Author Topic: Woodward's effect  (Read 803072 times)

Offline tdperk

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Re: Woodward's effect
« Reply #1500 on: 07/30/2018 03:05 pm »
You are presuming the falsity of the concept, and so of course can not make a relevant statement about it -- you are presuming the MET does not work as described, abnd building your argument around that presumption.
Ppnl did no such thing. You however apparently refuse to actually read the content of his posts.

You have not demonstrated an understanding of any of the concepts that you listed in your post.

Also to be clear:
Of course it implies a potentially over unity device.

No, and it excludes the possibility of that by sourcing what would be the "excess energy" which is "over unity" from the gravinertial field of the observable universe.
Saying that something is potentially true does not "exclude the possibility" of anything including its exact opposite.

This kind of blatantly obvious starwman is the type of argument made by someone who has no valid arguments left, but refuses to change his view anyway.

PPNL has many times refrained from in any way qualifying the claim the MET is necessarily an over unity device.  Their suddenly being careful when called out on it doesn't change that.  That is a fact and not a strawman argument.

PPNL has done nothing to but assert by implication the universe is not Machian, and has done so with no reasons given for the assertion at all.

While my recall of all 76 pages of comments on the topic is not eidetic, I believe no one has ever shown Woodward's math with respect to the MET is incorrect.

It is not possible it is an over unity device, and everyone who has asserted it is or even could be, has done no math showing that to be possible, because no one stating or implying that has shown there is no energy input from the gravinertial field of the observable universe.
« Last Edit: 07/30/2018 03:06 pm by tdperk »

Offline meberbs

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Re: Woodward's effect
« Reply #1501 on: 07/30/2018 03:46 pm »
PPNL has many times refrained from in any way qualifying the claim the MET is necessarily an over unity device.  Their suddenly being careful when called out on it doesn't change that.  That is a fact and not a strawman argument.
The only fact involved here is that you misrepresented ppnl's statement. You refusing to read the detailed qualifications of statements in his posts, and then asserting that he hasn't qualified his statements is simply an argument in bad faith.

PPNL has done nothing to but assert by implication the universe is not Machian, and has done so with no reasons given for the assertion at all.
He has not made that assertion anywhere that I have seen.

While my recall of all 76 pages of comments on the topic is not eidetic, I believe no one has ever shown Woodward's math with respect to the MET is incorrect.
Seriously? Woodward wrote a paper that failed fundamentally at discussing energy conservation, claiming that there is no local generation of energy that needs an explained source to prevent from being over unity. His basic math on this exact topic is very, very wrong, and that has been shown in detail.

It is not possible it is an over unity device, and everyone who has asserted it is or even could be, has done no math showing that to be possible, because no one stating or implying that has shown there is no energy input from the gravinertial field of the observable universe.
You are the one making an assertion here burden of proof is on you. I have seen no explanation of where the energy comes from except for a handwaved "it comes from the rest of the universe." Unless there is an actual quantitative description of how the drive interacts with the rest of the universe, it will appear to be an over unity device. Whether or not it actually is depends on the details of that description, which is the responsibility of the device's supporters to provide. (proof of these (conditional) statements has been provided repeatedly)

Also, for completeness, GR has gravitational waves which are limited to the same energy/momentum ratio as photons, so your explanation for where the energy comes from can't simply be "gravitational waves."

Offline D_Dom

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Re: Woodward's effect
« Reply #1502 on: 07/30/2018 05:03 pm »
OK, will try a warning before my usual heavy handed slash and burn, please be excellent to each other. Responding to a post that exceeds the bounds of civil discourse risks having your post excised as well.
Space is not merely a matter of life or death, it is considerably more important than that!

Offline Jim Davis

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Re: Woodward's effect
« Reply #1503 on: 07/30/2018 05:14 pm »
A recent test of general relativity:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0265-1

found that general relativity holds even under very extreme conditions.

Does this test have any implications for Woodward's theories? Would Woodward have predicted different results? The authors do not reference Woodward specifically but they do reference other theories which incorporate Mach's principle.

Offline Rodal

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Re: Woodward's effect
« Reply #1504 on: 07/31/2018 02:55 pm »
A recent test of general relativity:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0265-1

found that general relativity holds even under very extreme conditions.

Does this test have any implications for Woodward's theories? Would Woodward have predicted different results? The authors do not reference Woodward specifically but they do reference other theories which incorporate Mach's principle.

Excellent article and excellent question   :)  .

The article:

Universality of free fall from the orbital motion of a pulsar in a stellar triple system

Anne M. Archibald, Nina V. Gusinskaia, Jason W. T. Hessels, Adam T. Deller, David L. Kaplan, Duncan R. Lorimer, Ryan S. Lynch, Scott M. Ransom & Ingrid H. Stairs

Nature  04 July 2018

behind a paywall  at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0265-1

is available in a version at ArXiv as follows:

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1807.02059.pdf

5 Jul 2018

Testing the universality of free fall by tracking a pulsar in a stellar triple system

Anne M. Archibald, Nina V. Gusinskaia, Jason W. T. Hessels, Adam T. Deller, David L. Kaplan, Duncan R. Lorimer, Ryan S. Lynch, Scott M. Ransom & Ingrid H. Stairs


Let's calculate this !  (hat tip to Marshall Eubanks, any mistakes below are my responsibility)

CALCULATION FOR THE PULSAR IN THE TRIPLE STAR SYSTEM


The answer is that the frequencies involved in the pulsar stellar triple system are too low, and the pulsar's mass density too large, for the Woodward effect to have any observable effect.




Data
 
Semi-major axis of the pulsar orbit projected along line of sight (from the above paper, table E.2)
(see https://www3.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de/staff/pfreire/orbits/index.html for example)

 (a' Sin[ i ])/c= 1.217 sec <- [here call this symbol a' for the semi-major axis -instead of "a" used normally and in the above paper-  to distinguish it from the acceleration symbol ].

Inclination of the pulsar orbit relative to the invariant plane (from the above paper, table E.3):

 i = 39.262°

Density of pulsar (average of the range 3.7×10^17 to 5.9×10^17 kg/m^3 listed in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_star#Density_and_pressure ):

ρ = 4.8 x 10^17 kg/m^3

Mass of pulsar (from the above paper, table E.3):

m = 1.44 M_Sun
    = 1.44 x (1.989 × 10^30 kg)
    = 2.86 × 10^30 kg

Period of pulsar orbit (from the above paper, table E.2)

T = 1.629 days

therefore,

Frequency of pulsar orbit = 7.105x10^(-6) Hz

(hence this will turn out to be too slow to result in an observable effect, it is 5x10^9 times smaller than the frequencies [>35,000 Hz] involved in Woodward tests, and the effect is proportional to the frequency to the fourth power)



Solution

Calculation of semi-major axis of pulsar orbit

inclination of the pulsar orbit relative to the invariant plane:

i = 39.262°

Sin[ i ] = Sin [39.262°]
           = 0.6329

hence the semi-major axis of the pulsar's elliptical orbit is:

a' =(c 1.217 s)/(Sin[ i ])
   = (299 792 458 m/s x 1.217 s)/0.6329
   =  5.765 x 10^8 m

Calculation of orbital acceleration of pulsar

a = a'  ω^2
   = (5.765 x 10^8 m) (2 π 7.105x10^(-6) (1/s) )^2
   = 1.149 m/s^2

Calculation of Woodward's prediction for zero-to-peak fluctuation in inertial mass of the pulsar due to Mach's effect

Δm = m a^2 /(G ρ  c^2)

and calculation of Woodward's prediction of ratio of zero-to-peak-fluctuation-in-inertial-mass to the initial mass of the pulsar

(Δm)/m = a^2 /(G ρ  c^2)
                 = a' ^2  ω^4 /(G ρ  c^2)


substituting   m= 2.86 × 10^30 kg ; a = 1.149 m/s^2 ;  ρ = 4.8 x 10^17 kg/m^3

G = 6.67408 × 10^(-11) m^3 kg^(-1) s^(-2)
c = 299 792 458 m/s

then     

Δm = 1.31 x 10^6 kg

and:

Δm/m = 4.59 x 10^(-25)

Which is way too small to be observable.


Notice that the predicted effect here is proportional to the 4th power of the frequency  ω^4 (since it is proportional to the square of the acceleration, and the acceleration is proportional to the square of the angular frequency).   The orbital frequency of the outer "cool old" white dwarf  (orbital period of 327 days) is smaller than the orbital period of the pulsar (orbital period of 1.6 days), and hence its predicted Woodward effect is much smaller.

--------------------------------------------------------

Thanks for the excellent question!




this last image from Scinexx-de
« Last Edit: 08/01/2018 03:22 pm by Rodal »

Offline Povel

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Re: Woodward's effect
« Reply #1505 on: 07/31/2018 06:10 pm »
I don't know if the "measurement are far above the noise floor of his instrumentation"; judging by some scope traces shown in his papers and books the difference before and after the input signal is turned on seems significant. Many of these are averaged combination of test runs, made explicitly to lower down the signal/noise ratio.
I don't want to spend much time on this, which is why I just went back to the most recent relevant picture I could find in the thread, which loooks worse than some others for good reason. The post you linked me to has a much better picture, but it illustrates signals deep in the "noise." This is not the standard "noise" but instead is errors and biases in the measurement equipment are comparable to the supposed "signal."

In some papers there's indication that this baseline drop between before and after is related to the length of the input pulse.
If you notice, in that picture the duration of the pulse is of the order of 10 seconds. Fearn and Wanser [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259623549_Experimental_tests_of_the_Mach_Effect_Thruster
]compared this drop with that obtained for shorter 1-2 seconds pulses and found out that the drop was much larger for longer inputs.

Moreover they wrote:

Quote
The baseline does return to pre-pulse values after a few more seconds, which we could not show due to restrictions in our data acquisition system. [pg. 8]

"A few more seconds" is not particularly precise, but it seems to imply that the baseline returns to the original value in a time shorter than the duration of the signal of interest.

Interestingly, the graphs 3a-b show that the drop is in the same direction for both the forward and reversed configuration, while the "thrust" signal reverses. This means that, at least for the case displayed, the procedure Woodward uses for isolating only the reversing part of the signal by subtracting forward and reverse runs automatically takes care of this bias.

In the papers I read it is not mentioned any possible cause, but it doesn't appear to be always present; for example the other picture I posted doesn't show any. You can also have a look the the most recent results from the damaged device (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=31037.msg1834754#msg1834754), starting from page 46 for the pulses result; I don't see such drop in any of the data.


As for the second graph, you can find longer run results here -> http://ssi.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/ssi_estes_park_proceedings_201609.pdf, page 91 (though honestly the picture is like a miniature).

Given all this,  I personally find difficult to confidently state that "errors and biases in the measurement equipment are comparable to the supposed "signal"", and I'm not sure what makes you reach this conclusion so quickly, since this is definetely not so for every single run.


[..] the source of the errors has to be understood and eliminated, or the signal clearly raised much higher to draw any real conclusions.

I think these are all things that are being sought after by Woodward and the NIAC team.



I don't have time to look into his papers in detail, but enough people are paying attention, if conclusive data existed in them, it would be well known, and everyone would want to replicate and apply the effect.

Are you sure? Up until very recently there was practically no interest whatsoever. I have the impression this situation had (has) much less to do with the possible merit of the idea and much more with the context the idea belongs to and was first developed in.

Certainly there are no "conclusive" data so far:  The devices have been tested only in an handful of laboratories with not always correct procedures.
But one thing is to say that the data needs to be refined and another is to consider all the current data completely unreliable on the base on some partial scopes.


I should mention that General Relativity has some weirdness with global conservation laws that make answering this question harder than it sounds. Given that there is a theory predicting the effect I'd expect they can at least provide a partial answer, but a full answer would likely need more than 2 years to come up with.

Yes, and moreover in GR the concept of "gravitational energy" is somewhat problematic too. Indeed, this is an issue that goes well beyond Woodward and his device and that it is being researched, so maybe I was unfair. Still, openly acknowledging that there's a a problem here that will need to be dealt with and starting doing some work in that direction can only be helpful.


The answer to your questions here also gets into why the paper I always bring up is a problem. With the mistakes in that paper, if Woodward was able to convince himself to write it despite any competence he may have demonstrated elsewhere, it also means he could have a blind spot for an error in his experiment that may not be easily recognizable from just published data. Retracting his statements in that paper would actually do a lot to gain him credibility, at least for me.

While I understand this point and I agree about the necessity for him to do something about that paper, I think that the fact that he is not working alone and has never worked completely alone on his device makes it at least believable that any blind spots of equal "magnitude" of that he displayed for some time in that paper should have been accounted for.
(For an quite impartial account of Woodward ex-collaborator, see http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/physics/graduate-studies-in-physics-at-cal-state-university-fullerton/)


As a side note, hoping to not sound patronizing (and apologizing in case it does), I'd like to add the following.

You have absolutely the right to spend your time according to your necessities and desires, and I won't blame you for this.
 
And yet, I think that the attitude you showed in the previous comment is at least worth some general reflection.
You jumped extremely fast to the conclusion (incompetence and/or will to deceive by Woodward), without taking time to analyze the informations you were using. This is something that I've actually seen happen quite a number of times around this whole subject over the past years, and it keeps happening.

For example, I've seen a number of physicist (or at least self-proclaimed physicist) over reddit argue sometimes with short sometimes with extremely long comments over the perceived problems and flaws of Woodward hypothesis/experiments; none of them seemed to have gone much deeper than the wikipedia page, and those who went reading Woodward webpage or tried reading his papers seemed to consistently miss the point/ misunderstand the actual content whenever they tried exposing and criticizing it.

I could bring some example in a later post, don't want to write a poem here for now.

Anyway, the fact that this attitude seems so prevalent makes me hard to believe that the criticism on this subject from the scientific community (with the exclusion of the concern over energy conservation), if the comments I saw from some of his members are representative, is based on something more than just a brief reading of, at best, the abstract/first pages of Woodward 1990 paper.
« Last Edit: 07/31/2018 10:57 pm by Povel »

Offline meberbs

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Re: Woodward's effect
« Reply #1506 on: 08/01/2018 01:44 am »
In the papers I read it is not mentioned any possible cause, but it doesn't appear to be always present; for example the other picture I posted doesn't show any.
This is a good summary of the first half of your post. You can talk about all of the different strange aspects of this shift all you want, but you aren't going to be able to come up with an explanation with the limited available information, and it the experimenters don't have an answer either.

Given all this,  I personally find difficult to confidently state that "errors and biases in the measurement equipment are comparable to the supposed "signal"", and I'm not sure what makes you reach this conclusion so quickly, since this is definetely not so for every single run.
Everything you said is an argument in favor of my statement. There is an uncharacterized signal of unknown origin that is not representative of a working drive. It not being in every run makes it more of a problem not less. The magnitude of this is clearly comparable to the signal that is being claimed to exist.  I come to the conclusion quickly because it is sitting right there in the data for anyone to see if they know what they are talking about and aren't letting biases cloud their view.

I don't have time to look into his papers in detail, but enough people are paying attention, if conclusive data existed in them, it would be well known, and everyone would want to replicate and apply the effect.

Are you sure? Up until very recently there was practically no interest whatsoever. I have the impression this situation had (has) much less to do with the possible merit of the idea and much more with the context the idea belongs to and was first developed in.
Dr. Rodal just posted in this thread (with a nice answer to a question). There are third parties that pay attention even if you don't know they are still there, or were ever there to begin with. You seem to be basing the relevant awareness of these things on your personal awareness or the activity on these forums. If there is truly solid data that gets produced, news will spread quickly enough where it matters.

Certainly there are no "conclusive" data so far:  The devices have been tested only in an handful of laboratories with not always correct procedures.
agreed.

 
And yet, I think that the attitude you showed in the previous comment is at least worth some general reflection.
You jumped extremely fast to the conclusion (incompetence and/or will to deceive by Woodward), without taking time to analyze the informations you were using. This is something that I've actually seen happen quite a number of times around this whole subject over the past years, and it keeps happening.
I didn't jump to a conclusion based on just the information stated there, but all of the previous evidence. And while that mistake was not made by Woodward, the facts of how wrong it is remain true. (I should note that incompetence or ignorance are both easily fixable if the person is willing to learn and I don't feel they should be viewed as insults, everyone starts that way in a new field, and even experienced people do something incompetent once in a while.)

Anyway, the fact that this attitude seems so prevalent makes me hard to believe that the criticism on this subject from the scientific community (with the exclusion of the concern over energy conservation), if the comments I saw from some of his members are representative, is based on something more than just a brief reading of, at best, the abstract/first pages of Woodward 1990 paper.
Unlike most devices in this category there is potentially some solid theory behind this, but there are still holes that need to be explained (see ppnl's recent posts). They are valid and easy to bring up, but hard to answer. There are plenty of people online who don't know what they are talking about, and some will end up on either side of an issue like this. There aren't a whole lot of people actually capable of sensibly discussing the issues in the full context of GR.

Offline Bob Woods

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Re: Woodward's effect
« Reply #1507 on: 08/01/2018 02:12 am »
Jose' !!!


Good to see you back. You HAVE been missed.  8)

Offline Rodal

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Re: Woodward's effect
« Reply #1508 on: 08/01/2018 05:30 pm »
Follow-up to the calculations based on the following article, on the observed PSR J0337+1715 triple star system with the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT), the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT), and the William E. Gordon telescope at the Arecibo  Observatory (AO). They have over 800 observations spanning approximately six years, which total about 1200 hours on this source.

Universality of free fall from the orbital motion of a pulsar in a stellar triple system
Anne M. Archibald, Nina V. Gusinskaia, Jason W. T. Hessels, Adam T. Deller, David L. Kaplan, Duncan R. Lorimer, Ryan S. Lynch, Scott M. Ransom & Ingrid H. Stairs
Nature  04 July 2018
behind a paywall  at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0265-1

which is also available in a version at ArXiv as follows:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1807.02059.pdf
5 Jul 2018
Testing the universality of free fall by tracking a pulsar in a stellar triple system
Anne M. Archibald, Nina V. Gusinskaia, Jason W. T. Hessels, Adam T. Deller, David L. Kaplan, Duncan R. Lorimer, Ryan S. Lynch, Scott M. Ransom & Ingrid H. Stairs


Let's calculate now the Woodward effect for the "Young-hot" white-dwarf companion to the pulsar in the inner orbit of the 3-star system  (thanks to Marshall Eubanks for consulting questions, any mistakes below are my responsibility) which is promising to have a greater effect than the pulsar because of its smaller mass density and smaller total mass

CALCULATION FOR THE WHITE-DWARF INNER COMPANION TO THE PULSAR IN THE TRIPLE STAR SYSTEM



Data
 
Semi-major axis of the inner-white-dwarf orbit projected along line of sight (from the above paper, table E.2)

(see https://www3.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de/staff/pfreire/orbits/index.html for example)
The semi-major axis should be proportional to the ratio of the masses with the pulsar:

 (a' Sin[ i ])/c=(PulsarMass/InnerWhiteDwarfMass) 1.217 sec <- [here call this symbol a' for the semi-major axis -instead of "a" used normally and in the above paper-  to distinguish it from the acceleration symbol ].

Inclination of the  inner-white-dwarf orbit relative to the invariant plane (from the above paper, table E.3):

 i = 39.262°

Density of inner-white dwarf (typical density of 1×10^9 kg/m^3 listed in a variety of sources: e.g.http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/W/white+dwarf):

ρ = 1 x 10^9 kg/m^3

Mass of inner-white dwarf (from the above paper, table E.3):

m = 0.1973 M_Sun
    = 0.1973 x (1.989 × 10^30 kg)
    = 3.924 × 10^29 kg

Period of inner-white dwarf orbit (should be the same as the one for the companion pulsar, from the above paper, table E.2)

T = 1.629 days

therefore,

Frequency of inner-white dwarf orbit = 7.105x10^(-6) Hz



Solution

Calculation of ratio of pulsar mass to inner-white dwarf mass
(from Table E3 in article)

(PulsarMass/InnerWhiteDwarfMass) = (1.4359 M_Sun) /(0.1973 M_Sun)
                                                    = 7.278

Calculation of semi-major axis of inner-white dwarf orbit

inclination of the inner-white dwarf orbit relative to the invariant plane:
(from Table E3 in article)

i = 39.262°

Sin[ i ] = Sin [39.262°]
           = 0.6329

hence the semi-major axis of the inner-white dwarf's elliptical orbit is:

a' =((1.4359 M_Sun) /(0.1973 M_Sun)) (c 1.217 s)/(Sin [39.262°])
   = 7.278x (299 792 458 m/s x 1.217 s)/0.6329
   =  4.195 x 10^9 m

Calculation of orbital acceleration of inner-white dwarf

a = a'  ω^2
   = (4.195 x 10^9 m) (2 π 7.105x10^(-6) (1/s) )^2
   = 8.361 m/s^2

Calculation of Woodward's prediction for zero-to-peak fluctuation in inertial mass of the inner-white dwarf due to Mach's effect

Δm = m a^2 /(G ρ  c^2)

and calculation of Woodward's prediction of ratio of zero-to-peak-fluctuation-in-inertial-mass to the initial mass of the pulsar

(Δm)/m = a^2 /(G ρ  c^2)
                 = a' ^2  ω^4 /(G ρ  c^2)


substituting   m= 3.924 × 10^29 kg ; a = 8.361 m/s^2;  ρ = 1 x 10^9 kg/m^3
G = 6.67408 × 10^(-11) m^3 kg^(-1) s^(-2)
c = 299 792 458 m/s

then     

Δm = 4.57 x 10^15 kg

and:


Δm/m = 1.17 x 10^(-14)

Which, although orders of magnitude larger than the effect on the pulsar (calculated in the last post as Δm/m = 4.59 x 10^(-25) ), it is still way too small to be observable (particularly for an orbit such as this which is pretty circular, with eccentricity parameter (e sin ω)  3.518595 × 10^(−2) ).   
For an effect that has a chance of being observable one needs to find a system with very elliptic orbits.


--------------------------------------------------------


Image courtesy of one of the co-authors: Jason Hessels https://www.astron.nl/astronomy-group/people/jason-w-t-hessels/jason-w-t-hessels

« Last Edit: 08/02/2018 04:00 am by Rodal »

Offline Povel

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Re: Woodward's effect
« Reply #1509 on: 08/06/2018 04:13 pm »
Everything you said is an argument in favor of my statement. There is an uncharacterized signal of unknown origin that is not representative of a working drive. It not being in every run makes it more of a problem not less. The magnitude of this is clearly comparable to the signal that is being claimed to exist.  I come to the conclusion quickly because it is sitting right there in the data for anyone to see if they know what they are talking about and aren't letting biases cloud their view.


I wrote that the papers I read don't mention any possible cause. Since I didn't read each and every single paper in detail, I can't exclude that the signal is characterized somewhere.

I fail to see how the signal not being present in every run is a problem. If, say, in 10 runs there's only a couple of them that show such noise and the others do not I'd consider this a quite decent result.
I don't know if the proportion is something like this of course, I know only about the data that are publicly available.
They might be cherrypicking only the best looking results, but then this is equivalent of accusing them of dishonesty, and there's no proof of that.

One should also consider that they are not testing a single device, they built a number of them, and for every set of runs they apply an averaging + subtraction of forward and reverse signals, which usually takes care of all the non reversing spurious signals. Some devices might simply be more noisy than others.


Dr. Rodal just posted in this thread (with a nice answer to a question). There are third parties that pay attention even if you don't know they are still there, or were ever there to begin with. You seem to be basing the relevant awareness of these things on your personal awareness or the activity on these forums. If there is truly solid data that gets produced, news will spread quickly enough where it matters.

Wasn't Dr. Rodal part of NIAC Phase I grant? Judging by its answers he seems to be involved also with Phase II grant. If so, I don't consider him to be a "third party".

Ideally a third party is a group or an institution that has never been involved with Woodward (and/or preferably with exotic propulsion, since sadly, as you noticed, the standard for these researches is quite low) that verifies indipendently both his theoretical and experimental results.

Even if you consider dr. Rodal as third party, he's only been involved in this quite recently.

Woodward started working on this in the '90s, and he received virtually no attention by the scientific community. While it is true that ultimately the experiments are the deciding factor, one should not forget that they are motivated by a calculation that could, in principle, be disproved by simply using pen and paper.

Assuming that the calculation is correct, there has been no interest by the physicists community, and I suspect that this is because Woodward immediately branded his idea as "exotic propulsion", which is something no physicist is working on and that is seen, with good reasons, as outlandish.

By the way, it seems that for Phase II people from the Johns Hopkins University will be involved

Quote
For this next phase of their research,Woodward and Fearn will collaborate with experts from industry and academia, including those at Johns Hopkins University , in hopes of successfully developing a breakthrough technology. Machinist Jonathan Woodland in the Physics Department and a student researcher also will be involved in the project.

http://news.fullerton.edu/2018sp/woodward-fearn-interstellar-researchers.aspx

I wonder if the experts from academia are physicists with a background in GR.
 

And while that mistake was not made by Woodward, the facts of how wrong it is remain true.

I agree, but who made such mistake is quite important I'd say, especially if it is used to further confirm our own evaluation of Woodward.

I should note that incompetence or ignorance are both easily fixable if the person is willing to learn and I don't feel they should be viewed as insults, everyone starts that way in a new field, and even experienced people do something incompetent once in a while.

Agreed, but you wrote

Quote
Picking the peak out of all the oscillations as the thrust "value" is obviously the wrong answer even if the device worked. The only reasons to do so are incompetence or deception.

Which is different from incompetence/ignorance.

Unlike most devices in this category there is potentially some solid theory behind this, but there are still holes that need to be explained (see ppnl's recent posts). They are valid and easy to bring up, but hard to answer.

Indeed, there might be substance in this.
Regarding ppnl's post, I would like to add two things:

- The issue can be associated with the fact that Woodward's equation is seemingly Lorentz covariant, which means that the mass fluctuation has the same magnitude for all inertial observers and cannot depend on the velocity of the mass fluctuating element relative to some "absolute" frame. The mass fluctuation resulting from the effect, taken alone, doesn't cause a force directly, it must be "rectified" by a push/pull of different frequency.

- In the previous post I cited this 2014 paper by Fearn at al. - > https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259623549_Experimental_tests_of_the_Mach_Effect_Thruster

I noticed that there's an approximate derivation of Woodward's equation from "a modified PPN wave equation for the gravitational field" right after the introduction.

Interestingly, the derivation seems to at least partially try addressing the energy conservation issue.
It still looks rather handwavy, but it is definetely better than all the purely verbal handwave I thought constituted the entire discussion on this.

There are plenty of people online who don't know what they are talking about, and some will end up on either side of an issue like this. There aren't a whole lot of people actually capable of sensibly discussing the issues in the full context of GR.

Sure, but one would hope that any physicist, when asked about this, would at least read a couple of the peer-reviewed papers published by Woodward and the others before expressing their informed opinion, especially given how they rely on issues within the modern foundations of physics, such as Mach's principle and the origin of inertia, that are still not settled.

Maybe, like you said, this in only something that happens online.
Afterall it's probably correct to assume that NIAC granted Woodward more than half a million dollars after hopefully having his works and results reviewed by a team of physicists (there were many other proposals presented at NIAC that I doubt could be evaluated by a team purely composed by engineers).
For what it is worth, in the book it is also mentioned how Woodward originally had his math checked by two general relativist friends of him, Ron Crowley and Stephen Goode.
« Last Edit: 08/06/2018 04:15 pm by Povel »

Offline meberbs

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Re: Woodward's effect
« Reply #1510 on: 08/06/2018 05:01 pm »
I wrote that the papers I read don't mention any possible cause. Since I didn't read each and every single paper in detail, I can't exclude that the signal is characterized somewhere.
I can't say that hasn't been done either, but my concerns stand uncontested unless someone shows the characterization. (Which then could be evaluated.)

I fail to see how the signal not being present in every run is a problem. If, say, in 10 runs there's only a couple of them that show such noise and the others do not I'd consider this a quite decent result.
It means that you don't know what is going on with your measurement apparatus. If you can't say why something is only there sometimes, you can't say with any confidence that the signal that is always there isn't just a more consistent version of the same effect, given that it is comparable in magnitude. The more unexplained aspects the behavior has, the less confidence.

Dr. Rodal just posted in this thread (with a nice answer to a question). There are third parties that pay attention even if you don't know they are still there, or were ever there to begin with. You seem to be basing the relevant awareness of these things on your personal awareness or the activity on these forums. If there is truly solid data that gets produced, news will spread quickly enough where it matters.

Wasn't Dr. Rodal part of NIAC Phase I grant? Judging by its answers he seems to be involved also with Phase II grant. If so, I don't consider him to be a "third party".
Point is that there are others looking, and as you mention, the NIAC grant is actually better evidence of that.

Woodward started working on this in the '90s, and he received virtually no attention by the scientific community. While it is true that ultimately the experiments are the deciding factor, one should not forget that they are motivated by a calculation that could, in principle, be disproved by simply using pen and paper.
I am not sure it can be disproved with just pen and paper. General Relativity is not consistent with all statements of Mach's principle, so it could differ from "standard" GR by having a different assumption (hypothesis), and then you would have to determine whether differences that arise from that are true. This would need an experiment. 

And while that mistake was not made by Woodward, the facts of how wrong it is remain true.

I agree, but who made such mistake is quite important I'd say, especially if it is used to further confirm our own evaluation of Woodward.
Of course, which is why I admitted that it was an error on my part, and I shouldn't have made it.

I should note that incompetence or ignorance are both easily fixable if the person is willing to learn and I don't feel they should be viewed as insults, everyone starts that way in a new field, and even experienced people do something incompetent once in a while.

Agreed, but you wrote

Quote
Picking the peak out of all the oscillations as the thrust "value" is obviously the wrong answer even if the device worked. The only reasons to do so are incompetence or deception.

Which is different from incompetence/ignorance.
I do not see what is different between "incompetence" and "incompetence."  I wrote "or" in the original statement, not "and." The "deception" is there for completeness or my statement of possible explanations, but it should not be the default assumption. "Don’t ascribe to malice what can be plainly explained by incompetence."

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: Woodward's effect
« Reply #1511 on: 08/09/2018 04:05 pm »
I wrote that the papers I read don't mention any possible cause. Since I didn't read each and every single paper in detail, I can't exclude that the signal is characterized somewhere.

Just jumping in with the POV of communication.  The "signal", if there is one, is not dependent upon your having read "each and every single paper".  Some years ago, I figured out some unwarranted assumptions in Woodward's earlier papers, but since then the "theory" has evolved beyond my understanding, and I typically lurk and try to keep up.  I'm just suggesting that perhaps you should keep reading.

Quote
Wasn't Dr. Rodal part of NIAC Phase I grant? Judging by its answers he seems to be involved also with Phase II grant. If so, I don't consider him to be a "third party". ...

Even if you consider Dr. Rodal as third party, he's only been involved in this quite recently.

Just thinking in terms of communication again.  The quality of the mathematical analyses is independent of the time frame that the analyses was made.  Often, in fact, it is the recent analysis which can debunk or prove the earlier analysis.  Therefore, Jose's "recent" involvement does not factor into the mathematical results he reports.
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline Stormbringer

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Re: Woodward's effect
« Reply #1512 on: 08/11/2018 03:14 am »
phonons have negative mass?

https://www.livescience.com/63305-sound-waves-negative-gravity-mass.html

if so couldn't you just make a really powerful subwoofer or something in a enclosure to maintain a medium for sound and produce enough phonon activity to do something useful (propulsion wise?)
When antigravity is outlawed only outlaws will have antigravity.

Offline meberbs

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Re: Woodward's effect
« Reply #1513 on: 08/11/2018 03:28 am »
phonons have negative mass?

https://www.livescience.com/63305-sound-waves-negative-gravity-mass.html

if so couldn't you just make a really powerful subwoofer or something in a enclosure to maintain a medium for sound and produce enough phonon activity to do something useful (propulsion wise?)
No, all it says is if they did their math right, sound waves will have a tendency to deflect slightly upwards. All forces would still be balanced within the medium, gravity still pulls the system of "medium plus sound wave" downwards just as strongly.

Note: Unlike photons which don't have a medium, sound waves are inseparable from the medium they propagate through, and are just a useful concept to avoid writing down the equations of motion for 10^23 individual particles.

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: Woodward's effect
« Reply #1514 on: 08/17/2018 02:31 pm »
Meberbs:

Just out of curiosity, we all know that the "vacuum" of space isn't exactly a vacuum, what with dust and so forth.  Is it possible for there to be some kind of "sound" passing thru the medium of space?  I'm not trying to prove anything, so don't worry!
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline meberbs

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Re: Woodward's effect
« Reply #1515 on: 08/17/2018 03:37 pm »
Meberbs:

Just out of curiosity, we all know that the "vacuum" of space isn't exactly a vacuum, what with dust and so forth.  Is it possible for there to be some kind of "sound" passing thru the medium of space?  I'm not trying to prove anything, so don't worry!
My guess was yes since it is a medium and pushing off interstellar gas has been proposed more than once. According to google, that is correct:

https://gizmodo.com/there-actually-is-sound-in-outer-space-1738420340

Restriction is basically wavelength must be less the the mean distance between particles. I assume there would be related restrictions on the minimum size of a practical detection device, and the low density would probably also keep the amplitude small as well. (for some definition of small amplitude)

Offline soms42

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Re: Woodward's effect
« Reply #1516 on: 08/21/2018 03:35 pm »
I have read Woodwards book "making starships and stargates" and view all lectures on the subject that i could find (most via nextbigfuture) and am trying to make sense out of it. One of the problems  i encountered was a remark of Dr Fearn. In some lecture (i forgot to note which one) she says that the energy required for the dP/dt (in woodwards formula for delta m) must come from the force causing the acceleration of the mass in which the energy is stored.

Why is this?
Is there a fundamental reason for this or is it just a limitation of the experimental setup?

I mean i think it does not matter how power is transfered to the accelerated object: the (normal relativitic) calculation should show no change in the momentum of the whole system.

Any thoughts?

Offline flux_capacitor

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Re: Woodward's effect
« Reply #1517 on: 08/24/2018 04:14 pm »
I have read Woodwards book "making starships and stargates" and view all lectures on the subject that i could find (most via nextbigfuture) and am trying to make sense out of it. One of the problems  i encountered was a remark of Dr Fearn. In some lecture (i forgot to note which one) she says that the energy required for the dP/dt (in woodwards formula for delta m) must come from the force causing the acceleration of the mass in which the energy is stored.

Why is this?
Is there a fundamental reason for this or is it just a limitation of the experimental setup?

I mean i think it does not matter how power is transfered to the accelerated object: the (normal relativitic) calculation should show no change in the momentum of the whole system.

Any thoughts?

You should try to find that source again and quote it here with a link, in order for someone to actually address it.

Offline soms42

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Re: Woodward's effect
« Reply #1518 on: 08/25/2018 08:57 am »
You should try to find that source again and quote it here with a link, in order for someone to actually address it.

I am searching but up to now no result.  I will add it when i find it.

Edit:
I found something. Not the exact quote that triggered me, but it explains what was said:

From "Making Stargates: The Physics of Traversable Absurdly Benign Wormholes" just before equation 42 ( ;D  ):
Quote
The second consideration that must be kept in mind is that the accelerating force can produce both changes in internal energy of the object accelerated and changes in its bulk velocity which do not contribute to internal energy changes. Only the part of the accelerating force that produces internal energy changes contributes to Mach effects.

Full text: https://ac.els-cdn.com/S1875389211005724/1-s2.0-S1875389211005724-main.pdf?_tid=b9488dd7-f4bb-42f1-b58e-1b04d408eec6&acdnat=1535190455_5c0b94ea94a18b18a5265a632f9e8995
« Last Edit: 08/25/2018 09:56 am by soms42 »

Offline flux_capacitor

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Re: Woodward's effect
« Reply #1519 on: 08/25/2018 04:43 pm »
I found something. Not the exact quote that triggered me, but it explains what was said:

From "Making Stargates: The Physics of Traversable Absurdly Benign Wormholes" just before equation 42 ( ;D  ):
Quote
The second consideration that must be kept in mind is that the accelerating force can produce both changes in internal energy of the object accelerated and changes in its bulk velocity which do not contribute to internal energy changes. Only the part of the accelerating force that produces internal energy changes contributes to Mach effects.

For me this means that in order for Mach effects (i.e. transient mass fluctuations, suitable for propellantless propulsion) to appear in a thruster, the internal energy in the object must change while the object is also undergoing a proper acceleration at the same time.

In other words, (proper) acceleration alone is not enough, although the acquired velocity means the object has gained additional kinetic energy ½mv². That gained energy alone due to accelerating cannot trigger any mass fluctuation according to Woodward. The internal energy state of the object must also change (e.g. charging/discharging capacitors with some voltage and electric current).

This is also related to Nembo Buldrini's "bulk acceleration conjecture" that I have already quoted in a previous post.

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