Mach Effect progress

[vnbt4]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQBZcMLTa2A

Interesting video on an MLT.

[GIThruster]

Fascinating vid, though I'm not sure what I'm looking at. Is he alternately running at 90* and 270* phase to get both directions of thrust? Is this why 3 different mass figures?

Would love to see a handful of other controls here, and find out what ceramic was used, etc. Did this guy Paul Kocyla report these findings to Woodward or anyone other than YouTube?

[vnbt4]

I really don't know. I figured there was something i was missing. I think the electric field from the coils messed with the scale but i thought that the more knowledgeable should see it and make comments. Is it possible that some mass transients got caught in the circuit?

[MSimon]

I really don't know. I figured there was something i was missing. I think the electric field from the coils messed with the scale but i thought that the more knowledgeable should see it and make comments. Is it possible that some mass transients got caught in the circuit?

Did you read the text under the video? I'd say he has nothing.

[vnbt4]

Even if he has nothing right now, his work may bear fruit as he experiments further. Plus, having people try and replicate Woodward's and Paul's work (whether it be Mach or QVM) is progress in the right direction.

Also i was wondering if coils on the MLTs could be replaced with plasma antenna? And if so what kinds problems could be expected.

[GIThruster]

I tried to send him a note but no note back over the weekend so who knows what's with this. But just notting, he was +/- 10-20mg with this test. Isolating from spurious would not be especially hard with such a large signature. It's certainly not ion wind or thermal. He'd need lots of exposed power lines and many kV for that much ion wind to occur, and thermal does not have such a fast decay as this.

First thing he needs to do is vary the distance between the test article and the stand, so he can clearly demonstrate he has no coupling with the measurement device. e and b fields are both inverse distance proportional, so if you change the distance and get the same readings, you know you don't have field coupling. There are other simple tests, and you need to do all of them before you can make any guesses as to what we're looking at.

The key issue is that 20mg is a LOT of thrust. If he can show this is not coupling, he's got something worth looking into.

Anyone know, is that an ardino controller?

[GIThruster]

. . .i was wondering if coils on the MLTs could be replaced with plasma antenna? And if so what kinds problems could be expected.

Doubtful. Plasma antennae are just antennae. The MLT needs very high magnetic fields generated by the inductor, and I can't imagine how any antennae could generate such fields. The MLT requires an inductor and as such, is far less than ideal as compared to the MET design.

That doesn't mean the MLT couldn't work. To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever used an active mass in the MLT with a shape change material like PZT. All by itself, this would overcome many of the difficulties we saw in MLT design so long as it is in 1/4 wave resonance rather than 1/2 wave, though the inductor in the MLT results that the MLT is never going to be as efficient as the MET.

Woodward says that plasmas cannot store Mach Effects and this is likely true, but since no one has clearly shown a difference between covalent and ionic bonds in bulk materials ability to store Mach Effects, it seems to me possible plasmas could be used. If ionic bonds can store Mach Effects, then plasmas ought to be able to store Mach Effects and a plasma window could be used to generate thrust. That is actually a far easier to test hypothesis than one would at first imagine. I've had a couple experiments designed for this for years. Doesn't require much more than a Hg vapor lamp.

[krenshala]

It was refreshing to see the person making the claim pointing out all the reasons it could still be a negative result.

Anyone know, is that an ardino controller?

It doesn't match any of the arduino controllers I've seen. I'd guess its a custom board.

[Diogenes]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQBZcMLTa2A

Interesting video on an MLT.

My first impression is that he is just creating a dramatization of what would happen if the idea worked. I find it completely unbelievable that he is getting sufficient force to register on a scale when others are requiring extremely sensitive balances to register anything.

[GIThruster]

I find it completely unbelievable that he is getting sufficient force to register on a scale when others are requiring extremely sensitive balances to register anything.

Paul March supposedly generated thrusts on this level, with a device this size and scale like this. The issue really comes down to things like frequency, materials used and whether he deliberately or mistakenly created a 1/4 wave resonance. Odds are still good this is just spurious and there's no way to tell without the proper controls, but the thrusts are plausible. I'm especially intrigued that he is supposedly getting two different directions and magnitudes of thrust, which is what one ought to get if they're altering the phase between the 1w and 2w components from 90* to 270*.

[vnbt4]

GI would you be willing to share some details on your plasma experiment designs?

[GIThruster]

I can tell you a little and if you decide you want to pursue it, I'll collaborate with you. i would just note that my predisposition is to think there is despite Woodward's comments to the contrary, a significant and perhaps complete difference between covalent and ionic bonds. In Woodward's book, especially in chapters 6 & 7, he makes this argument that the best electron model we have thus far (and I think Woodward deserves a Nobel just for this work) is that it is composed of a very large but finite negative mass, which is "dressed' such that it acts as a very small positive mass. He then goes on to argue that this is where to find exotic matter, and this is what M-E devices are doing--they're "undressing" the electrons in bulk matter. It seems to me if this is true, then you want the 2 critical conditions for M-E to occur: acceleration and delta energy; to act on electrons. In an ionic bond, there is no electron. It's just an electric field. In a covalent bond, there is a shared electron that could indeed be stretched, twisted, mangled and manipulated to undress this negative mass. So I think the plasma solution is very possibly the backward way to go. Plasmas are most often just a collection of fields. (Electron plasmas are the exception here and this makes them particularly interesting.) They're generally missing the covalent bonds so a null result in a plasma experiment would provide some evidence that you want to focus on covalent bonds.

But that aside to answer your question: Mercury vapor lamps provide a cheap and easy source of plasma, and there are several like devices. Were you to force the plasma there through enough delta E as with any high voltage AC field, and through enough acceleration as with any high speed circular motion, as could for example be provided with a cheap ultracentrifuge (nicer than other spinning stuff since they always include bearings that can manage off center loading), you should get M-E. If your signal is 1w+2w, you should get force rectification, so long as the e-field is parallel to the axis of rotation.

The chief difficulty so far as whipping something up like this for a garage experiment seems to me would be the expense in very high speed slip rings. The performance of the slip rings in getting the power signal to the field superposed on the plasma is likely the limiting factor in how well you can do this experiment. It goes without saying, you can't rotate the glass in a lamp bulb at high g without breaking it. It needs to be replaced or reinforced. And your measurement apparatus needs to be able to cope with pretty serious mass while looking for what one expects without crunching the numbers, would be relatively small forces.

I think a MET is a much better way to go for these and other reasons.

And i should own the terrible place from whence comes this notion: much popular UFO tripe often claims UFO's are designed around a high energy mercury plasma that circulates around the circumference of a saucer ship. Where that tripe actually truth, my guess is this is why it would work. I am not however endorsing the mercury plasma UFO construction claims found on the web. I think there are lots of reasons to suppose they are nonsense.

[TDPerk]

The chief difficulty so far as whipping something up like this for a garage experiment seems to me would be the expense in very high speed slip rings. The performance of the slip rings in getting the power signal to the field superposed on the plasma is likely the limiting factor in how well you can do this experiment. It goes without saying, you can't rotate the glass in a lamp bulb at high g without breaking it. It needs to be replaced or reinforced.

A) Why on earth wouldn't you use liquid metal filled partial annuli to move the electricity?

B) I expect you can rotate circular cross section glass objects really rapidly. What G's are you thinking of at the periphery?

[GIThruster]

The chief difficulty so far as whipping something up like this for a garage experiment seems to me would be the expense in very high speed slip rings. The performance of the slip rings in getting the power signal to the field superposed on the plasma is likely the limiting factor in how well you can do this experiment. It goes without saying, you can't rotate the glass in a lamp bulb at high g without breaking it. It needs to be replaced or reinforced.

A) Why on earth wouldn't you use liquid metal filled partial annuli to move the electricity?

B) I expect you can rotate circular cross section glass objects really rapidly. What G's are you thinking of at the periphery?

There are liquid metal slip rings but they are typically low RPM. I imagine the trouble is the viscosity of any highly conductive fluid. In general, slip rings that can manage thousands of rpm's and significant power signals as opposed to instrumentation levels, are very expensive. The Northrup-Gruman set I borrowed from Jim for the micro-rotator cost several thousand dollars. Note that slip rings will avoid decomposition and rpm's above their rating, but they disturb the signal passed through them because the resistance of the contact is not constant. That is the real issue.

To get acceleration like what you have in Jim's setup, you need tens of thousands of gees. To match the acceleration in a VHF or UHF MET, you are looking at millions of gees. Most materials go through explosive decomposition at a few thousand gees. Glass bulbs are just a couple hundred.

It is maybe a better approach to look for the right sort of vacuum tube that generates a plasma inside a metal block, or build your own with this sort of hobby equipment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDdAbFP7TtE

[TDPerk]

I don't see why you pass anything through the slip rings but DC. Get data out optically by an axial port on top.

If it's hot, the liquid metals I've handled don't have much viscosity, and the apparatus can be driven by as much torque as you need from below.

"To get acceleration like what you have in Jim's setup, you need tens of thousands of gees."

His active mass is low if I remember, and low frequency. Plasma has much lower mass, but can have much higher frequency, correct?

That report of glass having issues at a few hundred gees doesn't seem to square with it's terribly high tensile strength when annealed properly. Time to go talk to a guy I know at Corning...