131–140 of 205 posts
Doesn't this remind anyone of the not-so-long-ago overhyped E-Cat? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Catalyzer
The e-cat had "secrets" that they wouldn't divulge and it's tests were also questionable with the machine being plugged into a power source the whole time.
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To expand on that a little: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/outthere/2014/08/06/nasa-v... >>In the paper by White et al, they also write that the Cannae Drive “is producing a force that is not attributable to any classical electromagnetic phenomenon and therefore is potentially demonstrating an interaction with the quantum vacuum virtual plasma.” That last bit stopped me. What’s a quantum vacuum virtual plasma? I’d…
Huh. I thought the OP experiment WAS verification.
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None of the things mentioned so far that we "don't know how they work" are on a par with this. Flying with wings doesn't violate fundamental, and experimentally very well supported, symmetries like conservation of momentum, nor do high temperature superconductors. Your final sentence is actually nonsense.
My final sentence was getting at a mechanism by which momentum is conserved in this system. If you assume that time is quantisable (big assumption, I know), and that the planck time is lorenz invariant (not as much of an assumption), then an EM wave at a fixed frequency moving from one reference frame to another could experience quantisation due to the shifting time-base, resulting in an apparent net deceleration - r…
Accepting a flaw in conservation of momentum is already hard enough without you (and the original paper) imposing a flaw on the relativity principle to explain it.
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Fluid flow is complicated, true - but the basic physical phenomenon of lift is very simple and completely understood: wings redirect air downwards, and the reaction force is what we call lift.
Agreed, but it's the fluid flow bit that complicates it. We absolutely understand lift in the Newtonian sense of a reaction, but wings, we're still learning about. If we weren't, we wouldn't have developed winglets and other such adaptations, as we slowly but surely assemble the theoretical particles into a coherent whole.
Saying we can't decide how wings work is not at all in the same category as saying these guys don't know how Q works.
One "not knowing" is about not knowing exactly precisely how to model something perfectly because it has so much complexity.
The other not "not knowing" is about not having even a basic working theory that doesn't use mumbo jumbo and stands up to scrutiny.
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At the paper. And it's crazy simple.
I can't find prototype diagrams with dimensions or something, did you find any? Please link? The paper is $25 .... mmm http://arc.aiaa.org/doi/abs/10.2514/6.2014-4029 This post has some more info https://plus.google.com/117663015413546257905/posts/WfFtJ8bY...
But you're right that there are no actual dimensions in it.
I've read the abstract, but apparently Wired has access to more information. Any idea where the primary source for that information is? I'm interested to see what magnetic shielding was used and how well they characterized the magnetic field in the experimental volume. There was a mention of shielding against electromagnetic effects, but that could just mean a Faraday cage or Helmholtz coils, neither of which will re…
http://www.libertariannews.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/An...
I note that not only is there no shielding to reduce the Earth's magnetic field, but there are large NeFeB magnets in the torsion balance assembly. I strongly suspect that the "missing momentum" is going into the object producing the magnetostatic fields which lie in the RF cavity, whether that be the Earth or the damping magnets.
Not to say that this wouldn't be interesting (RF interaction with magnetostatic fields), but I don't think this has met the level of proof required of a claim of violation of momentum conservation.
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Just because something is able to be replicated multiple times, by different people, you still don't want to jump to conclusions. You just need to look back at polywater, http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...
And several other effects, like N-rays, filed by some under the category of "pathological science" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathological_science ). There's also that nice graph of measurements of the speed of light versus time, in which experiments tended to reproduce the results of (erroneous) previous measurements, due to confirmation bias.
Reproducing an experiment, even with reputable scientists at NASA or reputable universities is in no way a guarantee.
I've read the abstract, but apparently Wired has access to more information. Any idea where the primary source for that information is? I'm interested to see what magnetic shielding was used and how well they characterized the magnetic field in the experimental volume. There was a mention of shielding against electromagnetic effects, but that could just mean a Faraday cage or Helmholtz coils, neither of which will re…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of the problems with this idea, that we have the physics "perfectly understood", is that even that statement isn't accurate. What we actually have are unbelievably precise models for how things work and people who understand those models at extremely deep levels. But even something we experience literally every moment of every day, like gravity or magnets, we haven't the foggiest idea of how it actually works. We…
All models are wrong. Some are useful. But what is your point, really? By "understand" in physics, we really mean that we can predict what will happen in a given experiment to any desired accuracy based on the established "laws of physics". " But even something we experience literally every moment of every day, like gravity or magnets, we haven't the foggiest idea of how it actually works. " I think this does a deep…
Feynman also addresses this, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05WS0WN7zMQ
The next Monday, when the fathers were all back at work, we kids were playing in a field. One kid says to me, “See that bird? What kind of bird is that?” I said, “I haven’t the slightest idea what kind of a bird it is.” He says, “It’s a brown-throated thrush. Your father doesn’t teach you anything!” But it was the opposite. He had already taught me: “See that bird?” he says. “It’s a Spencer’s warbler.” (I knew he didn’t know the real name.) “Well, in Italian, it’s a Chutto Lapittida. In Portuguese, it’s a Bom da Peida. In Chinese, it’s a Chung-long-tah, and in Japanese, it’s a Katano Tekeda. You can know the name of that bird in all the languages of the world, but when you’re finished, you’ll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird. You’ll only know about humans in different places, and what they call the bird. So let’s look at the bird and see what it’s doing—that’s what counts.” (I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.)
Models are just a complicated way of calling something, not a way of understanding it. Getting experimental results just means you've used the correct name, not that you understand anything in particular about it.
Calling a hot bright thing "fire" doesn't mean you understand it at all -- no matter how many complex tribal dances you do around an open flame. Knowing what fire actually is gave us modern civilization. For many fundamental everyday things like gravity or magnetism, on the scale from "calling an open flame 'fire'" to "rocket ship", we're charitably somewhere around "learning to cook meat".
Please be true, please be true! How big is a two megawatt nuclear power source anyway? A quick search showed nuclear power plants are in the hundreds to low thousands of megawatt range, and RTGs are in the tens to hundreds of watt range. I have no idea what something that lies between those two would be.