Mach Effect progress

[GIThruster]

The above is the right attitude and entirely correct. Evidence in science is really just falsifying the alternatives.

In the case of a thruster, you eliminate spurious sources that might show up on the balance as thrust. That's the best you can do, and right now with the tiny uN thrusts we're seeing, there's all manner of spurious that needs to be ruled out.

Of course, with even huge thrusts, there's no way to rule out spurious sources of thrust we've never imagined. Could be there are invisible gremlins pushing on the balance beam and that's why there's no such thing as proof. What we can show is we don't have thermal, or ion wind, or e coupling or b coupling, etc. That's what the work is all about, and Tom is spot on when he says that this work is extremely difficult given the thrust levels we've seen. uN thrusts can be explained by all four of the examples above unless you provide specific controls to eliminate these sources.

BTW, this is why the rotator evidence is so impressive. It side-steps the troubles you have when using a balance. The only phenomena known that produces a 2w signal in a situation like the rotator is electrostriction, and it is in anti-phase with M-E, so its fairly conclusive you have what you think you have based upon the unique signature M-E theory predicts.

[cuddihy]

The above is the right attitude and entirely correct. Evidence in science is really just falsifying the alternatives.

In the case of a thruster, you eliminate spurious sources that might show up on the balance as thrust. That's the best you can do, and right now with the tiny uN thrusts we're seeing, there's all manner of spurious that needs to be ruled out.

Actually the best you should be able to do is improve the thrust of the thruster to the point where the thrust is physically substantially (orders of magnitude) greater than even the largest possible spurious source of thrust.

Eliminating specific likely spurious sources is a bit of a non-falseafiable sideshow. It attempts to prove a negative, yet the likelihood of a spurious conventional source that hasn't been correctly eliminated is high as you say below.

Of course, with even huge thrusts, there's no way to rule out spurious sources of thrust we've never imagined. Could be there are invisible gremlins pushing on the balance beam and that's why there's no such thing as proof. What we can show is we don't have thermal, or ion wind, or e coupling or b coupling, etc. That's what the work is all about, and Tom is spot on when he says that this work is extremely difficult given the thrust levels we've seen. uN thrusts can be explained by all four of the examples above unless you provide specific controls to eliminate these sources.

BTW, this is why the rotator evidence is so impressive. It side-steps the troubles you have when using a balance. The only phenomena known that produces a 2w signal in a situation like the rotator is electrostriction, and it is in anti-phase with M-E, so its fairly conclusive you have what you think you have based upon the unique signature M-E theory predicts.

I'm not sure it's really accurate to say that "M-E theory predicts" the signal that is under consideration.

Prediction requires a consistent set of inputs and outputs, and if you consider the litany of attempts by different individuals that Paul March catalogued recently, I counted 3 experimenters who saw results "in agreement" with predictions; Woodward, Mahood, and March, 6 experimenters who saw results "not in agreement" or in other words, NO THRUST, and 1 "thrust, but entirely not in agreement with prediction either" (Buldrini).

That's .300 for the reality matching predictions theory, not really a bad batting average in basball, but pretty bad for "science."

And that's counting the three "fors" as "for," even though the scaling inconsistency is another point against.

[GIThruster]

Sorry but no, that's not the way science works, and you have your facts wrong as well.

Eliminating spurious sources is not done by calculating the expected quantity of the source and having a signal much larger. That's just silly nonsense and shows you've never studied scientific controls before. Even if the signal is smaller than the noise sources, the signal can be retrieved and we do this with transistor radios as a matter of course. Much more important is to show that the signal you have is not spurious. To do this, you first have to have a signal a couple decades larger than the resolution of the measurement device. . .perhaps this is what you were thinking of? Well as I said the other day, the ARC Lite resolves down to 10nN. If you have a 1uN signal, that's enough to say you have a signal. Now you have to show it's not from a spurious source.

For example, if you're testing against b field coupling, you can run the device, then run it with a Faraday shield, then run it with extra Mu metal shielding etc. You can walk around and wave magnets and you can otherwise seek to alter the balance by altering the field around it. If in all these tests you always have the same signal, you have confidence to say you don't have b-field coupling posing as a signal. There is also the fact the devices to date all use AC, so it's pretty hard to see how you'd have net b coupling.

Take another example. Lets say you want to eliminate ionic wind and thermal. You place the device in vacuum. If you get the same readings at E-1T, E-2T and E-3T, that you did with no vacuum, you have eliminated the possibility of those issues contributing to the signal on the balance and you really don't need to draw harder vacuum. If there were ion wind or thermal contributions posing as a signal, they would have betrayed themselves. (Also note that a thermal or ionic wind source would not have the prompt decay when sweeping, so this is another reason to rule them out.) So what you've done is eliminate the possibilities.

As to the facts of the matter you've introduced, they're not quite "factual". For instance, Woodward and Mayhood worked together. Tom was Jim's graduate student and all their experiments were performed in the same lab at Fullerton. Buldrini had only two days to test the item which is really not even enough to set up a test. Woodward has done the vast majority of the tests over the years. Pretending two days work in Austria is comparable to 15 years full time work is a heinous error. Likewise, comparing a simple on/off self contained test with years in the lab is a horrendous error. These things are not nearly so easily compared, for many reasons I've already mentioned.

In the end, it really doesn't matter how many experiments go wrong. There are so many ways to mess up in this work, a negative result doesn't mean much except one wants to figure out what went wrong. For instance, the fact many of the MLT attempts produced disappointing results is probably due to the lack of bulk acceleration produced in designs with ceramics sintered to repress their piezo-action. When the MLT was designed as a "silver bullet" to avoid the acoustic impedance troubles in the UFG, there was no real appreciation for the need for bulk acceleration--it was thought the accelerations in the mobile ion would be enough. We now know this was plainly mistaken. The entire ceramic lattice needs to accelerate. It was because of the MLT tests that this conjecture was formed--which is just how science is supposed to work.

Don't know what you mean about the "scaling inconsistency". To the best of my knowledge, all tests capable of measuring scaling have confirmed the predicted scale. Most experiments do not however, produce enough thrust to so test scaling, because we're not seeing enough thrust at full power to power down and see the scaling. The rotator experiment is the exception and it certainly did demonstrate the predicted scaling.

You're concerned about the right issues, but you seem to be making some incorrect presumptions about them.

[cuddihy]

Sorry but no, that's not the way science works, and you have your facts wrong as well.

Eliminating spurious sources is not done by calculating the expected quantity of the source and having a signal much larger. That's just silly nonsense and shows you've never studied scientific controls before.

Well, you're right, I haven't. However, I believe I have the concept right even if I expressed it wrong. It's just common sense, that if your key "signal" which proves the effect is of a similar amplitude to spurious sources, you end up not proving much without VERY convincing arguments that the signal of interest is what you say it is.

Even if the signal is smaller than the noise sources, the signal can be retrieved and we do this with transistor radios as a matter of course. Much more important is to show that the signal you have is not spurious. To do this, you first have to have a signal a couple decades larger than the resolution of the measurement device. . .perhaps this is what you were thinking of?

precisely.

Well as I said the other day, the ARC Lite resolves down to 10nN. If you have a 1uN signal, that's enough to say you have a signal. Now you have to show it's not from a spurious source.

For example, if you're testing against b field coupling, you can run the device, then run it with a Faraday shield, then run it with extra Mu metal shielding etc. You can walk around and wave magnets and you can otherwise seek to alter the balance by altering the field around it. If in all these tests you always have the same signal, you have confidence to say you don't have b-field coupling posing as a signal. There is also the fact the devices to date all use AC, so it's pretty hard to see how you'd have net b coupling.

Take another example. Lets say you want to eliminate ionic wind and thermal. You place the device in vacuum. If you get the same readings at E-1T, E-2T and E-3T, that you did with no vacuum, you have eliminated the possibility of those issues contributing to the signal on the balance and you really don't need to draw harder vacuum. If there were ion wind or thermal contributions posing as a signal, they would have betrayed themselves. (Also note that a thermal or ionic wind source would not have the prompt decay when sweeping, so this is another reason to rule them out.) So what you've done is eliminate the possibilities.

As to the facts of the matter you've introduced, they're not quite "factual".

For instance, Woodward and Mayhood worked together. Tom was Jim's graduate student and all their experiments were performed in the same lab at Fullerton. Buldrini had only two days to test the item which is really not even enough to set up a test. Woodward has done the vast majority of the tests over the years. Pretending two days work in Austria is comparable to 15 years full time work is a heinous error. Likewise, comparing a simple on/off self contained test with years in the lab is a horrendous error. These things are not nearly so easily compared, for many reasons I've already mentioned.

In the end, it really doesn't matter how many experiments go wrong. There are so many ways to mess up in this work, a negative result doesn't mean much except one wants to figure out what went wrong. For instance, the fact many of the MLT attempts produced disappointing results is probably due to the lack of bulk acceleration produced in designs with ceramics sintered to repress their piezo-action. When the MLT was designed as a "silver bullet" to avoid the acoustic impedance troubles in the UFG, there was no real appreciation for the need for bulk acceleration--it was thought the accelerations in the mobile ion would be enough. We now know this was plainly mistaken. The entire ceramic lattice needs to accelerate. It was because of the MLT tests that this conjecture was formed--which is just how science is supposed to work.

Ok, I was drawing with some rather broad strokes, but I think it's warranted given the caveats to each and every example provided. I'm trying to come up with a reasonable picture from a broader perspective. That requires generalizing because if everything is a different case, it doesn't help much in forming a picture of where the evidence is overall.

Although I have found the theory fairly convincing up until Dr. Fuerst's comments at NSF recently, I don't buy modifying the required conditions every time an experiment seems to disprove the theory.

Don't know what you mean about the "scaling inconsistency". To the best of my knowledge, all tests capable of measuring scaling have confirmed the predicted scale. Most experiments do not however, produce enough thrust to so test scaling, because we're not seeing enough thrust at full power to power down and see the scaling. The rotator experiment is the exception and it certainly did demonstrate the predicted scaling.

You're concerned about the right issues, but you seem to be making some incorrect presumptions about them.

From what I read of Woodward's and Mahood's experiments, to date, they conceded the Oak Ridge Boys' point that none of the thrust produced tracks with or is proportional to the predicted thrust given input voltage, frequency, and power. Additionally, that the thrust output did not change proportionally to the voltage as expected. Perhaps I have misunderstood that point, but that is what I have gotten out of the previous experiements. That's what the scaling point refers to.

[GeeGee]

Although I have found the theory fairly convincing up until Dr. Fuerst's comments at NSF recently, I don't buy modifying the required conditions every time an experiment seems to disprove the theory.

I am weary of Dr. Fuerst's criticisms. My feeling is that he has not actually read any of the published papers. He claimed in one post that Woodward is separating gravitational and inertial mass, then in the reddit thread claimed the MLT works by violating conservation of momentum. Unless I've totally misunderstood the hypothesis, neither of these is claimed by Woodward.

We're also only hearing one side of the argument. Woodward is probably addressing him in e-mails that we're not privy to.

[paulmarch]

Sorry but no, that's not the way science works, and you have your facts wrong as well.

Eliminating spurious sources is not done by calculating the expected quantity of the source and having a signal much larger. That's just silly nonsense and shows you've never studied scientific controls before.

Well, you're right, I haven't. However, I believe I have the concept right even if I expressed it wrong. It's just common sense, that if your key "signal" which proves the effect is of a similar amplitude to spurious sources, you end up not proving much without VERY convincing arguments that the signal of interest is what you say it is.

Even if the signal is smaller than the noise sources, the signal can be retrieved and we do this with transistor radios as a matter of course. Much more important is to show that the signal you have is not spurious. To do this, you first have to have a signal a couple decades larger than the resolution of the measurement device. . .perhaps this is what you were thinking of?

precisely.

Well as I said the other day, the ARC Lite resolves down to 10nN. If you have a 1uN signal, that's enough to say you have a signal. Now you have to show it's not from a spurious source.

For example, if you're testing against b field coupling, you can run the device, then run it with a Faraday shield, then run it with extra Mu metal shielding etc. You can walk around and wave magnets and you can otherwise seek to alter the balance by altering the field around it. If in all these tests you always have the same signal, you have confidence to say you don't have b-field coupling posing as a signal. There is also the fact the devices to date all use AC, so it's pretty hard to see how you'd have net b coupling.

Take another example. Lets say you want to eliminate ionic wind and thermal. You place the device in vacuum. If you get the same readings at E-1T, E-2T and E-3T, that you did with no vacuum, you have eliminated the possibility of those issues contributing to the signal on the balance and you really don't need to draw harder vacuum. If there were ion wind or thermal contributions posing as a signal, they would have betrayed themselves. (Also note that a thermal or ionic wind source would not have the prompt decay when sweeping, so this is another reason to rule them out.) So what you've done is eliminate the possibilities.

As to the facts of the matter you've introduced, they're not quite "factual".

For instance, Woodward and Mayhood worked together. Tom was Jim's graduate student and all their experiments were performed in the same lab at Fullerton. Buldrini had only two days to test the item which is really not even enough to set up a test. Woodward has done the vast majority of the tests over the years. Pretending two days work in Austria is comparable to 15 years full time work is a heinous error. Likewise, comparing a simple on/off self contained test with years in the lab is a horrendous error. These things are not nearly so easily compared, for many reasons I've already mentioned.

In the end, it really doesn't matter how many experiments go wrong. There are so many ways to mess up in this work, a negative result doesn't mean much except one wants to figure out what went wrong. For instance, the fact many of the MLT attempts produced disappointing results is probably due to the lack of bulk acceleration produced in designs with ceramics sintered to repress their piezo-action. When the MLT was designed as a "silver bullet" to avoid the acoustic impedance troubles in the UFG, there was no real appreciation for the need for bulk acceleration--it was thought the accelerations in the mobile ion would be enough. We now know this was plainly mistaken. The entire ceramic lattice needs to accelerate. It was because of the MLT tests that this conjecture was formed--which is just how science is supposed to work.

Ok, I was drawing with some rather broad strokes, but I think it's warranted given the caveats to each and every example provided. I'm trying to come up with a reasonable picture from a broader perspective. That requires generalizing because if everything is a different case, it doesn't help much in forming a picture of where the evidence is overall.

Although I have found the theory fairly convincing up until Dr. Fuerst's comments at NSF recently, I don't buy modifying the required conditions every time an experiment seems to disprove the theory.

Don't know what you mean about the "scaling inconsistency". To the best of my knowledge, all tests capable of measuring scaling have confirmed the predicted scale. Most experiments do not however, produce enough thrust to so test scaling, because we're not seeing enough thrust at full power to power down and see the scaling. The rotator experiment is the exception and it certainly did demonstrate the predicted scaling.

You're concerned about the right issues, but you seem to be making some incorrect presumptions about them.

From what I read of Woodward's and Mahood's experiments, to date, they conceded the Oak Ridge Boys' point that none of the thrust produced tracks with or is proportional to the predicted thrust given input voltage, frequency, and power. Additionally, that the thrust output did not change proportionally to the voltage as expected. Perhaps I have misunderstood that point, but that is what I have gotten out of the previous experiements. That's what the scaling point refers to.

Tom:

"From what I read of Woodward's and Mahood's experiments, to date, they conceded the Oak Ridge Boys' point that none of the thrust produced tracks with or is proportional to the predicted thrust given input voltage, frequency, and power. Additionally, that the thrust output did not change proportionally to the voltage as expected. Perhaps I have misunderstood that point, but that is what I have gotten out of the previous experiements."

Sorry, but you need to back-up and punt on that position. Woodward in his MLT and rotary delta mass experiments during the 2000s has demonstrated many times now that the M-E's predicted cubic voltage scaling rule for the delta-mass production is correct and so have I with my MLT experiments. When we combine my MLT results at ~2.0 MHz to ~4.0 MHz with Woodward's ~50 kHz MLT work, we also have confirmed the M-E's predicted delta-mass cubic frequency scaling in MLT class thrusters as well. I've posted a lot of this data over at NSF over the past few years if you care to find and appreciated what I was at trying, apparently unsuccessfully, to show folks. I can also send you this M-E data directly if you are of a mind to review it.

Best,

Paul M.

[ScottL]

Hi Paul,

I like the idea of the work being done by Woodward and yourself. I do have a question though. I'm wondering how close we are in terms of budget and research to showing a device with significant lift that everyone can point at and go, "ohhhhhh?" I definitely appreciate the level of sophistication that goes into designing experiments and following through with research, but there's usually a crowd pleasing demonstration somewhere along the way and I'd love to get an idea as to the progress with regard to such a demonstration. Thanks in advance for any input.

[GIThruster]

Jim said he hopes to see higher thrusts in March or April.

[GIThruster]

Although I have found the theory fairly convincing up until Dr. Fuerst's comments at NSF recently, I don't buy modifying the required conditions every time an experiment seems to disprove the theory.

I think there needs to be balance here. When you get a null result, you can do one of three things: you can say you've falsified the theory and in its narrowest sense, the theory that one specific implementation ought to work is falsified. You can also improve the theory by wondering why the implementation didn't work and finding an answer. This doesn't happen easily and you're right, if you simply altered the theory each time you had a null result, you could wander from iteration to iteration of the theory itself for ages. You therefore need to have very strong warrant for belief in your improved theory, which is just what happened with the "Bulk Acceleration Conjecture". Nembo derived that improvement mathematically. It wasn't a simple guess. Third thing you can do with a null result is nothing. That happens a lot. When Dr. Cummins did his coke-can MLT build a few years ago, there were two strong possibilities presented as to why it didn't work, and several suggestions how to fix these. The MLT was not mounted in a way to connect it well to its reaction mass. That would have been easy to fix. The ceramic was not polarized at all, and polarizing it would have been fairly easy and would have provided the bulk acceleration needed, if only in part since it was sintered to reduce piezo-action. Trouble was, Dr. Cummins was out of time, so he was never able to apply any of these suggestions to his work.

Same thing happened with Dr. Cramer's "Mach Guitar" experiment years ago. The work was funded by NASA and administrated through the University of Washington. When the funding ran out, regardless of the project's phase of completion, it had to be closed down. That's just what happens so you get an "inconclusive" result. Dr. Cramer had many paths left to pursue before he would have called his work a "null" result, so he called it "inconclusive".

There really does need to be three options--positive, null and inconclusive. If you force the issue so you only have two, you certainly end in creating more confusion than avoiding it.

From my dealings with Dr. Fuerst, he does not appreciate this. He's used a lot of rhetoric to rationalize his casual dismissal of the facts and his refusal to look at the theory, and is much more interested in teaching GR over at NSF. He makes a lot of blanket statements he's not willing to support, both publicly and privately and his reasoning is often juvenile. For instance, when I asked him if he'd read any of the papers forwarded to him, he said he didn't need to, started telling me about how brilliant he is and asked if I've read his papers. That's a pretty personal and off-topic response to a very appropriate question, and I got a lot of such responses. They were all lengthy. He loves the sound of his own voice, but in the end, they were all rationalizations of how and why he's able to dismiss work he hasn't read and doesn't understand.

[cuddihy]

Although I have found the theory fairly convincing up until Dr. Fuerst's comments at NSF recently, I don't buy modifying the required conditions every time an experiment seems to disprove the theory.

I think there needs to be balance here. When you get a null result, you can do one of three things: you can say you've falsified the theory and in its narrowest sense, the theory that one specific implementation ought to work is falsified. You can also improve the theory by wondering why the implementation didn't work and finding an answer. This doesn't happen easily and you're right, if you simply altered the theory each time you had a null result, you could wander from iteration to iteration of the theory itself for ages. You therefore need to have very strong warrant for belief in your improved theory, which is just what happened with the "Bulk Acceleration Conjecture". Nembo derived that improvement mathematically. It wasn't a simple guess. Third thing you can do with a null result is nothing. That happens a lot. When Dr. Cummins did his coke-can MLT build a few years ago, there were two strong possibilities presented as to why it didn't work, and several suggestions how to fix these. The MLT was not mounted in a way to connect it well to its reaction mass. That would have been easy to fix. The ceramic was not polarized at all, and polarizing it would have been fairly easy and would have provided the bulk acceleration needed, if only in part since it was sintered to reduce piezo-action. Trouble was, Dr. Cummins was out of time, so he was never able to apply any of these suggestions to his work.

Same thing happened with Dr. Cramer's "Mach Guitar" experiment years ago. The work was funded by NASA and administrated through the University of Washington. When the funding ran out, regardless of the project's phase of completion, it had to be closed down. That's just what happens so you get an "inconclusive" result. Dr. Cramer had many paths left to pursue before he would have called his work a "null" result, so he called it "inconclusive".

There really does need to be three options--positive, null and inconclusive. If you force the issue so you only have two, you certainly end in creating more confusion than avoiding it.

This is a fair point, but it cuts both ways, as any "null" can be turned into an "inconclusive" merely by asserting that you MAY have gotten some particular aspect of the construction wrong. Just the same, any "positive" can also be turned into "inconclusive" by asserting that a spurious source MAY NOT have been eliminated. Again, it is not really a falsifiable proposition. It's really one for the law of diminishing returns.

It doesn't leave you in any different place than where I stated it -- inconclusive results that were null but did not have resources to go until positive should be considered null, not "unable to be scored" just as "positive" results that were not done with every potential spurious source clearly eliminated are considered "positive". Otherwise under the same rules you have to eliminate EVERY positive result except perhaps Woodward's most recent (because the spurious source elimination IS exhaustive).

From my dealings with Dr. Fuerst, he does not appreciate this. He's used a lot of rhetoric to rationalize his casual dismissal of the facts and his refusal to look at the theory, and is much more interested in teaching GR over at NSF. He makes a lot of blanket statements he's not willing to support, both publicly and privately and his reasoning is often juvenile. For instance, when I asked him if he'd read any of the papers forwarded to him, he said he didn't need to, started telling me about how brilliant he is and asked if I've read his papers. That's a pretty personal and off-topic response to a very appropriate question, and I got a lot of such responses. They were all lengthy. He loves the sound of his own voice, but in the end, they were all rationalizations of how and why he's able to dismiss work he hasn't read and doesn't understand.

I haven't seen that publicly, and I am skeptical he would write the below without having read the "Flux Capacitors" paper,

Paul, this isn't the problem. The issues with M-E propulsion have nothing to do with the theory of inertia! Any theory at all will do, so long as it couples to the gravitational mass/energy distribution.

The issue is one of engineering. You simply cannot construct a gravitational mass/energy distribution that will have a time-varying monopole or dipole moment. To do so requires you to be able to create negative gravitational mass/energy.

The current propulsion model tries to use a matter dipole... but it has a mistake where important terms are left out. Add those terms, and the purported dipole disappears.

Physically, the lowest multipole order that is possible is the quadrapole. This unfortunately lowers the magnitude of any effect enormously. The need for a varying quadrapole moment is a very well known result. Trying to ignore it doesn't do the M-E folks any favour

although I don't yet understand the basis for this statement, being that the dude is a physicist with a doctorate specializing in relativity, I'll take it on faith until I see a rebuttal from Woodward or another physicist that makes as much sense, or until I do a lot more study myself.

I don't generally respect an appeal to authority, but in the case of an area where one is too ignorant to judge the accuracy of the statement oneself, an appeal to authority is appropriate until a similar level of authority offers a sensical rebuttal.

[cuddihy]

Although I have found the theory fairly convincing up until Dr. Fuerst's comments at NSF recently, I don't buy modifying the required conditions every time an experiment seems to disprove the theory.

I think there needs to be balance here. When you get a null result, you can do one of three things: you can say you've falsified the theory and in its narrowest sense, the theory that one specific implementation ought to work is falsified. You can also improve the theory by wondering why the implementation didn't work and finding an answer. This doesn't happen easily and you're right, if you simply altered the theory each time you had a null result, you could wander from iteration to iteration of the theory itself for ages. You therefore need to have very strong warrant for belief in your improved theory, which is just what happened with the "Bulk Acceleration Conjecture". Nembo derived that improvement mathematically. It wasn't a simple guess. Third thing you can do with a null result is nothing. That happens a lot. When Dr. Cummins did his coke-can MLT build a few years ago, there were two strong possibilities presented as to why it didn't work, and several suggestions how to fix these. The MLT was not mounted in a way to connect it well to its reaction mass. That would have been easy to fix. The ceramic was not polarized at all, and polarizing it would have been fairly easy and would have provided the bulk acceleration needed, if only in part since it was sintered to reduce piezo-action. Trouble was, Dr. Cummins was out of time, so he was never able to apply any of these suggestions to his work.

Same thing happened with Dr. Cramer's "Mach Guitar" experiment years ago. The work was funded by NASA and administrated through the University of Washington. When the funding ran out, regardless of the project's phase of completion, it had to be closed down. That's just what happens so you get an "inconclusive" result. Dr. Cramer had many paths left to pursue before he would have called his work a "null" result, so he called it "inconclusive".

There really does need to be three options--positive, null and inconclusive. If you force the issue so you only have two, you certainly end in creating more confusion than avoiding it.

This is a fair point, but it cuts both ways, as any "null" can be turned into an "inconclusive" merely by asserting that you MAY have gotten some particular aspect of the construction wrong. Just the same, any "positive" can also be turned into "inconclusive" by asserting that a spurious source MAY NOT have been eliminated. Again, it is not really a falsifiable proposition. It's really one for the law of diminishing returns.

It doesn't leave you in any different place than where I stated it -- inconclusive results that were null but did not have resources to go until positive should be considered null, not "unable to be scored" just as "positive" results that were not done with every potential spurious source clearly eliminated are considered "positive". Otherwise under the same rules you have to eliminate EVERY positive result except perhaps Woodward's most recent (because the spurious source elimination IS exhaustive).

From my dealings with Dr. Fuerst, he does not appreciate this. He's used a lot of rhetoric to rationalize his casual dismissal of the facts and his refusal to look at the theory, and is much more interested in teaching GR over at NSF. He makes a lot of blanket statements he's not willing to support, both publicly and privately and his reasoning is often juvenile. For instance, when I asked him if he'd read any of the papers forwarded to him, he said he didn't need to, started telling me about how brilliant he is and asked if I've read his papers. That's a pretty personal and off-topic response to a very appropriate question, and I got a lot of such responses. They were all lengthy. He loves the sound of his own voice, but in the end, they were all rationalizations of how and why he's able to dismiss work he hasn't read and doesn't understand.

I haven't seen that publicly, and I am skeptical he would write the below without having read the "Flux Capacitors" paper,

Paul, this isn't the problem. The issues with M-E propulsion have nothing to do with the theory of inertia! Any theory at all will do, so long as it couples to the gravitational mass/energy distribution.

The issue is one of engineering. You simply cannot construct a gravitational mass/energy distribution that will have a time-varying monopole or dipole moment. To do so requires you to be able to create negative gravitational mass/energy.

The current propulsion model tries to use a matter dipole... but it has a mistake where important terms are left out. Add those terms, and the purported dipole disappears.

Physically, the lowest multipole order that is possible is the quadrapole. This unfortunately lowers the magnitude of any effect enormously. The need for a varying quadrapole moment is a very well known result. Trying to ignore it doesn't do the M-E folks any favour

although I don't yet understand the basis for this statement, being that the dude is a physicist with a doctorate specializing in relativity, I'll take it on faith until I see a rebuttal from Woodward or another physicist that makes as much sense, or until I do a lot more study myself.

I don't generally respect an appeal to authority, but in the case of an area where one is too ignorant to judge the accuracy of the statement oneself, an appeal to authority is appropriate until a similar level of authority offers a sensical rebuttal.

[cuddihy]

Although I have found the theory fairly convincing up until Dr. Fuerst's comments at NSF recently, I don't buy modifying the required conditions every time an experiment seems to disprove the theory.

I think there needs to be balance here. When you get a null result, you can do one of three things: you can say you've falsified the theory and in its narrowest sense, the theory that one specific implementation ought to work is falsified. You can also improve the theory by wondering why the implementation didn't work and finding an answer. This doesn't happen easily and you're right, if you simply altered the theory each time you had a null result, you could wander from iteration to iteration of the theory itself for ages. You therefore need to have very strong warrant for belief in your improved theory, which is just what happened with the "Bulk Acceleration Conjecture". Nembo derived that improvement mathematically. It wasn't a simple guess. Third thing you can do with a null result is nothing. That happens a lot. When Dr. Cummins did his coke-can MLT build a few years ago, there were two strong possibilities presented as to why it didn't work, and several suggestions how to fix these. The MLT was not mounted in a way to connect it well to its reaction mass. That would have been easy to fix. The ceramic was not polarized at all, and polarizing it would have been fairly easy and would have provided the bulk acceleration needed, if only in part since it was sintered to reduce piezo-action. Trouble was, Dr. Cummins was out of time, so he was never able to apply any of these suggestions to his work.

Same thing happened with Dr. Cramer's "Mach Guitar" experiment years ago. The work was funded by NASA and administrated through the University of Washington. When the funding ran out, regardless of the project's phase of completion, it had to be closed down. That's just what happens so you get an "inconclusive" result. Dr. Cramer had many paths left to pursue before he would have called his work a "null" result, so he called it "inconclusive".

There really does need to be three options--positive, null and inconclusive. If you force the issue so you only have two, you certainly end in creating more confusion than avoiding it.

This is a fair point, but it cuts both ways, as any "null" can be turned into an "inconclusive" merely by asserting that you MAY have gotten some particular aspect of the construction wrong. Just the same, any "positive" can also be turned into "inconclusive" by asserting that a spurious source MAY NOT have been eliminated. Again, it is not really a falsifiable proposition. It's really one for the law of diminishing returns.

It doesn't leave you in any different place than where I stated it -- inconclusive results that were null but did not have resources to go until positive should be considered null, not "unable to be scored" just as "positive" results that were not done with every potential spurious source clearly eliminated are considered "positive". Otherwise under the same rules you have to eliminate EVERY positive result except perhaps Woodward's most recent (because the spurious source elimination IS exhaustive).

From my dealings with Dr. Fuerst, he does not appreciate this. He's used a lot of rhetoric to rationalize his casual dismissal of the facts and his refusal to look at the theory, and is much more interested in teaching GR over at NSF. He makes a lot of blanket statements he's not willing to support, both publicly and privately and his reasoning is often juvenile. For instance, when I asked him if he'd read any of the papers forwarded to him, he said he didn't need to, started telling me about how brilliant he is and asked if I've read his papers. That's a pretty personal and off-topic response to a very appropriate question, and I got a lot of such responses. They were all lengthy. He loves the sound of his own voice, but in the end, they were all rationalizations of how and why he's able to dismiss work he hasn't read and doesn't understand.

I haven't seen that publicly, and I am skeptical he would write the below without having read the "Flux Capacitors" paper,

Paul, this isn't the problem. The issues with M-E propulsion have nothing to do with the theory of inertia! Any theory at all will do, so long as it couples to the gravitational mass/energy distribution.

The issue is one of engineering. You simply cannot construct a gravitational mass/energy distribution that will have a time-varying monopole or dipole moment. To do so requires you to be able to create negative gravitational mass/energy.

The current propulsion model tries to use a matter dipole... but it has a mistake where important terms are left out. Add those terms, and the purported dipole disappears.

Physically, the lowest multipole order that is possible is the quadrapole. This unfortunately lowers the magnitude of any effect enormously. The need for a varying quadrapole moment is a very well known result. Trying to ignore it doesn't do the M-E folks any favour

although I don't yet understand the basis for this statement, being that the dude is a physicist with a doctorate specializing in relativity, I'll take it on faith until I see a rebuttal from Woodward or another physicist that makes as much sense, or until I do a lot more study myself.

I don't generally respect an appeal to authority, but in the case of an area where one is too ignorant to judge the accuracy of the statement oneself, an appeal to authority is appropriate until a similar level of authority offers a sensical rebuttal.

Incidentally, there is a piece of me that says, "but Woodward's theory is stating that you have positive & negative ME contributions everytime you have an inertial reaction...so that's an a prior assumption you're making..."

[GeeGee]

I don't generally respect an appeal to authority, but in the case of an area where one is too ignorant to judge the accuracy of the statement oneself, an appeal to authority is appropriate until a similar level of authority offers a sensical rebuttal.

I too would like to see Dr. Woodward's rebuttal to this assertion. Paul mentioned at NSF that Woodward was writing up a response to Fuerst.

[GIThruster]

I don't generally respect an appeal to authority, but in the case of an area where one is too ignorant to judge the accuracy of the statement oneself, an appeal to authority is appropriate until a similar level of authority offers a sensical rebuttal.

I too would like to see Dr. Woodward's rebuttal to this assertion. Paul mentioned at NSF that Woodward was writing up a response to Fuerst.

I haven't heard that Jim is building a response to Fuerst. I think and hope that's unlikely.

It makes no sense, for someone like Jim who is involved most hours of every day, year after year and onto almost two decades, to waste precious effort on a guy who hasn't read any of Jim's papers.

And just saying true here: I don't know what Dr. Fuerst's qualifications are, but I haven't found ANY published works of his. I know about more than 40 of Jim's. Seems entirely likely to me that Fuerst is suffering the physicist's equivalent of penis envy.

I can't say why Fuerst makes the judgements he does. To say the truth, looks like he's a prophet of the status quo--someone who thinks all original ideas are bankrupt.

Don't wait on guys like Fuerst for real observations. Seems to me he's busy supporting the status quo, to pay his bills; and can't be bothered to look at cutting-edge physics.

[GeeGee]

I haven't heard that Jim is building a response to Fuerst. I think and hope that's unlikely.

It makes no sense, for someone like Jim who is involved most hours of every day, year after year and onto almost two decades, to waste precious effort on a guy who hasn't read any of Jim's papers.

And just saying true here: I don't know what Dr. Fuerst's qualifications are, but I haven't found ANY published works of his. I know about more than 40 of Jim's. Seems entirely likely to me that Fuerst is suffering the physicist's equivalent of penis envy.

I can't say why Fuerst makes the judgements he does. To say the truth, looks like he's a prophet of the status quo--someone who thinks all original ideas are bankrupt.

Don't wait on guys like Fuerst for real observations. Seems to me he's busy supporting the status quo, to pay his bills; and can't be bothered to look at cutting-edge physics.

If you do a search on "General relativistic radiative transfer," you will find a couple of his papers.

While I understand your frustration, it is best to stay away from ad-hominem attacks. Fuerst has not made any ad-hominem towards Woodward and he has made criticisms that no one on NSF nor here quite understands (particularly the post cuddihy quoted). Since I don't understand his argument, it would be nice to see a retort from Woodward explaining what Fuerst is talking about and whether or not his point is valid. At the very least, we'd all learn something.