EM Drive Developments Thread 1

[Rodal]

After I learned to let go of the absolute universality of EEP, I was then able to accept Wheeler-Feynman absorber theory (and all the other theories) as facets of the same interaction, expressed at different levels of interaction.

Thanks Dr. McCulloch for bringing order to the madness via your fresh insight on the true origin of inertial mass. I hope you are correct.

As the great Feynman is quoted, "All mass is interaction."

Wheeler-Feynman absorber theory has no arrow of time: it implies time symmetry.  Feynman abandoned it for QED due to the problem of self-interactions. 

Does McCulloch's quantised inertia theory also imply time-symmetry?  I didn't notice that.

Also, my understanding of McCulloch's theory that it assumes that the inertial mass of an object is caused
by Unruh radiation resulting from its acceleration with respect to surrounding matter.

[Notsosureofit]

What would be the complications on conducting experiments in my garage?
I would need a copper frustum and optimised dielectric designed by you guys.
RF power source.
Suspend the whole thing from a wire and see if it moves.
Am I missing anything?

Big battery

[Mulletron]

After I learned to let go of the absolute universality of EEP, I was then able to accept Wheeler-Feynman absorber theory (and all the other theories) as facets of the same interaction, expressed at different levels of interaction.

Thanks Dr. McCulloch for bringing order to the madness via your fresh insight on the true origin of inertial mass. I hope you are correct.

As the great Feynman is quoted, "All mass is interaction."

Wheeler-Feynman absorber theory has no arrow of time: it implies time symmetry.  For QED it has even more problems, that's why Feynman abandoned it for QED (due to the problem of self-interactions). 

Does McCulloch's quantised inertia theory also imply time-symmetry? no arrow of time?  I didn't notice that.

Also, my understanding of McCulloch's theory that it assumes that the inertial mass of an object is caused
by Unruh radiation resulting from its acceleration with respect to surrounding matter.

It modifies the context of the origin of inertial mass to fit the universe.

Said a different way, "The origin of all mass is all interaction."

Not just some interaction. Not just distant matter, and the gravity from it.

Another core tenet is that objects undergoing very very very small acceleration have very very very low inertial mass.

Unruh radiation is a fancy way of saying ALL possible radiation.

[zen-in]

What would be the complications on conducting experiments in my garage?
I would need a copper frustum and optimised dielectric designed by you guys.
RF power source.
Suspend the whole thing from a wire and see if it moves.
Am I missing anything?

Suspend it from the place that will give you the greatest height, as high as possible in a place with no air drafts.  > 20ft high would be nice.  Do you have access to an abandoned elevator shaft?


Use thin piano wire (strong and small diameter).  Use a laser to verify the small movement.

1 KWatt (as done by the Chinese) should give you ~0.3 Newtons.  Explore 1.5 to 3 GHz frequencies.
Take a movie and post it in our thread 

An interaction with the geomagnetic field might be observed.   Even a small amount of current will cause movement if the pendulum is long.   Twisted DC power leads cancel this out to some extent, but not completely.  There is always some residual current loop.   And any method used to eliminate the resistance to movement from power leads will increase the torque caused by interaction with the geomagnetic field.   This is one possible source of measurement error that is not addressed in the em drive paper, besides the others I mentioned earlier.

[Rodal]

After I learned to let go of the absolute universality of EEP, I was then able to accept Wheeler-Feynman absorber theory (and all the other theories) as facets of the same interaction, expressed at different levels of interaction.

Thanks Dr. McCulloch for bringing order to the madness via your fresh insight on the true origin of inertial mass. I hope you are correct.

As the great Feynman is quoted, "All mass is interaction."

Wheeler-Feynman absorber theory has no arrow of time: it implies time symmetry.  For QED it has even more problems, that's why Feynman abandoned it for QED (due to the problem of self-interactions). 

Does McCulloch's quantised inertia theory also imply time-symmetry? no arrow of time?  I didn't notice that.

Also, my understanding of McCulloch's theory that it assumes that the inertial mass of an object is caused
by Unruh radiation resulting from its acceleration with respect to surrounding matter.

It modifies the context of the origin of inertial mass to fit the universe.

Said a different way, "The origin of all mass is all interaction."

Not just some interaction. Not just distant matter, and the gravity from it.

Another core tenet is that objects undergoing very very very small acceleration have very very very low inertial mass.

Unruh radiation is a fancy way of saying ALL possible radiation.

OK but I see some very nice things.  The weak force has an arrow of time that breaks time symmetry.  The weak force is associated with radiation.  Unruh is a form of radiation, like Hawkins radiation that is part of quantum gravity.

McCulloch --> local effects + arrow of time / a quantised theory of inertia

[Mulletron]

After I learned to let go of the absolute universality of EEP, I was then able to accept Wheeler-Feynman absorber theory (and all the other theories) as facets of the same interaction, expressed at different levels of interaction.

Thanks Dr. McCulloch for bringing order to the madness via your fresh insight on the true origin of inertial mass. I hope you are correct.

As the great Feynman is quoted, "All mass is interaction."

Wheeler-Feynman absorber theory has no arrow of time: it implies time symmetry.  For QED it has even more problems, that's why Feynman abandoned it for QED (due to the problem of self-interactions). 

Does McCulloch's quantised inertia theory also imply time-symmetry? no arrow of time?  I didn't notice that.

Also, my understanding of McCulloch's theory that it assumes that the inertial mass of an object is caused
by Unruh radiation resulting from its acceleration with respect to surrounding matter.

It modifies the context of the origin of inertial mass to fit the universe.

Said a different way, "The origin of all mass is all interaction."

Not just some interaction. Not just distant matter, and the gravity from it.

Another core tenet is that objects undergoing very very very small acceleration have very very very low inertial mass.

Unruh radiation is a fancy way of saying ALL possible radiation.

OK but I see some very nice things.  The weak force has an arrow of time that breaks time symmetry.  The weak force is associated with radiation.  Unruh is a form of radiation, like Hawkins radiation that is part of quantum gravity.

McCulloch --> local effects + arrow of time / a quantised theory of inertia

His theory reconciles QM with GR by bringing precision to GR.

You don't even need to quantize gravity anymore.

You don't need fancy math tricks anymore.

You don't need dark matter anymore.

You can calculate dark energy as vacuum energy correctly now.

The vacuum catastrophe can go away.

A cold inertial particle with NO acceleration is a perfect emitter and absorber.

[Rodal]

What would be the complications on conducting experiments in my garage?
I would need a copper frustum and optimised dielectric designed by you guys.
RF power source.
Suspend the whole thing from a wire and see if it moves.
Am I missing anything?

Suspend it from the place that will give you the greatest height, as high as possible in a place with no air drafts.  > 20ft high would be nice.  Do you have access to an abandoned elevator shaft?


Use thin piano wire (strong and small diameter).  Use a laser to verify the small movement.

1 KWatt (as done by the Chinese) should give you ~0.3 Newtons.  Explore 1.5 to 3 GHz frequencies.
Take a movie and post it in our thread 

An interaction with the geomagnetic field might be observed.   Even a small amount of current will cause movement if the pendulum is long.   Twisted DC power leads cancel this out to some extent, but not completely.  There is always some residual current loop.   And any method used to eliminate the resistance to movement from power leads will increase the torque caused by interaction with the geomagnetic field.   This is one possible source of measurement error that is not addressed in the em drive paper, besides the others I mentioned earlier.

I agree.

What are the other "possible source of measurement error that is not addressed in the em drive paper" you mentioned previously (besides the geomagnetic field) ? Please refresh our minds...

[zen-in]

What would be the complications on conducting experiments in my garage?
I would need a copper frustum and optimised dielectric designed by you guys.
RF power source.
Suspend the whole thing from a wire and see if it moves.
Am I missing anything?

Suspend it from the place that will give you the greatest height, as high as possible in a place with no air drafts.  > 20ft high would be nice.  Do you have access to an abandoned elevator shaft?


Use thin piano wire (strong and small diameter).  Use a laser to verify the small movement.

1 KWatt (as done by the Chinese) should give you ~0.3 Newtons.  Explore 1.5 to 3 GHz frequencies.
Take a movie and post it in our thread 

An interaction with the geomagnetic field might be observed.   Even a small amount of current will cause movement if the pendulum is long.   Twisted DC power leads cancel this out to some extent, but not completely.  There is always some residual current loop.   And any method used to eliminate the resistance to movement from power leads will increase the torque caused by interaction with the geomagnetic field.   This is one possible source of measurement error that is not addressed in the em drive paper, besides the others I mentioned earlier.

I agree.

What are the other "possible source of measurement error that is not addressed in the em drive paper" you mentioned previously (besides the geomagnetic field) ? Please refresh our minds...

This is from earlier posts:

A previous lurker and a newly minted member here.   I have been following this topic for some time and just want to throw in a few thoughts I have had, for what they are worth.
 1) The MCL amplifier used is a Class AB amp.   The output, unless it has a DC blocking cap inside the amp, will have a DC offset = Vdd/2.   My guess is the amp does not have a DC blocking cap because that would affect the bandwidth and MCL likes to advertise their amplifiers as being broadband.   It is also possible that different load configurations (reflected power) will change the offset.   When a dummy load is used the RF feedline is totally coaxial so no external magnetic effects would be present.   However when the cavity is loaded the internal loop, if there is a DC offset, would act like an electromagnet.   Any DC magnetic field generated in the loop would not be shielded by the metal.   There is no mention of any testing or mitigation of a DC offset from the Class AB amplifier in the paper.   I would not expect the dual directional couplers used between the amplifier and the cavity to have DC blocking caps.
 2)  I also question the RF theory of this device.   It is an untuned cavity with a very high Q ceramic resonator inside.   Almost all the RF power will be in the ceramic, and very little power will be bouncing off the inside Cu walls of the cavity.   The cavity is just a Faraday cage.   Its end caps are single-sided FR4 (fiberglass PCB material).  The S11 plot (voltage reflection coefficient at the input) shows this very well.   Very, very little RF power is reflected back to the input at 1932.6 MHz.   That is to be expected.  Any RF-tight enclosure with the same ceramic resonator inside would produce a similar S11 plot.   There is no mystery about it.   Well, except where does the anomalous force come from?
 

And later:

In pages 15, 16 of the paper the 16 mm and 12.5 mm loop antenna used to drive the cone-shaped cavity are mentioned.   The wireframe drawings of the cavity also show a loop attached to what looks like an RF connector on the outside of the cone.    The MCL ZHL-100 amplifier is rated at 100 W with a 28 V supply.  Since they are only running it at 17 or 2.6 Watts the DC supply would be much less than 28 V.   So if there was a DC offset coming from the class AB amp that was not blocked there would not be a significant overload of the power supply or amp.   This is just theoretical.   I don't know if the RF amps DC offset is blocked.   Nothing in the paper indicates that it is.   I don't know enough about the Cannae device to know if it uses a loop or a 1/4 λ probe, but all the RF cavity filters I have seen use loops.

[Rodal]

....

So the possible measurement error you bring up is:

Possible DC offset coming from the class AB amp that was not blocked. When the cavity is loaded, if there is an unblocked DC offset, the EM drive will act like an electromagnet, and the slowly-varying magnetic field will escape the EM drive's cavity. The slowly-varying magnetic field from the cavity may interact with any combination of the following:

A) the Earth's magnetic field,
B) the magnetic damper used to dampen the inverted torsional pendulum oscillations
C) the magnetic field from the power cable

Did I include everything you brought up as a possible measurement error?

[zen-in]

....

So the possible measurement error you bring up is:

Possible DC offset coming from the class AB amp that was not blocked. When the cavity is loaded, if there is an unblocked DC offset, the EM drive will act like an electromagnet, and the slowly-varying magnetic field will escape the EM drive's cavity. The slowly-varying magnetic field from the cavity may interact with any combination of the following:

A) the Earth's magnetic field,
B) the magnetic damper used to dampen the inverted torsional pendulum oscillations
C) the magnetic field from the power cable

Did I include everything you brought up as a possible measurement error?

Yes.  I mention these possible sources of error because there they are not discussed in the paper and when measuring very small forces the geomagnetic field and fields from power cables can produce measurable results.

[Rodal]

....

Here are the reasons why the measurements maybe an experimental artifact, better prioritized and with comments:

Possible DC offset coming from the class AB amp that was not properly blocked. When the cavity is loaded, with an unblocked DC offset, the EM drive will act like an electromagnet, and the slowly-varying magnetic field will escape the EM drive's cavity. The slowly-varying magnetic field from the cavity may interact with any combination of the following:


1) the Earth's magnetic field

Pro:  This is common throughout the Earth: in the USA, UK and China. So it would serve to explain all the experiments, in different continents.

Against:

A) One would expect the alignment with the geomagnetic field to differ with (likely different) experimental setup orientations in the USA, UK and China.  Therefore one would not expect an equation (like Prof. McCulloch's) to universally and comprehensibly explain all these experiments without an obvious bias between the different locations.
 
B) Shawyer's rotational "on air bearing" demonstration had the Shawyer EMDrive smoohtly rotate through many revolutions.  I would not have expected that smooth rotation to be compatible with a magnetic field interaction between the EMDrive and the geomagnetic field.


2) the magnetic field from the power cable

Against:

A) I would expect this to be an issue with external sources of power (NASA Eagleworks) but not when using a battery.
 
B) Shawyer's rotational "on air bearing" demonstration had the Shawyer EMDrive smoohtly rotate through many revolutions.  I would not have expected that smooth rotation to be compatible with a magnetic field interaction between the EMDrive and a stationary power cable.


3) the magnetic damper used to dampen the inverted torsional pendulum oscillations

Against:

A) I would expect this to be an issue only for NASA Eagleworks.  Perhaps with the Chinese University if they also used a magnetic damper (which is unknown).  It doesn't appear that Shawyer used a magnetic damper.
 
B) Shawyer's rotational "on air bearing" demonstration had the Shawyer EMDrive smoohtly rotate through many revolutions.  I would not have expected that smooth rotation to be compatible with a stationary magnetic damper even if Shawyer would have used a magnetic damper (which apparently he did not use).

[ThinkerX]

His theory reconciles QM with GR by bringing precision to GR.

You don't even need to quantize gravity anymore.

You don't need fancy math tricks anymore.

You don't need dark matter anymore.

You can calculate dark energy as vacuum energy correctly now.

The vacuum catastrophe can go away.

A cold inertial particle with NO acceleration is a perfect emitter and absorber.

According to my feeble understanding, this means rewriting the physics textbooks. 

[zen-in]

....

Here are the reasons why the measurements maybe an experimental artifact, better prioritized and with comments:

Possible DC offset coming from the class AB amp that was not properly blocked. When the cavity is loaded, with an unblocked DC offset, the EM drive will act like an electromagnet, and the slowly-varying magnetic field will escape the EM drive's cavity. The slowly-varying magnetic field from the cavity may interact with any combination of the following:


1) the Earth's magnetic field

Pro:  This is common throughout the Earth: in the USA, UK and China. So it would serve to explain all the experiments, in different continents.

Against:

A) One would expect the alignment with the geomagnetic field to differ with (likely different) experimental setup orientations in the USA, UK and China.  Therefore one would not expect an equation (like Prof. McCulloch's) to universally and comprehensibly explain all these experiments without an obvious bias between the different locations.
 
B) Shawyer's rotational "on air bearing" demonstration had the Shawyer EMDrive smoohtly rotate through many revolutions.  I would not have expected that smooth rotation to be compatible with a magnetic field interaction between the EMDrive and the geomagnetic field.


2) the magnetic field from the power cable

Against:

A) I would expect this to be an issue with external sources of power (NASA Eagleworks) but not when using a battery.
 
B) Shawyer's rotational "on air bearing" demonstration had the Shawyer EMDrive smoohtly rotate through many revolutions.  I would not have expected that smooth rotation to be compatible with a magnetic field interaction between the EMDrive and a stationary power cable.


3) the magnetic damper used to dampen the inverted torsional pendulum oscillations

Against:

A) I would expect this to be an issue only for NASA Eagleworks.  Perhaps with the Chinese University if they also used a magnetic damper (which is unknown).  It doesn't appear that Shawyer used a magnetic damper.
 
B) Shawyer's rotational "on air bearing" demonstration had the Shawyer EMDrive smoohtly rotate through many revolutions.  I would not have expected that smooth rotation to be compatible with a stationary magnetic damper even if Shawyer would have used a magnetic damper (which apparently he did not use).

My overall take on this em-drive phenomena and a conservative application of Occam's razor is that Sonny White is a very good experimentalist, and possibly the best of them all.   He has done the most to find and account for any anomalous force and has reduced it to the lowest level.   I am assuming he is privy to many of the details of the other em-drive experiments.   I consider his work to be a good-faith effort to duplicate Sawyer's or the Chinese group's experiment; after all replication is the purpose.   If others have replicated Sawyer's experiment independently, or the Chinese experiment and gotten the same force values, then my views might change.   I mention these possible sources of error as they could apply to the JSC experiments, after reading their paper since I just don't have as many details on the other em-drive experiments.  It is entirely possible that in their thoroughness they did account for these effects, but considering them too trivial to mention in their paper.    I remain an unbeliever in this em-drive.

[Rodal]

My overall take on this em-drive phenomena and a conservative application of Occam's razor is that Sonny White is a very good experimentalist, and possibly the best of them all.   He has done the most to find and account for any anomalous force and has reduced it to the lowest level.   I am assuming he is privy to many of the details of the other em-drive experiments.   I consider his work to be a good-faith effort to duplicate Sawyer's or the Chinese group's experiment; after all replication is the purpose.   If others have replicated Sawyer's experiment independently, or the Chinese experiment and gotten the same force values, then my views might change.   I mention these possible sources of error as they could apply to the JSC experiments, after reading their paper since I just don't have as many details on the other em-drive experiments.  It is entirely possible that in their thoroughness they did account for these effects, but considering them too trivial to mention in their paper.    I remain an unbeliever in this em-drive.

These are the Chinese papers:

http://www.emdrive.com/NWPU2010translation.pdf
http://www.emdrive.com/yang-juan-paper-2012.pdf

and this is the best (in my opinion) of the Shawyer's papers:

http://www.emdrive.com/IAC-08-C4-4-7.pdf

I look forward to your reviewing the above papers with your critical eye, when you have the time, as I would appreciate hearing any potential problems you uncover with their experimental setup. 
 

[zen-in]

My overall take on this em-drive phenomena and a conservative application of Occam's razor is that Sonny White is a very good experimentalist, and possibly the best of them all.   He has done the most to find and account for any anomalous force and has reduced it to the lowest level.   I am assuming he is privy to many of the details of the other em-drive experiments.   I consider his work to be a good-faith effort to duplicate Sawyer's or the Chinese group's experiment; after all replication is the purpose.   If others have replicated Sawyer's experiment independently, or the Chinese experiment and gotten the same force values, then my views might change.   I mention these possible sources of error as they could apply to the JSC experiments, after reading their paper since I just don't have as many details on the other em-drive experiments.  It is entirely possible that in their thoroughness they did account for these effects, but considering them too trivial to mention in their paper.    I remain an unbeliever in this em-drive.

These are the Chinese papers:

http://www.emdrive.com/NWPU2010translation.pdf
http://www.emdrive.com/yang-juan-paper-2012.pdf

and this is the best (in my opinion) of the Shawyer's papers:

http://www.emdrive.com/IAC-08-C4-4-7.pdf

I look forward to your reviewing the above papers with your critical eye, when you have the time, as I would appreciate hearing any potential problems you uncover with their experimental setup. 
 

There isn't enough information about their experimental setup in Yang et al paper to critique it.   And not enough for anyone to replicate their experiment. 

Shawyer's has a little more information.  One thing that does stand out is the large radiator and the much larger power dissipation of his experiment.   More pictures of his apparatus, along with descriptions of how it was changed for different tests (forward, reverse, up, down) would help.   

There are so many different ways that a small force can be produced when so much power is being dissipated.   For example if that whole copper cone was heating the surrounding air there would be a net thrust generated, because of the angle of the cone, similar to what turns the paddle wheels of a classical radiometer.   

Shawyer's graph 10 shows a slow increase in thrust during which time he states the magnetron is unlocked and the device is not accelerating until 130 Sec.  However velocity is indicated from 75 Sec on.     Maybe those first 75 130 Sec before any thrust is indicated is how long it takes for the cone to heat up enough to start pushing air and the time from 75 - 130 Sec is when the temperature is continuing to rise.  The strange shape of the velocity curve does look temperature related.   

At 75 Sec. the frequency is within .04% of the stated cavity natural frequency and the power is maximum.  The Q can't be that low .04% from the peak.   And at 200 Sec the power is switched off yet the device's velocity continues to increase.   That also looks like a thermal effect, ie: it takes several Sec. for the cone to cool down enough that it is no longer pushing air away from it.   Shawyer says this continued acceleration is due to the "slosh effects of 5 kg of coolant".  Did the coolant line spring a leak?  Or does the closed loop coolant system also push against the inertia of the cosmos?

There are so many possible explanations for the small thrust Shawyer's em-drive produces given the high power and complexity of the apparatus.   The JSC group built a much simpler low power test apparatus and have almost reduced the anomalous force to zero.  Maybe their force is also due to heat radiating from the cone and pushing air.   There may be a much shorter thermal time constant with their apparatus if the cone is lightweight Copper GR4 (PCB material).  The endcaps of the JSC em-drive do not have exposed Copper.   The material on the outside of the endcaps looks like FR4, which is an insulator.   So  the cone section would be heating air much more than the end caps.   Another reason to test it in a vacuum.

[Mulletron]

His theory reconciles QM with GR by bringing precision to GR.

You don't even need to quantize gravity anymore.

You don't need fancy math tricks anymore.

You don't need dark matter anymore.

You can calculate dark energy as vacuum energy correctly now.

The vacuum catastrophe can go away.

A cold inertial particle with NO acceleration is a perfect emitter and absorber.

According to my feeble understanding, this means rewriting the physics textbooks.

Yeah, given his notions about the effects of very very low accelerations which happen at the edges of galaxies and beyond; this serves to bring the uncertainty principle to the macro world, in the context of GR. This isn't a stretch in my view, because if you view EVERYTHING as a particle and a wave, this makes sense. You have to treat the the universe as a particle, and we're inside of that particle.

So if you encounter an object out there in deep space with no discernible acceleration, but you know that no acceleration is impossible. It must have an uncertain acceleration.

No more dichotomy is needed between QM and GR.

This isn't much of a leap. Black holes are already characterized as particles. They have mass, charge, and angular momentum.



Concentric spheres my friends. Gravity is common to all of them. Gravity is emergent as a product of all interactions.

The only question is, what layer of the onion are we at? That probably doesn't have meaning in the context of infinity.

It all makes sense this way.

Treat EMdrive as a particle inside a universe, and treat the inside of EMdrive as a universe (where ALL MASS is the result of ALL interaction, suddenly becomes, ALL MASS is the result of MOST interaction), because some interactions were blocked by its boundaries....

amazing things happen.

You have to ask yourself:

If all mass is all interaction. What happens to that mass if you redirect or block (by geometry taking advantage of casimir effects or meta materials) some of those interactions?

Inertial mass isn't tied to just gravitational interaction. Rather it is tied to ALL interactions; happening over time.

You get less inertial mass.

[RotoSequence]

I hate to be a wet blanket, but until there's experimental evidence to support the idea, it's only a hypothesis - a far cry from the time to rewrite physics texts!

[Mulletron]

I hate to be a wet blanket, but until there's experimental evidence to support the idea, it's only a hypothesis - a far cry from the time to rewrite physics texts!

http://physics.aps.org/story/v12/st14

[RotoSequence]

I hate to be a wet blanket, but until there's experimental evidence to support the idea, it's only a hypothesis - a far cry from the time to rewrite physics texts!

http://physics.aps.org/story/v12/st14

Facts that happen to fit the theory help, but rigorous testing of the theory's predictions are needed before they can be accepted as something more than a theory.

[Star One]

I hate to be a wet blanket, but until there's experimental evidence to support the idea, it's only a hypothesis - a far cry from the time to rewrite physics texts!

http://physics.aps.org/story/v12/st14

Facts that happen to fit the theory help, but rigorous testing of the theory's predictions are needed before they can be accepted as something more than a theory.

Which is what's happening.