3 ms·

Thanks, my first question was exactly the one you answered: "is the proposed mechanism within an order of magnitude of explaining the observed thrust?" It sou

by jepler 10y ago

Thanks, my first question was exactly the one you answered: "is the proposed mechanism within an order of magnitude of explaining the observed thrust?" It sounds like it's not.

amluto 10y ago
It's worth noting that, depending on how they wired the thing, they could get an extra power of two. Energy carried in massless form, including in a wire, has the same force of (power / c). So, if you wire the thing up so the power cable comes in the back, your apparent efficiency will double. Of course, this is useless in a spaceship that carries its own power source. (Unless you're a solar sail or powered by a ground-based laser.) Actually accounting for the force in a transmission line (e.g. where is it in space) or, for that matter, the power, is notoriously complicated. Also, real wires have tension as well as magic Maxwell's Equations force. I wonder whether the experimenters tried leaving the power cable in place and turning the cavity around. If the thing really worked and they corrected for their cable correctly, they should observe the same thrust in the other direction.
- dogma1138 10y ago
  >Energy carried in massless form, including in a wire, has the same force of (power / c). What?
  - amluto 10y ago
    Take a pair of parallel wires carrying a current and with a potential difference such that the power flows left to right. Calculate the Poynting vector everywhere along a plane perpendicular to the wires, and you'll find that the power flux is distributed across the plane and that there's a momentum flux, i.e. a force. If you use AC or more complicated shapes, the calculation gets gnarlier.
    - dogma1138 10y ago
      Yes that's the electric flux in the field but it has no bearing on this whatsoever, it's also one of the first thing they've isolated while testing the damn thing.

3 ms·

Thanks, my first question was exactly the one you answered: "is the proposed mechanism within an order of magnitude of explaining the observed thrust?" It sou

by jepler 10y ago

Thanks, my first question was exactly the one you answered: "is the proposed mechanism within an order of magnitude of explaining the observed thrust?" It sounds like it's not.

amluto 10y ago
It's worth noting that, depending on how they wired the thing, they could get an extra power of two. Energy carried in massless form, including in a wire, has the same force of (power / c). So, if you wire the thing up so the power cable comes in the back, your apparent efficiency will double. Of course, this is useless in a spaceship that carries its own power source. (Unless you're a solar sail or powered by a ground-based laser.) Actually accounting for the force in a transmission line (e.g. where is it in space) or, for that matter, the power, is notoriously complicated. Also, real wires have tension as well as magic Maxwell's Equations force. I wonder whether the experimenters tried leaving the power cable in place and turning the cavity around. If the thing really worked and they corrected for their cable correctly, they should observe the same thrust in the other direction.
- dogma1138 10y ago
  >Energy carried in massless form, including in a wire, has the same force of (power / c). What?
  - amluto 10y ago
    Take a pair of parallel wires carrying a current and with a potential difference such that the power flows left to right. Calculate the Poynting vector everywhere along a plane perpendicular to the wires, and you'll find that the power flux is distributed across the plane and that there's a momentum flux, i.e. a force. If you use AC or more complicated shapes, the calculation gets gnarlier.
    - dogma1138 10y ago
      Yes that's the electric flux in the field but it has no bearing on this whatsoever, it's also one of the first thing they've isolated while testing the damn thing.