[AR] Re: NASA test of quantum vacuum plasma thruster (was "Anyone heard of this?")
- From: Pierce Nichols <piercenichols@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2014 19:47:35 -0700
I don't think they'd intentionally publish an over-unity paper, but nothing
is preventing them from publishing one by accident. As for interactions
with quantum plasma, dark matter, or anything else... show your work.
-p
On Mon, Aug 4, 2014 at 7:33 PM, Willow Schlanger <wschlanger@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
> NASA wouldn't have published an AIAA paper on an "over unity"
> experiment. It is possible to "seem to" violate momentum conservation
> but still be in line with the laws of physics, including energy
> conservation (as long as you don't really violate momentum
> conservation). The AIAA papers (there are two of them and I'm still
> getting motivated to work my way though them) do not mention perpetual
> motion.
>
> It is the folks on this list that have treated this as a claim of a
> "reactionless drive," whereas it's really a proposal for a possible
> "propellantless drive" that doesn't carry its own stuff to use for the
> reaction that needs to conserve momentum (and make energy conservation
> and all the known laws of physics still work).
>
> The idea that quantum plasma or anything related is what conserves
> momentum is interesting, if unproven. Maybe once that "quantum plasma"
> gets accelerated, if indeed that is what happens, it pushes space debris
> or other objects away, ultimately conserving momentum after-all (if
> indirectly?) In this case our drive's efficiency could perhaps vary
> depending on what it's ultimately pushing against, falling to 0 if
> there's nothing to react against but still not requiring its own
> propellant?
>
> It is true that if momentum were not conserved at all, many reference
> frames would exist where energy conservation would be violated. For
> example, in some reference frames, the device would mysteriously slow
> down instead of speeding up (while still consuming some internal energy
> as before). That represents the loss of energy into nowhere (this can't
> be easily corrected, though if there's some exhaust moving the opposite
> direction that reference frame would show the exhaust having increased
> in speed, thus conserving energy and momentum and being permissible).
>
> Key questions are: 1) does this work at all; and 2) is it significant
> (i.e. is this something new), or is it useful? Having this discussion is
> worthwhile, but we're degenerating into speculation.
>
> I suppose I could discredit a project really well by over-hyping it,
> even mixing in references to black holes and perpetual motion! But
> aren't we smart enough to know better?
>
> Again, if there's a box you turn on and at the end of the day its
> velocity has changed (even when you compute the mass * velocity, i.e.
> momentum, of all of its parts); and it continues to increase velocity in
> the same direction, using up only a reasonable amount of energy, then we
> have a possible problem here UNLESS if you wait long enough you realize
> other things nearby are affected to somehow conserve momentum.
>
> If this is done via some kind of field, it would be interesting: the
> device's performance could be measured (newtons per watt) and nearby
> objects could perhaps affect that performance. If it's in free space,
> away from all stars and planets (and assuming quantum "plasma" thrusters
> aren't really possible as an end-game but only perhaps as a theory about
> how we get to the final state), we'd expect efficiency to be close to 0,
> as then there'd be essentially nothing that could be pushed away.
>
> If there's a dense planet or moon nearby (the Earth in the case of this
> experiment), perhaps that thing is interacted with via a field so as to
> still conserve momentum, and depending on its mass and the relative
> velocity of that and the device with this "EmDrive" inspired device,
> we'd experience more than 0 efficiency; but exactly how much more, could
> perhaps vary depending on the device's ability to interact with those
> moons or planets to honor conservation laws.
>
> In other words, even if this isn't useful for propulsion, perhaps it can
> be useful to measure the density of stuff beneath our feet (or in the
> ocean)? Laser interferometers can be used between a pair of satellites
> in space to precisely measure their distance from each other. From those
> distance measurements, one can reconstruct images of continents, where
> one is measuring the density of the Earth beneath the satellites, using
> gravitation itself and not electromagnetism at all.
>
> This is interesting because gravitation is not licensed or regulated,
> and no one knows how to shield it (so if you build a very, very, very
> big "secure area" and keep giant secrets in it, someone can peer inside
> passively via gravitation and get an idea of what you're doing in there,
> even if you secured it against electromagnetism).
>
> Being able to determine the density of something near-by a device like
> this (or to peer within the Earth without needing a pair of satellites
> far away from the area of interest) would be exciting and useful.
>
> It's optimistic though, to imagine this device or (any other
> electromagnetic device, Biefield-Brown or otherwise) has anything to do
> with gravitation. I haven't heard a credible report of a capacitors'
> mass to weight ratio changing in response to a change in its internal
> energy or the extent to which it is charged.
>
> Of course we know its effective rest energy must increase a bit when it
> gets an increase of potential energy (i.e. if it becomes capable of
> doing work to the outside world because it's charged up, then its energy
> has increased and effective mass has also increased by 1/C^2 times as
> much).
>
> Presumably if the capacitor is moving, its momentum has then changed in
> response to being charged up (but the momentum of whatever charged it up
> -- say a battery that lost energy so the capacitor could gain energy,
> would have similarly changed so momentum is still conserved).
>
> Before the Townsend Brown guy, there was James Clerk Maxwell who, in
> addition to proposing the Maxwell demon thought experiment, proposed
> having a positive and negative charge separated by an insulating rod,
> and he wasn't clear on why it wouldn't accelerate on its own if it was
> already moving, because he felt there'd by a delay in information
> propagation (the charges were supposed to be responding to the position
> of where the other charge was a little bit in the past).
>
> In a nutshell that's "reaction-less" propulsion also. No one's looking
> into this, though, because how much force (or energy) you get for free
> depends on the reference frame, meaning the conclusions are absurd and
> not Lorentz invariant (I'm not sure how this is resolved, but probably
> it's done by using special relativity and all 4 of Maxwell's equations;
> I think he proposed this idea before they were all fully derived).
>
> However, the mere possibility of potential energy having momentum cannot
> be discounted. If a capacitor can be charged up and experience a change
> in linear momentum (at the expense of the momentum of whatever provided
> the energy to charge it), the two must be related.
>
> Measuring this would be very difficult, and relating it to angular
> momentum would be a great idea since the latter is known to be quantized
> (and is conserved just like linear momentum).
>
> Still, I was hinting at a possible physical route here: maybe our
> "EmDrive" derived device does work after-all, and measurements of its
> efficiency would reveal information about how dense objects in its
> vicinity are? So you might aim for propulsion to the stars, and wind up
> instead with a scale that works without contact (that'd still be cool!)
> and can peer within the Earth to find oil or whatever.
>
> If this drive does work, momentum conservation is mandatory at the end
> of the day (otherwise we'd have this "over-unity" problem that
> discredits the effort quite nicely!) But maybe momentum is conserved via
> a change in potential energy, via some unknown route?
>
> Willow Schlanger
>
> On 08/04/2014 05:42 PM, Michael Clive wrote:
> > Monroe, it requires money to get vacuum pumps, chambers, interfeometers,
> RF
> > amplifiers, DAQ systems, structural equipment. It requires money to get
> the
> > systems to a level of sophistication that the data produced by them will
> be
> > trusted. It takes money to have calibration labs verify your equipment,
> and
> > it takes money to publish results, host websites, etc.
> >
> >
> > Since the possibility of this being an over-unity device has been
> raised, I
> > am really unenthused about the project now. I don't waste time with
> > perpetual motion machines.
> > Bummer!
> > If anyone can counter Pierce's argument, I would love to hear about it!
> >
> >
> >
> > On Mon, Aug 4, 2014 at 1:22 PM, Monroe L. King Jr. <
> > monroe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> >> Why do you need $100k to build one of these? The more I look into it I
> >> don't see where you need it. I can try this in my shop.
> >>
> >> What's going on here? I don't get it? Is it a schema to raise money for
> >> research? What's the pitch?
> >>
> >> A simple interferometer should be sufficient for the measurement.
> >>
> >> I can pull 10 to the 8th torr
> >>
> >> I can machine the parts it looks like.
> >>
> >> What else do you need?
> >>
> >> Monroe
> >>
> >>> -------- Original Message --------
> >>> Subject: [AR] Re: NASA test of quantum vacuum plasma thruster (was
> >>> "Anyone heard of this?")
> >>> From: Peter Fairbrother <zenadsl6186@xxxxxxxxx>
> >>> Date: Mon, August 04, 2014 12:35 pm
> >>> To: arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On 04/08/14 17:47, Ian Woollard wrote:
> >>>> On 4 August 2014 16:54, Peter Fairbrother <zenadsl6186@xxxxxxxxx
> >>>> <mailto:zenadsl6186@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> Suppose, as has been claimed, the drive is somehow exchanging
> >>>> momentum with the entire universe. The momentum of the universe
> may
> >>>> have a (?local) velocity - which would be mathematically
> equivalent
> >>>> to a preferred frame of reference.
> >>>>
> >>>> If so, there need be no violation of either of the conservation
> >> laws.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Even that wouldn't be of any practical use for propulsion.
> >>>>
> >>>> There's basically zero chance that you would moving close the
> preferred
> >>>> frame of reference's speed. And if you're not.. .big trouble in little
> >>>> china.
> >>>>
> >>>> To see this, consider that we're already going at (say) >300km/s due
> to
> >>>> orbital speed, the speed of the Sun within the local cluster and the
> >>>> orbital speed around the Milky Way, and the speed of the Milky Way
> >>>> relative to other galaxies... so it takes enormous energy to make
> quite
> >>>> modest increases in speed because energy goes as 0.5 m V^2.
> >>>>
> >>>> i.e.
> >>>>
> >>>> E = 0.5 m V^2
> >>>>
> >>>> where V is the speed in the preferred frame of reference.
> >>>>
> >>>> differentiating wrt time:
> >>>>
> >>>> P = m V dV/dt
> >>>>
> >>>> dv/dt = P/mV
> >>>>
> >>>> so acceleration for any given power is inversely proportional to
> >> initial
> >>>> speed. That's the same reason cars accelerate very fast initially, and
> >>>> then accelerates ever more slowly. But here you would be going at
> >>>> extreme speeds to start with. Rockets and ion drives circumvent this
> >> due
> >>>> to Oberth effect and get constant acceleration from constant power.
> >>>>
> >>>> Plugging in numbers here it would cost 300kW to accelerate 1kg by
> >> 1m/s^2
> >>>> which is insanely inefficient.
> >>>
> >>> So, 300 kW per N.
> >>>
> >>> The highest claim in the paper, afaict, is 17 W for 91 uN - or 186 kW
> >>> per N, not so different.
> >>>
> >>> There may also be local issues, eg the Milky Way's mass may drag an
> >>> effective local frame velocity zero closer.
> >>>
> >>> And what about if you want to go sideways?
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> The point I am trying to make (while I don't actually believe in the
> >>> thruster at all) is if the explanation is as above, if the quantum
> >>> vaccuum has a (?local) velocity, it does not violate Newtonian physics
> >>> or Special Relativity - it just adds a single new item, the local
> >>> velocity of the universe, to the laws of physics.
> >>>
> >>> And maybe it answers a long-standing question about Special Relativity
> >>> too - the universe does in fact seem to have some sort of preferred
> >>> frame of reference. That is unexplained in SR.
> >>>
> >>> There is also an asymmetry in SR time dilation which it also might help
> >>> explain as well, but probably better offlist.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> We do not know all the laws of physics. Not even close.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> -- Peter Fairbrother
> >>
> >>
> >
>
>
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