Could a Gyroscopic inertial thruster ever work?

[Brotoro]

If your machine tilts on the pendulum, it invalidates the test (since that will cause a vertically-aimed laser pointer to shift its beam, making its beam spot on the floor move even if the frame holding the device is not moving horizontally). Hang the frame that holds the device using four parallel wires from the corners of the frame. Place the device inside the frame so the center of mass is in the center of the frame (when the machine is not on). And, as I mentioned before, you'll want to mount laser pointers on the frame that shoot their beams forward and backward so you can use those points to check that the frame is not tilting during operation. And that doesn't mean you need lots of laser pointers -- you can use one laser pointer and move it to the different locations for multiple runs (but monitoring multiple pointer spots during the same run would be best).

[Red Iron Crown]

M Drive, you should also introduce some form of measurement to your experiments. See if you can weigh the components you're using (especially the gyroscope's rotor), measure the machine's physical dimensions, get a yardstick or measuring tape placed in such a way that you can measure the distance the device moves, and get the RPM of the gyro as well. This will help a bunch in establishing the repeatability of your tests.

[sgt_flyer]

One quick note about the pendulum test : the system should be zeroed around the average center of mass of the equipment to not be flawed.

Basically, with those gyroscopic oars, your center of mass will not be in the same position when the oars are fully retracted or fully extended - your average center of mass will be somewhere halfway between the two points.

For exemple, with the system at rest, If you pick your 'zero' with the oars fully retracted you will notice a shift of your laser marker relative to the 0 when the oars, still at rest, are fully extended.

[Alchemist]

Also, because your device's center of mass shifts, try comparing the average platform tilting at different work rates - if it doesn't differ significantly between the minimal and full velocities that would mean there's nothing besides moving the center of mass relatively to the platform.

[M Drive]

"For exemple, with the system at rest, If you pick your 'zero' with the oars fully retracted you will notice a shift of your laser marker relative to the 0 when the oars, still at rest, are fully extended."

Well like I said, if the wires are vertical (I think I wrote horizontal before, my bad), meaning they go from the front and back of the machine and straight up (NOT attached to the same point on the ceiling), then it doesn't matter where the center of gravity is, the wires will still remain straight as long as the center of gravity is inbetween them.

Though when the machine is on it's going to shake the dot back and forth because the center of gravity shifts. But yeah, I'm going to go with this solution. If I use 4 wires on all 4 corners of the machine, the machine will have no option but to remain horizontally aligned, no matter how much it shakes about. So 4 wires it is.

[Momentus]

I have no idea where you are getting this number from. If it's in reference to the gyro on ice experiment, we don't know sufficient details about it to say that it really was frictionless. If you mean the video from your link, then you simply have no sense of scale. The gyro there is much, much lighter than the base. .

Google it, The ice tower is on the web. My figures came from Prof Laithwaite himself.

Again, the PAGE YOU ARE QUOTING insists that the point of rotation is center of mass. And based on the video, I would agree that it's very likely. The base is a thick metal disc, significantly larger than the gyro. It can easily be up to 10x heavier.

Yes , yes , yes. that is indeed what you see, but remember please what it was supposed to do, what the result should have been. In the original demo by Prof Laithwaite the HEAVY Gyroscope rotated about the LIGHTER Tower

The experiment by Cambridge University, one of the UK's Prestigious and hallowed institutions was to replicate Prof Laithwaite's experiment and to prove that he was wrong. This experiment shows what happens when Prof Laithwaite's experiment is replicated. You may choose to believe that Cambridge University deliberately altered the parameters of the experiment, they did not. What you see is a heavy gyro, a light tower and a conclusion of political expediency and intellectual cowardice.

The question posed by freefall1984 was "Could a gyroscope inertial thruster ever work?"

Is it possible? yes will it happen? Not whilst the scientifically literate community allows the establishment to insist that all science is known. There are three experiments on this site which would be advance science. An inertial drive would be but one of the things.

[Red Iron Crown]

Yes , yes , yes. that is indeed what you see, but remember please what it was supposed to do, what the result should have been. In the original demo by Prof Laithwaite the HEAVY Gyroscope rotated about the LIGHTER Tower

Fonts and colors don't make your arguments any more persuasive. The relative masses of the gyroscope and tower don't matter, the system will always rotate around the center of mass.

The experiment by Cambridge University, one of the UK's Prestigious and hallowed institutions was to replicate Prof Laithwaite's experiment and to prove that he was wrong. This experiment shows what happens when Prof Laithwaite's experiment is replicated. You may choose to believe that Cambridge University deliberately altered the parameters of the experiment, they did not. What you see is a heavy gyro, a light tower and a conclusion of political expediency and intellectual cowardice.

Why would they possibly want to make the experiment not work? An inertialess thruster would be the discovery of the millenium, easily Nobel Prize material.

The question posed by freefall1984 was "Could a gyroscope inertial thruster ever work?"

Is it possible? yes will it happen? Not whilst the scientifically literate community allows the establishment to insist that all science is known. There are three experiments on this site which would be advance science. An inertial drive would be but one of the things.

The scientific community most emphatically does not insist that all science is known. It is the most basic of scientific principles that all scientific knowledge is ephemeral, that the most established of theories can be brought down with new observations. There is no conspiracy to keep the gyroscopic thruster down, its failure to generate thrust has done that.

[FREEFALL1984]

Well...... This Escalated quickly....

[sgt_flyer]

"For exemple, with the system at rest, If you pick your 'zero' with the oars fully retracted you will notice a shift of your laser marker relative to the 0 when the oars, still at rest, are fully extended."

Well like I said, if the wires are vertical (I think I wrote horizontal before, my bad), meaning they go from the front and back of the machine and straight up (NOT attached to the same point on the ceiling), then it doesn't matter where the center of gravity is, the wires will still remain straight as long as the center of gravity is inbetween them.

Though when the machine is on it's going to shake the dot back and forth because the center of gravity shifts. But yeah, I'm going to go with this solution. If I use 4 wires on all 4 corners of the machine, the machine will have no option but to remain horizontally aligned, no matter how much it shakes about. So 4 wires it is.

still, be sure to check before starting the experiment if there's any shift of the center of gravity to only one side of the 'zero', when the oars are extended / retracted - if the system shifts to only one side, it will mess up your results

[M Drive]

I'd like to point out I don't believe Eric Laithwaite achieved anything with gyroscopes. He did take gyroscopic propulsion seriously though, and should be commended for that, but in the end he never proved anything. Really the one interesting thing he was involved with was Alex Jones gyro propulsion machine, which if you ask me still hasn't been properly explained (which would require real life experiments and not just internet squabbles).

"There is no conspiracy to keep the gyroscopic thruster down"

Sure isn't. But it'd be nice if the scientific community didn't treat inertial propulsion with about as much respect as perpetual motion/free energy or UFOs. But in their defense the body of evidence is extremely small and very easily overlooked.

[Momentus]

Fonts and colors don't make your arguments any more persuasive. The relative masses of the gyroscope and tower don't matter, the system will always rotate around the center of mass.

Perhaps you are being deliberately obtuse, this is just a wind up for you. The relative masses of the gyro and tower do matter.

The original experiment consists of a heavy gyro and a light tower. This puts the centre of mass is nearer the gyro.

That is the ice tower experiment performed by Professor Laithwaite. Do you see the difference between the Laithwaite experiment and the Cambridge replication? Can you explain why Cambridge would use a light Gyro and claim that it is the same experiment? Indeed what would be the point of doing the experiment with a LIGHT GYRO?

Momentus

[Red Iron Crown]

Perhaps you are being deliberately obtuse, this is just a wind up for you. The relative masses of the gyro and tower do matter.

The original experiment consists of a heavy gyro and a light tower. This puts the centre of mass is nearer the gyro.

That is the ice tower experiment performed by Professor Laithwaite. Do you see the difference between the Laithwaite experiment and the Cambridge replication? Can you explain why Cambridge would use a light Gyro and claim that it is the same experiment? Indeed what would be the point of doing the experiment with a LIGHT GYRO?

The relative masses change where the CoM is, but not that the system will revolve around it. Why would a heavy gyro change that?

[N_las]

Perhaps you are being deliberately obtuse, this is just a wind up for you. The relative masses of the gyro and tower do matter.

The original experiment consists of a heavy gyro and a light tower. This puts the centre of mass is nearer the gyro.

That is the ice tower experiment performed by Professor Laithwaite. Do you see the difference between the Laithwaite experiment and the Cambridge replication? Can you explain why Cambridge would use a light Gyro and claim that it is the same experiment? Indeed what would be the point of doing the experiment with a LIGHT GYRO?

Momentus

It doesn't matter if they used a light or heavy gyro. If Laithwaites would be right, the tower would stay still. And it doesn't.

[andrewas]

Can you explain why Cambridge would use a light Gyro and claim that it is the same experiment? Indeed what would be the point of doing the experiment with a LIGHT GYRO?

Perhaps they just used the equipment they had to hand. Since they already know the outcome, I doubt they put too much effort into that replication. However, what would be the point of lying about the outcome of an experiment this easy to replicate? All you need is a gyro, a tower, and a frictionless surface, ice will do if you are careful with it. I'd offer to replicate it myself, but I lack a suitable gyro and if you're willing to accuse Cambridge of lying, you aren't going to believe a random internet guy if I release a video showing a result that doesn't fit into your view of the world.

Instead, I encourage you to replicate it - and please, document it properly, make sure it really is a frictionless surface, level is as well as you can, make sure its actually flat, mark the CoM so we can see if it stays still, publish the masses of the tower and the gyro so we can see if your mark is reasonable. And so on.

[Momentus]

The relative masses change where the CoM is, but not that the system will revolve around it. Why would a heavy gyro change that?

It doesn't matter if they used a light or heavy gyro. If Laithwaites would be right, the tower would stay still. And it doesn't

.

Prof Laithwaite said that if you had a heavy spinning gyro, supported by a light friction free tower, the system would rotate about the tower and not about the C of G of the tower/gyro system. He demonstrated this.

Cambridge undertook to replicate this. Video 5 shows a gyro/tower system rotating about the tower, an outcome predicted by Prof Laithwaite.

You all seem quite content with that outcome and you attribute it to the distribution of the mass.

...., what would be the point of lying about the outcome of an experiment this easy to replicate? All you need is a gyro, a tower, and a frictionless surface,........

All you need is a heavy gyro and a light tower.

Which mass distribution would place the C of G and the rotation near to the Gyro. The closer the C of G is to the gyro, the more clearly it would show that Laithwaite was wrong, the object of the exercise.

Two conclusions may be drawn.

a) The mass distribution was deliberately manipulated, making the result meaningless.

There is anomalous behaviour, not acknowledged.

Momentus

[N_las]

.

Prof Laithwaite said that if you had a heavy spinning gyro, supported by a light friction free tower, the system would rotate about the tower and not about the C of G of the tower/gyro system. He demonstrated this.

If he would be right, and there is anomalous behavour, the gyro would spin around the tower no matter what is heavy and light. A Light tower would just make for a better presetation, but the same effect should be seen with a heavy tower: It would stay still in the middle with the gyro rotation around it.

The replication of the experiment isn't to the letter. They don't use a lighter tower because it doesn't matter. To show that Laithwaite is wrong, they just have to show that the tower doesn't stay still. Watch the video again: The tower is clearly rotating.

[Red Iron Crown]

Video 5 shows a gyro/tower system rotating about the tower, an outcome predicted by Prof Laithwaite.

Can you seriously not see that the tower is revolving, too?

All you need is a heavy gyro and a light tower.

Can you tell us why the relative masses matter?

[Momentus]

Can you seriously not see that the tower is revolving, too?

Can you tell us why the relative masses matter?

I don't think that any one can. Such a deep mystery. Why should the distribution of mass effect the outcome of this experiment.

Even if you could get your head around it, it still would not matter.

Some really clever bloke who knows all about Newtonian dynamics might be able to get it across. Me I give up.

Momentus

[andrewas]

The relative masses matter because the change the expected position of the axis of rotation. If Laithwaite was correct and spinning gyroscopes were lighter, then a heavy gyro precessing around a light tower should have an axis close to the tower, depending on how strong the effect was and how much non-rotating mass was on the gyro end of the arm, the result might look exactly like the Cambridge video. Of course, Cambridge say that it proves the opposite, but Momentus doesn't seem to trust trust them.

Since I've run across a guy named Momentus who was arguing this kind of thing way back in 2005, who I assume is the same person as our Momentus, I doubt there's any point in trying to convince him other than by encouraging him to replicate that experiment. This isn't something like the LHC, where if you don't believe the results you can't do anything about it because no other machine on the planet can replicate the experiment, this is something that anyone who wants to can replicate with very little money.

[Red Iron Crown]

The relative masses matter because the change the expected position of the axis of rotation. If Laithwaite was correct and spinning gyroscopes were lighter, then a heavy gyro precessing around a light tower should have an axis close to the tower, depending on how strong the effect was and how much non-rotating mass was on the gyro end of the arm, the result might look exactly like the Cambridge video. Of course, Cambridge say that it proves the opposite, but Momentus doesn't seem to trust trust them.

I understand that changing the relative masses changes the CoM, just not clear on why changing the relative masses would change the "anomalous" result that Momentus apparently sees.

[K^2]

I don't think that any one can. Such a deep mystery. Why should the distribution of mass effect the outcome of this experiment.

Even if you could get your head around it, it still would not matter.

Some really clever bloke who knows all about Newtonian dynamics might be able to get it across. Me I give up.

Momentus

I can give you a full solution for a gyro of arbitrary mass, with arbitrary angular solution, attached to a base of another arbitrary mass on a frictionless surface. This might be slightly above undergraduate level, but for a graduate student in Physics, this should be peanuts. In fact, I think I've seen something similar on a candidacy exam one year. Anyways, let me write up some equations, and I'll post a general solution.

Edit: Actually, that's way simpler than I was even thinking about. So long as the surface really is frictionless, and we can ignore the mass of the arm connecting gyro to base, you don't need anything complicated.

Say you have gyro of mass m, carrying angular momentum L. (L ~ Émr²/2 for a solid disk gyro, and L ~ Émr² for a ring with spokes gyro). If the arm has length d, then the equation for rate of change of angular momentum is trivially dL/dt = mgd. Therefore, precession angular frequency is Ω = mgd/L. And, of course, center of rotation, given base of mass M, is going to be located dm/(M+m) from the center of the base.

On video, the gyro goes through half rotation in 10.5 frames at 15FPS. So that's 21/15 seconds per turn, or Ω = mgd/L = 4.5s^-1.

It's harder to judge the sizes, but if the gyro is about 5cm across, then the arm is about 20cm long. Since this is just a very rough estimate, lets go with that. I'll also take gyro to be a solid steel disk, about 1cm thick. It's probably a bit off, but again, we just want to get an idea for what's going on. At typical steel density of about 9g/cm³, that gets me about 175g of gyro, which would be dead in the middle of the range you've suggested.

We can use that to get L = mgd/Ω = 0.076 kg m²/s. And that lets us estimate É = 2L/(mr²) = 1,390s^-1 or something like 13,300 RPM.

This is a bit on the high side, so some of these size estimates are probably a little off. One possibility is that the gyro is actually a bit larger and has a ring shape, rather than solid cylinder, which at the same mass, would bring the above down by about a half. Still, this can definitely be ballpark.

If we take the base to also be a steel disk, 1cm thick, and I'd say it's about same diameter as the arm, so about 20cm, we get 2.8kg. That's actually too heavy. It might also be an aluminum alloy. Duralumin has density of 2.8g/cm³, which would put the mass of the disk at 880g. If that is the case, center of rotation is going to be 3.3cm from the center of the base. That's definitely about consistent with the video.

So there is absolutely no reason to say that something weird is going on. If you were to obtain precise measurements, we can verify them precisely.

Edited March 25, 2014 by K^2

[Momentus]

...................................So there is absolutely no reason to say that something weird is going on.

The parameters of the Laithwaite experiment are heavy gyro/light tower. You prove conclusively with your analysis that Cambridge did the exact opposite. You have grasped the importance of the relative size of the masses and how they determine the centre of rotation. From your analysis do you think that the Cambridge experiment is a replication of the original?

The relative masses matter because the change the expected position of the axis of rotation. If Laithwaite was correct and spinning gyroscopes were lighter, then a heavy gyro precessing around a light tower should have an axis close to the tower, depending on how strong the effect was and how much non-rotating mass was on the gyro end of the arm, the result might look exactly like the Cambridge video. Of course, Cambridge say that it proves the opposite, but Momentus doesn't seem to trust trust them.

Since I've run across a guy named Momentus who was arguing this kind of thing way back in 2005, who I assume is the same person as our Momentus, I doubt there's any point in trying to convince him other than by encouraging him to replicate that experiment. This isn't something like the LHC, where if you don't believe the results you can't do anything about it because no other machine on the planet can replicate the experiment, this is something that anyone who wants to can replicate with very little money.

As I said previously, I have replicated this experiment. I know from experience that "the result might look exactly like the Cambridge video.". "Cambridge say that it proves the opposite, but Momentus doesn't seem to trust trust them.". But you do trust them? To do what, Duplicate the experiment and Lie, or change the relative positions of the masses to make the experiment fit?

[peadar1987]

In physics terms, "heavy gyro and light tower" mean absolutely nothing, so long as you have enough precision in your measurements. The only thing that matters is that they both have mass. At what point does the gyro become "heavy" and the tower become "light"? When the gyro is 101% of the mass of the tower? 105%? 500%? 10,000%?

[Red Iron Crown]

As I said previously, I have replicated this experiment.

Care to share the data from your experiment?

[andrewas]

The parameters of the Laithwaite experiment are heavy gyro/light tower. You prove conclusively with your analysis that Cambridge did the exact opposite. You have grasped the importance of the relative size of the masses and how they determine the centre of rotation. From your analysis do you think that the Cambridge experiment is a replication of the original?

It is. Changing the relative masses of the components changes the expected position of the CoM, but the same phenomenon apply. A heavy gyro round a light tower is more sensitive than the reverse, thats the only advantage to doing it that way around.

As I said previously, I have replicated this experiment. I know from experience that "the result might look exactly like the Cambridge video.". "Cambridge say that it proves the opposite, but Momentus doesn't seem to trust trust them.". But you do trust them? To do what, Duplicate the experiment and Lie, or change the relative positions of the masses to make the experiment fit?

I trust Cambridge to accurately report on whether or not their results are the expected ones or if they show the anomaly Laithwaite predicted.

But no matter, because you've replicated it yourself. Since you are the one making extraordinary claims here, Im sure you realize how important it is to document that experiment in every detail, so when you share the video you will give us the masses of the components, show how effective your frictionless surface is, demonstrate and mark the CoM of the static structure, show us clearly how that CoM is rotating around the effective CoM as the gyros mass drops in accordance with Laithwaite's predictions.