Something for Nothing?

There is a famous Law of Physics, you cannot get something for nothing. This is the Law of Conservation of Energy.

According to Alan Guth, Inflation is the biggest Free Lunch ever.

Here I bring another take on this very attractive idea.

While at LynkLabs (no patent here), I considered the possibility to harness radio waves to power small devices. Now some cell phone companies are pursuing this. Wikipedia.

Of course this is not something from nothing. What we mean is, that there is so much junk energy floating around us, that we might as well use it.

Today the NYT has a piece on spacecrafts with no human energy source, [link].

I am going to give a talk on Quasicrystals, so I was remembering the Fermi Acceleration mechanism for Cosmic Rays. Again, this is more playing the odds than violating the law of conservation of energy.

Even a simple minded kicked oscillator, related to the Zaslavskii map, shows this phenomenon.

Professor Lowenstein showed that the phase space points completely fill the plane, in a Stochastic Web.

In laymen's terms, this means, that one can start with a spring, then every fifth of a cycle one gives it a small kick, and it is possible to find the spring very hot after a long time. The kicks do not have to be big. A small one suffices.

Sure, if you want to go to the stars this way, be my guest. Unfortunately the first tries will be like the monkeys from the note below!