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Yes, sadly grand-parent appears to have been downvoted for posting one of the most insightful comment so far. To be fair, the authors did enlist Tajmar's paper

Yes, sadly grand-parent appears to have been downvoted for posting one of the most insightful comment so far. To be fair, the authors did enlist Tajmar's paper in the state-of-the-art but they do not discuss despite it being the most relevant prior art. For anyone who knows a little bit Tajmar, if there was a tiny hint of a possibility that this effect could be real, he would definitely have pursued it; after all, his self-admitted goal is nothing else but to discover the warp-drive... That being said, he is no crackpot and the thoroughness of his article confirms it. Incidentally, in a similar HN story a couple of days ago I shared my suspicion about spurious contributions from thermal drift, and unsurprisingly I see this was also the number 1 suspect for Tajmar. Beside using thermal barrier to mitigate the problem, he also went from electro-magnetic damping to oil damping and found completely different results. Meanwhile, the Eagleworks guys are still using an EM damper, working right next to a strong EM field source.

azernik 10y ago
Probably for tone. "Sad to see NASA involved in such shitty research" is needlessly judgmental of authors who, though they had read (and referenced) a paper, did not do quite as well at eliminating potential error sources as that paper.
- binarycoffee 10y ago
  True, that could have been brought up with greater diplomacy. That being said, I can understand the over-reaction, it is indeed frustrating to see relatively weak articles making front page because they originate from NASA when earlier, more thorough research did not get any attention because their authors were more careful with their claims. Mind you, I am not saying the Eagleworks paper should not have been published; any data point is good as long as the experiment is sufficiently described for it to be reproduced or disproved, and in that respect I think it is OK. But very good it is not.
- davesque 10y ago
  That was my interpretation as well.
deleted 10y ago
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azernik 10y ago

Probably for tone. "Sad to see NASA involved in such shitty research" is needlessly judgmental of authors who, though they had read (and referenced) a paper, did not do quite as well at eliminating potential error sources as that paper.

binarycoffee 10y ago
True, that could have been brought up with greater diplomacy. That being said, I can understand the over-reaction, it is indeed frustrating to see relatively weak articles making front page because they originate from NASA when earlier, more thorough research did not get any attention because their authors were more careful with their claims. Mind you, I am not saying the Eagleworks paper should not have been published; any data point is good as long as the experiment is sufficiently described for it to be reproduced or disproved, and in that respect I think it is OK. But very good it is not.
davesque 10y ago
That was my interpretation as well.

deleted 10y ago

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