"Impossible" EM space drive?

In message , Bill Miller writes

Regardless of the similarities, real or imagined, it's irrelevant when the claim is that conventional electromagnetism is doing the accelerating.

For a suitable definition of "kinda", maybe. Falling around the nearest star isn't normally considered to be a "gravitational space drive". In GR it isn't even considered to be acceleration. Gravitation doesn''t provide a mechanism for using controlled external sources of energy to power that acceleration, the way electromagnetism does.

Basically he's seeing how far you can push Newton's model of gravity by using the same re-formulation using retardation methods that he applied to EM. From that, he has a theory which is either equivalent to Einstein's, or is testably (in principle) different.

What's the "inverse" here?

It's not much of a stretch to consider that almost anything _might_ be true. Speculation is cheap. Proving it is another matter.

In message , Benj writes

Why? Because he has _confirmed_ the holes in the logic that the lack of self-consistency between premises and conclusion implies must necessarily be there?

You STILL don't get it you you? You can't prove ANYTHING by quoting freshman physics texts or the bold assertions on PBS. And to do that without even reading someone's arguments is the height of fraud. You are saying in effect, "I am proud to say I know absolutely no details about what this person is claiming, but I do know that I am so smart and knowledgeable and physics is always so infallible that I don't need to go any further than my own uninformed opinion to prove that this won't work!"

Note that Timo did this RIGHT. He read the paper. He went in and found some errors of logic in the proposed theory. And finally even after doing that he STILL didn't say the thing was "impossible"! He said you'd have to build it to prove it doesn't work. In other words Timo did the SCIENCE. All the rest was people doing faith-based physics. His conclusion was totally different from yours. Timo said, "Here are some holes in the suggested theory, but to really test these ideas you'd have to build it." You and Uncle Al and some others in effect said, "I really don't know anything about how this device is supposed to work in detail, but in my opinion it is impossible that it could work." Timo did science, you did a political discussion.

The difference between what Timo did and what you are trying to say is like night and day. Don't try to use his work to justify your own laziness!

What is "wrong" is you. You have assumed the device is ONLY an ion drive. Clearly in some cases it would work as one. But the claim has also been made that it works in a hard vacuum. You are claiming that this device in your opinion is ONLY an ion drive and thus cannot work. The fringe claims it works in a vacuum which obviously means in that mode it would not be an ion drive. [Actually it could be, but would have to use it's own material rather than surrounding gas for ions] You thus are saying that the discovery of any new principle (like electrostatic propulsion in a vacuum) without your permission is "impossible".

Did you notice that there is a subtle difference between "My opinion is completely correct and everyone else is "wrong"" and the statement "In my opinion this thing wouldn't work.". Obviously the only scientific true test is to put the damn thing in a vacuum and see if it still produces force. I see no evidence that your opinion is so infallible that we should accept it without proof or question.

And while we are on a roll here, let me point out some shortcomings of "infallible" "omniscient" physics.

1. Nobody from Newton on has the slightest clue what gravity "is". Lots of mathematical descriptions of how it operates, but no models as to what is the actual mechanism of that force.
2. Nobody has the slightest clue what a photon is. Again lots of very strange mathematics describing truly weird behavior but no real models or understanding of what a photon at the fundamental level actually is doing.
3. Because of 1 and 2 above, nobody has the slightest clue if there is some electrical or electromagnetic connection between gravity and E&M. In other words could there possibly be SOME way to build a "electrical" device that generates a localized gravitational field? "Gravity plating" for a starship if you will. Nobody knows. BUT IF such a thing were possible, then clearly by applying such a device to an object in space and IF one finds NO Newtonian reaction back upon the gravity field generator, [obviously action-reaction is not a "law" that always must be obeyed] then one clearly has the unidirectional thruster in question.

And given the total lack of knowledge in 1., 2. and 3., it should be obvious that anyone asserting that such a device is "impossible" is a clown.

Mirror, mirror...

For an appropriate definition of "in effect", meaning something like "here comes a fraudulent misrepresentation of what was actually said", maybe.

Nonsense. Take your strawman arguments elsewhere.

I'm making no claims whatsoever about physics, only about logic. (The clue is in words like "premise" and "conclusion".)

I don't think so. What he actually said was this (in Message-ID: )

Since there's only one possible answer to that (rhetorical) question, I don't think the following sentence has quite the implications you'd like:

especially when followed by this:

No, he said:

There you go with "in effect" again. Al can speak for himself, but I said nothing like the following:

Then you should have no difficulty in providing a message-ID for where I said that, if I actually had.

But of course your strawman is (as usual) a misrepresentation. All I have said is that it couldn't work _by the method claimed_, because the claim is logically inconsistent and therefore incoherent.

And since when are _you_ paying me for my time?

"Benj" wrote news: snipped-for-privacy@26g2000hsk.googlegroups.com...

People from optics know that light travel in packets. They know even how they are long (from Newton rings). S*

Some know it from Aepinus.

Electrical and gravitational are the same. The field is a math.

Plating or screaning is impossible (electric or gravity). Proved superposition rule tells it. S*

On Oct 4, 11:29=A0pm, "Timo A. Nieminen" wrote: [snip]

Careful there Timo. Benj will be in here telling you that you are not doing science by invoking conservation of momentum in mechanical systems. Socks

Jacoby logic: "I don't know, therefore nobody knows."

No, but it's a useful filter to determine what is worth investing more time on. If it claims to use the principles taught in undergraduate physics courses, but the results contradict the principles of undergraduate physics, it's very, very, very likely to be crap.

Invest time if interested or paid. Even a professional or amateur scientist has no obligation to investigate every outlandish claim - the amateur's time is limited, and they should pursue thheir own interests, while the professional may well be supposed to be working on a specific project for their boss (otherwise, is usually supposed to be trying to produce something).

It isn't meant to be a proof; it's a simple heuristic which usually works.

So what? Reading the paper and finding errors doesn't prove anything either. One can come up with a correct result through a series of errors. One can still claim the device _really works_, despite the supposed theory behind it being a crock of shit. Since going through the details takes a lot more time, and still doesn't _prove_ anything, why do it, unless (a) you're interested in the details, (b) it's your "job" as a peer reviewer, or (c) a potential investor wants to make sure they might be making a better investment than spending their money on lottery tickets.

No, it isn't even remotely fraud.

An example of fraud would be claiming that you have a design for an EM drive that works, while knowing that you've fudged the theory to make it appear it might work, when you know it won't (and I'm not claiming this is the case here; the errors and omissions may very well be accidental - easy to make the theory fit when convinced beforehand it should work), and seeking money from investors that will be used to support your lifestyle, not development of the device (also something I'm not claiming here; spending all of the investor money, and then more of your own, on development of the device is a good sign of sincerity).

Which I did because I was interested in the details (electromagnetic transport of momentum is my job). I didn't think it would take very long. Doing it while sitting at home drinking coffee meant it didn't even take time away from annything else I should have been doing.

No. This still wouldn't prove it doesn't work. I said that if anybody wants to build it, it's up to them. In the context of where it appeared in the post, take it to mean "build it knowing the theory provided is deeply flawed".

No, I just went further into the details. Neither the simple assessment nor the finding the errors in the details _proves_ anything about whether or not the device _works_. Neither _proves_ that the theoretical conclusions are _wrong_. The first simply shows that since A is assumed in the theory, and the result contradicts A, there must be an error, and the conclusion is incompatible with the assumptions. The second, finding errors in the details, simply shows that there is an error, but does not show that the conclusions are necessarily wrong, or incompatible with the assumptions (unless one provides a correct derivation, leading to a different result, which I did partly, but only partly) - this is actually a _weaker_ result, and only serves to amplify the first conclusion.

Appropriately prudent with the investment of one's time is not laziness. A comes up with a list of outlandish ideas. B says "Support them". A comes back with supposed support full of holes, and B says "Here is a critical error; go away and come back if you can fix it." What's wrong with that? Using classical electromagnetic theory to come up with a result contradicting classical electromagnetic theory is a pretty good sign of a critical error, even if you don't bother to find out exactly where it is.

You want to suggest it should be investigated "properly" - why don't you do it?

TT Brown's devices are not primarily ion drives, they are dielectic pumps. Feynman describe its basic principle in his lectures.

Really? Are you saying they work even if the air is not ionized? That would be interesting. Isn't the aether a dielectric? Doesn't that imply it would work in a vacuum? Also would violate conservation of momentum, conservative fields and all the rest and would be an (apparent) unidirectional force. Tell us more. What is the lectures page?

Vol II, Chapter 10, Section 10-5 page 10-8 (see figure 10-8 and related text).

OK, when one places a dielectic in an asymmetrical electic field (a field where the gradient of the field is not zero) each molecule is polarised and one end, being slightly physically closer to the shaping electrode, is attracted to it with more force than the other end is to the larger or dispersive electrode. Thus, if the dielectic is free to, it will move in the field toward the shaping (smalller, more concentrative) electrode. Like, as Feynman explains, a small fleck of paper will be attacted to a comb charged with static electricity even though it is neutral (has no net charge). This is NOT! an ion flow phenomena.

Of course as flow is started, if the electrodes are exposed ion flow can be part of the process also. That is why, making the shaping electrode positive will enhance the effect.

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The device in the OP is a wickedly inefficient EM drive that operates off momentum transfer of the fields. Whether it will actually work or not, I don't know. The ion wind style devices are lifter devices which use the air as the driving medium. Neither of these will work for shit in vacuum.

Did I say that? Learn to read.

rote:

Now explain how to pump vacuum.

Mythbusters did an episode where they tested a lifter in vacuum - no lift.

Easy. Go to an Obama rally.

Easy, the dielectric of free-space (where the impedence comes from...) ;)

Seriously, TT Brown said (and told me personally) that he had tested these in large vacuum chambers and they worked but with significantly less thrust) that to work in a vacuum you need to increase the applied voltage to at least 500 KV. The 'lifters' work at voltages from 30-50 KV.

This would make mythbuster's test in a vacuum was meaningly.

Since Brown did do testing in vacuum I believe him, but have no means of verifying this myself.

Or verifying how good his vacuum was, I assume. How come *nobody* has done any definitive peer reviewed experiments confirming the so-called effect?

Well, I found this,