enigma555

Quick answer: "That certainly sounds fishy..."

So, no.

Dark Jedi

I suspect the prof was assuming a vacuum. Ask what would happen in the same scenario in an atmosphere.

enigma555

I found the thread referenced.

The guy claims that "Russians were planning to go to the moon, using this anomoly".

He also claims that the speed of light is no barrier.

He said that he had a device spinning and it's weight as measured by a bathroom scale dropped before it fell apart.

I'll admit that I'm an aerospace neophyte... this is my third year in the program, and the first year where they teach us any aerodynamics, but my finely tuned BS detector is telling me it's complete crap.

Ballistic effects on bullets for example, take effect in supersonic flow. Up until you hit Mach .3, there is little to no effect due to viscosity (~95% accurate at .3M).

I severely doubt that his device had any instantaneous supersonic motion.

The only way to use a device with rotating arms to provide lift is for the device to be a propellor.

They don't call them Newton's Laws for nothing.

echidna

I suspect the calibre of scientist can be judged by his own report.

echidna

Sorry, I really don’t use LOL very often, but for some reason I find this image worthy of a … ROTFLMFAO !!!

Feather

Well it seems to me he's relying quite heavily on perfectly elastic collisions, transfers of energy and so forth.

(taken from <a href="http://www.forceborne.com/cip_principle.htm" target="_blank">CIP Principle Page</a>)

There's no way that "recombining the mass" is elastic. There will be energy loss.

Maybe I missed it, but in his "parametric study" he doesn't seem to include any sort of accomodation for energy loss. In fact, he claims directly that the energy is conserved. Which is bogus. There's a force and a torque generated somehow to make up the difference external to the "engine," otherwise the engine will stop after some time. Even for the "motor driven rotor," the motor will have to make up the difference for the energy of splitting and recombining the masses. In addition to rotating the arms.


At any rate, this statement: "angular momentum for point masses is only a convenient form of linear momentum" makes baby Jesus cry ( ). If this were true, then we'd have to throw out orbital mechanics (for starters). It may be "convenient" in this particular mechanical system, but it is not generally true.

[ October 02, 2002: Message edited by: Feather ]</p>