Talk-Polywell.org

...but if it really worked, darn cool!

http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/09/mach-e ... march.html

Now as I said, I doubt it will work and to be quite honest, for a non physicist like me, it does sound rather implausible.
But...lately there has been little on the "news" that got me that excited.

I love stuff like this. Totally bonkers, what on earth goes through these folks minds? But then they actually go turn the thoughts into lumps of something. I like that. Where would mankind be without such people!?

This is making my head hurt, how does mach's priniciple lead to variable mass for ions?

edit:actually, no, I'm not understanding half the things in this article in these contexts... grumble, I'm not gonna finish my quantum mechanics homework if I try to hobble this together...

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The pursuit of knowledge is in the best of interest of all mankind.

I think they're quite probably wrong, but not typical Dean Drive loons. Woodward & his kibitzers state their hypothesis, provide the math, double check on falling into wishful thinking, and both run and report on experiments.

If you're interested in easy listening during workouts or drives, there are two podcasts on the topic:

http://archived.thespaceshow.com/detail.asp?q=689
http://archived.thespaceshow.com/detail.asp?q=1114

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Vae Victis

I just love the thought of "what if it worked?". It would be a gamechanger in about everything. Interplanetary spacetravel? No problem! Heck for all I understand it would just as much revolutionize transport on earth as well. Again, IF (and that is a big IF with an I as tall as the Empire State Building) it worked.
Sigh, maybe we will see it happen. Woodward is going to present the results of his latest series of experiments at a meeting soon, or so I understand. Maybe we will know more then (at least whether his experiments were able to show something or not). I will definitely be on the lookout.

Hell, you want things to speculate on, there are tantalizing articles about reversing gravity with the casimir effect, generating a reactionless thruster with a resonator cavity filled with microwaves, and thousands of other things. The human race is on the verge of changing everything all the time, it just keeps not happening I guess.

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The pursuit of knowledge is in the best of interest of all mankind.

Stuff like this just makes me mad. They are trying to get people on step 12 when they are on step 2. Establishing the existence measurable mass fluctuations doesn't sound very expensive and is interesting all by itself. They should focus on that.

Every competent car salesman knows you sell the benefit, not the feature. They don't sell "this sports car has 250Hp, will corner at 0.6G, accelerate 0-60 in 4.2 seconds" they sell "it'll get you laid". They may be subtle about it, but... And the benefit is step 12, not step 2.

"This stuff" (i.e. human nature) makes you mad. Welcome to the world of the techno-nerd!

If you are trying to get stuff from NSF or a government agency then your work is going to be reviewed by scientists. You are basically trying to sell a used car to a bunch of user car salesmen. Different tactics are needed.

And really if you can prove mass fluctuations in laboratory conditions, there's a Nobel prize waiting for you.

John G. Cramer actually received a grant from Nasa to do exactly this. I followed this closely several years ago, but I couldn't find any data on the results. Finally I ran across a link in which Cramer explained they had massive oscillations in their setup and no further time could be devoted to solving the problems with the experiment. Considering how they set up the experiment this result surprised me not at all.

Here's the link.


http://gltrs.grc.nasa.gov/reports/2004/ ... 213310.pdf


David

Woodward is also preparing for another experiment from what I gather. He is very ill though, so it might be a while...
Lets hope the best.
Hey and if it does not work, we can at least strike one possible explanation for inertia from the list (or thats what I understand).


Professor Science, I am always reading up on these things on the usual suspects of webpages.
Hey thats how I ended up here

As you say, "NSF (as in NATIONAL Science Foundation), or a government agency" (emphasis/editorials added). Both of these are subject to pressure from the politicians who respond to... constituents. The NBF blog article seems to be trying to sell the constituents a dream which may devolve into a more attentive review when the actual grant request comes in.

kmkramer wrote:

"Stuff like this just makes me mad. They are trying to get people on step 12 when they are on step 2. Establishing the existence measurable mass fluctuations doesn't sound very expensive and is interesting all by itself. They should focus on that."

Dr. Woodward has been doing M-E “proof of principle” tests since ~1990 and I started in 2002. In short, the M-E derivation indicates that when a capacitor dielectric is subjected to a sinusoidal time rate of change of stored energy while simultaneously being subjected to a bulk acceleration relative to the distant stars, that a mass density variation of the dielectric should be expressed at 2X the drive frequency of the dE/dt energy flux, AKA electrical power. And its magnitude should be proportional to the product of the cube of the applied voltage times the applied bulk acceleration with all other controlling parameters held constant.

The latest Woodward run M-E proof of principle test series was expanded in the 2008 to 2009 time period to include the upgraded Mark-III rotary test rig that could supply a variable bulk centripetal gee loading to the excited dielectric cap array that went from zero up to over 800 gees (~7,900 m/sec^2) at 3600 RPM. A ring of eight high-k (e-r=~5,000) ceramic dielectric caps that were subjected to this variable acceleration were then excited at 40 kHz with 2.0, 4.0, & 6.0 kV-peak voltages while the 2nd harmonic (80 kHz) mass density fluctuations were measured using an instrumentation system that included an FFT time to frequency domain measurement scope that displayed the magnitudes of the generated fundamental and harmonic signals. We found a mass density variation signal present at 80 kHz that was proportional to the applied gee loading, varied with the cube of the applied voltage and subtracted from the mundane electrostrictive signal that was also suppose to be expressed at this 80 kHz frequency but at 180 degrees out of phase with the dm signal. Data is available to all who are interested.

Now you have to remember that the M-E powered WarpStar-1 slides appended at the “Next Big Future” web site were from my third STAIF paper published in 2007 which was about the possible future applications of the M-E, IF perfected. My 2004 and 2006 papers explored the theory, math modeling and M-E proof of principle tests that had been performed up to that time, including my own Mach-Lorentz Thruster (MLT) tests at a drive frequency 2.15, 2.2 and 3.8 MHz, where I measured a peak thrust of ~5.0 milli-Newton with a Faraday shielded test article.

So yes, I was selling step-12 as you call it in my STAIF-2007 paper since few people in the aerospace community had noticed the possible importance of the foregoing M-E proof of principle work by several different investigators both here in the USA and in Argentina. However, since then we have come to the conclusion that we will have to create a M-E demonstrator that will have to levitate itself for all to see before the mainstream will even acknowledge the possibility that we are on to something that could change the course of history in a very big way. Working…

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Paul March
Friendswood, TX

Professor Science:

"This is making my head hurt, how does mach's priniciple lead to variable mass for ions?"

It’s because in a Machian universe inertial mass arises from the radiation reaction interaction of the local accelerated mass with the cosmological / ambient gravitational or gravinertial field. If you transiently shield the local accelerated mass from its inertial field source, its instantaneous inertial mass has to transiently change in lock step with this shielding effect. This transient inertial shielding effect can be induced by accelerating a the local mass, while simultaneously changing its internal stored energy state. See Dr. Woodward's Cal. State University web page for details if interested.


http://physics.fullerton.edu/Woodward.html

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Paul March
Friendswood, TX

Hello Paul!
Good to see you posting here. Please forgive everybodies sceptizism here, including my own. Things like these are rather hard to grasp and you know the "extgraordinary claims...".
So what would it take to make a levitating device? I mean in terms of finances and time. If there was, say a capable sponsor, or maybe some grass roots funding?
I am just curious. I do really have no idea about the finances involved in such a project.