Well he's not Zefram Cochrane, but...

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

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Diogenes
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Well he's not Zefram Cochrane, but...

Post by Diogenes »

Image


On average, Pares spends a couple of hours a day here almost every day of the week. To bend the fabric of space, he sits in front of a tray of instruments, twisting knobs and glancing every now and then into a Faraday cage, where a 3.5-pound weight hangs inside an electrically isolated case. Outside the case hangs a strange instrument made up of V-shape panels with fractal arrays on the surfaces. The instrument is the latest version of what Pares believes is the world’s first low-power warp drive motor.

http://www.omaha.com/news/metro/working ... da9c9.html
‘What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.’
— Lord Melbourne —

birchoff
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Re: Well he's not Zefram Cochrane, but...

Post by birchoff »

LOL I saw this on my face book feed and almost shared it here. I mean I have as open a mind as anyone but at least explain how you plan to make it so. How about a video of the laser interferometer test he claims to have done.

Diogenes
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Re: Well he's not Zefram Cochrane, but...

Post by Diogenes »

birchoff wrote:LOL I saw this on my face book feed and almost shared it here. I mean I have as open a mind as anyone but at least explain how you plan to make it so. How about a video of the laser interferometer test he claims to have done.


I think a little comedy is good for people from time to time.



This guy exactly encapsulates something an old friend used to tell me on occasion.


"Scientists work from dusk till dawn but the crackpots go on all night. "
‘What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.’
— Lord Melbourne —

krenshala
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Re: Well he's not Zefram Cochrane, but...

Post by krenshala »

The bit with the laser from the article didn't sound like an interferometry test, but instead a simple deflection test.

What I got from the description was a weight hanging in a Faraday cage with a laser reflecting off its surface; as the "warp engines" were adjusted the weight moved, changing the point onto which the reflected laser was hitting. The Faraday cage should prevent the electromagnetic field from affecting the weight, but without more info than the article gave there really isn't a way to know one way or the other.

birchoff
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Re: Well he's not Zefram Cochrane, but...

Post by birchoff »

he said he will have more in 6 months so we will see what happens.

Tom Ligon
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Re: Well he's not Zefram Cochrane, but...

Post by Tom Ligon »

No snide comments from me on this project. I applaud amateur science, and this one smells a little like some other work I've heard of. Specifically, electromagnetic effects getting past a Faraday cage, especially repulsive effects. I've seen a small scale, ultra-low-force demonstration of it.

If this is based on some of the oddities lying inside Maxwell's Equations, I would hardly expect the explanation to translate in a popular press article.

I will, of course, reserve judgement on the validity of his particular ideas until he drives up in his flying car.

hanelyp
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Re: Well he's not Zefram Cochrane, but...

Post by hanelyp »

It would be nice if we had a good diagram or photograph of the experimental setup. The expected behavior of that antenna array would depend on the power supply attached. Absent details there are several electromagnetic effects I wouldn't rule out.
The daylight is uncomfortably bright for eyes so long in the dark.

Tom Ligon
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Re: Well he's not Zefram Cochrane, but...

Post by Tom Ligon »

I searched on his name and Google gave him a top-of-list hit.

His website mentions wanting to rig a Cessna 152 as a UAV for an attempt to run flight experiments. I've got about 65 hours of stick time on these ... maybe an Aerobat variant would do. They're good airplanes, but a tad dainty for thunderstorms. I've done Search and Rescue (actually body recovery) when a Beach Bonanza tangled with a thunderstorm. Not pretty. The pilot who made that Bermuda Triangle flight was just plain lucky.

But as for the possibility of rigging a C152 for unmanned flight, I know where there is some equipment to do the job in an afternoon. Aurora Flight Sciences built it, and it runs with an Athena Controls GuideStar (now owned by Rockwell Collins). Aurora built something that would remind you of the inflatable autopilot from the movie Airplane. It is essentially a bunch of servos and a control system that strap into the co-pilot's seat of their DA42. I built the hardware in loop simulator for this thing. It hooks to all the essential controls, manipulating the yoke, rudder pedals, throttle, etc, just as a human pilot would. The plane has flown this way, although with a human pilot aboard to satisfy legal requirements. It is technically "optionally piloted." The engines are aircraft diesels, with full FADEC control.

It should adapt to the C152, with servos left over (the DA42 is a twin with constant speed props so there are probably at least three channels to spare, a throttle and two props), but the Cessna will need mixture control that this particular DA42 does not. The control routines would be a straightforward adjustment of the control laws of the DA42 to the C152 to get it flying, and the same simulator setup would prove it out. The Cessna would also accommodate a human pilot for flight testing.

http://www.aurora.aero/Development/DiamondDA42MPP.aspx

djolds1
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Re: Well he's not Zefram Cochrane, but...

Post by djolds1 »

Tom Ligon wrote:No snide comments from me on this project. I applaud amateur science, and this one smells a little like some other work I've heard of. Specifically, electromagnetic effects getting past a Faraday cage, especially repulsive effects. I've seen a small scale, ultra-low-force demonstration of it.

If this is based on some of the oddities lying inside Maxwell's Equations, I would hardly expect the explanation to translate in a popular press article.
This guy is claiming inspiration by spontaneous wormholes with mouth to mouth separations of 150,000 to 500,000 meters. That's more than variations in the coulomb repulsion. :)
Tom Ligon wrote:I will, of course, reserve judgement on the validity of his particular ideas until he drives up in his flying car.
Me as well. The guys in basements at odds with establishment science do run across interesting things from time to time. The laws of electromagnetics, germ theory, powered flight, etc.
Vae Victis

GIThruster
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Re: Well he's not Zefram Cochrane, but...

Post by GIThruster »

triple post
Last edited by GIThruster on Fri Dec 26, 2014 2:59 pm, edited 2 times in total.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis

GIThruster
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Re: Well he's not Zefram Cochrane, but...

Post by GIThruster »

I can't say I think much of journalism that doesn't identify the theory being worked with, nor the background of the person doing the work. Obviously though, this guy is not a physicist and he is having delusions of grandeur. This is the norm for people in this field, and why there are so many dozens of bits of rubbish to sort though to get to the real work. This is not real work, and if electric fields were enough to warp spacetime, Dr. White would have found this during Eagleworks' interferometry experiments.

This guy is just wasting his time.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis

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

Re: Well he's not Zefram Cochrane, but...

Post by GIThruster »

I can't say I think much of journalism that doesn't identify the theory being worked with, nor the background of the person doing the work. Obviously though, this guy is not a physicist and he is having delusions of grandeur. This is the norm for people in this field, and why there are so many dozens of bits of rubbish to sort though to get to the real work. This is not real work, and if electric fields were enough to warp spacetime, Dr. White would have found this during Eagleworks' interferometry experiments.

This guy is just wasting his time.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis

DeltaV
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Re: Well he's not Zefram Cochrane, but...

Post by DeltaV »

Anyone else notice that the article's photographer's last name is "Machian"?

krenshala
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Re: Well he's not Zefram Cochrane, but...

Post by krenshala »

DeltaV wrote:Anyone else notice that the article's photographer's last name is "Machian"?
I did. Got a chuckle from it when I noticed.

Speaking of photographs from the article, anyone happen to know what the fractal antennae "should" do, based on its shape? I don't know enough about antenna design to hazard a guess, but I'm curious about as I know different shapes do/allow different things.

djolds1
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Re: Well he's not Zefram Cochrane, but...

Post by djolds1 »

GIThruster wrote:I can't say I think much of journalism that doesn't identify the theory being worked with, nor the background of the person doing the work. Obviously though, this guy is not a physicist and he is having delusions of grandeur. This is the norm for people in this field, and why there are so many dozens of bits of rubbish to sort though to get to the real work. This is not real work, and if electric fields were enough to warp spacetime, Dr. White would have found this during Eagleworks' interferometry experiments.

This guy is just wasting his time.
Theory is not a be-all end-all. It can quickly degrade into a self-sucking lolipop. Genuine anomaly is more important, as that is evidence, not rhetoric cloaked in math.

Tho in this case you are likely correct.
Vae Victis

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