Your space example does not take into account the gravitational drag that the entire universe puts on everything, as well as the nearest galaxy, star, planet or moon. It does not take into account the effects of photons moving every which way, cosmic rays, magnetic flux in the space-time continuum or hundreds of other forms of energy and gravity anomolies that can and do produce instability in any and all system.
Gravitational drag of the entire universe?
Please... how much can you stretch this out to fit your perspectives. The forces you talk about are so minutes that they are not even relevant. Photons and radiation can easily be excluded from the experiment if you encapsulate the ball in some sort of thick lead container. And gravity dies off relative to the square of the distance, so it wouldn't take long before the force of such gravity was completely miniscule. Not to mention, gravity only works exerts a force in one direction. It pulls us down to Earth, but there is no horizontal force pulling us to the side, thus one could simply spin the ball in a direction where the force of the Moon or Earth is not acting on it. Furthermore, since this is a purely theoretical experiment, we could simply say lets take it out into the vastness of space where there's virtually nothing around for light years.
You are completely wrong about what you think thermodynamics says about systems like the one we are talking about. It's perfectly possible, because the energy in the system is conserved. Just because something can be in perpetual motion does not mean it can provide free energy. The system I described does not create energy, and if you were to extract energy from the spinning ball it would slow down. In reality, you are correct, it would be virtually impossible to make it work for an infinite amount of time, simply because the Universe is too chaotic. But for all PRACTICAL purposes it can most certainly be considered perpetual motion because the ball will keep spinning for vast amounts of time without needing any extra energy injected into the system.
edit on 13-5-2012 by ChaoticOrder because: (no reason given)



. Great experimental work
my man 