dark matter ?
Ok, this is preliminary and difficult. But, regardless of theories, they claim results, they claim difficult to obtain and measure but real non classical effects. Sceptic but open minded readership is not requiring cautionary phrase "assuming any propellantless effect at all is possible" at each single slide or paragraph of the publications, but the overall tone is that they have no doubt they are onto something, and trying to improve that something. But there is nothing to improve if there is nothing, and it is very possible there is nothing, that propellantless effects (better than 1/c) is not part of reality, like FTL travels. It would be very desirable but it could be just plain impossible. No matter bright theories to explain how it could be possible, and it is certainly worth investigating such possibilities, in the end it might be just plain impossible. And that is what best contemporary theories and their theoreticians are telling. They could be wrong. They very possibly could be right, even if wrong on a lot of other things.If all the signals are false, then there is no progress to be made by comparing the signals. For instance it is irrelevant to make a theory that better explains why a thruster could better push on vacuum with a dielectric resonator than without, it is irrelevant to make devices with dielectric resonators because seeing a signal would be better than no signal. I think that they are trying too hard to see something, and not hard enough to see nothing. There is the device and the experiment to test the device. As for the experimental part there is a force measuring system and an enclosure around the device to insure the device is isolated from the rest of the experiment and can't expel anything or push on any wall or field. Working in a vacuum is a kind of enclosure, but it is far from sufficient. If any effect at all is possible then this enclosure is irrelevant for applications. For determining the all or nothing answer of "is the effect real ?" this enclosure is paramount. The experimenters and theoreticians here seem to put so much accent on the device, some real effort on the force measuring (but maybe not the appropriate apparatus), but not much about the enclosure.
Pierre Sikivie [in 1983] showed that dark matter axions can be detected on Earth by converting them to microwave photons in an electromagnetic cavity tuned to the axion mass and permeated by a strong magnetic field. This is the principle of the Axion Dark Matter eXperiment (ADMX) at the University of Washington in Seattle. It uses a resonant microwave cavity within in a large superconducting magnet to search for cold dark matter axions in the local galactic dark matter halohttp://www.phys.washington.edu/groups/admx/home.htmlhttp://www.phys.ufl.edu/~tanner/PDFS/Hoskins11prd-Hires-10Hz.pdf<<We describe the ADMX receiver in detail as well as the analysis of narrow band microwave signals. We demonstrate the sustained use of a SQUID amplifier operating between 812 and 860 MHz with a noise temperature of 1 K. The receiver has a noise equivalent power of View the MathML source in the band of operation for an integration time of View the MathML source.>><<ADMX converts axions to detectable microwave photons via the inverse Primakoff effect within a tunable,high quality factor (Q ~ 50000) microwave cavity immersed in a strong magnetic field.>><<The ADMX detector consists of a 1-m tall, 0.5-m diameter, copper plated, stainless steel, right cylindricalcavity kept at 1.8 K and placed in a 7.6 T magnetic field>>We are missing the 7.6 T strong magnetic field in the Eagleworks experiment. The only magnetic field is the one produced by the magnetic damper, which is there only by chance (mainly to dampen the swinging oscillations of the inverted pendulum and also the torsional oscillations). The magnetic damper is located about a foot away from the tested microwave device (Cannae or Frustum).Eagleworks has three Neodymium (NdFeB Grade N42) block magnets interacting with the pendulum’s aluminum angle to dampen oscillatory motion.For comparison, the magnetic field intensity at the surface of a neodymium magnet is 1.25 T
dark matter?
The interaction would be the other way around, photon interaction...
Can't answer your question, they run at twice the frequency required, less than half the Q at Washington, and the main problem is that the magnetic field was there only by chance and far away (a foot from the tested device).As far-fetched as this would be, sounds certainly much more possible than pumping the Quantum Vacuum...
QuoteThe interaction would be the other way around, photon interaction...Ok, so microwave photons are creating (?) dark matter axioms? (trying for clarity here, though this sounds a little like my earlier speculation)QuoteCan't answer your question, they run at twice the frequency required, less than half the Q at Washington, and the main problem is that the magnetic field was there only by chance and far away (a foot from the tested device).As far-fetched as this would be, sounds certainly much more possible than pumping the Quantum Vacuum...Assume that by sheer chance if nothing else, the drive built and tested by the Eagleworks team is 'using microwave photons to create dark matter axioms,' which seems at least plausible as everything connected with dark matter has giant question marks attached. If this is the case, then in your best view, would this qualify as a 'propellentless drive' or 'EM drive?' And would we be in serious violation of the laws of physics here?
Quote from: frobnicat on 09/28/2014 11:36 amOk, this is preliminary and difficult....../...If all the signals are false, then there is no progress to be made by comparing the signals...This is now several pages back but didn't want to leave it unchallenged -- frobnicat, it's not a detour for Eagleworks or Woodward to be focusing, decades into their separate work, building thrust levels as a primary focus compared to eliminating spurious, conventional sources of potential thrust. The fact is, the effort to eliminate spurious sources can go on forever if you are pumping hundreds of watts into a box and measuring micronewtons at a small distance above the noise threshold. In Woodward's case it's been over I believe 17 years of experiments.
Ok, this is preliminary and difficult....../...If all the signals are false, then there is no progress to be made by comparing the signals...
The one thing that changes the dynamic is if you can increase the thrust/power to the level where spurious sources of thrust are differentiated by the power level. The larger the thrust being measured, the easier it is to figure out the source.So even if the theory is wrong, after so many years of chasing something uncertain, and if you're convinced either by the underlying theory or previous results, surely it makes sense to keep trying to increase the thrust while only slowly chipping away at the spurious potential sources.
Quote from: ThinkerX on 09/29/2014 03:52 amS1/ Coupling a local RF field with existing axions that just happen to be there : pushing on the local dark matter. Since this matter is real but not interacting there is 0 chance that the average velocity of this "dark gas" is synchronised with rotating earth surface or even with earth centre of mass on its orbit around the sun. It is possible that this dark average velocity is in the same direction and grossly similar magnitude as solar system (sun) velocity orbiting the galaxy, but unknown for sure. What is certain is that in such a situation (coupling with existing dark matter) the device in a lab would see a strong relative wind of magnitude at least 30km/s (and possibly up to a few 100s km/s) with direction and exact magnitude depending of orientation to the stars (periodicity of 23 hours, 56 minutes sidereal time and day of the year (earth velocity on orbit around sun, relative to galactic referential). Will try to do some order of magnitude roughing to develop quantitatively this situation. Dr Rodal do you know of any attempt in the literature to characterize sidereal or year time periodicity of the various thrusters results ? That could explain why the results (if real) appear to be erratic...
S1/ Coupling a local RF field with existing axions that just happen to be there : pushing on the local dark matter. Since this matter is real but not interacting there is 0 chance that the average velocity of this "dark gas" is synchronised with rotating earth surface or even with earth centre of mass on its orbit around the sun. It is possible that this dark average velocity is in the same direction and grossly similar magnitude as solar system (sun) velocity orbiting the galaxy, but unknown for sure. What is certain is that in such a situation (coupling with existing dark matter) the device in a lab would see a strong relative wind of magnitude at least 30km/s (and possibly up to a few 100s km/s) with direction and exact magnitude depending of orientation to the stars (periodicity of 23 hours, 56 minutes sidereal time and day of the year (earth velocity on orbit around sun, relative to galactic referential). Will try to do some order of magnitude roughing to develop quantitatively this situation. Dr Rodal do you know of any attempt in the literature to characterize sidereal or year time periodicity of the various thrusters results ? That could explain why the results (if real) appear to be erratic...
.../...It would need to act more like a sailboat using its sail to go forward with the wind blowing at an angle against it..../...If we cannot come up with something in the EM drive that would be forming an airfoil shape, or if we don't conclude that Dark Matter is a directionless wind and the EM drive works by pumping the Dark Matter (as proposed by Dr White for the vacuum) then this possibility has to be discarded since it is nullified by the experiment. .../...
Quote from: Rodal on 09/29/2014 12:59 pm.../...It would need to act more like a sailboat using its sail to go forward with the wind blowing at an angle against it..../...If we cannot come up with something in the EM drive that would be forming an airfoil shape, or if we don't conclude that Dark Matter is a directionless wind and the EM drive works by pumping the Dark Matter (as proposed by Dr White for the vacuum) then this possibility has to be discarded since it is nullified by the experiment. .../...A sail is a passive momentum exchange device : no input power from the ship. When considering a powered device the analogy would be more like a propeller : take the medium at a certain velocity vector and blow it on another velocity vector (magnitude and or direction). Some incoming relative speed wind effect could be smaller than the net thrust if exhaust speed is much higher. 20 km/h relative wind, forward or backward, relative to 400 km/h exhaust, would make only 10% difference. The reported thrust measurements (in "anomalous thrusts..." for instance) show some amount of disparity that could accommodate for this explanation up to a certain ratio... and indeed the ratio could be much lower as to be difficult to see at all. A scatterplot of enough data points, with magnitude against sidereal time could show such effect down to a certain threshold.Quantitatively, the fact that direction reversal of thruster reverses thrust while keep roughly same magnitude (within what, 10% ?) would imply that the exhaust velocity of dark matter would be about 10 times higher than "dark matter wind" which in all likelihood is a least on the order of 30km/s -> more than 300km/s exhaust velocity. Got to check if it makes sense energetically. Also got to check if there is enough dark matter density to push onto. Quick search : this paper states about 1GeV/cm3. That sounds like not much. But no time to make quantitative argument right know, probably no posting for the next 48H.
Point is : " the effort to eliminate spurious sources can go on forever"
If "my" theory is correct (true effect is impossible) : the thrust is spurious, trying to augment it is trying to augment a spurious effect. At some point it could appear clearly as spurious because it was augmented. Ok, I give you that. But it is also possible that in this antagonistic interplay between lowering the effects one recognize as spurious and augmenting the effects believed to be true (still spurious, but not recognized as such), and changing constantly from set-ups, devices, experimental conditions... one is just keeping on the level of confusion needed to maintain an illusion of true effect and progress when there is none.... if it is possible, the methodology appears far from fundamental research standards
This is all or nothing, hit or miss, and when missing there is no indication by how far. And there may be no target at all, be open for that.
Quote from: frobnicat on 09/29/2014 01:41 pmA sail is a passive momentum exchange device ...Well the propeller also has an airfoil shape...
A sail is a passive momentum exchange device ...
Guys,Is it possible, that this device is somhow acting like and eductor type of device causing electrons to interact with dark matter, not so much as to push off from it, but to pull it along with itimparting more of a physical thrust? I imagine that there would be a fall off of effective kinetic energy from the electron stream produced as it interacts with the far heavier Dark Matter, but the overall effect may be sufficent to cause the observed effects.I'm probably completely off base, but, it makes a whole lot more sense that "pushing off of Dark Matter"
Quote from: Rodal on 09/29/2014 01:54 pmQuote from: frobnicat on 09/29/2014 01:41 pmA sail is a passive momentum exchange device ...Well the propeller also has an airfoil shape...To continue with this line of reasoning over the next 48 Hamsters, consider making your "propellor" out of a magnetically induced force field.I want to believe in the ether.
Quote from: JohnFornaro on 09/29/2014 01:58 pmI want to believe in the ether.Hey kernosabe, I came up with some numbers here http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=29276.msg1263849#msg1263849Please give us your numbers for your ether magnetically induced force field You also get 48 Hamster-Hours to provide those numbers. If you do you get a drink.
I want to believe in the ether.
Quote from: Rodal on 09/29/2014 03:16 pmQuote from: JohnFornaro on 09/29/2014 01:58 pmI want to believe in the ether.Hey kernosabe, I came up with some numbers here http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=29276.msg1263849#msg1263849Please give us your numbers for your ether magnetically induced force field You also get 48 Hamster-Hours to provide those numbers. If you do you get a drink.Ok. How about Numbers 6:24-26?Sadly, you ask for that which I cannot provide. I want to believe in the ether, but it is not a fundamental need for me. I guess it is my intuition which suggests that information can travel instantaneously, and also that there ought to be an instantaneous explanation for inertia.The mental image of a spaceship using an "invisible" propeller shaped force field pushing against the "invisible" ether is an intriguing one for me.You had mentioned considering a 24 hour fluctuation in the "Force" as a means of determining the direction of the "inertial wind". Might I also throw out this paper, regarding the idea that there is change in the gravitational constant?What is the nature of the liquid drink that you suggest?
Oh, and the drink is a Martini.