Mach Effect progress

[kurt9]

I checked with an Asian source of mine for some PMN. They have it but only in large quantities (25Kg or greater). I will continue looking for both PMN and CCTO. LSNO is a new material that would have to be made up special for this application. Some of the investment money we're talking about in here would have to be spent on materials development.

[GIThruster]

Yes, even if you settle on one material, its construction is a complex issue. For instance, the smaller the crystal is milled into powder, the larger percent the grain boundaries and lower the effective dielectric constant, but the higher the density it can be sintered and the higher the dielectric strength. So in order to chooose the proper powder size, you need to know whether your dielectric strength is so high that you are way past the dE of the material.

That's just one trade and there are others. For instance, we don't know the electron work function of all these materials. In order to enhance the k value through extrinsic means, we can use gold and especially platinum electrodes, which creates a "Schottky Barrier" which greatly enhances the effective permittivity--IF the electron work function of the ceramic is low enough. We don't have those figures and they could easily determine which material has the highest effective k at any given frequency. More trades with unknowns.

IMHO, since we want to see higher frequency applications, LSNO is a good choice unless we find it has significantly lesser qualities at ultrasonic frequencies. No way to tell yet since we don't have things like electromechanical linking numbers for LSNO and unless we do the tests, shouldn't expect to find them for a decade. I have not found a single LSNO manufacturer however. Probably needs to wait until we can spend significantly more and have 25 kg manufactured at once, and sintered with platinum electrodes in place (monolithic construction).

And there is the fact that CCTO and LSNO probably both have half the density of PMN so, if they all had about the same rigidity (we don't know) these others would have twice the acoustic velocity and so we would use twice as much in any given thruster of the same frequency, and have twice as much active mass.

There are so many details like this it starts to stagger after a bit.

[kurt9]

About the LSNO: we would have to contact the university research group that first developed the material and get them to make a batch of it for us. This, of course, will cost money (how much I don't know). That's how new this material is. My contacts (in Singapore) have most of their materials fabbed in China (they make sputtering targets and evaporative materials for semiconductor and other thin-film fabrication processes). I'm currently checking with them on the CCTO. Maybe I ask them about the LSNO.

From Woodward's emails, I assume 200-300 grams is sufficient for the next set of experiments.

[GIThruster]

Honestly I have no idea how much Jim needs. Heidi is looking at Chinese CCTO but if we assume it has about the same rigidity as PZT, it will have an acoustic velocity about twice as high (since it's half the density--lead free) and so the thruster would need to use twice as much thickness to operate at the same frequency. I presume Jim wants to dtay about the same frequerncy to avoid replacing the power system. This is good in that one has twice the active mass, so all thyings equal it will produce twice the thrust, but it will require more CCTO powder.

OTOH, we have to hope since it can't depolarize, the thusters won't die off so enough for just a few is probably sufficient.

Any sources you find for PMN or CCTO, please do forward them direct to Jim and Heidi.

[93143]

Doesn't the "rest of the universe" change with the vehicle's light cone (in connection with velocity)? That would mean no priviledged frame.

Re: lightcone - the speed of light is the same in all frames, and relativistic foreshortening is symmetric (and small). I don't see a mechanism there, though as I said I'm not an expert on relativity...

Wait a second - the speed of a photon is frame-independent, but its momentum is not. Perhaps red- and blue-shifting of forward/reversed-time emitted/absorbed gravinertial waves could have something to do with this...?

I should think about that some time when I'm not sleepy...

[GeeGee]

CSUF has a news article on Woodward's book and research

http://news.fullerton.edu/2013sp/Woodward-Book.asp

[ladajo]

Doesn't the "rest of the universe" change with the vehicle's light cone (in connection with velocity)? That would mean no priviledged frame.

Re: lightcone - the speed of light is the same in all frames, and relativistic foreshortening is symmetric (and small). I don't see a mechanism there, though as I said I'm not an expert on relativity...

Wait a second - the speed of a photon is frame-independent, but its momentum is not. Perhaps red- and blue-shifting of forward/reversed-time emitted/absorbed gravinertial waves could have something to do with this...?

I should think about that some time when I'm not sleepy...

Woudl that not set the stage for infinite momentum?

[GeeGee]

There's been a lot of changes to the Woodward effect wiki page

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodward_effect

The only thing bugging me is the section on the Nordtvedt effect. They seem to have confused Woodward's use of the term "Nordtvedt effect" with a paper describing a test for the strong equivalence principle. What Woodward is referring to when he uses the term "Nordtvedt effect" is the equation for linear accelerative framedragging in the 1988 paper:

http://physics.fullerton.edu/~jimw/gene ... a/nord.htm

[GIThruster]

I'm not especially find of the fact it was deliberately edited to encourage people to believe the MLT tests were done by Sonny in 2011. Looks like more deliberate deception to me. Whoever did it was so committed to misrepresenting the situation without specifically misstating the facts that its not even sensible English. More very bad. . .

[TallDave]

In any case, Woodward's mass fluctuation equation doesn't seem to be dependent on the relative velocity of the "far-off active mass", and the local forcing shouldn't be either, so I don't know where such a dependence would come from... certainly if inertia itself were velocity-dependent, we'd have noticed by now...
...
I've ordered the book and will take a closer look when it arrives.

Heh. I'll be interested to see what you think.

I hope he can get to some macro thrust soon. The usual course of things is for difficult-to-explain phenomenon to require new/modified theories. It will be very interesting to fit this in!

[GIThruster]

I don't think it requires any new theory. I haven't followed any of the latest discussion (due to time constraints) but I think the fact Jim has always said to do this math you need to use the tools or relativity is salient here. Way back in 2006, he told Paul and I "you can't do the math that way", yet all the troubles seem to come from people not using relativistic corrections.

I'm pretty sure no new physics is needed here.

[kunkmiester]

In any case, Woodward's mass fluctuation equation doesn't seem to be dependent on the relative velocity of the "far-off active mass", and the local forcing shouldn't be either, so I don't know where such a dependence would come from... certainly if inertia itself were velocity-dependent, we'd have noticed by now...
...
I've ordered the book and will take a closer look when it arrives.

Heh. I'll be interested to see what you think.

I hope he can get to some macro thrust soon. The usual course of things is for difficult-to-explain phenomenon to require new/modified theories. It will be very interesting to fit this in!

Can't find 93413's original post but IIRC, the basic idea from my very very limited knowledge is that inertia increases as you approach the speed of light--the approach to infinite inertia is the basis for not being able to exceed C. Or is this some weird thing where speed isn't actually velocity. I've heard rumors of weirder stuff in relativity, but haven't made much study on it, it's not a big field of interest.

[paperburn1]

In any case, Woodward's mass fluctuation equation doesn't seem to be dependent on the relative velocity of the "far-off active mass", and the local forcing shouldn't be either, so I don't know where such a dependence would come from... certainly if inertia itself were velocity-dependent, we'd have noticed by now...
...
I've ordered the book and will take a closer look when it arrives.

Heh. I'll be interested to see what you think.

I hope he can get to some macro thrust soon. The usual course of things is for difficult-to-explain phenomenon to require new/modified theories. It will be very interesting to fit this in!

The gravity waves in the liquid interact in a nonlinear manner, resonating and building in complexity, somewhat like how a playground swing will climb higher from repeated pushes. This is the first time such nonlinear, resonant interactions have been seen with gravity waves.
So if this is a true effect maybe Woodward has something here, Not saying he does but??????
http://www.livescience.com/27342-star-s ... waves.html

[GIThruster]

" Scientists then observed that the liquid contained gravity waves — oscillations due to gravity pulling downward and vibrations pushing upward." is a malapropism. They did not "observe" gravity waves. They observed the star shape. It could just as easily have been caused by the gravity field. We still don't know if gravity has waves or particles. There is no evidence for the latter and almost no evidence for the former, and observing this star shape is evidence for neither. It is quite possible gravity propagates without the mediation of either waves or particles.

And just saying, I first saw this kind of dopey claim in the premier issue of Omni magazine. They published a picture of what they claimed were "gravitons". 35 years later and we still have no evidence for gravitons.

[paperburn1]

I make no claims as my knowledge base of this field for this is way to small to comment intelligently. Just read the article
this comment caught my attention "This is the first time such nonlinear, resonant interactions have been seen..." and it made me wonder.