Mach Effect progress

[chrismb]

Chris, as you have noted recently, you were involved in another thread on M-E a few years ago, before this one. I take it you've read a bit about Kip Thorne's wormhole work since the late 1980s, Alcubierre's warp drive from 1994, Woodward's work etc.

chrismb would not have read any of this, unless it was posted on this forum.

Why would anyone who is signed up to a fusion forum go looking for information on a totally unrelated idea that flies in the face of everything that is scientifically reasonable if those that brought the story to such a forum can't be bothered to provide all the details themselves?

Do they think the forum's audience are muppets who just sit there and lap up any old unsubstantiated tripe, without a question (or tell them that they are 'cowards' and other such ad hominem insults if they do dare to hold their posts up to scrutiny)?

The distortion of space time happens in the thin shell layer where the negative energy is concentrated. Whatever is inside that shell sits in relatively flat spacetime, and this bit of flat spacetime is carried along inside the distortion. Or, in the case of wormholes, the spacetime in the "throat" is more or less flat, with the distortion happening around the edges.

Stated as if it were an extant fact, with all the conviction of a religious convert.

It is quite impossible to have 'negative energy'. It is meaningless. A change of entropy is work performed, thus if 'nothing' flows into 'negative energy' it still generates work, which is, thus, positive energy performed. It is self-contradictory.

There is not a single shred of anything known about the universe that substantiates such a claim as a shell of negative energy around a region of a space-time distortion. It is unsubstantiated tripe until those that postulate it provide evidentially based observations to prove it, AND that it is a feasible interpretation of a plausible theory within known physics.

No sensible interpretation of GRT brings electromagnetic and gravitational fields together (other than through the deflection of the mediating particles of an EM field in a gravity field).

It is no way to proceed to continue to confobulate science fiction in a forum dedicated to fusion science. If there are any KNOWN scientific facts substantiating claims of 'warp-drive' then what are they, and what are the references supporting them? If there are any experiments being performed, then explain what they are in all detail required to repeat them independently to reproduce the same outcomes reported.

.. otherwise, quit with the tripe.

[GIThruster]

This above is precisely why no one wants you around, chris. Time and again you've vented your arrogance and ignorance on this crowd as an equal opportunity offender, swaggering and declaring how everyone is less rational than you, and each time you've gone all in here, you ended up with your tail between your legs and vowing not to return.

Do you ever learn your lesson? You were supposed to learn how to play nice in kindergarden.

[chrismb]

GIT's reply is merely one of complaint and bitching, rather than being a refute of chrismb's suggestions by, simply, offering a single shred of anything known about the universe that substantiates such a claim as a shell of negative energy around a region of a space-time distortion.

[CaptainBeowulf]

Why would anyone who is signed up to a fusion forum go looking for information on a totally unrelated idea that flies in the face of everything that is scientifically reasonable if those that brought the story to such a forum can't be bothered to provide all the details themselves?

Granted, this thread should probably be in general, not in news, which theoretically should be kept for news about Polywell or closely related fusion projects like Tri-Alpha. However, everyone who's spent time on talk polywell knows that we're rather lax with the whole staying on topic thing. The title of the thread indicates that it is clearly mainly about gravinertial drives - you're free to just read the fusion threads.

Do they think the forum's audience are muppets who just sit there and lap up any old unsubstantiated tripe, without a question (or tell them that they are 'cowards' and other such ad hominem insults if they do dare to hold their posts up to scrutiny)?

Chris, I have never insulted you. In fact, I have found some of your comments quite interesting. The flame war is between you and GIT; I have little desire to be involved.

There is not a single shred of anything known about the universe that substantiates such a claim as a shell of negative energy around a region of a space-time distortion. It is unsubstantiated tripe until those that postulate it provide evidentially based observations to prove it, AND that it is a feasible interpretation of a plausible theory within known physics.

Kip Thorne and Alcubierre, for example, are trained physicists with PhDs. Woodward has a BA and MA in physics and a PhD in the history of physics. Their theories are precisely designed to be in agreement with General Relativity. The idea is that if you can concentrate a negative energy density into a thin shell area, there is then nothing physically impossible about these warped space-time metrics.

GIT and a few others are very optimistic, which I think is good - we need optimists. However, very few of the rest of us have claimed that these things are possible, just that they might be.

In order to be able to conduct experiments to substantiate claims about warp drive, people have to first develop theories about how warp drives or wormholes might work. Then they can, as Woodward, Paul March and Sonny White are doing, design experiments which can disprove or substantiate given theories. With experimental results in hand, theories can then be changed in order to design new experiments. We are at an early, speculative stage regarding these things. All this might not lead anywhere, but at least it satisfies human curiosity to study the subject.

Here is Woodward's website:

http://physics.fullerton.edu/~jimw/

Scroll down the page and you will see nine papers under the heading "Latest Papers on Mach Effect Drives." Read the paper on "Making the Universe Safe for Historians," and you'll see that Stephen Hawking became interested enough to postulate a "chronological protection mechanism" to stop wormholes from being used to create closed timelike loops.

Link to Alcubierre's 1994 paper (originally published in the Classical Quantum Gravity Journal):

http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0009013

Link to Van den Broeck's proposed modifications to Alcubierre's metric:

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2000AIPC..504.1105V

Biographical sketch of Kip Thorne from Caltech:

http://www.its.caltech.edu/~kip/scripts/biosketch.html

Link to Thorne's publications, including the ones on wormholes:

http://www.its.caltech.edu/~kip/scripts ... tions.html

[chrismb]

Good on Capt Beo for stating his case and setting out the links.

There is a weakness, though, which is his 'appeal to authority'. It's not science to imply these folks have said worthy things because they have PhD's. That's an irrelevant fact to bring up. It is up to their publications to speak for themselves, which you have provided appropriate links.

But also;

The idea is that if you can concentrate a negative energy density into a thin shell area, there is then nothing physically impossible about these warped space-time metrics.

.. unfortunately this is also easily confused with being a 'scientific position'. It isn't, because an 'it-might-be-possible' stance is not science. Remember, for it to be science it requires either to be a readily accepted testable conjecture based on deductions within convention understanding, OR an experimental observation.

Science is NOT a conjecture that is extraordinary in the context of current understanding AND NOT supported by experimental observations.

This whole forum, talk-polywell.org, is about polywell fusion. This discussion, irrespective of the title, is neither 'news on polywell fusion' nor is it 'getting to know your fellow polywell enthusiasts'. The whole lot belongs in a different website. There are websites better dedicated to this stuff, why do non-scientific fictional speculations need to be raised here, a place where the attempts have always previously been aimed at understanding and discussing real physics and not science-fiction?

[CaptainBeowulf]

That's a possibility they evolve into what you suggest or some kind of "Q-Continuum" type of superbeing/hive mind whatever. Seems to me that even that works better if I assume that technological species are rare, maybe 0-10 active at any one time. Don't think it would really explain, thousands, or millions of different species around. Hard to believe if many have come before us that none would go the K-III way with large power generating constructs detectible over great distances. Even if they later evolved beyond such things, hard to believe that millions of yrs of carving up the galaxy for this or that wouldn't leave large footprints.

I understand your point, but the basic point of the singularity idea is that in almost all cases the transition to singularity happens very fast at a certain point, forestalling the K-III stage. So, you might only get K-III civilizations in a few galaxies, and the light from those galaxies still has hundreds of millions of light years to travel before it reaches us.

I also wouldn't be surprised if intelligent life doesn't emerge all that often. I can see there being a lot of "dead" solar systems out there. I can also imagine that, as someone already said, "Cambrian explosion" events might be rare, and that when they do happen, complex organisms frequently never get past the intelligence level of birds, dolphins, elephants or chimpanzees. Throw in self-destruction in nuclear wars and rapid transitions to singularities and, yeah, you might only have two or three recognizably intelligent species per galaxy at any one time.

I don't discount Skipjack's concerns about hyper-aggressive alien species, and I also wonder if we should be broadcasting our existing openly across the EM spectrum for anyone within several light years to notice (the signals might degrade sufficient beyond there, except for specifically tightly beamed emissions). However, I do tend towards the view that to get very advanced requires a lot of cooperation between individuals in a species, and that this in turn would force evolution of something analogous to what we call empathy. I tend to think that most advanced civilizations, while probably very well armed for contingencies, would not be extremely violent.

[AcesHigh]

since few people commented on the SPACE SHOW interview with Dr Sonny White, here again is the link.

http://archive.thespaceshow.com/shows/1 ... -01-04.mp3

there is a good rebuttal to why some universities have been saying its impossible and etc.

[GIThruster]

GIT's reply is merely one of complaint and bitching, rather than being a refute of chrismb's suggestions by, simply, offering a single shred of anything known about the universe that substantiates such a claim as a shell of negative energy around a region of a space-time distortion.

I'm not qualified to argue about what warp drive ought to look like or how it ought to work, and neither are you. The difference between us is you're arrogant enough to pretend you know what you're talking about when it is obvious you do not.

What I do know is there are no prohibitions against a negative energy condition, nor a negative inertial condition. This was a point of heated debate in the 80's and the physicists at that time such as Kip Thorn clearly showed we have no reasons to think it is impossible. Just because a psycho engineer with no training in relativity wants to proclaim negative energy is impossible doesn't mean any of us should pay heed.

And seriously, continuing to refer to yourself in third person despite this is normally a sign you need a diagnosis, even after you've been told, is totally creepy.

[GIThruster]

I also wouldn't be surprised if intelligent life doesn't emerge all that often. I can see there being a lot of "dead" solar systems out there. I can also imagine that, as someone already said, "Cambrian explosion" events might be rare, and that when they do happen, complex organisms frequently never get past the intelligence level of birds, dolphins, elephants or chimpanzees. Throw in self-destruction in nuclear wars and rapid transitions to singularities and, yeah, you might only have two or three recognizably intelligent species per galaxy at any one time.

Well it only has to happen once. If it happened once billions of years ago and those folks went interstellar, they could easily have seeded all the appropriate worlds in the universe. That makes the math of biogenesis much more likely.

[williatw]

since few people commented on the SPACE SHOW interview with Dr Sonny White, here again is the link.

http://archive.thespaceshow.com/shows/1 ... -01-04.mp3

there is a good rebuttal to why some universities have been saying its impossible and etc.

I listened to it was waiting to hear what other's thought. Sonny White seemed more conservative about how soon we would have functioning warp drive ships even if the interferometry experiments go well. He seemed to be speaking more in decades before operational craft even if all goes well, especially of the superluminal variety. Seemed more optimistic about interplanetary sub-light "warping" in our Solar System. As for the rest of the more theoretical side discussed, anxious to hear what others here think..

[emanroga]

...the ability to generate large thrusts..you need to be ..running on resonance ...

If you put a tuned circuit (the piezo and the ceramics) in the feedback loop of an amplifier you get an oscillation at the resonant frequency.

(GIT = EE fail)

The oscillator needs to be in the feedback loop, but the open loop transfer function will probably have a phase shift that is undesirable, and creating an analog circuit that can correct phase without affecting gain or frequency is non-trivial. A PLL would be on my short list of options for solving the problem as I understand it.

For what it's worth if you are probably getting to the point where a discreet analog control solution offers diminishing returns. There are several good microcontrollers on the market optimized for motor control in that 100s of kHz range. I can probably be convinced to do some part selection and hardware layout work. No guarantees on my programming chops though .

On tangent - I vaguely recall that Woodward was using high stability low dielectric breakdown caps. Was that in order to alleviate frequency drift? If so, would an active controller allow him to use higher breeakdown dielectrics? That could give a factor of 4+ field strength.

[GIThruster]

That's very kind of you to offer. As it turns out, there is an Ivy League PhD who is at the top of his field, and has been working on a power solution for Jim for 2 years in his spare time. It's nearly complete. He has a very robust, flexible and powerful system that should allow Jim finally to focus his efforts on the thruster rather than the power system. This would be a huge breakthrough.

Jim is currently using cheap PZT from StemInc, commonly available on EBay, with a k value of less than 1,000. According to theory, thrust should scale with the square of the k value, and Jim is currently looking into having proprietary ceramics manufactured out of CCTO with a k of 50,000 at 100 Khz. This would be a huge step forward, but there are several issues. Apart from having to have the stuff blended, pressed, sintered, polished, sputtered, and assembled, it has not been characterized so far as the electromechanical linking in its 2w electrostrictive action, which Jim is currently using for the 2W force rectification. This is a major issue, but even if no significant 2W action is found, there is always the option to go back to driving the ceramic with a 1w+2w wave. So this seems what Jim is pressing for though I have not checked in the last week. I can tell you this interest in a next gen ceramic is monopolizing his time of late.

I'm pretty sure he'll make a large change in the thruster this coming year that ought to allow it to develop much larger thrusts than we've seen to date. With the power system and the CCTO, he could be well on his way to a commercial thruster this coming year, but my guess is not until next Fall.

PS~I think the motor controllers you're talking about--pulse width modulation controllers--are not suitable because generally they don't provide thick enough pulses. They have the same issue that pulsed DC generators have. That's the issue Bruce is solving by building his own proprietary system. He'll have complete control over the pulse width, the DC offset, the phase, the ability to generate 1w+2w waveforms, PLL, etc. It's really an amazing setup he's designed. Helps to be a brilliant PhD from Penn State.

[Joseph Chikva]

Just because a psycho engineer with no training in relativity wants to proclaim negative energy is impossible doesn't mean any of us should pay heed. Anyone with a clue will simply sit back and laugh at you, chris; for your magnificent presumptuousness and world-class ego problems.

Training in relativity?
Ask him: do two charges moving parallely to each other experience magnetic force? http://academic.mu.edu/phys/matthysd/web004/l0220.htm

Ask him: how Z-pinch occurs?

Pinches occur naturally in electrical discharges such as lightning bolts,[6] the aurora,[7] current sheets,[8] and solar flares.[9] They are also produced in the laboratory, primarily for research into fusion power, but also by hobbyists (crushing aluminium cans).

Then theta-pinch:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/e ... incher.png - image too big
Let he first learn this and only then let talk about more complex things.

[chrismb]

I'm not qualified to argue about what warp drive ought to look like or how it ought to work, and neither are you.

NO-ONE is 'qualified' to argue about warp drive. This is because it is currently a fantasy with not a shred of evidence.

What sort of qualification does one get in WARP DRIVE technology? Is it some piece of paper that geeks print out for themselves with 'Star Command Academy' at the top of it?

The difference between us is you're arrogant enough to pretend you know what you're talking about when it is obvious you do not.

The posts under chrismb cannot be 'arrogant'. They contain questions or posits.

A question cannot be 'arrogant' and claim to know anything, because it is A QUESTION!!

A posit containing a proposition of a lack of existence of something is EASILY disproved by presenting evidence of that thing.

Neither can be 'arrogant'.

GITs replies are a hopeless and ridiculous continuation of a series of posts that demonstrate a complete failure to comprehend what science and scientific questions aim to be.

Examples of how GIT's responses get it all so wrong:

Mr GIT Geography Teacher; "The Earth is an oblate spheroid"
Schoolboy; "Please sir, what is "an oblate spheroid" "
Mr GIT Geography Teacher; "You are so arrogant. You coward. You know nothing of geometry"

Mr GIT RE Teacher; "Jesus was born to the Virgin Mary"
Schoolboy; "Please sir, how can a virgin have a baby"
Mr GIT RE Teacher; "You are so arrogant. You coward. neither you nor I are not qualified to judge how God works"

Mr GIT Physics Teacher; "Atomic nucleii can be divided into protons and neutrons"
Schoolboy; "Please sir, can a proton be divided?"
Mr GIT Physics Teacher; "You are so arrogant. You coward. You are totally uneducated in the standard model."

Schoolboy; "Please sir, I've been told there is no word in French that means 'a peck [on a cheek/by a bird]? Can you tell us what it is if there is one."
Mr GIT French Teacher; "You are so arrogant. You coward. I do not need to answer your question because you have shown how ignorant you are. Just because it is claimed there is no equivalent word does not disprove that there isn't one, therefore there is but I'm not going to share it with you because you have the level of education of an ignorant schoolchild."

This is how GITs responses get it all so wrong. A question cannot be 'wrong' or 'arrogant', it is simply a question demanding an answer.

Similarly, a posit that something does not exist is easily disproved by showing that thing. There is no place for a load of bullshit bluster to try to evade addressing the simple claim that something doesn't exist. There is nothing 'arrogant' or 'ignorant' or 'whateverant' in a question, it's simply there to be answered. A posit can be an 'ignorant' posit showing a fundamental lack of knowledge of something, but it is more easily dismissed by showing evidence to the contrary that bothering to argue that there is something wrong with the actual act of posing the posit itself.

[MSimon]

I'm not qualified to argue about what warp drive ought to look like or how it ought to work, and neither are you.

NO-ONE is 'qualified' to argue about warp drive. This is because it is currently a fantasy with not a shred of evidence.

What sort of qualification does one get in WARP DRIVE technology? Is it some piece of paper that geeks print out for themselves with 'Star Command Academy' at the top of it?

The difference between us is you're arrogant enough to pretend you know what you're talking about when it is obvious you do not.

The posts under chrismb cannot be 'arrogant'. They contain questions or posits.

A question cannot be 'arrogant' and claim to know anything, because it is A QUESTION!!

A posit containing a proposition of a lack of existence of something is EASILY disproved by presenting evidence of that thing.

Neither can be 'arrogant'.

GITs replies are a hopeless and ridiculous continuation of a series of posts that demonstrate a complete failure to comprehend what science and scientific questions aim to be.

Examples of how GIT's responses get it all so wrong:

Mr GIT Geography Teacher; "The Earth is an oblate spheroid"
Schoolboy; "Please sir, what is "an oblate spheroid" "
Mr GIT Geography Teacher; "You are so arrogant. You coward. You know nothing of geometry"

Mr GIT RE Teacher; "Jesus was born to the Virgin Mary"
Schoolboy; "Please sir, how can a virgin have a baby"
Mr GIT RE Teacher; "You are so arrogant. You coward. neither you nor I are not qualified to judge how God works"

Mr GIT Physics Teacher; "Atomic nucleii can be divided into protons and neutrons"
Schoolboy; "Please sir, can a proton be divided?"
Mr GIT Physics Teacher; "You are so arrogant. You coward. You are totally uneducated in the standard model."

Schoolboy; "Please sir, I've been told there is no word in French that means 'a peck [on a cheek/by a bird]? Can you tell us what it is if there is one."
Mr GIT French Teacher; "You are so arrogant. You coward. I do not need to answer your question because you have shown how ignorant you are. Just because it is claimed there is no equivalent word does not disprove that there isn't one, therefore there is but I'm not going to share it with you because you have the level of education of an ignorant schoolchild."

This is how GITs responses get it all so wrong. A question cannot be 'wrong' or 'arrogant', it is simply a question demanding an answer.

Similarly, a posit that something does not exist is easily disproved by showing that thing. There is no place for a load of bullshit bluster to try to evade addressing the simple claim that something doesn't exist. There is nothing 'arrogant' or 'ignorant' or 'whateverant' in a question, it's simply there to be answered. A posit can be an 'ignorant' posit showing a fundamental lack of knowledge of something, but it is more easily dismissed by showing evidence to the contrary that bothering to argue that there is something wrong with the actual act of posing the posit itself.

You don't get it. Mr. GIT's urine is government inspected and approved. He is beyond reproach and simple commoners.