Newton's Second Law, Revisited

eldavojohn writes "Dust off your fundamental physics books, an aspiring astrophysicist by the name of Alex Ignatiev has published a paper that proposes testing special cases of Newton's Second Law on earth's surface. His goal is sort of ambitious. The time he has to test his theory is only 1/1000th of a second, twice each year, in either Greenland or Antarctica. What would he look for? Spontaneous motion. From his interview with PhysOrg: 'If these experiments were to take place, Ignatiev says that scientists would look for what he calls the SHLEM effect. This acronym stands for static high latitude equinox modified inertia and would be noticed in a condition where the forces of the earth's rotation on its axis, and of the orbital force of the earth as it moves around the sun, would be canceled out ... In the end, if Newton's Second Law could be violated, he would be forcing physicists to reevaluate much of what we understand derived from that law — which is quite a bit.'"

Comments

I KNEW IT

[heptapod]

Spending $1000 on these plans for the Dean drive weren't a waste of my money! Take that science!

Perpetual motion machine

[Khyber]

idea for ya.

The universe blows up, expands, shit forms, eventually everything comes back, collapses, and another big bang happens. Repeat countless cycles, yet it keeps happening.

If you want to get into it, I'd argue that the universe, as open as it is, is a closed system without energy loss. But, this only works with the Big Bang theory.

As it stands, we'll NEVER know in our lifetimes. So, I just present something for you to think of - the perpetual motion machine could exist, but it's on such a scale that even galaxies of competent and intelligent life coudn't figure it out before the universe collapses upon itself from it's own gravity and wipes us all out.