Quote from: cuddihy on 05/11/2010 04:37 pm...no alternative of what exactly causes inertia is ever proffered. The question is never asked....I don't think that inertia is understood just yet.Per:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertia#Source_of_Inertia
...no alternative of what exactly causes inertia is ever proffered. The question is never asked....
Quote from: JohnFornaro on 05/14/2010 04:13 pm... Your opinion may differ, so we really need to be doing experiments instead of brushing this inertia issue under the rug.Paul:Glad you're working on this stuff. I did not express an opinion, but rather pointed to a common source of information, which indicates a general lack of understanding on this issue. In addition, perhaps some people are indeed suggesting "brushing this inertia issue under the rug", but I did not say that. In the number of months since I've posted here last, I have made some math headway in the field of calculus. Nevertheless, the key issues of Woodward's derivation of Sciama's equation remain beyond me.I have read some of Sciama's work. We're familiar with Einstein's thought experiment of dropping a ball in the cab of an elevator, which seems to indicate that one can't differentiate between acceleration or gravitational attraction. Sciama suggests dropping two balls. In an accelerating frame, the balls would move parallel to one another. In a gravitational frame, the balls would tend to converge to the center of gravity of the nearby body. This struck me as a good experiment to differentiate between the two types of acceleration.And now, I've shared pretty much everything I know about this subject.
... Your opinion may differ, so we really need to be doing experiments instead of brushing this inertia issue under the rug.
Quote from: Star-Drive on 05/14/2010 04:30 pmQuote from: JohnFornaro on 05/14/2010 04:13 pm... Your opinion may differ, so we really need to be doing experiments instead of brushing this inertia issue under the rug.Paul:Glad you're working on this stuff. I did not express an opinion, but rather pointed to a common source of information, which indicates a general lack of understanding on this issue. In addition, perhaps some people are indeed suggesting "brushing this inertia issue under the rug", but I did not say that. In the number of months since I've posted here last, I have made some math headway in the field of calculus. Nevertheless, the key issues of Woodward's derivation of Sciama's equation remain beyond me.I have read some of Sciama's work. We're familiar with Einstein's thought experiment of dropping a ball in the cab of an elevator, which seems to indicate that one can't differentiate between acceleration or gravitational attraction. Sciama suggests dropping two balls. In an accelerating frame, the balls would move parallel to one another. In a gravitational frame, the balls would tend to converge to the center of gravity of the nearby body. This struck me as a good experiment to differentiate between the two types of acceleration.And now, I've shared pretty much everything I know about this subject.
Quote from: JohnFornaro on 05/14/2010 04:13 pmQuote from: cuddihy on 05/11/2010 04:37 pm...no alternative of what exactly causes inertia is ever proffered. The question is never asked....I don't think that inertia is understood just yet.Per:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertia#Source_of_InertiaFurthermore, I thought the whole basis of conjecture for Higgs Boson is about inertia, since inertia is intrinsic to mass. How then is Mach's Principle reconciled with Higgs Theory? Aren't they competing ideas?Mach's Principle says that your inertial properties are the result of the interaction of your mass with all the other masses in the universe, no matter how far away.Higgs Theory says that your mass (and hence your inertia) properties are the result of your interaction with the Higgs field.Are they both right? Are they each different ways of judging the same thing? Or does one inherently rule out the other?
Brilliant! I have been struggling to understand the concept well enough to explain it to high school students. Energy has inertia, a charged capacitor is arguably more massive than when it has been discharged. Mach Effect thrusters synchronize the charging of capacitors to generate acceleration.
Another thing - why is Lorentz-Force/Electromagnetic-Force special for this field propulsion approach? Why not any other force, like Strong Nuclear Force, for example? Presumably the different falloff-range of that different force would require an appropriately different oscillation period or amplitude to produce useful results, but why couldn't any force be used to produce this effect? What's so special about Lorentz Force? Is it just the one that's most convenient to work with on a practical level?
Quote from: sanman on 05/14/2010 07:33 pmQuote from: JohnFornaro on 05/14/2010 04:13 pmQuote from: cuddihy on 05/11/2010 04:37 pm...no alternative of what exactly causes inertia is ever proffered. The question is never asked....I don't think that inertia is understood just yet.Per:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertia#Source_of_InertiaFurthermore, I thought the whole basis of conjecture for Higgs Boson is about inertia, since inertia is intrinsic to mass. How then is Mach's Principle reconciled with Higgs Theory? Aren't they competing ideas?Mach's Principle says that your inertial properties are the result of the interaction of your mass with all the other masses in the universe, no matter how far away.Higgs Theory says that your mass (and hence your inertia) properties are the result of your interaction with the Higgs field.Are they both right? Are they each different ways of judging the same thing? Or does one inherently rule out the other?I believe they can both be right, I don't see how the Sciama description of inertia interferes with the Higgs mechanism description of W and Z boson mass. The Higgs field would be one component of what makes up the mass-energy of the causually connected universe.
Quote from: sanman on 05/14/2010 06:55 pmAnother thing - why is Lorentz-Force/Electromagnetic-Force special for this field propulsion approach? Why not any other force, like Strong Nuclear Force, for example? Presumably the different falloff-range of that different force would require an appropriately different oscillation period or amplitude to produce useful results, but why couldn't any force be used to produce this effect? What's so special about Lorentz Force? Is it just the one that's most convenient to work with on a practical level?The answers for this will have to wait until Dr. Woodward's article is published. He's got some rather illuminating answers. Since the thrusters in question use electrons charging and discharging from capacitors, you would need to propose some equivalent means of rapid storage and discharge of strong nuclear forces. Essentially controlled cyclic fusion and fission, and to do so in a way that doesn't result in the energy being dissipated in radiation.
AFAIK the acceleration driver is actually the bulk movement of ions making up the caps, not the electrons as they make up a minute fraction of the cap rest mass. (Atomic mass of an electron is quite small...) Therefore the actual bulk of the acceleration driver (gonna need new terminology here) is better served by being a higher fraction of the total mass of the engine. Ideally, the engine would be composed of nothing but the acceleration driver. The only thing that really pumps the drive system higher (ie nonlinear relationship) is oscillation frequency, but that has proven difficult to achieve engineering-wise in a small lab setup.