Re: SPACE: Lunar Warfare

Eliezer Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Thu, 23 Jan 1997 19:30:32 -0600

[Lorrey:]
> > I really don't care. I know that any time people say something is
> > impossible, someone else goes and proves them wrong.
[Grant:]
> Seen any perpetual motion machines lately? Or are they all locked up in
> that big warehouse with the Ark of the Covenant, the captured alien
> saucers and the 200mpg carburettor?

I can build a perpetual-motion machine.
I can build a Dean Drive.
I can run the laws of thermodynamics in reverse.
I can conjure new matter out of nowhere.
I can go back in time or faster than light.
All without violating the known laws of physics.

I give you: Negative energy!
*Conjure* equal amounts of matter and unmatter out of nowhere!
*Zoom* off to infinity by balancing positive momentum with an equal
amount of negative momentum!
*Travel* back in time using General Relativity and wormholes!
*Dispose* of that pesky heat by transferring it to negative/positive
matter and annihilating it!

Now, what I do doubt is that there's a strictly *mechanical* workaround
for thermodynamics or conservation...

-- 
         sentience@pobox.com      Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
          http://tezcat.com/~eliezer/singularity.html
           http://tezcat.com/~eliezer/algernon.html
Disclaimer:  Unless otherwise specified, I'm not telling you
everything I think I know.