If you have a new physical theory which predicts some phenomenon, it should reduce to previously known physical theories, and be able to explain existing experiments and observations. If I believe that the EM drive is actually providing some nonclassical, unexplained thrust, I must throw out 100+ years of physics experiment and theory. I choose not to do that, which is why I do not believe further experimentation is warranted. Others may choose differently, but then they should ask themselves why they are so eager to disregard such a large body of established science.
I'm going to preface this by admitting straight off the bat that I don't actually know why it wouldn't have been noticed before. However, the functionality of these EM drives is dependent on resonance, which requires the broadcast energy to be absorbed, or at the very least contained, by the cavity. For the purposes of transmission, resonating cavities are a characteristic of inefficiency and loss to design against, no?
So what are the leading contenders among established physical phenomena which could account for some of the observations/results from the experimental apparatus?Could these results be due to a mere photon rocket - ie. due to mere photon emissions?Could they be due to the EM fields interacting with the rest of the apparatus in ways that would throw off the measurements?Could the results be due to some mechanical effect of electric current passing through wires, etc?List the possible legitimate effects that could be contributing to these anomalous results, and then figure out ways to modify the rig to eliminate or otherwise correct for them.
The mere fact that this saga has continued for 15 years without a definitive experiment such as suggested by squid leads one to smell a rat! Could it all just be due to poor experimental method?
How to eliminate almost all of these (and for the life of me I can't understand why this hasn't been done, as it's pretty obvious) -- and I should credit Dymytry for the suggestion upthread:1. Place the ENTIRE apparatus in a thermally shielded, electrically shielded hermetic enclosure. Doesn't need to be a vacuum, doesn't need to be anything fancy. A few hours in a machine shop with some aluminum plate is all you need for this. Mu-metal (to screen magnetic fields) would be best, though, with perhaps some polystyrene insulation on the outside. This would include a battery powered RF amplifier. Doesn't need to be anything fancy -- switch it on with a timer after you seal up, for example.2. Hang the entire apparatus on a Cavendish-style torsion balance. IF it moves:3. Replicate the experiment with a 50 ohm load instead of a cavity.IF it moves:4. Replicate the experiment with cavities made of different metal, or filled with dielectric... this should reduce the e-field (lower the Q) and show less thrust.Then I will be much more convinced that something interesting is going on.
Go back and read the entire thread, you'll find they already did most of what you suggested. Their Rig has been tested and has not been falsified.There is another explanation that has been around for many decades, it is that variations in the gravitational field are indistinguishable from variations in the refractive index of the vacuum. When you refer to the Lorentz invariance of Maxwell's equations, this does not hold in a vacuum where epsilon0 and mu0 are variables. In General Relativity we refer to the metric components, g^uv. These can and are interpreted as components of a variable refractive index, in the Polarizable Vacuum Model. Primarily refined by Hal Puthoff, a few papers of my own and many others have contributed to it. There are many, many papers on this available. In this case, the interior energy density is not symmetrical, so the refractive index has a gradient. It was said in a previous post that the speed of light inside is different than it is outside. This is the correct interpretation, however it must include a gradient in the refractive index, as it passes through the structure itself, to cause motion. The gradient in the refractive index "is" a gravitational field. That is what the warp drive requires. In a separate experiment, they may have shown that the speed of light inside the chamber varies. The amount is varies would only be noticed "IF" you were looking for it. Most resonant systems are "tuned" to eliminate such affects in manufacturing. In such a small cavity, I'm not confident it can be measured.
Quote from: laika on 05/01/2015 04:01 amThe mere fact that this saga has continued for 15 years without a definitive experiment such as suggested by squid leads one to smell a rat! Could it all just be due to poor experimental method?Granted. But perhaps maybe its been dragged on for 15 years because no one would take it seriously. Consider how sad it would be if that were the case. This is certainly the first I've heard of it.Eagleworks isn't full of crackpots. If they discover it was experimental error then that will be the end of it. Hand waving this away because you do not agree with their observations wont kill it, but the science they're doing now will.
Quote from: Hexadecibel on 05/01/2015 04:27 amQuote from: laika on 05/01/2015 04:01 amThe mere fact that this saga has continued for 15 years without a definitive experiment such as suggested by squid leads one to smell a rat! Could it all just be due to poor experimental method?Granted. But perhaps maybe its been dragged on for 15 years because no one would take it seriously. Consider how sad it would be if that were the case. This is certainly the first I've heard of it.Eagleworks isn't full of crackpots. If they discover it was experimental error then that will be the end of it. Hand waving this away because you do not agree with their observations wont kill it, but the science they're doing now will. ote]Hopefully Eagleworks will resolve it, but they haven't yet resolved to everyone's satisfaction whether or not there IS any thrust, and yet they are forging ahead hypothesizing warp effects related to zero point energy!Even their test setup is only intended to produce micro-Newton thrust levels, extremely difficult to measure requiring complex test equipment all a potential source of measurement error.The UK and Chinese tests apparently produced thrusts you almost could feel! So with accurate, well thought out measurements, an unambiguous result could be produced. Then would be the time to determine what is causing it.
Quote from: Mulletron on 04/30/2015 08:05 pmIt is clear that we are operating under other than usual symmetry conditions and that Maxwell's equations as we were trained to use them do not apply.What are you talking about? Maxwell's equations apply to EM radiation unequivocally. Especially in these low power regimes there is no chance of observing any perturbations due to higher order effects from field theory.Look, I want to believe in a "reactionless" drive as much as the next SF junkie, but this does not pass the smell test. Consider:e0. The proposed explanations violate: conservation of energy, conservation of momentum, and the Lorentz transformations. These are some of the best-tested physical arguments we have today, and yet this "drive" violates them by huge orders of magnitude. Is it really plausible that 100+ years of experiments have failed to notice a comparatively huge effect? RF cavities are not a poorly understood system. I used to work with superconducting RF cavities for particle accelerators with Q > 1 million supporting fields of > 10 MV/m. I can guarantee you we would have noticed if power was disappearing into "thrust", or if the damn things were starting to levitate. 1. Even if we are pushing against the "quantum vacuum" this does not make sense, as any such vacuumo must be charge neutral and so we would be pushing in opposite directions on electrons and positrons. Not to mention the accelerated positrons would smash into the surrounding cavity, producing copious, easily-observable gamma rays.1a. Even ignoring this objection, to promote particles from "virtual" to real (as in Hawking radiation...) you have to provide the particles with their mass-energy. 511 keV per electron/positron. Does this make sense?Assume 100% of the energy delivered to the cavity goes into making virtual particles real: 100 W / (mass of electron * c^2) = 1e15 electrons / s. Assume the particles are instantaneously acclerated to the speed of light (a pretty generous assumption). Then F = (1e15 electron/s)*(mass of electron)*(speed of light) = 2e-7 newtons. Much smaller than what we observe. The explanation does not hold up to scrutiny.2. The "quantum vacuum"/Casimir effect should not be given more emphasis than is appropriate. It is a calculational tool. For example, one can explain the casimir effect solely through the van der Waals forces between two neighboring conductors, without handwaving explanations about virtual particles: http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/11544/vander-waals-and-casimir-forces3. The quantum vacuum publication referenced earlier is really, really bad. It starts with the Bohr formula for hydrogen (thus neglecting any fine structure, etc... effects), and takes a "radius" (which as we know from QM should not be interpreted literally...) to get a volume and from that some kind of density. This has no physical meaning. Then a function 1/r^4 is fitted to the values -- with no justification! This is then compared to the casimir force for cavities separated by this radius... and the values are pretty far off. But it looks like a factor of 1/3! So some further handwaving about general relativity which also has a factor of 1/3 in one equation! Then there's a whole word salad about solving hydrogen atom wavefunctions with COMSOL [], which is ridiculous since any undergraduate physics students can solve them with pen and paper... This papers seems explicitly designed to use lots of fancy terminology and equations to look impressive to anyone with no background in physics, while saying nothing at all of substance. It does not even rise to the level of coherence.In conclusion, this whole affair appears to be the work of someone who has convinced himself his theory is right and is on a fishing expedition for evidence that supports it. The experimental design is poor (camera pictures of LabView windows? unable to find an RF amplifier to deliver more than 100W of power? inability to measure forces that would be measurable in the 1800's?), the past 100+ years of physical experiments contradict the experiments, and there is no coherent underlying theory.This is not science, it is cargo cult science.
It is clear that we are operating under other than usual symmetry conditions and that Maxwell's equations as we were trained to use them do not apply.