Author Topic: Hyperdrive  (Read 84739 times)

Offline DonPMitchell

  • The Right Stuff
  • Moonwalker
  • ****
  • Posts: 1200
  • Gender: Male
    • Mental Landscape
Re: Hyperdrive
« Reply #30 on: January 25, 2006, 02:45:14 PM »
SatanicMechanic, you are right.  I just meant that Tesla was not a scientist in the modern professional sense.  He was a extremely inventive guy and knew the basic math of electrical engineering.  I've read his Colorado Springs notes and pretty much everything else he wrote, including articles in Electrical Experimenter.  He was also kind of whacky, and got a lot of science wrong when he speculated.  His idea of resonating the Earth with an electrical oscillator is intersting, but it's extremely unlikely that he actually did that in Colorado in 1899.  He wasn't very careful about his claims, and in his later life went off the deep end entirely.

Edison is a mixed bag.  Clearly an important man, who had a big technological and economic impact on the world.  A lot of his inventions were undoubtely made by the engineers on his staff, not by Edison himself.  And he did some terrible things in the course of trying to maintain a monopoly on his motion picture technology, including having rivals beaten by thugs.
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
  - Agent Smith

Offline Spinalwayswins

  • Stargazer
  • *
  • Posts: 8
Re: Hyperdrive
« Reply #31 on: January 25, 2006, 05:07:51 PM »
I was just reading an article about Tesla's dynamic theory of gravity, and it discussed about a craft he wanted to build or did. He said it had no propellers, or wings, and that it used some sort of gyroscopic motion, but refused to discuss further. Now this is very interesting because he was a firm believer of eastern understandings, and the works on vedics or Veda's, and in those works there is described devices that could do miraculous things similar to what he described. I cant really say that Tesla was as crazy or unknowledgable as some may think, because there are mathematicians today  that know nothing...but math! So just because Einstein was finely in touch with mathematics doesn't really mean much except that he..well knew math. I understand that he was a bright individual and I'm not trying to put him down, its just that you cant knock a person because they don't know something like tensor calculus, or differential geometry, because even those mean nothing unless you have acquired the perception to apply them. Mathematics is merely a tool. Look at Faraday. What about the cell phone, or Tesla coil or AC motors,etc... for a long time this guy had quite a few patents, and what of his works that aren't being released from the govt.?

Offline DonPMitchell

  • The Right Stuff
  • Moonwalker
  • ****
  • Posts: 1200
  • Gender: Male
    • Mental Landscape
Re: Hyperdrive
« Reply #32 on: January 26, 2006, 12:58:54 AM »
You're reading some new-age stuff about Tesla that is total fiction.  Vedic scriptures and gyroscopic propulsion and government secrets?  That's deep into the territory of crank science, and has nothing to do with Nikola Tesla.  If you want to know about Tesla, read O'Neil's biography, Prodigal Genius, written by a man who was actually Tesla's friend.

As for math, ignorance is never a strength.  Not knowing math limits a person's perception of the reality of the universe, just like being color blind limits your perception of a flower.
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
  - Agent Smith

Offline Nik

  • Gemini Pilot
  • ***
  • Posts: 103
Math...
« Reply #33 on: January 26, 2006, 10:55:52 AM »
Agreed.

My career choices were limited by math-blindness. I could do 'Partials' and such by rote, but I could not 'see' them on paper. D'uh, even before I lost my Chess at puberty, I could not play 'blind'...

And, yes, there is a *lot* of new-age nonsense about. As with zero-point and over-unity, proponents refuse to consider reality checks. Inventors will feed their widget power, measure an 'excess' at the output. But, none will connect input to output for long. Certainly, none will connect input *and* a significant dissipative load to their output...

Standard cliché for invention is the lit light-bulb: A real ZP/OU widget would run a modest 40 Watt desk-lamp stand-alone for the filament's rated life, delivering far more power than could be mis-measured due phase and/or wave-form errors, stored in rotating components, concealed in frame, delivered by microwaves etc etc. If you dare suggest such a trial, be prepared to leave in haste.

Mind the step...

 

Offline Spinalwayswins

  • Stargazer
  • *
  • Posts: 8
Re: Hyperdrive
« Reply #34 on: January 26, 2006, 10:09:01 PM »
I am curious, how many people actually believe in the ether. The reason why is because even mainstream science is starting to back track and wonder if there exist some sort of fluid like properties to space (Scientific America, Dec. 2005), well and because the vacuum is not empty, its filled with fluctuations as a result of the Heisenburg uncertainty principle.

Offline Spinalwayswins

  • Stargazer
  • *
  • Posts: 8
Re: Hyperdrive
« Reply #35 on: January 26, 2006, 11:44:39 PM »
**Not Stephen Hawking, Brian Greene or Michio Kaku
Ufo Propulsion, Vehicle Design and Related Phenomena
by D. V. Williams

www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0533125871


Offline DonPMitchell

  • The Right Stuff
  • Moonwalker
  • ****
  • Posts: 1200
  • Gender: Male
    • Mental Landscape
Re: Hyperdrive
« Reply #36 on: January 27, 2006, 01:42:59 AM »
Dude, why do you waste you time with junk like this?  You're smart enough to learn real science!  Pick up a copy of Feynman's lectures and start reading.  I'm done talking to you.
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
  - Agent Smith

Offline Satanic Mechanic

  • The Right Stuff
  • Moonwalker
  • ****
  • Posts: 1834
Re: Hyperdrive
« Reply #37 on: January 27, 2006, 11:28:39 AM »
Michaelson-Morley experiment disproved the existence of the "ether".  Hell, I learned that in high school physics.

SM

Offline DonPMitchell

  • The Right Stuff
  • Moonwalker
  • ****
  • Posts: 1200
  • Gender: Male
    • Mental Landscape
Re: Hyperdrive
« Reply #38 on: January 27, 2006, 02:47:26 PM »
Well a lot of these German theories about antigravity also had their origins during WWII, when their scientists were encouraged to find alternatives to the "Jewish" theory of relativity.  Not only crank, but totally repugnant.
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
  - Agent Smith

Offline Spinalwayswins

  • Stargazer
  • *
  • Posts: 8
Re: Hyperdrive
« Reply #39 on: January 28, 2006, 12:46:56 AM »
I guess i am a fool in all of your eyes, but to me before i commit to any belief i want to know a bit about how it came about, so i started from Boscovich, Faraday, maxwell, Tesla, Leibniz, Gauss, etc... just to get a full insight into what modern theories have been building on. And to be honest i think its pretty familiar to scientist that use these theories that somethings wrong, the only problem is that they don't deal with it because usually it has nothing to do with there work, after a certain point in their life they only have time to focus on one specific area. It takes like 20 years to make a discovery so they don't waste a minute.
Hamilton's Quaternions everyone says that there's nothing special about them, but i don't know because Carl Friedrich Gauss was dealing with somethings call the "complex domain" which showed a deeper geometric relation to algebra, which relied of complex numbers, he also showed what exactly was meant (geometrically) by the square root of negative numbers, instead of....i...Maxwell was interested in Quaternions and was introduced to them by his class mate (Peter Tait), who didn't fully understand them, he also didn't fully understand Hamilton. Maxwell had asked what was the significance of the Nabla, "what was the significance of rotating the delta by 30 degrees" is what he asked Tait, but Tait himself was unsure. Hamilton was deeply into the symmetry's of life, left right, hot cold, positive and negative charges. Heaviside created the vector analysis to get quick results for engineers, so that they wouldn't have to learn quaternions, they could just use vectors and quickly get results. Today vectors seem just fine, but according to the Aharonov-Bohm Effect there exist a scalar potential that wasn't predicted by vectors, but is easily noticed using quaternions...

Offline Nik

  • Gemini Pilot
  • ***
  • Posts: 103
Michaelson-Morley redux...
« Reply #40 on: January 28, 2006, 10:55:59 AM »
"Michaelson-Morley experiment disproved the existence of the "Aether".  Hell, I learned that in high school physics."

So did I.

Turns out there could be a loop-hole in their elegant methodology due time-of-day, season, instrument alignment NSEW and experimental error. Their data did not exclude a recent, alternative formulation of potential aetherial properties.

My opinion is that the new work will just 'dot the i and cross the t' on the Aether Hypothesis' consignment to History. That's Science. If the notion fails experimental testing, we sigh with relief. If the notion succeeds, we grin and explore it, for that is Science, too.

D'uh, but how do I explain difference between 'Aether Hypothesis' and the *known* mega-flux of Solar & Galactic neutrinos to some-one who lacks Physics ??


Offline Nik

  • Gemini Pilot
  • ***
  • Posts: 103
Reference for hypothetical alternative...
« Reply #41 on: January 28, 2006, 11:34:08 AM »
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminiferous_aether

Extract...

"Maurizio Consoli of the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics in Catania, Sicily, argues in Physics Letters A (vol 333, p 355) that any Michelson-Morley type of experiment carried out in a vacuum will show no difference in the speed of light even if there is an ether. Electroweak theory and quantum field theory suggest that light could appear to move at different speeds in different directions in a medium such as a dense gas; the speed of light would be sensitive to motion relative to an ether and the refractive index of the medium. Consoli and Evelina Costanzo propose an experiment with laser light passing through cavities filled with a relatively dense gas. With the Earth passing through an ether wind, light would travel faster in one direction than in the perpendicular direction. This would fit with predictions by Lorentz whose theory for light predict equivalent results to those of the special theory of relativity only in a vacuum."

Worth checking, to be sure, to be sure...

Offline DonPMitchell

  • The Right Stuff
  • Moonwalker
  • ****
  • Posts: 1200
  • Gender: Male
    • Mental Landscape
Re: Hyperdrive
« Reply #42 on: January 29, 2006, 12:24:47 AM »
A true story from Caltech:  One day a man walked into the office of nuclear phycisist Tom Tombrillo.

Man: "Thank-you for seeing me.  Usually people just kick me out of their office."

Tom: "Well, let's hear about your theory."

Man: "OK, well first of all, protons are flat and neutrons are round."

Tom: "You're right."

Man: "I am?"

Tom: "Yes, I'm going to kick you out of my office."
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
  - Agent Smith

Offline Nik

  • Gemini Pilot
  • ***
  • Posts: 103
ROFL !!
« Reply #43 on: January 29, 2006, 08:43:58 AM »
Some years ago, after returning from extended sick-leave, I was handed the 'kook-file' as make-work. Remember, these missives were the survivors of a vetting process that included bomb & toxin checks, and diversion of rants to local police...

Most were *totally* weird, including the usual crop of inventors offering us 'elixirs', folk blaming and/or warning of assorted plagues, accusing us of soaking the poor etc etc. One scribbled note struck me as different. This juvenile correspondent wanted to buy a lot of second-hand production equipment... but the phrasing seemed wrong for a wannabee 'Grass' or 'Meth' lab.

The un-written rule for replies was 'play with straight bat'. So, I strolled down to Engineering, explained the situation, Xeroxed some 2nd-User Supplier info from their files. As it was a good day --I wasn't *hurting*--, I did not stop at the usual 'hope these help' and disclaimer in my covering letter.

I added a homily on the several difficulties of maintaining quality standards when expanding facilities, suggested co-operation with local clinics & technical college, listed various Development Agencies, mentioned Export Credits etc etc..

Month or so later, my manager put head around door. H'd had a *very nice* business letter from newly formed company, thanking us for the insights which had secured their draft business plan, and inviting me to drop in for a cup of local tea-- should I find myself in India !!

At a guess, they'd 'networked' their request to save on postage, and kin-folk forgot that few companies would look twice at a child's untidy scrawl...

Offline Nik

  • Gemini Pilot
  • ***
  • Posts: 103
for info: Quaternions...
« Reply #44 on: January 29, 2006, 03:59:54 PM »
http://theworld.com/~sweetser/quaternions/qindex/qindex.html

...has a quirky yet readable approach to the Math.

It also tries to formulate Relativity in quaternions, but does NOT claim to offer a 'Theory of Everything'.