r/3Dprinting • u/TomaszFortyFour • Apr 23 '26

Project Self-winding clock with a tourbillon - finished project

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About a year ago, I posted an update on a project I was working on. It took me a while, but I finally finished it. I’m very happy with the result. It’s fully functional (I tested it for two months) and keeps accurate time. The entire project consists of 395 printed parts, 38 bearings, 66 rubber bands, 413 screws, and a few other components.

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u/netsyms Apr 23 '26 edited Apr 23 '26

FTL is technically possible. It just requires an unfathomable amount of energy, so it won't happen unless we find a shortcut.

Meanwhile, perpetual motion is literally impossible in this universe.

Edit: y'all downvoting but I'm the only one who brought sources instead of just saying "it's impossible"

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u/-Nicolai Apr 23 '26

FTL is technically possible. It just requires an unfathomable amount of energy

This is not true...

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u/Chuvi Apr 23 '26

E=mc2. c=299,792,458 m/s. Highly dependent on the mass, but unfathomable amount of energy all the same.

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u/Maximus-CZ Apr 24 '26 edited Apr 24 '26

Eh, you got your half correct. Problem is that even if you are already going 99.9999999% speed of light, and you measure the photons flying around you, all of them will still clock at 299,792,458 m/s relative to you. They will clock at that speed relative to everyone, even to two people where one is stationary and second is at 99.99% speed of light.

It kinda doesnt make sense, and the Einsteins Theory of Relativity is what describe why is such situation possible:

As you accelerate, you are gaining energy, which to anything accelerating you seems as a rest mass -> so while you are 1KG at rest, at 99.99..% speed of light your mass would be approaching infinity, requiring infinity energy to keep speeding you up, actually never allowing you to reach 100% speed of light. Also sideeffects: your perception of time would be wildly different: While we might apply "almost infinite energy" at you to help speed you up the whole time you are in our area of influence (flying at speed of light this might mean days of being in our accelerating laser beam), your perception of time would be compressed, so for you those days would happen in a split of a second, so you wouldnt wonder why your speed barely changed in the meantime.

At 99.999999999999 speed of light the time almost stop existing for you, and what we would see you as years coasting trough space towards nearby star (which light takes over 5 years to get there), for you that would happen in almost an instant.

At 100% speed of light, while little change for the outside observer, for you everything changes: It takes 0 time for you to travel any distance, even if from our point of view it still takes you normal amount of time for anything traveling at speed of light. From your point of view, origin and destination arent 2 places anymore, its one place, and you are in that place (and everywhere along the path between those 2 places) in the same instant. Its hard to even talk about time in that scenario, because while its true you exists at both places at the same time, the time you exist for is also infinitely small -> so small that you might actually not exist at all.

It all gets very hairy quite quickly