/sci/ - Science & Math

old

b) media sensationalism

>>6681055
The latter.

>>6681055
Right now we have
a) anomalous measurements of an at first glance unaccounted force on the order of micronewtons (in the end it could be attributed to known forces that were underestimated due to computing errors or imperfections in the experiments)
b) machines with wonky theoretical foundations (nobody who built them can actually say why and how they should work as drives)
c) apparent violation of a core principle of physics that was tested and confirmed during numerous different experiments during the history of physics.
d) Eaglelabs, a laboratory known to go for sensationalist publications (like that new warp drive)

>>6681055
Well by now the engine has been proven to work by three different agencies, including NASA. And we've long known that there was a chance that reactionless drives might be possible using wave-particle physics. I'd say it's intriguing, but actually seems legit.

>>6681055
What I do NOT agree with is how a lot of websites took the story and ran with it as "THIS IS THE ENGINE THAT WILL TAKE HUMANS TO MARS" because, well, It's really not. Even if it works, the thrust is minimal, and the drive really only makes sense for precise maneuvers, mostly on satellites.

>>6683657
At its current state, sure. But what if it works AND it scales?

I'm assuming the 'thrust' is the thing vibrating on its test bed.

>>6681055
I don't understand why people say it is impossible. Alcubierre drives can move without gaining momentum. What if this drive uses a similar/unknown GR phenomenon to move through space-time. If they measure thrust by differentiating the observed velocity of the drive, they'll find a non zero value. Doesn't it make sense?

>>6681055
>I know a little bit about physics and quantum mechanics
>I know a little bit about … quantum mechanics
So, like, wave-particle duality and the observer effect?

… because both of those are bullshit. Either you know QM or you don't, buddy.

>>6683897
>wave-particle duality
>bullshit
I'm not OP, btw. But can you tell us why is it bullshit?

>>6685693
It's not. The poster is either a troll or retarded.

>>6685693
it's not.
As the Observer Effect.
Also
>Either you know QM or you don't, buddy.
>I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.
>Richard Feynman, in The Character of Physical Law (1965)

>>6683856
> Alcubierre drives can move without gaining momentum

They only exist on paper.

>>6681055
if it works, it not only violates conservation of momentum, but also conservation of energy.

The control engine which was not supposed to produce thrust, also produced thrust, which means there was likely a problem with the test set up.

This means the NASA people probably misinterpreted(and overhyped) their test results.

>>sensationalism
this is very much the case

If these results turn out be shown to a test error, the guy responsible, Harold White(aka warp drive man) will likely be fired.

>>6685734
I don't think Harold White was responsible for the media shitstorm. The fact that experimental error is likely is made very clear in the abstract.

>>6685753
>The fact that experimental error is likely is made very clear in the abstract.

No it isn't, in fact if you search the paper for the word "error" you get no results.

>>6681055
Friendly tip: ordinary news and media have no fucking clue about science, and prefer hype over scientific accuracy. If you want to know about the engine, go to the NASA website or check a scientific website, rather than relying on the retards at news.com.au (who post horoscopes on their home page and rely on stupid puns and lame movie references to sell their stories).

>>6685734
>violates conservation of energy
So?

>>6685836
>so what if it violates a fundamental conservation principle.

What the hell are you, an engineer?

>>6685836
So it means that it's bullshit.
The same way the FTL neutrinos were bullshit.

Why everyone here has their panties in a bunch over this? Whats wrong with trying new things?

Supposedly, this Cannae drive works like Q thrusters that push off virtual particles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=9M8yht_ofHc#t=1860

>>6686271
The scepticism and hate in these threads isn't really about "trying new things", it's about people who aren't versed in physics latching onto something incredibly speculative and then becoming hostile when anyone points out that it's incredibly speculative and will probably be proven wrong in the future. The scepticism comes from the fact that if this thing works it looks like it's violating a fundamental conservation principle and that the actual paper spends more time discussing possible applications of this drive than it does to pointing out sources of error, so large is this flaw in any experimental paper that it renders the whole paper useless.

>>6683856
>Alcubierre drives can move without gaining momentum.
last time i checked alc drives require exotic materials which don't exist in this universe and aren't made entirely of copper sheets you can pick up at the hardware store

>>6681055
>produces-fuel-out-of-empty-space
>fuel

Could it have something to do with QM?
Like, because of some wanky QM stuff, things like conservation of energy and momentum get fucked?
I know that conservation of these things comes from symmetries and(I'm talking a bit out of my ass here) one of the axioms of quantum mechanics is that symmetries preserve probabilistic stuff in the hilbert spaces involved.
Correct? No? Is there more?
Sorry if I'm spouting bullshit.

>>6686320
>Like, because of some wanky QM stuff, things like conservation of energy and momentum get fucked?

Conservation of energy and momentum still apply at the quantum scale.

>>6686320
>Could it have something to do with QM?
the instant you typed this sentence, you should have stopped and closed your browser

>>6686320
The tentative explanation, like the video in >>6686271 says, is that the pushes off the quantum vacuum that as we know is not empty but filled with particles that pop in and out of existance. An analogy would be a submarine pushing off the ocean around it to move instead of using water as a propellant.

This remains a hypothesis for the moment but I am cautiously optimistic that something will come out of this.

>>6685734
The null drive was not the control... the actual control showed no net thrust.

http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/SCIENCE/Cavity/Cavity.html

tl;dr: The unbalanced wheel is the crustiest of all the perpetual motion machines, and the asymmetric cavity is basically a well disguised unbalanced wheel.

>>6681055
>I know a little bit about physics and quantum mechanics
>/pol/lack

don't kid yourself fucker

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-08/07/10-qs-about-nasa-impossible-drive

Read the fucking paper guys.

http://higgs.rghost.ru/download/57230791/b32888aa94b23d7f580bdeffe49f18dfd8047719/6.2014-4029%5D%20--%20.pdf

Seriously. You all have just read b-class magazines about this shit. They've settled calling it a quantum vacuum plasma thruster, so we have at least a vague idea about what could be going on. At some point, the casimir effect also might have been deemed to defy known physics.

Let's see what we've got:

When the test article was turned 180°, thrust was reversed. Experiment was conducted in a vacuum chamber. The equipment used for measurement was sensible enough to be disturbed by waves of the gulf of mexico 25 km away.

The only difference between the test article and the control article was that it didn't have the radial slots engraved, and still worked (producing less thrust). this only proves that ONE THEORY about how this thing works was wrong, nothing else.

I know this is too good to be true. And we need much more testing. Still don't shoot it down already. If there's even the slightest chance this thing works, we should throw big bundles of money into researching it.

Because 'disruptive' doesn't even describe what this thing could be for mankind.

>>6688733
But that's wrong? The control and the null were the same thing, pic related.

What if it was just nuclear decays from the impure material used to make the device

Or dark matter attraction via gravity

>>6689755
There was an actual control with no power whatsoever, and it gave no thrust. The fact that the null showed thrust challenges the theory behind it, but it doesn't mean it doesn't work.

>>6689742
>producing less thrust
It produced the same. Neither revered test was repeated and the forward numbers were the same,
>this only proves that ONE THEORY about how this thing works was wrong
But we don't have another theory. There is no rigorous theory as to how this would create thrust from some "quantum plasma".

>we should throw big bundles of money into researching it.
Cold Fusion II: The Wrath of Bacon

>>6689783
Well yes, it pretty much does. It indicates that there is some Dean drive effect here.

>>6685720
>(1965)
That was 50 years ago m8, we've solved quantum mechanics now.

>>6689783
>There was an actual control with no power whatsoever

No there wasn't
>The fact that the null showed thrust challenges the theory behind it, but it doesn't mean it doesn't work.

It implies that either the theory is incorrect or that there was some experimental error or confounding variable that wasn't taken into account.

>>6685693
It is bullshit. There is no duality. What we call a "particle" is just a collection of an arbitrary bunch of dimensions of the wave function's hilbert space. There is no "particle that is also a wave", only the wave is actually there. The particle just arises in classical approximation of quantum mechanics. I honestly don't know why people keep bringing up this "duality" when all they're doing is confusing the listener. Just tell them there's a wave function goddamn it or a state vector if you want to be more elegant

>>6685720
LOL. Non physicists detected. Any physics graduate who still hasn't figured out QM in this day and age with the knowledge available in textbooks and from teachers should hand their degree back in. Remember when they said only two people understood the theory of relativity? Well that was a long ass time ago, now there are countless researchers in that field

Also nice appeal to authority
faggot

>>6686338
I haven't watched the video and maybe they have an explanation for this, but isn't the quantum vacuum just virtual particles? If so, they can't get out of the right side of a feynman diagram since they're made of "borrowed" energy, so they can't really come out and do something that would violate the conservation of energy. Just because you rearrange some ideas around doesn't mean you can break the assumptions that these ideas were built upon

>>6689361
goddamn engineers

>>6689904
So what's the physical nature of the wavefunction?

>>6689900
Because people are retarded and because they don't really know.

>>6689851
The null drive was another test... all it controlled for was the presence of slotting. There was an actual control where they applied an identical resistive load, and no thrust was observed.

>>6690219
Unless I've missed something there were only two test articles, the actual thing and the null. No other, if there is please point to it in the article.

>>6690314
D. Systemic Effect Evaluation (using RF Load)
Finally, a 50 ohm RF resistive load was used in place of the test article to verify no significant systemic effects
that would cause apparent or real torsion pendulum displacements. The RF load was energized twice at an amplifier
output power of approximately 28 watts and no significant pendulum arm displacements were observed. Torsion
pendulum calibration displacements (corresponding to approximately 29 micronewtons each) were performed
immediately before and after thrust measurements.

>>6690219
>The null drive was another test... all it controlled for was the presence of slotting.
Which the inventior of this thing said wouldn't work.

>There was an actual control where they applied an identical resistive load, and no thrust was observed.
The paper said 10 uN

>The net force is calculated by accounting for the null force present in the system. Null testing is performed by attaching the RF drive system to a 50 ohm load and running the system at full power. The null force testing indicated that there was an average null force of 9.6 micronewtons present in the as tested configuration. The presence of this null force was a result of the DC power current of 5.6 amps running in the power cable to the RF amplifier from the liquid metal contacts. This current causes the power cable to generate a magnetic field that interacts with the torsion pendulum magnetic damper system.

>>6689900
Hey, dont go away I have a question too!
(Currently studying physics btw)

There are a few things I still dont really get about QM and you just might be able to help me...
I mean: When we measure something, like the Spin of an Electron, doesnt the Wave function collapse and we get indeed a specific Spin (Up or Down) and at this moment the Wavefunction (is no more) ? At least thats what I have bean told. How is there still a Wave function?

>>6690519
cont...

The more basic questing that is bugging me is: What makes a Wavefucntion collapse? I guess in fancy advanced Quantum Interaction Physics, Interactions are described using these Wavefunction (not needing to collapse them), but how does this work?

>>6690523
it's not physically real

>>6690523
>>6690523
different anon here

undergrad degree was physics (no Phd; starting salary < $300,000).

The wavefunction 'collapsing' means, I think, that the wavefunction you measured (that describes a specific particle) is gone and replaced with another wavefunction.

A (presumably drastically) simplified explanation for why a wavefunction necessarily collapses (i.e. is changed) comes from the fact that if you observe something, you necessarily change it.

For example, let's say you're looking at something in your room, for example, a World of Warcraft poster. You are seeing that poster because light is bouncing off it and in to your retina. Light consists of little packets of energy called photons, which have no mass but do have momentum. So in colliding with the World of Warcraft poster, the photons push the poster away from your eye, very slightly, as the photon itself moves towards from your eye. So the information that the photon transmits is relevant to the point on the World of Warcraft poster that the photon hit, at the time it hit it, while the World of Warcraft poster has, since the collision, been pushed away, just very slightly, by the momentum transferred. So what you see is the poster at the time the photon hit it, but not the after-effects of the collision with the photon. In other words, the wavefunction you observed is different to the true wavefunction of that bit of the poster at the time you observe it.

In other words, the wavefunction of that specific part of the World of Warcraft poster has collapsed and the information that your eye receives is not exactly the same as what that specific part of the World of Warcraft poster is doing at the exact moment that your eye receives the information.

Interested if anyone who knows more than me can improve or upgrade this explanation.

>>6685715
>>6685720

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAH

> still believing in the duality myth

>>6690537
please stop using "human looks at XY" to explain "observeration", the concept is abused and misunderstood as it is.
what is usually called "observation" is all interaction between and inside fields, not just somebody looking at something or measuring something.

>>6681055
>/pol/ack here!
why do /pol/tards always need to do this

>>6681191

it's totes possible, it's just going to provide a retardedly small (but still useful) amount of thrust

>muh nanonewtons

>>6690762
They want to announce they are idiots

>>6689361
Ever open a webpage and spend hours browsing the site because literally everything on there shines with intelligence? I am envious of such people's abilities.

Can photons provide thrust (ie, can they impart a force)?

Answer please.

>>6690804
Yes.
While they are massless, they have energy and thus momentum

>>6690807
would this system accelerate, and if not, why?

>>6690820
u wat m8, troll or seriously dumb ?

>>6690826
Seriously dumb. Answer please. At first I thought it's because photon's 'push back' against their source when they are released but that didn't make sense to me.

>>6690836
hold onto your table with one hand.
now try pushing away with your other hand with equal force.
are you moving away ?
same principle.

>>6690844
so when i turn on a light, there's a very very very small force pushing back on me from all the photons going out?

>>6690852
yes.
but the force is so tiny it could be OP's dick.

>>6690820
Yes, but not by an amount we could easily detect, and not by as much as if you turned the light around.

Research was done on "photonic rockets" in the 60's and 70's, somewhere along the line it was worked out that it would take about 300 megawatts of power to generate 1 newton of thrust, and people sort of lost interest at that point.

>>6690854
Okay, I guess I was just confused about how something mass-less can cause mass to accelerate.

>>6690862
in very simple terms,
acceleration is just adding energy.
being massless does not mean energy-less.

>>6690854
#rekt

>>6690862
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_sail

>>6690862
Photons have momentum. You basically have to accept that p=mv is not true outside of high school physics.

>>6691134
>p=mv is not true outside of high school physics

of course it is, just not exclusively

>>6690769
Shpashe and no fuel, just the powerplant. In interplanetary travel that would be supa fast mode.