Why are there now two threads for this nonsense?
Quote from: Star One on 08/03/2014 08:41 pmQuote from: hop on 08/03/2014 08:19 pmQuote from: Star One on 08/03/2014 07:47 pmIt seems much confusion has arisen here. I have been reading on the Polywell forums that firstly the business with the Null article is not a concern, what you are seeing is an ill chosen abstract. Please see the quote below for more detail. If the experiments were actually done at atmospheric pressure none of that matters. It's clear from the paper that at least some of the tests were (see fig 22). That fact that it isn't clearly stated for each test is a major flaw in the paper regardless of the results, and strongly suggests the paper wasn't rigerously reviewed.I don't understand why you think the quoted post would "clear up confusion", it looks like a hand wavy rationalization to me. To most scientists, a "null" that produces the predicted effect would be a strong hint to look for experimental error, not new physics.My overall view is this is going to have wait for the further round of tests in the fall of this year, it looks like at this time there are just too many possible issues with this as it stands. It sounds like what they are planning next is either going to make or break this whole thing.Nothing will ever break it. The tests will fail to show convincing evidence of anomalous thrust, and the proponents of the various reactionless drives will come up with rationalizations for it and explain how they're working on new versions that will fix the problems. It will continue without end.
Quote from: hop on 08/03/2014 08:19 pmQuote from: Star One on 08/03/2014 07:47 pmIt seems much confusion has arisen here. I have been reading on the Polywell forums that firstly the business with the Null article is not a concern, what you are seeing is an ill chosen abstract. Please see the quote below for more detail. If the experiments were actually done at atmospheric pressure none of that matters. It's clear from the paper that at least some of the tests were (see fig 22). That fact that it isn't clearly stated for each test is a major flaw in the paper regardless of the results, and strongly suggests the paper wasn't rigerously reviewed.I don't understand why you think the quoted post would "clear up confusion", it looks like a hand wavy rationalization to me. To most scientists, a "null" that produces the predicted effect would be a strong hint to look for experimental error, not new physics.My overall view is this is going to have wait for the further round of tests in the fall of this year, it looks like at this time there are just too many possible issues with this as it stands. It sounds like what they are planning next is either going to make or break this whole thing.
Quote from: Star One on 08/03/2014 07:47 pmIt seems much confusion has arisen here. I have been reading on the Polywell forums that firstly the business with the Null article is not a concern, what you are seeing is an ill chosen abstract. Please see the quote below for more detail. If the experiments were actually done at atmospheric pressure none of that matters. It's clear from the paper that at least some of the tests were (see fig 22). That fact that it isn't clearly stated for each test is a major flaw in the paper regardless of the results, and strongly suggests the paper wasn't rigerously reviewed.I don't understand why you think the quoted post would "clear up confusion", it looks like a hand wavy rationalization to me. To most scientists, a "null" that produces the predicted effect would be a strong hint to look for experimental error, not new physics.
It seems much confusion has arisen here. I have been reading on the Polywell forums that firstly the business with the Null article is not a concern, what you are seeing is an ill chosen abstract. Please see the quote below for more detail.
Am not sure I understand the objection to power being provided from a source not physically connected to the device. I understand that it would no longer be a closed system, but considering the scope of the mechanism of which these things are supposed to work then it is a moot point.Why would it matter? Honest question.
Hello all,I think there is one elephant in the room that nobody seems to notice. If the drive is supposed to gain impulse by interaction with virtual particles of the quantum vacuum, then these particles obviously have to be accelerated in the opposed direction in which the drive is accelerated.Here comes now the elephant: When those accelerated virtual particles (which pop in an out of existence spontaneously) disappear again to who-knows-where, what happens to the impulse that these particles previously gained.. is it gone? I can hardly imagine that this should be the case. So.. where would the imparted impulse on the virtual particles go? Ideas? On the other hand.. please correct me if I'm wrong.. I seem to remember some knowledge that virtual particles were not subject to impulse conservation?Regards
Quote from: IslandPlaya on 08/04/2014 02:52 pmAm not sure I understand the objection to power being provided from a source not physically connected to the device. I understand that it would no longer be a closed system, but considering the scope of the mechanism of which these things are supposed to work then it is a moot point.Why would it matter? Honest question.Don't know the exact setup but it's not trivial to exchange power from laboratory frame to device frame without exchanging momentum down to µN. The thrust of the device is measured as a displacement against a spring. With a torsion pendulum the device should be completely free to rotate about a vertical axis save for a very weak spring restoring force. The torsion wire(s) should be the only mechanical link(s) between lab frame and device frame. If you go current through them they are heating (changing stiffness). If you have other "soft" bent wires they will exert spurious forces. Also 10 cm of straight wire passing only 20mA of current will get about a µN of lateral thrust in the earth magnetic field alone. A curved wire will tend to straighten up a little bit from interaction with its own generated magnetic field. Going wireless would probably be worse as it's basically coupling electromagnets across the two frames. Even optical power transmission has some radiation pressure (not sure how much). All effects that go on when power on and off when power off (like the effect to be measured). I'm sure all that can be mitigated, but it's really far from trivial. Better have the power source on the suspended test bed (though not perfect as it can still electromagnetically interfere with lab/earth frame even in a vacuum)
Too important to be public. Military knows to release crappy results. What do you think X34 is for?
I think they did the test with an RF load also.They reported no force in this case. That must go someway to eliminating systemic errors in their setup.
Quote from: IslandPlaya on 08/03/2014 09:28 pmToo important to be public. Military knows to release crappy results. What do you think X34 is for?Sure you want to go with that example there? The X-34 never flew and so provided NO data. Just an FYI Randy
Quote from: RanulfC on 08/04/2014 07:13 pmQuote from: IslandPlaya on 08/03/2014 09:28 pmToo important to be public. Military knows to release crappy results. What do you think X34 is for?Sure you want to go with that example there? The X-34 never flew and so provided NO data. Just an FYI RandyLol. Fair cop RanulfC!I 'of course' meant to say the X-37
Welcome to the forum![sophomoric speculation] Perhaps the impulse goes to wherever the virtual particles came "from" when they pop out of existence again. Conservation of momentum only matters in a closed system right? [/sophomoric speculation]
Quote from: IslandPlaya on 08/04/2014 07:08 pmI think they did the test with an RF load also.They reported no force in this case. That must go someway to eliminating systemic errors in their setup.No, they reported there was some thrust detected from the RF load, also, but not as much, and they subtracted that from the measured thrust for the other two devices.
Quote from: IslandPlaya on 08/04/2014 02:52 pmAm not sure I understand the objection to power being provided from a source not physically connected to the device. I understand that it would no longer be a closed system, but considering the scope of the mechanism of which these things are supposed to work then it is a moot point.Why would it matter? Honest question.The power is provided from a physically connected source, but the source is not accelerated with the device. This means that you are feeding a current from a static system into a moving frame of reference and that could appear as a thrust. And I might be wrong with this, but I am pretty sure that this could be a potential problem, especially when we are dealing with very small amounts of thrust here.
IANAS - But, I have read the report and it seems to me that they are only reporting on experimental results that they could not explain and honestly didn't expect to see. The first set of experiments and the "null" (they should have chosen a better word) device indicated results that were unexpected and invalidated 1 theory as to why results were seen. The so called "null" device was not really such a device. Rather, the engineer that made it had a theory that placing groves in one end of the device would create thrust and that not having the grooves would not create thrust. He was proven wrong in that the device appeared to create thrust irregardless of the groves. The second set of experiments conducted with a different device of a type more closely related to the EMDrive also yielded results. They were able to take lessons learned about their first experimental setup and apply them to the second set of tests. As such they were able to test at much higher frequencies. Among all of the tests, time available to test has been an issue. They stated in the opening brief about the setup of their vacuum chamber and pendulum that it takes "days" to pull an appropriate vacuum. Later in the paper they stated that one of the devices used had electrical components that were not vacuum friendly. I don't recall a specific mention of the second set of tests being performed in a vacuum. The paper did not make any conclusions as to what is causing the effect that they are seeing. It does state that the effect is worth investigating and that they are planning to test a more powerful 1GHz version at other facilities with better equipment. I believe that at this time such an advanced concept lab as this is doing the right thing in further researching the results that they measured. I also believe that they are confident to a high enough degree to warrant larger scale testing at facilities that are better equipped for such tests. I look forward to the results of such testing whether they be positive or negative.