ZetaX Posted May 4, 2015 Share Posted May 4, 2015 What ever the results of testing this thing out gets, it's still better than almost anything else humans keep them selfs busy with.Like trying to achieve sustainable and economically viable fusion, curing cancer, curing Alzheimers, trying to lessen poverty, ...¿No, I am 100% with K^2 here. I tried arguing the science side form a formal point in this thread some months ago, but gave up because people only saying "but it would be so cool, if ..." kept coming without end. While not having K^2's physics background, I can still judge the science and the math behind this, and already that is screaming NO. Both by a probability check and by common sense (the one of type "we would have seen it much earlier if our laws are that much off"). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frozen_Heart Posted May 4, 2015 Share Posted May 4, 2015 Though I don't believe it will work, I still think it is worth investigating. It is very low risk due to almost no money being put into research and very high reward.At least finding where the error is in this experiment would be helpful so we don't encounter it again.Making it just an efficient ion driveA higher thrust, more efficient Ion drive is still a huge advancement in space propulsion. I'd be happy if this came to that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
K^2 Posted May 4, 2015 Share Posted May 4, 2015 A higher thrust, more efficient Ion drive is still a huge advancement in space propulsion. I'd be happy if this came to that.Ditto. And we'll have it that much faster if funding is focused on looking for exhaust, rather than "quantum foam" nonsense. Now, mind, I don't exclude possibility that there is a quantum plasma/foam intermediate, which would be kind of cool. But it's irrelevant until we track down what actually carries away momentum. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rune Posted May 4, 2015 Share Posted May 4, 2015 So... calling on those people with a better understanding of the test rig setup and in general high energy and electrical field physics. It is my understanding that one of the explanations being offered is that this works as some kind of electric drive working on either the surrounding equipment, or vaporizing some part of itself/the chamber and using that as propellant. Well, ion engines are incredibly well characterized, and their thrust/power ratios are orders of magnitude lower than what is being talked about here. And those are actually optimized for what they are doing, electric propulsion is inherently low TWR because you can't push the ions close together to gather some density without using energy that should be going into speeding them up in the first place.So I don't have any idea about what is going on here, I'll admit that up front. But it's not an ion engine, that much I think I can say.A higher thrust, more efficient Ion drive is still a huge advancement in space propulsion. I'd be happy if this came to that.I think if it was that, physics would still need some rewriting, because it gets TWRs that are supposed to be impossible for ion systems.Rune. Wouldn't it be cool if it ended up being a true reactionless drive? I'd be the most surprised, mind you... but I want it to at the same time! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sean Mirrsen Posted May 4, 2015 Share Posted May 4, 2015 All of which is equivalent to unicorn-in-a-box. EM Drive is reported to produce a force. <snip>You forgot the explanation where a minute slope in spacetime curvature allows a tiny fragment of matter inside of it to "fall" forward, pushing on the rest of the device. It would need no reaction mass, no energy to carry away by any particles, virtual or otherwise. Just a very unlikely effect created by very specific circumstances. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
K^2 Posted May 4, 2015 Share Posted May 4, 2015 (edited) The actual ISP and power/thrust are well within the parameters of an ion drive. These are the absolute physical limitations. The fact that actual power transfer is way more efficient than in any existing ion drive could be within the realm of Quantum Weirdnessâ„¢. There are number of effects that work along this line. Laser is a good example. Mossbauer Effect is another one.Certainly, if there are no measurement errors in thrust output or energy input, something very weird is going on. But it is far, far easier to believe that what we are seeing is interaction with macroscopic quantum state explained by some nuance of condensed matter physics, then that it is a reaction-free drive. One is a Nobel Prize discovery, the other is finding that all of our physics is wrong, and we've been getting correct results from a totally wrong system of assumptions by pure chance.Smart money is doubling down on ion propulsion.You forgot the explanation where a minute slope in spacetime curvature allows a tiny fragment of matter inside of it to "fall" forward, pushing on the rest of the device. It would need no reaction mass, no energy to carry away by any particles, virtual or otherwise. Just a very unlikely effect created by very specific circumstances.Such a configuration does not conserve charges, so it's impossible to achieve. A lot of the problems in GR appear to be paradoxical, until you introduce actual matter fields and see that configuration in question is simply impossible. Edited May 4, 2015 by K^2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kStrout Posted May 4, 2015 Share Posted May 4, 2015 Remember, this is a device that violates a scientific law with enough evidence that is not a theory but a LAW. Tons of people have supposedly come up with ideas for propellent less drives and perpetual motion machines that work on paper, until upon closer inspection they forgot to add the force of say, friction, to their machine. Humans are prone to error, physics is not, whenever a device supposedly violates the laws of physics your reaction should not be "I just created a device that proves science wrong" but instead "where did I mess up". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SargeRho Posted May 4, 2015 Share Posted May 4, 2015 Remember that Theories are "superior" to Laws. Theories are never promoted to Laws. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
magnemoe Posted May 4, 2015 Share Posted May 4, 2015 Ditto. And we'll have it that much faster if funding is focused on looking for exhaust, rather than "quantum foam" nonsense. Now, mind, I don't exclude possibility that there is a quantum plasma/foam intermediate, which would be kind of cool. But it's irrelevant until we track down what actually carries away momentum.However I don't get the ion drive effect, yes it can be gas from the plastic inside however it will pass out any openings in the device after bouncing around in near vacuum heated by the radiation.It might even be copper from the edge of the device spatting off, both of this effects should be simple to trap with plates connected to the drive covering openings and backside. My guess is electromagnetic interaction with the environment, might be something generated from the microwaves so it would not show up in the dummy tests. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scotius Posted May 4, 2015 Share Posted May 4, 2015 You would have to heat the copper to very high temperature to get noticeable thrust from evaporating metal. No one reported engine chamber glowing white hot so far Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frozen_Heart Posted May 4, 2015 Share Posted May 4, 2015 You would have to heat the copper to very high temperature to get noticeable thrust from evaporating metal. No one reported engine chamber glowing white hot so far Maybe its interacting with the magnetic field or something? Rather than evaporating material. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
magnemoe Posted May 4, 2015 Share Posted May 4, 2015 Maybe its interacting with the magnetic field or something? Rather than evaporating material.Yes, trust is very depended on some resonance frequencies, however any ion engine effects should be easy to detect simply by putting an plate behind the drive and connected to it. This would cause the trust to go away. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sean Mirrsen Posted May 4, 2015 Share Posted May 4, 2015 The thrust you'd be looking for might consist of particles that don't interact with matter reliably. It would have to be leaving the resonance chamber, for one thing.Or wait, is that thing sealed or not? I really ought to read some of the technical specs of the thing I'm arguing about sometime. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dansmithers Posted May 4, 2015 Share Posted May 4, 2015 Remember that Theories are "superior" to Laws. Theories are never promoted to Laws.Uh... what?Every law in science started out as a theory. Laws are laws because they are generally accepted theories, not because they are universal truths Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mazon Del Posted May 4, 2015 Share Posted May 4, 2015 At this time the following location is sparse as the effort has just been started. However, one of the members of the form and I (as well as anybody that is interested) will be populating a wiki in the following days to come in an effort to list out things from the current mega-thread and the previous locked thread on the NASA forums.The purpose of this wiki is to show what is currently known about the various efforts (NASA, Shawyer, China, Cannae, etc), current theories from the same, as well as to list all currently presented theories on the source of the anomalous thrust. IE: Atmospheric effects, Magnetic effects, thermal buckling, etc.Several of these have been analyzed in quite extreme depth by several of the physicists at the forums with calculations, diagrams, etc, proving why the proposed source cannot account for the thrust either because of that same analysis, or because the Eagleworks setup accounts for that source of error in some fashion already.AGAIN: This wiki was just started this morning and is EMPTY! It will be gradually filled with information as time and efforts permit.http://emdrive.echothis.com/index.php/Main_PageAdditionally, several DIY efforts to replicate the various drives will be posted. Some of which will be including open source documents allowing for others to participate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rakaydos Posted May 4, 2015 Share Posted May 4, 2015 In general geometry, sure. But Earth results in almost perfect Schwarzschild geometry, which isn't usable for this. And while there are gradients you could probably grab onto, they are absolutely miniscule. You'd need a much larger system to produce far less thrust than is reported.Out of curiosity, how many order of magnatudes would it be off? Assuming, what was it, 6 plank lengths of motion per cycle, (which is probably generous, but that's the idea) with each cycle being the length of the chamber and back at the speed of light- ballpark it as a meter total, which might be low...Speed of light ballparks to 300,000,000 cycles per second, x6 plank lengths is 1.8 x10^10 plank lengthsPlank length is appox 1.6x10^-35, which means the drive (if it used this approach somehow) would hypothetically move 10^(-25)meters per second (per second?)...I'm pretty sure I'm missing a natural logarithum somewhere, but as a ballpark, that amounts to .000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,1g...Yea, too small to be worth considering, outside some hypothetical spacial-warp shenanagans that somehow amplify the curvature the drive is pulling on well beyond earth-normal... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stargate525 Posted May 4, 2015 Share Posted May 4, 2015 Uh... what?Every law in science started out as a theory. Laws are laws because they are generally accepted theories, not because they are universal truthsOh God...No.Theories are HOW things happen.Laws are the MATH of things happening. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZetaX Posted May 4, 2015 Share Posted May 4, 2015 Oh God...No.Theories are HOW things happen.Laws are the MATH of things happening.I have seen this definition several times, but I fail to see how that actually differentiates between them. Any "how" will in the end turn down to a (semi-)mathematical description of what it does. GRT's "how" is "by bending space", and more precisely by the corresponding geometrical properties of spacetime. How is this truly different from newton's law of gravity¿I have seen another definition that defines "law" as the actual body of information we have. Then we have a difference to "theory", but one might ask why Newton's law of gravity is again not actually a theory (and indeed, "theory of gravity" is used often). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vger Posted May 4, 2015 Share Posted May 4, 2015 (edited) I have seen another definition that defines "law" as the actual body of information we have. Then we have a difference to "theory", but one might ask why Newton's law of gravity is again not actually a theory (and indeed, "theory of gravity" is used often).In this train of thought, it appears that "law" and "formula" are synonymous, as long as the formula exists to support a theory that has stood up to peer review.On a random side-note... my goodness. I can't open a news portal at all anymore without a new article about "warp drive" being in the headlines. Edited May 4, 2015 by vger Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vanamonde Posted May 5, 2015 Share Posted May 5, 2015 A number of posts have been removed from this thread because they were not about the EM drive but were about insulting and attacking each other. Please keep the discussion on-topic and polite. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stargate525 Posted May 5, 2015 Share Posted May 5, 2015 I have seen this definition several times, but I fail to see how that actually differentiates between them. Any "how" will in the end turn down to a (semi-)mathematical description of what it does. GRT's "how" is "by bending space", and more precisely by the corresponding geometrical properties of spacetime. How is this truly different from newton's law of gravity¿I have seen another definition that defines "law" as the actual body of information we have. Then we have a difference to "theory", but one might ask why Newton's law of gravity is again not actually a theory (and indeed, "theory of gravity" is used often).The LAW of gravity is F= (g*m1*m2)/r^2The THEORY of gravity is that the masses of the two objects attract each other from a bend in spacetime. It could just as easily be that particles actually love one another very much, and they hate to be away from one another.The lack of any sort of mathematical thing like that is why Evolution is a theory and will never be a law. It reasons the observed evidence of archeology and biology, but there is no equation for evolution at work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sean Mirrsen Posted May 5, 2015 Share Posted May 5, 2015 The LAW of gravity is F= (g*m1*m2)/r^2The THEORY of gravity is that the masses of the two objects attract each other from a bend in spacetime. It could just as easily be that particles actually love one another very much, and they hate to be away from one another.The lack of any sort of mathematical thing like that is why Evolution is a theory and will never be a law. It reasons the observed evidence of archeology and biology, but there is no equation for evolution at work.The Theory of Universal Gravitation, assuming it was ever named such before being coined as a Law, was, from the outset, that any two bodies are drawn together by a force proportional to their masses, and inversely proportional to the square of distance between them. Theories often contain at least as much math as laws do. The word you're looking for is "concept". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZetaX Posted May 5, 2015 Share Posted May 5, 2015 The LAW of gravity is F= (g*m1*m2)/r^2The THEORY of gravity is that the masses of the two objects attract each other from a bend in spacetime. It could just as easily be that particles actually love one another very much, and they hate to be away from one another.The lack of any sort of mathematical thing like that is why Evolution is a theory and will never be a law. It reasons the observed evidence of archeology and biology, but there is no equation for evolution at work.A lot of evolution can be out into math, mostly stochastics. "Theory of gravity" is also used for what you call the law of gravity (example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity#Newton.27s_theory_of_gravitation). And as I already explained, "bending spacetime" is in the end a purely mathematical statement as well (yet I see no one talking about the "law of general relativity"). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mazon Del Posted May 5, 2015 Share Posted May 5, 2015 On a random side-note... my goodness. I can't open a news portal at all anymore without a new article about "warp drive" being in the headlines.Unfortunately, this very thing you speak of might have resulted in the NASA uppers instructing Paul March (an Eagleworks Team Member) to no longer post information about NASA's efforts with us. Thanks for your help Vanamonde! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scotius Posted May 5, 2015 Share Posted May 5, 2015 That sucks It was very nice to get a peek at real news - not filtered by sensationalism of the media. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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