Author Topic: Propellantless Field Propulsion and application  (Read 1041702 times)

Offline aceshigh

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Re: Propellantless Field Propulsion and application
« Reply #1280 on: 05/05/2011 01:10 am »
much of the evidence for quantum mechanics extraordinary claims only came much later...

Nonsense.. everything that came out of quantum mechanics was the result of experiments saying what we knew was wrong.  The double slit experiment is one you can do with polarizing filters on your kitchen top and trying to explain it before the era of quantum mechanics would have been quite a head scratch.  That's the most valuable form of evidence you can ever put forward, easily repeatable and unexplainable in the current framework. 


yes, I wonder why there was such a feud between the classic physicists like Einstein with the likes Niels Bohr and others...

Offline QuantumG

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Re: Propellantless Field Propulsion and application
« Reply #1281 on: 05/05/2011 01:22 am »
yes, I wonder why there was such a feud between the classic physicists like Einstein with the likes Niels Bohr and others...

They didn't like the explanations and figured there had to be better answers, but they never argued with the experimental results because, if you can reproduce them, they're the closest thing to facts.

But an engineer doesn't care if God plays dice with the universe.. an engineer (should) just want an equation that works reliably and can be used to do actual work.

Getting back to the point here, none of the proponents of propellantless propulsion have provided reproducible experiments that produce anything that makes people scratch their heads and say "how the heck does that work?"  The closest is an experiment that isn't accurately described and makes most people say "so what?  my washing machine does that."

Trying to come up with theories about the universe which may allow you to postulate on the existence of a technique which could be used to create a propellantless propulsion system is no doubt fun to some people, but until they have the aha moment and construct an experiment, they should be of no interest to an engineer.
Human spaceflight is basically just LARPing now.

Offline kurt9

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Re: Propellantless Field Propulsion and application
« Reply #1282 on: 05/05/2011 03:19 am »
The final results of the Gravity Probe B mission have been announced. The Geodetic effect has been measured within 0.2% of the theoretical prediction and the frame dragging only within 20% of the theoretical prediction. It was this last that was marred by problems with the probe.

In short, General Relativity is real as far as any theory can said to be real. This means that any "space drive" or FTL concept that does not fit with GR is spurious, which rules out most (not all) of the ZPE schemes.

That leaves only the Woodward-Mach effect and Extended Heim theory on the table.

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: Propellantless Field Propulsion and application
« Reply #1283 on: 05/05/2011 01:35 pm »
yes, I wonder why there was such a feud between the classic physicists like Einstein with the likes Niels Bohr and others...

They didn't like the explanations and figured there had to be better answers, but they never argued with the experimental results because, if you can reproduce them, they're the closest thing to facts. ...

I have read about the Copenhagen discussion, but can't recall quite what they disagreed upon.  Care to elaborate a bit?
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline aceshigh

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Re: Propellantless Field Propulsion and application
« Reply #1284 on: 05/05/2011 02:52 pm »
yes, I wonder why there was such a feud between the classic physicists like Einstein with the likes Niels Bohr and others...

They didn't like the explanations and figured there had to be better answers, but they never argued with the experimental results because, if you can reproduce them, they're the closest thing to facts. ...

I have read about the Copenhagen discussion, but can't recall quite what they disagreed upon.  Care to elaborate a bit?

may I suggest you this awesome documentary from the BBC? Its called The Atom and tells the story of the discovery of the Atom and the first years of quantum mechanics.

Episode 1: Clash of the Titans (60 min)


Episode 2: The Key To The Cosmos (60 min)


Episode 3: The Illusion of Reality (60 min)

Offline Sith

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Re: Propellantless Field Propulsion and application
« Reply #1285 on: 05/13/2011 11:54 am »
Here's some interesting article from 1986 about the so called "Ether"
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v322/n6080/index.html
p.590
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v322/n6080/pdf/322590b0.pdf
Special relativity


Offline GeeGee

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Re: Propellantless Field Propulsion and application
« Reply #1286 on: 05/16/2011 02:36 am »
When is Woodward's paper on wormholes going to be published?

I've been reading a bit about them lately, and I've realized that unless you can somehow place the exit-mouth of a wormhole where you want (i.e. light years away) without the need to carry it, then it's going to be very tough to use them in the way we want.

Consider a starship carrying the exit-mouth of a wormhole heading towards Vega (25 light years away) at 0.999c with the entrance-mouth sitting somewhere in orbit. The mouth of the wormhole is being accelerated at relativistic speeds along with the crew, which means they're experiencing time dilation. Now from our perspective, it should take the crew 25 years to reach their destination, but the crew experiences only 3 months thanks to relativity. Since we have a wormhole to their ship, it appears that if we were to step through the entrance in orbit and into their ship, we would have time traveled 25 years into the future; and the crew would conversely be able to time travel 25 years into the past by simply walking in through their side of the wormhole. If quantum gravity allows wormholes and we one day achieve the ability to create them, I foresee immense difficulties in preventing closed timelike curves in cases where we just want a shortcut through space.

Offline QuantumG

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Re: Propellantless Field Propulsion and application
« Reply #1287 on: 05/16/2011 03:03 am »
sigh, the day someone proposes an experiment that demonstrates a basic principle of worm holes you can claim that they might some day be feasible.. until then, they're just another item on the long long long list of things that are theoretically possible but we have no clue how to achieve. (not the least of which is teaching people to have reasonable expectations about science and technology).
Human spaceflight is basically just LARPing now.

Offline GeeGee

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Re: Propellantless Field Propulsion and application
« Reply #1288 on: 05/16/2011 05:18 am »
sigh, the day someone proposes an experiment that demonstrates a basic principle of worm holes you can claim that they might some day be feasible.. until then, they're just another item on the long long long list of things that are theoretically possible but we have no clue how to achieve. (not the least of which is teaching people to have reasonable expectations about science and technology).


No where in my post did I say wormholes were feasible. I was speaking in completely hypothetical terms and noting that wormholes could be converted into time machines quite easily.

Why does this bother you? Is speculation not allowed here? Would you also sigh at the several hundred published papers on wormholes by people like Kip Thorne, who actually came up with the exact scenario I just mentioned?
« Last Edit: 05/16/2011 05:19 am by GeeGee »

Offline QuantumG

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Re: Propellantless Field Propulsion and application
« Reply #1289 on: 05/16/2011 05:28 am »
Speculation that isn't based on experiment went out with Plato.. ironically, it too involved gravity (objects falling at equal rates regardless of mass is not a natural concept).  So yes, I do tell all those physicists who waste their time writing wormhole papers to get back to doing real work.
Human spaceflight is basically just LARPing now.

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: Propellantless Field Propulsion and application
« Reply #1290 on: 05/16/2011 01:30 pm »
Quote from: GeeGee
(1) No where in my post did I say wormholes were feasible. I was speaking in completely hypothetical terms and noting that wormholes could be converted into time machines quite easily.

(2) Why does this bother you? Is speculation not allowed here? Would you also sigh at the (3) several hundred published papers on wormholes by people like Kip Thorne, who actually came up with the exact scenario I just mentioned?

(1) From my standpoint, yes, you did suggest wormholes were feasible.  "Consider a starship carrying the exit-mouth of a wormhole heading towards ..."  By my interpretation, you were not saying: "Consider the starship carrying an infeasible exit mouth of a wormhole".  Rather, you were saying, unless I'm totally incorrect in reading your sentence: "Consider the starship carrying a feasible exit mouth of a wormhole".  You don't have to mention the word "feasibility" in order for your comment to be interpreted as "feasible".

(2) This sort of speculation bothers me a bit, but it doesn't bother me all that much.  In case you're in the least bit interested in how I think, here's an analogy as to your speculation:  Consider the vacation I'd take with a million dollars.  Yes, it is "feasible" that I could suddenly get a million dollars, and take a fairly nice vacation.  Yet, my description of that speculative vacation has very little utility in the world.  By your own telling, this here wormhole promises "immense difficulties in preventing closed timelike curves", so it's utility seems pretty farfetched, without the experiment which addresses the issue somehow in the laboratory.  Therefore, I'd say, your speculation has the utility of my speculative vacation.

I usually don't speak up about this sort of thing, because I've noticed that my viewpoint on these speculative matters of physics, time, wormholes, starships, and so forth, has no appreciable effect on the quantity or quality of such speculations being raised and discussed to no end.

(3) Expressing the limits of my knowledge about the writers in this field, I know nothing about Mr. Thorne and his many papers.  Were my interests different, I would know more.  Were there to be a replicable, vetted experiment, which demonstrated an aspect of the theory he is working on, I would want to learn as much about the work as I could.
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline GeeGee

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Re: Propellantless Field Propulsion and application
« Reply #1291 on: 05/16/2011 02:11 pm »


(1) From my standpoint, yes, you did suggest wormholes were feasible.  "Consider a starship carrying the exit-mouth of a wormhole heading towards ..."  By my interpretation, you were not saying: "Consider the starship carrying an infeasible exit mouth of a wormhole".  Rather, you were saying, unless I'm totally incorrect in reading your sentence: "Consider the starship carrying a feasible exit mouth of a wormhole".  You don't have to mention the word "feasibility" in order for your comment to be interpreted as "feasible".

This does not make any sense. If you're proposing a thought experiment on wormholes, then of course you assume they're feasible in the context of that hypothetical scenario. I don't know how you can misinterpret this as meaning they are feasible in reality.

You do know what a thought experiment is, correct?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gedanken_experiment

« Last Edit: 05/16/2011 02:15 pm by GeeGee »

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: Propellantless Field Propulsion and application
« Reply #1292 on: 05/16/2011 07:37 pm »
Sigh. feasible in the context of that hypothetical scenario, yes.
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline aceshigh

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Re: Propellantless Field Propulsion and application
« Reply #1293 on: 05/16/2011 08:02 pm »
When is Woodward's paper on wormholes going to be published?

I've been reading a bit about them lately, and I've realized that unless you can somehow place the exit-mouth of a wormhole where you want (i.e. light years away) without the need to carry it, then it's going to be very tough to use them in the way we want.

Consider a starship carrying the exit-mouth of a wormhole heading towards Vega (25 light years away) at 0.999c with the entrance-mouth sitting somewhere in orbit. The mouth of the wormhole is being accelerated at relativistic speeds along with the crew, which means they're experiencing time dilation. Now from our perspective, it should take the crew 25 years to reach their destination, but the crew experiences only 3 months thanks to relativity. Since we have a wormhole to their ship, it appears that if we were to step through the entrance in orbit and into their ship, we would have time traveled 25 years into the future; and the crew would conversely be able to time travel 25 years into the past by simply walking in through their side of the wormhole.

sorry, I dont follow why the crew would time travel 25 years in the past by walking through the wormhole.

the crew left Earth in 1st january 2100. They are reaching Vega in 2125. To them, only 3 months have passed at relativistic speeds, but for the low speed universe outside, it passed 25 years.

When they cross the Wormhole in their ship and appear back on Earth, they are in 2025, just like they would be in 2025 when their ship decelerated back to very low speeds to land on Vega.


edit: ok, I see the problem. For some reason (dont know WHICH reason) time is fixed between the two wormhole mouths (always the same on both mouths).

yes, if time is fixed on both mouths, there would be time travel (the crew would return to Earth march 2100).

I would imagine that if a wormhole mouth was just like a "portal" which you can see through, that if you had TWO clocks, each one at a different mouth, the crew inside the ship would see the clock at Earth, through the wormhole, moving incredibly fast (think of the movie Time Machine), while people on Earth would see everything inside the ship VERY slow.

Apparently, that is not correct. The clocks on both places would remain synchronized.


now, the question is WHY is time fixed in both mouths? Can anyone explain me? Thanks.
« Last Edit: 05/16/2011 08:17 pm by aceshigh »

Offline Moe Grills

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Re: Propellantless Field Propulsion and application
« Reply #1294 on: 05/16/2011 08:09 pm »
   Somebody mentioned time travel?  :)

It seems a smart guy named Stephen Hawking once wrote (I'm not quoting him verbatim) that if "time travel" were to be a fact in the future, we should see "tourists" from the future around TODAY.

Where are they? Hiding behind dark glasses, wearing hoodies,
and tapping away on their PC's?  :)

Offline aceshigh

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Re: Propellantless Field Propulsion and application
« Reply #1295 on: 05/16/2011 08:13 pm »
   Somebody mentioned time travel?  :)

It seems a smart guy named Stephen Hawking once wrote (I'm not quoting him verbatim) that if "time travel" were to be a fact in the future, we should see "tourists" from the future around TODAY.

Where are they? Hiding behind dark glasses, wearing hoodies,
and tapping away on their PC's?  :)



I always thought those "greys" were too humanoid to have just originated in another planet.
 ;D
« Last Edit: 05/16/2011 08:13 pm by aceshigh »

Offline aceshigh

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Re: Propellantless Field Propulsion and application
« Reply #1296 on: 05/16/2011 08:26 pm »
all of that time travel talk reminds me of this:


But FTL doesnt actually mean time travel per se. Claims that it does constitute a fundamental misunderstanding of relativity.

such as???

I would love to know, because I already lost more than one argument to physics smartasses that told me FTL means time travel to the past. I said "yes, but not if its FTL that are not really faster than light like a hypothetical tachyon, but ftl like "taking shortcuts" or "moving spacetime itself" (warp), etc.

he showed me an graph to prove I was wrong. Well, my knowledge was not deep enough to contradict him.

This is a common problem with people who think they understand relativity but dont.

The assumptions made are that since it takes 1 year per light year distance for light to travel from destination B to departure point A, that if you go to B from A instantly then you are going to emit photons there that wont be observed at A until x years from now, and therefore are in the past of point A, such that if you travelled back to A from B instantly immediately after travelling from A to B, that you would wind up x many years in the past of A.

This is false. The photons that are observed at A in the future of you arriving at B are in the past OF THAT FUTURE "A" TIMELINE BUT NOT THE PRESENT POINT IN TIME AT "A". This is easy to confuse and its basically a game of physics three card monte that some know-it-alls try to play to "prove" the impossibility of FTL. Once you see where they palmed the card, it becomes much clearer.



Offline mlorrey

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Re: Propellantless Field Propulsion and application
« Reply #1297 on: 05/16/2011 10:34 pm »
   Somebody mentioned time travel?  :)

It seems a smart guy named Stephen Hawking once wrote (I'm not quoting him verbatim) that if "time travel" were to be a fact in the future, we should see "tourists" from the future around TODAY.

Where are they? Hiding behind dark glasses, wearing hoodies,
and tapping away on their PC's?  :)

One more reason Hawking was wrong. Generally speaking, you can't travel with a time machine beyond the period of existence of the time machine itself, so, for instance, if I built one today, I couldn't travel back to yesterday, but people from my future would start coming out of it now.
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Offline kurt9

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Re: Propellantless Field Propulsion and application
« Reply #1298 on: 05/16/2011 10:57 pm »


This is a common problem with people who think they understand relativity but dont.

The assumptions made are that since it takes 1 year per light year distance for light to travel from destination B to departure point A, that if you go to B from A instantly then you are going to emit photons there that wont be observed at A until x years from now, and therefore are in the past of point A, such that if you travelled back to A from B instantly immediately after travelling from A to B, that you would wind up x many years in the past of A.

This is false. The photons that are observed at A in the future of you arriving at B are in the past OF THAT FUTURE "A" TIMELINE BUT NOT THE PRESENT POINT IN TIME AT "A". This is easy to confuse and its basically a game of physics three card monte that some know-it-alls try to play to "prove" the impossibility of FTL. Once you see where they palmed the card, it becomes much clearer.

Either this is the case or its that physicists have a different definition of causality than the one we are all familiar with.

Offline MarkZero

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Re: Propellantless Field Propulsion and application
« Reply #1299 on: 05/17/2011 08:00 am »
...

sorry, I dont follow why the crew would time travel 25 years in the past by walking through the wormhole.

the crew left Earth in 1st january 2100. They are reaching Vega in 2125. To them, only 3 months have passed at relativistic speeds, but for the low speed universe outside, it passed 25 years.

When they cross the Wormhole in their ship and appear back on Earth, they are in 2025, just like they would be in 2025 when their ship decelerated back to very low speeds to land on Vega.


edit: ok, I see the problem. For some reason (dont know WHICH reason) time is fixed between the two wormhole mouths (always the same on both mouths).

yes, if time is fixed on both mouths, there would be time travel (the crew would return to Earth march 2100).

I would imagine that if a wormhole mouth was just like a "portal" which you can see through, that if you had TWO clocks, each one at a different mouth, the crew inside the ship would see the clock at Earth, through the wormhole, moving incredibly fast (think of the movie Time Machine), while people on Earth would see everything inside the ship VERY slow.

Apparently, that is not correct. The clocks on both places would remain synchronized.


now, the question is WHY is time fixed in both mouths? Can anyone explain me? Thanks.

I have no explanation why time for the wormhole mouths would be fixed, only an additional question. If the time for a wormhole mouth is fixed, doesn't that make it impossible to travel through them, or actually even to observe them? I mean if time is fixed for the wormhole mouth, doesn't that mean it only exists in the instance it was created and not in the past or the future of that point in time. So after it's creation wouldn't the wormhole mouth seem to instantly disappear, so instantly in fact that it would not have the chance to emit anything that could be observed to see that it even was there?

Or, if time being fixed for a wormhole means that time in the wormhole has slowed down to a halt, wouldn't that mean that from the outside the wormhole looks just like a black hole because anything that gets inside it will literally take forever to get out, and so will never be seen again?

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