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#980 by Notsosureofit on 26 Apr, 2019 11:20
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At this point,the only (GR) wrinkle left would require the inclusion of local time-reversal to invoke a balancing negative momentum change. (QM anti-symmetric operator ?) Everything else would appear to be experimentally debunked. (Assuming my old brain is remembering properly...it would still require a demonstration of entropy increase w/ the frame change, but I haven't checked that w/ time-reversal included)
Micro-wormholes anyone? -
#981 by RotoSequence on 26 Apr, 2019 17:08
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I don't know what exactly McCulloch's animation is supposed to represent, but if it is a simulation of some kind of binary it's definitely weird. In Newtonian/GR gravity the objects don't seem to feel any gravitational pull, in (some unspecified variety of) MoND they have a very, very wide orbit and in QI the orbit is tighter with extreme apsidal precession.
He is looking at wide binaries which supposedly have velocities that don't match up with the predictions of GR, however it is possible that there are unaccounted for errors in the original data this is based on.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.13397
Given the results in the paper I just linked, calling GR and MOND "falsified" based on his data is premature at the least. On the other hand, McCulloch has made predictions that if they are true predictions of his theory, mean that his theory is falsified. (for example he claims the Pioneer Anomaly is not due to asymetric thermal radiation, even though the best thermal models show that Pioneer should be accelerating due to asymmetric thermal radiation.)
I think there's room for at least one more missing piece in the physics puzzle:
https://arxiv.org/abs/1903.07603
Large Magellanic Cloud Cepheid Standards Provide a 1% Foundation for the Determination of the Hubble Constant and Stronger Evidence for Physics Beyond LambdaCDMQuote from: Adam G. Riess, Stefano Casertano, Wenlong Yuan, Lucas M. Macri, Dan ScolnicWe present an improved determination of the Hubble constant (H0) from Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations of 70 long-period Cepheids in the Large Magellanic Cloud. These were obtained with the same WFC3 photometric system used to measure Cepheids in the hosts of Type Ia supernovae. Gyroscopic control of HST was employed to reduce overheads while collecting a large sample of widely-separated Cepheids. The Cepheid Period-Luminosity relation provides a zeropoint-free link with 0.4% precision between the new 1.2% geometric distance to the LMC from Detached Eclipsing Binaries (DEBs) measured by Pietrzynski et al (2019) and the luminosity of SNe Ia. Measurements and analysis of the LMC Cepheids were completed prior to knowledge of the new LMC distance. Combined with a refined calibration of the count-rate linearity of WFC3-IR with 0.1% precision (Riess et al 2019), these three improved elements together reduce the full uncertainty in the LMC geometric calibration of the Cepheid distance ladder from 2.5% to 1.3%. Using only the LMC DEBs to calibrate the ladder we find H0=74.22 +/- 1.82 km/s/Mpc including systematic uncertainties, 3% higher than before for this particular anchor. Combining the LMC DEBs, masers in NGC 4258 and Milky Way parallaxes yields our best estimate: H0 = 74.03 +/- 1.42 km/s/Mpc, including systematics, an uncertainty of 1.91%---15% lower than our best previous result. Removing any one of these anchors changes H0 by < 0.7%. The difference between H0 measured locally and the value inferred from Planck CMB+LCDM is 6.6+/-1.5 km/s/Mpc or 4.4 sigma (P=99.999% for Gaussian errors) in significance, raising the discrepancy beyond a plausible level of chance. We summarize independent tests which show this discrepancy is not readily attributable to an error in any one source or measurement, increasing the odds that it results from a cosmological feature beyond LambdaCDM.
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#982 by mandrewa on 26 Apr, 2019 19:00
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I think there is a misunderstanding about what Mike McCulloch is doing in his April 7th post:
https://physicsfromtheedge.blogspot.com/2019/04/models-experiments-theory.html
This is a prediction! He's not talking about an observed system.
He's saying that if his theory is true, we should be able to find wide binary systems that behave exactly like this. In fact if his Quantized Inertia theory is correct, then there should be a whole bunch of wide binaries right here in our galaxy showing this behavior. In fact they all should.
This is how real science is supposed to work. Theoretical physicists theorize. And then experimenters, or observers in this case, go out and show that they are wrong. Because that is what usually happens. Or we could say it's the universe that says "No!"
Of course, if people start observing wide binaries and they find out that they really are showing this behavior, well that's pretty good evidence for Quantized Inertia, but it is also evidence for an alternate explanation: Dark Matter.
The reason people believe in the Dark Matter hypothesis is that 99.99% of the galaxies in the universe have motions that don't make sense under Newtonian Physics. A simple explanation for that is invisible matter that we are not seeing.
Obviously the same can be done with wide binaries if they are manifesting this behavior that McCullough is predicting.
On the other hand, if observers don't find that wide binaries are behaving like this, then that's pretty strong evidence that the theory of Quantized Inertia as currently constituted is wrong. -
#983 by meberbs on 26 Apr, 2019 20:21
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I think there is a misunderstanding about what Mike McCulloch is doing in his April 7th post:
Completely false.
https://physicsfromtheedge.blogspot.com/2019/04/models-experiments-theory.html
This is a prediction! He's not talking about an observed system.
He says he is modelling a real system:Quotewhen you model a real wide binary,
You can go do a search on "wide binaries" and you will see there are experimental results showing a conflict between the observed velocities and the expectations based on GR. I already provided a link to a paper which indicates that such conflicts may simply be due to not properly accounting for projection effects when comparing the relative velocities.He's saying that if his theory is true, we should be able to find wide binary systems that behave exactly like this.
No, he is stating (incorrectly) that he has falsified GR and MOND, which is something you can only even assert when you are comparing to experimental data. -
#984 by meberbs on 26 Apr, 2019 20:44
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We know that current theories of the universe aren't complete. Dark energy is basically a placeholder, and as the paper you referenced discusses, the Hubble constant does not seem to be as constant as it should be. (Actually it isn't a constant to begin with, but after taking out other things that make it vary such as accelerating expansion due to dark energy, things still aren't matching up.)He is looking at wide binaries which supposedly have velocities that don't match up with the predictions of GR, however it is possible that there are unaccounted for errors in the original data this is based on.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.13397
Given the results in the paper I just linked, calling GR and MOND "falsified" based on his data is premature at the least. On the other hand, McCulloch has made predictions that if they are true predictions of his theory, mean that his theory is falsified. (for example he claims the Pioneer Anomaly is not due to asymetric thermal radiation, even though the best thermal models show that Pioneer should be accelerating due to asymmetric thermal radiation.)
I think there's room for at least one more missing piece in the physics puzzle:
https://arxiv.org/abs/1903.07603
This is one of the places where there most likely actually is "new physics" needed, but there is a lot of uncertainty, making it hard to come up with a new consistent theory.
My post about McCulloch's results was just stating that the specific data he is looking at may be a non-problem, and that there are other predictions he has made that aren't supported by experiment. I didn't mean to imply that GR (and specifically, lambda-CDM) predicts everything perfectly, but that the regime that McCulloch was discussing is one where GR can still be fine. -
#985 by mandrewa on 26 Apr, 2019 21:38
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I think there is a misunderstanding about what Mike McCulloch is doing in his April 7th post:
Completely false.
https://physicsfromtheedge.blogspot.com/2019/04/models-experiments-theory.html
This is a prediction! He's not talking about an observed system.
He says he is modelling a real system:
You say this with such assurance. What do you mean "completely false?" Are you saying he is not making predictions about the behavior of wide binaries? Are you saying that a similar analysis can't be applied to every other wide binary?
Here's the relevant quote from the blog entry:QuoteMy post doc, Dr Jesus Lucio is working very well. I asked him to write a matlab script that simulates wide binaries with ordinary Newtonian physics, and MoND and QI. His script has produced a very nice animation (see below) that shows that when you model a real wide binary, only quantised inertia (red) predicts the stars to be bound together (as they are in reality).
If your point is that they didn't start by creating a completely imaginary wide binary, well then you may be right. Although I also think this is a lot to read into one adjective, "real," in a blog post, and that he may have intended a different meaning.
But if your claim, "completely false," is that they aren't making a prediction that can be applied to wide binaries in general, then I think you're mistaken.
And if you're thinking that these two have made a detailed study of the data from a particular binary and found that in detail the data supports Quantized Inertia, I think you're reading more into it than was intended. You might be right, but my guess would be that they discovered that, Aha!, the predictions of Newtonian Physics and Quantized Inertia for a wide binary system should diverge enough that we should be able to observe it.
Thus, I'll say it again. This is a prediction: a testable prediction. -
#986 by meberbs on 26 Apr, 2019 23:05
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Except it is not just "one adjective." He repeats this at the end of the paragraph "as they are in reality." And he also makes the claim that the result falsifies GR and MOND which is not a sensible statement unless he was the simulation was based off of measured experimental data.I think there is a misunderstanding about what Mike McCulloch is doing in his April 7th post:
Completely false.
https://physicsfromtheedge.blogspot.com/2019/04/models-experiments-theory.html
This is a prediction! He's not talking about an observed system.
He says he is modelling a real system:
You say this with such assurance. What do you mean "completely false?" Are you saying he is not making predictions about the behavior of wide binaries? Are you saying that a similar analysis can't be applied to every other wide binary?
Here's the relevant quote from the blog entry:QuoteMy post doc, Dr Jesus Lucio is working very well. I asked him to write a matlab script that simulates wide binaries with ordinary Newtonian physics, and MoND and QI. His script has produced a very nice animation (see below) that shows that when you model a real wide binary, only quantised inertia (red) predicts the stars to be bound together (as they are in reality).
If your point is that they didn't start by creating a completely imaginary wide binary, well then you may be right. Although I also think this is a lot to read into one adjective, "real," in a blog post, and that he may have intended a different meaning.But if your claim, "completely false," is that they aren't making a prediction that can be applied to wide binaries in general, then I think you're mistaken.
No, not what I was saying, though it is debatable if "prediction" is the correct term when the experimental data is taken first (which is a fine thing to do.)And if you're thinking that these two have made a detailed study of the data from a particular binary and found that in detail the data supports Quantized Inertia, I think you're reading more into it than was intended.
He says that he falsified both GR and MOND, while his theory matches "reality." That is an even stronger statement than the one you just made. I am not reading between the lines, he is stating this in plain English.Thus, I'll say it again. This is a prediction: a testable prediction.
He has made a number of supposedly "testable predictions" of his theory. It doesn't seem to bother him much that his predictions have been incorrect on things like the emDrive and the Pioneer anomaly. -
#987 by mandrewa on 26 Apr, 2019 23:35
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To be honest, I interpret Mike McCulloch generously. I'm pretty sure some of the things he's said are wrong. He has this hammer, his Quantitative Inertia theory, and he is trying to apply it to everything. Even in the best case not all of his flights of fancy are going to be correct.
I also notice the odds are against him. Anyone that dares to come up with new ideas is likely to be wrong.
But I think this is what theoretical physicists should be doing. The odds are against them but this is the way we improve our understanding of the universe.
And by the way, he made another testable prediction, that was mentioned about a month ago on this forum that I'm not sure people caught.From Mike McCulloch on twitter below. Would be interesting to see this 6.5 sigma data and the test rig.
https://twitter.com/memcculloch/status/1114176825733914625
Mike McCulloch
Good news from Madrid: the #QI laser loop experiment is showing a thrust 6.5 sigma over the noise. Its size is as expected. We have 2b cautious still that it is not some spurious effect, but photon absorption & magnetic fields have been ruled out. #QI #theempiriciststrikesback
Mike McCulloch
Yes. The thrust is tiny (1 microNewton) but, if it is real, then it is scale-up-able.
So if I understand, his theory predicted that if you send light around a loop near to an information boundary you are going to get a force to the side. And because of that prediction, someone tried to do it. And so far or at least as of three weeks ago, they are seeing a force!
Amazing stuff if they haven't made a mistake. We might see a paper in a few years. -
#988 by Monomorphic on 26 Apr, 2019 23:50
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US Navy Emdrive presentation from Estes Park 2018 was just posted to the SSI youtube channel. I'm not sure why it was posted a month later than the others.
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#989 by meberbs on 27 Apr, 2019 00:10
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To be honest, I interpret Mike McCulloch generously. I'm pretty sure some of the things he's said are wrong. He has this hammer, his Quantitative Inertia theory, and he is trying to apply it to everything. Even in the best case not all of his flights of fancy are going to be correct.
He earned a LOT of credibility back with me with his response to a criticism of his paper back around December. That doesn't change that he has made predictions inconsistent with experiments. There is nothing wrong with coming up with an incorrect theory, but when data disagrees with you, you have to acknowledge that you have screws not nails, and put down your hammer. McCulloch seems to be missing this last step.
I also notice the odds are against him. Anyone that dares to come up with new ideas is likely to be wrong.
Making "new" predictions doesn't help much when you have already made failed predictions. -
#990 by mandrewa on 27 Apr, 2019 00:24
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Quote
Except it is not just "one adjective." He repeats this at the end of the paragraph "as they are in reality." And he also makes the claim that the result falsifies GR and MOND which is not a sensible statement unless he was the simulation was based off of measured experimental data.
That phrase, "as they are in reality," is a bad sign, because it suggests he is fully committed to his theory. That may be humanly understandable, but it means he may not the right person to test these testable predictions.
I interpreted this as saying that their calculations showed you should be able to distinguish between Newtonian Physics, Quantitative Inertia, and MOND theory for wide binaries. I didn't think that he meant that they had actually tested it.
McCullough is theoretical not experimental. He only does experiments when he is forced to. As a theoretician he understands he needs to find testable predictions which someone whose talents lie in that direction can then run with. -
#991 by JohnFornaro on 27 Apr, 2019 14:44
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I also notice the odds are against him. Anyone that dares to come up with new ideas is likely to be wrong.
I would like to observe that your language veers from the realm of the scientific into the realm of emotion. Mike is not "daring" to come up with a new idea. He has a new idea, QI, and has convinced himself that QI has predictive ability in the real world. He has convinced others to fund his research into QI, but so far, he has not disproven GR. -
#992 by meberbs on 27 Apr, 2019 23:36
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McCullough is theoretical not experimental. He only does experiments when he is forced to. As a theoretician he understands he needs to find testable predictions which someone whose talents lie in that direction can then run with.
For cosmology, experiments often consist of just taking as much data as we can about other stars and galaxies and cataloging them. Theoreticians can then go take that data and show whether their model matches it. Most of his claims, such as the one about wide binaries are not ones that he needs other people to go run an experiment for. This is why it would be strange if he did not use real data for his simulation. (Though the paper I linked to points out errors typical in determining the velocity of the binary stars.)
This is stretching pretty far off topic though, so probably no more on this subject from me right now. -
#993 by as58 on 28 Apr, 2019 12:33
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To be honest, I interpret Mike McCulloch generously. I'm pretty sure some of the things he's said are wrong. He has this hammer, his Quantitative Inertia theory, and he is trying to apply it to everything. Even in the best case not all of his flights of fancy are going to be correct.
Indeed, he hurts his credibility when he tries to explain all sorts of "anomalies" with his theory, sometimes even those that almost nobody believes exist in the first place. IMO, it would be more valuable to show that his theory does not break in the huge number of cases where conventional physics work just fine. I think that would be quite a high hurdle, given how different predictions his theory seems to give in some cases, such as wide binaries. -
#994 by dustinthewind on 28 Apr, 2019 20:40
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To be honest, I interpret Mike McCulloch generously. I'm pretty sure some of the things he's said are wrong. He has this hammer, his Quantitative Inertia theory, and he is trying to apply it to everything. Even in the best case not all of his flights of fancy are going to be correct.
Indeed, he hurts his credibility when he tries to explain all sorts of "anomalies" with his theory, sometimes even those that almost nobody believes exist in the first place. IMO, it would be more valuable to show that his theory does not break in the huge number of cases where conventional physics work just fine. I think that would be quite a high hurdle, given how different predictions his theory seems to give in some cases, such as wide binaries.
I would look at it as though he's doing a service if he is forthright in the work he does. The fact that there's still exist unexplainable phenomena that may need yet to get the explained means we need a way to predict that behavior. If it turns out we can't predict behaviors and that's well confirmed then we may look to other methods to try and predict them. If someone's already done the work and can predict it then that may save us a lot of time trying to figure it out. Not everyone can do that kind of work.
You are right though in that it also needs to predict pre-existing phenomena. -
#995 by Slangny on 29 Apr, 2019 15:42
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Quote
The diametric drive involves an initial negative mass, it does not involve the continuous creation of negative mass.
- by senior member "Rodal", 2016, Thread 6 (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=39004.2600)
The papers I have seen from Bondi and Forward involve an initial negative mass, they do not involve the continuous creation of negative mass.
Their discussion of conservation of momentum (that I have seen) is much simpler, giving the fact that they only involve an initial negative mass instead of a variable mass.
What is being examined here instead is the creation of negative mass, starting from zero negative mass, and arises as a necessity of conserving momentum in a closed-system self-accelerating (instead of involving two separate particles as in the diametric drive one of them having initial negative mass).
Have you examined any papers (*) that discuss the continuous creation of negative mass, starting from zero negative mass, and its consequences for conservation of momentum?
____
(*) except for Woodward's who does discuss the creation of negative mass through one type of Mach Effect. However, I am not familiar whether Woodward has discussed the conservation of momentum equations and analyzed it as I did. Woodward's hypothesis has always been on the table regarding the EM Drive, certainly Paul March thinks so.
My apologies to resurrect an old comment, but I noticed this older comment on Woodward's work with awe. Did you see the paper last year on negative mass creation? https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2018A%26A...620A..92F
It was widely covered in popular media and berated by some scientists:
https://www.techtimes.com/articles/236043/20181206/new-scientific-model-describing-dark-fluid-with-negative-mass-could-make-up-most-of-the-universe.htm
http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2018/12/no-negative-masses-have-not.html
It also was broken down by the lead scientist for us commoners: http://theconversation.com/bizarre-dark-fluid-with-negative-mass-could-dominate-the-universe-what-my-research-suggests-107922
This seems to describe the continuous creation of negative mass, using full GR equations, which is precisely what is required in the EMdrive model of Woodward! Has anyone tried applying a creation tensor to the EMdrive?
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#996 by RERT on 01 May, 2019 08:52
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A thought...
If we hypothesize that the EM drive works due to some unexplained interaction with gravity, then it is only a very small step further to guess that any thrust will be related to the orientation of the device relative to the gravity field.
What? If we hypothesize that EM drives work, then why stretch that hypothesis further, with no cause to believe that the hypothesis itself is correct?
Because (unless I'm mistaken) all of the experiments which have shown a null result for the EMdrive are measuring horizontal forces: that's the natural thing to do with a torsion balance. So if the force is mostly up or down, they may be missing something. I'd also comment that some theory of operation (resonance etc, for instance) is needed to even attempt a replication. -
#997 by Star One on 01 May, 2019 11:02
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To be honest, I interpret Mike McCulloch generously. I'm pretty sure some of the things he's said are wrong. He has this hammer, his Quantitative Inertia theory, and he is trying to apply it to everything. Even in the best case not all of his flights of fancy are going to be correct.
Indeed, he hurts his credibility when he tries to explain all sorts of "anomalies" with his theory, sometimes even those that almost nobody believes exist in the first place. IMO, it would be more valuable to show that his theory does not break in the huge number of cases where conventional physics work just fine. I think that would be quite a high hurdle, given how different predictions his theory seems to give in some cases, such as wide binaries.
Other than the fact that it’s arguable that conventional physics is also broken until quantum and general relativity are reconcilable. There was an article recently in the New Scientist about all the numerous theories on how black holes are theorised to work because no one really knows what is beyond the event horizon. The concept of a singularity is in many ways just a place holder in theory because of all the infinities involved in describing it. -
#998 by JohnFornaro on 01 May, 2019 12:13
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A thought...
If we hypothesize that the EM drive works due to some unexplained interaction with gravity, then it is only a very small step further to guess that any thrust will be related to the orientation of the device relative to the gravity field.
What? If we hypothesize that EM drives work, then why stretch that hypothesis further, with no cause to believe that the hypothesis itself is correct?
Because (unless I'm mistaken) all of the experiments which have shown a null result for the EMdrive are measuring horizontal forces: that's the natural thing to do with a torsion balance. So if the force is mostly up or down, they may be missing something. I'd also comment that some theory of operation (resonance etc, for instance) is needed to even attempt a replication.
Perhaps the universe has a horizontal and a vertical axis. If one chooses a merry-go-round as a thought model of that universe, there would be distinctly different forces at hand depending on the choice of a vertical or horizontal frame of reference. To my knowledge, this is not the case with this universe.
On the surface of the Earth, which dominates the local gravitational frame of reference, we find that it takes far more energy to move away from the Earth's COG than it takes to move parallel to the Earth's surface.
From a pragmatic standpoint, when attempting to detect tiny forces in a frame of reference where gravitational effects are dominant on the macro scale of the detection experiment, a horizontal torsion balance aids greatly in that detection. Still, there is nothing in physics which supports the notion that while one can walk along the highway using energy, that one cannot scale a cliff using energy.
In fact, the better experimenters who have reported on this thread have tested their "devices" in a variety of orientations in an effort to rule out unknown gravitational influences on the forces they are interested in finding. -
#999 by RERT on 02 May, 2019 11:24
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...In fact, the better experimenters who have reported on this thread have tested their "devices" in a variety of orientations in an effort to rule out unknown gravitational influences on the forces they are interested in finding.
Monomorphic, Tajmar, and NRL have all used EMdrive devices on a torsion balance, with the device orientated horizontally, at a variety of angles to the beam, usually +-90, 0 and 180 degrees. The original NASA paper also fits in that category. Again, that's unless I'm mistaken.
Does anyone know if there has been a high-quality thrust measurement of a vertical EMDrive?