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[sirboomalot]

PTW

[Redzephyr01]

PTW

[wierd]

You know... A curious thought suddenly occurs to me.

Microwave radiation is just a strong manifestation of the EM force, in the form of photon force carriers.  This is the same force that is present with magnetisim.

There's a rather mysterious type of neutron star out there called a magnetar.   Magnetars produce photonic emissions many many many orders of magnitude stronger than this EM drive does, but the strong magnetic flux lines around them would make them into natural resonant cavities for their own emissions.  Massive, celestial sized versions of these little things we are discussing.

Why do I bring them up?  There's rotational period anomalies that are associated with them.

Given the recent emperical lab data that Bucket has brought up concerning alcubierre-metric-like data, and the "insane version" physics that magnetars would enable, I wonder if the emdrive's behavior could be a plausible explanation for the magnetar periodicity anomalies.

[mainiac]

To that level of precision?  How would you know the difference between there being 100 times as much copper as we thought and a slight difference in the balance of nickel and iron?

[Eagleon]

IIRC, the premise behind the ecat is nonsense.  The mechanism proposed is just not plausible-- We would have a LOT more copper on earth if this kind of thing was possible and easy to do. (Nickel constitutes a fair percentage of the earth's core, and would have been very abundant in the early solar system, along with the water that was delivered to the earth. Conditions would have been "favorable" for this kind of fusion, if it were really possible, in the early history of the earth-- meaning a significant amount of copper should have been generated. So-- where's all that copper at?)

It's usually the case that geophysics bases its measurements on the reactions that we know occur, so our estimates may be off somewhat. We can't exactly dip into the mantle to study it, we have to base our guesses on its composition on volcanic events (which don't represent the whole mantle) and sonar/seismic density studies.

You forgot the 'working out the earth's mass and density', which helps a lot in regards to finding out what the earth is made of.

and sonar/seismic density studies.

My parents were geologists. I at least know how full of crap they are, even if that doesn't qualify me to be one.

Especially if there are different radiochemistry processes occurring than we expect, mass and density isn't enough to determine composition without a good handle on the chemistry present, because when you have different chemicals in different phase states you have different densities, and if you have an abundance of a compound with a different density than you're expecting, that can radically alter the potential concentrations of each element. As early as last year, for instance, from physical modelling with lasers: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/344/6186/877

[Bohandas]

IIRC, the premise behind the ecat is nonsense.  The mechanism proposed is just not plausible-- We would have a LOT more copper on earth if this kind of thing was possible and easy to do. (Nickel constitutes a fair percentage of the earth's core, and would have been very abundant in the early solar system, along with the water that was delivered to the earth. Conditions would have been "favorable" for this kind of fusion, if it were really possible, in the early history of the earth-- meaning a significant amount of copper should have been generated. So-- where's all that copper at?)

It's usually the case that geophysics bases its measurements on the reactions that we know occur, so our estimates may be off somewhat. We can't exactly dip into the mantle to study it

Yeah, the Russians tried that during the Soviet Era but had to stop because the drill kept overheating (contrary to urban legend it was NOT stopped because they encountered Hidden Fun Stuff)

[Reelya]

Wow the 80's were kooky times with the supernatural beliefs. The Soviet Hell Bore was benign though as no-one had their lives ruined by that. Similar but worse was the epidemic of satanism abuse. Not actual abuse, but the mass panic that there were satanists running every daycare center. You think Dark Dungeons was exagerrated? People in the 80's literally believed that stuff was real. The scale of the satanic daycare panic was so huge, it's basically the moden equivalent of the Salem witch trials, but on a national scale. Why don't people talk about it? well...

When you once believed something that now strikes you as absurd, even unhinged, it can be almost impossible to summon that feeling of credulity again. Maybe that is why it is easier for most of us to forget, rather than to try and explain, the Satanic-abuse scare that gripped this country in the early 80's — the myth that Devil-worshipers had set up shop in our day-care centers, where their clever adepts were raping and sodomizing children, practicing ritual sacrifice, shedding their clothes, drinking blood and eating feces, all unnoticed by parents, neighbors and the authorities

Some of the claims in various American cases included that the daycare teachers could fly, took daycare kiddies to cemetaries and had them assist in exhuming bodies for dark rituals, flew children to Mexico to be abused, and flew them back in time for mom and dad to pick them up from daycare, and that children were flushed down toilets into secret underground labyrinths below the daycare center where abuse happened, then they were cleaned up and presented back to parents in the afternoon. No such tunnels were found, I guess that's where the magic toilets come in. Which begs the question how the adults got in and out of the tunnels. Still, the tunnel abuse case lasted 7 years in the legal system before all charges were dropped. This was the evil ringleader in that case. Feel the evil emanating:


^True face of evil.

[alway]

So on the silly ecat device, correct me if I'm wrong, but there also wouldn't be a necessity for planetary conditions for it to occur? Because if that were supposedly the case, you would not only see the element discrepancy in the earth if you disassemblednit, but you would also clearly see an elemental distribution that appeared incorrect throughout every part of the universe, if compared to known nuclear synthesis processes. This would be very obvious, since astronomical spectrometry is such an impo rant tool in that field. There would also be a question of planetary temperature if it is bound to planetary sysrems, though we may or may not see evidence of that depending on the scale of things.

[Bohandas]

Wow the 80's were kooky times with the supernatural beliefs. The Soviet Hell Bore was benign though as no-one had their lives ruined by that. Similar but worse was the epidemic of satanism abuse. Not actual abuse, but the mass panic that there were satanists running every daycare center. You think Dark Dungeons was exagerrated? People in the 80's literally believed that stuff was real. The scale of the satanic daycare panic was so huge, it's basically the moden equivalent of the Salem witch trials, but on a national scale.

Why don't people talk about it? I've read quotes from journalists from the time who say that no-one talks about it now because it's too uncomfortable to admit that half the country and the majority of the media believed things that they now realize are so far out in "crazy shit" territory. Some people are actually still in prison over satanism-linked child abuse which is most likely complete baloney.

Some of the claims in various American cases included that the daycare teachers could fly, took daycare kiddies to cemetaries and had them assist in exhuming bodies for dark rituals, flew children to Mexico to be abused, and flew them back in time for mom and dad to pick them up from daycare, and that children were flushed down toilets into secret underground labyrinths below the daycare center where abuse happened, then they were cleaned up and presented back to parents in the afternoon. No such tunnels were found, I guess that's where the magic toilets come in. Which begs the question how the adults got in and out of the tunnels. Still, the tunnel abuse case lasted 7 years in the legal system before all charges were dropped. This was the evil ringleader in that case. Feel the evil emanating:

Don't forget the one where the kids were allegedly molested on a hot air baloon by Chuck Norris

[Mech#4]

I watched the video in a link a page back of some people heating up a bar until it ruptured. Uh, could someone explain what the purpose behind that is? I understand it's got something to do with reactors but there seems to be some history behind the thing that I don't know. What is the E-cat thingy?

I'm no scientist by any means but my curiosity is peaked. If someone could please humour me with a short explanation?

[Il Palazzo]

To that level of precision?  How would you know the difference between there being 100 times as much copper as we thought and a slight difference in the balance of nickel and iron?

Primarily because of the density. If we can work out the density, then unless there's a large amount of *far* lighter matter in the mantle/core, there will not be a larger amount of copper because the earth would be smaller.

One gram of iron would be smaller in size than one gram of copper, despite them both being as massive.

When was the last time you checked the densities of those materials? Iron is less dense than both copper and nickel, the latter of two are nearly equally dense.
The question is more in the vein of how would you differentiate between nickel with some free (i.e. bound in water molecules, most likely) hydrogen and copper, since that's what the ecat fusion is supposed to operate on - both of which give the same density as far as the achievable precision is concerned.

But anyway, the 'independent report' that got that anomalous heating:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1305.3913
has not been published in any journal, and the people who wrote it are associated with the ecat crowd - I'm not sure where their 'independence' comes from.
It has been criticised as essentially bunk e.g. by this commentary article:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1306.6364

[scrdest]

Feel the evil emanating:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

^True face of evil.

FOOL! YOU HAVE DOOMED US ALL!

DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom!

[SirQuiamus]

ITT: New developments in pathological science.

Hope is a good thing, but persistent false hopes are detrimental to science and healthy scepticism.     

[TempAcc]

Yea, nobody is actualy jumping to conclusions and saying that everything works and its all revolutionary, but rather trying to find reasonable possible explanations as to why it might/might not work and ocasionaly finding things that support/contradict the supposed developments. IE the same thing scientists do when they a new hypothesis comes up, except they examine actual data and test it while we're limited to looking up the results of supposed research here and there.

@cooky 80s satanic panic stuff

Those kind of cases apparently only went foward because the parents that firmly believed their child was abused by some sort of satanic daycare eventualy CONVINCED said children that it actualy happened. In fact, some supposed victims of "satanic child abuse" wrote entire books on the matter and later came to public saying it was all a lie. The whole thing was just a huge case of memetic hysteria.

The soviet hell drill thing was actualy conceived as a publicity hoax by a finnish tabloid though, which eventualy got picked up by some people in the US and became an article in some less then reputable newspapers.

[Akura]

They can hook this up to Rossi's E-Cat Cold Fusion device for the power source. This will have the added benefit that the water for the E-Cat can be heated up in the microwave section.

You just made me think of something as if it's from a futuristic sitcom.

'What's that popping noise?'
'Oh, just stuck some popcorn in the engine'

Didn't say it was a good sitcom.

That just sounds like a good use for the by-products of existing processes. Hell, the British used the coolant water from their machine guns(which was boiling after sustained fire) for tea.


As for this idea, I don't know how the physics work, so I'll just wait and see.