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Re:Perpetual motion? by _pius on Thursday February 04, 2010 @04:45PM (#1101703)
you're allowed to assume perfect efficiency, unless you can show it to be physically impossible

Even then, his specification is at too high a level of abstraction for us to prove that it's physically impossible. That seems unfair.

If the author wants people to ignore the abstractions that quickly prove something impossible, then he or she should provide enough detail to analyze it from a practical perspective.

Re:Perpetual motion? by RiderOfGiraffes on Thursday February 04, 2010 @04:49PM (#1101716)
So you're worried about the "perfect efficiency" and not concerned about the "convert the mass to energy" bit?

It's a thought experiment.

Re:Perpetual motion? by _pius on Thursday February 04, 2010 @04:55PM (#1101731)
It's a thought experiment.

Fair enough. :)