em drive

Point out news stories, on the net or in mainstream media, related to polywell fusion.

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birchoff
Posts: 200
Joined: Sun Jul 27, 2014 7:11 pm

Re: em drive

Post by birchoff »

GIThruster wrote:
The basic implication of your statements is that NASA as an entity cannot be trusted when it comes to reporting scientific results?
Skippy has this right. It's not fair to the most often excellent workers at NASA to paint them all with the same brush. Dr. Sonny White is an aberration at NASA. He has always been full of shit. For details of this you can read back in the Mach Effect thread here. I was correcting this PhD's math with my 30 year old algebra back in 2007 and he hasn't gotten more careful, more serious or more honest in the years since. He's pretty pathetic and many of the people at NASA know this. However, the people at DARPA where he gets his money from do not know this and he's an very skillful bullshit artist. Eventually though, the truth will win out and Sonny's lack of honor and integrity will catch up with him. The fact he is so untrustworthy does not however reflect in any way on those he has hired, including Paul March. Paul is not responsible for the outlandish lies and exaggeration Sonny is so often guilty of.

Want another example of the lies? You said you read his arxiv paper and he's bagging the warp field experiment? Well that's good since he had a null result. So why did he stand up in front of a classroom of aero students in Arizona and tell everyone he had a "non-null" result? You can search for and find that video online I believe at Youtube.

Anyone interested in supporting Jim's work through Kickstarter, look forward to news in September or October.
It is true that in reality NASA is not a singular entity. However, to the average public that is how they are perceived. Which in the end since they draw their funding from tax dollars is all that matters.

As for Dr. White, and the warp interferometer research, I never expected much to come from it. Even though I would have loved if he was able to design an experiment that once replicated proved his idea. In the end, if what you say is accurate NASA needs to put him out to pasteur; plain and simple.

Please post a link as soon as Jim's Kickstarter is put together.

Betruger
Posts: 2321
Joined: Tue May 06, 2008 11:54 am

Re: em drive

Post by Betruger »

GIThruster wrote:Anyone interested in supporting Jim's work through Kickstarter, look forward to news in September or October.
Well it's about time! Great news. I hope that it's either got well chosen stretch goals or that it's one of those campaigns that keeps partial funding.
You can do anything you want with laws except make Americans obey them. | What I want to do is to look up S. . . . I call him the Schadenfreudean Man.

Diogenes
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Joined: Mon Jun 15, 2009 3:33 pm

Re: em drive

Post by Diogenes »

"Impossible" Space Engine Gets Pushback from Scientists


Image

Anything that purports to break the laws of physics—even a little—should be subject to great skepticism. And that's what's happening this week to NASA's purported "impossible" engine. Earlier this week, we reported on NASA's test of a microwave thruster that seemingly broke the laws of physics, but needed more verification from outside experts. Today's there's pushback about the test.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/how-to/ ... =pm_latest
‘What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.’
— Lord Melbourne —

Aero
Posts: 1200
Joined: Mon Jun 30, 2008 4:36 am
Location: 92111

Re: em drive

Post by Aero »

Now that was totally worthless. Popular mech. just repeating stuff bloggers posted days ago based on the misleading summary abstract. They should have named it the "Null - in virtual plasma theory - device" then when it caused measured thrust, readers might realize that it was the - virtual plasma theory - that was off. Of course that is not a surprise to a lot of scientists.

The problem with explaining the device is that when compared to a classic ion thruster producing 17 watts of jet power, that classic ion thruster would have an exhaust velocity of about 373,000 m/s and a mass flow of about 2.44E-10 kg/s. With the ion thruster in the lab we can measure the exhaust velocity and mass flow. With the EM thruster we can't. If the force is verified as real by further tests, then we need to do a lot of head scratching to figure out where that mass comes from and where it goes. The energy isn't a problem, it is conserved from the 17 watts drive power to jet power. But the mass?
Aero

GIThruster
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Re: em drive

Post by GIThruster »

It is part of the Standard Model that virtual particles pop into and out of the quantum vacuum all the time. According to Sonny, this is where the mass comes from and where it goes. The real trouble is that these are VIRTUAL, not real particles. There are so many of them, that if they gravitated, they would cause the universe to collapse from its own gravity. Obviously, they don't gravitate, which is what makes them "virtual". However, Einstein's Equivalence Principle says that gravitational mass and inertial mass are not only indistinguishable, they are the same thing. So if virtual particles can't gravitate, they can't transfer momentum either. If they can't transfer momentum, then they can't be used for propellantless thrust. Hence our trouble. Sonny's "theory" which certainly does not rise to the level of a scientific theory, makes no sense at all as it is a denial of EEP. This is why Sean Carroll at CalTech calls it "bullshit".
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis

Skipjack
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Joined: Sun Sep 28, 2008 2:29 pm

Re: em drive

Post by Skipjack »

I thought that virtual particles were still part of the universe and have all real properties, but if they pop into existence at one place, they pop out of existence at another.

hanelyp
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Joined: Fri Oct 26, 2007 8:50 pm

Re: em drive

Post by hanelyp »

A quibble over phrasing:
Anything that purports to break the known laws of physics—even a little—should be subject to great skepticism.
Physics as we know it may not be entirely correct. But the body of evidence in support gives us fair confidence that it is at least approximately correct over a large scope.
The daylight is uncomfortably bright for eyes so long in the dark.

Aero
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Location: 92111

Re: em drive

Post by Aero »

Not to be defending any theory, but AIUI virtual particles pop out as particle/antiparticle pairs that quickly annihilate each other. If it should be the case that the antiparticle produces antigravity or "antimass" (how could that be?) then EEP would be satisfied even when the particle had mass. In this physics the thruster might work by causing a transient separation of the particle/antiparticle pair by accelerating the particle.

As I posted on the other EM Drive thread, conservation of energy (17 watts) dictates that the thrust be produced by a mass stream of 2.44E-10 kg/s at 373 km/s to produce 17 watts jet of energy. 0.244 micrograms is still a lot of particles but then they are everywhere, maybe there are enough?
Aero

GIThruster
Posts: 4686
Joined: Tue May 25, 2010 8:17 pm

Re: em drive

Post by GIThruster »

I'm not familiar with any model that proposes virtual negative mass particles, but they would be accelerated in the opposite direction than positive mass particles by a powerful field, so they would cancel the thrust from such a device. In any case, neither ZPF theory aka Haish, Rueda Puthoff ZPF theory, nor Sonny White's QVF model based on it, speak of negative mass.

It is interesting that Bernie Haish is at CalTech, and Sean Carroll (at CalTech) still felt comfortable saying that treating virtual particles in the vacuum as plasmas is "bullshit". That's pretty bold stuff. But note Carroll was not referring to his peer at CalTech. He was definitely referring to Sonny.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis

Aero
Posts: 1200
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Location: 92111

Re: em drive

Post by Aero »

they would be accelerated in the opposite direction than positive mass particles by a powerful field
Why? They have opposite charges and opposite mass, hence the same momentum.
Aero

Carl White
Posts: 476
Joined: Mon Aug 24, 2009 10:44 pm

Re: em drive

Post by Carl White »

More from Wired Magazine:

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/201 ... ible-drive

"10 questions about Nasa's 'impossible' space drive answered"

Here's an interesting part:
4. Why didn't they test Shawyer's EmDrive design as well as the Cannae drive?

It turns out that in January this year they did test the EmDrive design.

The test results for this were also positive, and in fact their tapered-cavity drive, derived from the Chinese drive which is in turn based on Shawyer's EmDrive, produced 91 micronewtons of thrust for 17 watts of power, compared to the 40 micronewtons of thrust from 28 watts for the Cannae drive.

RERT
Posts: 271
Joined: Mon Jun 02, 2014 9:10 pm

Re: em drive

Post by RERT »

Couple of points:

1. I'm far from a physicist, but I recall that 'Hawking Radiation' is caused by gravitational effects near an event horizon tearing virtual particle pairs apart. So the assertion that virtual particles don't gravitate is at least suspect.

2. The AEGIS experiment at CERN is working on measuring the effect of gravitation on anti-hydrogen, i.e. trying to determine if it falls up or down. I'd be waiting for a wailing and nashing of teeth if they fell up, but at least someone is checking.

tokamac
Posts: 55
Joined: Wed Nov 04, 2009 2:50 pm

Re: em drive

Post by tokamac »

RERT wrote: 1. I'm far from a physicist, but I recall that 'Hawking Radiation' is caused by gravitational effects near an event horizon tearing virtual particle pairs apart. So the assertion that virtual particles don't gravitate is at least suspect.
Yeah, if only black holes really existed… hem sorry, nevermind.
RERT wrote: 2. The AEGIS experiment at CERN is working on measuring the effect of gravitation on anti-hydrogen, i.e. trying to determine if it falls up or down. I'd be waiting for a wailing and nashing of teeth if they fell up, but at least someone is checking.
It's good they check that, but don't hold your breath. Antimatter has a positive energy, hence positive mass. Its arrow of time is the same as we know. It falls in a gravitational field. This is the antimatter according to Dirac, C-symmetric of our own matter (charge conjugation). The antimatter as we observe it.
Another type of interesting "exotic" matter would be the antimatter according to Feynman, PT-symmetric. It is enantiomorphic due to the P-symmetry. The T-symmetry implies negative energy, hence negative mass. It would "fall up" above Earth. But we never observed it. We couldn't, as it would follow different geodesics in our space-time. it would act (anti)gravitationally as if it were located "here" but in a "different dimension". But we're quite out of topic here.

Aero
Posts: 1200
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Location: 92111

Re: em drive

Post by Aero »

Another type of interesting "exotic" matter would be the antimatter according to Feynman, PT-symmetric. It is enantiomorphic due to the P-symmetry. The T-symmetry implies negative energy, hence negative mass. It would "fall up" above Earth. But we never observed it. We couldn't, as it would follow different geodesics in our space-time. it would act (anti)gravitationally as if it were located "here" but in a "different dimension". But we're quite out of topic here
No, I think you are exactly on topic. I have conjectured that the virtual particles that pop into and out of existence are separable in the very small scale and that the sum of particle plus antiparticle mass equal zero (to preserve EEP). A consequence is that a very strong magnetic field could impart momentum in the positive direction on both the particle and antiparticle, even though the velocity of the antiparticle would be in the negative direction. And, further, the particle and antiparticle do not need to recombine with each other, they are not uniquely married to each other, any hook-up in the quantum sea will do. They can hook-up either within or without the thruster structure.
Aero

RERT
Posts: 271
Joined: Mon Jun 02, 2014 9:10 pm

Re: em drive

Post by RERT »

I had intended to post this reference in respect of the AEGIS comment.

EPL (Europhysics Letters) Volume 94 Number 2
M. Villata 2011 EPL 94 20001 doi:10.1209/0295-5075/94/20001

Abstract

The gravitational behavior of antimatter is still unknown. While we may be confident that antimatter is self-attractive, the interaction between matter and antimatter might be either attractive or repulsive. We investigate this issue on theoretical grounds. Starting from the CPT invariance of physical laws, we transform matter into antimatter in the equations of both electrodynamics and gravitation. In the former case, the result is the well-known change of sign of the electric charge. In the latter, we find that the gravitational interaction between matter and antimatter is a mutual repulsion, i.e. antigravity appears as a prediction of general relativity when CPT is applied. This result supports cosmological models attempting to explain the Universe accelerated expansion in terms of a matter-antimatter repulsive interaction.
===========================================
I read the paper, but as I said, I'm not a physicist. It looks reasonable enough, the math seems to scan, and the guy seems pretty mainstream. At one time I would have said that peer review ought to have picked up an obvious sign-error, I'm not so sure these days!

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