Carnot Engine
A popular myth, the Carnot engine is a hypothetical (and impossible) perfect piston engine that recycles the heat within its combustion chamber to repeat the same adiabatic combustion process and thus the Carnot engine never needs to refuel or expel waste. This equation was made by the Napoleonic era (Old Earth) French physicist Sadi Carnot who realized this engine worked only mathematically but not in reality because it violated the Law of Entropy (entropy increases in a closed system).
The Carnot engine later served only as a measuring tool for actual physical engines. Nonetheless for the next 10,000 years governments and later the NoCoZo AIs would be inundated by millions of patents for what were in effect alleged "Carnot engines". Even a few heterodox and deluded Negentropist AIs vow to make the environmentally friendly Carnot engine a reality by vanquishing entropy.
Text by Eric Lo
Initially published on 24 September 2001.
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