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Re: EM Drive

Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2018 1:20 am
by Diogenes
Scientists receive $1.3 million to study new propulsion idea for spacecraft



Spacecraft and satellites could in future be launched into space without the need for fuel, thanks to a revolutionary new theory.

Dr Mike McCulloch, from the University of Plymouth, first put forward the idea of quantised inertia (QI) – through which he believes light can be converted into thrust – in 2007.

He has now received $1.3million from the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for a four-year study which aims to make the concept a reality.

https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/news/scienti ... spacecraft

Re: EM Drive

Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2018 4:21 am
by Taliesin
Or Intense laser light exciting electrons as propulsion?

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 141422.htm

Re: EM Drive

Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2018 10:32 am
by williatw
Diogenes wrote:Scientists receive $1.3 million to study new propulsion idea for spacecraft


From your posted link:

The theory has already predicted galaxy rotation without dark matter, and the fact that if a system is accelerated enough – such as a spinning disc or light bouncing between mirrors – the Unruh waves it sees can be influenced by a shield. Therefore, if a damper is placed above the object, it should produce a new kind of upwards thrust.
Sound like Dr Mike McCulloch work is similar to Shawyer's EMDrive:

EmDrive: British scientist's 'new physics' theory accidentally proves controversial space propulsion works

British physicist Dr Mike McCulloch of Plymouth University has presented results on a new theory.
And while he respects Shawyer for his invention and believes that ultra-fast propellant-less space travel will one day be possible, like many scientists McCulloch does not agree that Shawyer understands the real reason why EmDrive works.

"He is using special relativity but he's claiming a violation of the conservation of momentum. In order to do that, you really do need new physics, which is what I'm suggesting. He's suggesting there's nothing new under the sun, that this can be allowed. I don't accept that. Conservation of momentum has been very well tested and it should apply to special relativity as well," he stressed.

"In order to extract the energy required to do this, it has to be new energy and it has to come from somewhere, and I'm saying it's coming from information, which is a very new kind of physics. I've found I can get my theory to work by assuming that what is conserved is not mass and energy, but mass, energy and information stored on horizons."
https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/emdrive-briti ... ce-1556098

This is from two years ago but it sounds like what some of us here have said; that Shawyer may well have stumbled onto something but be wrong about why his effect occurs/works. That might explain some of the difficulty in reproducing it. Dr Mike McCulloch is a PHD physicist Shawyer I believe is an engineer; maybe that says it all.

Re: EM Drive

Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2018 9:11 pm
by Diogenes
williatw wrote:
From your posted link:

The theory has already predicted galaxy rotation without dark matter, and the fact that if a system is accelerated enough – such as a spinning disc or light bouncing between mirrors – the Unruh waves it sees can be influenced by a shield. Therefore, if a damper is placed above the object, it should produce a new kind of upwards thrust.
Sound like Dr Mike McCulloch work is similar to Shawyer's EMDrive:

I noticed that too. Thought it might be of interest in this thread.

Re: EM Drive

Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2018 11:53 pm
by ScottL
Diogenes wrote:
williatw wrote:
From your posted link:

The theory has already predicted galaxy rotation without dark matter, and the fact that if a system is accelerated enough – such as a spinning disc or light bouncing between mirrors – the Unruh waves it sees can be influenced by a shield. Therefore, if a damper is placed above the object, it should produce a new kind of upwards thrust.
Sound like Dr Mike McCulloch work is similar to Shawyer's EMDrive:

I noticed that too. Thought it might be of interest in this thread.
Yeah, it's the same asymmetrical geometry claims we're taught don't work in intro physics, repackaged.

Re: EM Drive

Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2018 6:51 pm
by Diogenes
ScottL wrote:
Diogenes wrote:
williatw wrote:
From your posted link:




Sound like Dr Mike McCulloch work is similar to Shawyer's EMDrive:

I noticed that too. Thought it might be of interest in this thread.
Yeah, it's the same asymmetrical geometry claims we're taught don't work in intro physics, repackaged.

Somehow this PHD must have missed that part.

Re: EM Drive

Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2018 9:54 pm
by ScottL
Diogenes wrote:Somehow this PHD must have missed that part.
Not to be snarky, but I can't help but point out that McCulloch's PhD is in Physical Oceanography. If one PhD is as good as the next to talk about differing subjects, then My BS in Comp. Sci. and EE must make me a reasonable authority in nuclear reactors, albeit I've never worked on or with one. You get my immediate hesitation and skepticism I hope. I would also add that several notable physicists have intellectually ripped to shreds his theory, but that is my layman opinion based on their response to this initial theory. I'm going to trust the community that has devoted their lives to physics over the guy just coming in to the subject with a few demonstrably false ideas.

I should name a few things that don't jive with this theory probably, just to be thorough. His theory implies the ability to exceed the speed of light, massive photons, etc.

Re: EM Drive

Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2018 11:04 pm
by williatw
ScottL wrote:Not to be snarky, but I can't help but point out that McCulloch's PhD is in Physical Oceanography.

I gained a BSc in Physics at the University of York, and a PhD in Physical Oceanography (ocean physics) at the University of Liverpool. I have suggested (and published in 21 journal papers) a new cosmological model for inertia (called Quantised Inertia, QI or MiHsC) which predicts galaxy rotation without dark matter and cosmic acceleration without dark energy, without any adjustable parameters. QI predicts that inertia is controllable & lab tests of this are continuing. QI suggests a new, propellant-less, way to launch spacecraft and propel them.



https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/staff/mike-mcculloch

I guess you were right...apparently I was mislead by the article calling him a "physicist" and adding the "Dr." before his name; a little misleading that.

Re: EM Drive

Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2018 11:32 pm
by ScottL
williatw wrote: https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/staff/mike-mcculloch

I guess you were right...apparently I was mislead by the article calling him a "physicist" and adding the "Dr." before his name; a little misleading that.
I frequent /r/physics over on reddit. His theory came up and a dog pile ensued. The general consensus from that community was that McCulloch doesn't really know what he's talking about. While still a community with ample laypersons, there are some decent physicists and post-docs that provide feedback. I know Dr. Sean Carroll (physicist) commented on the validity of the theory and the response was less than stellar. Topics such as the EMDrive have been banned since that time on that sub due to their pseudo-science-like nature.

Re: EM Drive

Posted: Fri Sep 21, 2018 6:30 pm
by paperburn1
I thought the german already found the source of the unexplained push and it was a design /test flaw and no neal propulsion was found.

Re: EM Drive

Posted: Fri Sep 21, 2018 10:06 pm
by Diogenes
ScottL wrote:
Diogenes wrote:Somehow this PHD must have missed that part.
Not to be snarky, but I can't help but point out that McCulloch's PhD is in Physical Oceanography. If one PhD is as good as the next to talk about differing subjects, then My BS in Comp. Sci. and EE must make me a reasonable authority in nuclear reactors, albeit I've never worked on or with one. You get my immediate hesitation and skepticism I hope. I would also add that several notable physicists have intellectually ripped to shreds his theory, but that is my layman opinion based on their response to this initial theory. I'm going to trust the community that has devoted their lives to physics over the guy just coming in to the subject with a few demonstrably false ideas.

I should name a few things that don't jive with this theory probably, just to be thorough. His theory implies the ability to exceed the speed of light, massive photons, etc.

You make a valid point. I didn't bother looking up his PHD because it never occurred to me that it would be in anything other than Physics. This is but another example for me to remember that people are often weird.

Re: EM Drive

Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2018 10:39 pm
by ScottL
paperburn1 wrote:I thought the german already found the source of the unexplained push and it was a design /test flaw and no neal propulsion was found.
Tajmar reported a negative result, if that is who you're talking about.

Re: EM Drive

Posted: Fri Nov 02, 2018 10:48 pm
by williatw
Why DARPA Is Betting a Million Bucks on an "Impossible" Space Drive

Agency responsible with filling the government's coffers with cutting-edge tech is funding a controversial drive that's based on unproven science.

By David Hambling Nov 2, 2018


Image

“The DARPA mission is to embrace and advance transformational change in the U.S. military, but…we must strive to beat the other guy to the punch line and ensure there will never again be another Sputnik moment,” says Sponable. “If DARPA does not gather this evidence and publish the results, positive or negative, then who in the U.S. government will?”
The law of conservation of momentum says that a rocket (or anything else) can't accelerate forward without some form of exhaust ejected backward. But in 1998, a British engineer named Roger Shawyer announced the seemingly impossible—he had built a closed system that could generate thrust.

Twenty years later and many scientists still call the Shawyer's EmDrive impossible, but that hasn't stopped DARPA, the Defense Department agency that funds potential technological breakthroughs of all kinds, from putting serious money behind it.

Image
EmDrive concept

Here's how the EmDrive works. Imagine you have a truncated cone—a tube wider at one end than the other—made of copper. Seal it, then fill it with microwaves. Like other electromagnetic radiation, microwaves exert a tiny amount of pressure. But because of the shape of this device, they would exert slightly more force on one end than the other. So, even though it’s a closed system, the cone would experience a net thrust and, if you had enough microwaves, it would gradually accelerate.

Build it to a large enough scale and you could revolutionize propulsion.

But all of this should be theoretically impossible, hence the skepticism hurled by respectable physicists and SGU, a skeptic website that compared the idea behind the EmDrive to someone trying to move a car forward by pushing on the dashboard.




Image
NASA Eagleworks’ EmDrive


Undeterred by the fact that it would seem to be physically impossible, independent imitators testing the EmDrive theory have nonetheless reported small but measurable thrust from their own EmDrives. These include Chinese researchers at Northwestern Polytechnic in Xi’an, NASA’s Eagleworks, and the American company Cannae, which plans to launch a commercial version into space. A German team at Dresden is evaluating the EmDrive and will report next year, though early results suggest thrust measurements could instead be stray magnetic fields.

To the physics establishment, these reports of positive thrust are an irritating anomaly, the result of experimental error and wishful thinking. But about a decade ago, before China reported its results, as the idea of a propellant-less drive began to swirl, DARPA quietly got involved, according to Shawyer.

“DARPA attended the original 2008 EmDrive meeting at the Pentagon, chaired by Joe Rouge, the then director of the National Security Space Office,” Shawyer told Popular Mechanics. “I was then invited to a meeting with DARPA at their Arlington HQ to discuss an R&D program.”


Jess Sponable, formerly a program manager at DARPA in charge of the XS-1 Spaceplane project, says that he maintained an interest in the EmDrive’s progress well before China. Although he did not fund any EmDrive programs, Sponable believes the interest in these findings is justified.

“Given the number and diversity of claims about EmDrive and other exotic physics, my opinion then and now is that DARPA should invest modest sums to experimentally assess such claims, albeit only where credible experimental evidence exists,” Sponable told Popular Mechanics.



"We must strive to beat the other guy to the punch line and ensure there will never again be another Sputnik moment."

This applies even where the underlying science is unclear or disputed, and especially if there is a risk that someone else, like China, might get there first, Sponable says.


“The DARPA mission is to embrace and advance transformational change in the U.S. military, but…we must strive to beat the other guy to the punch line and ensure there will never again be another Sputnik moment,” says Sponable. “If DARPA does not gather this evidence and publish the results, positive or negative, then who in the U.S. government will?”


More recently, Shawyer has been in discussion with Mike Fiddy, the manager behind the latest DARPA initiative, Nascent Light Matter Interactions, or NLM. This will explore new and little-understood phenomena, such as the apparent thrust generated by the EmDrive. Fiddy confirms that DARPA has previously funded work related to the EmDrive but says this is a fresh start.

“The NLM program is new and is focused on Nascent Light Matter interactions where ‘Light’ implies electromagnetic waves and not only visible light,” Fiddy told Popular Mechanics.

DARPA's $1.3 million contract includes developing theories to reconcile the EmDrive with known physics, and the basis of such a theory already exists. Enter Mike McCulloch, a lecturer in geomatics (the math of positioning in space) at the University of Plymouth, U.K.

“McCulloch's research will model and test the interaction of light with strongly resonant cavities, and it relies on a prediction from quantum theory that accelerating objects experience a thermal background known as Unruh radiation,” says Fiddy.


McCulloch and has already published over 20 papers on his theory of Quantized Inertia, or QI. It’s also known as Modified inertia by a Hubble-scale Casimir effect (MiHsC). This is a radical theory with wide-ranging implications that affects everything from galactic rotation to Dark Energy. McCulloch has already indicated how QI could reconcile the EmDrive with existing physics.



“It would be a game changer because if we understand the thrust effect then we can enhance it.”

“I am approaching it with a sense of opportunity,” McCulloch says. "It would be a game changer because if we understand the thrust effect then we can enhance it."

His QI theory has already been met with some resistance, as it challenges some widely accepted but unproven beliefs such as the existence of dark matter. But in science, facts are always king.

Image



Rather than the tiny forces claimed by NASA—a few micro-Newtons, or the weight of a large ant—a properly engineered EmDrive could theoretically produce hundreds of milli-Newtons (as claimed by Chinese scientists), similar to the weight of a smartphone. That will make it easier to demonstrate that the thrust is not a measuring error or some other random effect.

Rather than microwaves, the experiments to validate McCulloch’s theory will use light with one experiment traveling in a loop and another with a laser bouncing off asymmetrical mirrors. Nobody has built this type of EmDrive before, but the inventor thinks it has some advantages.

“There is no reason why EmDrive should not work at optical frequencies,” says Shawyer. “This approach would result in small EmDrive thrusters, with high specific thrust output.”

If successful, the technology could be quickly applied to station-keeping for satellites, keeping them in orbit for extended periods. McCulloch says it would cut the cost of space launches by a factor of at least ten. Instead of giant rockets and inefficient rocket boosters which waste energy lifting their fuel, spacecraft could have sleek, efficient, electrical EmDrives.

“It would make interplanetary travel easier and will make interstellar travel in a human lifetime possible for the first time,” says McCulloch.

But the doubters are still going to doubt, because that’s how science works. Unruh radiation, a key part of McCulloch’s work, is still just a theory, yet to be detected conclusively in the laboratory. As Rochester Institute of Technology astrophysicist Brian Koberlein has noted, the experimental evidence for the EmDrive is currently at the level of background noise. And, as he writes in Forbes, any theory supporting the EmDrive has a lot of work to do:


“The idea not only violates Newton’s third law of motion, it violates special relativity, general relativity, and Noether’s theorem. Since these are each well-tested theories that form the basis of countless other theories, their violation would completely overturn all of modern physics.”

McCulloch’s work will likely continue under scrutiny, with the smallest details setting off all kinds of intense debate among scientists who live and breathe this stuff. But DARPA has, for the moment, anyway, deemed the potential of a working EmDrive worthy of at least some further investigation.


https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/ ... a-emdrive/

Re: EM Drive

Posted: Sun Apr 07, 2019 8:52 am
by williatw
The impact of EmDrive on Future Warfare


Roger Shawyer SPR Ltd
12thFebruary 2019


1.EmDrive, what is it and where did it come from?
2.Basic EmDrive Science
3.Development of the technology
4.A proposed Moon mission
5.Defence applications of EmDrive
6.Conclusions





http://www.emdrive.com/shrivenhampresentation2019.pdf

Re: EM Drive

Posted: Sun Apr 07, 2019 9:56 am
by Giorgio
williatw wrote:The impact of EmDrive on Future Warfare


Roger Shawyer SPR Ltd
Roger Shawyer is becoming the Randell Mills of 21st century..... :roll: