Mach Effect Propulsion

I saw this article about Mach Effect Propulsion over on nextbigfuture.com and I thought I should make a thread about it here on ATS. I hadn't seen a thread on it yet. It's a propellantless thruster that has shown some experimental promise. The article has a number of links to more information on the concept, including a link to a 16 page pdf that gives a much more detailed description of the theory on which the design is based.

From the article:

The Mach Effect Thruster (MET) is a propellant—less space drive which uses Mach’s principle to produce thrust in an accelerating material which is undergoing mass—energy fluctuations. Mach’s principle is a statement that the inertia of a body is the result of the gravitational interaction of the body with the rest of the mass-energy in the universe. The MET device uses electric power of 100 - 200 Watts to operate. The thrust produced by these devices, at the present time, are small on the order of a few micro-Newtons.

According to Einstein, General Relativity contains the essence of Mach’s ideas. Mach’s principle can be summarized by stating that the inertia of a body is determined by the rest of the mass-energy content of the universe. Inertia here arises from mass-energy there. The latter, was a statement made by John Wheeler in his 1995 book, Gravitation and Inertia, coauthored by Ciufolini. Einstein believed that to be fully Machian, gravity would need a radiative component, an action-at-a-distance character, so that gravitational influences on a body from far away could be felt immediately. In 1960’s, Hoyle and Narlikar (HN) developed such a theory which was a gravitational version of the Absorber theory derived by Wheeler-Feynman for classical electrodynamics and later expanded upon by Davies and Narlikar for quantum electrodynamics. The HN-field equation has the same type of mass fluctuation terms as in the Woodward Mach effect thruster theory. The force equation, used to predict the thrust in our device, can be derived from the mass fluctuation. We outline a new method for deriving the force equation. We present new experimental tests of the thruster to show that the thrust seen in our device is not due to either heating or Dean Drive effects. Successful replications have been performed by groups in Austria and Canada, but their work is still pending in the peer review literature.

www.nextbigfuture.com...

It's interesting theory, and experiments appear to have produced thrust derived by harnessing the principles of this theory. I am interested to see what developments will come from this design. What do you think, ATS? Bunk? Supercool? Meh?

My prediction is they are going to let out the hidden technologies in the next 5 years. I haven't looked into this but I wouldn't be surprised. We already got the EM Drive recently, there's more to come.

And finally all the "free-energy" BS will make sense, as it was simply a means of hiding and distracting the brilliant minds who would've uncovered or discovered the real technology. Don't want to pop the bubble.

Em drive. Now this. Lets hope this and em drive works so we can keep pushing the boundries of 'known laws' further and further back. The space race is getting hotter.

Already posted here.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

a reply to: TheLotLizard

Negative, TheLotLizard. Mach effect propulsion was discussed at that conference, but this is a thread to discuss Mach Effect Propulsion itself. The theory, equipment used, experimentation with, opinions of, and developments with this new concept.

a reply to: TheBadCabbie
That opening post is very misleading, which is not a criticism of you, it's a criticism of your source which drops Einstein's name as if that lends some credibility to the Mach effect, also known as the Woodward effect, but Einstein was skeptical about the idea, not a supporter of it as a reading of the OP and cited source might imply:

The Woodward Effect

A space ship could be equipped with however much mass it needs to move, spend its voyage flinging that mass around its internal systems while employing the Woodward Effect, and come back home with exactly the same amount of fuel it had in the beginning.

How likely is this? That depends on whether Mach's Principle actually works, practically speaking. Many scientists dismiss the very idea — and Einstein was one of them.

So much for Einstein's support.

But surely we can conduct experiments to test the concept without Einstein's help:

The Woodward Effect has been tested multiple times. While some tests indicate it might be even greater than Woodward himself estimated, other tests are muddy and inconclusive.

When test results are inconsistent (all over the place), we can't claim to have a handle on this subject. The tests mentioned that gave results even greater than Woodward predicted were done in 2006 and in 2011 Dr Sonny White of NASA's Eagleworks lab said they would try to replicate those results, but I haven't heard the outcome. I have read that Paul March who got the 2006 favorable test results is cooperating with NASA in their replication attempts:

Paul March Reactionless Drive Interview

Paul March is now working at the NASA Eagleworks labs with Sonny White...

Aerospace Engineer Paul March has been working diligently on the Mach-Lorentz Thruster project for several years. He talks about the beginning of true reactionless propulsion in the lab, as presented in his stunning STAIF 2006 experimental results.

The Mach-Lorentz Thruster project is an outgrowth of research by Dr. James Woodward, which predicts a net-directional reactionless drive thrust originating from a piezo-electric crystal resonating in a phase-locked magnetic field. The project has spawned several replication attempts including March's, and despite some negative setbacks in a European replication, March is among the American inventors seeing positive results above the experimental threshold for error.

I've also heard Sonny White mention a variant of a Mach effect thruster which instead of being based on Mach's princple, is based on pushing on virtual "Q" particle/antiparticle pairs that would annihilate after they have been pushed on. White nicknamed this the "Q-thruster" and plans to do research on it.

I wouldn't say the Mach effect thruster is "bunk", but the scattered test results don't smack of any definitive confirmation to me either, the jury is still out. As the researchers continue with their research they should be able to iron out replication issues that have plagued these ideas so far.

originally posted by: TheLotLizard
Already posted here.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Thread closed.
As one thread is about the conference...and this thread is about the theory.....reopening this thread.

Yay, got it back!

a reply to: Arbitrageur

Interesting reply, thanks. Pushing Einstein in there a little too hard, you think? Perhaps...

You know how it is, though. They've got some shiny promising theory they're proud of, they're going to work as many big names in there as they think they can get away with. Try and sex it up a little.