Comparing the Chinese results with the American results, it seems that raising the wattage by a factor of 50 raises the thrust by a factor of 15000. That's somewhat hard to believe. On the other hand, the linked pdf from the Chinese team suggests that at just 3 times the wattage of the American group, they got 1500 times the thrust. I think there is some confusion somewhere.
What we know about the EmDrive and Cannae Drive
41–50 of 180 posts
Re: What we know about the EmDrive and Cannae Drive
#42I know it's unlikely that the EmDrive is real, and even more unlikely that the "warp drive" effects that some have been talking about are real. But...I really hope they are. What a world it'd be if these things prove out to be real.
I think even if it proves real, it would still take around 50 years to put in flying cars and such. But perhaps a bit less for using it in satellites. Still it's not too long on the humanity scale of time.
Re: What we know about the EmDrive and Cannae Drive
#43I think this technology, if real, should be shut down and controlled by the government. Officially, it should be denied and declared to be quackery. It would likely cause grave security problems. Just think of the capabilities this would give the bad guys. We already went too far with technology with the discovery of nuclear weapons and enormous effort has been invested in controlling that technology for decades. The…
The classic quote from the time "We know they have WMDs because we have the receipts!"
Re: What we know about the EmDrive and Cannae Drive
#44Comparing the Chinese results with the American results, it seems that raising the wattage by a factor of 50 raises the thrust by a factor of 15000. That's somewhat hard to believe. On the other hand, the linked pdf from the Chinese team suggests that at just 3 times the wattage of the American group, they got 1500 times the thrust. I think there is some confusion somewhere.
What is the ratio of wattage to thrust, that's what I'd be curious about? And how efficient is it?
I guess change in kinetic energy can never be greater than energy inputted to the device, correct?
Re: What we know about the EmDrive and Cannae Drive
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
According to physicist Harold White, leader of the NASA Eagleworks team, it can't simply be a "photon rocket": The NASASpaceflight.com group has given consideration to whether the experimental measurements of thrust force were the result of an artifact. Despite considerable effort within the NASASpaceflight.com forum to dismiss the reported thrust as an artifact, the EM Drive results have yet to be falsified. After c…
Yes, sure, they've measured something surprising. I have no reason to doubt that. A few years ago, the enormously more respected folks at the OPERA experiment were willing to announce that they had seemingly detected neutrinos moving faster than light. Despite this coming from a large group of scientists with top-notch credentials, that was immediately doubted by almost the entire physics community, and sure enough,…
I'm not saying anything about the experiment, but I think your statement that "conservation of momentum is more deeply embedded..." isn't quite so accurate.
[0] http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2010/02/22/energy-i... [1] http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/GR/energy_g...
Re: What we know about the EmDrive and Cannae Drive
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
According to physicist Harold White, leader of the NASA Eagleworks team, it can't simply be a "photon rocket": The NASASpaceflight.com group has given consideration to whether the experimental measurements of thrust force were the result of an artifact. Despite considerable effort within the NASASpaceflight.com forum to dismiss the reported thrust as an artifact, the EM Drive results have yet to be falsified. After c…
Realize that this is the exact same level of verification as superliminal neutrinos, except at a vastly decreased level of rigor. At this point the overwhelmingly likely explanation is that there is some phenomenon at work which we don't understand or haven't properly accounted for, not that there is new physics afoot.
All models are flawed and only imitate reality by definition. We must accept that our models are only a glimpse of the real thing. We barely manage to grok our own planet let alone galaxies unfathomably beyond our reach yet we are consistently surprised when our models turn out to yet again be wrong. We know for a fact that our currently accepted physical models are flawed. To start with, we cannot fully reconcile gravity or "spooky action at a distance." The only reason our current models are useful, like any useful model, is that they are somewhat good at predicting a very limited set of future outcomes given measurable parameters.
Why can't we admit that what we currently know only seems impressive to a few moderately advanced apes but in reality it is likely only tiny drop in the bucket compared to the knowledge our universe holds.
All that said I'm very pro skepticism. Just because science is dumb does not mean every other random idea is valid. It's the common arogance of the scientific community that grates on my nerves.
End rant.
Re: What we know about the EmDrive and Cannae Drive
#47This is not worth getting excited about. Really. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. These drives would violate conservation of momentum.[0] Conservation of momentum is built in to the known laws of physics at an extraordinarily deep level. It is obviously not impossible that our known laws are wrong, but the alternative would be to somehow produce a radically different set of physical laws that neve…
For some reason, this disturbs a lot of people more than violating conservation of momentum.
The alternative is that there really is absolute velocity, so the basic assumption of relativity is false. But that makes it a pretty big coincidence that atomic bombs work.
Still can't say I mind them checking just to be sure.
Re: What we know about the EmDrive and Cannae Drive
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
According to physicist Harold White, leader of the NASA Eagleworks team, it can't simply be a "photon rocket": The NASASpaceflight.com group has given consideration to whether the experimental measurements of thrust force were the result of an artifact. Despite considerable effort within the NASASpaceflight.com forum to dismiss the reported thrust as an artifact, the EM Drive results have yet to be falsified. After c…
Yes, sure, they've measured something surprising. I have no reason to doubt that. A few years ago, the enormously more respected folks at the OPERA experiment were willing to announce that they had seemingly detected neutrinos moving faster than light. Despite this coming from a large group of scientists with top-notch credentials, that was immediately doubted by almost the entire physics community, and sure enough,…
Re: What we know about the EmDrive and Cannae Drive
#49I think this technology, if real, should be shut down and controlled by the government. Officially, it should be denied and declared to be quackery. It would likely cause grave security problems. Just think of the capabilities this would give the bad guys. We already went too far with technology with the discovery of nuclear weapons and enormous effort has been invested in controlling that technology for decades. The…
The irony of your misinformed statement is that the alleged WMDs were American made and sold to Iraq. The classic quote from the time "We know they have WMDs because we have the receipts!"
Re: What we know about the EmDrive and Cannae Drive
#50Comparing the Chinese results with the American results, it seems that raising the wattage by a factor of 50 raises the thrust by a factor of 15000. That's somewhat hard to believe. On the other hand, the linked pdf from the Chinese team suggests that at just 3 times the wattage of the American group, they got 1500 times the thrust. I think there is some confusion somewhere.
Well, the natural world is full of non-linear and/or discontinuous responses, so it's not crazy if there's some sort of threshold at work. But yeah, it's more likely there's some confusion in there.