a cylindrical] enclosure T, as illustrated in diagram b. Energy could not be transferred across it except through a channel or path O.

By some means in this enclosure, a medium were maintained which would have little energy.

On the outer side of the same there would be the ordinary ambient medium with much energy.

The energy would flow through the path O, as indicated by the arrow. It might then be converted on its passage into some other form of energy.

Could such a condition be attained?

Could we produce artificially such a “sink” for the energy of the ambient medium to flow in?

Suppose that an extremely low temperature could be maintained by some process in a given space; the surrounding medium would then be compelled to give off heat, which could be converted into mechanical or other form of energy, and utilized.

By realizing such a plan, we should be enabled to get at any point of the globe a continuous supply of energy, day and night.

More than this, reasoning in the abstract, it would seem possible to cause a quick circulation of the medium, and thus draw the energy at a very rapid rate.

Here, then, was an idea which, if realizable, afforded a happy solution of the problem of getting energy from the medium.

But was it realizable?

I convinced myself that it was so in a number of ways, of which one is the following.

As regards heat, we are at a high level, which may be represented by the surface of a mountain lake considerably above the sea, the level of which may mark the absolute zero of temperature existing in the interstellar space. Heat, like water, flows from high to low level, and, consequently, just as we can let the water of the lake run down to the sea, so we are able to let heat from the earth’s surface travel up into the cold region above.

Heat, like water, can perform work in flowing down, and if we had any doubt as to whether we could derive energy from the medium by means of a thermopile, as before described, it would be dispelled by this analogue. But can we produce cold in a given portion of the space and cause the heat to flow in continually?

To create such a “sink,” or “cold hole,” as we might say, in the medium, would be equivalent to producing in the lake a space either empty or filled with something much lighter than water.

This we could do by placing in the lake a tank, and pumping all the water out of the latter.

We know, then, that the water, if allowed to flow back into the tank, would, theoretically, be able to perform exactly the same amount of work which was used in pumping it out, but not a bit more.

Consequently nothing could be gained in this double operation of first raising the water and then letting it fall down.

This would mean that it is impossible to create such a sink in the medium.

Heat, though following certain general laws of mechanics, like a fluid, is not such; it is energy which may be converted into other forms of energy as it passes from a high to a low level.

To make our mechanical analogy complete and true, we must, therefore, assume that the water, in its passage into the tank, is converted into something else, which may be taken out of it without using any, or by using very little, power.

For example, if heat be represented in this analogue by the water of the lake, the oxygen and hydrogen composing the water may illustrate other forms of energy into which the heat is transformed in passing from hot to cold. If the process of heat transformation were absolutely perfect, no heat at all would arrive at the low level, since all of it would be converted into other forms of energy.

Corresponding to this ideal case, all the water flowing into the tank would be decomposed into oxygen and hydrogen before reaching the bottom, and the result would be that water would continually flow in, and yet the tank would remain entirely empty, the gases formed escaping. We would thus produce, by expending initially a certain amount of work to create a sink for the heat or, respectively, the water to flow in, a condition enabling us to get any amount of energy without further effort. This would be an ideal way of obtaining motive power.

We do not know of any such absolutely perfect process of heat-conversion, and consequently some heat will generally reach the low level, which means to say, in our mechanical analogue, that some water will arrive at the bottom of the tank, and a gradual and slow filling of the latter will take place, necessitating continuous pumping out.

But evidently there will be less to pump out than flows in, or, in other words, less energy will be needed to maintain the initial condition than is developed by the fall, and this is to say that some energy will be gained from the medium. What is not converted in flowing down can just be raised up with its own energy, and what is converted is clear gain. Thus the virtue of the principle I have discovered resides wholly in the conversion of the energy on the downward flow.