EM Drive Developments - related to space flight applications - Thread 8

[Star-Drive]

Have any of the tests on EMDrive been performed with maintaining a vacuum inside of the frustrum?

This is an excellent question. If the EW test under vacuum did indeed vent the frustum to its external environment, there must have been a vent allowing it to do so, whether intentional or not. Did this vent exist? If it did, what was the effect of this hole on the Q of the frustum? If it did not, what was the effect of the frustum expansion as its internal 1 atmosphere was exposed to external vacuum outside the frustum? Could the phase locked loop deal with this probably severe cavity distortion? If it could do so, could it maintain phase lock under mode shift? If so, what are the use of the results?

The results of these experiments should NOT be thrust versus frequency, thrust versus Q, thrust versus mode. They should be thrust versus input power based upon ONE of the above. Expected result versus controlled input. To date, absolutely no-one has done this.

As many others on this forum have suggested (including myself), a kilowatt is a kilowatt is a kilowatt. A resistive heater within the frustum dissipating the same energy would go a long way to answering quite a few of the thermal issues.

Would be intriguing to see how a vacuum inside the frustrum would affect performance considering that such a drive could easily operate in a vacuum in application(since it's intended use is in space). 

Would also be intriguing to see if it would be possible to utilize(and filter if necessary) the already existing AMPLE background radiation in space to power this. Tapping that would be like running a cruise liner in a sea of diesel fuel.

All:

The EW copper frustum was radially vented along the entire perimeter of both the big OD and small OD ends of the frustum, so any vented gas's momentum would be cancelled out.  Thus all the copper frustum tests run in an ambient vacuum also had near the same vacuum level in the frustum itself.  I also made sure that all venting was completed before running any tests and since it took hours to reach the desired vacuum levels of less than ~5x10^-5 Torr, all venting activities were long gone before testing started.

Best,

[rq3]

To quote SeaShells on this forum, "There is no bad data". I would extend that to say, "there are also no bad theories".

I disagree: there are both bad data and bad theories, and there's been no shortage of either in emdrive threads.

If there was no data to evaluate you would have no idea that a test was flawed or not.
Shell

Yes, obviously. But not all data are useful. With the rush of DIYers there have been a lot of substandard experiments, where for example characterisation of the tested device and description of methods used to measure thrust are very lacking or completely missing. Just have a look at the (IMO mostly legitimate) criticism EM paper got on reddit, and that was the best (by far) emdrive measurement report seen in public.

About bad theories: to pick one example, I can't be the only one here who thinks that Shawyer's theory fits that description.

The point I was trying to make is that until data or theories are presented, good OR bad, there's no discussion to be had at all. We may as well sit around a fire, grunting, and banging rocks together.

Until Ogg comes out with his stupidly flawed rock banging theory I can't possibly discount it. In that sense there are no bad theories, i.e., I can't tell if it's bad until I hear it. Even Ogg may change his tune after the flaws are explained to him, and rock banging then moves forward.

[Star-Drive]

Best, Paul M.

Paul, you've mentioned a couple of times that you're planning on getting a home lab up and running - do you have any concrete plans of what areas you want to investigate, or what sort of test program you are going to run?
Interested in how you think you can build on the work at EW, and what's missing from those results.

Nerm999:

The plans for my workshop are in work and pricing is being obtained for same.  It looks like that this 14' x 30' air-conditioned storage, workshop and Lab building will end up costing my wife and I over $50k and then I get to equip it with my existing home lab stuff in our home plus new test gear as required. 

As to what I plan to test, I am going to be looking at improved versions of both Jim Woodard's Mach Effect Gravity Assist (MEGA) drives and the EM-drive frustums, parabaloids or hemispheres that will NOT have their designs frozen until their thrust outputs are over 1.0 milli-Newton or more.  Then it will be the same old test them in as many ways as possible considering my available test budget, time & energy.

Best, Paul M,

[SeeShells]

To quote SeaShells on this forum, "There is no bad data". I would extend that to say, "there are also no bad theories".

I disagree: there are both bad data and bad theories, and there's been no shortage of either in emdrive threads.

If there was no data to evaluate you would have no idea that a test was flawed or not.
Shell

Yes, obviously. But not all data are useful. With the rush of DIYers there have been a lot of substandard experiments, where for example characterisation of the tested device and description of methods used to measure thrust are very lacking or completely missing. Just have a look at the (IMO mostly legitimate) criticism EM paper got on reddit, and that was the best (by far) emdrive measurement report seen in public.

About bad theories: to pick one example, I can't be the only one here who thinks that Shawyer's theory fits that description.

Shawyer's theory is just a theory, a paper, there are lots of other theories, that doesn't make them bad or good they just may have flaws.

We are intelligent beings immersed in data, our eyes, ears, touch, smell, taste and extended that breadth of information and sensory input with our machines, it's how we perceive the world we exist in. We cannot assign a good and bad to it, it's just information to process. If it's flawed, we can say the results and conclusions we draw from it are bad or good, but not the data. Data is just a tool, it's like calling a hammer bad because you hit your thumb, it's not the hammer that's bad, it's your aim. 

Best,
Shell

PS: I'd still like to hear your thoughts on why the drive cannot work.

[PotomacNeuron]

PotomacNeuron

The copper frustum force production is NOT reliant on the sense antenna cable being present, which was validated with manual controlled data runs two or three years ago, so your Lorentz force diagram is not accurate when the sense antenna was not used. 

Thank you for answering. This Lorentz force diagram is for the new experiment in the AIAA publication, and not for the old (two or three years ago) experiment which did not use a sense antenna. It is relatively accurate for this new experiment. For the old experiment, I have other illustrations in my 2014 arxiv paper.

Now due to the safety requirement that we had to have a single-point, green-wire ground to the torque pendulum and all its metallic parts, the EW Torque Pendulum (TP) always had some unbalance dc current loops interacting whit the ambient magnetic fields in the vacuum chamber components, thus the need to quantify these NET Lorentz forces using the dummy load test. 

The purpose of my illustration is to show that this dummy load test is not sufficient to quantify the NET Lorentz force. The presence of the dummy load itself changed the ground loop pattern thus Lorentz force. It quantified the Lorentz force with the dummy load test, not the Lorentz force with the frustum test.

However what really has made it clear to me that what we are seeing here is a real force and not some spurious Lorentz force is the fact that the EW team ran the same Integrated Copper Frustum Test Article (ICFTA) on a battery powered, spherical air-bearing supported, Cavendish-Balance (C-B) last summer, and it self-accelerated in both directions when the ICFTA was reversed on its mount. Past that I can't reveal anymore on the C-B test campaign until Dr. White gets around to publishing those test results after some improvements are made to the spherical air bearing, which had some annoying swirl torques that disturbed the data runs, but did not hide the already noted results. 

Thank you for acknowledging the swirl torques that are associated with the air bearing. Because of that, the rotation test is not reliable. I will be more convinced if you hang the Cavendish Balance with a thin steel wire. I will really be impressed if the hanging Cavendish Balance can rotate a whole round.

Best, Paul M.

Thank you again.

[Drijfzand]

Not at all sure if this is a realistic possibility, but the large variation in measured thrust, and the large increase from 40W to 60W contrasting with the small increase (even a decrease in two forward and one reverse run) between 60W and 80W made me think of center of gravity shifts due to stick-slip movement of components (caused for example by magnetic force between two current carrying wires). Movement occurs when the force exceeds maximum static friction, and after that "slip", a further increase in force (current) may have no effect (since dynamic friction is lower than static friction, or because the wire or component can't move any further). 

Static friction is variable, the amount of displacement during the "slip" varies, parts won't return to the exact same position when power is turned off, so repeated runs would give different results. If 60W is sufficient to move most "movable" parts, increasing the power to 80W wouldn't make much difference.

I don't know whether the equipment contains movable parts (coils, wires), or whether other non-thermal effects can cause displacement or deformation of parts of the apparatus, is there an obvious reason why the paper seemed to consider only thermal causes of cg-shift?

I'm not an RF expert, so sorry if this is a naive question.

[Star-Drive]

However what really has made it clear to me that what we are seeing here is a real force and not some spurious Lorentz force is the fact that the EW team ran the same Integrated Copper Frustum Test Article (ICFTA) on a battery powered, spherical air-bearing supported, Cavendish-Balance (C-B) last summer, and it self-accelerated in both directions when the ICFTA was reversed on its mount.  Past that I can't reveal anymore on the C-B test campaign until Dr. White gets around to publishing those test results after some improvements are made to the spherical air bearing, which had some annoying swirl torques that disturbed the data runs, but did not hide the already noted results. 

Best, Paul M.

Paul, it is my understanding that in the D-B test, the frustum was in resonance in TM212 mode with a PE disc at small end and the reaction force vector was measured big to small.
Can you at least confirm the direction of thrust on these dynamic air bearing rotary experiments, and the presence or absence of an internal polymer insert (or if the two possibilities were tested)?

Flux-Capacitor:

"Paul, it is my understanding that in the C-B test, the frustum was in resonance in TM212 mode with a PE disc at small end and the reaction force vector was measured big to small."

Correct, but we were using a new, fully automated digital S11 resonant frequency tracker instead of the old PLL system that required near constant attention by me to keep it on tune.  This was required because in the torque pendulum tests we never ran it past 90 seconds of run time, whereas in the Cavendish Balance (C-B) tests, a typical run time was the ~30 minutes it took to deplete the on-board 10 A-hr, Li-Fe-PO4 battery down to a 20% state of charge. 

"Can you at least confirm the direction of thrust on these dynamic air bearing rotary experiments, and the presence or absence of an internal polymer insert (or if the two possibilities were tested)?"

Again, we were using the same Integrated Copper Frustum Test Article (ICFTA) with 2 PE discs mounted at the small OD end of the frustum using its TM212 resonant frequency mode that was used in the Fall 2015 EW in-vacuum test campaign reported in the AIAA/JPP paper.  However the "free-flyer" C-B rig required the above S11 frequency tracker modification and also the addition of a remote controlled battery pack and avionics package that gathered and sent test telemetry data via WiFi to and from the lab computer that I manned.  The thrust vector was still from the big OD end to the small OD end of the cavity for this two PE discs loaded frustum as before.  And no, we did not test a no-dielectric version in the C-B test rig to see if the thrust vector reversed before I left the EW lab for good.

Best, Paul M.

[Rodal]

...
Shawyer's theory is just a theory, a paper, there are lots of other theories, that doesn't make them bad or good they just may have flaws.
...

What makes some of them really bad is the obstinacy displayed at improving the "theory" which is still frozen in time, particularly when there has been universal criticism of many aspects of it like its claim that there is no pressure on the side walls of an electromagneticaly resonant truncated conical cavity, inability to present a self-consistent free-body-diagram of forces, and the claim that an electromagnetic cavity can self-accelerate simply based on Special Relativity, Maxwell's equations and Newton's laws, and that nothing else needs to be taken into account.  And that he keeps repeating this after 16 years.

Compare this with a good theory: Einstein's paper on the Special Theory of Relativity was followed, 11 years afterwards by his General Theory of Relativity. Einstein did not need any criticism to improve his theory: it was self-motivated.

What is really wrong is not just to present a theory that can be shown to be flawed.  What is really wrong is to keep insisting on the same old flawed theory after decades of criticism and the lack of improvement of this wrong theory.  All the greatest scientists made mistakes, so did Einstein and Feynmann.  The difference is that they corrected themselves and they continuously improved their models of the Universe.

"The obstinacy of human beings is exceeded only by the obstinacy of inanimate objects"  Alexander Chase

Obstinacy on a chosen individual particular path, and unwillingness to improve it should not be confused with obstinacy in pursuing a goal. 

[Star-Drive]

Not at all sure if this is a realistic possibility, but the large variation in measured thrust, and the large increase from 40W to 60W contrasting with the small increase (even a decrease in two forward and one reverse run) between 60W and 80W made me think of center of gravity shifts due to stick-slip movement of components (caused for example by magnetic force between two current carrying wires). Movement occurs when the force exceeds maximum static friction, and after that "slip", a further increase in force (current) may have no effect (since dynamic friction is lower than static friction, or because the wire or component can't move any further). 

Static friction is variable, the amount of displacement during the "slip" varies, parts won't return to the exact same position when power is turned off, so repeated runs would give different results. If 60W is sufficient to move most "movable" parts, increasing the power to 80W wouldn't make much difference.

I don't know whether the equipment contains movable parts (coils, wires), or whether other non-thermal effects can cause displacement or deformation of parts of the apparatus, is there an obvious reason why the paper seemed to consider only thermal causes of cg-shift?

I'm not an RF expert, so sorry if this is a naive question.

Drijfzand:

"Not at all sure if this is a realistic possibility, but the large variation in measured thrust, and the large increase from 40W to 60W contrasting with the small increase (even a decrease in two forward and one reverse run) between 60W and 80W made me think of center of gravity shifts due to stick-slip movement of components (caused for example by magnetic force between two current carrying wires)."

The reason the thrust efficiency fell off from the EW AIAA/JPP tests going from the 60W tests to 80W tests is that I physically bumped the ICFTA's 3-stub tuner during one of the times I was reversing the 9.3kg ICFTA on its torque pendulum arm.  I never could get back to that "just-so" 3-Stub tuning solution that allowed the 40W and 60W runs  to work the way they did, so we muddled through for the 80W tests as best we could.  And yes, that is a tribute to how super sensitive the RF tuning requirements are needed to evoke the thrust response we are looking for, for both the loop antenna in the frustum AND the 3-Stub tuner between the RF amplifier and frustum loop antenna.

BTW, the above super-sensitive RF tuning requirements in the frustum system is another reason I know that these force measurements are the real deal and not just mundane "Lorentz forces" because the same dc currents can be flowing for low-thrust, slightly off-tuned conditions, verses spot on tuned conditions that produce twice or more of the thrust signal with the SAME dc currents flowing to the PLL box and the RF amplifier.

Best, Paul M.

[SeeShells]

...
Shawyer's theory is just a theory, a paper, there are lots of other theories, that doesn't make them bad or good they just may have flaws.
...

What makes some of them really bad is the obstinacy displayed at improving the "theory" which is still frozen in time, particularly when there has been universal criticism of many aspects of it like its claim that there is no pressure on the side walls of an electromagneticaly resonant truncated conical cavity, inability to present a self-consistent free-body-diagram of forces, and the claim that an electromagnetic cavity can self-accelerate simply based on Special Relativity, Maxwell's equations and Newton's laws, and that nothing else needs to be taken into account.  And that he keeps repeating this after 16 years.

Compare this with a good theory: Einstein's paper on the Special Theory of Relativity was followed, 11 years afterwards by his General Theory of Relativity. Einstein did not need any criticism to improve his theory: it was self-motivated.

What is really wrong is not just to present a theory that can be shown to be flawed.  What is really wrong is to keep insisting on the same old flawed theory after decades of criticism and the lack of improvement of this wrong theory.  All the greatest scientists made mistakes, so did Einstein and Feynmann.  The difference is that they corrected themselves and they continuously improved their models of the Universe.

"The obstinacy of human beings is exceeded only by the obstinacy of inanimate objects"  Alexander Chase

Obstinacy on a chosen individual particular path, and unwillingness to improve it should not be confused with obstinacy in pursuing a goal. 

Well said.
Now a bad theory is the Miasma theory of disease, the theory that diseases are caused by bad air.
Flipping it around, some theories are just that, bad air.
Shell

[Star-Drive]

PotomacNeuron

The copper frustum force production is NOT reliant on the sense antenna cable being present, which was validated with manual controlled data runs two or three years ago, so your Lorentz force diagram is not accurate when the sense antenna was not used. 

Thank you for answering. This Lorentz force diagram is for the new experiment in the AIAA publication, and not for the old (two or three years ago) experiment which did not use a sense antenna. It is relatively accurate for this new experiment. For the old experiment, I have other illustrations in my 2014 arxiv paper.

Now due to the safety requirement that we had to have a single-point, green-wire ground to the torque pendulum and all its metallic parts, the EW Torque Pendulum (TP) always had some unbalance dc current loops interacting whit the ambient magnetic fields in the vacuum chamber components, thus the need to quantify these NET Lorentz forces using the dummy load test. 

The purpose of my illustration is to show that this dummy load test is not sufficient to quantify the NET Lorentz force. The presence of the dummy load itself changed the ground loop pattern thus Lorentz force. It quantified the Lorentz force with the dummy load test, not the Lorentz force with the frustum test.

However what really has made it clear to me that what we are seeing here is a real force and not some spurious Lorentz force is the fact that the EW team ran the same Integrated Copper Frustum Test Article (ICFTA) on a battery powered, spherical air-bearing supported, Cavendish-Balance (C-B) last summer, and it self-accelerated in both directions when the ICFTA was reversed on its mount. Past that I can't reveal anymore on the C-B test campaign until Dr. White gets around to publishing those test results after some improvements are made to the spherical air bearing, which had some annoying swirl torques that disturbed the data runs, but did not hide the already noted results. 

Thank you for acknowledging the swirl torques that are associated with the air bearing. Because of that, the rotation test is not reliable. I will be more convinced if you hang the Cavendish Balance with a thin steel wire. I will really be impressed if the hanging Cavendish Balance can rotate a whole round.

Best, Paul M.

Thank you again.

PotomacNeuron:

A thought just struck me and that while looking at your ground loop diagrams, you show the 50-ohm dummy load's metal chassis as being isolated from the torque pendulum and frustum metallic structures.  However I've run the dummy load with and without its ground return bonded to the frustum with little difference between the two wiring configurations and certainly not enough difference to masquerade as the thrust signature I kept observing.

Best, Paul M.

[Peter Lauwer]

Brian Koberlein @ Forbes: NASA's EMDrive And The Quantum Theory Of Pilot Waves

"In a desperate attempt to demonstrate that the EM Drive doesn’t violate physics after all, the authors spend a considerable amount of time arguing that the effect could be explained by pilot waves. Basically they argue that not only is pilot wave theory valid for quantum theory, but that pilot waves are the result of background quantum fluctuations known as zero point energy. Through pilot waves the drive can tap into the vacuum energy of the Universe, thus saving physics! To my mind it’s a rather convoluted at weak argument. The pilot wave model of quantum theory is interesting and worth exploring, but using it as a way to get around basic physics is weak tea. Trying to cobble a theoretical way in which it could work has no value without the experimental data to back it up.
... "

http://www.forbes.com/sites/briankoberlein/2016/11/28/nasas-emdrive-and-the-quantum-theory-of-pilot-waves/

[RotoSequence]

Brian Koberlein @ Forbes: NASA's EMDrive And The Quantum Theory Of Pilot Waves

"In a desperate attempt to demonstrate that the EM Drive doesn’t violate physics after all, the authors spend a considerable amount of time arguing that the effect could be explained by pilot waves. Basically they argue that not only is pilot wave theory valid for quantum theory, but that pilot waves are the result of background quantum fluctuations known as zero point energy. Through pilot waves the drive can tap into the vacuum energy of the Universe, thus saving physics! To my mind it’s a rather convoluted at weak argument. The pilot wave model of quantum theory is interesting and worth exploring, but using it as a way to get around basic physics is weak tea. Trying to cobble a theoretical way in which it could work has no value without the experimental data to back it up.
... "

http://www.forbes.com/sites/briankoberlein/2016/11/28/nasas-emdrive-and-the-quantum-theory-of-pilot-waves/

So, do they want to see EM Drive data with a theory about why they might be seeing these results in the first place (poor as it may be), or no theoretical explanation at all for the experimental data that appears to contradict known physics? 

[SeeShells]

Brian Koberlein @ Forbes: NASA's EMDrive And The Quantum Theory Of Pilot Waves

"In a desperate attempt to demonstrate that the EM Drive doesn’t violate physics after all, the authors spend a considerable amount of time arguing that the effect could be explained by pilot waves. Basically they argue that not only is pilot wave theory valid for quantum theory, but that pilot waves are the result of background quantum fluctuations known as zero point energy. Through pilot waves the drive can tap into the vacuum energy of the Universe, thus saving physics! To my mind it’s a rather convoluted at weak argument. The pilot wave model of quantum theory is interesting and worth exploring, but using it as a way to get around basic physics is weak tea. Trying to cobble a theoretical way in which it could work has no value without the experimental data to back it up.
... "

http://www.forbes.com/sites/briankoberlein/2016/11/28/nasas-emdrive-and-the-quantum-theory-of-pilot-waves/

So, do they want to see EM Drive data with a theory about why they might be seeing these results in the first place (poor as it may be), or no theoretical explanation at all for the experimental data that appears to contradict known physics? 

The Pilot Wave Theory keeps on coming up and according to some new testing, it isn't dead yet.

QUANTUM MECHANICS
New Support for Alternative Quantum View
An experiment claims to have invalidated a decades-old criticism against pilot-wave theory, an alternative formulation of quantum mechanics that avoids the most baffling features of the subatomic universe.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160517-pilot-wave-theory-gains-experimental-support/

Best,
Shell

[SeeShells]

Interesting that electrons have the ability to gain mass in a magnetic field.

http://phys.org/news/2016-08-electrons-mass-presence-high-magnetic.html#jCp

My Best,
Shell

[Rodal]

Interesting that electrons have the ability to gain mass in a magnetic field.

http://phys.org/news/2016-08-electrons-mass-presence-high-magnetic.html#jCp

My Best,
Shell

Interesting in general, but unfortunately of no applicability to those claiming that there is thrust from an empty copper truncated conical cavity EM Drive at low electromagnetic fields with less than 1 kW, as these measurements took place in the newly discovered Dirac semimetal ZrTe₅, and at magnetic fields from 3 T to 60 T !

A macroscopic quantum phenomenon present in systems with charged chiral fermions, such as the quark-gluon plasma, or Dirac and Weyl semimetals, see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiral_magnetic_effect

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semimetal

[SeeShells]

Interesting that electrons have the ability to gain mass in a magnetic field.

http://phys.org/news/2016-08-electrons-mass-presence-high-magnetic.html#jCp

My Best,
Shell

Unfortunately of no applicability to those claiming that there is thrust in an empty truncated conical cavity EM Drive, as these measurements take place in the newly discovered Dirac semimetal ZrTe5, and at magnetic fields from 3 T to 60 T !

Yes it was in a 3-60 Tesla field, although the point is that's interesting is electrons can acquire mass. Electrons are the first generation of lepton particle, are elementary particles with no known components or substructure. Electrons and positrons do not consist of quarks as the protons are which feel the strong forces of that bind protons together and that energy gives them their mass from what I understand.

I'm way outside my field of soldering irons and the smell of flux.

Shell

[Rodal]

Interesting that electrons have the ability to gain mass in a magnetic field.

http://phys.org/news/2016-08-electrons-mass-presence-high-magnetic.html#jCp

My Best,
Shell

Unfortunately of no applicability to those claiming that there is thrust in an empty truncated conical cavity EM Drive, as these measurements take place in the newly discovered Dirac semimetal ZrTe5, and at magnetic fields from 3 T to 60 T !

Yes it was in a 3-60 Tesla field, although the point is that's interesting is electrons can acquire mass. Electrons are the first generation of lepton particle, are elementary particles with no known components or substructure. Electrons and positrons do not consist of quarks as the protons are which feel the strong forces of that bind protons together and that energy gives them their mass from what I understand.

I'm way outside my field of soldering irons and the smell of flux.

Shell

But also there is no semimetal inside the empty copper EM Drive cavities, and some EM Drive aficionados (not you and Monomorphic  ) have been antagonistic (if not downright hostile) to even testing the chiral dielectric polymer inserts used by NASA Eagleworks...

to say nothing about chiral magnetic semimetal effect inserts...

[therealjjj77]

Have any of the tests on EMDrive been performed with maintaining a vacuum inside of the frustrum?

This is an excellent question. If the EW test under vacuum did indeed vent the frustum to its external environment, there must have been a vent allowing it to do so, whether intentional or not. Did this vent exist? If it did, what was the effect of this hole on the Q of the frustum? If it did not, what was the effect of the frustum expansion as its internal 1 atmosphere was exposed to external vacuum outside the frustum? Could the phase locked loop deal with this probably severe cavity distortion? If it could do so, could it maintain phase lock under mode shift? If so, what are the use of the results?

The results of these experiments should NOT be thrust versus frequency, thrust versus Q, thrust versus mode. They should be thrust versus input power based upon ONE of the above. Expected result versus controlled input. To date, absolutely no-one has done this.

As many others on this forum have suggested (including myself), a kilowatt is a kilowatt is a kilowatt. A resistive heater within the frustum dissipating the same energy would go a long way to answering quite a few of the thermal issues.

Would be intriguing to see how a vacuum inside the frustrum would affect performance considering that such a drive could easily operate in a vacuum in application(since it's intended use is in space). 

Would also be intriguing to see if it would be possible to utilize(and filter if necessary) the already existing AMPLE background radiation in space to power this. Tapping that would be like running a cruise liner in a sea of diesel fuel.

All:

The EW copper frustum was radially vented along the entire perimeter of both the big OD and small OD ends of the frustum, so any vented gas's momentum would be cancelled out.  Thus all the copper frustum tests run in an ambient vacuum also had near the same vacuum level in the frustum itself.  I also made sure that all venting was completed before running any tests and since it took hours to reach the desired vacuum levels of less than ~5x10^-5 Torr, all venting activities were long gone before testing started.

Best,

Thanks for that clarification. Was reviewing the wiki data and it looks as though the team was using the same frequency as when testing in an ambient atmosphere. However, you may then need to recallibrate the frequency for optimal performance in a vacuum. This is because the wavelength is longer in a vacuum then air.

http://www.rpi.edu/dept/phys/Dept2/APPhys1/optics/optics/node7.html

[OnlyMe]

PotomacNeuron

The copper frustum force production is NOT reliant on the sense antenna cable being present, which was validated with manual controlled data runs two or three years ago, so your Lorentz force diagram is not accurate when the sense antenna was not used. 

Thank you for answering. This Lorentz force diagram is for the new experiment in the AIAA publication, and not for the old (two or three years ago) experiment which did not use a sense antenna. It is relatively accurate for this new experiment. For the old experiment, I have other illustrations in my 2014 arxiv paper.

Now due to the safety requirement that we had to have a single-point, green-wire ground to the torque pendulum and all its metallic parts, the EW Torque Pendulum (TP) always had some unbalance dc current loops interacting whit the ambient magnetic fields in the vacuum chamber components, thus the need to quantify these NET Lorentz forces using the dummy load test. 

The purpose of my illustration is to show that this dummy load test is not sufficient to quantify the NET Lorentz force. The presence of the dummy load itself changed the ground loop pattern thus Lorentz force. It quantified the Lorentz force with the dummy load test, not the Lorentz force with the frustum test.

However what really has made it clear to me that what we are seeing here is a real force and not some spurious Lorentz force is the fact that the EW team ran the same Integrated Copper Frustum Test Article (ICFTA) on a battery powered, spherical air-bearing supported, Cavendish-Balance (C-B) last summer, and it self-accelerated in both directions when the ICFTA was reversed on its mount. Past that I can't reveal anymore on the C-B test campaign until Dr. White gets around to publishing those test results after some improvements are made to the spherical air bearing, which had some annoying swirl torques that disturbed the data runs, but did not hide the already noted results. 

Thank you for acknowledging the swirl torques that are associated with the air bearing. Because of that, the rotation test is not reliable. I will be more convinced if you hang the Cavendish Balance with a thin steel wire. I will really be impressed if the hanging Cavendish Balance can rotate a whole round.

Best, Paul M.

Thank you again.

Am I missing something?

The portion (I placed) in bold above does not seem a logical conclusion.., since the the test article experienced self acceleration in both directions, when the orientation of the test device was reversed.., even while any swirl torque would have remained constant in its direction, no matter what orientation the test article was in.