Continuous Radiation Pressure

Continuous Radiation Pressure by Bryan_Kelly on 31 May, 2016 15:45
"Continuous Radiation Pressure" is a concept I would like to introduce here for comments.

Very simply, it is an optomechanical device containing hydrogen, which is stimulated to continuously absorb and emit light. The device and whatever is attached to it, can be variously described as becoming "weightless", or as emitting photon "thrust". Either way, the effect of gravity is controlled.

These slides, http://suretyinsider.com/gravity-transparency-continuous-radiation-pressure-hydrogen-low-energy-pair-production-excess-aqueous-electron.html and comments are meant to give you the general idea. Their purpose is to generate interest with non-technical people, so please try to look past the cartoonishness.

Apply the concept of a "hot air balloon" if you will, or the levitating and cooling of molecules done on the micro level, but imagine such a device with each and every contained hydrogen atom optimally pumping light at capacity, at a rate itself approaching the speed of light, or at least in the femtosecond range. Visualize riding on something containing that, with light being pulled through it at near-light speeds.

Still another way of looking at it is as reloading hydrogen with photon fuel. Rocket fuel is mostly light bursting out of hydrogen. This simply contains the hydrogen and reloads it. It could also be seen along the lines of "ballast", manipulating mass in a gravitational field.

I have skipped a few of the obvious intermediate steps, those are described elsewhere, as is the proposed engineering. This is only the conceptual overview.

My aim here is to cleanse the concept of any perceived "fringe" or taint of pseudoscience. Any advice along those lines would be greatly appreciated. As the pinned guideline post describes, I want this to be seen as "cool - but realistic".

The questions to the forum are:

- Is the concept clear?
- Does it seem viable?

Feel free to expound.

Thank you.

Bryan Kelly
[email protected]
#1 by sevenperforce on 31 May, 2016 16:16
This belongs in new physics. Or in the bin. Not sure which.

I would respond to the idea, but (philosophical/epistemic sidebar here) the questions I would ask would invariably be interpreted as a demonstration of the idea's novelty, untouchability, and certainty.

EDIT: Okay, can't resist biting.

What you've got here, once you cut away all the goofy stuff, is a one-way mirror. Which, without the input of outside energy, is a violation of the third law of thermodynamics. Without a Maxwellian daemon to shove light through in the preferred direction, the thrust vector will be invariably random and thus zero.

Plus, the ambient flux even in space isn't nearly enough to get any significant thrust this way.
#2 by meberbs on 01 Jun, 2016 00:21
Quote from: sevenperforce on 31 May, 2016 16:16
...
What you've got here, once you cut away all the goofy stuff, is a one-way mirror. Which, without the input of outside energy, is a violation of the third law of thermodynamics. Without a Maxwellian daemon to shove light through in the preferred direction, the thrust vector will be invariably random and thus zero.

Plus, the ambient flux even in space isn't nearly enough to get any significant thrust this way.

Just to clarify for anyone who thinks "I've seen a one-way mirror," the one-way mirror people are familiar with works both ways, and is based on different brightness of lights on the two sides. See Wikipedia for details.

Quote from: Bryan_Kelly on 31 May, 2016 15:45
My aim here is to cleanse the concept of any perceived "fringe" or taint of pseudoscience. Any advice along those lines would be greatly appreciated.
...
I can give you some guidance, but it would include some very harsh criticism of the concept and presentation. My goal would be constructive criticism, but it would be difficult for me to do that effectively in this case without being harsh. I'll leave it up to you if you still want it.
#3 by Bryan_Kelly on 01 Jun, 2016 13:53
Thank you for the comments, sevenperforce.

Indeed there is an input of outside energy, "Electromagnetic (E-M)/Photonic Stimulus". It's used to cause the hydrogen to absorb light which, by definition, temporarily becomes mass. The hydrogen is stimulated again when we want to expel the photons.

That point could have been made clearer on my part.

Also, light of differing wavelengths is collected in the usual way, mirrors, antennae, etc., then manipulated for absorption. We certainly want to keep it daemon-free.

I have to disagree with the last statement on its face, unless you'd care to explain further. Perhaps I am missing something.
#4 by Bryan_Kelly on 01 Jun, 2016 13:56
I appreciate your offer of constructive criticism and accept, meberbs. One man's "harsh" is another man's "helpful".

Bear in mind that the presentation, five slides in five minutes, in "pitch" format, was made to conform to certain standards I do not control. That's only to get my foot in the door and get people thinking. You shouldn't waste too much time on that.

As for the concept, fire away. Thanks.
#5 by whitelancer64 on 01 Jun, 2016 14:53
Text below the slide claiming "Light passing through mass diminishes the effect of gravity" with pictures of rockets and balloons as examples:

"Ask yourselves...
How is it that the smoking water we call a cloud can defy gravity, but we can not?
Why isn't it down in the (area body of water)?
And what's with that gravity-defying plastic we call a balloon?
We can control this process, and enhance it.
And I am here to show you how.
Quite simply, the answer is continuous radiation pressure."

No, that's not it at all. You've either fundamentally misunderstood the physical processes at work here or never attempted to understand them in the first place.

Clouds stay up because the water droplets (or ice crystals in high-altitude clouds) that make them up are very tiny, typically ranging from just a few microns to a few tens of microns across. The speed at which things fall is related to its mass and surface area, in this case the fall speed is so small that they can be kept suspended in the air by normal air currents, this is why clouds are often formed by updrafts. It is the same reason fine dust can remain suspended in the air, as well as soot, and other pollution, etc.

Balloons, on the other hand, operate on a much simpler method: buoyancy. Helium balloons are less dense than the Nitrogen / Oxygen air around it, and will therefore rise. Hot air balloons decrease the density of the air using heat.

Anyone who knows this will dismiss you immediately as someone who doesn't know what they are talking about, which is my inclination as well.
#6 by meberbs on 01 Jun, 2016 23:50
Quote from: Bryan_Kelly on 31 May, 2016 15:45
The device and whatever is attached to it, can be variously described as becoming "weightless", or as emitting photon "thrust". Either way, the effect of gravity is controlled.
These are completely different concepts that you are equating here. Photons create forces through electromagnetic interactions. The unification scale where gravity is unified with the other fundamental forces is so far beyond current experimental capability that physicists can only guess at the energy level involved. You are either working with something well past the edge of current human understanding of physics, or your description is completely wrong.

This leads me to the next issue. One of the slides says "Undisputed, non-controversial science." When someone feels the need to state this explicitly, it is almost certainly because there is reason for there to be a dispute. Something proactively labelled with this statement is most likely pseudo-science, because science is about testing ideas and comparing them to the real world. If you think this statement is necessary to make, it basically guarantees that the statement is wrong, and this is a quick way to convince people you are talking about a fringe subject.

Quote
...pumping light at capacity, at a rate itself approaching the speed of light, or at least in the femtosecond range.
You just equated 3 different units, a flow rate of light (could be measured as photons per time, or energy per time (Watts)), speed (m/s), and time (femtoseconds). This at the minimum will confuse anyone as to what you are trying to say, whether they have a technical background or not. For people who know what a femtosecond and the speed of light are, it will convince them that you do not understand what you are talking about.

Quote
Still another way of looking at it is as reloading hydrogen with photon fuel. Rocket fuel is mostly light bursting out of hydrogen. This simply contains the hydrogen and reloads it. It could also be seen along the lines of "ballast", manipulating mass in a gravitational field.

I am not sure where to even begin with this statement, since everything about it is wrong. Rocket fuel is not light bursting out of hydrogen. It is hydrogen and oxygen undergoing a chemical reaction, which releases energy, primarily in the form of thermal (randomly directed kinetic) energy. (The detailed thermodynamics are more complicated than this simple picture.) The shape of the exhaust bell allows this energy to be redirected into kinetic energy of the exhaust. Thermal radiation is emitted from the hot gas, but this is effectively wasted if it is not reabsorbed within the rocket to return the heat to the gas, since the momentum/energy ratio of massless particles (like photons) is tiny.

That last sentence about manipulating mass makes so little sense that you must have the wrong idea about what those words mean in context. Without some more specifics on what you are referring to (i.e. inertial vs relativistic mass) I don't know how to explain the issues with it short of a small physics course worth of material.

I think that's enough for now, also see whitelancer64's post above mine.
#7 by sevenperforce on 02 Jun, 2016 01:04
Conservation of momentum is a cruel mistress. If you want to gain an impulse in one direction, you MUST have an equal and opposite impulse in the other direction, or it will not happen.

So unless you are advocating a breakdown of momentum conservation (which I sincerely hope you are not), what we have is something like a photon thruster. Photon thrusters work just fine. Unfortunately for space travel they have an annoying tendency to adhere closely to the laws of physics, which dictate that their energy and momentum are related by their speed, which happens to be the fastest speed possible. A photon thruster thus represents the MINIMUM possible thrust that can be obtained for a given energy input.
#8 by Lar on 02 Jun, 2016 01:50
Seen enough. Thread locked. This is not a haven for every unusual but counterfactual supposition about physics.