Science!! Fucking magnets, how do they work?
- Thread starter Flunklesnarkin_sl
- Start date
10 questions about Nasa space drive answered (Wired UK)
More on the drive, still no idea how it works (there are 2-3 popular theories)
More on the drive, still no idea how it works (there are 2-3 popular theories)
- 24,489
- 45,417
Fucking awesome. I was talking this up to my wife the other night and she was giving me the blank nerd stare.
iannis
Musty Nester
- 31,351
- 17,656
Such a nerd boner. I'm sure it'll take at least 20 years for this to become something that we actually see... and I'll be an old man... but I'm starting to really feel Burt Coopers, "Bravo" line.
- 24,489
- 45,417
Well, unless we're just never going to explore past LEO, it has to eventually not be bullshit. They've got to make a breakthrough somewhere.
Tuco
I got Tuco'd!
- 45,450
- 73,533
It fizzled out. He never let anyone properly verify it.
Energy Catalyzer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I thought Shrinky Dinks were awesome as a kid
Robot folds itself up and walks away: Demonstrates potential for sophisticated machines that build themselves -- ScienceDaily
Or we can just send perv-bots through the mail now
Robot folds itself up and walks away: Demonstrates potential for sophisticated machines that build themselves -- ScienceDaily
Or we can just send perv-bots through the mail now
Palum
what Suineg set it to
- 23,528
- 33,918
I'm always amazed when we still have engineering discoveries that defy our understanding of physics. You would think when we have things like CERN LHC specifically designed for exploring exotic particles and the unobservable and unnatural, it would be nigh impossible for people to just cobble random shit together from ideas and come up with practical concepts outside of our understanding of why they work. I get that a lot of these practical things is imagination + extension of theory and 'faith' that known physics extends into the unknown to manifest itself in predictable ways, of course. But still, this is why all that LENR stuff is so impossible to believe at face value as Brutul said. Yet here we have these new Q drives, we have graphene... it's invigorating to see we still have practical leaps (and not just crawling) to make that don't rely on improbably large energy levels or impossible resource commitment.
Have they ever explained how that drive doesn't break the laws of conservation of momentum? The thought of being able to hover without needing energy just blows my mind.
I see a few theories barely mentioned but nothing more than a couple of words. I'm curious how they are trying to explain how this works.
I see a few theories barely mentioned but nothing more than a couple of words. I'm curious how they are trying to explain how this works.
iannis
Musty Nester
- 31,351
- 17,656
Oh, you do need energy. You probably need a lot of energy. This stuff is powered. What you don't need is reaction mass. As in "every action provides an equal and opposite reaction" mass. But you stillkind ofdo need that, because the device has to be powered in the first place. They're converting energy, through some magical pattern of wave interference, directly into force. And it's not a lot of force but it's also not a lot of energy. Even if this phenomena turns out to be non-scalable and impractical for most macro-applications when they manage to figure out more about how the phenomena exists it will have to provide some insight into "dark energy"... which is probablyexactlywhere it started in some grad students brain.
All this is iterative. You can't make this device and wonder why it works without first being able to make the fission device which powers it and understanding how and why that device works. And so on and suchlike. My concern is not that we'll run out of things to discover, my concern is that the body of knowledge will grow so large and specific that we'll run up against a hard biological wall within ourselves and run out of ways to discover.
All this is iterative. You can't make this device and wonder why it works without first being able to make the fission device which powers it and understanding how and why that device works. And so on and suchlike. My concern is not that we'll run out of things to discover, my concern is that the body of knowledge will grow so large and specific that we'll run up against a hard biological wall within ourselves and run out of ways to discover.
Mist
Eeyore Enthusiast
- 30,453
- 22,287
It's basically an impulse drive from Star Trek. It converts energy into force. It still takes a big fucking reactor if you want to get a big fucking force out of it, but it wouldn't necessarily take a fusion reactor.
Also keep in mind that most of physics breaks the laws of physics. The whole 'classical physics breaks down at the quantum level' thing is actually an oversimplification. Classical physics breaks down in all sorts of ways before you even get down to quantum physics. Classical physics is merely 'good enough' for engineering and most mundane chemistry.
Also keep in mind that most of physics breaks the laws of physics. The whole 'classical physics breaks down at the quantum level' thing is actually an oversimplification. Classical physics breaks down in all sorts of ways before you even get down to quantum physics. Classical physics is merely 'good enough' for engineering and most mundane chemistry.
What do they mean then when they say this:
I'm familiar with super conducting magnets and how they work. Obviously those are super cooled which requires tons of energy. Would this potentially allow levitation without such cooling? Is that their claim? Seems like crazy talk to me.