Usually I am not the one to just respond to titles. However, here I couldn't help myself and think "Yes, they are called rockets". Now excuse me while I go read the article to see if the content...
Usually I am not the one to just respond to titles. However, here I couldn't help myself and think "Yes, they are called rockets".
Now excuse me while I go read the article to see if the content is any better.
Edit: Nope, it is just a fluff article with just claims and no substance.
But the print version of the magazine would at least have a cool artist’s conception of the article that a preteen nerd could hang on the wall next to the Millennium Falcon poster.
But the print version of the magazine would at least have a cool artist’s conception of the article that a preteen nerd could hang on the wall next to the Millennium Falcon poster.
Am not too familiar with this magazine, but I guess I should have been keyed in on the "popular" part that it's a very basic layman's perspective on a a subject.
Am not too familiar with this magazine, but I guess I should have been keyed in on the "popular" part that it's a very basic layman's perspective on a a subject.
It's not your fault. Popular Mechanics has been around for at least 100 years, honing it's skills in duping the unaware. It's only inevitable, one's gonna get got by the professionals.
It's not your fault. Popular Mechanics has been around for at least 100 years, honing it's skills in duping the unaware.
It's only inevitable, one's gonna get got by the professionals.
I really wish you wouldn't make comments like this. Tildes is a small community, and one member of it decided to share this article. If you want to critique it that's fine, but this shallow...
I really wish you wouldn't make comments like this. Tildes is a small community, and one member of it decided to share this article. If you want to critique it that's fine, but this shallow dismissal is really a dismissal of the person who shared it.
I sort of get where you are coming from. But, don't really agree, at least not when my initial comment is concerned. The title really is as generic and non descriptive as they come. That's not...
I sort of get where you are coming from. But, don't really agree, at least not when my initial comment is concerned. The title really is as generic and non descriptive as they come. That's not really a dismissal of OP imho.
As far as my edit goes. Maybe I can follow your logic there.
I also couldn't help but notice you said comments (plural) was that in general or aimed at me specifically?
(Not the person you replied to). I don't think you, or anyone else, has done anything wrong per se, but after reading the responses as a whole I'd definitely be feeling a bit "...oh, ok. Sorry :("...
(Not the person you replied to). I don't think you, or anyone else, has done anything wrong per se, but after reading the responses as a whole I'd definitely be feeling a bit "...oh, ok. Sorry :(" if I were OP. I can't speak for them, but for me at least the aggregate tone of the thread is kind of echoing those times when you try to share something you thought was cool IRL and it just gets eye rolls.
It's a tricky one, because it's a generalised impression of the thread more than anything overt from any individual person or comment - and I'm absolutely certain I lose sight of this sometimes too - but this topic in particular did make me think that the distinction between the content itself and the person who chose to share it is a good one to keep in mind.
I certainly felt a little silly at first seeing a lot of the dismissive comments towards the article. But, I shared it because I was curious about a topic I knew little about and wanted to hear...
I certainly felt a little silly at first seeing a lot of the dismissive comments towards the article. But, I shared it because I was curious about a topic I knew little about and wanted to hear some other opinions, so as long as no one was calling me directly a dumb ass I felt OK about it and didn't take it as a personal attack.
I have certainly read pop articles in my field that I was scoffing at, and I will sometimes be dismissive when talking about them with colleagues. Although I do admit when I'm discussing those with people I don't know I try to avoid being dismissive and critique it in a light-hearted tone to minimize the chance I elicit those feelings you mentioned. I don't want to quash anyone's curiosity and excitement.
Yeah that's fair, it is why I can follow the logic as far as my edit goes as I could have expanded more constructively there. If I had to place it my response came from a bit of a jaded position....
Yeah that's fair, it is why I can follow the logic as far as my edit goes as I could have expanded more constructively there.
If I had to place it my response came from a bit of a jaded position. The article bears all the hallmarks of clickbait, fluff and very little in the way substance. It isn't entirely fair to expect everyone to have the same contextual baggage to see the same thing as I have. At the same time, even if there actually is some breakthrough, the article basically comes down to “person claims it exists” and “we have to take their word for it and nothing else”.
So while I could have expanded on it a bit more, there is not that much to expand on if I am being completely honest. Explaining it would require me to basically put in more effort than the article author seems to have done in the first place.
I get where you are coming from, but comments on articles are generally, practically always, not directed at the original poster of the article, posting articles here is more about discussing the...
I get where you are coming from, but comments on articles are generally, practically always, not directed at the original poster of the article, posting articles here is more about discussing the article and ideas and their potential merits, and that includes nebulous titles and discerning the article/title validity.
This is quite a bit different than most social forums, but here I think we all kind of have a generalized idea that topics and links are a collective submission and it's through the consensus of the community (that leans predominantly more scientific/data/engineering heavy) to try to more directly refute or find consensus on things being talking about in both our internal circles, and external circles, to bring some new enrichment into our little habitat from far off lands.
if it's being discussed elsewhere, we should absolutely have fun and tear it down if we can/want, or find some areas where it's nice to know is in development and learn more about it. Besides it's fun to roleplay with the potentialities of the universe, even if they're not possible, and if you feel the comment is being dismissive or too sarcastic, use the 'label' feature and mark it as such!
I'm not well-qualified to evaluate this - what makes this pseudoscience? Just the fact that there hasn't been any formalized evidence presented? I know electrostatic fields can move objects so it...
I'm not well-qualified to evaluate this - what makes this pseudoscience? Just the fact that there hasn't been any formalized evidence presented? I know electrostatic fields can move objects so it seems like it could be possible, albeit maybe not practical to move something as massive as a craft.
This guy claims he's discovered a "new force". Without getting into the details of why this is roughly like saying "i found a new color". This should INSTANTLY raise all sorts of flags because...
Buhler told the website The Debrief that they’ve created a drive powered by a “New Force” outside our current known laws of physics, giving the propellant-less drive enough boost to overcome gravity.
This guy claims he's discovered a "new force".
Without getting into the details of why this is roughly like saying "i found a new color". This should INSTANTLY raise all sorts of flags because such a thing would be monumental. You wouldn't say "oh i made a new drive" you'd say "i've fundamentally changed physics as we understand it"
propellant-less.
Not possible. Period. Done. 2nd law of thermodynamics to start (no perpetual energy) and only gets worse from there. Again this is why we have to have our "magic" new force, because you can't explain it otherwise.
Electrostatic fields.
I'm assuming you're talking about something like the triangle with current run through it hovering thing (i cannot for the life of me find an example of this basic experiment and instead get a deluge of alien nonsense). That would not require a "new force" nor be "propellant-less". The forces are well documented, and the propellant....gets a bit beyond my rough understanding, but I believe by definition you're using the atmosphere at that point as propellant, and thus aren't going anywhere in space.
Obviously that's before you get into the fun issues of things like weight.
Edit-
Another way to think of these things is the level of claims this guy is making should be akin to developing electricity/the internal combustion engine. With associated level of international scrutiny, secrecy, and investment. IF anything he claimed was remotely true, especially after working at NASA, there's a decent chance he'd either be on some DARPA team and not allowed to say anything about it as he develops the equivalent of the next stealth bomber, or on some corporate team and not allowed to say anything about it as they develop the equivalent of the next "car".
Edit 2-
A further important thing to consider, in relation to the last point of electricity and the engine, these things didn't happen all at once. Someone wasn't burning a candle and then someone else said "i've created hydro electric power and neon lighting!". They are gradual changes. And yet this person claims to have found a completely new force AND developed a patent for a space worthy engine out of no where? With nothing else behind it?
The cited The Debrief article is even more damning. Apparently they have perpetual motion:
The cited The Debrief article is even more damning. Apparently they have perpetual motion:
“We can see some of these things sit on a scale for days, and if they still have charge in them, they are still producing thrust,” he told Ventura. “It’s very hard to reconcile, from a scientific point of view because it does seem to violate a lot of energy laws that we have.”
The most likely "propellant-less" drive would be one that uses the planet as reaction mass. If you can build a device that uses electrostatic forces to propel away from the earth, even while...
The most likely "propellant-less" drive would be one that uses the planet as reaction mass. If you can build a device that uses electrostatic forces to propel away from the earth, even while you're outside the atmosphere, that's actually groundbreaking. It's not necessarily fundamentally new science. But boy does it have engineering implications. It also seems virtually impossible for reasons of, well, engineering implications.
Alternatively, you could conceivably call photon rockets propellant-less. The reaction mass is photons, which means it's trivial to refuel in space via just solar panels. It's functionally propellant-less, but it doesn't mean it violates physics. Though, a photon rocket with enough juice to overcome gravity sounds an awful lot like a weapon of mass destruction.
Even though it's propellant is made up of massless particles, it still has a propellant. Because of E=MC^2, you'd have to have a MASSIVE amount of energy to use those particles to achieve any...
Even though it's propellant is made up of massless particles, it still has a propellant. Because of E=MC^2, you'd have to have a MASSIVE amount of energy to use those particles to achieve any reasonable amount of thrust, way, way more than solar panels could hope to produce.
You'd be talking about a huge fusion or fission reactor powering it, which is why most electricly powered spaceship drives are hall-effect thrusters instead.
If you're trying to harness solar power to move your spaceship to reasonable speeds, solar sails would be a lot more practical.
Oh, for sure. I don't mean to imply that photon rockets are viable as they exist right now. Their TWR will be low regardless of how you do it, so even solar cells won't make them unviable as of...
Oh, for sure. I don't mean to imply that photon rockets are viable as they exist right now. Their TWR will be low regardless of how you do it, so even solar cells won't make them unviable as of now. I guess what I was trying to convey is some nitpickery about "propellant" vs "reaction mass". Like, in any reasonable definition, are those photons actually propellant? They weren't on board when your rocket is fuelled up (though of course their mass was). Yet they act as reaction mass. You can also "refuel" in some unusual ways compared to regular rocket engines, even Hall effect thrusters. So can you really call them propellant? Hence "propellantless, but photons as reaction mass".
As soon as there was mention of electrostatic forces, I started to think they were about to talk about the electric universe theory, which is pseudoscience.
As soon as there was mention of electrostatic forces, I started to think they were about to talk about the electric universe theory, which is pseudoscience.
This article wasn't particularly great, but I did find some more details. The credentials behind him are pretty great, and so are the people attached, but we'll see. via nextbigfuture that did a...
This article wasn't particularly great, but I did find some more details. The credentials behind him are pretty great, and so are the people attached, but we'll see.
Dr. Charles Buhler discusses an experimental propulsion results based on asymmetrical electrostatic pressure, in a device described in International Patent# WO2020159603A2. The device is described as a system and method for generating a force from a voltage difference applied across at least one electrically conductive surface. The applied voltage difference creates an electric field resulting in an electrostatic pressure force acting on at least one surface of an object. Asymmetries in the resulting electrostatic pressure force vectors result in a net resulting electrostatic pressure force acting on the object. The magnitude of the net resulting electrostatic pressure force is a function of the geometry of the electrically conductive surfaces, the applied voltage, and the dielectric constant of any material present in the gap between electrodes.
via nextbigfuture that did a much better breakdown overall.
Patent can be found here, not that it really means anything these days.
I just looked it over, and while I'd have to take a few days(time I unfortunately don't have) I'm preeeetty skeptical of this. Especially this image, shortening the divergence electric force to...
via nextbigfuture that did a much better breakdown overall.
I just looked it over, and while I'd have to take a few days(time I unfortunately don't have) I'm preeeetty skeptical of this. Especially this image, shortening the divergence electric force to divine is not something that most physicists or engineers would do for the obvious reasons.
I'm also not convinced that an assymetrical capacitor would give a net-zero force. It'd be like releasing a wound-up spring mid-air. Sure, there would be potential energy released and that may cause a rotation. But a net-zero force?
And in the original article...
“Essentially, what we’ve discovered is that systems that contain an asymmetry in either electrostatic pressure or some kind of electrostatic divergent field can give a system of a center of mass a non-zero force component,” Buhler told The Debrief. “So, what that basically means is that there’s some underlying physics that can essentially place force on an object should those two constraints be met.”
This would imply a loss in symmetry of momentum to me. And apart from general relativity I don't know any situation where that holds up. (and even that is questionable if you consider momentum/energy to be related to spacetime, or the conversion of it. It is a very strong symmetry in the Universe)
Likely he is using this "New Force" gambit as marketing for his new research lab, if you make bold claims, get some internet chatter going, you can hype yourself up to some ambivalent cash-fluid...
Likely he is using this "New Force" gambit as marketing for his new research lab, if you make bold claims, get some internet chatter going, you can hype yourself up to some ambivalent cash-fluid investors.
As I said, he has the credentials to know what he is talking about, so likely he did find something but it isn't as directly useful as he makes it sounds. From one of the transcripts I read he seems sincere and that its very much more of a "this is a possibility in the far future, we just need to research it now to maybe get there*." Possible it's a small cog that could extend other systems, or its scientific research for research sake and could move the needle in some unseen/unknown direction in the future until we get the research for it.
Another possibility is that he wants attention. That may sound out there, but every now and then there is an astronomer(different field but still) who claims that X or Y may be due to aliens in a...
Another possibility is that he wants attention. That may sound out there, but every now and then there is an astronomer(different field but still) who claims that X or Y may be due to aliens in a way that grabs media attention. I hope it's not for everyone's sake but unfortunately I consider that a realistic scenario.
I think for society to prosper you need an alien-dude, a lot of the times if you really look deeper into the ones most loud, they write books, articles, interviews proclaiming "it was aliens" to...
I think for society to prosper you need an alien-dude, a lot of the times if you really look deeper into the ones most loud, they write books, articles, interviews proclaiming "it was aliens" to draw attention to something in the hopes that other people use the space to correct them and teach people new things, or to draw attention to a long-standing problem like "How was X, Y, & Z created using medieval tools? It had to be aliens!" and that draws enough attention to drag people into the frenzy to talk about 'this dudes nuts, they were possibly able to do that using A, B, or C using M, N, O' and now you have a possible solution to continue on, because you hyped the history up with something fantastical to draw the knowledgeable to come out of the woodwork to explain other more realistic, but outside of standard thinking. It's a way of shifting the Overton window a little bit to get some fresh renewed interest into it.
That quoted bit sounds really quite close to the EmDrive. "With this one weird geometry hack, we built a shape that produces a net force in a lab. We think this might be the next spacecraft...
That quoted bit sounds really quite close to the EmDrive. "With this one weird geometry hack, we built a shape that produces a net force in a lab. We think this might be the next spacecraft drive." - until it cleanly reproduces in other labs, I don't buy it.
On the topic of reproducibility, anyone remember that high-temperature super conductor craze? Yeah, me neither. Not sure why I brought it up.... /s
If you mean with the Korean students - tbf, I'd say that that was partially due to the media. And IIRC some of the students didn't want to publish it either due to well, first wanting to test it...
If you mean with the Korean students - tbf, I'd say that that was partially due to the media. And IIRC some of the students didn't want to publish it either due to well, first wanting to test it more thoroughly. I hope their careers weren't affected too much. :\
Not to say that there isn't a whole lot of bogus claims for super conductors... It's basically a market of it's own.
The EM drive has been independent tested a couple of times. And noone has been able to definitely prove a force greater than the margin of experimental error...
The EM drive has been independent tested a couple of times. And noone has been able to definitely prove a force greater than the margin of experimental error (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EmDrive).
I remember when I first heard about this, I was extremely sceptical, and at the same time really excited. If the claims were true, it would have been truly revolutionary.
I don't think this is an EmDrive, unless I'm badly misreading the article. The article talks about the EmDrive a lot, as an example of a claimed propellant-less drive that turned out to be "bunk"...
I don't think this is an EmDrive, unless I'm badly misreading the article. The article talks about the EmDrive a lot, as an example of a claimed propellant-less drive that turned out to be "bunk" but I don't think this is the same thing, although I think it's fair to say that it faces a lot of the same problems as far as needing to be reproduced.
There is a patent (filed in 2019). However, the mere existence of a patent proves little, and the particular physics justification does not strike me as especially rigorous (but I'm not planning...
There is a patent (filed in 2019). However, the mere existence of a patent proves little, and the particular physics justification does not strike me as especially rigorous (but I'm not planning to read it carefully). Having a student debunk the proposal would probably make for a fun homework assignment for someone taking graduate E&M, but that won't be me because I'm hoping to never crack open Jackson again.
Pretty short read so I'm not going to post a summary. Instead some food for thought: My education in physics is very limited, so I can't really evaluate the likelihood of any of this technology....
Pretty short read so I'm not going to post a summary. Instead some food for thought: My education in physics is very limited, so I can't really evaluate the likelihood of any of this technology. One thing I wonder is that the focus is primarily about escaping Earth's gravity well - but how would electrostatic forces work in space? Would it be easier to generate the proper force or would it be more difficult?
Escaping Earth's gravity well requires a huge amount of energy. xkcd had a comic a while back that has a good visualization. If you can do that without running into the tyranny of the rocket...
Escaping Earth's gravity well requires a huge amount of energy. xkcd had a comic a while back that has a good visualization. If you can do that without running into the tyranny of the rocket equation, you're basically free to explore the solar system.
Usually I am not the one to just respond to titles. However, here I couldn't help myself and think "Yes, they are called rockets".
Now excuse me while I go read the article to see if the content is any better.
Edit: Nope, it is just a fluff article with just claims and no substance.
As is the Popular Mechanics way.
But the print version of the magazine would at least have a cool artist’s conception of the article that a preteen nerd could hang on the wall next to the Millennium Falcon poster.
And Popular Science. I mentally rolled my eyes as soon as I saw the URL.
Am not too familiar with this magazine, but I guess I should have been keyed in on the "popular" part that it's a very basic layman's perspective on a a subject.
It's not your fault. Popular Mechanics has been around for at least 100 years, honing it's skills in duping the unaware.
It's only inevitable, one's gonna get got by the professionals.
I really wish you wouldn't make comments like this. Tildes is a small community, and one member of it decided to share this article. If you want to critique it that's fine, but this shallow dismissal is really a dismissal of the person who shared it.
I sort of get where you are coming from. But, don't really agree, at least not when my initial comment is concerned. The title really is as generic and non descriptive as they come. That's not really a dismissal of OP imho.
As far as my edit goes. Maybe I can follow your logic there.
I also couldn't help but notice you said comments (plural) was that in general or aimed at me specifically?
(Not the person you replied to). I don't think you, or anyone else, has done anything wrong per se, but after reading the responses as a whole I'd definitely be feeling a bit "...oh, ok. Sorry :(" if I were OP. I can't speak for them, but for me at least the aggregate tone of the thread is kind of echoing those times when you try to share something you thought was cool IRL and it just gets eye rolls.
It's a tricky one, because it's a generalised impression of the thread more than anything overt from any individual person or comment - and I'm absolutely certain I lose sight of this sometimes too - but this topic in particular did make me think that the distinction between the content itself and the person who chose to share it is a good one to keep in mind.
I certainly felt a little silly at first seeing a lot of the dismissive comments towards the article. But, I shared it because I was curious about a topic I knew little about and wanted to hear some other opinions, so as long as no one was calling me directly a dumb ass I felt OK about it and didn't take it as a personal attack.
I have certainly read pop articles in my field that I was scoffing at, and I will sometimes be dismissive when talking about them with colleagues. Although I do admit when I'm discussing those with people I don't know I try to avoid being dismissive and critique it in a light-hearted tone to minimize the chance I elicit those feelings you mentioned. I don't want to quash anyone's curiosity and excitement.
Yeah that's fair, it is why I can follow the logic as far as my edit goes as I could have expanded more constructively there.
If I had to place it my response came from a bit of a jaded position. The article bears all the hallmarks of clickbait, fluff and very little in the way substance. It isn't entirely fair to expect everyone to have the same contextual baggage to see the same thing as I have. At the same time, even if there actually is some breakthrough, the article basically comes down to “person claims it exists” and “we have to take their word for it and nothing else”.
So while I could have expanded on it a bit more, there is not that much to expand on if I am being completely honest. Explaining it would require me to basically put in more effort than the article author seems to have done in the first place.
Tbf, my first thought was "isn't that what rockets do?".
If the title had said "cancel gravity" then I would have been interested.
I get where you are coming from, but comments on articles are generally, practically always, not directed at the original poster of the article, posting articles here is more about discussing the article and ideas and their potential merits, and that includes nebulous titles and discerning the article/title validity.
This is quite a bit different than most social forums, but here I think we all kind of have a generalized idea that topics and links are a collective submission and it's through the consensus of the community (that leans predominantly more scientific/data/engineering heavy) to try to more directly refute or find consensus on things being talking about in both our internal circles, and external circles, to bring some new enrichment into our little habitat from far off lands.
if it's being discussed elsewhere, we should absolutely have fun and tear it down if we can/want, or find some areas where it's nice to know is in development and learn more about it. Besides it's fun to roleplay with the potentialities of the universe, even if they're not possible, and if you feel the comment is being dismissive or too sarcastic, use the 'label' feature and mark it as such!
I had some small m hope this was related to space planes and they found a better ultra high altitude engine, but no. Pseudoscience it is
I'm not well-qualified to evaluate this - what makes this pseudoscience? Just the fact that there hasn't been any formalized evidence presented? I know electrostatic fields can move objects so it seems like it could be possible, albeit maybe not practical to move something as massive as a craft.
Without getting into the details of why this is roughly like saying "i found a new color". This should INSTANTLY raise all sorts of flags because such a thing would be monumental. You wouldn't say "oh i made a new drive" you'd say "i've fundamentally changed physics as we understand it"
Not possible. Period. Done. 2nd law of thermodynamics to start (no perpetual energy) and only gets worse from there. Again this is why we have to have our "magic" new force, because you can't explain it otherwise.
I'm assuming you're talking about something like the triangle with current run through it hovering thing (i cannot for the life of me find an example of this basic experiment and instead get a deluge of alien nonsense). That would not require a "new force" nor be "propellant-less". The forces are well documented, and the propellant....gets a bit beyond my rough understanding, but I believe by definition you're using the atmosphere at that point as propellant, and thus aren't going anywhere in space.
Obviously that's before you get into the fun issues of things like weight.
Edit-
Another way to think of these things is the level of claims this guy is making should be akin to developing electricity/the internal combustion engine. With associated level of international scrutiny, secrecy, and investment. IF anything he claimed was remotely true, especially after working at NASA, there's a decent chance he'd either be on some DARPA team and not allowed to say anything about it as he develops the equivalent of the next stealth bomber, or on some corporate team and not allowed to say anything about it as they develop the equivalent of the next "car".
Edit 2-
A further important thing to consider, in relation to the last point of electricity and the engine, these things didn't happen all at once. Someone wasn't burning a candle and then someone else said "i've created hydro electric power and neon lighting!". They are gradual changes. And yet this person claims to have found a completely new force AND developed a patent for a space worthy engine out of no where? With nothing else behind it?
The cited The Debrief article is even more damning. Apparently they have perpetual motion:
The most likely "propellant-less" drive would be one that uses the planet as reaction mass. If you can build a device that uses electrostatic forces to propel away from the earth, even while you're outside the atmosphere, that's actually groundbreaking. It's not necessarily fundamentally new science. But boy does it have engineering implications. It also seems virtually impossible for reasons of, well, engineering implications.
Alternatively, you could conceivably call photon rockets propellant-less. The reaction mass is photons, which means it's trivial to refuel in space via just solar panels. It's functionally propellant-less, but it doesn't mean it violates physics. Though, a photon rocket with enough juice to overcome gravity sounds an awful lot like a weapon of mass destruction.
Even though it's propellant is made up of massless particles, it still has a propellant. Because of E=MC^2, you'd have to have a MASSIVE amount of energy to use those particles to achieve any reasonable amount of thrust, way, way more than solar panels could hope to produce.
You'd be talking about a huge fusion or fission reactor powering it, which is why most electricly powered spaceship drives are hall-effect thrusters instead.
If you're trying to harness solar power to move your spaceship to reasonable speeds, solar sails would be a lot more practical.
Oh, for sure. I don't mean to imply that photon rockets are viable as they exist right now. Their TWR will be low regardless of how you do it, so even solar cells won't make them unviable as of now. I guess what I was trying to convey is some nitpickery about "propellant" vs "reaction mass". Like, in any reasonable definition, are those photons actually propellant? They weren't on board when your rocket is fuelled up (though of course their mass was). Yet they act as reaction mass. You can also "refuel" in some unusual ways compared to regular rocket engines, even Hall effect thrusters. So can you really call them propellant? Hence "propellantless, but photons as reaction mass".
As soon as there was mention of electrostatic forces, I started to think they were about to talk about the electric universe theory, which is pseudoscience.
I was thinking "was the engineer named Werner Von Braun?"
This article wasn't particularly great, but I did find some more details. The credentials behind him are pretty great, and so are the people attached, but we'll see.
via nextbigfuture that did a much better breakdown overall.
Patent can be found here, not that it really means anything these days.
Here is an interview that I haven't watched yet, that might be of interest.
I just looked it over, and while I'd have to take a few days(time I unfortunately don't have) I'm preeeetty skeptical of this. Especially this image, shortening the divergence electric force to divine is not something that most physicists or engineers would do for the obvious reasons.
I'm also not convinced that an assymetrical capacitor would give a net-zero force. It'd be like releasing a wound-up spring mid-air. Sure, there would be potential energy released and that may cause a rotation. But a net-zero force?
And in the original article...
This would imply a loss in symmetry of momentum to me. And apart from general relativity I don't know any situation where that holds up. (and even that is questionable if you consider momentum/energy to be related to spacetime, or the conversion of it. It is a very strong symmetry in the Universe)
Likely he is using this "New Force" gambit as marketing for his new research lab, if you make bold claims, get some internet chatter going, you can hype yourself up to some ambivalent cash-fluid investors.
As I said, he has the credentials to know what he is talking about, so likely he did find something but it isn't as directly useful as he makes it sounds. From one of the transcripts I read he seems sincere and that its very much more of a "this is a possibility in the far future, we just need to research it now to maybe get there*." Possible it's a small cog that could extend other systems, or its scientific research for research sake and could move the needle in some unseen/unknown direction in the future until we get the research for it.
Another possibility is that he wants attention. That may sound out there, but every now and then there is an astronomer(different field but still) who claims that X or Y may be due to aliens in a way that grabs media attention. I hope it's not for everyone's sake but unfortunately I consider that a realistic scenario.
I think for society to prosper you need an alien-dude, a lot of the times if you really look deeper into the ones most loud, they write books, articles, interviews proclaiming "it was aliens" to draw attention to something in the hopes that other people use the space to correct them and teach people new things, or to draw attention to a long-standing problem like "How was X, Y, & Z created using medieval tools? It had to be aliens!" and that draws enough attention to drag people into the frenzy to talk about 'this dudes nuts, they were possibly able to do that using A, B, or C using M, N, O' and now you have a possible solution to continue on, because you hyped the history up with something fantastical to draw the knowledgeable to come out of the woodwork to explain other more realistic, but outside of standard thinking. It's a way of shifting the Overton window a little bit to get some fresh renewed interest into it.
That quoted bit sounds really quite close to the EmDrive. "With this one weird geometry hack, we built a shape that produces a net force in a lab. We think this might be the next spacecraft drive." - until it cleanly reproduces in other labs, I don't buy it.
On the topic of reproducibility, anyone remember that high-temperature super conductor craze? Yeah, me neither. Not sure why I brought it up.... /s
If you mean with the Korean students - tbf, I'd say that that was partially due to the media. And IIRC some of the students didn't want to publish it either due to well, first wanting to test it more thoroughly. I hope their careers weren't affected too much. :\
Not to say that there isn't a whole lot of bogus claims for super conductors... It's basically a market of it's own.
The EM drive has been independent tested a couple of times. And noone has been able to definitely prove a force greater than the margin of experimental error (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EmDrive).
I remember when I first heard about this, I was extremely sceptical, and at the same time really excited. If the claims were true, it would have been truly revolutionary.
I don't think this is an EmDrive, unless I'm badly misreading the article. The article talks about the EmDrive a lot, as an example of a claimed propellant-less drive that turned out to be "bunk" but I don't think this is the same thing, although I think it's fair to say that it faces a lot of the same problems as far as needing to be reproduced.
The guy behind it claims that his "New Force" explains the EmDrive, just check out the article on TheDebrief as cited in OP.
Hmm, thanks. The Popular Mechanics article didn't make that clear at all.
The obvious question about this is "where's the patent?" Given that it doesn't seem to exist, I'm guessing the drive doesn't either.
There is a patent (filed in 2019). However, the mere existence of a patent proves little, and the particular physics justification does not strike me as especially rigorous (but I'm not planning to read it carefully). Having a student debunk the proposal would probably make for a fun homework assignment for someone taking graduate E&M, but that won't be me because I'm hoping to never crack open Jackson again.
Pretty short read so I'm not going to post a summary. Instead some food for thought: My education in physics is very limited, so I can't really evaluate the likelihood of any of this technology. One thing I wonder is that the focus is primarily about escaping Earth's gravity well - but how would electrostatic forces work in space? Would it be easier to generate the proper force or would it be more difficult?
Escaping Earth's gravity well requires a huge amount of energy. xkcd had a comic a while back that has a good visualization. If you can do that without running into the tyranny of the rocket equation, you're basically free to explore the solar system.
just a bit over 15 years ago, released on December 28th, 2009
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