No, physics. Conservation of Momentum still holds true in Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. All of modern physics holds CoM to be true, all proposed theories for superseding GR/QM hold it to be true, and if it ever turned out not to be true, basically all of our physics would have to be thrown out the window because CoM is a critical component to deriving most of it.
Reactionless drives violate the known laws of physics, full stop.
Correct, the device described in the article is not a Reactionless Drive. So are photon drives, electromagnetic tethers, and every other device that actually works in reality even if it isn't throwing mass out the back door like a traditional rocket. Now it's still up in the air as to whether this device will work, but if it fails it won't be because it tried to violate conservation of momentum.
Basically we were just talking about definitions. A reactionless drive by definition violates conservation of momentum.
That's the whole point. The rotating nanoparticles add momentum to the field that it otherwise wouldn't have via the Lorenz force. It's not 'stealing' momentum from the field in some kind of crazy zero-point energy scam. It's using the field as something to push against.
A ship built using this theory would use nothing in its surrounding environment, and would introduce nothing to that environment, at least as it relates to propulsion.
Yes it would, it would introduce momentum, the only thing that ultimately matters for propulsion.
but this allows you to take mass out of the equation, so you don't have to carry any reaction mass, you only need lots of energy.
You can do the same thing with a photon drive.
I'm not saying this will create a particularly practical engine, though maybe it could. But the theory totally busts Newtonian physics (by busting the "Equal and Opposite" law)
No it doesn't, because it explicitly relies upon Newton's 3rd Law.
Instead of trying to explain the theory incorrectly again, why don't you try re-reading the article so you understand it better?
"Such a drive would use a hypothetical form of thrust that does not require any outside force or net momentum exchange to produce linear motion, and therefore necessarily violates the conservation of momentum, a fundamental principle of all current understandings of physics."
The "reaction" in "reaction drive" is in reference to a Newton's 3rd Law reaction, and that is what a gyro-based system relies on.
Basically there are two categories of propulsion: Reaction drives, which encompass every possible drive that obeys the laws of physics, and Reactionless drives, which don't.
Naw, TFA is talking about distinguishing Alcor and Mizar as distinct stars with the naked eye. It took telescopes to resolve Mizar as the Mizar A and B system.
Personally, I haven't been able to see Alcor/Mizar with the naked eye on a cloudless night far away from cities and I don't need glasses, so maybe the OP just has exceptional vision.
Yes it does. The field is generated from the virtual particles in the vacuum, not from the ship. It is that field that they add momentum to -- the article explicitly mentions doing this -- adding equal and opposite momentum to their ship. They aren't trying to 'drag' the quantum vacuum field along with them. That would be impossible, not a method of propulsion, and violate conservation of momentum. The actual idea, however, does not.
If you can accelerate a ship to near-c with little difficulty, there's not much stopping you from extorting the Earth by threatening to drop the ship (or for that matter, a bunch of tungsten telephone poles traveling at.99c) on them.
A bunch of tungsten telephone poles in orbit is already a weapon deadly enough to extort the Earth -- maybe not by threatening the whole planet with annihilation by a relativistic kill vehicle, but I think threatening rich nations with the equivalent of nuclear bombardment would do the trick. Things in orbit have a lot of potential and kinetic energy without needing fancy propulsion devices.
An EM field can carry momentum, but this allows the momentum to go in only one direction.
If I emit an EM field, it is pushing back against me as it emits (albeit VERY gently). When the EM field hits something, it imparts some or all of that momentum to the object it hits. The conservation of momentum has been maintained, because there are equal and opposite forces.
Right. The EM field carries momentum in one direction, your vessel carries an equal amount in the opposite direction, momentum is conserved and your ship is moving. What's the issue here?
I believe it's the fact that anyone can study a topic. I can study the Bible and not be a high ranking member of a church. Just like I can study scientific journals, peer-reviewed studies, textbooks, etc. and not have a $60,000 piece of paper saying I studied it.
Okay, to be sure that's true. Yet in most cases in the course of studying a topic in sufficient depth, you also earn the blessed piece of paper, and essentially become part of the "clergy" even if you disagree with them. Very few people are actually able to sit down and read textbooks and journals to the point where they are equivalent in knowledge and understanding to a traditional degree. There are, of course, exceptions. The most notable to me being Michael Faraday, who was a peasant in a class-based society and simply had no access to college. He got his education as a book binder, reading the books as he bound them by hand. For that matter Einsten was really only a PHD student when he wrote his paper on Special Relativity, though it's not unusual for a graduate student to contribute to their field to varying extents.
If someone has an argument against facts, then they should have facts to present and be weighed accordingly, regardless of bureaucratic "proof" of study.
Yet that gets to the heart of the issue: Who is doing the weighing, and do they have the qualifications necessary to do so correctly? Forget "bureaucratic proof"; how many of the people questioning the results of climatologists do you think actually have studied the topic well enough to say they are as qualified to analyze the results as those with aforementioned proof?
I mean, any jackass can say they don't believe in the Luminiferous Ether. It took someone like Einstein -- brilliant and educated -- to rigorously show why it was not needed, and how the universe behaved in its absence. He didn't necessarily have to get that education at a university, but it had to come from somewhere other than pure ego, which I think is where most skeptics "education" comes from.
Thanks for the thorough information. How does this throwing off mass thing relate to electric cars? Do electric cars accelerate without loosing mass?
It's not about losing mass necessarily, it's about Newton's 3rd Law / Conservation of Momentum. For something to accelerate forward, something else (the surface of the earth) must accelerate in the opposite direction such that momentum is conserved.
The concept of Conservation of Momentum and rocket propulsion is often explained using the analogy of a boat on the lake with a bunch of rocks in it. If you throw rocks off the back of the boat, conservation of momentum means your boat will be propelled forward. Now, that's a pretty silly way to propel a boat when you can just use a paddle or propeller to push the water backwards and your boat forward.
Rockets in space don't have that luxury. So they pretty much have to carry a bunch of "reaction mass" with them and throw it at high speed out the ass end of the rocket.
This invention, if it pans out, would be more like a propeller for spacecraft, pushed by and pushing against the short-lived particles that spring in and out of existence in vacuum. I have to imagine that the amount of thrust would be miniscule, but not having to carry reaction mass would be a huge advantage.
The maximum number of ways you can arrange 300 things is 300!, or about 3.06 X 10^614. Granted a very large number, but definitely not infinite.
Okay but what if there were 301 pixels, would that be infinite?
And anyway, since pedantry loves company, I'll point out that 300! is the maximum number of orderings of 300 things, not necessarily the maximum number of arrangements. How many arrangements there are depends on what you consider the "rules" for a free-form puzzle like this. Since the pieces do have interlocking teeth I'm going to say that minimally the pieces have to be interlocked (otherwise the possible arrangements truly would be infinite to the extent the universe is), but beyond that does it have to have a specific geometry like 15x20? Does it even have to be rectangular, or can it more resemble a game of dominoes?
I am literally pointing out that if you can't trust the instrument you can't selectively decide what data gets exempted without risking selection bias.
Meaning you literally have no idea how to decide if you can trust an instrument or not, and are literally ignorant of the possibility of an instrument transitioning from a state of trustworthiness to untrustworthiness.
Of all your bad assumptions, the worst is assuming that because you are ignorant of something, that nobody has knowledge.
I am, however, literally not going to even read the rest of your post.
Lucky you, or you might have accidentally learned something about how to properly conduct measurements.
Sorry you took the time to type it, but hopefully your skull thickness will keep you warm on this cold, cold day.
I'm sorry you think deliberate ignorance will protect you from reality. I really wish your world view was true. Sadly, no matter how hard I concentrate, my wishes also do not modify reality.
It was my assumption that calibration was performed on measuring instruments, rather than on data.
Well your assumption is wrong, go figure. The data is how you determine if something is calibrated. If you have data that you know was not calibrated, you reject it. You're literally arguing for including known-bad data. Or, alternatively, throwing out known-good data.
How would one independently verify that the readings were incorrect unless duplicate measurements were taken from the same experimental criteria?
You compare them to multiple other sources of data, duh.
You don't calibrate a scale against itself, that will just give you the same answer within the precision of the device. you calibrate it against measurements from other devices. If your analysis shows that the scale was correctly calibrated for a period of time, and then there was a period where it was not, it is proper to keep the data from when the data was good, and reject the data from when the data was bad.
No matter how much you don't like the good data and love the bad data.:P
I'd prefer to see conclusions drawn upon data that requires less explanation.
Well your assumption that real life should be simple and easy to explain is also wrong, go figure.
Toss one, toss them all.
And toss good data out with bad? What a foolish thing to do. Fortunately real scientists are smarter than that and capable of more nuance than that. I'm sorry that this makes things harder for you to understand. I'm sorry the result is different than what you want it to be. I wish the world could be simple and reinforce all of your comforting assumptions. I wish it could reinforce all my comforting assumptions, and everyone else's too. But that's not reality. Sorry.
I am perfectly qualified, and so is anyone else who is able to think critically, admittedly a shrinking demographic.
You are qualified, as in you have skills which would allow you in the course of time to be able to render a meaningful analysis of the data. But it would be more accurate to say that, due to critical thinking ability, you could become qualified, once you've studied all the relevant fields to a sufficient degree.
Or do you think you can judge the correctness of a statistical analysis without knowing statistics, the relationship between heat and energy without knowing physics, the context of historical data without knowing natural history, the implications of trends without knowing climatology, or even the validity and precision of raw data without understanding the techniques used to acquire it -- and still claim to be a critical thinker?
Or to use a more pure example -- do you think critical thinking alone will allow you to determine the correctness of a mathematical proof, without knowledge or understanding the theorems used in each step?
Critical thinking requires knowledge, it cannot replace it. And just as you wish to use critical thinking to determine whether someone else's conclusions are correct, you should apply critical thinking to yourself and determine if you are equipped to make such a judgment. And if you are honest, then you will come to the conclusion that there are cases where you are not -- at least not without learning more.
By your logic, what right did a (then) non professional scientist like Albert Einstein have, meddling in a respected and obviously 'more-qualified-than-thou' field of professional science?
Actually, by the GP's logic, Albert Einstein's PHD in Physics made him qualified enough to question the established scientific thinking in the field of physics in a rigorous and meaningful way.
And it's absolutely no accident or quirk of fate that it took someone who was well studied in the field to up-end the established thinking, while the 'theories' of gaggles and gaggles of uneducated crackpots claiming to be following in Einstein's footsteps continue to come to naught. Because Einstein, armed with his PHD, understood the existing physics and thus its realistic flaws and limitations. Whereas the crackpot is theorizing from a position of ignorance.
Similarly, there are actual climatologists who take issue with certain studies and more so the strengths of their conclusions. They are useful. Then there are people who are not climatologists and don't understand climatology claiming it's all a huge conspiracy and it can't possibly be true because of the sun, ha ha, those stupid scientists never thought of the sun, or natural climate cycles, yeah, only the true rebels have ever thought of that etc etc.
It's not hard to tell the difference.
after all, only someone trained in, say, Canon Law would be qualified to speak authoritatively on christianity, right?
To the extent that I accept the existence or need of any worldly 'authority' on Christianity (which is to say not much... after all it's ultimately about a personal relationship between you and the Creator), then absolutely yes. Because if you haven't studied the Bible and Theology beyond attending church on Sunday, then you sure as fuck aren't an authority on either.
I mean, what are you trying to say? That you can be an 'authority' on something without having studied it? That only accepting people who actually know things about the subject at hand as authorities is elitist, or equivalent to Religious Orthodoxy?
Einstein is a very bad example for that point of view!
Slashdot Mirror
Which makes me wonder if you'd end up with a particle beam to "react against" as a result.
Yeah, pretty much.
No, physics. Conservation of Momentum still holds true in Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. All of modern physics holds CoM to be true, all proposed theories for superseding GR/QM hold it to be true, and if it ever turned out not to be true, basically all of our physics would have to be thrown out the window because CoM is a critical component to deriving most of it.
Reactionless drives violate the known laws of physics, full stop.
Correct, the device described in the article is not a Reactionless Drive. So are photon drives, electromagnetic tethers, and every other device that actually works in reality even if it isn't throwing mass out the back door like a traditional rocket. Now it's still up in the air as to whether this device will work, but if it fails it won't be because it tried to violate conservation of momentum.
Basically we were just talking about definitions. A reactionless drive by definition violates conservation of momentum.
You could have flavors like Lime Quark and Strange Berry, put the stand up outside the Hadron Collider.
Those sound great, but I'd be very afraid of the flavor Bottom Punch.
Yes (though probably not noticeably as earth has a LOT of angular momentum), but then as soon as they stopped all that momentum would be added back.
Now if you started firing big rocks out of huge cannons at escape velocity, on the other hand...
He hasn't been flexible since the 80s (overdosed on Richard Simmons I guess).
Especially when the same posts in a GW article would have been made with no irony at all.
Just fyi, she's being subtly sarcastic in parodying the arguments of the anti-AGW crowd.
(sorry for ruining the joke)
That's the whole point. The rotating nanoparticles add momentum to the field that it otherwise wouldn't have via the Lorenz force. It's not 'stealing' momentum from the field in some kind of crazy zero-point energy scam. It's using the field as something to push against.
A ship built using this theory would use nothing in its surrounding environment, and would introduce nothing to that environment, at least as it relates to propulsion.
Yes it would, it would introduce momentum, the only thing that ultimately matters for propulsion.
but this allows you to take mass out of the equation, so you don't have to carry any reaction mass, you only need lots of energy.
You can do the same thing with a photon drive.
I'm not saying this will create a particularly practical engine, though maybe it could. But the theory totally busts Newtonian physics (by busting the "Equal and Opposite" law)
No it doesn't, because it explicitly relies upon Newton's 3rd Law.
Instead of trying to explain the theory incorrectly again, why don't you try re-reading the article so you understand it better?
Keep reading the wiki article.
"Such a drive would use a hypothetical form of thrust that does not require any outside force or net momentum exchange to produce linear motion, and therefore necessarily violates the conservation of momentum, a fundamental principle of all current understandings of physics."
The "reaction" in "reaction drive" is in reference to a Newton's 3rd Law reaction, and that is what a gyro-based system relies on.
Basically there are two categories of propulsion: Reaction drives, which encompass every possible drive that obeys the laws of physics, and Reactionless drives, which don't.
Quite the opposite, in fact. The article explicitly states that it would be adding momentum to the ambient EM field.
It's possible the idea won't work, but as given it definitely does not violate conservation of momentum.
Naw, TFA is talking about distinguishing Alcor and Mizar as distinct stars with the naked eye. It took telescopes to resolve Mizar as the Mizar A and B system.
Personally, I haven't been able to see Alcor/Mizar with the naked eye on a cloudless night far away from cities and I don't need glasses, so maybe the OP just has exceptional vision.
Yes it does. The field is generated from the virtual particles in the vacuum, not from the ship. It is that field that they add momentum to -- the article explicitly mentions doing this -- adding equal and opposite momentum to their ship. They aren't trying to 'drag' the quantum vacuum field along with them. That would be impossible, not a method of propulsion, and violate conservation of momentum. The actual idea, however, does not.
If you can accelerate a ship to near-c with little difficulty, there's not much stopping you from extorting the Earth by threatening to drop the ship (or for that matter, a bunch of tungsten telephone poles traveling at .99c) on them.
A bunch of tungsten telephone poles in orbit is already a weapon deadly enough to extort the Earth -- maybe not by threatening the whole planet with annihilation by a relativistic kill vehicle, but I think threatening rich nations with the equivalent of nuclear bombardment would do the trick. Things in orbit have a lot of potential and kinetic energy without needing fancy propulsion devices.
An EM field can carry momentum, but this allows the momentum to go in only one direction.
If I emit an EM field, it is pushing back against me as it emits (albeit VERY gently). When the EM field hits something, it imparts some or all of that momentum to the object it hits. The conservation of momentum has been maintained, because there are equal and opposite forces.
Right. The EM field carries momentum in one direction, your vessel carries an equal amount in the opposite direction, momentum is conserved and your ship is moving. What's the issue here?
I believe it's the fact that anyone can study a topic. I can study the Bible and not be a high ranking member of a church. Just like I can study scientific journals, peer-reviewed studies, textbooks, etc. and not have a $60,000 piece of paper saying I studied it.
Okay, to be sure that's true. Yet in most cases in the course of studying a topic in sufficient depth, you also earn the blessed piece of paper, and essentially become part of the "clergy" even if you disagree with them. Very few people are actually able to sit down and read textbooks and journals to the point where they are equivalent in knowledge and understanding to a traditional degree. There are, of course, exceptions. The most notable to me being Michael Faraday, who was a peasant in a class-based society and simply had no access to college. He got his education as a book binder, reading the books as he bound them by hand. For that matter Einsten was really only a PHD student when he wrote his paper on Special Relativity, though it's not unusual for a graduate student to contribute to their field to varying extents.
If someone has an argument against facts, then they should have facts to present and be weighed accordingly, regardless of bureaucratic "proof" of study.
Yet that gets to the heart of the issue: Who is doing the weighing, and do they have the qualifications necessary to do so correctly? Forget "bureaucratic proof"; how many of the people questioning the results of climatologists do you think actually have studied the topic well enough to say they are as qualified to analyze the results as those with aforementioned proof?
I mean, any jackass can say they don't believe in the Luminiferous Ether. It took someone like Einstein -- brilliant and educated -- to rigorously show why it was not needed, and how the universe behaved in its absence. He didn't necessarily have to get that education at a university, but it had to come from somewhere other than pure ego, which I think is where most skeptics "education" comes from.
The issue with the theory is that it violates the Newtonian rule of conservation of momentum.
No it doesn't. As Maxwell figured out long ago, EM field can carry momentum.
Thanks for the thorough information. How does this throwing off mass thing relate to electric cars? Do electric cars accelerate without loosing mass?
It's not about losing mass necessarily, it's about Newton's 3rd Law / Conservation of Momentum. For something to accelerate forward, something else (the surface of the earth) must accelerate in the opposite direction such that momentum is conserved.
The concept of Conservation of Momentum and rocket propulsion is often explained using the analogy of a boat on the lake with a bunch of rocks in it. If you throw rocks off the back of the boat, conservation of momentum means your boat will be propelled forward. Now, that's a pretty silly way to propel a boat when you can just use a paddle or propeller to push the water backwards and your boat forward.
Rockets in space don't have that luxury. So they pretty much have to carry a bunch of "reaction mass" with them and throw it at high speed out the ass end of the rocket.
This invention, if it pans out, would be more like a propeller for spacecraft, pushed by and pushing against the short-lived particles that spring in and out of existence in vacuum. I have to imagine that the amount of thrust would be miniscule, but not having to carry reaction mass would be a huge advantage.
Query: What do four pill bugs and a millipede marching in formation have to do with a middle finger?
The maximum number of ways you can arrange 300 things is 300!, or about 3.06 X 10^614. Granted a very large number, but definitely not infinite.
Okay but what if there were 301 pixels, would that be infinite?
And anyway, since pedantry loves company, I'll point out that 300! is the maximum number of orderings of 300 things, not necessarily the maximum number of arrangements. How many arrangements there are depends on what you consider the "rules" for a free-form puzzle like this. Since the pieces do have interlocking teeth I'm going to say that minimally the pieces have to be interlocked (otherwise the possible arrangements truly would be infinite to the extent the universe is), but beyond that does it have to have a specific geometry like 15x20? Does it even have to be rectangular, or can it more resemble a game of dominoes?
I literally am not.
"Toss one, toss them all."
I am literally pointing out that if you can't trust the instrument you can't selectively decide what data gets exempted without risking selection bias.
Meaning you literally have no idea how to decide if you can trust an instrument or not, and are literally ignorant of the possibility of an instrument transitioning from a state of trustworthiness to untrustworthiness.
Of all your bad assumptions, the worst is assuming that because you are ignorant of something, that nobody has knowledge.
I am, however, literally not going to even read the rest of your post.
Lucky you, or you might have accidentally learned something about how to properly conduct measurements.
Sorry you took the time to type it, but hopefully your skull thickness will keep you warm on this cold, cold day.
I'm sorry you think deliberate ignorance will protect you from reality. I really wish your world view was true. Sadly, no matter how hard I concentrate, my wishes also do not modify reality.
It was my assumption that calibration was performed on measuring instruments, rather than on data.
Well your assumption is wrong, go figure. The data is how you determine if something is calibrated. If you have data that you know was not calibrated, you reject it. You're literally arguing for including known-bad data. Or, alternatively, throwing out known-good data.
How would one independently verify that the readings were incorrect unless duplicate measurements were taken from the same experimental criteria?
You compare them to multiple other sources of data, duh.
You don't calibrate a scale against itself, that will just give you the same answer within the precision of the device. you calibrate it against measurements from other devices. If your analysis shows that the scale was correctly calibrated for a period of time, and then there was a period where it was not, it is proper to keep the data from when the data was good, and reject the data from when the data was bad.
No matter how much you don't like the good data and love the bad data. :P
I'd prefer to see conclusions drawn upon data that requires less explanation.
Well your assumption that real life should be simple and easy to explain is also wrong, go figure.
Toss one, toss them all.
And toss good data out with bad? What a foolish thing to do. Fortunately real scientists are smarter than that and capable of more nuance than that. I'm sorry that this makes things harder for you to understand. I'm sorry the result is different than what you want it to be. I wish the world could be simple and reinforce all of your comforting assumptions. I wish it could reinforce all my comforting assumptions, and everyone else's too. But that's not reality. Sorry.
I am perfectly qualified, and so is anyone else who is able to think critically, admittedly a shrinking demographic.
You are qualified, as in you have skills which would allow you in the course of time to be able to render a meaningful analysis of the data. But it would be more accurate to say that, due to critical thinking ability, you could become qualified, once you've studied all the relevant fields to a sufficient degree.
Or do you think you can judge the correctness of a statistical analysis without knowing statistics, the relationship between heat and energy without knowing physics, the context of historical data without knowing natural history, the implications of trends without knowing climatology, or even the validity and precision of raw data without understanding the techniques used to acquire it -- and still claim to be a critical thinker?
Or to use a more pure example -- do you think critical thinking alone will allow you to determine the correctness of a mathematical proof, without knowledge or understanding the theorems used in each step?
Critical thinking requires knowledge, it cannot replace it. And just as you wish to use critical thinking to determine whether someone else's conclusions are correct, you should apply critical thinking to yourself and determine if you are equipped to make such a judgment. And if you are honest, then you will come to the conclusion that there are cases where you are not -- at least not without learning more.
By your logic, what right did a (then) non professional scientist like Albert Einstein have, meddling in a respected and obviously 'more-qualified-than-thou' field of professional science?
Actually, by the GP's logic, Albert Einstein's PHD in Physics made him qualified enough to question the established scientific thinking in the field of physics in a rigorous and meaningful way.
And it's absolutely no accident or quirk of fate that it took someone who was well studied in the field to up-end the established thinking, while the 'theories' of gaggles and gaggles of uneducated crackpots claiming to be following in Einstein's footsteps continue to come to naught. Because Einstein, armed with his PHD, understood the existing physics and thus its realistic flaws and limitations. Whereas the crackpot is theorizing from a position of ignorance.
Similarly, there are actual climatologists who take issue with certain studies and more so the strengths of their conclusions. They are useful. Then there are people who are not climatologists and don't understand climatology claiming it's all a huge conspiracy and it can't possibly be true because of the sun, ha ha, those stupid scientists never thought of the sun, or natural climate cycles, yeah, only the true rebels have ever thought of that etc etc.
It's not hard to tell the difference.
after all, only someone trained in, say, Canon Law would be qualified to speak authoritatively on christianity, right?
To the extent that I accept the existence or need of any worldly 'authority' on Christianity (which is to say not much... after all it's ultimately about a personal relationship between you and the Creator), then absolutely yes. Because if you haven't studied the Bible and Theology beyond attending church on Sunday, then you sure as fuck aren't an authority on either.
I mean, what are you trying to say? That you can be an 'authority' on something without having studied it? That only accepting people who actually know things about the subject at hand as authorities is elitist, or equivalent to Religious Orthodoxy?
Einstein is a very bad example for that point of view!