Mach Effect progress

Point out news stories, on the net or in mainstream media, related to polywell fusion.

Moderators: tonybarry, MSimon

RobL
Posts: 35
Joined: Thu Feb 24, 2011 4:14 pm

Post by RobL »

GIThruster, you just got Wanged (quoted over at NBF)
http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/08/scalin ... lsion.html

GIThruster
Posts: 4686
Joined: Tue May 25, 2010 8:17 pm

Post by GIThruster »

It was disappointing to me when Brian ignored the details about what is happening at Eagleworks in order to put out a juicy story on the "Q-Thruster". Brian was complicit in misrepresenting the MLT tests from 8 years ago as current tests of a different device based upon a different theory, so I have no respect for Brian as a journalist. That's the real reason I don't bother with NBF any longer. Brain has disqualified himself as trustworthy.

This new stuff with Brian quoting people without their knowledge nor consent, including editing and posting stuff without attribution, just demonstrates Brian's standards have fallen through the floor.

But, to answer those who answered my "Wanged" post:

"What I really mean to ask of course is: would this thing then enable us to travel to the (nearest) stars? " Ronald12

Both the Alcubierre Warp Drive and it's variations, and the "absurdly benign wormhole generator" devised by Kip Thorn and his grad students at Cal Tech for Carl Sagan, rely upon huge amounts of negative mass. The propellantless propulsion scheme being tested here entails the ability to temporarily fluctuate mass, so if we can verify that this is what is seems, we are at the same time verifying we finally have a way forward with warp and wormhole construction. TallDave's "More replication, please!" is precisely my sentiment.

"According to GoatGuy, it could be used to create free energy, which seems implausible." BlueAlice

GoatGuy has been corrected on this several times. In short, M-E devices like the UFG are NOT transducers, that convert electrical energy into kinetic. Rather, they are gravinertial transistors, that control the flow of gravinertial flux into and out of the active matter in the thruster. Therefore, in order to do an accounting of the energy into the device, you have to consider the gravinertial flux that sustains the mass of matter, and alters it periodically in the device. As the mass of the active matter goes up (temporarily), the mass of the rest of the universe it is causally connected to goes down, so you do indeed have conservation. Since M-E theory includes Mach's Principle, that mass and inertia are the result of the gravitic action of the universe on all it's constituent parts, it is necessary to use the entire universe as the system when doing any sort of conservation calculation. If you fail to do this, you will get what appears a conservation violation, just as you would were you to ignore the wind on a sail of a boat and considered only the energy it takes to move the sails as input energy.

"But this guy is a history professor and not an accredited physicist, am I right?" manofsan

Woodward's PhD is in the history of gravity physics. There is no one better suited to do this sort of work.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis

tomclarke
Posts: 1683
Joined: Sun Oct 05, 2008 4:52 pm
Location: London
Contact:

Post by tomclarke »

GIThruster wrote:It was disappointing to me when Brian ignored the details about what is happening at Eagleworks in order to put out a juicy story on the "Q-Thruster". Brian was complicit in misrepresenting the MLT tests from 8 years ago as current tests of a different device based upon a different theory, so I have no respect for Brian as a journalist. That's the real reason I don't bother with NBF any longer. Brain has disqualified himself as trustworthy.

This new stuff with Brian quoting people without their knowledge nor consent, including editing and posting stuff without attribution, just demonstrates Brian's standards have fallen through the floor.

But, to answer those who answered my "Wanged" post:

"What I really mean to ask of course is: would this thing then enable us to travel to the (nearest) stars? " Ronald12

Both the Alcubierre Warp Drive and it's variations, and the "absurdly benign wormhole generator" devised by Kip Thorn and his grad students at Cal Tech for Carl Sagan, rely upon huge amounts of negative mass. The propellantless propulsion scheme being tested here entails the ability to temporarily fluctuate mass, so if we can verify that this is what is seems, we are at the same time verifying we finally have a way forward with warp and wormhole construction. TallDave's "More replication, please!" is precisely my sentiment.

"According to GoatGuy, it could be used to create free energy, which seems implausible." BlueAlice

GoatGuy has been corrected on this several times. In short, M-E devices like the UFG are NOT transducers, that convert electrical energy into kinetic. Rather, they are gravinertial transistors, that control the flow of gravinertial flux into and out of the active matter in the thruster. Therefore, in order to do an accounting of the energy into the device, you have to consider the gravinertial flux that sustains the mass of matter, and alters it periodically in the device. As the mass of the active matter goes up (temporarily), the mass of the rest of the universe it is causally connected to goes down, so you do indeed have conservation. Since M-E theory includes Mach's Principle, that mass and inertia are the result of the gravitic action of the universe on all it's constituent parts, it is necessary to use the entire universe as the system when doing any sort of conservation calculation. If you fail to do this, you will get what appears a conservation violation, just as you would were you to ignore the wind on a sail of a boat and considered only the energy it takes to move the sails as input energy.

"But this guy is a history professor and not an accredited physicist, am I right?" manofsan

Woodward's PhD is in the history of gravity physics. There is no one better suited to do this sort of work.
The conservation argument relates to entropy. It would appear to violate entropy by turning high entropy energy (temperature of universe) into low entropy energy. Now there may be some way out of this but on the face of it this seems difficult, and so adds to the implausibility of the theory.

It is of course also true that locally an m-e device would act as an arbitrarily large source of essentially free energy.

CaptainBeowulf
Posts: 498
Joined: Sat Nov 07, 2009 12:35 am

Post by CaptainBeowulf »

Tom, in terms of the entropy argument Jurek Dędor on the other forum said that:
It does not create energy. It imports it. Pretty much like a heat pump that "makes" more heat than electricity going in it would account for. Although the act of importing it does reduce entropy locally, it is probably compensated by increase in entropy in the whole casually connected universe.
Is the increase in entropy in the whole causally connected universe part a reasonable way around this?

Also, I'm not entirely clear on why it would act as an arbitrarily large source of essentially free energy locally... wouldn't you have to keep powering it in order for it to keep accelerating and thereby producing work? If you shut off its power wouldn't it eventually run down and stop doing work? Would it make enough energy through its own acceleration to keep powering itself as well as producing excess energy? If you treat it as a gravinertial transistor that, once turned on, can keep the flow of gravinertial flux from the rest of the university pouring into the thruster indefinitely then in theory it could do this, but isn't it feasible that the theory isn't wrong, but instead that the universe simply won't let the transistor stay "on" indefinitely unless you feed in more power from another source?

CaptainBeowulf
Posts: 498
Joined: Sat Nov 07, 2009 12:35 am

Post by CaptainBeowulf »

By the universe not allowing the transistor to stay "on," I mean something analogous Hawking's chronological protection conjecture: although it's mathematically possible to make the device function like a source of free energy locally, just as it's possible to mathematically create closed timelike curves, in reality the universe will prevent the device from functioning at a high enough efficiency to accomplish this...

GeeGee
Posts: 95
Joined: Fri Jun 10, 2011 7:00 pm

Post by GeeGee »

Goatguy post in new thread:

Hmmm... to me, the single most important mega-civilization use of such Conservation-of-Momentum violating devices, when they come out in pretty-high-force-producing models ... would be to move the asteroids around creatively. I mean think about it: if you could plant a thruster on an asteroid, and have it produce a few meganewtons of force, it might not change the velocity of the asteroid by more than a few microns-per-second (F = ma; m = 20,000,000,000 kg for 250 meter across asteroid; F = 1,000,000 N ... a = 51 microns per meter per second²)... but with continuous and never ending thrusting, that can really add up. 1 Day = 4 meters/sec... 1 year = 1,600 m/s

With that kind of delta-v, then the entire orbital dynamics of asteroids could be changed radically enough to guide them into the earth-moon orbital system, for 3-body capture. At the L3 point, perhaps. The whole idea then of "going to the asteroids to mine them" becomes a whole lot simpler.

Eternal thrusters also solves the problem of how to loft significant quantities of stuff to orbit without the Space Elevator. Provided it doesn't weigh more than it has in lift (and even if, then aero-wing designs can still do leveraged lifting).

Then there are all the uses for such thrusters for non-nuclear, modest-turnaround time lobbing of kinetic weapons ("rocks") from space down this-a-way. Not all prettiness and sweet smelling unicorn poo. Wouldn't violate START or any of the antiproliferation treaties. What, accelerating blobs of space junk?

A combination of them could power aircraft, both by providing lift, and thrust. With no moving parts or - except for power generation - emitted gasses.

However, the "tempest in the teapot" remains violation of CoE especially, and CoM in particular. Dreams come easy when one loosens the shackles of needing to balance CoE and CoM with the 'reactionless' thruster.

RobL
Posts: 35
Joined: Thu Feb 24, 2011 4:14 pm

Post by RobL »

CaptainBeowulf wrote:Tom, in terms of the entropy argument Jurek Dędor on the other forum said that:
Also, I'm not entirely clear on why it would act as an arbitrarily large source of essentially free energy locally... wouldn't you have to keep powering it in order for it to keep accelerating and thereby producing work?
If you stick it at the end of a long rotating arm, then it will produce power at a rate equal to the tangential velocity x ME force. If that power produced is greater than what is required to power the ME thruster then you essentially have a near infinite source of energy and/or mass.

Nice way to get around the heat death of the universe (if it works)

GIThruster
Posts: 4686
Joined: Tue May 25, 2010 8:17 pm

Post by GIThruster »

I'm not sure everyone is following Tom Clarke's point and it is a good one. Reducing entropy locally does require increasing it in the rest of the system, which is universal, so it's fair to summarize that using M-E devices ought to hasten the end of the universe. It is essentially stealing and causing the universe to expand more rapidly.

Hence Tom Mayhood's quip from more than a decade ago, "Tomorrow's Momentum Today!" I think Heidi recently put that up on the door of the lab.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis

painlord2k
Posts: 24
Joined: Tue Mar 23, 2010 7:35 pm
Location: Italy
Contact:

Post by painlord2k »

From my prospective, what is need here is a Venture Capitalist or some Rossi-type entrepreneur taking up the research and running for commercial application with the current technology.

Prof. Woodward and March (and the others involved) are too academically oriented. But as good as they are (and they are good) they are only two researchers. Their ability to push the limits is, well, limited.

But if someone show up some commercially serious proof of concept (versus some scientifically serious) claiming to be working for commercialization, there would be an awakening in research. Competing teams researching, knowing competition is out there to become the next Gates or Vanderbilt.
What begot all those technological and therapeutical
achievements that characterize our age was not science, but the
social and political system of capitalism. Only in the climate of
huge capital accumulation could experimentalism develop from
a pastime of geniuses like Archimedes and Leonardo da Vinci
into a well-organized systematic pursuit of knowledge.

Ludwig von Mises - The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 127

polyill
Posts: 150
Joined: Tue Jan 18, 2011 12:29 am

Post by polyill »

GIThruster wrote:I'm not sure everyone is following Tom Clarke's point and it is a good one. Reducing entropy locally does require increasing it in the rest of the system, which is universal, so it's fair to summarize that using M-E devices ought to hasten the end of the universe. It is essentially stealing and causing the universe to expand more rapidly.

Hence Tom Mayhood's quip from more than a decade ago, "Tomorrow's Momentum Today!" I think Heidi recently put that up on the door of the lab.
Well, we shall build'em devices in pairs, one to reduce local entropy and to be used as engine and another to increase local entropy to be used as weapon elsewhere, attaining Universal Hegemony for Eternity...

Muahahaha! :twisted:

Carl White
Posts: 497
Joined: Mon Aug 24, 2009 10:44 pm

Post by Carl White »

GIThruster wrote:I'm not sure everyone is following Tom Clarke's point and it is a good one. Reducing entropy locally does require increasing it in the rest of the system, which is universal, so it's fair to summarize that using M-E devices ought to hasten the end of the universe. It is essentially stealing and causing the universe to expand more rapidly.

Hence Tom Mayhood's quip from more than a decade ago, "Tomorrow's Momentum Today!" I think Heidi recently put that up on the door of the lab.
Here's a wild thought... the universe's accelerating expansion is due to broad use of this principle by space-faring civilizations.

Haha.

GIThruster
Posts: 4686
Joined: Tue May 25, 2010 8:17 pm

Post by GIThruster »

Carl White wrote:
GIThruster wrote:I'm not sure everyone is following Tom Clarke's point and it is a good one. Reducing entropy locally does require increasing it in the rest of the system, which is universal, so it's fair to summarize that using M-E devices ought to hasten the end of the universe. It is essentially stealing and causing the universe to expand more rapidly.

Hence Tom Mayhood's quip from more than a decade ago, "Tomorrow's Momentum Today!" I think Heidi recently put that up on the door of the lab.
Here's a wild thought... the universe's accelerating expansion is due to broad use of this principle by space-faring civilizations.

Haha.
I had wondered. We still don't know what is causing the universe to accelerate toward entropy. It seems to me possible, both our future use could cause this now, and our past use given wormhole generators can travel back through time. Given wormholes are in the future seems their use would hasten the end of the universe, but provide a means to escape that end at the same time. The Restaurant at the End and all that. . .
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis

kunkmiester
Posts: 892
Joined: Thu Mar 12, 2009 3:51 pm
Contact:

Post by kunkmiester »

Douglas Adams and taking energy from the past?(HHGTTG referece)
Evil is evil, no matter how small

CaptainBeowulf
Posts: 498
Joined: Sat Nov 07, 2009 12:35 am

Post by CaptainBeowulf »

I'm pretty certain that we made the accelerating expansion joke within the last year or two... it's probably between 10 to 20 pages back in this same thread...

Jded
Posts: 20
Joined: Sat Feb 26, 2011 8:01 am

Post by Jded »

CaptainBeowulf wrote:I'm pretty certain that we made the accelerating expansion joke within the last year or two... it's probably between 10 to 20 pages back in this same thread...
Yeah, we did. We concluded that someone would need to move whole galaxy clusters around for the observed size of the effect. Well, maybe the Xeelee are indeed building the Great Atractor...

More seriously, though, since:
A. Currently we don't know the cause of inertia
B. Currently we don't know the cause of accelerating expansion
C. Something that can be done artificially probably already happens somewhere on it's own accord and on much bigger scale, since all we people do is exploiting existing capabilities...

I'd say that there are non-zero chances that all this is connected.

Post Reply