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#20 by ThatOtherGuy on 22 May, 2017 09:25
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There are so many options to choose from. I just discovered that I can use the LimeSDR itself as a VNA, though it may still have some rough edges at this point.
I am trying to figure out the best price/performance point. I know this is subjective based upon my budget for building n EMdrive, which is currently not very well defined but I am giving priority to an adequate testing and verification rig, as well as a time budget for documentation to enable others to reproduce any encouraging design.
Had a look at LimeSDR (here and here) and, for sure, it's an interesting board; I just have some doubt about the accuracy of its measurements and the cleanliness of its signal (harmonics and so on); also, when it comes to measurements, other critters, like the SynthNV or the MiniVNA allow to setup a sweep and let the device do the job, storing the data in the device's internal RAM and then returning them, this speeds up things quite a lot, but the LimeSDR doesn't seem capable of doing so, I mean, apparently to sweep you'll need to send a flow of commands to the device... am I wrong ?
Also, and since we're at instruments and tools, I think that adding some pointers to VNA devices, signal generators, (pre)amplificators, attenuators and the like to the wiki (e.g. here) may be a good thing
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#21 by ThatOtherGuy on 22 May, 2017 09:36
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All,
A update on the shop.
Got paint on the walls, lights bought and hung and will start moving in the other machines, band saw, lathe, English wheel, buffers, grinders, tool boxes, extra doodads for the shop like hardware bins, racks etc.
Hope to maybe have enough room for my work bench area, but will see. If not then I have another workshop that's a 18'x20' that needs most everything from floors to insulation, walls and power.
My Very Best,
Shell
Nice setup, Shells; just curious, are you planning to setup your test rig as for the design published in the wiki or did you change your mind and decided to go for a different test rig (e.g. like Jamie's one) ?
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#22 by flux_capacitor on 22 May, 2017 10:57
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I always considered magnetic and electrical "waves" to be distortions in the space-time continuum, much like gravity, not as something physical that moves through space. Clearly it is a different sort of distortion, but the ways in which electrical and magnetic fields interact with solid objects are not entirely different from the way gravitation interacts with mass. Somewhere in there lurks the Unified Field theory.
What if spacetime was quantized? Imagine spacetime not as a continuum but as a multidimensional map of successive discrete "tiny squares" each described by an unknown "quantum entity" (don't know how to call such thing surely equal or below the Planck length). Then an electromagnetic wave would be the physical interpretation of a step by step propagation through one "case" to the next one, of the "activation" and "deactivation" of such a quantum entity through spacetime. As for the associated particle (a photon, but why not also any particle composing matter) would be the physical local interpretation of an "activated case" (or the average of a group of activated cases, if one wants to include Heisenberg's uncertainty principle in that very rough idea).
Following that idea, nothing really "propagates" physically, only the information, which triggers the apparent movement of the wave and of its associated particle. A moving particle would then be like those light arrays on top of a wall in the dark, sequentially switched on and off rapidly with a little delay with respect to the previous one, giving the impression of a luminous object quickly propagating through space, whereas in fact there is only an apparent propagation and no movement at all…
Another way to express such a view: considering the atomic orbital of an electron in an atom. With the appropriate amount of energy, an electron can "jump" from an orbital to the other. This is a quantum leap, a discrete atomic electron transition. The wave function changes. But fundamentally, is it really the same electron which jumped from one orbital to the other, or is the higher energy electron a different one than the previous one described on a lower energy orbital… -
#23 by ThatOtherGuy on 22 May, 2017 11:58
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At this point one may guess everything ranging from entanglement to whatever other simple or exotic theory, even something like
http://www.sciencealert.com/increasing-entropy-could-signal-that-a-mysterious-quantum-flip-is-about-to-occur
may fit, better being over-cautious and going on step after step
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#24 by R.W. Keyes on 22 May, 2017 14:09
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The LimeSDR is built around the LMS7002D FPRF http://www.limemicro.com/products/field-programmable-rf-ics-lms7002m/ which has built-in calibration features which I hope will be adequate for VNE calibration. It's got a build-in microcontroller and the LimeSDR has 256MB of RAM, so I think it likely that the VNE program is uploaded to the onboard RAM, run by the microcontroller, and results stored in that RAM. A user program would later download these to a PC via the USB3 port. Does the 12 bit DAC/ADC create a sufficiently clean signal? I don't know. I'll look at the resolution of what the SynthNV and MiniVNA have in their DAC and see how they compare, and may ask on some other forums as well.
I think you are absolutely correct about posting test equipment on the Wiki. That's what it is ideal for.There are so many options to choose from. I just discovered that I can use the LimeSDR itself as a VNA, though it may still have some rough edges at this point.
I am trying to figure out the best price/performance point. I know this is subjective based upon my budget for building n EMdrive, which is currently not very well defined but I am giving priority to an adequate testing and verification rig, as well as a time budget for documentation to enable others to reproduce any encouraging design.
Had a look at LimeSDR (here and here) and, for sure, it's an interesting board; I just have some doubt about the accuracy of its measurements and the cleanliness of its signal (harmonics and so on); also, when it comes to measurements, other critters, like the SynthNV or the MiniVNA allow to setup a sweep and let the device do the job, storing the data in the device's internal RAM and then returning them, this speeds up things quite a lot, but the LimeSDR doesn't seem capable of doing so, I mean, apparently to sweep you'll need to send a flow of commands to the device... am I wrong ?
Also, and since we're at instruments and tools, I think that adding some pointers to VNA devices, signal generators, (pre)amplificators, attenuators and the like to the wiki (e.g. here) may be a good thing -
#25 by SeeShells on 22 May, 2017 14:16
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Thanks.All,
A update on the shop.
Got paint on the walls, lights bought and hung and will start moving in the other machines, band saw, lathe, English wheel, buffers, grinders, tool boxes, extra doodads for the shop like hardware bins, racks etc.
Hope to maybe have enough room for my work bench area, but will see. If not then I have another workshop that's a 18'x20' that needs most everything from floors to insulation, walls and power.
My Very Best,
Shell
Nice setup, Shells; just curious, are you planning to setup your test rig as for the design published in the wiki or did you change your mind and decided to go for a different test rig (e.g. like Jamie's one) ?
Oh my no. I'm currently in the build of the 4th layout.
This was my very first hack at doing something and just getting it down on paper. My first real build in my shop was this. http://s1039.photobucket.com/user/shells2bells2002/library/CE%20Electromagnetic%20Reaction%20Thruster?sort=2&page=1
Winter came ... and at 8700 foot in the Rockies it can be brutal. Just couldn't keep it warm. I moved it into a "kind of unused" room in my home. I built 2 different test stands after that, using modified torsion pendulum style designs. http://imgur.com/a/LSwQN
Currently I'm redoing it again as the house is not stable enough and I'm getting too many ambient vibrations. I needed a place for my tools and metal working machines for this next build as it's become more than a simple copper can.
The test stands have improved (thanks Dr. Rodal, Paul March and so many others for help). The drive designs have also improved.
Thanks for asking, sorry guys I promised I'd post more but sometimes I get very busy for a old lady.
My Very Best,
Shell -
#26 by ThatOtherGuy on 22 May, 2017 15:05
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Winter came ... and at 8700 foot in the Rockies it can be brutal. Just couldn't keep it warm. I moved it into a "kind of unused" room in my home. I built 2 different test stands after that, using modified torsion pendulum style designs. http://imgur.com/a/LSwQN
I see, did you consider covering the whole building with a "thermal coat" ? That would help quite a lot, I thinkThanks for asking, sorry guys I promised I'd post more but sometimes I get very busy for a old lady.
Don't worry, Shells, take your time, again, there's no hurry, I was just curious, nothing else
!
Oh and please stop writing "old" otherwise you'll make me feel as old as "methuselah"
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#27 by ThereIWas3 on 22 May, 2017 21:45
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What if spacetime was quantized?
Thank you for resurrecting my post I don't see why spacetime would not be quantized.
As for waves that move through a medium, consider ocean waves. The water goes up and down, but the water does not move laterally. Even in an electric current in a wire, the electrons do not flow from one end to the other like water through a pipe. Instead one electron nudges another electron, which nudges the next one, and so on. The wave of nudges propagates through the crystaline structure of the metallic wire, but the electrons hardly move at all. [Edit: the electrons do eventually get to the other end, but slowly. You can walk faster.]
In the case of EM waves moving through 'empty' space it is not quite so obvious how it works. The Michelson-Morely experiment did not prove that there is no transmission medium as some think, but as Einstein showed, various relativity factors make it impossible to directly detect such a medium even if it did exist!
There is something there, and we know it has a characteristic impedance of about 377 ohms. [Amazing that I remember that number after 45 years...]
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#28 by spupeng7 on 23 May, 2017 02:52
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(...) a few monopole related posts got banished into the aether -a shame because they were good though they were tangential to the topic.
Thanks Stormbringer, but I consider the fundamentals of particle interaction to be central to any argument about the origin of emdrive thrust. What if all photons are quantum leaps, then a Machian universe would make a great deal of sense and there would be something very real for the emdrive to gain momentum in reaction to. Quantum mechanics makes no claim to make sense but our universe should make sense, otherwise we really are trapped in Brama's dream. Not that I would mind if it were so, I just don't think it is so. Anyone who believes in logic has a duty to work toward an explanation for interaction which is seamless, preferably true, not reliant upon the logical gap that QM offers. -
#29 by Augmentor on 23 May, 2017 06:12
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Quote from: ThereIWas3 on: 05/22/2017 09:45 PM
"There is something there, and we know it has a characteristic impedance of about 377 ohms."
Quote from: flux_capacitor on 05/22/2017 10:57 AM
"What if spacetime was quantized?"
In the quest to quantize spacetime, has to start with the elementary particles, particularly the electron and photon and work their way down through small particles like gluons and the neutrino, and perhaps identify a sub particle zoo before one can claim spacetime.
The vacuum is not a void. We might have difficulty with measuring particles like the neutrinos let alone preventing or removing neutrinos from the vacuum. Until then, we only have a vacuum.
Quantizing space? Resonance is a sign of quantization. Perhaps spacetime itself resonant? Wheeler-Feynman suggests that resonance might be across time, not just space. The future and past may participate in present forms of energy density such as mass and perhaps define charge.
One has to determine if the characteristic impedance of vacuum space can be reduced. Can we drop the vacuum temperature to 0 degrees K and obtain 0 ohm resistance? We simply don't have a good grasp of how to engineer the vacuum just yet especially wrt the emDrive.
Then there is this pesky thing called charge. The electron represents charged mass although a ±1/3 charge quark might be more fundamental. The photon appears to represent uncharged massless energy until we look a bit closer. The photon appears to interact with spacetime.
Is the electron built from photon(s)? That question leads to the photon and whatever that is made of. Could it be the photon is constructed from sub elementary particles. Some electron models suggest a quanta is the building block for the photon, and furthermore, the photon is the building block to an electron. So a sub elementary particle set of {quanta} may be the fundamental building block.
Could the monopole be a missing particle we simply don't see? And what is the role of a magnetic monopole in quantizing spacetime, and with entanglement and action-at-a-distance.
The emdirve embraces the fundamentals of physics we know while pushing out the boundaries of physics. -
#30 by RERT on 23 May, 2017 07:25
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Shells -
4 builds! Give us a clue - are you still looking for a signal outside the noise, do you have a signal and are optimising your design, are you characterising the effect in detail with a view to publishing, or something else? -
#31 by ThatOtherGuy on 23 May, 2017 09:42
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The LimeSDR is built around the LMS7002D FPRF http://www.limemicro.com/products/field-programmable-rf-ics-lms7002m/ which has built-in calibration features which I hope will be adequate for VNE calibration. It's got a build-in microcontroller and the LimeSDR has 256MB of RAM, so I think it likely that the VNE program is uploaded to the onboard RAM, run by the microcontroller, and results stored in that RAM. A user program would later download these to a PC via the USB3 port. Does the 12 bit DAC/ADC create a sufficiently clean signal? I don't know. I'll look at the resolution of what the SynthNV and MiniVNA have in their DAC and see how they compare, and may ask on some other forums as well.
I think you are absolutely correct about posting test equipment on the Wiki. That's what it is ideal for.
As for VNAs, the PocketVNA is another interesting one; costs slightly more than the MiniVNA Tiny (around 430 USD) but its specifications are quite interesting; my only doubt about the device is related to sweep speed, the documents say that "A normal scan takes about 10 ms per data point plus communication. As an example a 1001 points scan takes 12 seconds." and also that "A 10001 steps scan take about 2 minutes", not sure how this compares with MiniVNA Tiny speeds
[edit]
Found a couple of pics of the PocketVNA board (here and here) in case someone is curious and there's a forum discussion about PocketVNA and TinyVNA mini here
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#32 by flux_capacitor on 23 May, 2017 13:27
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Quote from: ThereIWas3 on: 05/22/2017 09:45 PM
"There is something there, and we know it has a characteristic impedance of about 377 ohms."
Quote from: flux_capacitor on 05/22/2017 10:57 AM
"What if spacetime was quantized?"
In the quest to quantize spacetime, has to start with the elementary particles, particularly the electron and photon and work their way down through small particles like gluons and the neutrino, and perhaps identify a sub particle zoo before one can claim spacetime.
The vacuum is not a void. We might have difficulty with measuring particles like the neutrinos let alone preventing or removing neutrinos from the vacuum. Until then, we only have a vacuum.
Quantizing space? Resonance is a sign of quantization. Perhaps spacetime itself resonant? Wheeler-Feynman suggests that resonance might be across time, not just space. The future and past may participate in present forms of energy density such as mass and perhaps define charge.
One has to determine if the characteristic impedance of vacuum space can be reduced. Can we drop the vacuum temperature to 0 degrees K and obtain 0 ohm resistance? We simply don't have a good grasp of how to engineer the vacuum just yet especially wrt the emDrive.
Then there is this pesky thing called charge. The electron represents charged mass although a ±1/3 charge quark might be more fundamental. The photon appears to represent uncharged massless energy until we look a bit closer. The photon appears to interact with spacetime.
Is the electron built from photon(s)? That question leads to the photon and whatever that is made of. Could it be the photon is constructed from sub elementary particles. Some electron models suggest a quanta is the building block for the photon, and furthermore, the photon is the building block to an electron. So a sub elementary particle set of {quanta} may be the fundamental building block.
Could the monopole be a missing particle we simply don't see? And what is the role of a magnetic monopole in quantizing spacetime, and with entanglement and action-at-a-distance.
The emdirve embraces the fundamentals of physics we know while pushing out the boundaries of physics.
Good ideas As for me I don't even think particles and subparticles are the most fundamental "objects" of the universe: they are rather the apparent consequence of more fundamental multidimensional "quantum entities" which compose spacetime (which are spacetime) and are the generator of all particles and their motion within our 4D+ space. Maybe we could use a quantum effect to macroscopically create any kind of particle from the "vacuum" and transform any particle into any other. Very speculative I know.
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#33 by Star-Drive on 23 May, 2017 13:32
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Folks:
With Shell's latest updates on her lab build in CO as a reminder, I realized that I had not updated the build status of my new home lab here in Friendswood, TX. I last gave a status back in February per the below post:
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=41732.msg1639119#msg1639119
Well, my new lab is now completed and I'm in the process of moving my old lab gear from the house to the new facility, which I'm thinking about calling either the Gravity Reaction Lab or The Sorcerer's Apprentice Lab. Either way I hope to be back in the testing business by the end of the year at the latest, for right now I'm supporting Jim Woodward's and Heidi Fearn's NASA/NIAC Phase-1 study on increasing their MEGA-drive thrust output and applying their MEGA-drive to an interstellar probe mission to the nearest stars from Earth.
Best, Paul M.
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#34 by Rodal on 23 May, 2017 14:06
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I always considered magnetic and electrical "waves" to be distortions in the space-time continuum, much like gravity, not as something physical that moves through space. Clearly it is a different sort of distortion, but the ways in which electrical and magnetic fields interact with solid objects are not entirely different from the way gravitation interacts with mass. Somewhere in there lurks the Unified Field theory.
What if spacetime was quantized? Imagine spacetime not as a continuum but as a multidimensional map of successive discrete "tiny squares" each described by an unknown "quantum entity" (don't know how to call such thing surely equal or below the Planck length). Then an electromagnetic wave would be the physical interpretation of a step by step propagation through one "case" to the next one, of the "activation" and "deactivation" of such a quantum entity through spacetime. As for the associated particle (a photon, but why not also any particle composing matter) would be the physical local interpretation of an "activated case" (or the average of a group of activated cases, if one wants to include Heisenberg's uncertainty principle in that very rough idea).
Following that idea, nothing really "propagates" physically, only the information, which triggers the apparent movement of the wave and of its associated particle. A moving particle would then be like those light arrays on top of a wall in the dark, sequentially switched on and off rapidly with a little delay with respect to the previous one, giving the impression of a luminous object quickly propagating through space, whereas in fact there is only an apparent propagation and no movement at all…
Another way to express such a view: considering the atomic orbital of an electron in an atom. With the appropriate amount of energy, an electron can "jump" from an orbital to the other. This is a quantum leap, a discrete atomic electron transition. The wave function changes. But fundamentally, is it really the same electron which jumped from one orbital to the other, or is the higher energy electron a different one than the previous one described on a lower energy orbital…
There are fundamental differences between gravitation and electromagnetism, even considering the field theory without any quantization.
One very interesting thing about gravitation is that in 4 spacetime (3 D space + time) (*) one can have a zero stress-energy tensor, and still have non-zero energy and momentum in the gravitational field.
This follows from the fact that zero right hand side of the gravitational field equation (zero stress-energy tensor), means zero left hand side (zero Einstein's tensor). But zero Einstein tensor in 4 spacetime does not necessarily mean a flat spacetime. The equality is between the Einstein tensor and the stress-energy tensor. Zero Einstein tensor does not equal a flat spacetime geometry. The Einstein tensor is equal to the difference between the Ricci tensor and the scalar curvature (times the metric tensor).
Both can add up to zero, and yet have non-zero components. ADDED IN EDIT: In 4 dimensions the Ricci tensor can be zero and yet the space be curved: non-flat. Since Ricci tensor equal zero does not necessarily mean flat spacetime, therefore one can have zero stress-energy tensor in 4 spacetime and still have non-zero energy and momentum in the gravitational field ! One can have gravitational wave disturbances with zero source: zero stress-energy density tensor.
This is very different from electromagnetism where the electromagnetic fields (photons) do not carry any charge. In a gravitational field one can have a zero energy density, and still have gravitational waves. Thus we have self-interaction in gravitation due to the nonlinearity of the gravitational equations. A gravitational wave with a small energy relative to the curvature will travel along a null geodesic in the curved spacetime geometry. This is a different path than it would travel in the absence of the spacetime curvature. Thus one can have self-interaction: the gravitational field interacting with itself.
This issue involves energy conservation and self-interaction in 4D spacetime, something that many posters discussing "overunity" really struggle with. In General Relativity you can have energy and momentum on the left hand side of the equation, unlike charges in electromagnetism (electromagnetic waves in vacuum or in space without charges do not carry any charge: photons have no charge).
(*) This is only possible in 4 spacetime (3 D space + time) and higher. In 3 spacetime (2 D space + time) a zero stress-energy tensor necessarily implies a zero curvature of spacetime (because in 3 dimensions or less zero Ricci tensor means flatness) and hence in 3 spacetime (2 D space + time) the gravitational field would not be able to carry energy and momentum. In 4 spacetime electromagnetism, the electromagnetic fields (photons) do not carry any charge.
ADDED IN EDIT:
The issue has to do with the number of components of the tensor that specifies curvature of space: the number of independent components of the Riemann curvature tensor. The Riemann curvature tensor has 4 indices:
But the curvature tensor that appears in Einstein's equation is not the Riemann curvature tensor, but is instead the Ricci tensor which has only two indices:
In 3 D the Ricci tensor has 6 independent components, exactly the same number of independent components as the Riemann curvature tensor has in 3 D: also 6.
Therefore, in 3 D, vanishing of the Ricci tensor implies also vanishing of the Riemann curvature. In 3 D, vanishing of the stress-energy tensor implies vanishing of the Ricci tensor, and vanishing of the Ricci tensor implies vanishing of the Riemann curvature. Hence in 3 D vanishing of the stress-energy tensor implies a flat geometry.
However in 4 D, the Ricci tensor has 10 independent components and the Riemann curvature tensor has 20 independent components. For 4 dimensions or greater, there will be fewer components of the Ricci tensor than components of the Riemann tensor.
Hence for 4 dimensions or greater, the Ricci tensor can vanish, and yet the Riemann curvature tensor may not vanish. Therefore for 4 dimensions or greater vanishing of the stress-energy tensor does not imply flatness of spacetime.
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#35 by ThatOtherGuy on 23 May, 2017 14:07
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Well, my new lab is now completed and I'm in the process of moving my old lab gear from the house to the new facility, which I'm thinking about calling either the Gravity Reaction Lab or The Sorcerer's Apprentice Lab.
Apprentice Sorcerer Gravity Appliances Reaction ....hmmm help me find something for the D, so that the acronym will be ASGARD
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#36 by SeeShells on 23 May, 2017 14:14
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Shells -
I am looking to publish results of my testing as I promised here. That said, it needs to be known that I have seen something and I even stated here I did. The thrust signatures have been large jerks although highly sporadic. With the limits being my lab equipment.
4 builds! Give us a clue - are you still looking for a signal outside the noise, do you have a signal and are optimising your design, are you characterising the effect in detail with a view to publishing, or something else?
My goal hasn't changed in the almost 2 years I've been working on this and I said it on my go fund page in the first paragraph. (link bottom of page)QuoteBecause I choose to dream.
I believe we are at a cusp of our growth on this ball of mud and if we don't evolve from this tiny seed called earth we may perish and never know the glorious heights that await us, or the true challenges of a universe that has no bounds. Yes, I dream, for humanity. -Michelle Broyles
Whatever I can do to make that happen I'll do.
While Paul March Dr. Fern, Dr. Woodward, Dr. Rodal and many talented others work on the MEGA Mach effect drive. https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/niac/2017_Phase_I_Phase_II/Mach_Effects_for_In_Space_Propulsion_Interstellar_Mission
I'm pursuing another way to do about the same thing. I believe that the Mach effect can be realized within the EM Drive functions. Paul March has said and others as well that it's different sides of the same coin. That's not to say that the EM Drive is only using the Mach effect as I believe other theories are coming into effect.
My Very Best,
Shell -
#37 by Slyver on 23 May, 2017 14:20
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Well, my new lab is now completed and I'm in the process of moving my old lab gear from the house to the new facility, which I'm thinking about calling either the Gravity Reaction Lab or The Sorcerer's Apprentice Lab.
Apprentice Sorcerer Gravity Appliances Reaction ....hmmm help me find something for the D, so that the acronym will be ASGARD
Domain, Domicile, Delve, Digs, Den, Department, Division -
#38 by D_Dom on 23 May, 2017 14:37
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Development, as in R&D.
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#39 by Slyver on 23 May, 2017 15:09
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Apprentice Sorcerer's Gravitational Advances -- Research Division
!
