GIThruster wrote:Em. . .I'm sorry but this seems to be a terribly misinformed series of comments. To make clear the situation: Dr. Woodward has never made any sort of quantitative prediction of what magnitude thrust to expect. It was Andrew Palfreyman's math model, as used by Paul March, that made such predictions. There have always been however, several reasons to suspect that Andrew's model is broken, especially including the presumptions it makes regarding a linear transition across the wormhole boundary, which according to theory is not so.
Further complicating the issue is the fact that the work has always involved a host of "loose variables" that would make quantitative prediction near impossible. For example, we do not know the percent dielectric as opposed to sinter used in any of the caps to date. We do not know how successful the sinter is in repressing the piezo-mechanical action in the ceramic. (We do know that the sinter was chosen to do this, and that this reduces the force from any thruster since they rely upon this action.) We do not know the relative polarization of the ceramic, and we do not know how much if at all this changes with time.
There are many reasons Dr. Woodward has never made any quantitative predictions in this work, so when we read someone who discounts the work because of such predictions, we're reading someone sadly mistaken in their presumptions.
Jim has continued to generate evidence from the lab and to publish this to his reading list. IMHO, the trouble is certainly that no matter how much he demonstrates things like scaling, reversibility, etc., because he is in the uN rather than commercial mN range, people don't take the work seriously. Rather, they jump to hasty conclusions based upon inadequate familiarity with the facts--much like Tom has done above. Fact is, if you don't generate mN thrusts, people just don't much care what "proof of science" you provide.
Well I'll happily accept that correction, but it is still a negative change. The quantitative model was one of the best things about the m-e theory, because it made it disprovable. Otherwise it would appear to be impossible to disprove.
As for Jim's demonstrations at uN level the problem is that such results are extremely easy to be subject to extraneous influence. Jim has done a good job of ruling out some such, but in no ways all.
For example at uN level nonlinearities in effects which cancel out first order become significant, and this makes any definitive analysis of the data difficult.
I would not dismiss new good data, but it will be difficult to prove good when the effect is so small.
Tom