Figured as much based on the reception he's getting. I should read it to understand where the conservation of momentum is violated.
Electromagnetic Drive Produces Thrust in Vacuum: NASA:
- Thread starter paddoboy
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So let's see; switch on the RF power, and 'a non-uniform gravitational field' might magically appear and spoil the results!? Ha ha ha. That would be way more bizarre than the claimed EM originating forces. 'Debunking' articles sometimes need themselves to be at least partially debunked. It is just barely believable that all independent teams bungled their experimental runs in the same way, but I think not. As for Martin Tajmar team's results, well reportedly working with a cavity Q < 50 when the intrinsic Q is probably in the low 10,000's is just atrocious. And is really asking for trouble as at that level things like electrical contact asymmetrical forces might indeed skew things.
The reported 'anomalous' positive results from control experiments may indicate test design flaws - or be clues as to where and how any genuine 'reactionless' thrust actually arises.
The article you refer to was not what I said, It is an extract from an article at....
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-07-scientists-havent-impossible-space.html#jCp
As news worthy reports and comments come in, I'll post them as I said I would.
danshawen
Valued Senior Member
Newton's third law (action:reaction) seems to be a requirement for generating thrust of any kind. To date, the best way of doing that in a vacuum is with an ion engine. High efficiency ion engines have already been used to provide long term thrust on deep space missions which could not be accomplished with hydrazine or a less efficient means of propulsion.
This is one reason why I harbor serious doubts about exotic ideas like the Casimir effect. If you could somehow manage to get vacuum energy from quantum fluctuations between closely spaced planar conducting plates, you would have the essentials of a reactionless drive. Energy would come out of the vacuum energy between the plates, and you could direct the thrust obtained in any direction you like for propulsion.
This is why reactionless drives are in the same general category as perpetual motion machines (and also wormholes).
This is one reason why I harbor serious doubts about exotic ideas like the Casimir effect. If you could somehow manage to get vacuum energy from quantum fluctuations between closely spaced planar conducting plates, you would have the essentials of a reactionless drive. Energy would come out of the vacuum energy between the plates, and you could direct the thrust obtained in any direction you like for propulsion.
This is why reactionless drives are in the same general category as perpetual motion machines (and also wormholes).
What do you doubt about the Casimir effect? That the energy density between the plates is less than the energy density out side the plates? As measured. Over numerous experiments. That this results in a measurable force pushing the uncharged plates towards eachother?
danshawen
Valued Senior Member
Right. And that is the ONLY force you are ever likely to harvest from that particular perpetual motion machine. The one atmosphere reduction in pressure between the plates, which is the energy provided by your vacuum pump (on Earth). In space, the plates simply vacuum weld themselves together.
Unless you haven't noticed, most physics fraud from the last four decades comes from the same source as the Casimir effect, and involves inertialess drives or perpetual motion machines, sometimes both.
And this is your role here. You need to be able to spot fraud in physics to be of any use.
danshawen
Valued Senior Member
It isn't what is claimed. It is not a means for getting energy from the vacuum on a quantum level, and not a means for using it for propulsion, much less a crack in the door for allowing something like ERP wormholes or anything like them to exist above the scale of quantum level phenomena.
I have no doubt, vacuum fluctuations in energy exist. Unless you can devise some means of harnessing energy from virtual particle pair creation, the Casimir effect, even if it existed, is pretty much useless. I'm not completely satisfied with the science which claims to have verified it, either.
Go ahead and explain to me how it will violate Newton's third law by getting thrust out of an inertialess quantum field which can only produce virtual particles in pairs traveling in opposite directions. I'm not listening. Like trying to get thrust out of moving internal weights, this idea isn't going anywhere.
If you had a spaceship the size of the known universe, you could just walk anywhere you wanted to go. It's about as practical as that idea. If it doesn't take you far enough, just use a ladder of similar design. Like nailing jello to a wall, only without a nail, and without a wall.
The only force that can get mechanical energy out of the vacuum is gravity.
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danshawen
Valued Senior Member
In rural Russia, such science film-flamery is common. They view such junk science as a way into a field that should be better at excluding some of their bizarre ideas.
You are witnessing evolution at work here. It doesn't always mean that truth or even something resembling it prevails. That consideration isn't even a priority.
You are witnessing evolution at work here. It doesn't always mean that truth or even something resembling it prevails. That consideration isn't even a priority.
Dan, forget virtual pair production for a bit and consider only the EM spectrum of vacuum energy. No charge, no mass.., and yet a potential transferable momentum.., and selectively interaction with matter based on wavelength.....
Virtual pairs always winds up a net zero. The EM spectrum not so, since potential interaction can be controlled by materials and design characteristics... Thus fewer modes or wavelengths allowable between two plates than outside the gap......., and a net force pushing them together.... Nothing to do with virtual particle pairs.
And the EM spectrum is perhaps the only portion of vacuum energy that has a confirmed real counterpart.
So to the point of exotic thrust devices, perhaps they are actually creating a bias in just how the device, as a whole, interacts with the EM spectrum?
Most of the discussion, including mine here, is nothing more than speculation about how we should interpret theory.
I don't think Shawyer has the ability to run true controlled tests, that and past record make his claims, fall toward speculation. The only actual controlled testing I have heard of, was the few reports leaked from the NASA Eaglewprks Group.., and they don't publish, or even really talk publicly about their NASA funded work.
danshawen
Valued Senior Member
You'd probably do better using a flashlight for photon propulsion than a Casimir device. The greatest pressure measured pushing the plates together was one atmosphere, which is a value that is fishy all by itself, because that is exactly the pressure you would get from a vacuum between the plates and air on the outside.
I understand that NASA propulsion groups don't publish papers about things like ion drives, which are reputed to be nothing short of astonishing in terms of thrust compared to conventional rocket engines. But these are not reactionless thrusters.
And don't forget that gravity (a planet's gravity) is a perfectly functional means of propulsion for spacecraft.
Let me propose another way gravity could be used for propulsion that does not require a reactionless thruster.
Ever pumped up your amplitude of oscillation on a child's swing? It's an easy and fun way to use the movement of internal weight redistribution in conjunction with gravity to increase angular momentum. Imagine a larger version of a child's swing anchored on an airless low gravity body like the moon, and replace the child with a spacecraft you wish to slingshot into orbit or an escape trajectory using only the momentum derived from moving weights on that swing/sling/thing. A trebuchet drive.
Possible? You bet. Practical? Perhaps. More likely to work for pumping kinetic energy out of the body used to slingshot spacecraft than something exotic like the Casimir effect or some bogus physics purporting to provide thrust from a vacuum that has no inertia? Definitely. It also beats mishappen ideas about moving spacecraft by moving internal weights after it is enroute outside of the gravity wells of the planet from which it originated.
On another forum, one individual from rural Russia was certain that he could somehow move a spacecraft by shifting weights around as is done in some attitude control systems on actual spacecraft. After much discussion, we agreed that if a hammer and an anvil were encapsulated inside of the combustion chamber of a rocket engine and the hammer keeps hitting the anvil until it got hot enough to glow red, some small amount of thrust could actually be produced that way. How practical is that idea?
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Sounds about as practical as banging your head repeatedly against the anvil. Or trying to get your car to move by sitting in it and pushing on the steering wheel.danshawen said:
Dan, I believe it is a mistake to get caught up in the reactionless thruster debate. If any useful momentum can be extracted from the vacuum, it would not be reactionless, any more than a solar sail is. It should be a priori, that the vacuum includes an isotropic and wide spectrum of EM radiation. Any material design that would interact in a biased way to that background could result in a net thrust. Useful for lift off from the planet? Not likely, but in space and already in a relatively stable free fall orbit, even a small change in momentum could be useful. The idea of selectively interacting with specific EM frequencies are not new, directional antennas, already do this. The objective would be to come up with a design that interacts with sufficient directional bias that useful momentum can be extracted. (Extracted is probably a bad way to phrase it.)
Really my point here is that should any of the currently discussed reactionless devices prove to develop useable thrust, it will not be reactionless. It would more likely just lead to some deeper understanding, of whatever the underlying physics might be. Too often in these discussions it is assumed that things are just as we imagine and believe them to be. I am more and more inclined to believe there is still more that we don't know or understand, than we do... And that at least a good part of what we think we know for sure, we should not be so sure of.
danshawen
Valued Senior Member
Yes. A Higgs condensate drive would be übercool, as well as unexpected.
You seem to have a thing against 'rural Russians' - as though they, or maybe Russians in general, typically have below par IQ's or are somewhat eccentric.
The most famous example of a 'reactionless drive' based on moving weights around, is owing to a one non-rural all-American Norman Lorner Dean, and dates from the 1950's:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_drive
As for Casimir force, afaik it remains doubtful as to whether it involves vacuum fluctuations at all, rather than simply a variant of van der Waals/London type interatomic dispersion forces:
http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0503158
Do carry on.
danshawen
Valued Senior Member
Both of my parents hail from rural West Viginia (worse than rural Russia), but I was born in the District of Columbia and my physics degree is from the UofMD.You seem to have a thing against 'rural Russians' - as though they, or maybe Russians in general, typically have below par IQ's or are somewhat eccentric.
The most famous example of a 'reactionless drive' based on moving weights around, is owing to a one non-rural all-American Norman Lorner Dean, and dates from the 1950's:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_drive
As for Casimir force, afaik it remains doubtful as to whether it involves vacuum fluctuations at all, rather than simply a variant of van der Waals/London type interatomic dispersion forces:
http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0503158
Do carry on.
My own Dad had an idea for a reactionless centrifugal drive, which I easily dispensed of as a teenager. In his defense, it would have made a fine liquid centrifuge, which is what it resembled. I suggested he use a simple car jack to get to the moon, or to levitate a flying saucer (now you understand the shape, right?), which is about as practical.
However it is a fact that his excellency Mr Wormhole himself has roots in rural Russia, and I have many close friends with advanced degrees whose heritage is similar. None of them ever talked about reactionless drives. Eventually, they learn not to make that mistake. I didn't mean that they could not be taught to do better science.
But Mr Wormhole has yet to observe even one gravity wave. Nine years ago, he said that event was only months away. All he has done in those nine years is consult on a film about black holes and the most unrealistic depiction of a gravity wave in action I've ever seen. It's what you might expect to see from an amateur scientist who still believes in reactionless drives and gravity waves throwing books from just one bookshelf in one small house on one small planet in an immense, mostly inertialess universe. Fraud.
At least, no one could depict me as reactionless. I'm not quite that gullible. If anyone enjoyed the movie, I hope it was for the art and not its very flawed science.
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Of course - we all know about the dangers of oxygen starvation and space chilliness once you jack up too high!
We are talking Kip Thorne? Maybe originally Thornovky or whatever. Well if the newly refurbished and upgraded advanced LIGO/eLISA combo fails to detect within say two years, heads should roll, and much scrambling back to drawing boards/computer terminals. I'm on record as saying IF any GW's are detected, they will for sure not have the signature of GR's quadrupole mode TT waves.
danshawen
Valued Senior Member
Do not speak (or write) his name. He knew Voldemort, whom he taught to lose the accent.Of course - we all know about the dangers of oxygen starvation and space chilliness once you jack up too high!
We are talking Kip Thorne? Maybe originally Thornovky or whatever. Well if the newly refurbished and upgraded advanced LIGO/eLISA combo fails to detect within say two years, heads should roll, and much scrambling back to drawing boards/computer terminals. I'm on record as saying IF any GW's are detected, they will for sure not have the signature of GR's quadrupole mode TT waves.