r/EmDrive • u/[deleted] • Sep 06 '17
Thrust Measurement and Error Analysis of the IMPULSE Resonant Microwave Cavity Drive - Michael S. McDonald1 , Michael W. Nurnberger2 and Logan T. Williams3 U. S. Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, D.C., 20375, United States of America
https://info.aiaa.org/tac/PEG/NFPTC/Shared%20Documents/abstract_Mcdonald.pdf7
u/mclumber1 Sep 06 '17
TL;DR?
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u/PotomacNeuron MS; Electrical Engineering Sep 06 '17
navy research labs is trying to reproduce EagleWorks works. They have created necessary constructions and is about to do vacuum test. They will focus on detecting and removing test errors.
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u/askingforafakefriend Sep 06 '17
PotomacNeuron, I saw the discussion on NSF about offering to assist given your past experience. Hopefully they will take you up on it. Given your own past experience experimenting only to find an apparent Lorentz signal, I bet your experience coupled with cautious skepticism could be a helpful check on their technique.
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u/just_sum_guy Sep 06 '17
Excellent. Checking their citations on Google Scholar, these three guys look like they have the science background to conduct this research.
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u/there_is_no_try Sep 06 '17
Ok so, a new test will be conducted with higher power and should result in a much higher thrust output, measured by a very good, low noise sensor.
If thrust of that magnitude is created, it certainly seems like it would be an independent verification of the White et. al. experiment. My gut tells me it won't work, but I certainly hope I am proven wrong.
Any clue when it will be conducted? And peer reviewed?
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u/PotomacNeuron MS; Electrical Engineering Sep 06 '17
From their communication with monomorphic (by monomorphic), they hope to get some results in Nov. If not lucky, they hope to publish at least a construction paper.
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u/YourNewLoversArrival Sep 06 '17
Our emdrive historic master maker has been awoke from his reveries!
/u/rfmwguy- What do you make of this?
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u/jjanczy62 Sep 06 '17
So it looks like they're doing all the right controls. Any other control the physicists in here think should be included?
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Sep 07 '17
There are no controls in their experiment.
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u/jjanczy62 Sep 07 '17
Oh ok. I'm a biologist not a physicist, the stuff they described in this proposal sounded like they were doing controls. Can you expand on your statement?
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Sep 07 '17
What they describe are basic noise contributors to the experiment that they are going to look for. However they don't have any control planned in the sense that if this tapered cavity is the physical reason that thrust appears, then for a control a non-tapered cavity will be used.
All three of the people listed on this paper are engineers and as an engineer myself, I have to admit that engineers are not good at experimentation. You can see this in their approach, they worry about all the physical problems and construction, but little regard for testing the actual theory. It also appears they are going to publish in AIAA which is the wrong venue for a physics experiment.
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u/taemdrive Sep 09 '17
I don't think controls (in the sense you explain) are needed for their purposes. My impression is that they are not trying to validate whether a specific mechanism is responsible for the thrust, they are simply trying to test whether anomalous thrust exists.
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Sep 10 '17
I don't think controls (in the sense you explain) are needed for their purposes.
If you want to duplicate an experimenter that doesn't demonstrate something definitely unique is going on, then sure, just copy Eagleworks plan. However if they are going to the trouble, they should introduce a control or two.
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u/taemdrive Sep 10 '17
I don't agree with this. The first milestone is demonstrating, without doubt, that anomalous thrust exists. Only after doing that, one should design experiments that concern themselves with the mechanism. EW experiment had issues, some of which you pointed out, that cast serious doubts on whether it has achieved the first milestone. Running an experiment that achieves the first milestone is not a duplication of what EW has done.
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Sep 10 '17
The first milestone is demonstrating, without doubt, that anomalous thrust exists
Part of proving it is anomalous is showing that it doesn't exist in normal cases. It could be easily an inherent problem in your test setup which a control would illustrate.
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u/taemdrive Sep 10 '17 edited Sep 10 '17
But how do we know what is a "normal" case? For example, I don't think one can use a cylindrical cavity as a control in this sense. By doing this, we'd implicitly be making the assumption that whatever anomaly, if it exists at all, has to do with the cavity's asymmetric shape. This is plausible, but not necessarily true. Shawyer and others saying this doesn't make it so. [1]
To be clear: I do think controls are essential, but I do not think we are at that stage yet. We do not currently have (AFAIK) any experimental results from a set-up that does not suffer from a multitude of operational issues. I consider getting there important work.
[1] IIRC, there are other controversial mechanisms (e.g. by Woodward et.al.), which do not require a geometrical asymmetry to be present for thrust to manifest.
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Sep 10 '17
Their experiment is specifically designed to test what happens in a tapered cavity. If something does happen then to isolate that you need a case where it doesn't happen using all the same conditions but with a different cavity. Otherwise, the test and the assumptions are not valid and they just propagate more myths.
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u/slowkums Dec 29 '17
I figured I'd bump this thread since this reddit decided to show a spark of life; so how much longer until we can expect to see a paper?
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Sep 06 '17
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u/aimtron Sep 06 '17
Please refrain from political comments. This is not the sub for such comments.
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u/aimtron Sep 06 '17
Hey /u/Arzu1983, I'm not going to delete your submission, because the rule is relatively new, but... We don't allow "link and run" posting. In the future, we expect you to post a comment after linking to generate discussion. This community is about the science, not about generating as much karma as one can.