From what I remember, originally there was the Alcubierre "Warp Drive" concept proposed by Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre, which required a jupiter-sized mass of dark matter. Then Dr White came up with a refinement of the geometry, so that the amount of dark matter was much less (someone compared it to the mass of the Voyager space probe.) Then Dr White announced his intention to test whether a "space warp" was possible, by using a Michelson interferometer to try to detect a path-length difference when a voltage was applied to a capacitor ring.So that stuff was all purely related to Alcubierre "Warp Drive". And of course news media were widely reporting that NASA was researching how to develop a Warp Drive, and the news stories were of course showing pictures of the starship Enterprise from Star Trek. But Shawyer's EMdrive was nowhere in that picture, and was an altogether separate and much less reported story on its own.Then when the Eagleworks lab got involved in experimental testing to verify the Shawyer EMdrive concept (or Cannae drive, whatever) that's when suddenly the 2 stories began to merge, and speculation was put forth that the EMdrive was somehow a "Q-thruster" and then further that it was a "Warp Drive". Since the actual mechanism - if any - is unknown, what it is seems to depend on who's doing the speculating.
How much power are you planning on putting through that coax? The thicker it gets, the stiffer it gets, which would mess up any delicate movements of the balance beam. My experience is with amateur radio, and there 50 watts is the most you would try to put through something like RG-59 (looks like cable-TV cable). RG-8, which can handle a kilowatt, is about 1 cm in diameter and not very flexible at all.Power losses in the cable of course turn into heat...
I am afraid that Star-Drive...aka Paul March isn't coming back. We had such a productive collaboration. That was open source science happening right before the World's eyes.We'll reach the stars someday, and you're getting us there...one data point at a time.
.....Amazing how times have changed that now discussing future space applications (even if they are impractical like the flotilla of spaceships to Mars was) is met with such backlash at the one organization that should be inspiring young people to go into mathematics, physics and engineering (instead of being condemned to short trips to near-Earth orbit gazing at our own planet). ......
EDIT: Actually.. the movie implies that, because only very smart people made it into space and procreate there, their descendants should also be quite a bit smarter in general than the old generations on Earth. An evolutionary jump, if you will, caused by extinction pressure.
Quote from: Rodal on 05/05/2015 04:07 pmQuote from: Flyby on 05/05/2015 03:05 pmwhile realizing my knowledge of electromagnetism falls short compared to level that is discussed here, i do have a question about that interesting idea on momentum transfer of the waves : -with the law on conservation of energy in the back of my head - How can the momentum transfer of a wave be bigger then the energy contained in a photon, as seen in a pure photon rocket ? I believe calculations showed the forces observed in the frustum are many times (100? 1000?) greater then what a photon rocket would be able to produce...Due to the duality of microwave being a photon particle and a wave at the same time, shouldn't the energy contained in a wave/particle be the same?Is it because for a photon rocket only a small portion of that energy is used for kinetic motion, while in the momentum transfer a greater part of the energy is transferred? Concerning Todd's formulation, I attach below his reply that was posted in another thread, that may also be of help concerning the above question:COM=conservation of momentumGR=General RelativityHis answer has to do with the "gravitational field" inside the cavity, which can have different levels of energy :(in one post he suggested that the experimenters should post a label on the frustum reading "Gravitational Field Inside") I'm trying to wrap my head around this, so let's see if i got this right...(in simple wording)Due to the shape of the frustum, energy is gradually compressed going from the large base to the small base. (energy density differs along the longitudinal axis). This energy increase also causes a denser gravitational field, effectively slowing down electromagnetic waves, who transfer part of their momentum energy to the frustum...I can more or less see how "gravitational drag" can cause a forward motion for wave moving towards the small end... but what about the returning waves?Do they accelerate again when the gravitational field inside the frustum decreases (going from small to large base) , hence nullifying the forward momentum..ordo they keep their lower energy state on the way back, hence slowly dying out to zero after X bounces?or.. did i completely miss the point?
Quote from: Flyby on 05/05/2015 03:05 pmwhile realizing my knowledge of electromagnetism falls short compared to level that is discussed here, i do have a question about that interesting idea on momentum transfer of the waves : -with the law on conservation of energy in the back of my head - How can the momentum transfer of a wave be bigger then the energy contained in a photon, as seen in a pure photon rocket ? I believe calculations showed the forces observed in the frustum are many times (100? 1000?) greater then what a photon rocket would be able to produce...Due to the duality of microwave being a photon particle and a wave at the same time, shouldn't the energy contained in a wave/particle be the same?Is it because for a photon rocket only a small portion of that energy is used for kinetic motion, while in the momentum transfer a greater part of the energy is transferred? Concerning Todd's formulation, I attach below his reply that was posted in another thread, that may also be of help concerning the above question:COM=conservation of momentumGR=General RelativityHis answer has to do with the "gravitational field" inside the cavity, which can have different levels of energy :(in one post he suggested that the experimenters should post a label on the frustum reading "Gravitational Field Inside")
while realizing my knowledge of electromagnetism falls short compared to level that is discussed here, i do have a question about that interesting idea on momentum transfer of the waves : -with the law on conservation of energy in the back of my head - How can the momentum transfer of a wave be bigger then the energy contained in a photon, as seen in a pure photon rocket ? I believe calculations showed the forces observed in the frustum are many times (100? 1000?) greater then what a photon rocket would be able to produce...Due to the duality of microwave being a photon particle and a wave at the same time, shouldn't the energy contained in a wave/particle be the same?Is it because for a photon rocket only a small portion of that energy is used for kinetic motion, while in the momentum transfer a greater part of the energy is transferred?
Quote from: ThereIWas3 on 05/05/2015 05:10 pmHow much power are you planning on putting through that coax? The thicker it gets, the stiffer it gets, which would mess up any delicate movements of the balance beam. My experience is with amateur radio, and there 50 watts is the most you would try to put through something like RG-59 (looks like cable-TV cable). RG-8, which can handle a kilowatt, is about 1 cm in diameter and not very flexible at all.Power losses in the cable of course turn into heat...Thanks for the feedback.Did a few years as a ham. You are right. Cable heat losses need to be considered. Will be very small. Max power will be 100W.What I plan to do is not a lot different to how Shawyer tests is cryo EM Drive variant as attached. Note the scale under the cryo EM Drive and the other above left?He has been doing this since 2003 or before. Why reinvent the wheel? Follow the path he has made.
BTW, I think Mr. Shawyer claimed that there was no dielectric inserted into his cavity at all because it was not needed for its functioning. Technically though, that's not possible with materials like copper and aluminum. They instantly oxidize during manufacture of the cavity. So, the standing EM waves will encounter a dielectric on any metallic surface.
Quote from: CW on 05/05/2015 07:01 pmEDIT: Actually.. the movie implies that, because only very smart people made it into space and procreate there, their descendants should also be quite a bit smarter in general than the old generations on Earth. An evolutionary jump, if you will, caused by extinction pressure.which goes against current fact: the 10% smarter people on Earth seems to procreate much more slowly than the other 90%.maybe this trend is older than we think and is the reason why we are still stuck to Earth.
Eagleworks mounted their PA on the balance beam. The frequency source could also be custom made and mounted on the balance beam. That would eliminate the coax problem.Interesting photograph; I have not seen it before. The experiment is nicely setup with very good shielding for air currents. But I don't see how it can be called cryogenic. It looks like the Nitrogen dewar is just supplying dry Nitrogen. The apparatus inside the clear boxes and sitting on a postage scale is not a dewar. Unless he has found a supplier of room temperature superconductors it is not a superconductor test. Superconducting cavities have to be cooled with liquid Helium and to keep the lHe from boiling off in a flash the lHe dewar has to be surrounded by a liquid Nitrogen dewar. A high vacuum has to separate the dewars from everything and high IR reflective surfaces and other exotic contrivances are needed. Otherwise the cryogens boil off and the whole thing turns into a missile. High temperature superconductors are easier to work with because they only require liquid Nitrogen. The second picture shows my crufty rotating magnetic field setup. The white thing is a styrofoam container filled with liquid Nitrogen and the dut (device under test).
Maybe someone can tell him we've settled down here. Did the tumult from a few of the new thread participants because of the new publicity discourage him?
As far as I can tell, I am not the only one to have thought to a general relativity effect here. This paper uses a modified version of Einstein equations to explain what is going on in a conical resonant cavity without violating momentum conservation. The point is that the author uses a weak perturbation approximation and I do not know if this is fully justified.
The weakest part of the theory seems to be that there is no clear way of preventing large gravitational effects due to the magnetic field of the Earth, as predicted by Eq. (17)
Quote from: sanman on 05/05/2015 06:23 pmFrom what I remember, originally there was the Alcubierre "Warp Drive" concept proposed by Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre, which required a jupiter-sized mass of dark matter. Then Dr White came up with a refinement of the geometry, so that the amount of dark matter was much less (someone compared it to the mass of the Voyager space probe.) Then Dr White announced his intention to test whether a "space warp" was possible, by using a Michelson interferometer to try to detect a path-length difference when a voltage was applied to a capacitor ring.So that stuff was all purely related to Alcubierre "Warp Drive". And of course news media were widely reporting that NASA was researching how to develop a Warp Drive, and the news stories were of course showing pictures of the starship Enterprise from Star Trek. But Shawyer's EMdrive was nowhere in that picture, and was an altogether separate and much less reported story on its own.Then when the Eagleworks lab got involved in experimental testing to verify the Shawyer EMdrive concept (or Cannae drive, whatever) that's when suddenly the 2 stories began to merge, and speculation was put forth that the EMdrive was somehow a "Q-thruster" and then further that it was a "Warp Drive". Since the actual mechanism - if any - is unknown, what it is seems to depend on who's doing the speculating.Maybe there is some of that going on out there. But what i am recalling is from this thread. and I think it may have been Mr March or someone directly in a conversation with Mr March in this thread. Again my memory may be faulty on who but not where. It happened here. ...or maybe i am insane.
Quote from: Stormbringer on 05/05/2015 06:34 pmQuote from: sanman on 05/05/2015 06:23 pmFrom what I remember, originally there was the Alcubierre "Warp Drive" concept proposed by Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre, which required a jupiter-sized mass of dark matter. Then Dr White came up with a refinement of the geometry, so that the amount of dark matter was much less (someone compared it to the mass of the Voyager space probe.) Then Dr White announced his intention to test whether a "space warp" was possible, by using a Michelson interferometer to try to detect a path-length difference when a voltage was applied to a capacitor ring.So that stuff was all purely related to Alcubierre "Warp Drive". And of course news media were widely reporting that NASA was researching how to develop a Warp Drive, and the news stories were of course showing pictures of the starship Enterprise from Star Trek. But Shawyer's EMdrive was nowhere in that picture, and was an altogether separate and much less reported story on its own.Then when the Eagleworks lab got involved in experimental testing to verify the Shawyer EMdrive concept (or Cannae drive, whatever) that's when suddenly the 2 stories began to merge, and speculation was put forth that the EMdrive was somehow a "Q-thruster" and then further that it was a "Warp Drive". Since the actual mechanism - if any - is unknown, what it is seems to depend on who's doing the speculating.Maybe there is some of that going on out there. But what i am recalling is from this thread. and I think it may have been Mr March or someone directly in a conversation with Mr March in this thread. Again my memory may be faulty on who but not where. It happened here. ...or maybe i am insane. And besides that, Paul March was initially involved with research on Prof Woodward's "Mach Effect" theory, which is again something altogether different from Alcubierre warp drive and EMdrive. Mach Effect as of yet cannot be claimed to violate the established laws of physics, and is supposedly a prerequisite or necessary consequence of Einstein's Relativity. But so the Woodward Mach Effect experiments were about oscillating masses, weren't they? They were not the same type of apparatus as the EMdrive. So when I see people mentioning warp drive, Woodward's theory, and EMdrive all in the same thread, it kind of looks like the lines are being blurred here. These things originally started out as completely distinct from each other - they were 3 separate things - and now it looks like they're all being mashed together in the thread discussions. Perhaps it's because the same researchers at Eagleworks have been involved in investigating all 3 things.
Quote from: zen-in on 05/05/2015 07:50 pmEagleworks mounted their PA on the balance beam. The frequency source could also be custom made and mounted on the balance beam. That would eliminate the coax problem.Interesting photograph; I have not seen it before. The experiment is nicely setup with very good shielding for air currents. But I don't see how it can be called cryogenic. It looks like the Nitrogen dewar is just supplying dry Nitrogen. The apparatus inside the clear boxes and sitting on a postage scale is not a dewar. Unless he has found a supplier of room temperature superconductors it is not a superconductor test. Superconducting cavities have to be cooled with liquid Helium and to keep the lHe from boiling off in a flash the lHe dewar has to be surrounded by a liquid Nitrogen dewar. A high vacuum has to separate the dewars from everything and high IR reflective surfaces and other exotic contrivances are needed. Otherwise the cryogens boil off and the whole thing turns into a missile. High temperature superconductors are easier to work with because they only require liquid Nitrogen. The second picture shows my crufty rotating magnetic field setup. The white thing is a styrofoam container filled with liquid Nitrogen and the dut (device under test). Here is what is inside the shiny metal cylinder. An EM Drive with a superconducting inner surface.According to Shawyer it is designed to be cooled by liquid Nitrogen and it's super-conducting surfaces are formed from YBCO thin films on sapphire substrates.