Mach Effect Propulsion Lab and Theoretical Work

Nextbigfuture has been covering the work of independent researchers who are working to enable the Mach Effect to be used for propellentless space propulsion and potential as a means to create wormholes. James Woodward is the primary researcher and theorist in this area. He wrote written a book “Making Starships and Stargates”. If James Woodward is correct this would be the technology that enables near lightspeed propellentless space propulsion and potentially Stargates.

Update The Space Studies Institute is raising $42,000 support Mach Effect Propulsion. They will provide the Woodward Lab at CalState Fullerton the new instrumentation, computers and power supplies that Emeritus Professor Jim Woodward and his colleague Professor Heidi Fearn need to continue their research on Mach Effect propulsion.

Dr. Heidi Fearn is a physicist who checked Dr Woodward’s math in regards to Mach Effect propulsion. She obtained her Ph.D. in physics at Essex University in England, and has been teaching physics at Fullerton since 1991, where she has known Woodward for more than twenty years. (The two of them are shown above.) She didn’t take a serious interest in his work until she discovered that stacks of his equipment had been unexpectedly relocated in her back office while she was on vacation. As Woodward’s project was now unavoidable, she found herself watching the experiments. “I saw that it wasn’t just experimental noise,” she recalls. “It was a very clear effect, on every run. It was a huge signal, relatively speaking. You can’t get a signal like that from nothing. Something obviously was happening, and it wasn’t something I could explain very easily.”

She was skeptical about Woodward’s ideas and was surprised when she found nothing wrong with the theoretical basis.

She became, as she puts it, “ninety-nine percent convinced,” and started to collaborate informally on the project while still teaching physics at the university. She bought some test equipment with her own money, along with modeling software that she wants to use to design the next prototype. “Right now, I’m a theorist, but I find myself using trial-and-error,” she says. “I’m not comfortable with that. Jim’s been tinkering for more than twenty years. I want to get to the point where I can suggest something optimal.”

Her goal is to scale up the effect by an order of magnitude.

The idea behind Mach Effect propulsion is to accelerate a small object while varying its energy. For example, if the small object is a capacitor that is vibrating at a relatively high frequency, and the electrical charge on it fluctuates at twice that frequency, the mass of the capacitor should fluctuate, too. When Woodward is asked him why such an easily demonstrated phenomenon had never been noticed by anyone else. “Probably because people don’t normally go around weighing capacitors,” he said.

In principle, you could try this yourself by using a stereo amplifier to power a speaker that has been repurposed to vibrate a capacitor at, say, 20kHz, while you would also charge and discharge the capacitor at 40kHz. This would be such an elementary experiment, you could set it up for maybe $50, but your challenge would be to measure the small mass variations that are supposedly occurring. You would also have a major problem excluding outside factors such as electromagnetic fields, vibration, air currents, thermal variations, and much more.

SOURCES – Boing boing, SSI,