Author Topic: EM Drive Developments - related to space flight applications - Thread 2  (Read 3320972 times)

Offline tchernik

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Concerning "warp-drive", please notice that the following was placed today on NASA Glenn's website ( http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/technology/warp/warp.html ):

Bold added for emphasis:
Quote
Is Warp Drive Real?
Ever since the sound barrier was broken, people have turned their attention to how we can break the light speed barrier.  But “Warp Drive” or any other term for faster-than-light travel still remains at the level of speculation.

The bulk of scientific knowledge concludes that it’s impossible, especially when considering Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. There are certainly some credible concepts in scientific literature, however it’s too soon to know if they are viable.

Science fiction writers have given us many images of interstellar travel, but traveling at the speed of light is simply imaginary at present.

In the meantime, science moves forward.  And while NASA is not pursuing interstellar flight, scientists here continue to advance ion propulsion for missions to deep space and beyond using solar electric power. This form of propulsion is the fastest and most efficient to date.

There are many “absurd” theories that have become reality over the years of scientific research.  But for the near future, warp drive remains a dream.

If you would like to know more about the theories of interstellar flight, you should visit the Tau Zero Foundation.  Marc Millis, a former NASA Glenn physicist, founded the organization to consider revolutionary advancements in propulsion.

Past articles of warp drive found at this location have been archived.

Nancy Smith Kilkenny, SGT Inc.
NASA's Glenn Research Center

Last Updated: April 23, 2015
Editor: NASA Administrator

It's possible the recent spike of attention this discussion has brought to the topic in social networks (like reddit), has prompted some people to ask directly about it at NASA's official communication channels.

And they probably have to make a statement. If this statement you refer is the official position within NASA or just the public one at Glenn's, it's not yet clear (for me, at least).

But it's true such attention can make other parts of the institution pay more attention to these experiments. Which can be good or bad, depending on the level of tech readiness of the experiments happening at Eagle Works.
« Last Edit: 04/23/2015 07:17 pm by tchernik »

Offline Star One

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So it looks like any interest in warp drive has been for now shelved. But then warp drive isn't the EM drive & I imagine it's possible that people were getting the two mixed up and this is an act of clarification.
« Last Edit: 04/23/2015 06:53 pm by Star One »

Offline Rodal

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So it looks like any interest in warp drive has been for now shelved. But then warp drive isn't the EM drive & I imagine it's possible that people were getting the two mixed up and this is an act of clarification.
Your statements are of course your personal view.  I regard the first statement as unwarranted speculation, as the announcement from NASA Glenn just pertains their own center's work on space propulsion, and also because NASA Eagleworks is not conducting engineering of an actual warp-drive vehicle but is instead conducting R&D interferometer tests for the purposes discussed in previous posts.

I regard Glenn's statement as a necessary sanitary statement to answer science-fiction fans that may be unaware of the difference between R&D and actual aerospace-engineering, and therefore may have completely unrealistic short-term expectations.
« Last Edit: 04/23/2015 07:18 pm by Rodal »

Offline tchernik

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Completely agree. I see the current state of research as similar to the state of atomic theory and radioactivity research in the XIX-th century: they started seeing some weird phenomena and started to advance some theories to explain them, without achieving full acceptance of it yet, but gathering evidence.

That is, far from any practical application yet.

But given the enthusiasm this creates  in some sector of the public, they can immediately make the conceptual jump and  think NASA is working on an Star-Trek-like propulsion engine or some such.
« Last Edit: 04/23/2015 07:27 pm by tchernik »

Offline Star One

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So it looks like any interest in warp drive has been for now shelved. But then warp drive isn't the EM drive & I imagine it's possible that people were getting the two mixed up and this is an act of clarification.
Your statements are of course your personal view.  I regard the first statement as unwarranted speculation, as the announcement from NASA Glenn just pertains their own center's work on space propulsion, and also because NASA Eagleworks is not conducting engineering of an actual warp-drive vehicle but is instead conducting R&D interferometer tests for the purposes discussed in previous posts.

I regard Glenn's statement as a necessary sanitary statement to answer science-fiction fans that may be unaware of the difference between R&D and actual aerospace-engineering, and therefore may have completely unrealistic short-term expectations.

I thought it was obvious that it's only my own very limited interpretation. I did manage to imply in what I did say that this and warp drive were not one & the same thing which is could be concern with the wider Internet.
« Last Edit: 04/23/2015 08:08 pm by Star One »

Offline aceshigh

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So it looks like my conjecture that the device is creating some sort of spacial warp field is likely?

IF it´s creating a sort of warp of space-time... would it be safe to use on Earth when we increase it´s thrust by several orders of magnitude? Unless the warp distortion can be kept small but strong (think of a black hole) inside the engines...

Offline Rodal

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So it looks like my conjecture that the device is creating some sort of spacial warp field is likely?

IF it´s creating a sort of warp of space-time... would it be safe to use on Earth when we increase it´s thrust by several orders of magnitude? Unless the warp distortion can be kept small but strong (think of a black hole) inside the engines...
Whether it is creating a distortion of the space fabric of spacetime remains to be proven (hopefully they carry on their proposed experiments in vacuum to put to bed the issue of air refraction).  But just to entertain your speculative question, a back-of-the-envelope analysis quickly shows that the initial distortion of spacetime would be local and insignificant compared to the distortion of spatime produced by the Earth (which is immense in comparison).  There is no issues of safety related to "black holes".  No.  (And there are no issues of black-hole safety at CERN either).

EDIT: Remember that Dr. White (based on extra-3D-dimensional brane theory) showed that Viking-like masses are needed for his warp concept (Viking-like masses are negligible in comparison with the mass of the Earth).

Let's say that instead it takes a Jupiter-like mas-energy for the warp-drive to work, and that a future civilization can achieve that (a thousand years from now, at which point one has to wonder what is the need of humans in an interstellar spaceship if humans are still around instead of cyborgs  :) ) .  Then yes, any distortion of spacetime produced by a mass-energy comparable to (or exceeding) the mass of the Earth would be problematic to have near the Earth, but then there is a simple answer to that which is to have the warp-drive engaged at that energy far away from the Earth.

I hope that Interstellar producers followed Prof. Kip Thorne advise when they decided to place the wormhole for the Interstellar film all the way near Saturn. (And I hope that Prof. Thorne calculated the effect on Saturn's orbit and that it did not affect the Solar System  :)   )

If the location of the wormhole in Interstellar was not Prof. Thorne's advise, then you would have to engage your warp-drive's full power beyond Neptune, outside Kuipers belt.
« Last Edit: 04/23/2015 08:51 pm by Rodal »

Offline Mulletron

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They report using permanent magnets for B and a sinusoidally driven HVPS for E.


Recent discussion wrt connecting EM to warp reminded me of this. His youtube channel is amazing. I wish we had him here in this thread.



Is the following just "defined"

β f = - h /(1 - h )

without addressing what are the conditions for this "definition" to hold, and what is the validity of this "definition" ?

and then predictive conclusions are extracted from plugging in this "definition" into the exact solution?

I hopped on his youtube channel and asked him. At the 40 second mark he explains what is going on but not to the detail you're looking for.
And I can feel the change in the wind right now - Rod Stewart

Offline Rodal

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They report using permanent magnets for B and a sinusoidally driven HVPS for E.


Recent discussion wrt connecting EM to warp reminded me of this. His youtube channel is amazing. I wish we had him here in this thread.




Is the following just "defined"

β f = - h /(1 - h )

without addressing what are the conditions for this "definition" to hold, and what is the validity of this "definition" ?

and then predictive conclusions are extracted from plugging in this "definition" into the exact solution?

I hopped on his youtube channel and asked him. At the 40 second mark he explains what is going on but not to the detail you're looking for.

Thank you for going through the trouble and time to inquire this on his channel.

No, I find that what is said on the video at 40 sec is not a proper justification for the replacement of variables.  There are countless contrived examples in Mathematics and Physics were one can make such substitutions and show that they are unwarranted.  For example demonstrations that 1+1 does not equal 2.

If by making this (so far) unjustified substitution one finds exactly the same formula as Alcubierre's metric, then nothing new is added by the substitution.  On the other hand if by performing the substitution it leads one  to conclude something new, then any such new conclusion is unwarranted unless one can formally justify the substitution.
« Last Edit: 04/23/2015 08:28 pm by Rodal »

Offline aceshigh

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So it looks like my conjecture that the device is creating some sort of spacial warp field is likely?

IF it´s creating a sort of warp of space-time... would it be safe to use on Earth when we increase it´s thrust by several orders of magnitude? Unless the warp distortion can be kept small but strong (think of a black hole) inside the engines...
Whether it is creating a distortion of the space fabric of spacetime remains to be proven (hopefully they carry on their proposed experiments in vacuum to put to bed the issue of air refraction).  But just to entertain your speculative question, a back-of-the-envelope analysis quickly shows that the initial distortion of spacetime would be local and insignificant compared to the distortion of spatime produced by the Earth (which is immense in comparison).

even if the EM Drive thrust was increased to big levels?

Is it possible to calculate at which level of EM Drive thrust the local distortion of space time would be dangerous?


Quote
  There is no issues of safety related to "black holes".  No.  (And there are no issues of black-hole safety at CERN either).

well, I was not thinking in black holes being created (And the micro ones possibly created by CERN we know should evaporate in nanoseconds)

I mentioned black holes only in the sense of strong space-time warping in a small volume...

In that same sense, I would guess that despite Earth having a much stronger effect warping space time due to it´s mass, it´s spread over a large volume.

In other words... what I am thinking here is the difference between the distortion caused by a spoon of neutron star matter, weighing the same as the Everest, and Earth itself.

Earth itself has much more gravity, but it´s spread over a really big volume... while a spoon of neutron star matter equivalent to Mount Everest would condense all that space-time distortion over such a small volume...



The above was just an analogy for trying to make myself clear.

Now, Paul March talked about increasing thrust to 600 N. Let´s imagine a future EM Drive with a thrust equivalent to a chemical rocket... 600 thousand N. Would that create a significant space-time distortion?

Offline tchernik

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...

even if the EM Drive thrust was increased to big levels?

Is it possible to calculate at which level of EM Drive thrust the local distortion of space time would be dangerous?

...

I mentioned black holes only in the sense of strong space-time warping in a small volume...

In that same sense, I would guess that despite Earth having a much stronger effect warping space time due to it´s mass, it´s spread over a large volume.

In other words... what I am thinking here is the difference between the distortion caused by a spoon of neutron star matter, weighing the same as the Everest, and Earth itself.

Earth itself has much more gravity, but it´s spread over a really big volume... while a spoon of neutron star matter equivalent to Mount Everest would condense all that space-time distortion over such a small volume...



If you pardon my meddling: this is a very interesting question. I imagine one of the upcoming tasks of the research effort is precisely to characterize the field strength, its relation to input power and other parameters, and its changes with distance to the source, besides proving the field existence, of course.

If this field's strength is proportional to the input energy and it falls strongly with the distance to the device, then it may be safe to use  here on Earth. If it isn't, well, that would be interesting too (and probably also making it dangerous).

Offline Rodal

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....

Now, Paul March talked about increasing thrust to 600 N. Let´s imagine a future EM Drive with a thrust equivalent to a chemical rocket... 600 thousand N. Would that create a significant space-time distortion?

Look at my answer above, on what I wrote after "EDIT".

I would worry much more about particles in space being “swept up” into the warp bubble and focused into regions before and behind the ship. When your warp-driven spaceship decelerates, these particles will be released in  outbursts. The forward-facing particles can be very energetic — enough to destroy anyone at the destination directly in front of you.  So, if you are planning to go on a warp-drive beware that gamma ray and high energy particles released from your spaceship may destroy any beings on the location you are trying to reach  :)

Wormholes are more benign (if you can traverse them  :)
« Last Edit: 04/23/2015 09:04 pm by Rodal »

Offline CW

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I think the real point is that normal matter is pretty ineffective at producing a space warp, so you'd need e.g. a Jupiter mass equivalent for a decent space warp. If there were a highly effective synthetic way of inducing space warps, then that's exactly what the doctor ordered. I'm curious whether the higher-power regime of new test articles will produce any effects that correlate to the predicted dramatic thrust increase.
Reality is weirder than fiction

Offline CW

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[snip]

Look at my answer above, on what I wrote after "EDIT".

I would worry much more about particles in space being “swept up” into the warp bubble and focused into regions before and behind the ship. When your warp-driven spaceship decelerates, these particles will be released in  outbursts. The forward-facing particles can be very energetic — enough to destroy anyone at the destination directly in front of you.  So, if you are planning to go on a warp-drive beware that gamma ray and high energy particles may destroy any beings on the location you are trying to reach  :)

Wormholes are more benign (if you can traverse them  :)

Easy solution: Divide your travel way into hops with very short warp deactivation phases to get rid of unwanted particle collection.
Reality is weirder than fiction

Offline JasonAW3

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So it looks like my conjecture that the device is creating some sort of spacial warp field is likely?

IF it´s creating a sort of warp of space-time... would it be safe to use on Earth when we increase it´s thrust by several orders of magnitude? Unless the warp distortion can be kept small but strong (think of a black hole) inside the engines...

At this point, all that the warp seems to be doing is an optical distortion in addition to causing motion in the test article.  However, the optical distortion is so small at this point, that they're not even sure that it is real, or an artifact of the instrumentation.  Even if it is an actual warp, the level of distortion and size are so small as to be effectively inconsequential.
« Last Edit: 04/24/2015 03:23 pm by JasonAW3 »
My God!  It's full of universes!

Offline JasonAW3

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[snip]

Look at my answer above, on what I wrote after "EDIT".

I would worry much more about particles in space being “swept up” into the warp bubble and focused into regions before and behind the ship. When your warp-driven spaceship decelerates, these particles will be released in  outbursts. The forward-facing particles can be very energetic — enough to destroy anyone at the destination directly in front of you.  So, if you are planning to go on a warp-drive beware that gamma ray and high energy particles may destroy any beings on the location you are trying to reach  :)

Wormholes are more benign (if you can traverse them  :)

Easy solution: Divide your travel way into hops with very short warp deactivation phases to get rid of unwanted particle collection.

I somehow suspect that the issue would be self resolving, as I suspect the particles and built up debris would flow around the warp in much the same way as the wake of a ship is formed.  It would tend to wrap around the craft and be left behind, much the same way that water wraps around and is left behind a submarine.
« Last Edit: 04/24/2015 03:22 pm by JasonAW3 »
My God!  It's full of universes!

Offline Rodal

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[snip]

Look at my answer above, on what I wrote after "EDIT".

I would worry much more about particles in space being “swept up” into the warp bubble and focused into regions before and behind the ship. When your warp-driven spaceship decelerates, these particles will be released in  outbursts. The forward-facing particles can be very energetic — enough to destroy anyone at the destination directly in front of you.  So, if you are planning to go on a warp-drive beware that gamma ray and high energy particles may destroy any beings on the location you are trying to reach  :)

Wormholes are more benign (if you can traverse them  :)

Easy solution: Divide your travel way into hops with very short warp deactivation phases to get rid of unwanted particle collection.

I somehow suspect thatthey issue would be self resolving as I suspect teh particles and built up debris would flow around the warp in much the same way as the wake of a ship is formed.  It would tend to wrap around the craft and be left behind, much the same way that water wraps around and is left behind a submarine.
That's incorrect  :)  .  The effect has been modeled at the University of Sidney.  See this:

http://sydney.edu.au/news/science/397.html?newsstoryid=8790

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1202.5708

Quote
It would tend to wrap around the craft and be left behind, much the same way that water wraps around and is left behind a submarine.

That is an incorrect model for the warpdrive.  Water flows as an incompressible fluid around a submarine (*).  (Actually even air can be modeled, for practical purposes, to flow as an incompressible viscous fluid around aircraft traveling below the speed of sound).

On the contrary, the whole point about the Alcubierre warp drive is that space is compressed ahead of the spaceship and expanded behind it.  Not at all like an incompressible fluid.

_____

(*) there is possible cavitation (boiling of water as a result of pressure reduction rather than heat addition) in the propeller blades of course
« Last Edit: 04/23/2015 10:33 pm by Rodal »

Offline tchernik

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[snip]

Look at my answer above, on what I wrote after "EDIT".

I would worry much more about particles in space being “swept up” into the warp bubble and focused into regions before and behind the ship. When your warp-driven spaceship decelerates, these particles will be released in  outbursts. The forward-facing particles can be very energetic — enough to destroy anyone at the destination directly in front of you.  So, if you are planning to go on a warp-drive beware that gamma ray and high energy particles may destroy any beings on the location you are trying to reach  :)

Wormholes are more benign (if you can traverse them  :)

Easy solution: Divide your travel way into hops with very short warp deactivation phases to get rid of unwanted particle collection.

I wonder if this "broom" effect is actually a blessing in disguise, the kind that would make warp drive travel actually feasible (if it exists).

One of the biggest concerns of relativistic ships is the effect of dust and particles upon the traveling ship. The faster you go, the nastier the effect of these particles upon your ship. At some speeds blue shifting converts mere radio wave photons into gamma rays hitting you all the time. Up to the point of probably limiting the speed reachable by any ship, given the fact that even the weak CMB radiation would start heating up and melting the ship after certain fraction of c is reached.

 If the warp drive "focuses" the dirt and particles in the front of the ship, releasing them upon the field's deactivation, then that's maybe a solution to the problem of high energy impacts. And probably of dust up to certain grain size.
« Last Edit: 04/23/2015 10:34 pm by tchernik »

Offline CW

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I was just wondering.. there seems to be a lot of focus on dielectrics playing a big role in the hypothesized workings of such a drive. Taken literally, aren't also the subatomic particles like protons etc, which exist as quark combinations, somewhat comparable to dielectrics? Or speaking in general terms: If the QV can be seen as a dielectric (maybe the mother of all dielectrics), and if all kinds of existing 'real' particles are a subset of the QV, doesn't any kind of particle then implicitly have a special kind of dielectric behavior? And could this dielectric behaviour within the QV determine what we call mass?
« Last Edit: 04/23/2015 10:35 pm by CW »
Reality is weirder than fiction

Offline Rodal

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[snip]

Look at my answer above, on what I wrote after "EDIT".

I would worry much more about particles in space being “swept up” into the warp bubble and focused into regions before and behind the ship. When your warp-driven spaceship decelerates, these particles will be released in  outbursts. The forward-facing particles can be very energetic — enough to destroy anyone at the destination directly in front of you.  So, if you are planning to go on a warp-drive beware that gamma ray and high energy particles may destroy any beings on the location you are trying to reach  :)

Wormholes are more benign (if you can traverse them  :)

Easy solution: Divide your travel way into hops with very short warp deactivation phases to get rid of unwanted particle collection.

I wonder if this "broom" effect is actually a blessing in disguise, the kind that would make warp drive travel actually feasible (if it exists).

One of the biggest concerns of relativistic ships is the effect of dust and particles upon the traveling ship. The faster you go, the nastier the effect of these particles upon your ship. At some speeds blue shifting converts mere radio wave photons into gamma rays hitting you all the time. Up to the point of probably limiting the speed reachable by any ship, given the fact that even the weak CMB radiation would start heating up and melting the ship after certain fraction of c is reached.

 If the warp drive "focuses" the dirt and particles in the front of the ship, releasing them upon the field's deactivation, then that's maybe a solution to the problem of high energy impacts. And probably of dust up to certain grain size.

Interesting observation.  More like a vacuum cleaner effect than a broom (remember the film Spaceballs ?)  :)



A lot depends on how far ahead of the spearhead of the spacecraft is the nadir of the space contraction ahead of the spaceship.

You could send an e-mail to the guys at Sidney and ask them ==> even if they didn't model that already, they should be able to give you the best answer based on their model  :)
« Last Edit: 04/23/2015 10:57 pm by Rodal »

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