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EM Drive System No Longer Further Confirmed

Oh boy! DARPA is now funding research into Quantized Inertia, a theory that, frankly, I find dubious:

DARPA funds developing Quantized Inertia into breakthrough space propulsion
Article:
DARPA is giving $1.3 million for a four-year study of quantized inertia (QI) for possible breakthrough space propulsion.

The QI theory predicts that objects can be pushed by differences in the intensity of so-called Unruh radiation in space, similar to the way in which a ship can be pushed towards a dock because there are more waves hitting it from the seaward side.

The theory has already predicted galaxy rotation without dark matter, and the fact that if a system is accelerated enough – such as a spinning disc or light bouncing between mirrors – the Unruh waves it sees can be influenced by a shield. Therefore, if a damper is placed above the object, it should produce a new kind of upwards thrust.

[...]

The research is being funded through DARPA's Nascent Light-Matter Interactions (NLM) programme, which aims to improve the fundamental understanding of how to control the interaction of light and engineered materials.

[...]

Over the first 18 months, the Plymouth team will seek to develop a fully predictive theoretical model of how matter interacts with light (Unruh radiation) using the quantized inertia model. This will provide a new predictive tool for light-matter interactions.

A series of experiments will then be conducted in Germany and Spain to test whether the thrust is specifically due to quantized inertia, and whether it can be enhanced significantly.

I'm frustrated that the Mach Effect isn't receiving the same kind of visibility, but I have to admit that the galaxy rotation prediction is new and much more compelling than the material that was available when I first rejected Quantized Inertia. Now I'm going to have to go back and look at the information to try and see where the holes are instead of dismissing it out of hand as the work of a crank. Still, the increased visibility means more people will have their eyes on it to try and find those (potential) holes.

I can only hope Mach Effect receives similar attention from DARPA if and when QI falls through.
 
Amorous Intent said:
the galaxy rotation prediction is new and much more compelling than the material that was available when I first rejected Quantized Inertia.
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How do they explain things like the bullet cluster? There is a lot of things these days that point towards dark matter, and just explaining galaxy rotation without the others creates even more problems.
 
Catty Nebulart said:
How do they explain things like the bullet cluster? There is a lot of things these days that point towards dark matter, and just explaining galaxy rotation without the others creates even more problems.
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I'll just quote the Wikipedia article on the Bullet Cluster:

Wikipedia said:
Mordehai Milgrom, the original proposer of Modified Newtonian Dynamics, has posted an on-line rebuttal[16]​ of claims that the Bullet Cluster proves the existence of dark matter. Milgrom claims that MOND correctly accounts for the dynamics of galaxies outside of galaxy clusters, and even in clusters such as the Bullet Cluster it removes the need for most dark matter, leaving only a factor of two which Milgrom expects to be simply unseen ordinary matter (non-luminous baryonic matter) rather than cold dark matter. Without MOND, or some similar theory, the matter discrepancy in galaxy clusters is a factor of 10, i.e. MOND reduces this discrepancy five-fold to a factor of 2. Another study in 2006[17]​ cautions against "simple interpretations of the analysis of weak lensing in the bullet cluster", leaving it open that even in the non-symmetrical case of the Bullet Cluster, MOND, or rather its relativistic version TeVeS (tensor–vector–scalar gravity), could account for the observed gravitational lensing.
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The issue is further muddied by the fact that some alternative models (though not Quantized Inertia, to my knowledge) predict that gravitational lensing would be affected by the change in gravitation in equal proportion to the changes that produce the apparent dark matter.
 
There are galaxies without dark matter, so pretty much all alternatives to dark matter are in trouble. The Bullet Cluster shows that galaxies and their dark matter content cam separate, so it's not too surprising that there are galaxies approximately without any at all.

Regarding people like McCulloch, pretty every time one sees a simplistic claim that solves a half-dozen scientific mysteries at once, you're probably dealing with a crank, especially if some of those things have far more mundane explanations. That what they write is basically gibberish in the first place just confirms it.
 
Amorous Intent said:
Oh boy! DARPA is now funding research into Quantized Inertia, a theory that, frankly, I find dubious:

DARPA funds developing Quantized Inertia into breakthrough space propulsion
Article:
DARPA is giving $1.3 million for a four-year study of quantized inertia (QI) for possible breakthrough space propulsion.

The QI theory predicts that objects can be pushed by differences in the intensity of so-called Unruh radiation in space, similar to the way in which a ship can be pushed towards a dock because there are more waves hitting it from the seaward side.

The theory has already predicted galaxy rotation without dark matter, and the fact that if a system is accelerated enough – such as a spinning disc or light bouncing between mirrors – the Unruh waves it sees can be influenced by a shield. Therefore, if a damper is placed above the object, it should produce a new kind of upwards thrust.

[...]

The research is being funded through DARPA's Nascent Light-Matter Interactions (NLM) programme, which aims to improve the fundamental understanding of how to control the interaction of light and engineered materials.

[...]

Over the first 18 months, the Plymouth team will seek to develop a fully predictive theoretical model of how matter interacts with light (Unruh radiation) using the quantized inertia model. This will provide a new predictive tool for light-matter interactions.

A series of experiments will then be conducted in Germany and Spain to test whether the thrust is specifically due to quantized inertia, and whether it can be enhanced significantly.

I'm frustrated that the Mach Effect isn't receiving the same kind of visibility, but I have to admit that the galaxy rotation prediction is new and much more compelling than the material that was available when I first rejected Quantized Inertia. Now I'm going to have to go back and look at the information to try and see where the holes are instead of dismissing it out of hand as the work of a crank. Still, the increased visibility means more people will have their eyes on it to try and find those (potential) holes.

I can only hope Mach Effect receives similar attention from DARPA if and when QI falls through.
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I don't think I can plow through this whole thread.

I trust that at some point someone pointed out if the claims of the alleged EM drive's proponents were true, we could set up a perpetual motion machine that generates power out of nothing, right?

I used to think it would be legitimate to have an invention that released "zero point energy" or whatever we call it fashionably lately, useful power out of nothing, but that violation of conservation of momentum was a harder barrier that would not be transgressed. But of course thinking about it relativistically, if you have a device that scrupulously does not produce thrusts without equal and opposite motion of some observable kind of matter, but does generate "new" energy without depleting some previously existing mass, in some frame or other--in fact in the majority of frames--it would be seen, in creating new mass out of nothing, that the generator is moving, therefore the new mass creates new momentum, unbalanced by any counter-momentum in the opposite direction, because many of these frames will not agree on what direction the generator is moving in. One sees new momentum going thisaway, the other thataway. Either we can't have new energy bleeding into this universe at all, or both conservation of mass and conservation of momentum are out the window, being at best things that happen generally, but not always!

So I don't hold that either is categorically impossible, but obviously the burden of proof is on someone who claims either is violated.

I never could get a description of how EM drive allegedly worked that clarified whether they admitted it was momentum out of nothing, or had some kind of claim of a counter-momentum allowing thrust locally at the cost of some other matter elsewhere being shoved back somehow. But the claims seemed clearly to be that considerably more thrust was being developed by tiny amounts of power flow than could be explained by any local reaction, nor was there a plausible means of depleting the device of mass that would account for such thrusts at such low power. If we allow action at a distance, sure, an infinitesimal amount of power can produce a thrust as large as you like, but there would be no way to square that with speed of light limits I would think. Something has to carry the equal and opposite change in momentum through space to some medium that can be thrust backward; it is easy to say "it pushes on the nearest planet" or "on the nearest star" or something like that, but how does the engine know where the Sun will be in 8 minutes time, and how do any reaction particles coupling inside the drive with the infinitesmal shove back on the Sun know how to find the moving generator 8 more minutes later to actually move it in the desired direction, rather than traveling through space forever, missing the target? Considering that change of motion is what the drive is alleged to accomplish, how can it possibly avoid setting aside the whole lightspeed concept?
 
Shevek23 said:
If we allow action at a distance, sure, an infinitesimal amount of power can produce a thrust as large as you like, but there would be no way to square that with speed of light limits I would think. Something has to carry the equal and opposite change in momentum through space to some medium that can be thrust backward; it is easy to say "it pushes on the nearest planet" or "on the nearest star" or something like that, but how does the engine know where the Sun will be in 8 minutes time, and how do any reaction particles coupling inside the drive with the infinitesmal shove back on the Sun know how to find the moving generator 8 more minutes later to actually move it in the desired direction, rather than traveling through space forever, missing the target? Considering that change of motion is what the drive is alleged to accomplish, how can it possibly avoid setting aside the whole lightspeed concept?
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Wait, how? Even remotely pushing off the sun, you still get increased energy cost of thrust as your velocity relative to the sun increases (assuming a start with zero velocity, and that thrust and relative velocity point in the same direction).
 
Shevek23 said:
I don't think I can plow through this whole thread.

I trust that at some point someone pointed out if the claims of the alleged EM drive's proponents were true, we could set up a perpetual motion machine that generates power out of nothing, right?

I used to think it would be legitimate to have an invention that released "zero point energy" or whatever we call it fashionably lately, useful power out of nothing, but that violation of conservation of momentum was a harder barrier that would not be transgressed. But of course thinking about it relativistically, if you have a device that scrupulously does not produce thrusts without equal and opposite motion of some observable kind of matter, but does generate "new" energy without depleting some previously existing mass, in some frame or other--in fact in the majority of frames--it would be seen, in creating new mass out of nothing, that the generator is moving, therefore the new mass creates new momentum, unbalanced by any counter-momentum in the opposite direction, because many of these frames will not agree on what direction the generator is moving in. One sees new momentum going thisaway, the other thataway. Either we can't have new energy bleeding into this universe at all, or both conservation of mass and conservation of momentum are out the window, being at best things that happen generally, but not always!

So I don't hold that either is categorically impossible, but obviously the burden of proof is on someone who claims either is violated.

I never could get a description of how EM drive allegedly worked that clarified whether they admitted it was momentum out of nothing, or had some kind of claim of a counter-momentum allowing thrust locally at the cost of some other matter elsewhere being shoved back somehow. But the claims seemed clearly to be that considerably more thrust was being developed by tiny amounts of power flow than could be explained by any local reaction, nor was there a plausible means of depleting the device of mass that would account for such thrusts at such low power. If we allow action at a distance, sure, an infinitesimal amount of power can produce a thrust as large as you like, but there would be no way to square that with speed of light limits I would think. Something has to carry the equal and opposite change in momentum through space to some medium that can be thrust backward; it is easy to say "it pushes on the nearest planet" or "on the nearest star" or something like that, but how does the engine know where the Sun will be in 8 minutes time, and how do any reaction particles coupling inside the drive with the infinitesmal shove back on the Sun know how to find the moving generator 8 more minutes later to actually move it in the desired direction, rather than traveling through space forever, missing the target? Considering that change of motion is what the drive is alleged to accomplish, how can it possibly avoid setting aside the whole lightspeed concept?
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vicky_molokh said:
Wait, how? Even remotely pushing off the sun, you still get increased energy cost of thrust as your velocity relative to the sun increases (assuming a start with zero velocity, and that thrust and relative velocity point in the same direction).
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:confused:My brain hurts...:confused:
 
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