Talk-Polywell.org

Ron, I'm not going to rise to the bait. Instead, I'm going to congratulate you on living up to your signature and suggest that publicly acknowledging other people's contributions is an excellent habit to cultivate.

In other news, looks like a redditor has found a mathematical error in White's paper which doesn't prevent warp drive, just says White is going to spin his wheels. I'll let you guys be the judge and if this needs to go into a separate thread, I can repost as such. (Woodward gets a link mention)

http://www.reddit.com/r/Physics/comment ... asas_warp/

I suggest post this in the EM Drive thread about 19 folders down from here. This is old news. I don;t see how it matters since Sonny got a null finding with his interferometer, and the current work is not on warp but on the Cannae drive.

I have to wonder, since they're saying that the slotted Cannae drive and the non-slotted 'null' test article both have an internal dielectric, if they aren't inadvertently generating Mach effects and are wrongly attributing it to this whole QVF idea they're trying to float? I get that impression considering that they got the same results with and without the "slotting" that was supposedly key to the operation of it.

That is entirely possible, and they knew this when they designed their test article with the dielectric in it.

BTW, finally snagged a copy of Woodward's book yesterday. Very illuminating! Some of the math was above my pay grade, or at least complex enough that I didn't bother digging into specifics during my first read, but the real insight for me was the breakdown of how exactly he arrived at the conclusion of Mach's principle being the definitive source of inertia. It really cemented, in my mind at least, the possibility that not only is this a very real effect that's being seen, but that we might get to see technology based on it in our lifetimes. His resolution of the issues with the negative bare mass model of the ADM electron seems pretty solid, given the assumptions he lays out, though I'm still skeptical that we can realistically exploit it to make wormholes, or at least useful ones that would take us anywhere we'd want to go.

raelik wrote:. . .real insight for me was the breakdown of how exactly he arrived at the conclusion of Mach's principle being the definitive source of inertia.

This is one of the most convincing parts of Woodward's theory, that it makes so much common sense. The more one looks at the simple observations about how inertia comes from gravity, the more warrant for belief in Mach's Principle one comes up with. And Woodward's modification of the ADM electron model is pure genius that solves troubles we have never had solutions to. People don't realize, we have no functioning model of the electron! For Woodward to deliver one to us, almost as an aside; is just shocking. Chapters 6 and 7 are my favorite part of the book as they read like a murder mystery. Finding the solution to the >>c rotation of the electron is truly worthy of a Nobel prize all by itself.

GIThruster wrote:Chapters 6 and 7 are my favorite part of the book as they read like a murder mystery. Finding the solution to the >>c rotation of the electron is truly worthy of a Nobel prize all by itself.

That was definitely a good read, the mental gymnastics he runs you through, leading you to question if this is going anywhere. How could the electron have a spin that much higher than c? Oh, it's the negative bare mass, increasing c to the outside observer, analogous to how the massive positive mass of a black hole decreases it. Brilliant!

This definitely could be Nobel worthy, and he just might get one for it if things keep proceeding in a positive manner.

GIThruster wrote:That is entirely possible, and they knew this when they designed their test article with the dielectric in it.

I could swear that back on the NSF locked thread you and Rodal arrived at the conclusion that those effects at the test articles tested by Dr White could NOT be caused by Mach Effects.

AcesHigh wrote:I could swear that back on the NSF locked thread you and Rodal arrived at the conclusion that those effects at the test articles tested by Dr White could NOT be caused by Mach Effects.

Not at all. Dr. Rodal did indeed press me on this point, and my answer was that I am not familiar enough with the details of the Cannae devise that I can say one way or another. The dielectric inside the thruster would need to be set such that it can resonate and press against the side of the thruster that generates force, and there are not sufficient details in the Eagleworks release that one can say this is so. Certainly, Paul March knows what is necessary for the dielectric to make the devise act as an M-E thruster, and according to Paul it is quite possible M-E physics explains the thrust. I am in no position to contradict this.

I think enough details have already been given in the new thread.

What details? You do realize it's all PR, yes? The release that is the subject of one piece of sensationalistic journalism after another, was a conference release with no scientific controls applied. There are almost no details in the release about their scientific setup, and this is what annoyed Rodal most of all. I was and am extremely impressed with Rodal's ability to diagnose the troubles on the Eagle balance with so few details, but make no mistake--there were almost NO DETAILS. The only thing remotely approaching detail are the statements of Paul March over at NBF, saying they have thus and such thrust in vacuum. But that's not even a conference paper; let alone a peer reviewed paper.

It's all posturing for funding and it has been remarkably successful. Sooner or later though, the fat lady is gonna sing. Either Eagle gets the thrusts required to see JPL, Stennis and Glenn mobilized for like tests, or they do not. Personally I think it is a bit crazy to respond to supposed test results that do not supply even the simplest scientific controls such as vacuum. Were they producing newtons of thrust, this would be acceptable but they're not.

So this post from Paul March (from the new EM drive thread over at NSFF) makes me very suspicious that they may very likely be generating a transient mass fluctuation in their device, but are attributing the possible thrust generated to other effects:

"Shawyer used a commercial ceramic dielectric resonator with an e-r = ~38 and a Q of greater than 10,000. We tried a similar commercial grade ceramic dielectric resonator material like the ones from Temex-ceramics and generated zip with same. Hard ceramics with low electrostrictive coefficients and no piezoelectric response apparently are dead-ends for this EM-Drive application.

http://www.temex-ceramics.com/site/en/d ... nu-28.html

http://www.temex-ceramics.com/site/fich ... ectric.pdf

Acknowledge that "neoprene" rubber covers a multitude of formulations, but it turns out that most if not all of them have low Q-factors at microwave frequencies that disqualify them from this application even if they have a large electrostrictive coefficient. What counts in this low power EM-drive dielectric "amplifier" appears to be a dielectric with the largest electrostrictive/piezoelectric coefficient combined with a high Q-factor at microwave frequencies."

So the EM drive requires a dielectric resonant amplifier with large electrostrictive & piezoelectric coefficients with a high Q-factor at microwave frequencies. Just going off the diagram of the thruster, with the 2-layer dielectric bonded to the narrow end of the frustrum, it seems more than likely that this is happening.

raelik wrote:So the EM drive requires a dielectric resonant amplifier with large electrostrictive & piezoelectric coefficients with a high Q-factor at microwave frequencies. Just going off the diagram of the thruster, with the 2-layer dielectric bonded to the narrow end of the frustrum, it seems more than likely that this is happening.

I haven't looked at it carefully and just admitting the truth, I never trust my own analysis when it comes to details like this as I'm not an engineer. I would note that in order to generate thrust according to M-E theory, the dielectric really needs to act as a quarter wave mechanical/acoustic resonator. It's hard to imagine this happening by accident, but it could so act even if very imperfectly.

Paul is aware of all this, and has had a hand in designing the experiment, so there is a strong possibility what they're seeing is M-E thrust. I doubt there's much way to tell with the scant details of the apparatus available, but Dr. Rodal would be the one to tear the issue apart. He's pretty amazing. Those MIT guys. . .PhD's and like that. . .hard to fool them. I'd also be interested to hear what Jim Woodward and Heidi Fern have to say on the subject. Maybe they'll weigh in over the coming months.

I've been wondering if Mach effects could be exploited using something like a linear accelerator design, similar to a rail gun, albeit at much lower velocities. The general idea would be that of two accelerators, one above the other running parallel, connected at both ends by a curved track. The top rail accelerates the "projectile", which contains a high-K ceramic or possibly graphene multi layer capacitor, with very low piezoelectric response and electrostrictive coefficient. This capacitor is charged before being accelerated down the top rail. The curved transfer rail at the end is where the capacitor is discharged. The bottom rail decelerates the projectile, and the capacitor is recharged when it reaches the other curved transfer rail. The idea is to achieve a much longer period of acceleration, at the expense of decreased cycles, and to decouple the accelerating mechanism from the capacitor itself. Of course, this design would have many engineering concerns of its own, but they would be separate from the capacitor material.