Whoa! New type of space drive discovered

[Paratus]

Every time I post interesting scientific news, it turns into this:

I've found the same thing.
Everyone wants to be right.

 

[disappoint]

I've found the same thing.
Everyone wants to be right.

Except you?

 

[tynopik]

That fact that it's been tested by different parties and we still have anomalous thrust says there is probably something there.

The fact that none of them can be bothered to go through peer-review says that there's nothing there.

I understand you all are getting so excited, but after going through a few cycles of super-exciting research that fizzles out, you begin to recognize the signs of bogosity.

And this one pegs the meter.

 

[DrPizza]

These sort of things could be avoided if the "scientists" would stop making announcements like "we think we", "we may have", "there may be". Prove it over and over in your own labs and make it repeatable, then have your peers try to disprove it, then and only then make announcements. The internet and the very quick 15 minutes of fame have made people lazy and too quick to make outlandish "we might have" announcements. It gets very old and gives a cry wolf affect after awhile.

I somewhat disagree with the sentiment. Let's take the "faster than light" neutrino experiment a year or so ago. Those scientists didn't rush to publish their results. They did all they could to figure out why they had anomalous results. When they couldn't do so, and all seemed to point to ftl neutrinos, they had an obigation to publish to the rest of the scientific community so that others could either confirm or falsify their research.

 

[DrPizza]

What an awesome article on this:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/o...date-imposible-space-drive-word/#.U-JNsIBdWD6

 

[Markbnj]

What an awesome article on this:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/o...date-imposible-space-drive-word/#.U-JNsIBdWD6

I know I risk getting into the position of debating science with an actual scientist, which I promise I will not do . I think this article has already been dealt with. It's essentially opinion and a characterization of the people who did the experiments rather than the methods. The point about the results from the null thruster has already been explained as an earlier misunderstanding from the abstract.

I still think the Wired piece linked earlier is better and more factual.

 

[Puppies04]

Very interesting, but I don't get the last part : "take astronauts to Mars in weeks rather than months".

I guess the idea is you could have constant thrust, instead of set burns for X length of time, but the thrust would be so minimal, that it would take weeks to get up to chemical propellant speeds. And, it would take weeks to slow down for orbit also.

If they are assuming these could eventually generate the same type of thrust as conventional engines, then a constant burn might explain it, but again, you'd have to thrust to gain delta v half the time, and thrust to lose delta v half the time to gain an orbit. Making that statement, in this case, seems pretty far fetched.

Why wouldn't you use conventional engines to get up to speed/provide most the stopping force then use the new drive to top it up.

 

[Fritzo]

Why wouldn't you use conventional engines to get up to speed/provide most the stopping force then use the new drive to top it up.

Fuel is incredibly heavy.

 

[tynopik]

It's essentially opinion and a characterization of the people who did the experiments rather than the methods.

We don't know anything about the methods because they won't go through peer review.

Why do you think that is?

The point about the results from the null thruster has already been explained as an earlier misunderstanding from the abstract.

there was no misunderstanding. They broke the device and it still worked.

Which means it never worked

 

[darkswordsman17]

I somewhat disagree with the sentiment. Let's take the "faster than light" neutrino experiment a year or so ago. Those scientists didn't rush to publish their results. They did all they could to figure out why they had anomalous results. When they couldn't do so, and all seemed to point to ftl neutrinos, they had an obigation to publish to the rest of the scientific community so that others could either confirm or falsify their research.

I don't think you're actually disagreeing at all. In that instance, the problem wasn't the research (which if I'm not mistaken, they basically were asking for help in figuring out) but rather how it got reported. Instead of it being "we've observed some strange behavior, any other scientists/labs able to help us figure it out?" it was passed as some breakthrough and the dumbass modern media that knows jack shit about anything picks it up and proclaims it some Einstein level breakthrough. Kinda like how they focused on "OMG the LHC will make black holes!!!!" or "The God Particle" and all the other BS.

 

[Paratus]

Except you?

Well I don't like to be wrong either.

But the only things I've stated in this thread are the facts as I'm aware of them Facts are not wrong. (The paper corroborates what I've said and what my friend on the project has told me in the past.)

The other things I've stated are my opinion.

• This is worthwhile science to explore at the minuscule funding levels it's received
• The technology if proven would be a game changer for exploration.
• Testing so far has been inconclusive. Neither proven or disproven.
• I'm pretty sure momentum is being conserved in one way or another
• Further testing should be done to conclusively prove or disprove the effect.

So far no one has provided me with an argument that makes me think my opinions are "wrong".

What an awesome article on this:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/o...date-imposible-space-drive-word/#.U-JNsIBdWD6

It's a well written skeptical article that I agree with almost entirely. What's funny though, is I think most people would misinterpret the article as saying the effect conclusivey doesn't work.

Let's look at the article:

The story begins several years back with a British inventor named Roger Shawyer and his EmDrive, a prototype rocket engine which he claimed generated thrust by bouncing microwaves around in an enclosed metal funnel. Since no mass or energy emerged from the engine, Shawyer’s claim was another way of saying that he’d found a way to violate the conservation of momentum. In Baez’s words, “this is about as plausible as powering a spaceship by having the crew push on it from the inside.” Shawyer argued that he was exploiting a loophole within general relativity. Baez calls his explanation “mumbo jumbo.”

Everything in science is open to questioning, of course, but nobody is going to throw out all the textbooks on the say-so of a single inventor trying to raise money for his company, SPR Ltd. Conservation of momentum is one of the most fundamental and thoroughly confirmed principles in physics. The EmDrive therefore got little notice outside of the “weird science” web sites. Last year, a Chinese group reported success with a similar device, prompting another blip of fringe coverage but little more.

Then Guido Fetta (a self-described “sales and marketing executive with more than 20 years of experience in the chemical, pharmaceutical and food ingredient industries&#8221 built a third version of the EmDrive, renamed the Cannae Drive. Fetta convinced a sympathetic group of researchers at the Eagleworks Laboratories, part of NASA’s Johnson Space Center, to give it a test. The results were maybe, tentatively, a little bit encouraging. And that is when the nonexistent propellant really hit the fan.

Yup, a couple of inventors have been trying to prove this thing works for several years now without a working hypothesis to describe the results they've seen. A Chinese group saw anomalous thrust and now the NASA group.

A number of publications that should have known better threw caution to the wind. “Nasa validates ‘impossible’ space drive” was the headline in an online story by WiredUK. The author, David Hambling, declared that an engine like the EmDrive could “take astronauts to Mars in weeks rather than months,” and even managed to work in nationalistic hand-wringing about “another great British invention that someone else turned into a success.” Soon the madness crossed the pond; “Space Engine Breaks Laws of Physics,” declared Popular Mechanics. “EmDrive is an Engine That Breaks the Laws of Physics and Could Take Us to Mars,” summarized Mashable.

Agree here too. The media ran with it after a paper was presented at a conference statusing the results of their experiments so far. NASA did not proclaim "Impossible Drive Works!"

Still, science is science: What matters are data, not motivations or semantics. Did White et al actually validate Fetta’s version of the EmDrive? The abstract of their paper, which was presented at a propulsion conference in Cleveland, is freely available online. Reading it raises a number of red flags. The methodology description makes it unclear how much of the testing took place in a vacuum—essential for measuring a subtle thrust effect. The total amount of energy consumed seems to have been far more than the amount of measured thrust, meaning there was plenty of extra energy bouncing around that could have been a source of error.

Yes the abstract is on line. Yes it raises questions about exactly how it was tested. The paper makes it somewhat clear that while they have it mounted in vacuum chamber the rf amplifier they were using turned out to not be vacuum rated so they tested it at pressure in the chamber. Further testing will be done at vacuum.

Worst of all is this statement from the paper: “Thrust was observed on both test articles, even though one of the test articles was designed with the expectation that it would not produce thrust.” In other words, the Cannae Drive worked when it was set up correctly—but it worked just as well when it was intentionally disabled set up incorrectly. Somehow the NASA researchers report this as a validation, rather than invalidation, of the device.

So here we have the author taking the NASA group to task. Those big shot NASA researchers totally made a rookie mistake by blowing the control and then reporting it worked. How embarrassing.

It would be. If that's what had happened. But what actually happened is an even more rookie mistake. The author didn't read the article.

If he had, he would have realized that the null device was used to test a hypothesis by the Cannae inventor about how the device worked. The device produced thrust so the NASA researchers said it invalidated the hypotheses
. Failing to prove the hypothesis in no way invalidates the thrust measured.

Also in the paper was the fact they did have a control. A 50ohm RF source was used as the control and did not produce thrust.

Did I say that was worst of all? I may have take that back. In the paper by White et al, they also write that the Cannae Drive “is producing a force that is not attributable to any classical electromagnetic phenomenon and therefore is potentially demonstrating an interaction with the quantum vacuum virtual plasma.” That last bit stopped me. What’s a quantum vacuum virtual plasma? I’d never heard the term, so I dropped a note to Sean Carroll, a Caltech physicist whose work dives deeply into speculative realms of cosmology and quantum theory.

Carroll wrote back immediately, with a pointed message: “There is no such thing as a ‘quantum vacuum virtual plasma,’ so that should be a tip-off right there. There is a quantum vacuum, but it is nothing like a plasma. In particular, it does not have a rest frame, so there is nothing to push against, so you can’t use it for propulsion. The whole thing is just nonsense. They claim to measure an incredibly tiny effect that could very easily be just noise.” There is no theory to support the result, and there is no verified result to begin with.

So he quotes the hypothesis Harold White puts forth in the abstract and shoots holes in it. There's not much supporting evidence in the actual paper and I'm not a physicist so the only thing I'll say on this is Harold White should try to come up with an experimental way to test his hypothesis.

There is some explanation on the web about this hypothesis

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20110023492.pdf

In a whiplash pivot, the same Popular Mechanics story that starts with the breathless headline ends with a sneer. The writer concludes, “But I’m still wondering, how much did it cost to run this test? During this era of tight budgets, is NASA wasting money on fringe science?”

That question is easy to answer, actually. Five researchers at Eagleworks Laboratories spent a total of 8 days testing the Cannae Drive, using mostly existing equipment. Assuming they each spent about half a day on the test, that is the salary equivalent of about $7,000, give or take. In the annals of government waste, $7,000 ranks as a footnote to a footnote to a footnote. I find it telling, then, that the issue of money is coming up at all. It is the crash that comes after inhaling the high of an up-with-people story in which sheer optimism can trump the laws of physics.

Yup not much money was spent on having an existing group dedicated to researching advanced propulsion concepts test theses devices. It should be obvious based on the limitations of the tests they could perform.

So with the exception of the author not understanding the null device because he didn't read the article, I tend to agree with him on not getting carried away like the press did.

The drives are not proven to work and there is no theory to describe their function. Neither have they been proven not to work or a definitive explanation for the anomalous thrust from experimental error been found.

Until one of those things happens, my opinion is they should continue testing. The fact is NASA is going to continue testing.

No where in the article does he dispute that further testing should occur.

 

[norseamd]

FYI

I want to emphasize that my time at Discover was incredible. I want to give special thanks to Tasha Eichenseher, Amos Zeeberg, and Sheril Kirshenbaum. As it happens none of these individuals are associated with Discover at this point (Tasha is leaving as well), but they were instrumental in allowing me to either be here (in Sheril’s case) or focus on writing (in Tasha and Amos’ case). I assume you’ll be somewhat surprised that I mention Sheril, but I feel like I have to give special thanks to her because I’m 99% sure that it was her “good word” which allowed me to catch the eye of an outfit as respectable as Discover. Unlike a blogger as writerly as Ed Yong, or Sheril herself, I’ve always been more data nerd-cum-verbal pugilist. So this leads me to praise the great management skills of the two web editors I’ve had while being a blogger at Discover. They’ve let “Razib be Razib,” by and large letting me do my thing (though yes, in the interests of professionalism I’ve moved most of the more “direct” verbal volleys to Twitter). I really can’t thank anyone else at Discover because I barely knew they existed, which, in light of recent events, seems like a good thing. Overall I give Discover a good grade in terms of understanding how blogging should be run, with a light hand. This, despite the fact that I often put up posts which rubbed many “right-thinking-people” the wrong way, and scoured the comment threads acidly.
There’s really not much else to say. Aside from a new domain, don’t expect many changes.

Do you see the bold? Not exactly the most trusting of Razib but it is notable. And there were some problems at Scientific American also. These are named popular science magazines for some very good reasons.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com.../standing-with-dnlee-and-discovering-science/

 

[tynopik]

So here we have the author taking the NASA group to task. Those big shot NASA researchers totally made a rookie mistake by blowing the control and then reporting it worked. How embarrassing.

It would be. If that's what had happened. But what actually happened is an even more rookie mistake. The author didn't read the article.

If he had, he would have realized that the null device was used to test a hypothesis by the Cannae inventor about how the device worked. The device produced thrust so the NASA researchers said it invalidated the hypotheses
. Failing to prove the hypothesis in no way invalidates the thrust measured.

Also in the paper was the fact they did have a control. A 50ohm RF source was used as the control and did not produce thrust.

No

They both understand the facts, they just have different explanations of them.

Let's put it in terms of another pseudoscience darling: homeopathy

This guy had a theory that like cures like, so he set up a test to treat those with mercury poisoning by giving them mercury. Unsurprisingly, those he gave the least mercury to did the best.

Those are the facts. What conclusion can we draw from these facts?

Most people would reasonably assume that the 'like treats like' theory is a bust.

He however reached a different conclusion: The smaller the dose, the more powerful it is. See, the smallest dose had the best effect. How can you argue with logic like that?

Similarly if you have a working drive and a broken drive and they both behave the same, you can either conclude that
a) it never worked in the first place
or
b) it somehow magically works in some way we don't understand that violates all laws of physics

The NASA group chose the more 'unlikely' explanation of the facts

"But but but the resistor!"

yes, that means pretty much nothing. Did it have the same physical size and weight of the engine? Did it have the same shape and distribution of mass? Was it made up of the same materials? There's all sorts of ways that engine could have messed up the test apparatus that a simple resistor wouldn't replicate.

 

[SMOGZINN]

No

They both understand the facts, they just have different explanations of them.

Let's put it in terms of another pseudoscience darling: homeopathy

This guy had a theory that like cures like, so he set up a test to treat those with mercury poisoning by giving them mercury. Unsurprisingly, those he gave the least mercury to did the best.

Those are the facts. What conclusion can we draw from these facts?

Very little, because this is a bad experimental design. It lacks a control. If he had a proper control then he would have seen that no mercury actually worked the best and would have come to the correct conclusion.

Similarly if you have a working drive and a broken drive and they both behave the same, you can either conclude that
a) it never worked in the first place
or
b) it somehow magically works in some way we don't understand that violates all laws of physics

The NASA group chose the more 'unlikely' explanation of the facts

"But but but the resistor!"

But NASA did had several a controls, the power source with out the device, and the device with out the power source. Guess what? Neither the power source by itself nor the unpowered device produced thrust, but the powered device did.
So, now what do we conclude?
We conclude that for there to be thrust we need both the device and for it to be powered.

 

[tynopik]

But NASA did had several a controls, the power source with out the device, and the device with out the power source. Guess what? Neither the power source by itself nor the unpowered device produced thrust, but the powered device did.
So, now what do we conclude?
We conclude that for there to be thrust we need both the device and for it to be powered.

You know how electronics sometimes make noise even though they have no moving parts? That noise is vibration. Vibration is enough to throw off a rig sensitive enough to detect ocean waves miles away. Simulating the the electric load of a microwave cavitron with a resistor is simply inadequate.

This is where they're supposed to keep tearing down the rig till they find what is actually necessary to cause the deflection.

Why didn't they do that?

 

[SMOGZINN]

You know how electronics sometimes make noise even though they have no moving parts? That noise is vibration. Vibration is enough to throw off a rig sensitive enough to detect ocean waves miles away. Simulating the the electric load of a microwave cavitron with a resistor is simply inadequate.

This is where they're supposed to keep tearing down the rig till they find what is actually necessary to cause the deflection.

Why didn't they do that?

Because this was a quick and dirty 'is this worth investigating further test' not a full exploration of what makes this thing tick, if it indeed does tick. This device is now going to JPL for closer examination. They will tear it down and test every possible situation to try to figure out if it is really producing thrust, and if so just where and how is this thrust being generated.
If this device really works it might takes years of dozens of teams investigating it to really understand it.

 

[tynopik]

Because this was a quick and dirty 'is this worth investigating further test' not a full exploration of what makes this thing tick, if it indeed does tick. This device is now going to JPL for closer examination. They will tear it down and test every possible situation to try to figure out if it is really producing thrust, and if so just where and how is this thrust being generated.

And now we get back to: why did they publish in the first place?

They clearly aren't done and don't have anything useful to say at this point. Before you make any sort of claim about ground-breaking physics (quantum vacuum virtual plasma indeed), make damn sure you don't have an experimental error

At least that's what RESPONSIBLE scientists would do

 

[SMOGZINN]

And now we get back to: why did they publish in the first place?

They clearly aren't done and don't have anything useful to say at this point. Before you make any sort of claim about ground-breaking physics (quantum vacuum virtual plasma indeed), make damn sure you don't have an experimental error

At least that's what RESPONSIBLE scientists would do

Science is incremental in nature. Scientists don't wait until they have done every test they can think of, or even fully proven their theory to publish. They do an experiment and publish what ever data they get from that in the hopes that it will help others go further, come up with other things to test, or get funding to explore it further.

 

[Ruptga]

Science is incremental in nature. Scientists don't wait until they have done every test they can think of, or even fully proven their theory to publish. They do an experiment and publish what ever data they get from that in the hopes that it will help others go further, come up with other things to test, or get funding to explore it further.

Which is exactly why any layperson that gets excited over news like this is an idiot. It's one thing to say "oh that's neat, I'll keep an eye out for this topic over the coming years", and it's quite another to say "OMG this changes everything, shut up and take my money", or even "what a bunch of crooks, everyone knows things don't work that way". Experts will eventually figure out if it works or not, and why. Until they reach some consensus there is no point in arguing about the merits of whatever researcher, theory, or methodology, because none of us really know or understand what's going on anyway. Us trying to second guess the researchers in an off-topic forum is like third graders arguing in a playground over the merits of an epigenetic therapy.

 

[tynopik]

Science is incremental in nature.

here folks we have a fine example of a true statement used in a misleading fashion

of course no one answers all the questions in the universe in one paper

HOWEVER, they do COMPLETE their small part of it AND try their best to ensure it's ACCURATE before publishing

Scientists don't wait until they have done every test they can think of, or even fully proven their theory to publish. They do an experiment and publish what ever data they get from that in the hopes that it will help others go further, come up with other things to test, or get funding to explore it further.

BULL SHIT

All this 'oh, they're just sharing their preliminary results', or 'oh, they're just trying to get help to verify' is nonsense

that is not what publishing is for, that is what you do BEFORE you publish

however, I think you did manage to stumble across at least part of their their true motivation:

get funding

 

[SMOGZINN]

here folks we have a fine example of a true statement used in a misleading fashion

of course no one answers all the questions in the universe in one paper

HOWEVER, they do COMPLETE their small part of it AND try their best to ensure it's ACCURATE before publishing



BULL SHIT

All this 'oh, they're just sharing their preliminary results', or 'oh, they're just trying to get help to verify' is nonsense

that is not what publishing is for, that is what you do BEFORE you publish

however, I think you did manage to stumble across at least part of their their true motivation:

I don't know what fantasy you have about research but I can tell you that funding is the main limiter. I'm sure the NASA scientists would have loved to spend all their time for the next few months exploring this this device, but they probably only had so much money (counted in time allotted as well as resources used) to do so. So, they did what they could with the resources allotted.

This is pretty much how ALL research works. You want to do X research project. You request $A moneys to do so, and they give you $A-Y to actually do so. You then have to make do with the resources you have.

A LOT of researcher's main goals are to prove that their research is worth spending more money on.

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

Now if we could just figure out how to have poor people stop having babies.

 

[Paratus]

You know how electronics sometimes make noise even though they have no moving parts? That noise is vibration. Vibration is enough to throw off a rig sensitive enough to detect ocean waves miles away. Simulating the the electric load of a microwave cavitron with a resistor is simply inadequate.

This is where they're supposed to keep tearing down the rig till they find what is actually necessary to cause the deflection.

Why didn't they do that?

So prove it's inadequate. You've read the articles about the abstract, declared the measurements they've taken as impossible and only presented to bilk someone out of funding. So prove it.

If the other NASA centers come back from testing and say the thrust measured was experimental error I'm perfectly willing to admit the thrusters don't function.

From your posts you already know they don't work. Not that it's likely it's an error. You know it is an error. So you should be able to prove it right now without waiting for any other experimental evidence or resorting to, "it could be this or it could be that".

What is the experimental error producing the anomalous thrust data in the 3 devices tested and how can can you definitively deduce it from the reported results.

I respond well to data. So I'm willing to change my mind if you can answer the question. Otherwise you're just pulling your opinion out of your ass and trying to pass it along as fact.

 

[tynopik]

I respond well to data.

No you don't.

I've repeatedly explained how the scientific process and publishing works and yet you continue to make up excuse after pathetic excuse for these jokers.

here's the data:

1. When their experiment performs no better than control, real scientists recognize that their experiment didn't work, they don't try to say it just works in ways they didn't understand

2. Real scientists don't publish in vanity journals

3. Real scientists submit to peer review

4. Real scientists don't invoke 'magic physics' when they have absolutely no clue what's going on

That's the cold hard facts

 

[Paratus]

You know how electronics sometimes make noise even though they have no moving parts? That noise is vibration. Vibration is enough to throw off a rig sensitive enough to detect ocean waves miles away. Simulating the the electric load of a microwave cavitron with a resistor is simply inadequate.

This is where they're supposed to keep tearing down the rig till they find what is actually necessary to cause the deflection.

Why didn't they do that?

No you don't.

I've repeatedly explained how the scientific process and publishing works and yet you continue to make up excuse after pathetic excuse for these jokers.

here's the data:

1. When their experiment performs no better than control, real scientists recognize that their experiment didn't work, they don't try to say it just works in ways they didn't understand

Control produced no thrust. EM drive produced measured thrust. Both Cannae drives produced measurable thrust. Further testing schedule indicates they don't believe "it just works" either.

2. Real scientists don't publish in vanity journals.
This has nothing to do with explaining the test results and is your opinion.

3. Real scientists submit to peer review
This has nothing to do with explaining the test results and is your opinion. Further test schedule indicates they aren't ready for peer review.

4. Real scientists don't invoke 'magic physics' when they have absolutely no clue what's going on
This has nothing to do with explaining the test results and is your opinion. Further test schedule indicates they need more time to produce and verify a theory explaining the results.


That's the cold hard facts

So one wrong fact and a bunch of opinions you are trying to present as facts.

Hardly proves what the experimental error is.