Mach Effect Propulsion 2016 – it is proven, replicated and will scale to fast interstellar travel

61 thoughts on “Mach Effect Propulsion 2016 – it is proven, replicated and will scale to fast interstellar travel”

1. Suppose I was sitting in a room throwing a ball, it bounces back against the wall and I catch it.
   I shouldnt be able to move the room by such actions.
   Not even if I changed nature’s forces, for example if i pushed the ball width a magnet or so.

   But for a moment assume something like that is possible, at what reference would I move, i have no way of telling how fast the room allready moved, supose it moved allready at 99.9999% of light speed, and i could accelerate linear i would be able to brake lightspeed.

   Conservation of energy is at play in the room, if the room could move, we have a perpetual mobile

   • Mach Effect doesn’t claim it’s an isolated room – it claims there’s interaction with the entire rest of the universe, including the distant parts. According to their thinking, there’s a gravinertial frame that was set up by the arrangement of the mass in the universe.
     If I put you in a closed room, and I occasionally spin the room with you inside it – will you be able to tell which moments the spinning is going on? Sure you will. Now explain that without resorting to Mach’s principles.
     We know that frame-dragging is a thing — it’s been experimentally proven. So explain it without resorting to Mach’s principles.

2. I still think they should try something like carbon nanotubes or graphene, since they’re the fastest nanomechanical oscillators. Furthermore, try to exploit the Dirac Fermion effect (aka. ‘massless electrons’) to produce mass fluctuations by oscillating an applied electric field. Synchronize the electric field oscillation with the nanomechanical oscillation to optimize the Mach Effect.

3. Interstellar? I would be happy with interplanetary. Plenty of room and things to do in our own solar system.

4. To what extent is Mach Effect science proven? As I understand it, it is only done at KHz levels in proximity to Earth mass and has not been generally replicated by science peers nor has it been shown to work generally in far space. Since the reaction mass is unknown, much remains to be done. Present status progress is a good start but much needs to occur before the “Proven” label has scientific meaning. IMO.

   • Proximity to Earth mass has no relevance and the “reaction mass” can be closely estimated by current astronomical observations.

     Woodward’s position has always been if it works at a given frequency, it will work at others, and from the theory and math involved there is no reason to doubt that. He seems to have preferred putting his money into scales which could reliably measure the forces he knew he could produce with the materials he could get,with a three year digression trying to get a differing mechanism based on magnetorestriction* to work.

     * If I remember correctly, it was about 10 years ago I think.

5. If I put a force measuring instrument in a vise, I can probably measure a continuous and very high force for any period of time you like with no input energy at all after the first few seconds.

   But when I suddenly release the vise, the instrument won’t go flying off, continuously accelerating. Something akin to what may be happening in this case?

   • No, that’s not possibly it. The “vise” is at the end of lever arm of torsion pendulum, and what is measured is net displacement. Did you read anything about the topic at all before commenting?

6. What is this assumption that the inherent goal is for decades of engineering to scale enough output for interstellar? Surely for a fraction of that we’d have more than adequate speeds for colonizing the solar system first. What? Say within 10 – 15 years of a decently resourced R & D program, eh?

   • Its like global warming – the more fear-inducing a tale of The Future you can pen, the more people will click, read, and wag their tongues. The perpetrators of this article’s screen-shots from their presentation are now painting Great Goals of Interstellar Travel.

     All the while faithfully keeping to “mights” and “might not” and “possibly” and so on. You know, if the billion-times-scaling doesn’t materialize, and there seems to be A Wall around 3× or so.

     +1 for the good humor.
     GoatGuy

     • “Its like global warming – the more fear-inducing a tale of The Future you can pen, the more people will click, read, and wag their tongues.”

       I’m surprised, didn’t think you were the science denying type…

       • Oh he studiously avoids math he doesn’t like.

         Hell, below he admits he has a religious faith any Mach Effect would be “magic”.

       • There’s a difference between “science-denying” and “academic authority-denying”.

         Science is a method.

         Academics invented progressivism, then were bought by progressive politicians in larger and larger portions of academia starting with sociology, proceeding through psycholoy and others until, by the late 1970s, politicians were buying a whole “hard science” discipline’s academic funding hierarchy from its inception in the late 1970s, climate science, to get politically useful results. By now, science is trusted, but hard to discern through the progressive fog. Academia has the trust of few.

       • Global Warming as was modeled & predicted is a proven intellectual fraud.

         This is why the fraudsters moved on to calling it ‘climate change’ so they can smear their critics of ‘denying’ that climate changes.

       • Remember that “global warming” is not a single concept or claim. It is several concepts in a row.

         1. Some common gases allow light to pass through, but absorb strongly at some infrared frequencies.
         2. As a result they let the sun’s energy through the atmosphere to the earth’s surface, but reduce the amount that escapes.
         3. As a result the Earth’s surface is warmer than it would otherwise be (also Venus, and Mars)
         4. Mass use of fossil fuels and changes in land use have greatly increased the CO2 content of the Earth’s atmosphere.
         5. As a result more energy is trapped on Earth than would otherwise be the case.
         6. This will change the climate that we experience
         7. On net these changes will be very negative.
         8. The only way to prevent this is wholesale abandoning of fossil fuels and modern land use practices.
         9. The only way to achieve that is by handing vast amounts of money and power to the very people telling us this story.

         These all get lumped together as “global warming”. But it’s clear that these range from hard science that can be proved in a lab through controlled testing, through to almost as hard science that is based on external measurements, through to models that try to simplify complex systems, through to pure politics.

         If someone disagrees with “global warming” they could be arguing with points 6, or 7, or 9. But it’s very tempting to assume they disagree with 1, 2 or 3 and so people start going on and on about “proven science”.

         The reverse is also true. Some people disagree with points 8 and 9, so they assume that this means the earlier stages are also rubbish because they are always told that this is all the same “science of global warming”.

         Note also that a Mach Effect energy machine kills global warming from fossil fuels stone dead.

     • It’s a valid point that Dennis makes.
       It’s perfectly possible to have a “space drive” with a combination of thrust and impulse that gives great results over a decade or 2 (interstellar travel) while still being too weak to be useful at an interplanetary scale.
       In exactly the same way that ion drives seem very good for interplanetary travel (a scale of months to years) but don’t have enough thrust to get off the ground in the first place.

   • Probably because it would be very low thrust that could be continued for decades. For shorter than interstellar distances it might not improve travel times that much; you’d actually need a better drive to be good at interplanetary.

7. 10h of video content of advanced physics that would have Einstein scratch his head (seriously, they mention it in one of the videos), so convenient… Jokes aside, for the little I could get, this is awesome, including the name “mega-drive” (kudos to Dr. Fearn for the idea).

   • Mega-drive? Great, now I am going to get my space drive mixed up with my cloud storage..

8. Build it and I will believe it. Until then no way.

   • It has been built, and far more than once.

     • What gives? My comment disappears.

       Then when I make a new one, I click once and it posts twice ? !

     • How hysterical is it that after I write the comment I’m replying to now, it disappears. Then when I make another one it posts it twice when I carefully clicked once.

   • That’s what the article you didn’t read is about. It has been built.

   • That’s what the article you didn’t read is about. It has been built.

   • Agreed, this is not remotely plausible. It might as well be a perpetual motion machine.

9. If this works then this is a perpetual motion machine. So not only will it allow us to travel to the stars but it will also create free energy for us. Win win!

10. The Mach Effect…..hmmm doesn’t come off the tongue very well…

    • MEGA Engine sounds great though.

      • Mass Effect sounds better.

11. I know it works. That has been clear when the likes of GoatGuy could never poke any holes in Woodward’s measurements or math, which has been three of four years or a little more.

    • Excepted, of course, the overunity nature of all these propellantless (in practice, reactionless) drives, which has been brought up every time these devices are featured here.

      Anything that provides a thrust greater than a perfectly collimated photon rocket (1 Newton per ~330 Megawatts of spent power) gains more energy in the form of kinetic energy at certain speed lower than c than the one you have spent pushing it, after that, it produces arbitrary amounts of power as said kinetic energy.

      Jim Woodward recently acknowledged such fact, after some close collaborators showed him that it was unavoidable and really, a feature of the presumed thrust mechanism. All thrust on these devices must come from the Mach effect (that is, stolen from the universe’s entropy), given no device can push itself with its internal energies alone without expelling any mass.

      • The over-unity aspect doesn’t mean it isn’t real, of course. Sails are “over-unity”. You can build a ship with a prop driven by a windmill, even. It would be remarkable nice if the universe gave us a gift like that, it might even force people to take seriously the idea that the universe was designed for intelligent life. But it isn’t strictly ruled out.

        It does imply that the main use might be power generation, not propulsion, though.

        • The use of the sails “analogy” is coy but misleading. Sails produce force by deflecting a moving mass (wind). There is conservation of energy (and momentum) with no magic involved.

          The problem with the Mach Effect is either that there is no ‘wind’ to deflect, or if there is, then its momentum must be far from infinitesimal. But in any case, an existence of such ‘momentum wind’ then implies a value; it strongly implies (but doesn’t require) directionality. From there, then the universe is anisotropic and fundamentally directional. This in turn flies in the face of the perfect directional isotropy of Einstein’s General Relativity (and Special Relativity in particular).

          No such positional anisotropy (in the measured Mach Effect device performance) has seemed to surface. Conveniently, time-of-day, season-of-year give a nice 24hr ÷ 365 day cyclic cadence to “position relative to Mach’s Universe”, on which to test such anisotropic modulations.

          GoatGuy

          • It’s good to see the goat going beast mode. Refreshing.

            +1

            • I am actually very glad he’s making such very weak arguments, and with his magic crack admitting his is religious faith it does not work, based in nothing but faith.

              • Violation of conservation of energy requires far more proof than Woodward has offered.

                Deep skepticism is warranted.

                • Where did you get the idea any violation of the conservation of anything except my patience with idiots who won’t read is happening?

          • ” There is conservation of energy (and momentum) with no magic involved. ”

            Yes, you have a religious faith the Universe can’t work this way. We know.

            ” But in any case, an existence of such ‘momentum wind’ then implies a value; it strongly implies (but doesn’t require) directionality. ”

            Except we know gravity works in all directions–as wind does not–and what you presume is a required vector isotropy could only potentially be a problem if the expansion of the universe actually has an “edge” and the light cone of a Mach Effect device was overlapping that edge.

            • You keep referring to GG having a religious faith but his faith is based on science which requires its beliefs to be based on testable theories. So when something violates the all standard notions of physics it’s not like saying to the Pope there is no God it’s “more” like saying to a logician that true is false or to a geographer that north is south.

              • No, his faith is based on rejecting the tests this theory has passed. Not on science.

                • It have passed the hurdle of being an observable phenomena but until someone proposes a theory of why it works (which may or may not have happened) and reasonable experiments are done to prove that theory (nobody is even close to that) then and only then is the Mach Effect valid. Since this whole thing seems to violate the most fundamental laws of physics what would be required as reasonable experimental verification would have to be extremely through and exhaustive to get over that logically necessary barrier.

                  Can you rationally blame GG for being very cynical about this whole thing at this point in time?

                • Goat,
                  This mach seems like a ride on a field, mimicking it and drawing it’s propulsion from the movement of the field. Much like a conducting wire placed next to an electric field borrows from the field to create an electric current.

                • ” but until someone proposes a theory of why it works (which may or may not have happened) and reasonable experiments are done to prove that theory (nobody is even close to that) ”

                  A) You clearly didn’t read the post much less any of the antecedent material. Possibly you are trolling.

                  B) They are not only close to that, they are all the way there.

                  They have the theory, reduced to merely mathematics, and the results are consistent with both the theory and the math–they violate no laws of conservation whatsoever.

                • Hey, I read the posting but what’s the point of reading everything associated with an article when it involves physics that only a Phd level could honestly critique? I only minored in Physics so it would be pointless. But I still understand what the basic notions of physics are and what science is!

                  Note, all they seem to be able to do now is reproduce this phenomena at small level. One obvious thing GG points out is scaling. If you have some phenomena and your model says it linear, quadratic or whatever then you needs some experimental data points to show that it indeed fits the model. That is the most primitive verification of any model and getting those few extra data points is where they are at now, they are not well on they way to anything yet rather they are just attempting to make a first small step.

          • Goat, (if you see this) would you state your position as
            1. (I) am SURE that Maths and basic physics means that a thrust to power ratio anything like that being claimed means that we can generate free (as in we don’t have to provide any fuel or input energy) power.

            and

            2. I am of the OPINION that this is too good to be true.

            Because that is much how I would put my position, except I would be even weaker on the seconds statement. More like
            2. I am of the OPINION that this is most likely too good to be true.

            But I want to emphasise the two different statements I am making.
            1. This means free energy.
            2. This is suspiciously wonderful, but wonderful things have (sometimes) turned out to be true in the past.

            I am prepared to debate, speculate and be pleasantly surprised on the second point. The first point is either true or all of fundamental physics needs to be overturned.

      • ” Excepted, of course, the overunity nature of all these propellantless (in practice, reactionless) drives, which has been brought up every time these devices are featured here. ”

        No such arguments have been successfully made by Goatguy or anyone else. They can only sustain the charge of them being “over unity” by conclusorily presuming the theory of their operation must be false–by ignoring the the theory, the math, and the evidence. Because the operation of the devices increase entropy within the bounds of the smallest meaningful boundary which can be drawn about their operation–which is the the “light cone” in time of the observable universe–they are perfectly consonant with the laws of thermodynamics.

        As Brett states, from an incorrect standpoint, sails are over unity, so are heat pumps.

        ” Jim Woodward recently acknowledged such fact ”

        He never disputed it.

        • Step 1. Ignore it
          2. Ridicule it
          3. Argue with it
          4. Pretend that it was your idea all along and that the original supporters were weirdos for pretending otherwise.

          So we now see a transition to phase 4. “Well OF COURSE it gives you more energy than you put in. Any idiot can see that. To say otherwise must be ‘ignoring the the theory, the math, and the evidence'”.

          • Not at all clear what you mean. I have never ignored it, ridiculed it, or argued with it. Only looked for results. They are hear and have been for quite a few years.

            Woodward has obviously never indulged in any of the first three steps you mention.

            So what do you think you are saying?

            Goatguy and like idiots are–out of a religious faith the Universe can’t work that way–ignoring the theory, the math, and the evidence.

            ” So we now see a transition to phase 4. ” <– Where or in whom do you claim to see such a "transition" ?

            • “GoatGuy and like idiots”, oh how far you’ve stooped, Perk. Unfortunately, you are missing the deep irony of having Woodward finally admit that the production of work-energy exceeds invested energy when (ΔV > P/F) … velocity is greater than power divided by force. Or when whole-system kinetic energy exceeds ALL invested energy when (ΔV > 2 P/F).

              I’ve said it.
              Y’all have cast aspersions for my saying it.
              Along lines of “you don’t know the math”.
              Yet now that Woodward admits the inevitability…
              GoatGuy isn’t vindicated? LOL buddy.

              Anyway, its all good and well. If the much ballyhooed “newton per watt” scenario comes about, we can finally stop leveling mountains for their coal, pumping oil, Fracking and building endless windmills and solar farms. Mach Effect will then be working great to cheat The Universe out of limitless amount of free power. Mankind with that – endless, free, pollution less, potent power… will be quite transformative.

              I remain of the opinion tho’ that Mother Nature doesn’t provide Free Lunches.

              GoatGuy

              • ” GoatGuy isn’t vindicated? ”

                No, since he’s admitted nothing–because he never denied it in the first place.

                This remains trivial “(ΔV > P/F)”. It says nothing about whether or not the theory, the math behind it, or the measurements which prove it are correct.

                ” I remain of the opinion tho’ that Mother Nature doesn’t provide Free Lunches. ”

                Yes, you remain indicted of and self-admittedly guilty of the same–a merely religious faith the Universe doesn’t work this way, and you have not the least math or theory, or falsifying measurement which backs you up.

                It’s no more a free lunch that a heat pump is free energy.

          • +1 – because I can, and because this new comment system seems to allow a +1 (and only) for free. Like Woodward Free Energy. GoatGuy

            • No more free than the energy you get out of heat pump.

              • The energy you get out of an electrical heat pump can not be converted back into more electrical energy than you started with.
                You can get more straight watts of power, measured is pure energy. But it is much higher entropy power (ie. a large amount of low temperature warm stuff instead of a smaller amount of high temerature hot stuff) so the net enthalpy is still less than you started with.

                Here is a few pages of explanation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enthalpy

                In short. The basic laws of thermodynamics are that you can’t start with one type of energy. (Chemical, heat, mechanical, electrical…) go through any process, and end up with more of the same sort of energy.

                The reactionless thruster DOES let you do this, because (according to the theory) you are actually stealing energy from some other parts of the universe, despite looking like it is in a closed system.

                If so it doesn’t break thermodynamics. It does break coal, gas and nuclear industries, murder solar and wind, damage oil (probably, it depends how small we could make such a system) and gets us to other stars within this century.

                • Your whole post is an example of the pigheadedness I’ve already mentioned. I am perfectly aware of enthalpy and the laws of thermodynamics.

                  If you only look at a heat pump with respect to the electrical energy going in, you have more energy coming out of it than you put in. Seen as a falsely too small closed system, a heat pump certainly does violate the laws of thermodynamics.

                  Exactly as I describe, you are conclusorily drawing too small a closed system around an MET, because the smallest closed system you can meaningfully draw around one is the observable light cone of the universe it is in.

                  ” despite looking like it is in a closed system ” <– It is in a closed system.

                  " The reactionless thruster DOES let you do this " <– No, it does not.

      • Thrust or travel has to be in a specific direction – and so technically, you’re stealing from the overall universe with respect to a particular axis of it. Couldn’t it be possible that you’re still increasing the overall entropy of the universe in the remaining axes, other than the one you’ve stolen from?

    • I must really bother you, eh Perk? Good. Since I definitely have provided a lot of very simple – and sound – maths, and you’ve provided exactly naught, the clever reader might point out that The Emperor seems to be wearing not-a-whit of clothing.

      Oh well. I’ve replied to you below; don’t bother to reply in kind. I’m no longer much reading NBF, as the comment system has become more work (and less responsive) than it was. I further receive no emailed alerts when people reply. So… troll along, ol’ bunion.

      GoatGuy

      • ” I definitely have provided a lot of very simple – and sound – maths ” <– None of which were relevant to the question of whether or not it works.

        You did and do exactly this, for religious reasons–you have faith the Universe cannot work this way–conclusorily presumed the theory of their operation must be false and you ignored the theory, the math, and the evidence that they do.

        I never troll. I am saying true things you don't like.

    • you guys are saying the same thing, but you’re arguing for the sake of it in a sort of nerdy chest thumbing.

      From the initial evidence it seems that Mach Effect thruster does work – at least up to a certain limit, let’s say before it goes over unity – by stealing momentum from the universe. Dr. Fearn said it out loud in the video (20:34-25:44): https://youtu.be/mliNE_B_vNQ?t=20m34s

      PS: please Brian bring back the old comments, these WP comments are indeed unbearable.

12. So can I invest in this too?

    I’m only half joking. I’m a bit low this month as the plasmoids took my money.

13. So that’s what Paul March looks like.

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