The man that invented the future

Our machinery will be driven by a power obtainable at any point of the Universe. Throughout space there is energy.

Nikola Tesla 1892

In case you didn't know this already, Professor Kompressor is an entirely fictional character. The invention of this excellent inventor was just one of those things that seem to happen for no apparent reason. A few whimsical bedtime stories, involving some crazy inventing antics, and the Professor was off. He was not modelled on a real life character. No way!

            Imagine my surprise the other day when, trying to finish a story intended for the Professor's sequel, I stumbled upon his real world alter ego. An individual that made such a massive difference to the world that the genius label is inevitable. The man that "invented the 20th century", Nikola Tesla. Of course, you think. Jump on the bandwagon by dragging old Tesla out of the cupboard. How predictable.

            Maybe so. But if you are looking for a role model for the "greatest inventor ever" somewhere in the borderland between reality and fiction (with the potential of some fun thrown in for good measure) then Tesla is your man, for sure.

            Let's take a look at the evidence.

            If it hadn't been for Nikola Tesla's inventions, the world would have been a very different place. You may not appreciate it, few people do, but Tesla's ideas laid the foundation for many things electric and electronic, from the power supply in your house to the TV remote control and the wireless network you might be using to access the internet.

            Nikola Tesla was born in what is today Croatia. His imaginative brain was in evidence already when he was a young man, but his rise to fame did not truly start until he immigrated to the United States. Pretty much without a penny in his pocket. He found a job as assistant to Thomas Edison (of obvious lightbulb fame). This turned out not to be a marriage made in heaven, however, and it was not long before the two inventors fell out.

            The two were soon engaged in an all out battle for electric supremacy. Tesla's new system emerged as the winner when it was used to light up the Chicago World's Fair in 1893. His Alternating Current is still used to bring power to homes around the world today. Following on from this success, Tesla designed the first hydro power plant at Niagara Falls, thus bringing practical energy to the people. This idea, to provide everyone with cheap (or indeed, free!) energy is a key theme of Tesla's career. His vision ranged from wireless transmission of energy straight into people's homes and extraction of this energy from medium that surrounds us. Awesome! Of course, it never happened. Big business was not prepared to support someone that wanted to simply give the product away. There was too much money to be made in selling the stuff.

            Nikola Tesla can stake a claim to many other inventions as well. In fact, he was the first to come up with the lightbulb. Edison was the genius behind the mass market, but the thing itself was Tesla's idea. He invented the radio. Wasn't that Marconi? you ask. Well, no. Tesla got there first. This was even recognized by the US Supreme Court in 1943 when they overturned Marconi's patent. X-rays? Yep, Tesla fiddled with those too. Time to rewrite the history books!

            What about the fiction side to this? Not surprisingly, someone of Tesla's immense creativity provides inspiration for speculation. He predicted microwaves, TV and interplanetary communication. It also doesn't hurt that many of his claimed inventions remain "lost". This involves his death ray, an extension of the wireless energy idea. Rumour has it that when Tesla died in 1943, alone and destitute in a New York hotel room, government representatives raided his laboratory and seized all notes and paraphernalia. None of this material has yet been made public. Excellent material for a conspiracy theory.

            The larger than life character of Tesla and his amazing ideas have often been called on by authors and moviemakers. Powerful Tesla coils were used to spectacular effect in The Sorcerer's Apprentice and the inventor himself played a role in The Prestige. Death rays are of course staple diet of science fiction. How about the main weapon of the Death Star in the first installment of the Star Wars saga?

            Allowing for a slight revision of history, it is obvious that Professor Kompressor draws on Nikola Tesla in many ways. Each individual a singular genius with more than a bit of eccentricity to the character. Their inventions draw on real science but often stretch the ideas beyond what might seem possible. The Professor's intentions are good and honourable, just like Tesla's, but things don't always end well. A real shame, isn't it?

Magic always leads to trouble

I picked up this piece of profound wisdom from kid’s TV. If you have to know, it was Ben and Holly’s Little Kingdom. Can’t say we usually watch this in my house, but I guess someone was too lazy to change channel... or couldn’t find the remote control. Tells you all you need to know about Sunday mornings, really.

            Anyway, this brought back an idea I have been thinking about for a while. Nature is governed by a number of pesky principles that dictate that so and so is possible but such and such is not likely. We refer to these as “laws”, but you would hardly be sent to prison for breaking them. It’s simply not a matter to be settled in court.

            However, suppose we allow ourselves just a little bit of (black) magic. Suppose it was in our power to repeal these laws. Why not? We invented them, didn’t we?

            Which law would you get rid of first?

            I have two prime contenders, but unfortunately there are problems with both.

            I’d like to start by getting rid of gravity, this terrible law that holds us in its grip and ties us down. Every single day of our lives. If there were no gravity, then we’d be able to fly. Wouldn’t that be great? I have this strange feeling that I actually used to be able to fly when I was little. It is a really weird “memory” because it seems so real. I can even recall what it feels like to kick off from the ground and float up in the air. I’d like to experience that again.

            Wouldn’t it be great to get rid of gravity? Well, perhaps not. It is true that gravity holds us down, but isn’t that actually a good thing? Without gravity we might all float off into space. Someone would have to invent velcro boots, or something, to keep us on the planet. There would be no up or down, which I think could be quite confusing. Even worse, the solar system would fly apart. The moon would drift away. There would be no night and day, so poetry would take a bit of a hit. Repealing the law of gravity suddenly doesn’t seem like such a good idea.

            What about thermodynamics and that annoying second law? It might be ok if we understood it, but we don’t so can’t we just get rid of it? Surely that ought to be good? Without the need for entropy to keep increasing, nature wouldn’t have to evolve towards disorder. Things would stay neat and tidy and a lot of domestic effort could be saved. It could be fun, as well. You’d be able to throw a broken glass on the floor and see it come together again. Stuff like that. Like magic.

            I’d settle for this. Get rid of thermodynamics. What’s the problem with that? Uh... well... for a start... Heat might flow from cold to hot. This would upset quite a few things, like the fridge in your kitchen. The central heating system would become more temperamental. There is a much bigger problem, though. The entropy law is one of the prime contenders for an “arrow of time”. The underlying reason why we experience the world as evolving rather than standing still. No one really understands how this works, it remains one of the unsolved mysteries of physics, but it might be a bad idea to get rid of the thermodynamic laws just in case they have something to do with it. Who’d want to run out of time, as it were?

            There we are. Two suggestions, neither entirely satisfactory. Begs the question, are there laws of nature that we can get rid of without ending up in trouble? What are the pros and cons or meddling with this? Why not have a go at this yourself? Let me know where it takes you.

Don't argue. It's the law.

Professor Kompressor's house was a complete mess. It didn't matter that Maud, the once-or-twice-a-week housekeeper, did her best to tidy up. The Professor was simply too good at picking things up, moving them about and leaving them where they weren't supposed to be. When Maud complained, the Professor muttered something about the "laws of thermodynamics" and that "disorder must increase". This sounded like complete gobbledygook to her, so Maud ignored the Professor and quietly carried on cleaning. She knew perfectly well that it was possible to keep a home nice and tidy. There was absolutely no reason why chaos should be allowed to reign.

                                                from "Professor Kompressor: The Mechanical Maid"

I think you're familiar with the idea. You spend hours tidying up; bedroom, living room or desk. After some effort it looks nice and tidy, and it seems incredible that it could ever have got into such a deplorable state. However, as soon as you turn your back on it the decay begins and before too long the mess has returned. Why does this happen?

            A common explanation from people with some understanding of physics, like the Professor, is that the "second law of thermodynamics" is at play. This sounds terribly serious, getting the law involved in everyday happenings. This kind of law is different, though. It is not the kind enforced by people in uniform. Rather, it is part of the rulebook for the Universe that is being pieced together by people in lab coats (although they may not actually be wearing them these days).

            Let's take a closer look at this particular rule. First we need to understand the main word a bit better. "Thermodynamics" is the name for the part of physics that describes processes involving hot and cold. It's basically a simplification, where very complex systems are described in terms of a small set of numbers describing the average behaviour.

            To understand how this works, imagine zooming in on a digital photograph. At first, on the large scale, the image seems perfectly smooth. As you take a closer view you can start to see the individual building blocks (the pixels). Finally, on the small scale, these building blocks dominate and you can't see the big picture any more. When you look at the original picture, your eyes average over the pixels and make the image appear nice and smooth.

            Everyday physical systems work in the same way. They are built from individual particles (atoms, or at the even finer level, quarks), but it is generally too difficult to keep track of the movement of each of these little guys. It is more practical to zoom out (average over a large number of particles) and focus on a few numbers that describe the collective behaviour. Information is obviously lost in this process, but one can often get away with ignoring this.

            The temperature of a system depends on how active the individual particles are. Basically, if they don't move at all then the temperature is zero. In a typical situation they whizz around madly. The temperature encodes the averaged energy associated with their motion.

            The laws of thermodynamics are the rules that describe how you measure the temperature and how it evolves as time passes. The famed "second law" deals with a somewhat mysterious quantity called the entropy. It used to be that scientists thought that heat was carried by a quantity known as the caloric. Hotter objects simply had more caloric in them. However, this idea didn't quite work out. Instead, the entropy took centre stage. 

            The entropy describes the amount of order (or lack of...) in a system. Think of the amount of papers, pens and various bits on an office desk, or perhaps toys on the floor in a playroom. If they're all put away neatly, then the system is ordered and the entropy is low. If they're spread in a random fashion, then the entropy is high. The second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy can never decrease (as long as you ignore outside influences). All systems become more random with time.

            The entropy law was a great breakthrough for science because it allowed people to work out why it is that heat flows from hot to cold and not the other way around.  An overall colder system is more random, and therefore more likely, than one where the particles bunch up in local hotter region. The second law led to the development of kitchen refrigerators, which are obviously great inventions, and is important for many other physics problems, like the evolution of the entire Universe, as well.

            What do we learn from this? All things tend to disorder and chaos, pretty much as the Professor suggested. The law says that entropy must increase, so any effort to tidy up is futile. Not quite! You can "break the law" by tinkering with the system. This is exactly what you do when you spend your precious energy tidying up. You can lower the entropy of a room, desk or whatever by using your free will to expend some energy. Thermodynamics says that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Ultimately you can't win, but you can chose to spend some energy getting things back in order for a while.

            It's such a shame! I can't use thermodynamics to excuse the mess on the desk in front of me, so I guess I have to admit that I am too lazy to do anything about it.