What is Digg?83 Comments
- msaleem, on 10/12/2007, -1/+17Woops sorry i submitted the same story with a different caption and different heading. Digging yours now.
"The MLT is similar to the "impulse engines" used by the starships in the "Star Trek" television series and movies, although on a much smaller scale. At some point, the MLT might be able to take things further and send space travelers across the universe at something approaching warp speed, but that's way out in the distance." - TheThirdWheel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13With the whole equal but opposite reaction thing....wouldn't something have to blow out the tailpipe? Or is this just way beyond me?
- PaulOwen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11Here's a video of a smokeless rocket in Japan:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6943201001782160188 - Silencer7, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10Actually, I'm going through the PDF paper from his website, and it makes a lot of sense. You all know that energy is related to mass, so by charging these capacitors he does slightly increase their mass. From the paper:
"To visualize how this works, imagine a child on a skateboard with a paddle-ball whose mass
can be made to fluctuate periodically. The child hits the ball when it is slightly more massive than
normal, and the elastic cord returns the ball to him when the ball is slightly less massive than normal.
...Since the inertial reaction force experienced by the child is slightly greater when he hits
the ball than when the cord returns it to him, he will experience a net stationary force."
...there's a lot more, but seriously, read the paper, it's neat. http://chaos.fullerton.edu/~jimw/staif2000.pdf - benhocking, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6It sounds like it's pushing against a magnetic field. So, it's probably indirectly pushing against the Earth and/or the Sun. Well, assuming that it's actually legit, which is a pretty big assumption.
- anthonares, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Ouch, American Antigravity is not exactly the most reputable source for physics phenomena. That makes this story look pretty badly researched, doesn't it?
- totalnet, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5At least the Japanese did better than the Mythbusters.
- anthonares, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Not to say that the research is not reputable, but it's being conducted by a history professor. Perhaps that suggests there's something not altogether right with this whole concept. Why wouldn't engineers or scientists be examining the idea?
- MrUnderbridge, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I believe it's still BS. This is like one of those machines that claims to violate the second law, the Devil's in the details and that's where they break down. Here, it's violating conservation of momentum in a closed system. What he's left out (at a minimum) is the infinitesimal momentum change in moving electrons from one component to another to charge the caps.
This won't get around Newton's laws, unless there's something against which this thing is "pushing" that wasn't evident from the pathetic detail in the article. - Nighthawke, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Impulse Drive reaction mass is hot plasma from either tapping the MAR/C system, or using agumented fusion reactors dedicated to providing sublight propulsion.
NCC-1701A through C used taps on their warp cores to supply sublight thrust. The Galaxy Class used daisy-chained fusion plants with subspace "afterburners" to provide extra oomph. - Silencer7, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Clicking the link of his name in the article shows that he's an adjunct professor of physics, with an AB and MS in physics to his credit. It did sound odd though...they must have some awesome interdisciplinary programs.
- willcode4beer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3How the hell do you "change the mass" of an object anyways?
With energy
E=mc2
Problem is, it takes a hellova-lota (thats a technical term) energy to make a little bit of mass.
I'd still like to get a better understanding of how the mass is changed with a capacitor. I can digg adding mass by moving electrons into it but, for a space craft you'd just be moving electrons from one part to another. I think an article of this nature should be more than a couple of paragraphs. - butcher, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3BTW, the coolest demonstration of this I've seen yet was when a guy (last name 'Saviour') used balloons to compensate for the weight of the batteries, then used infra-red remote control to change direction of 'lifters' that were used as propulsion.
http://jnaudin.free.fr/html/savrclft.htm
Also, see the first 'electronaut', a mouse named Orville, who 'flew' in one of these devices.
http://jlnlabs.imars.com/lifters/orville/indexfr.htm
And the 100 gram payload, which was a pretty big achievement (considering the infancy of this tech).
http://jlnlabs.imars.com/lifters/100gwin/index.htm - kevinmotel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3we should phase out rockets and dedicate research to a space elevator. the initial cost is large, but it's cheaper in the long run
- benhocking, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3No, I mean a magnetic field. Moving a charged particle creates a magnetic field (warning: this is a simplified explanation) which can then push against the Earth's magnetic field. The Earth's magnetic field is much stronger than the Sun's, so noon won't make much difference - just like it's not much easier to throw a rock straight up at noon than it is at midnight (although this IS due to gravity and not the magnetic field). People have talked about similar ideas before. Generating an electric current to push a satellite into a higher orbit - or generating current from the magnetic field resulting in lowering the satellite into a lower orbit.
- nafisto, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Recent Publications by James Woodward (http://chaos.fullerton.edu/~jimw/Woodward-3.html):
"Tweaking Flux Capacitors," Proc. Space Technology Applications International Forum [STAIF] 2005.
"Flux Capacitors and the Origin of Inertia," Foundations of Physics 34, 1475-1514 (2004).
I wonder if he fell off the toilet and hit his head to come up with these papers. - Otto, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Oh Jebus.... not lifters again!
Lifters are primitive ion propulsion devices that rely on charging the air around them. The thing generates a small breeze from the motion of the ions through the air, which yes, is more than enough to lift it up. The breeze you feel doesn't seem like enough because it is dispersed and not coming from anywhere obvious, but it's made up of charged air particles and the lifting action comes from the charge. Instead of blocking the breeze with cardboard (which wouldn't work anyway because by the time you feel the breeze below the thing, the thrust has already been given to the device), try putting it in a vaccum next time. Notice that it don't work without air around it.
The wire around the top charges the air near it. The charged air rushes down towards the foil, which is oppositely charged. In the process, the foil is pulled up towards the charged air. Now, if the air hit the foil, there'd be no net gain. But since the thing is not enclosed, most of the charged air actually misses the foil and thus provides thrust to the thing as a whole (by the act of pulling the foil up towards the charged air above it).
Simple physics, easily explained and proven. No magic behind it whatsoever. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5doesnt make much sense, I think the most important line is the one below
"The issue now is getting the funding together to drive further research, "
mass and energy being related is nothing new, using a capacitor to adjust the mass by a significant amount is new to me and then he doesnt really say what happens to the mass. If he is converting it all to energy, screw rockets there are a million uses for this, if he isnt converting it to energy he has byproducts..
when i read the title i figured he got the particles in the smoke to clump enough to be filtered but otherwise this makes zero real sence and am so sick of the news not checking peoples credencials before labeling them a scienctist. - Silencer7, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Well...Mach's principle is new to me, but it goes a long way to explain what inertia actually is.
"Mach's principle [first stated by George Berkeley nearly 200 years before Mach] is the assertion that the inertial reaction forces experienced by massive objects, when they are accelerated by external forces, are generated by the action of chiefly the most distant matter in the cosmos. Since the only known force with universal coupling to mass is gravity, it is natural to assume that, if the principle is correct, the gravitational interaction is the source of inertial reaction forces. This is in fact true in general relativity theory for the class of cosmological models thought to encompass our reality. About a decade ago, one of us realized that if inertial reaction forces are gravitational, as suggested by Mach's principle, and special relativity theory applies locally (as it does in general relativity theory), then there is reason to expect that when massive objects are accelerated, they should experience transient variations in their restmasses (Woodward, 1990)." - kenahoo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4"Woodward used capacitors to change the mass of an object and then applied a current to that mass."
Say whut? - Urusai, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Finally, we get some concrete results from reverse-engineering the Roswell spacecraft.
- Kitsune818, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I take it you don't read French.. (and it's not like I can... at least not very well) :) They did 250g with the "Maximus II"
- veloscaper, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@PaulOwen
that was awesome. way better than Mythbusters. - SteveMitchell, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2That's a confirm on that one.
I built a 'lifter' base off of Naudin's plans and it worked just fine after I made some adjustments to the wire. Basically it's a triangle shaped balsa wood thing surrounded by a ring of Aluminum foil and a thin wire forming an 'asymmetric capacitor'. You tether the three corners to a table using fishing line and dump 30Kv into the lifter straight from a fly-back coil of an old monitor. It will suddenly float in the air while held by the 3 fishing lines to keep the 30Kv tinfoil of death away from you.
When I did it I was with my engineering grad coworkers so of course we were trying all sorts of things to explain it. You could feel a slight breeze blowing down like a gentle whisper but not nearly the mag to explain it on wind currents. Tapping it with a wooden stick felt like tapping a helium balloon, and shoving a piece of cardboard inside the triangle using a stick to block air had no effect. When the lights were out you could see a pretty good corona flowing straight from the wire to the foil and the place wreaked of ozone. - Kitsune818, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@Otto: That makes sense.. like those "ionic air filters" at Brookstone that move air without fans.
- willcode4beer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2no, its not.
An ion engine expels ions. This expels nothing. - benhocking, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2It would probably fail to launch a rocket - but you could use it to adjust the orbit of a satellite. The tethered satellite experiment in 1996 (http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast15oct96_1.htm ) gave some ideas about what was possible, ProSEDS (http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast15oct98_1.htm ), in fact, was designed to do just that. Unfortunately, it was canceled. Still, it shows promise. (Using electric currents to generate thrust against the magnetic field to alter an existing orbit - not launching a rocket with this rather weak force.)
- JasonPrini, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2They use massive lasers that use huge amounts of electricty, to drive a very very light spinning top up 20 meters.... A toy rocket kit gets higher, is heavier, way cheaper and simpler.
- h4lofourt33n, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I'm all for the environment part of this, but it won't look nearly as cool.
- LordVoldemort, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3"MLTs are based on Mach's principle"
Nothing like a Mutton Lettuce and Tomato sandwich. - shaherazad, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Wrong.
If you know anything about magnetic fields, the science isn't that complicated.
"Here, it's violating conservation of momentum in a closed system."
As long as your closed system is the engine and the earth, momentum is conserved. Engine gets pushed one way, Earth the other. - carve, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Propulsion without a reaction mass is the 'holy grail' of space propulsion. NASA actually has a small program going that looks for "breakthrough" physics such as this. A warp drive, where space is expanded behind the craft and shrunk in front of it, would be an example of such a concept.
This, however, doesn't make much sense to me. Sure- you can change the mass of a capacitor. Electrons have a very small mass, so when you charge a capacitor it's mass goes up a little bit. If you move a charge capacitor towards the back of your engine, discharge it, and then move it to the front you'd theoretically generate a VERY small thrust. However, where do the electrons come from, and where do they go? If they are somehow discharged into space, then you still have a reaction mass. If they go back to the front of the engine to recharge the capacitor again, then you have just as many electrons moving forward as you have moving backwards, and thus have no net thrust. Perhaps I'm not understanding the concept properly, but if that is what it is supposed to do it won't work. - Kitsune818, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Intriguing.. Does the effect weaken as the distance between the two "plates" increases? Just wondering if the coronal discharge is somehow heating the air surrounding the "lifter".
- willcode4beer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Kitsune818
The only method I know of where energy is converted into mass, in practice, happens in particle acelerators (nothing at all to do with the article).
In these experiments, particles are smashed together at very high speed and new particles form. In this case, the energy comes from the momentum of the particles.
There may be other methods, but, I'm not aware of any. - willcode4beer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Kitsune818, yes. Its exactly like that. Only reduce the mass and crank up the voltage.
Its why nobody can make a lifter work in a vacuum. - willcode4beer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2creds
http://chaos.fullerton.edu/Woodward.html
His name had a link on it - Crymsen, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Correction: It runs on dreams, and magical pixie dust.
- dhughes, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Two things that seem a bit fishy to me:
"The MLT is similar to the "impulse engines" used by the starships in the "Star Trek" television series and movies..." They can't be similar because "impulse engines" don't exist. I doubt that even the writers of the show could describe how they work in a believable way other than using made up science babble.
Also "Woodward used capacitors to change the mass of an object " He changed the mass of an object, did he invent anti-gravity? Just that sentence alone seems like an enormous achievement!
It all sounds great and he has the credentials but that doesn't mean he can't be wrong.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3lol unless he discoveren new physics or the reporter didnt quote him properly but everything said in the article is bunk.
- CorpT, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Actually, it runs on my own sense of self-satisfication.
- dawgma, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Wait a minute, wait a minute..
I thought Mach's principle was refuted by the theory of relativity? If you imagined empty space occupied by one object, then Mach's prinicple says you cannot determine if the object is spinning because there are no other objects to refer it to. But then relativity came along and said you can refer the object to space itself (since it is warped and changes because of the object).
And so it turned out you didn't have to explain certain types of motion by referencing objects to the most distant stars etc... but just by considering space as a reference.
So if the basis of Mach's prinicple was refuted decades ago.. how is it being used in a practicle application? The article leaves off at an elementary explanation of the principle and doesn't explain how it is being applied... - Nadcock, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1where the mutton is nice and lean? Yeah, it came to mind
- krakelohm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Nighthawke, I think you just surpassed The Star Wars Kid, congrats.
- willcode4beer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1he doesn't work for american-anitgravity.
The aa article was written by a Paul March. Those guys are pretty famous for taking materials out of context. - (hr15, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This article lost me at "James Woodward, a HISTORY professor at California State University in Fullerton, presented his research..."
Why is the history professor running a Star Trek warp drive lab?
Even more disturbing was the factual reference to the engines used in Star Trek. - heymark, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I'm no expert, but isn't the magnetic field of the Earth very small? it's well below 1 Tesla at the Earths surface. If i am correct in that assumption, then that proposition would fail.
- Otto, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Steve: It's been done in vacuums. They don't work when the pressure drops too low. Quick google search gives me this: http://www.blazelabs.com/l-vacuum.asp
Also, they take into account some other forces I had not considered:
-The charged air molecules repel the wire upwards
-When the charged air impacts the non-charged air, there's a momentum transfer, and then if the charged air hits the aluminum, the momentum it has is less than the force it gave to the lifter in the first place (since the non-charged air gained all that momentum)
And so on. - aposter, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1So, CorpT, you're claiming you've invented a smug engine? Damn, the universe is saved. With some of the smug bastards I know we could power them for eons.
- neurobox, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I agree that the article was grossly inadequate. To clarify, this isn't about ion propulsion, warp drive, antigravity (necessarily), or even magnetism. I'ts about tipping the balance of action/reaction by messing with the mass (and therefore inertia) of a vibrating load via E=mc^2. The weight of the electrons need not be the only thing affecting the charged mass.
I like the section at the end of the PDF, titled "What Does This All Mean?"
"Well, these devices (as well as their predecessors) certainly move when activated. And, as the check protocols just discussed reveal, their motion is the result of an internally generated force that has the distinctive signature of the Machian propulsive effect predicted by theory. Other small forces are present and identifiable too, but they do not mask the effect sought, small though it may be. As far as rapid spacetime transport is concerned, however, the operative word in the previous sentence, we note, is small. Were these effects orders of magnitude larger, it would be almost trivial to implement them in rapid spacetime transport schemes. So, granting the presence of a genuine effect, the problem becomes how to make the effects larger. Much larger. In this connection it is worth noting that the naive calculation of the size of Machian mass fluctuations leads to effects that are orders of magnitude larger than those seen in this and earlier experiments. In turn, this suggests that one examine the conditions that presumably suppress the large effects of the naive calculation for ways to make these effects larger. Such schemes, however, exceed the scope of this paper. But if they can be found, the sky's the limit." - Moses, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Thank you.
Seriously, people. THINK. Don't just read the article and believe it because it was posted on the internet and made it to digg. This is such a load of BS, it's actually almost funny. However, it's turning out to be more scary because so many people are falling for it.
I'd say something about stupid 'Trek fans simply wanted to believe because "it'd be like Star Trek was coming true," but I'm a Star Trek fan. Which makes the people who believe this all the more scary.
I'm so scared, I may never sleep again. -
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