Finsrud's Perpetuum Mobile

[Omnibus]

Just had a personal meeting with the retired professor from the Physics department  at Oslo Uniersity who has visited Finsrud some ten years ago and saw the device. As I said before, he is pretty sceptical, although he would accept it as a real phenomenon if it is proved through the application of the standard methods of science. His opinion is that Finsrud has placed a hidden motor with a battery inside the base of the motor and that keeps the ball turning. He does not have a direct proof of that suggestion but he says that it is for Finsrud to prove there is none.

Finsrud, however, is making no scientific claims, always insisting that this is only art and nothing else.

On the other hand, if true, this is a seminal experiment that should not be dependent on the psychology of one person or another. The experiment should be replicated no matter what.

I think there is some urgency to that since this is the only working experiment known to date and it should not vanish when Finsrud is gone. I also felt that Finsrud is afraid of something and that's why he doesn't want to pursue it along a scientific route. Of course, I am not Finsrud and cannot speak for him and his actual feelings and fears. What I'm writing here are only my impressions of what I saw.

I think there are two things to be done. First, a non-destructive way is to be sought (say, portable gamma-ray flaw detector) to observe directly the base and the supporting column holding the track so that any hidden motor be excluded. Second, the whole device has to be replicated and this should be the top priority of anybody interested in this field. I don't see anything more interesting in this field at this moment than Finsrud's device.

I also think the magician Randi should be contacted and asked to uncover the "trick", if any. He is a professional magician and as such should be expected to know how to uncover the tricks of his competitors without asking them to reveal their tricks by taking apart whatever they are showing on the stage. I will contact Randi upon my return to the states and it will be very good if he feels some pressure from other parties too.

Send me you comments, thoughts and ideas as to how this experiment can be proven real to the scientific community.

[mikestocks2006]

Many thanks for letting us know.
It would be good, if you could post a few of your videos,
when you are back home over here.
Many thanks.

Omnibus thnaks, and I second Hartibelin's remarks.

Some pics and and a video of the device:
http://www.galleri-finsrud.no/sider/mobile/foto.html

pretty interesting device, 3 pendulums, with attached three magnets, 3 stationary magnets?, and a ball on a circular bi rail track. (all magnets are red?)

[dingbat]

there is a spring visible that is large enough to keep such a device running for a very long time.  anniversary clocks and 400 day clocks run for a year and more on a very small wound up spring.  this device is enough similar to a clock that it could be running from stored energy in the big spring for years.  the spring visible in the device is a very strong spring for such a device.  it might continue inside the tube to the base of the device.

[Omnibus]

Hi Stefan, mikestrecks2006, dingbat,

I'm still in Norway and therefore cannot do anything with the videos. When I get back to New York I'll see what I can do to post them so that you can see in more detail the working of the device.

dingbat, the spring you're referring to cannot explain the effect. Will say a little more on that below. First, I want to tell all that Finsrud showed me his workshop (although he asked me not to video there). He began pulling preliminary experiment after preliminary experiment. These he has carried out in the course of many years (about 30 some years) all with the goal to study where Nature would take a given mass. He was able to show me remnants of at least ten experiments. Eventually he brought 12 ring magnets into the secure room where the main device is. He then distributed them randomly on the floor (by casting 12 coins -- minding the heads or tails) and then suspended another ring magnet from the seiling to act as a pendulum. With this experiment he wanted to demonstrate how he began constructing the device. At the beginning the mentioned pendulum was swaying as an ordinary one, following the expected path. As time went on, however, the pendulum started randomly to change its trajectory at times spinning almost in a circle even. The magnetic fields of the floor magnets were kicking in.

Then, he said, he made two more of these stations and connected the three pendulums observing further strange behavior -- when one pendulum stops another would restart it and so on. This phenomenon, he thinks, is at the basis of the principle of his device.

In my opinion, however, the main effect is due to the clever way of retracting the horse-shoe magnets right at the time when the steel ball approaches the "sticky point". This is achieved by a very careful timing and adjustment of the three pendulums responsible for the retraction of the magnets. One can easily see also three wires protruding between the tracks which are being pushed by the ball during its motion. These activities ensure asymmetrically stronger pull towards the magnet than the pull after the ball passes the magnet by.

I'll continue in another posting ... 

[Omnibus]

Continue ...

In addition there are three smaller magnets, positioned above the track slightly after each horse-shoe magnet. The role of these smaller magnets (very well tuned) is to somewhat slow down the run of the steel ball so that there wouldn't be too much acceleration. This is like adding more friction, which may be done through roughening the track, but doing it with a magnet is pretty clever. The physical properties of the track would change in time while the magnetic "friction" will always stay the same.

As I said, it is these factors that are the main players in the working of the device. The rest seems redundant. Finsrud, however, insists that the randomly imbedded magnets in the base of the device as well as the magnets at the bottom of the fourth pendulum, the pendulum that is within the central supporting column and is not visible, play a crucial role in the working of the device. That is why he went out of his way to demonstrate the experiment with the twelve ring magnets.

I asked him if he would allow a fiber optic camera to be inserted into the central cylinder so that it can be shown that there is no hidden motor there. Unfortunately, the top of the tube containing the fourth pendulum is sealed and there is no direct access to the internal void. That's why I mentioned above non-destructive methods with gamma-rays ...

The spring that dingbat is referring to is not wound and is only to suspend the top part of the device. There are many more springs as well as flexible metal plates acting as springs which Finsrud has used for suspension purposes. Also, the spring dingbat refers to does not go along the central core -- it is only what one can see in the picture. Same applies to the numerous other springs which are used only for suspension and flexibility and cannot be considered as storing the energy necessary to drive the device. Therefore, these springs are of no concern.

The main concern is to prove that there is nothing hidden in the base of the device which secretly would be the driving mechanism.