Mach Effect progress

[GIThruster]

Any experiment seeking to PROVE the effect is scientifically inconsequential. It may be valuable for commercial purposes (indeed will be very good for that if it works), but if it can't disprove, it ain't scientific.

As I said, science never proves anything. It merely disproves the alternatives.

That said, scientific method is useful for things other than disproof. For example, in M-E research, the IIT experiment predicted a loss of mass and found it. Since M-E theory is the only cogent theory that can explain this, it's considered a form of verification, but it is nothing like "proof". Likewise with the rotator, theory predicted a signal at the second harmonic in anti-phase with electrostriction and this is just what was found. Since there is no other theory that can explain this finding, it is a form of verification, but it is not "proof" because "proof" is never what science provides.

In the cases of the UFG and MLT, M-E theory predicts thrust, which is what we found, several orders magnitude above the noise floor of the apparatus taking the measurements. However, that thrust was much less than predicted, which has sent us scurrying for years trying to find out what has gone wrong. From this process have arisen several theories, and some forehead-slapping epiphanies that made us wonder why we thought a past approach would work at all, so significant was the mistake in the approach. Mistakes in failing to appreciate the need for bulk acceleration and for very specific modulation of the drive signals, were really in hindsight, fairly obvious mistakes, but until you make them, you don't see them.

This is all just the way science proceeds. Generally, you learn more from mistakes than from successes. It all takes time, and if the standers-by have significant emotional problems, they'll certainly scoff and mock and ridicule. Putting up with trolls is therefore part of the scientific process too. It is however entertaining, when those trolls have no idea of what they speak. . .entertaining indeed.

[IntLibber]

if as you say you are your own centre (which i have no reason to counter) then to what is your gain in momentum attributed when an me thruster is switched on?

You go one way, and the FOAM goes the other. Action = Reaction. Easy Peazy.

[IntLibber]

I thought Copernicus already over-turned such anthrocentric hubris in natural philosophy or is it just an observer bias thing, a preferred reference frame?

If you feel like being re-humbled, a view back at the the path that has been fought through the thicket of confusion and falsehoods, starting here may help

http://www.amazon.com/History-Theories- ... 0883185237

there is a second volume also. Quite comprehensive.

Copernicus disproved the solar-centric-solar-system. Nothing else. Actually, he just theorized it. Galileo gave the experimental proof.

Then Newton came along, who felt, as all later major physicists (including Mach, and Einstein, except of course the Aetherists) that inertia was a tension created by the gravity of all Far Off Mass.

Anybody who claims ME requires new physics doesn't understand existing physics.

[Giorgio]

Lord Jesus, please give us some new physics with an experimental proof before the theoretical model instead of the other way around.

Theory ALWAYS precedes proof.

I do not agree. Ideas preceed experiments and experiments generate Theories. It has been like this for most of human discoveries.
Think about Archimede, Galileo, Newton.

Chrismb is right when he says that today science is forgetting "how" to discover something new.

[Giorgio]

Any experiment seeking to PROVE the effect is scientifically inconsequential. It may be valuable for commercial purposes (indeed will be very good for that if it works), but if it can't disprove, it ain't scientific.

As I said, science never proves anything. It merely disproves the alternatives.

Except that in reality it never works.
The proof is one, the alternatives are infinite.
Should you spend your time to disprove all available alternatives to a fact you will waste your life without actually proving anything.

This is the problem with philosophy. It might make people look smart at words but when you try to apply philosophical ideas to real word situations than the majority of the times the results are just silly.

[93143]

This is the problem with philosophy. It might make people look smart at words but when you try to apply philosophical ideas to real word situations than the majority of the times the results are just silly.

You're overgeneralizing.

[icarus]

Anybody who claims ME requires new physics doesn't understand existing physics.

Interesting, so you are saying that if the right set of circumstances had arisen they may have built ME thrusters in Victorian era powered by steam engines, for instance?

ME cars?

ME planes?

ME spaceships?


http://www.contentparadise.com/productd ... x?id=10742
"Clockwork Volume 1 is a series based on a steampunk version of history - an 1888 where Queen Victoria's Empire stretches secretly to the moon, and her scientists plumb the depths of the earth, the heavens and beyond, all using steam power and mysterious radiations and formulas."

Sounds fantastical.

[chrismb]

This is the problem with philosophy. It might make people look smart at words but when you try to apply philosophical ideas to real word situations than the majority of the times the results are just silly.

You're overgeneralizing.

..but he is generally correct!

[chrismb]

if as you say you are your own centre (which i have no reason to counter) then to what is your gain in momentum attributed when an me thruster is switched on?

You go one way, and the FOAM goes the other. Action = Reaction. Easy Peazy.

Exactly.... this is how it was sold to me... but if you send something in the opposite direction, it must be its CoG that goes in that direction, because all the individual bodies that make up the rest of that foam weren't sitting still to start with! Therefore the reaction must be with respect to a cosmic CoG. This is just elementary thinking, but GIT doesn't seem to want to enter into 'elementary' discussions. It is easier to say 'hah, you don't understand A because you have not read the 12,000 pages of thesis B. If you bothered to take 20 years full-time studying these things, then you'd understand, and until then you are not worthy of making comments to those that have studied this for 20 years'.

As we know, an argument is not scientific if the advocate refuses to address elementary and fundamental points and objections. Refusing to come back to explaining the basics is a method of anti-scientific debate based on malign obfuscation. "This is far too complicated for you mere mortals to understand," says the practiced obfuscator, "(I do not dain to pass comment to you for fear of sullying my reputation)".

(PS. I am not talking about Paul March here, because he seemed to have given straight answers to those points he addressed.)

I am not against M-E.. I have said it many times, see above. What I am against is those that would seek to refuse to engage in dodging point-for-point discussions whilst getting all snooty about anyone questioning the thing they defend.

[GIThruster]

That's just silly, Chris. Science is philosophy. Science is empiricism. Only those who understand philosophy of science are real scientists. The pretenders are just technicians.

Science is philosophy. To think other just says you don't understand what science is.

[93143]

There is no need for a center of gravity of the universe because the observable universe is always smaller in size than the actual universe, so wherever you go "there you are" at your very own center of gravity of your personal light cone....

This actually isn't a trivial observation, though I don't believe it's strictly correct in an inhomogeneous universe.

Since it's supposedly the causally-connected universe that's being reacted against, it is not the entire universe, and thus it does have an easily-defined spatial CoG, whether or not it is instantaneously centred on the M-E thruster itself. So that (large) composite object, which is not the whole universe, but merely a lot of comparatively nearby matter, goes one way, and the composite object consisting of the thruster and whatever's attached to it goes the other way.

Or you could go with something like this:

implies that you can be travelling towards or away from that CoG,

Unless you were always travelling on the hyper-spherical surface azimuthally to the CoG of the cosmos ....
EDIT: In which case you would be borrowing 4-D angular momentum from the cosmos not 4-momentum, I think I can go along with that.

which I believe also makes sense, and illustrates well why the concept of a location of the CoG of the rest of the universe isn't something to get hung up on - though it isn't strictly necessary to go there, as per above.

Now, it seems to me that on a perfect hypersphere with a uniform distribution of matter, subtracting any one part would put the CoG of the remainder at the opposite side of the hypersphere. But the real universe is far enough removed from this model that I suspect going any further in this intellectual exercise would be of dubious applicability...

[GIThruster]

Not to sound as if I understand all the implications above because I don't, but just saying--worrying about CoG is like worrying about the effect of an ant walking on the surface of the Earth.

Not really an issue. Better is, come to understand Mach's Principle and the debates surrounding it, the physics coming from it for 100 years and the applications for it this last 2 decades.

CoG really is a red herring, IMHO.

[icarus]

CoG arguments are not red herrings but have a long and proven history of yielding fruitful results, as per Newton's 3 laws and many others besides. Dismissing them flippantly as such demonstrates a lack of native curiosity needed for deep physical and philosophical insights. Yet you profess profusely to have no deep understandings but you seem to know which arguments are red herrings ... how does that work are you a soothsayer or something?

Mach's principle, some call it a conjecture, has no physical, mathematical basis or definition but is a loose collection of partially formed theories based on some comments by Ernst Mach for explaining the so-called fictitious forces that arise in rotating (non-inertial) reference frames.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach%27s_principle

"You are standing in a field looking at the stars. Your arms are resting freely at your side, and you see that the distant stars are not moving. Now start spinning. The stars are whirling around you and your arms are pulled away from your body. Why should your arms be pulled away when the stars are whirling? Why should they be dangling freely when the stars don't move?"

There is no mysterious deeper insight to be had here, as yet, but vague notions of "what it might all mean", kind of like where we are with Grand Unified Theories and Theories of Everything. The closest concrete physics to arise from the 'principle' is the frame dragging effect (Lens-Thirring effect) of GR that indicates an inertial frame near a massive rotating body will precess, which has not actually been measured with great success.

It is mostly a bunch of theoretical speculations at this point, post the experimental data and things may change.

[KitemanSA]

Theory ALWAYS precedes proof.

That is simply not true, and is a very modern take on science. Science used to be about discovering something, and once a phenomenon is discovered then you'd posit a theory to account for it. Not enough discoveries these days to see that happen, any more.

I think you just said, "no, you are right"!

People "discover something", i.e. find info that contradicts the conventional wisdom (prevalent theory, religious dogma, whatever). Once the old theory is discarded, at least by some, a new theory is posited that covers the new data. THEN hypothesis and test. A lack of disproof constitutes as good a proof as one ever gets in science. Which is what I said in the first place.

That a new theory covers existing fact is NOT proof. Many theories, even rediculously inane theories will cover known fact. Only hypothesis and test lead to "proof". And if the hypothesis is not disprovable, it is religion, not science.

[KitemanSA]

kiteflyer:

You just can't leave it alone, can you? Not in your nature to be civil?