Author Topic: Woodward's effect  (Read 803229 times)

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: Woodward's effect
« Reply #380 on: 06/25/2013 01:48 am »
I have a reflexive-disgust reaction to retrocausality as well. But if it works, so be it.

What does the word "if" mean in your comment?

Retrocausality.

Sorry to go all grammatical on you.  That's what the word "it" means...
De nada. I can go Grammar-Nazi myself at times.[/quote[

No question, if there is such a thing as retrocausality, the dictators of yesterday and today will rejoice at the new possibilities.

Quote from: DJ
The political dictators don't worry me so much. ... But the philosophers who over decades and centuries shape the intellectual climates in which societies, sensibilities and novel political implications develop? The effective death of free will will allow THEM to go hog wild, and the creeds they create to be eventually exploited by the political dictators will be a severe problem.

Which is what I'm getting at in fewer words.  The dictators pick up on the philosophies when they are seen to be pragmatically useful. In some ways, we are in the early stages of a philosophy of compulsion, with the insistance on correct speech from either side of the aisle.

The good news is that the universe is autonomous from the dictator.  A famous example being Stalin's insistance on the adoption of Lysenko's theories.  Today's dictators are better at listening to the scientific oligarchy.  But we digress.

Woodward insists on calling the thrust mechanism "recycled propellant propulsion," as distinct from the more typical "reactionless propulsion." In practical terms there is no effective difference, but Woodward insists the former is the more technically correct.

He's pumping electricity into it, and expects the damn thing to float across the conference table.  Technical that.

Quote from: DJ
The current level of output, if accurately reported, certainly isn't going to be floating across conference tables. OTOH, technical qualifications of that nature are precisely the type of answer you want to see out of the physics end of the equation that (hopefully) results in practical applications.

Don't care about the output level; the first I/C engine was a good bit less powerful than the I/C engines of today.

I'm talking about the conversion of electricity to forward momentum, which this device purports to do, plain and simple.

I had not heard the "recycled propellant propulsion" meme yet, but it is not true.  He puts electrical energy in, and expects the device to move forward.  If he can do that, he can conserve energy by converting it into an equivalent forward momentum, less resistive and other losses.

Also, there are other claims of "free energy" which I mention in passing.

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A great cartoon from a few years ago ...

A case where a few words can substitute for a picture.
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline 93143

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Re: Woodward's effect
« Reply #381 on: 06/25/2013 02:00 am »
Stand at the other end of the universe, at that distant moment in space and in the future, for a sec.  From that viewpoint, at some random point in time, a wave would be generated, moving backwards in time at -c, in order to conserve the momentum that I tweaked in firing up my ME thruster.

Not a random point in time.  The exact point in time that the retarded wave from the thruster's action reaches the matter "at the other end of the universe", which then generates the advanced wave in response.  Nothing has to know anything beforehand.

Quote
Woodward seems to be grasping at straws

This isn't even his idea, as I've said before - it's been used already in quantum mechanics, to explain "spooky action at a distance" that manifestly occurs in experiments.

Wavefunction collapse in quantum entanglement has been shown to happen much faster than lightspeed - at least four orders of magnitude faster, last I heard, which is probably a lower limit due to the precision of the measuring apparatus.  Clearly not everything that happens is limited by a naïve application of lightspeed propagation in forward time.

he can conserve energy by converting it into an equivalent forward momentum, less resistive and other losses.

You can't do that, because energy and momentum are not the same thing and are not mathematically interchangeable.  It is fundamentally impossible to define an equivalence.

No, without the interaction with the distant universe (which conserves both momentum and energy, separately), Woodward's got nothing.
« Last Edit: 11/07/2013 09:44 am by 93143 »

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: Woodward's effect
« Reply #382 on: 06/25/2013 02:14 am »
Stand at the other end of the universe, at that distant moment in space and in the future, for a sec.  From that viewpoint, at some random point in time, a wave would be generated, moving backwards in time at -c, in order to conserve the momentum that I tweaked in firing up my ME thruster.

Not a random point in time.  The exact point in time that the retarded wave from the thruster's action reaches the matter "at the other end of the universe" that generates the advanced wave in response.  Nothing has to know anything beforehand.

Quote
Woodward seems to be grasping at straws

This isn't even his idea, as I've said before - it's been used already in quantum mechanics, to explain "spooky action at a distance" that manifestly occurs in experiments.

From the POV of the inhabitants of that distant time and place.  Without cause, seemingly at random, a retarded wave from the past would be there, and instantaneously an advanced wave would go back at -c.

It don't make sense.

When I said Woodward seems to be grasping at straws, you seem to misinterpret that as my saying that he invented the idea.  He is grasping at some other idea, the Feynman thingy, to support his contentions.  He suggests exchanging "spooky action at a distance" for "spooky action at some time in the future", in  a universe whose growth rate we still do not know.

I'm not sending in $10 bucks for a selfie in front of the thruster.  Not that he's asking.  Just saying.
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline 93143

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Re: Woodward's effect
« Reply #383 on: 06/25/2013 06:02 am »
From the POV of the inhabitants of that distant time and place.  Without cause, seemingly at random, a retarded wave from the past would be there, and instantaneously an advanced wave would go back at -c.

From the point of view of a mirror, without cause, seemingly at random, a retarded electromagnetic wave from the past would be there, and instantaneously another retarded wave would go back at c.

Okay, it's not a perfect analogy, but it seems that what you're really objecting to is the concept of an advanced wave.

And if the concept is valid in quantum electrodynamics, why shouldn't a little-studied branch of gravity physics exhibit similar behaviour?
« Last Edit: 06/25/2013 06:12 am by 93143 »

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: Woodward's effect
« Reply #384 on: 06/25/2013 01:14 pm »
From the POV of the inhabitants of that distant time and place.  Without cause, seemingly at random, a retarded wave from the past would be there, and instantaneously an advanced wave would go back at -c.

From the point of view of a mirror, without cause, seemingly at random, a retarded electromagnetic wave from the past would be there, and instantaneously another retarded wave would go back at c.

Okay, it's not a perfect analogy, but it seems that what you're really objecting to is the concept of an advanced wave.

And if the concept is valid in quantum electrodynamics, why shouldn't a little-studied branch of gravity physics exhibit similar behaviour?

Running with the admittedly flawed but still somewhat useful mirror analogy:

Images appear in the mirror, seemingly at random and without cause.  The reverse of the vampire effect.  The work of the noted vampire scientist Bella Lugosi, posited that vampires do not leave images in mirrors in the causal light cone of the vampire.  The reverse effect would be a vampire appearing in the mirror with no vampire in the causal light cone of that mirror.

So yeah, I am objecting to the concept of an advanced wave.  It flies in the face of causality, and the arrow of time.

You ask, "if the concept is valid in quantum electrodynamics", why shouldn't a derivable concept apply to "gravity physics", and it's a fair question to ask, but it's not the right question, I think.  The pragmatic object is to remove the "if" from the equation.  Then and only then, are starships possible.

The claim that there are actually advanced waves from the future, penetrating our bodies every second is extraordinary enough to require the claimant to prove its existence, and not ask the questioner to prove its non-existance.

There's no such thing as an "advanced wave" which would interact with a starship carrying people, in such a way as to have pragmatic utility.

The device shown so far, does not give unambiguous evidence of the ability to convert electricity directly into forward momentum, at a useful efficiency, by taking advantage of a more detailed understanding of inertia.

As an aside, I have no problem with taxpayer dollars being used to research such possibilities in an appropriate fashion.  It seems certain that such research cannot take place on a desktop, but will require a facility at least as complex as the CERN facility.  At the current time, the physics community does not believe that this work on "retrocausality" and "advanced waves" has sufficient theoretical merit for such a funding level.
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline cuddihy

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Re: Woodward's effect
« Reply #385 on: 06/25/2013 06:25 pm »
On causality:
The blanket rejection of retarded/advanced waves on the point of causality is a bit of a red herring, especially on the basis of a conception that isn't essential to the actual theory.

Within the confines of Woodward's conception of reaction-at-a-distance, there's not even a theoretical way for an observer in the future to directly generate a wave that will propagate backwards in time, no matter what the level of technology of the person in the future.

The advanced waves that would be required in order to cancel out the original retarded wave, for it to appear 'instantly', have to match the retarded wave --is produced via interaction with all the mass in the universe, not via local interactions with handy mass in the future. Additionally, to be self-consistent, any such attempt would also produce a reaction propagating into its own future and the consequent advanced wave that would cancel out the attempt to send a wave unbidden into the past.

On the other hand, if the conception is taken properly--as a conceptual device that helps our three dimensional brains in a one-way arrow of time comprehend how such effect could be consistent with the limitation on propagation of everything at the speed of light--it gets a lot less silly. The math works either way and doesn't require causality.

*update to clarify. What I'm trying to get at here is that the speed-of-light and arrow-of-time objections are red herrings because both objections are based on an implicit rejection of Mach's Principle, which is dishonest in an argument that starts from the assumption that Mach's Principle is valid.

If you accept the original assumption at the beginning of Mach's principle: i.e. that inertial forces are due to a [gravitation like] interaction between the object that is disturbed and the distribution of ALL the mass in the universe
*then the apparent instantaneity of reaction and interaction of all matter follow
*as does the relationship between phi and c.

How the gravitation like interaction occurs and propagates is in fact an aside to the actual question of whether or not it occurs at all

To return to the thread title, clearly the Woodward Effect, not the Mach Effect is the proper name, and yes, it is all about space flight.
« Last Edit: 06/26/2013 05:09 am by cuddihy »

Offline aceshigh

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Re: Woodward's effect
« Reply #386 on: 06/25/2013 06:28 pm »
how about multiverses to solve these questions? You can go back in time and kill your own father. So what? Its just one of an infinite number of branches of time. In an infinite number of them, you never came back in time. In others, you were not even born, simply because a different spermatozoa fecunded your mothers egg, so another person was born and that person became a dentists instead of someone travelling faster than light in a warp drive.

Offline cuddihy

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Re: Woodward's effect
« Reply #387 on: 06/27/2013 05:30 am »
how about multiverses to solve these questions? You can go back in time and kill your own father. So what? Its just one of an infinite number of branches of time. In an infinite number of them, you never came back in time. In others, you were not even born, simply because a different spermatozoa fecunded your mothers egg, so another person was born and that person became a dentists instead of someone travelling faster than light in a warp drive.

Interesting as a sci-fi concept but no relation whatsoever to the Woodward effect or to any other physical laws in this universe.

Offline cordwainer

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Re: Woodward's effect
« Reply #388 on: 06/28/2013 03:55 am »
Cuddihy is right I don't believe that Mach effect has anything to do with retro-causality. After all if you change the pressure of water in a pipe does that violate causality? When people talk about Mach effects of "spooky action a distance" it is usually better to visualize the Universe in terms of fluid dynamics and not our limited physical view of 4 dimensions which is only limited to what is within our physical ability to sense(whether with our own senses or with our devices). We can't sense dark energy/matter(at least not directly) or the Dirac seas but that doesn't mean they don't exist. That being said one could visualize quantum fluctuations as ripples of a past or future event in the Dirac seas. Whether a Mach effect thruster is utilizing the effects of those events on physical space time via their manifestation of energy as one of the 4 physical forces of the Standard Model(electromagnetism, gravity, nuclear forces) or if it is taking advantage of zero-point energy or space time curves in some way is irrelevant. What matters is whether the effect is quantifiable, measurable and can do useful work. We can figure out the exact reason why it works in due time.

Offline D_Dom

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Re: Woodward's effect
« Reply #389 on: 06/28/2013 02:28 pm »
... I will give you a hint.  The electrodynamic Hall thruster that is the M-E thruster's nearest conventional electric rocket analog has a maximum specific force of ~0.05 N/KWe with a specific impulse (Isp) of ~2,500 seconds dependent on anode voltage.  The M-E device I built back in 2003 not only had a specific force almost an order of magnitude larger than the best Hall thrusters, see below URL, its equivalent Isp based on energy flow into the device where mass = E/c^2 , yields an equivalent Isp of over 1x10^12 seconds.  Yes, a functional M-E based thruster matters and it could matter in a big way if we can perfect it.

http://www.busek.com/technologies__hall.htm

I believe that surpasses the goal of "quantifiable and measurable" work. The biggest problem seems to be repeatability. By that I mean overcoming the engineering challenge of building a device that operates reliably over time. That will be very useful indeed.
Space is not merely a matter of life or death, it is considerably more important than that!

Offline cordwainer

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Re: Woodward's effect
« Reply #390 on: 06/28/2013 07:56 pm »
Well, repeatability may be an issue for other reasons as well. If the Mach effect is the result of some external force or "open system" then the amount of useful work might directly relate to the environment around it. Wind energy is inconstant, ancient mariners often found themselves at latitudes where wind and ocean currents were slow. If quantum fluctuations our inconstant and subject to a "doldrum" effect then calculating their actual specific force may be difficult.

Offline cordwainer

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Re: Woodward's effect
« Reply #391 on: 06/29/2013 09:32 pm »
One question? In more relatable layman's terms. When you say an ME thruster would have an order of magnitude greater than a Hall thruster you really mean that you would have the equivalent of a high efficiency MHD thruster that never needs fuel and needs very little maintenance, correct. You should be able to save mass in both fuel and in the size of any onboard power generator and theoretically you can accelerate for as long as you have a power source available(nuclear, solar) or a very long time. Question two? Would the time curve effect or mach effect provide a cumulative or multiplying kinetic effect. In other words would you draw more energy from the effect the longer you accelerate,(Like drawing energy from a steady wind or water current) after all the potential kinetic energy well could be nearly as infinite as the expansionary forces of the Universe.

Offline cuddihy

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Re: Woodward's effect
« Reply #392 on: 07/15/2013 07:35 pm »
One question? In more relatable layman's terms. When you say an ME thruster would have an order of magnitude greater than a Hall thruster you really mean that you would have the equivalent of a high efficiency MHD thruster that never needs fuel and needs very little maintenance, correct. You should be able to save mass in both fuel and in the size of any onboard power generator and theoretically you can accelerate for as long as you have a power source available(nuclear, solar) or a very long time.

Correct.

Quote
Question two? Would the time curve effect or mach effect provide a cumulative or multiplying kinetic effect. In other words would you draw more energy from the effect the longer you accelerate,(Like drawing energy from a steady wind or water current) after all the potential kinetic energy well could be nearly as infinite as the expansionary forces of the Universe.

For the mach effect, or more properly the Woodward effect, yes, theoretically, if you had a fully superconducting Woodward effect device, you could continuously increase your kinetic energy with no limit.

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: Woodward's effect
« Reply #393 on: 07/15/2013 09:17 pm »
On causality:

The blanket rejection of retarded/advanced waves on the point of causality is a bit of a red herring, especially on the basis of a conception that isn't essential to the actual theory.

Woodward brought up this particular red herring, in his book.  I would hope that he brought it up to shed light on his theory and explain it, not for other reasons.

Quote from: cuddihy
The advanced waves that would be required in order to cancel out the original retarded wave, for it to appear 'instantly', have to match the retarded wave --is produced via interaction with all the mass in the universe, not via local interactions with handy mass in the future. Additionally, to be self-consistent, any such attempt would also produce a reaction propagating into its own future and the consequent advanced wave that would cancel out the attempt to send a wave unbidden into the past.

You may think that this makes sense, but I do not. 

I'm driving my starship.  It is made out of "handy mass" in the local present.  As I travel left and right in my erratic trip thru the galaxy, these advance waves have to be there to meet me in, well, advance, somehow predicting my whimsical left and right turns.

It makes no sense.

Quote from: cuddihy
On the other hand, if the conception is taken properly--as a conceptual device that helps our three dimensional brains in a one-way arrow of time comprehend how such effect could be consistent with the limitation on propagation of everything at the speed of light--it gets a lot less silly. The math works either way and doesn't require causality.

Fine.  If all one is doing is playing around with "conceptual" math to no pragmatic purpose, then go for it.

Quote from: cuddihy
*update to clarify. What I'm trying to get at here is that the speed-of-light and arrow-of-time objections are red herrings because both objections are based on an implicit rejection of Mach's Principle, which is dishonest in an argument that starts from the assumption that Mach's Principle is valid.

Fine.  Have it your way.  Start from whatever assumption you wish.

Quote from: cuddihy
How the gravitation like interaction occurs and propagates is in fact an aside to the actual question of whether or not it occurs at all.

To return to the thread title, clearly the Woodward Effect, not the Mach Effect is the proper name, and yes, it is all about space flight.

Unless there is instantaneous action at a distance, with all the mass in the universe, no matter which direction your fancy takes you, no starships here, move along.
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline cuddihy

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Re: Woodward's effect
« Reply #394 on: 07/18/2013 05:49 am »

Quote from: cuddihy
The advanced waves that would be required in order to cancel out the original retarded wave, for it to appear 'instantly', have to match the retarded wave -- is produced via interaction with all the mass in the universe, not via local interactions with handy mass in the future. Additionally, to be self-consistent, any such attempt would also produce a reaction propagating into its own future and the consequent advanced wave that would cancel out the attempt to send a wave unbidden into the past.

You may think that this makes sense, but I do not. 

I'm driving my starship.  It is made out of "handy mass" in the local present.  As I travel left and right in my erratic trip thru the galaxy, these advance waves have to be there to meet me in, well, advance, somehow predicting my whimsical left and right turns.

It makes no sense.

. . .<snip> . . .

Unless there is instantaneous action at a distance, with all the mass in the universe, no matter which direction your fancy takes you, no starships here, move along.

it makes no sense to you...

"somehow predicting my whimsical left and right turns" is not correct. Just because you can't personally travel into the future and then reflect back into the past doesn't mean a gravitational interaction can't, or more to the point that it perhaps must in order for inertia to be gravitationally derived. There is no prediction taking place, the GI interactions at light speed are going as far into the future as they are into the past. So it's not predicting where you're going to be -- the wave at time t0+time at->hubble limit at the very temporal edge of the interaction is propagating based on where you have already been at t0+1, t0+2, etc. The future does not have to be predetermined for this to work conceptually, gravity is not a chaotic system on the macro scale, and the fact that you're interacting with ALL the matter in the universe through all time makes that clear. The distribution of mass in the universe just has to keep relatively the same macro shape to return the correct reflection of the retarded wave.

"handy mass" in the local present is not the point either. It's the mass the advanced wave is interacting with in the future that the "no local handy mass" applies to.

The point is that you cannot even conceptually "design" a wave to go into the past at all, no matter how smart you are about it. You are bound by the shape and distribution of mass in the universe as it really is to only produce interactions that propagate forward & backwards in time like the GI interactions described. Trying to produce a non-cancelling wave in the future would be akin to trying to pull yourself off the ground by your shoelaces and holding it there.

There's no way to stand outside the system and interact within the system. Since the interaction is with ALL the mass in the universe over ALL time, it's not even possible to design an intertial force-producing interaction that does not have the appearance of instantaneity, except transiently...as the Woodward effect does!

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: Woodward's effect
« Reply #395 on: 07/18/2013 12:28 pm »
Just because you can't personally travel into the future and then reflect back into the past doesn't mean a gravitational interaction can't, or more to the point that it perhaps must in order for inertia to be gravitationally derived.

Perhaps it must.

You are going to have to delete the "perhaps" from your sentence, and do so with demonstrable, independently repeatable proof.

Not me.
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline cordwainer

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Re: Woodward's effect
« Reply #396 on: 07/18/2013 08:25 pm »
If the "Woodward effect"(still think it should be called Mach effect) is based on stochastic dynamics interpretation of space time curves, then wouldn't quantum fluctuations result as an interaction between masses as they curve the space around them or when two or more large masses interfere with each other gravitationally? Essentially or in a virtual sense, a mach effect thruster would simple make a craft fall faster towards an object than local gravity effects allow by "surfing" a trough of "zero point energy" created by a gravity waves propagation. Since gravity is either the product of a particle or the product of interactions between particles(Higg's Brane theory or Quantum Loop Gravity theory, take your pick) then gravity waves are constantly being created and propagated and cannot be thought of a single wave. That means that fluctuations and peaks in actual gravitational energy should appear, effects like a large potential gravity well, harmonic resonance created through interference of two waves etc. merely create the illusion of a physically constant gravitational pull. So in theory one should be able to make use of this rising and falling of gravitational energy in some way just not as a future wave bouncing back to the past. It's more like riding a wake board in a weak sea of currents and small troughs. 

Offline cuddihy

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Re: Woodward's effect
« Reply #397 on: 11/11/2013 03:25 am »
I'm not sure how to fit these two ideas together. It's a lot of back and forth between the macro Mach effects and the quantum effects that occur at a very micro scale. It's part of what I've always been a bit confused about the quantum vacuum fluctuation effects that Dr. White proposes -- I don't really understand the connection between the two ideas. But then I've always had problems grasping how macro effects work on the quantum scale...

Offline cuddihy

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Re: Woodward's effect
« Reply #398 on: 12/03/2013 02:03 pm »
Anyone heard any news lately from Woodward or Fearn's work?

Offline aceshigh

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Re: Woodward's effect
« Reply #399 on: 12/04/2013 01:15 pm »
news are quite scarce since Paul March started working with Dr Sonny White.

I think people who are in Dr Woodward´s mail list may have some news, but truth is that Dr Woodward seems to be in no rush to prove anything to anyone, and he is content with his slow paced self funded research.

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