I've suggested (& published in 21 journal papers) a new theory called quantised inertia (or MiHsC) that assumes that inertia is caused by horizons damping quantum fields. It predicts galaxy rotation & lab thrusts without any dark stuff or adjustment. My University webpage is here, I've written a book called Physics from the Edge and I'm on twitter as @memcculloch. Most of my content is at patreon now: here

Sunday 23 January 2022

Learning from Experiments

It's a tricky thing taking a cosmological theory (QI) and applying it to the lab, applied cosmology, because although I am sure of QI from a theoretical and astrophysical point of view because it predicts galaxies and wide binaries in a simple and specific way, its behaviour in the lab is more subject to detail.

That was the reason I received my funds, to see if it could be done. The data from the project has partly changed my mind about solid state details, but I have not changed the fundamental QI theory.

I had originally thought that the best way to get thrust from QI was to use light or microwaves. Light is clean. The photons will see Unruh waves which will be damped by metal structures asymmetrically and the structures will move toward the damped regions. It turned out that QI thrusters based on light alone did not perform well (Tajmar, 2021) and yet QI thrusters that are based on electrons did (the capacitor approach of Becker and Bhatt, 2019). I have thought a lot about this over Christmas, and going back to the QI equations there is an explanation for this in that light, is well, light (it has very little mass), and it does not stick around in cavities for long so the mass-energy you can focus is low, whereas electrons have much lower speed and more mass, but still high accelerations and so the mass-energy you can focus is much higher. Thus thrusters based on electrons are 1000 times more effective and QI predicts them perfectly (see McCulloch 2021). Look at Eq. 2 in this paper. The problem was caused by me earlier assuming that v=c, not so for electrons! When you use the correct speed, you get this plot:


The graph shows a comparison between QI predictions (x axis) and the various experimental thrusts (y axis) from Shawyer, Tajmar, Madrid and Moddel. QI still predicts the emdrive  (top right), which may now not be due to the Unruh waves from the microwaves but from the Unruh waves seen by electrons accelerated by the microwaves in the metal walls, if you make a resonance. This makes no difference to QI mathematically, but it is a different physical interpretation. It accounts for the effectively zero thrusts seen by Tajmar's team for the laser cavities (bottom left) and the tiny but confirmed force seen in Moddel's photoinjector. It implies that the positive Spanish result was an artefact (middle-left) (unless the electrons in glass were the accelerand) and QI predicts the capacitor results perfectly (top right): results now seen in two labs.

It would have been nice if I could have said this years ago, of course, but QI has been since 2005 a learning experience and I am doing the best I can. For example, my first attempt at galaxy rotation in 2006 did not work because I assumed the only accelerations were rotational. I later learned there are other accelerations, and with more detail - better prediction. Over all this time I have not needed to change the QI theory or the maths, but I have changed the detailed understanding of what is going on. I am not adding arbitrary factors either because the behaviour of stars or electrons are known quantities.

QI has not been falsified. In systems where it is the only factor present, such as galaxies or wide binaries, it performs perfectly. In lab applications, my lack of awareness of physical or engineering details has been a problem, but I am willing to be wrong and therefore to learn.

References

Bhatt, A.S and F.M. Becker, 2019. Electrostatic accelerated electrons within symmetric capacitors during field emission condition events exert bidirectional propellant-less thrust. https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.04368

Neunzig, O., M. Weikert and M. Tajmar, 2021. Thrust measurements of microwave-, superconducting and laser type emdrives. Link 72nd IAC, Dubai.

McCulloch, M.E., 2021. Thrust from Symmetric Capacitors using Quantised Inertia. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/353481953_Thrust_from_Symmetric_Capacitors_using_Quantised_Inertia

38 comments:

Unknown said...

just a note that I've been seeing a lot of articles on quantum gravity showing up recently.

Mark In Mayenne said...

Great stuff

Simon Derricutt said...

Mike - QI is basically a new way of looking at the way the universe works, so it's going to develop as time goes on. Becker and Bhatt's experiment is maybe the best vindication of the existence of the horizon, and raises it from a theoretical idea to something whose location can be measured by the physical effects.

The relationships that QI predicts are certainly there. The reason why they exist may still need further thought - I'd propose identifying the Unruh waves as being instead waves of the "stuff" that matter is made of, and that we've got some way to go on figuring out the details because it might need new language to describe it. Saying what things do is a lot easier than saying what they are.

OK, it's been 17 years or so since you first realised that there was a Hubble-scale Casimir effect. Not really that long for a new idea to gain experimental verification, when it's so different to what people thought before that. Might not be that many years more before a practically useful amount of thrust can be produced.

Big Island said...

Could it be that what we think of as the obsevable universe is an artifact of QI reaching the damping horizon of an infinite universe from our point of view?

Big Island said...

Unknown, you observation adds weight to what I suspect is a race to claim Mike's glory by giving it another name and crediting it to someone else.

Jimmy Johnson said...

Mike,

I notice that in your latest paper "QI Thrust as an Asymmetric Casimir Effect" that you use Q=1 for non-resonant phenomena. You may want to check on the validity of this assumption. The definition of Q is that it is equal to 2*Pi*Energy Stored/Energy Dissipated per cycle (i.e. Energy Stores/Energy Dissipater per radian). For a device where the energy is dissipated in one cycle the Q is 2*Pi not 1.

You need not publish this comment, as it is only intended as a comment for your consideration in obtaining the appropriate value for Q in your derived formulas.

Jimmy Johnson

Bob said...

Mike,

I am not speaking as a skeptic but I would like to address something that bothers me. In your paper you refer to Canning (2004) as support for anomalous thrust from capacitors but in that paper they made it clear that the thrust they observed was entirely due to ion drift. They state there was no thrust in vacuum. Can you explain how you reached your conclusion and why their capacitors showed no thrust in vacuum?
Also, how confident are you that the results of Becker et. al. and the second lab you alluded to (I think you said elsewhere that was a pendulum setup) are not also ultimately due to ion drift if perhaps in a more subtle form?

Finally, can you recommend a setup that anyone can unambiguously demonstrate a QI thrust from capacitors?

Thanks,

Robert Virkus

Mike McCulloch said...

Robert. Good question. I found out about Canning (2004) by reading Martins and Pinheiro 2011, see ref below, in which they show that the thrust they saw (for one config. and several times) could not have been ion drift or ejected material because if it was the capacitor plates would have evaporated ten times over. Canning even said this themselves but still conclude ion drift. Also, it did thrust in vacuum (see section 3 of the paper below).

About Becker and Bhatt's test I am fairly confident, but I am even more confident about two other labs, especially one, that have reproduced what they did. I cannot say much except that it has passed a lot of tests so far.

Ref:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/251709922_On_the_propulsive_force_developed_by_asymmetric_capacitors_in_a_vacuum

Bob said...

Mike,

Is there a maximum rate at which energy could be generated from QI (or converted from information as I heard you discuss in a recent video) on some unit area or volume basis? Thanks.

Robert Virkus

Simon Derricutt said...

Mike - I sent you an email with the initial observations about the different energy-use of a device accelerated by a force relative to the reference frame and a device whose acceleration is relative to itself such as a rocket. Though the equations of motion are exactly the same in each case (for the same force and mass), and the kinetic energy gained is the same, for a rocket or thruster the energy input is at a constant rate per second while the kinetic energy gained per second depends on the thrust times the current velocity, and is variable.

A better mathematical derivation of this is:
The equation of motion of an accelerating body is
d=ut+0.5at², where d is distance travelled, u is initial velocity, t is time, a is acceleration.
Thus if we're applying a constant force f, W (the work done) is fd. If we start from stationary, u=0, and the equation translates to
W=0.5fat².
Note that W is the output work, and translates to kinetic energy acquired.
The energy used to produce the thrust is constant with time, so if e is the energy input per second and E is the sum of energy used at any point, then
E=et (straight line through the origin with slope of e)
Plot E (energy input) against W (energy output) over time.
Fairly obviously, since E is a straight line and W is a parabola, at some point W will exceed E.

Here I'm ignoring the irrelevant stuff such as gravity, drag, inefficiencies, etc. in order to expose the basic principle. I've had a bit longer to get used to this, but it was surprising when I noticed it and I wonder why no-one has noticed this before.

If you calculate work done by the thrust of the rocket times the distance it travels, then the sums balance and this equals the kinetic energy (and in the case of a rocket the gravitational potential energy)acquired. However, if you look at the energy input to produce this total energy it doesn't balance and we've created energy from *nothing*. This is all classical physics, and doesn't need QI. However, with QI we have electric thrusters that don't need reaction mass and can be continuously powered. The design to utilise this is pretty obvious, and using an IVO thruster at 45mN per watt produces as much energy as it uses at 22.22m/s. It produces twice as much energy as it uses once you reach 44.44m/s.

If the thrust is produced relative to the frame of reference, energy is conserved. On the other hand, if the thrust is relative to the object being accelerated, energy is not conserved, and can be created or destroyed depending on the velocity.

It might take a while for this to be accepted, since it directly challenges CoE which is a fundamental axiom. However, I can't see a fault in the logic or maths.

Mike McCulloch said...

Simon. Thanks. I think I just made a major advance thinking about your question/comment. Indeed, it is important to identify where this extra energy comes from and I think I now know.

Bob said...

Simon, this hypothetical energy difference has been noticed for a long time. Any device that could produce constant thrust at constant electrical energy input could do it. One would likely use a rotating device. This is one of the reasons critics go so batty over any form of propellantless propulsion, they know if would lead to energy generation devices which seemingly defy physics.

Bob said...

BTW, I disagree with the statement that energy is not conserved in the above example. It is conserved when it is changed from electrical to kinetic energy in the accelerating frame but kinetic energy is always relative to the observer. For example, if I pitch a 100mph baseball it has a certain kinetic energy. If I pitch the same ball at the same speed from a moving flatbed also at 100 mph in the same direction, the ball (ignoring air resistance) is moving at 200mph wrt the ground and as measured wrt the ground the kinetic energy is four time higher.

Simon Derricutt said...

Unknown - if it's been known for so long, why has it not been exploited? It works for a simple reaction-drive such as a rocket, and doesn't actually need a reactionless drive.

The problem of kinetic energy being different in different frames doesn't apply, since the derivation uses a single frame throughout.

Thus CoE can be violated using a single frame of reference and physics that Newton would have understood. The electric thrusters that need no reaction-mass just make it easier to implement.

Bob said...


While we do agree a QI device or any other similar device amounts to an energy generation device, I do not believe it works for a simple reaction drive because when you take into account the energy carried away by the reaction mass, the delta kinetic energy as viewed in all inertial frames is the same. There is no gain. Also, the frame of reference of the accelerating object is not inertial. I look at it as being in a continuously changing instantaneous frame of reference.

In my view propellantless devices make it work because they are conserving momentum in some other sense than locally and they must be borrowing energy from elsewhere in the universe.

I would be happy to discuss this in more detail privately.


Simon Derricutt said...

Unknown - having done calculations using a simple reaction drive, with various mass ejected per second and velocities of ejection, I'll disagree with you. This works using classical physics. It is also all held in the same inertial reference frame, so no oddities from changing frames or using accelerating frames. The kinetic energy gain is real. It doesn't matter how the thrust is produced, only that it is there and attached to the object being accelerated.

The kinetic energy gained in our frame is the thrust times the distance travelled in our frame. It is extremely simple, and as far as I can see the only reason people have ignored it is that they believe that energy must always be conserved, thus there must be some other reason for this mismatch.

An axiom such as CoE is supposed to be something that's obviously true but cannot be proved or disproved, but nevertheless holds true when tested. This is an obvious disproof of COE, so it's no longer an axiom but has a known exception we need to be aware of. Use CoE as a basic assumption except where the forces are relative to the object being accelerated. Thus take care when using rockets, jet engines, and thrusters when calculating energy gains. For everything else (as far as we know so far), CoE works just fine.

I should note that I'm an engineer, not a theorist. If something works in practice, I'll use it. Though theory gives me a reason why things work, theory may change (see Mike's theory for such a change), but things that work continue to work however they are explained.

We don't need reactionless drives in order to create energy from nothing. They do make it a lot easier to design and make a machine that does do that, though.

Bob said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Big Island said...

Hi Unknown,
My layman's understanding of QI is that it is a case of Rindler horizon vs Cosmic horizon, so thrust may be generated by leveraging that asymmetry.

Bob said...

I am extremely skeptical of the reference to the "IVO thruster at 45mN per watt". The website has no information and claims a breakthrough in QI yet no mention of Mike or his work.

"Built upon the basis of quantized inertia, the IVO Quantum Drive is the world’s first commercially viable and available pure electric propulsion technology to achieve legitimacy via thermal vacuum testing"

Mike, do you know anything about this? It sounds very fishy to me.

Simon Derricutt said...

Unknown - see http://physicsfromtheedge.blogspot.com/2021/11/a-thrust-from-nothing.html
Mike was definitely involved here....

Other Unknown (now deleted by author, but Bob on a physics forum) - run calculations on the newtons per watt required for a reaction engine. For example if I eject 10g/second at 100m/s I produce a thrust at 20mN per watt, and 20g/second at 50m/s produces the same thrust (1N) at 40mN per watt. Science is not determined by consensus. Either my maths is right or it is wrong. If it is wrong, then correct me. Possibly you deleted that comment after having done the calculations yourself.

Though I have used CoE all my life and have found no example of it being violated before and so thought it was absolute, in this case the energy input per second is fixed while the work output depends on the velocity and is not limited except by material strength in the case of a rotating device. It is a very obvious exception, because we have broken the symmetry by placing the thruster on a moving object. It's also very useful in a practical sense, since it has now become easy to practically implement.

Alexandre said...

You have certainly observed that there is currently a very significant change in the official authorities' recognition of the reality of UFO phenomena and their dynamic behaviours that defy the laws of body movement (incredible accelerations and speeds). A documentary research on the words Nimitz, 2004 incidents, will make you discover striking videos on the apparent total control of their inertia, on the frightening energy which seem to be at their disposal, that demonstrate these flying objects that many judge could only be piloted and built by extraterrestrials.

I believe that when it comes to what is physically possible, we should not be too constrained by the shackles of thought, the so-called theorems of impossibility that these UFOs do not care about!

Bob said...

Simon,

"For example if I eject 10g/second at 100m/s I produce a thrust at 20mN per watt, and 20g/second at 50m/s produces the same thrust (1N) at 40mN per watt. "


Yes you can make thrust this way but virtually all of that energy is going to accelerate the ejected mass and almost none is going to accelerate the device until the payload is as small as the ejected mass where the ratio is one half. That's the best you can do. Plus, if you carry all the ejected mass with you, your device mass gets less and less meaning its overall kinetic energy gets less than it would be if the total mass were fixed. This device is a rocket and looking at the rocket equation there is no way to get an energy gain even in principle. In contrast, using a QI device is fundamentally different. Virtually all the energy would be going into accelerating the object and none into ejected mass.

Bob

Simon Derricutt said...

Bob - in fact all the energy goes into accelerating the reaction mass relative to the device, and none goes into accelerating the device. You can see this using a non-accelerating frame by applying an equal and opposite force on the device so that it is not accelerating but instead moves at a constant velocity. Easiest to actually do this by holding the device stationary, of course, but it applies for any velocity.

Thus you need to go deeper into this, since it's not as easy as it at first looks.

Let's do this in a linear analysis, since though the rotating version is more practical there can be an objection that a rotating frame is accelerating anyway. Let's also consider that the ejected mass can be considered continuous, even though it's in fact atomic.

Our device that's ejecting mass at 20g/second and at 50m/s relative to itself (and thus producing 1N of force) is travelling at a fixed velocity because it's restrained by an equal and opposite force, so that it does not accelerate. Calculate what work this opposing force will do at 3 velocities, being 12.5m/s, 25m/s, and 50m/s. More velocities if you want, or you can plot a (trivial) graph. The opposing force will of course be 1N, and in 1 second it will act over 12.5m, 25m, and 50m, and thus will do 12.5J, 25J, and 50J of work. Meantime, no matter what the velocity, our device will do 25J of work in the same time. Note that the mass of the device doesn't even enter into this calculation. Work is simply force times distance.

If that opposing force is supplied by a (long enough!) linear generator that produces electricity, then the work done can be used to heat something, or drive a motor, or anything else that is electrically-powered. For our 25J input energy on the device, we'll get 12.5J, 25J, or 50J out as electrical power, depending on whether the device is moving at 12.5m/s, 25m/s, or 50m/s. Because I've chosen convenient values here, it's obvious that if we allowed the device to travel at 100m/s, we'd get 100J out for our 25J input.

Again, I've done this using a reaction engine and classical physics. The rocket equations are not needed (since the actual mass is not relevant, only the velocity). It does however go a long way to explaining why this has been missed for so long.

Now, instead of using a linear motion, use an electric QI-based thruster at a certain radius to produce a torque to power a standard electrical generator. Apart from the rotating frame, all the same things apply. None of the energy we put into that thruster goes into producing the thrust itself, and the thrust does no work in its own frame. You can calculate the power out as the torque times the radians per second, and again it rises linearly with radians per second while the input power remains constant. Unlike the reaction-engine where you'd need to find a way to replenish the reaction-mass, we only need brushes to get the electrical power in.

The reaction-engine example shows that for 1 second (or actually as long as the reaction-mass lasts) a classical reaction-engine can produce more joules output than needed to run the reaction-engine, and that the multiple you can achieve depends solely on the velocity relative to the break-even velocity. For a QI-based thruster, though, that limit does not apply, and it can be run continuously.

This has initially been shown to work classically in an inertial frame, but the transition to a rotating frame and a QI thruster does not affect the conclusions. CoE has an exception.

Bob said...

Simon, what you are proposing is very different from what I was discussing. We started out with accelerating systems and now you are discussing a non-accelerating system.

Ignoring how the device is given a certain velocity V, if the forces are equal such that the acceleration is zero, a dynamic equilibrium will be achieved. If the velocity is too low, the thrust will accelerate the device up to equilibrium. If the velocity is too fast, the linear generator will act as a brake and slow the device to equilibrium. At equilibrium the forces are equal. If the forces, the thrust and the motor, are in fact the same but in opposite directions, the work done by each is also the same as they cover the same distance at the same rate. Therefore the power input and the power generated will be the same assuming everything else is ideal. You cannot simply power the device at one rate and independently choose a certain velocity and say the output power is higher.

Here is how I calculate this situation;

The thrust and therefore the force acting in the device is F_t = dm/dt * V_e or the rate of mass ejection times the ejection velocity wrt the device. The rate of energy consumption or power required is 1/2 dm/dt (V_e)^2. Instantaneous power on an object is force times velocity P=Fv.

At equilibrium, The forces are equal, F_motor = F_thrust. Both act through the same distance so the work (energy consumption or generation) is the same and at the same rate so the instantaneous power is the same. We can say P_out = P_in.

Thus, P_in = 1/2 dm/dt (V_e)^2 = P_out = F_m V = F_t V = dm/dt V_e V

or 1/2 dm/dt (V_e)^2 = dm/dt V_e V

giving V = V_e/2 or the device will be in equilibrium at half the mass ejection velocity for this simple case.


Simon Derricutt said...

Bob - yep, if we provide a reverse thrust to stop acceleration, then the work done by the thrust and by that opposing force will be exactly equal, and the amount of power each produces/consumes will be dependent on the velocity. That is actually the point I was making, since the power required to produce that thrust is constant.

Thus we have a mismatch between the power needed to produce the thrust and the power we obtain from that thrust. The inverse of the newtons per watt produced by the thruster gives us the distance over which the work done by the thruster equals the energy put in per second to produce that thrust, thus determines the break-even velocity. Below this break-even velocity we generate less power than we put in (ignore the ejected mass KE because it's not relevant), and above this velocity we generate more power than we're using.

I did the calculations classically and in a single inertial frame of reference to try to remove the objections that this depends on new physics. It doesn't. It's just (obviously) much harder to see than I expected. To me, the energy input at a constant rate but the output work rate depending on velocity was glaringly obvious. Again, referring to Noether's Theorem, the reason is pretty obvious too - whereas normally the forces are produced relative to the environment so the energy inputs and outputs are the same, here the thruster is moving relative to the environment whereas the work done is measured in the environment, and we've broken the normal symmetry.

You've done a nice derivation of the break-even velocity for a reaction-engine, so thanks for that. If we allow the thruster to move at twice that speed, though, the work done per second (thus power available from generator) is twice as much, whereas the energy input per second remains the same.

The principle is depressingly simple, yet we've missed it for the last three and a half centuries or so because we think energy is always conserved so there must be a flaw somewhere that we've missed. In other discussions on this principle I've seen a lot of complex calculations on real rockets to try to show that energy is conserved. It's really not that complex. If the thruster is moving relative to us, then the power it will produce in a generator depends on how fast it's going. If the thruster takes a constant power then the inequality is obvious. It shouldn't take all these words to explain. It's actually obvious by inspection, and the rest of the calculations such as working out the break-even speed just make it easier to utilise the principle.

By providing that counter-force and thus stopping the thruster from accelerating (and also using the work done on that counterforce to produce electricity output) there are some other odd things happening that are worth discussing. In this situation, in the (now) inertial frame of the thruster, all the input energy goes into accelerating the ejected mass, and the reaction-force that is the thrust produced does zero work because it acts over zero distance. The thrust actually requires no energy to produce - it's a side-effect from ejecting the mass. It also means that the work we're doing against that counter-force has no energy-source. The energy we're generating is newly-created from nothing. That's really weird and unexpected. By analogy, using an electric thruster in the same situation, I'd expect all the energy input to end up as heat, with the energy from the generator again having no actual source.
/tbc

Simon Derricutt said...

/cont (that 4096 character limit....)

I only noticed this principle around 3 weeks ago, and once seen it seems obvious. Explaining it to others so that they can see it has taken a while so far, and has probably only succeeded for a few people. Adding in the generator (whether linear or rotary) to remove the acceleration may be the thing that makes it obvious to others. In any case, it's also obvious that using the electric thrusters to drive a generator will in fact work and produce more energy than they consume, and it's easy to implement. Mike's theory, that led to the Becker and Bhatt "leaky capacitor", will enable us to produce unlimited energy in future. Just needs enough investment in development. Also note that there are other electric non-reactive thruster designs around, though the newtons per watt available generally seems lower than B+B for those I know of.

Though this goes against what we were taught, I haven't found a hole in the logic. Whereas I thought perpetual motion with power out to drive something else was not possible, it's actually now easy. Just needs someone with the electric thrusters to actually do it and prove the point experimentally.

Simon Derricutt said...

It's just been pointed out that the energy needed to initially accelerate the reaction mass to the working velocity exactly balances the extra energy we get out when using a reaction engine. Thus I was wrong about a reaction engine being able to violate CoE once above the break-even speed (that extra power is there, but was initially "banked" during the initial acceleration, and stops when the reaction-mass is all used up). However, the principle still applies to electric thrusters that don't need reaction-mass.

My apologies for jumping too soon, and trying to derive it in classical physics before working out all the energy involved.

Bob said...

Simon, no problem. I enjoyed the discussion and like thinking about how to design such an energy generation machine. I also even recently had thought I had found loopholes only to be disappointed later. Keep thinking about it!

Bob said...

Mike,

On your website you reference a *paper by Higgins where he states any "space drive" device without reaction mass amounts to a "perpetual motion machine of the first kind". He states a photon rocket reaches the breakeven velocity at c so is not very useful. The claim is any propellantless thruster of greater efficiency that a photon rocket amounts to a energy generation device in principle because the breakeven velocity is less than c. He then uses that to suggest no such devices exist. "Thus, any device with a thrust-to-power ratio greater than the photon rocket would be able to operate as a perpetual motion machine of the first kind, and thus should be excluded by the First Law of Thermodynamics."

Photon force amplification over a given input power has been achieved by bouncing laser light thousands of times between two mirrors to accelerate an object with light. Y.K. Bae showed recycled light accelerated a physical object.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_GcJbL6k6s

Though by itself not practical, it seems to me that such a device has thrust-to-power ratio greater than the photon rocket by definition and thus shows such an energy generation device is possible in principle. This serves as an existence proof which should undercut the criticism that devices, such as those operating by the principles of QI, could never exist.

*Reconciling a Reactionless Propulsive Drive with the First Law of Thermodynamics
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1506.00494.pdf

Simon Derricutt said...

Bob - it's easy to show that momentum will not be conserved in the case of the field that transfers the force changing during the time between the emission of that disturbance of the field and its reception at the other object. It also makes sense that if the inertia of the objects change then momentum will not be conserved. If CoM can be violated, then CoE will be violated by that action. Thus starting by considering the use of an IVO thruster to produce torque, and seeing the violation of CoE there, I saw that any constant force would do the same and it seemed to work for a reaction engine too, so I told everyone (too soon). Peer review is a good thing. However, I also told people as soon as I realised it was wrong - red face but overall a good result.

I still don't know why energy is conserved in normal situations, though. The explanation that there is just a certain amount, and that's it, works in practice so far, but the various "reactionless" drives can easily be shown to violate that. Mike says he's worked out where that energy comes from (or goes to if you reverse the thrust), but we'll have to wait till he's ready on that idea. Takes time to think these things through. However, given the relative ease of the experiment using these thrusters, maybe we'll get experimental evidence soon of a device that produces a continuous stream of energy (at maybe a watt or two) and will need that better explanation of where the energy comes from because it's experimental fact that it can happen.

Physical laws are well-confirmed by experiment, but may not be precisely the same as the natural laws, and there may be exceptions we don't yet know about and only find out when we do something new. For the thruster, that's extreme acceleration of electrons. It's fun finding these exceptions and how to exploit them.

Thanks for the courteous treatment. I try not to be wrong, but fail sometimes....

Bob said...


Simon,

Yes, relativity, the finite speed of light, allows for CoM violation between interacting objects separated by spacetime with changing fields. Feynman even noticed that in his Lectures on Physics. Classical physics assumes the speed of light is infinite so there would in principle be no violations. Actually, I would say it's not so much as CoM is violated as it just doesn't apply under some circumstances. Quasi-static interactions approach the classical assumptions where CoM applies. For separated objects I think CoM and CoE are conserved at the instantaneous interaction between each object and the field of the other but not necessarily between the objects themselves. A few years ago I played around (on paper) with the forces between two closely spaced current carrying wires where the currents were changing in a precise phase relationship to produce forces on both wires always in the same direction. It seemed to work on paper but it was far too advanced for me to try and build it.



Simon Derricutt said...

Bob - yep, agree with all that. I've physically tried the two loops 1/4-wave apart and 1/4-wave phase difference, but didn't see a net force. It may not work because of the possible different speed of light in the sub-1/4-wave region, as found by experiment by Steffen Kühn where he sent a signal down a coax at 3c ( https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335677198_Electronic_data_transmission_at_three_times_the_speed_of_light_and_data_rates_of_2000_bits_per_second_over_long_distances_in_buffer_amplifier_chains ). Still, the calculated force was extremely small and on the edge of detection anyway even if it worked. Thus I think we'd need to use a resonant cavity to both increase the field strength and get into far-field, and a resonant loop to raise the current. Difficulty getting both in resonance at the same time, since the loop resonance frequency is changed by being in a cavity. Thus the "leaky capacitor" thruster looks a far easier thing to make.

Bob said...

Simon,

Congratulations on attempting to build the current loop device!

I agree that Mike's QI approach is the best route. I really hope the work by IVO pans out and they are not making a setup or measurement error. I also hope they really mean 45 milliNewtons and are not using m for micro Newtons! Are you going to try the leaky capacitor approach?

Yes, I think using retarded EM effects would be really difficult and possibly take a huge amount of power for high speed switching. Can I ask what frequency and separation you used? Have you thought about using a sheet current? I assume you have seen Yahalom's papers on his Relativistic Engine which is just a variant of this basic idea.

https://www.ariel.ac.il/wp/energy-research-center/wp-content/uploads/sites/114/2019/06/Energy-Conservation-170619.pdf

Thanks for that superluminal reference. The issue with that experimental setup in the paper is that the author circles the long cable back to the same scope with makes the sending and the receiving ports only centimeters away from each other. While I do not think that is what he is measuring, critics can easily claim a signal is being sent that short distance through space via the Poynting vector and mistaken for a signal through the long cable. How hard can it be to set up another scope at the end of linear cable to really prove the signal is being transmitter that distance at greater than c?

Simon Derricutt said...

Bob - I used 100mW at 5.8GHz, with 6mm diameter loop antennae and around 13mm separation. Calculated thrust was in the region of 0.1 micronewtons, so dangled on a long lead and looking for a displacement of maybe half a millimetre or less. If I'd seen any movement I'd have run it in an enclosure to avoid air-movements, but nothing was visible so I didn't take it further. I intend to try the leaky capacitor idea with a much thinner dielectric and lower voltage. I think that the Fermi velocity of electrons in the metal plates may be significant, so trying alternative materials could be useful.

Yep, Yahalom's papers take the mathematical approach to generalise this to any shaped current-loop, but without the resonances the forces will again be minute for practical designs. He shows it's theoretically possible, but practically we want a larger force for a lower current and power-use.

With Steffen Kühn's experiment, bringing it back to the same 'scope point is needed to avoid systematic errors on the time measurements, and since the signal is contained within the coax I think that the objection is unfounded of the ends being physically-close. He also sent stereo music down the alternate paths, which is a "dumb" way of measuring since the ear is very sensitive to phase. Thus I think it's a valid experimental result, though somewhat unexpected. I have another friend who's sent signals down a single wire but again looped and measured at the same 'scope, which has more of a possibility of interaction between the (unshielded) wires there and back again, but again shows superluminal velocity of the signal. Not conclusive on its own, but together with other similar experiments is certainly suggestive that there's something there. Anomalies are interesting. A better way of showing that the signal goes down the wire and not through the gap near the 'scope is to use various lengths of coax and plot the delays for each length, whilst keeping the gap at the 'scope the same. Steffen did this to some extent, but doing this for say 10 different lengths of coax would be pretty conclusive.

schubert said...

Tech enthusiast and science beginner here: Just discovered your QI theory, I found it very elegant.

Could it be that poor results with light based thrusters are because the rest mass of photon is null (as per standard model) contrary to the electron ?

One thing it's not clear yet in my mind is if it does take in account the relativistic part of the mass (as particles are accelerated, they become ''heavier'' as it get closer to c) or only the rest mass is participating to the effect ?

It seems that in many experiments the Q factors is really low, finding a way to dramatically increase it could improve the effect.

I just read the 2018 paper on symmetrical thrusters, I agree they are the most promising in term of power/weight ratio and practical utilization.One way could be to keep current at 10 uA (by reducing U to stay in thermionic regime as it seems other regimes such ion and avalanche have negative impact on the resulting thrust) while dramatically reducing distance d as it's squared in your formula (look like another way to increase it's Q).Another way according to the paper is to series stack the capacitors as it increase linearly with the number of capacitors.

Just some ideas that came around my mind, hope to see your progress in the coming months.

Best regards.

Hugh McBroom said...

Hi, my name's Hugh, I've been following quantised inertia and your work mike for about 6-7 years now and with the results from B + Bs paper I'm opening up to the idea of building my own prototypes. From what I understand here, could one not use cheap reflective mylar "space blankets" as the thruster considering they are a 4 um to 12 um thick dielectric with a conductive aluminium layer on both side and a van da Graff generator to supply the voltage. This seems like an incredibly cheap method to construct and something you could chuck several kilowatts of input power into for a low total mass. At 120N/kw for the 12um capacitor and a device weighing close to 5-6kg with 2.5kw input based off the motors and parts I have, the effects of this should be immediately noticeable with a thrust to weight exceeding 1. Am I missing something here or is this the answer to the world's transport and energy concerns and should I build this immediately

Mike McCulloch said...

Hi Hugh. Great suggestion. Please build it. We will also have a go at Plymouth. I've just ordered some. I will make it clear the Mylar was your suggestion. Please email me your name.

Bob said...

Wouldn't one have to do that in a vacuum to ensure it's not just ionizing and reacting off the air like 'lifters' do?