(Bilge) wrote in message ...
Steve Shires:
(Bilge):

Either the researchers attempted to replicate the original experiment
or they did not. It appears they did not.

Does that mean the university of alabama group failed to find
any support for the claim or that you are contradicting yourself
regarding what researchers have investigated?

Read these posts in sequence.

Stop changing your story to fit the circumstances. If you had
read anything about this experiment you'd know that the person who
has created the biggest obstacle is podkletnov himsekf, who has
witheld information on the experiment.

No, he wasn't an 'obstacle'. He provided enough information concerning
the *principal* features of the design but wanted to patent it as an
application of his discovery of a weight-loss effect (he could not
patent the discovery itself). He just didn't want chancers stealing
his design and claiming it for themselves. The New Scientist magazine
ran a detailed article with a diagram, the kind of information Ning
Li's team could have used as a starting point for their own
experiments in this field. As you appear to have read the background
to Podkletnov's experiment you ought to know this already.


Try again. If you _really_ did this (I'll get to the cost in a minute),
then you should have the following information handy:

(1) A scale drawing of the apparatus showing dimensions, which
includes the assembly required to spin the disk. Explain
how you managed to machine the magnet to the precision
necessary to get it rotating at 4200 rpm (440 rad/sec
= 4200 rpm = 70 rev/sec.

Please see the photographs which I have posted to:-

http://www.sito.org/cgi-bin/egads/showart?
show=sms.0440&idonly=SMS&cat=installation&seq=4

That is not a scale drawing with the pertinent information.

I also made a drawing with the principle dimension of the model, but
you should design your own rather than use a scale drawing.

I asked for your drawing.

See comment above, i.e.'He just didn't want chancers stealing his
design and claiming it for themselves.' Is that your game then?

I have no intention of designing
apparatus for this experiment. So far, what you've described
are the effects of eddy currents.

(2) A calculation showing the effect of eddy currents.

Are you thinking of hysteresis effects within a permanent magnet?

No. Eddy currents. You know, the currents set up from the spinning
magnet that exerts a repulsive force? Here's a link to an experiment
just like the one you describe which is done as a class demo:

http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~demos/demos/D9-5.htm

Thanks for the URL, the content of which confirms my suspicions with a
brief description that has absolutely nothing to do with my
experiments on levitating disks. It reads 'A small magnet is attached
with tape to the end of a flexible, plastic ruler. It is held just
above a metal disk which can be set into rotation by a turntable.' I
know of this experiment and its result. It is well represented by a
site ('Fun with Superconducting Magnets') that features a
superconducting magnet held in the manner described and rising away
from the rapidly rotating disk of a computer's hard disk drive
circuit.
In my experiment with the magnets, both of them rotate together
and ferromagnetic materials are poor conductors so we can safely
dismiss the effects of induced currents and additional magnetism. Of
course, I had already performed the same experiment using unsupported
balsa wood disks in order that a critical rate of rotation for
levitation could not be confused with the variables associated with
conducting and/or magnetic materials. What is your explanation for the
similarity between the magnetic and non-magnetic cases, apart from the
fact that you forgot about the latter?

If you didn't calculate this effect,

I take it to be negligably small; not enough to support a 7gm magnet.

(or apparently didn't
know about it at all), why are you commenting at all?

(3) Was this alledged disk made of Yttrium-Barium-Copper-Oxide?

I used permanent magnets, not a superconductor. I doubt 14" diameter
YBCO disks could be made for as little as £100 each.

You would have known just how unlikely had you read the papers.
Do you know that NASA was unable to replicate the results using
any material with which they were familiar and could get
podkletnov to provide the information about exactly what his
material was? The Yttrium-Barium-Copper-Oxide, which was their
best guess was a $600,000 item. It appears you just read some
blurb about the experiment and set up something that shows a
completely ordinary electromagnetic phenomenon.

And that would explain the rising of the spinning *balsa wood*.


Are you claiming to have spun a commercially purchased,
14 inch magnetic disk at 4200 rpm?

Certainly not.

[...]
That machine was demonstrated working in front of witnesses but later
taken apart to design another one. The balsa wood disks varied between
2cm and 2.5cm in diameter and ~0.5cm to 1cm in thickness. Thicker
disks rose further, to about 6cm, as high as allowed by the machine.
The magnet rises 0.5cm, due to dimensional restrictions caused by my
determination to restrict any vibration of the guide rod to a minimum.
Modern electric motors can reach 12,000 rpm without much difficulty.

I'[m not referring to the motor. Any idiot can buy a dremel tool
that runs at 30,000 rpm. I'm referring to the balsa wood.

An oscilloscope was used to determine the rate of rotation of the
motor's armature and the rate of spin of the sample was inferred from
this value.

You've essentially provided an excellent example of how not to perform
an experiment. You investigated no ordinary effects that would result in
what you claimed to have observed.

Ordinary effects like vibration, 'propellor shaping' of samples, drive
rods pushing the sample upwards by lateral pressure and such like, you
mean? All of these obvious complications were minimised or completely
avoided. I had the motor placed above the sample so that the drive
rods projected *downwards* for the balsa wood drive design. Of course
nobody can take account of all the factors that might interfere with
the demonstration of just one effect on its own. Just most of them.

You apparently haven't read any of the
literature regarding the apparatus needed to see the effect, even
according to podkletnov. He would probably be the first to admit that your
experiment wouldn't work, since he has apparently kept some information
back. You quantified nothing, and from the numbers you've tossed out, I
have severe doubts that those numbers weren't simply made up.

Then do the experiment yourself and 'make up' your own numbers for it
from the data it provides.

said. I
certainly wouldn't get near anything you built, for fear of having the
pieces come flying out.

So, it's more like 'I wouldn't want to be caught playing around with
anything like *that*', eh? Well, the pieces don't come flying out of
*my* model (though I suppose I could fit a perspex shield to it just
in case) and it does what it did when I first completed it, regularly
and reliably. I have no reservations about demonstrating it's
operation to members of the Institute of Physics.

Steve Shires.

Steve Shires:
(Bilge)

Stop changing your story to fit the circumstances. If you had
read anything about this experiment you'd know that the person who
has created the biggest obstacle is podkletnov himsekf, who has
witheld information on the experiment.

No, he wasn't an 'obstacle'. He provided enough information concerning
the *principal* features of the design but wanted to patent it as an
application of his discovery of a weight-loss effect (he could not
patent the discovery itself).

Apparently, these "principle features" were not enough to replicate the
experiment and no one was able to get additional details.

He just didn't want chancers stealing
his design and claiming it for themselves. The New Scientist magazine
ran a detailed article with a diagram, the kind of information Ning
Li's team could have used as a starting point for their own
experiments in this field. As you appear to have read the background
to Podkletnov's experiment you ought to know this already.

And what I know is that unlike what you've suggested, there have
been a number of attempts to replicate the experiment, including
attempts by nasa and boeing. Each of those organizations spent
more money than most research groups receive in funding for
a year, judging by the materials, equipment and personel involved.

[...]
I asked for your drawing.

See comment above, i.e.'He just didn't want chancers stealing his
design and claiming it for themselves.' Is that your game then?

Hardley. An experiment for which details are not available is
not a scientific experiment. You have no details available whatsoever,
apart from a description that indicates the best you could have done
was observe very ordinary physics. I suspect you've exaggerated the
numbers if not invented them. To the best I can tell from your
picture, the apparatus wouldn't spin at a few hundred rpm without
coming apart, let alone 4200 rpm.

In my experiment with the magnets, both of them rotate together
and ferromagnetic materials are poor conductors so we can safely
dismiss the effects of induced currents and additional magnetism. Of

No, you cannot.

course, I had already performed the same experiment using unsupported
balsa wood disks in order that a critical rate of rotation for
levitation could not be confused with the variables associated with
conducting and/or magnetic materials. What is your explanation for the
similarity between the magnetic and non-magnetic cases, apart from the
fact that you forgot about the latter?

No, but there is no way you can spin an unsupported balsa wood disk
at 12,000 rpm. The air friction alone would stop it in short order.
The air friction from spinning it at all would create a pocket of
warm air underneath it. Since you have no detailed drawings or
any details at all, I suspect this is another case where you've either
ignored the possibility of ordinary physics or simply made everything
up.

Where is your analysis of the systematic effects?


If you didn't calculate this effect,

I take it to be negligably small; not enough to support a 7gm magnet.

That is what separates science from crackpottery. You assume everything
but the effect you are interested in is negligibly small and get ****ed
off when a detailed analysis finds that the only effect that's negligibly
small is the one of interest.

[...]
podkletnov to provide the information about exactly what his
material was? The Yttrium-Barium-Copper-Oxide, which was their
best guess was a $600,000 item. It appears you just read some
blurb about the experiment and set up something that shows a
completely ordinary electromagnetic phenomenon.

And that would explain the rising of the spinning *balsa wood*.

Your evidence is no better than the evidence I have for claiming to
levitate with the magic words "abacadabra". Since both nasa and boeing
have spent a good bit of money investigating podkletnov's claims and
podkletnov himself only claims the effect was possible with a very special
high Tc material (which he hasn't divulged), your claims about balsa wood
are up to you to prove. Out of the most basic requirements for an
experiment - hypothesis, data, methodology, data, error analysis and
conclusion, you have a conclusion. Your conclusion is what you have
for an hypothesis and what you conclude was predetermined by your
own desire to reach that conclusion.

Are you claiming to have spun a commercially purchased,
14 inch magnetic disk at 4200 rpm?

Certainly not.

Well, gee, it's not possible to read your mind and you have no
detailed information, so I can only guess from what you do say.

[...]
You've essentially provided an excellent example of how not to perform
an experiment. You investigated no ordinary effects that would result in
what you claimed to have observed.

Ordinary effects like vibration, 'propellor shaping' of samples, drive
rods pushing the sample upwards by lateral pressure and such like, you
mean? All of these obvious complications were minimised or completely
avoided.

Since you have no calculations or measurements for _any_ of these
things, you stating that they were minimised or avoided is a blatant
fraud.

I had the motor placed above the sample so that the drive
rods projected *downwards* for the balsa wood drive design.

That means nothing to me. I have no drawing of the apparatus to
view and you have no data that represents a control study. You
don't even appear to have done such studies of your apparatus.

Of course
nobody can take account of all the factors that might interfere with
the demonstration of just one effect on its own. Just most of them.

I've done real experiments. The actual data taking reuires the least
amount of time and effort of any part of the experiment. Quantifying
the errors and designing apparatus to minimize those errors takes the
most time. You've never quantified _any_ sources of error and your
design objective was low cost. Well, it would be nice to build things
like airplanes with that as the only design objective, but flying
reliably (or at all) comes first. Most people won't accept someone's
word that an airplane is safe, when all of them crash on takeoff.

[...]

Then do the experiment yourself and 'make up' your own numbers for it
from the data it provides.

So far, you have not given any indication that it's worth spending
$10 and the time and effort required. I'd have to spend a few days
in a machine shop just to build something that wasn't a safety hazard
to use in spinning the disks. Go stick a chuck wrench in a lathe,
turn on the lathe and see how far it flies when you turn it on,
if you don't believe me.

said. I
certainly wouldn't get near anything you built, for fear of having the
pieces come flying out.

So, it's more like 'I wouldn't want to be caught playing around with
anything like *that*', eh?

I've personally designed and built things which are potentially
dangerous and and had to justify them with drawings and tests. I have a
good idea of what is required for mechanical integrity, given some
numbers. The numbers you gave indicate you either got lucky or fabricated
the numbers. I suspect both.

Well, the pieces don't come flying out of
*my* model (though I suppose I could fit a perspex shield to it just
in case) and it does what it did when I first completed it, regularly
and reliably. I have no reservations about demonstrating it's
operation to members of the Institute of Physics.

Then by all means, do so and report back afterward.

Bilge wrote:
So far, you have not given any indication that it's worth spending
$10 and the time and effort required. I'd have to spend a few days
in a machine shop just to build something that wasn't a safety hazard
to use in spinning the disks. Go stick a chuck wrench in a lathe,
turn on the lathe and see how far it flies when you turn it on,
if you don't believe me.

As people who read what I write know I am primarily interested in the
theoretical side of physics but I greatly enjoy commentary by those with a
more experimental bent - it tends to keep you honest. I remember when I was
younger and my father was alive - he was an electrical engineer with a more
practical bent on things. I would often do things like read a book on
designing loudspeakers for instance - get all excited about some ideas (such
as putting the loudspeaker in a spherical enclosure to minimise standing
waves) then go and see dad and say - gee wouldn't this be a great thing to
try - then clunk - you come back to earth pretty quickly. After awhile you
realize that all these supposedly great ideas you have had has almost
certainly occurred to others but when examined in the light what is possible
they fall apart.

Thanks
Bill


---
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"Bill Hobba" wrote in message ...
Bilge wrote:
So far, you have not given any indication that it's worth spending
$10 and the time and effort required. I'd have to spend a few days
in a machine shop just to build something that wasn't a safety hazard
to use in spinning the disks. Go stick a chuck wrench in a lathe,
turn on the lathe and see how far it flies when you turn it on,
if you don't believe me.

As people who read what I write know I am primarily interested in the
theoretical side of physics but I greatly enjoy commentary by those with a
more experimental bent - it tends to keep you honest. I remember when I was
younger and my father was alive - he was an electrical engineer with a more
practical bent on things. I would often do things like read a book on
designing loudspeakers for instance - get all excited about some ideas (such
as putting the loudspeaker in a spherical enclosure to minimise standing
waves) then go and see dad and say - gee wouldn't this be a great thing to
try - then clunk - you come back to earth pretty quickly. After awhile you
realize that all these supposedly great ideas you have had has almost
certainly occurred to others but when examined in the light what is possible
they fall apart.

Thanks
Bill


---...

'Great ideas' usually come to grief when exposed to testing by
experiment, but occasionally they succeed. Witness Faraday's invention
of the electric motor. In which case those in authority over you say
you stole the idea from them and, as a technician, easily produced a
simple working model of that idea. Which, in Faraday's case, was true.
Though sceptical concerning most of the easy answers devised by
scientific amateurs for complex physical problems, I am a whole lot
more sceptical when it comes to the theorists' attempts to describe
fundamental interactions, the 'fabric of space-time',
alternative/extra spatial dimensions and the like. It is easy to
generate fantasy tensor algebra but not so easy to even suggest
experiments to test its reliability. I suspect the theories are not
testable, i.e. meaningless.

Steve Shires.

Bill Hobba wrote:

...
As people who read what I write know I am primarily interested in the
theoretical side of physics but I greatly enjoy commentary by those with a
more experimental bent - it tends to keep you honest. I remember when I was
younger and my father was alive - he was an electrical engineer with a more
practical bent on things. I would often do things like read a book on
designing loudspeakers for instance - get all excited about some ideas (such
as putting the loudspeaker in a spherical enclosure to minimise standing
waves) then go and see dad and say - gee wouldn't this be a great thing to
try - then clunk - you come back to earth pretty quickly. After awhile you
realize that all these supposedly great ideas you have had has almost
certainly occurred to others but when examined in the light what is possible
they fall apart.

Why actually do you study physics ? ;-)
Let say that I'm an electrical and acoustical engineer. You certainly
know from your dad what that means. (I could well be your father. :-)
Since I have no problem with the related math (as many engineers have ,
even the practical bent on things made me see the particles as
outcome from GR including EM.
We have now the paradox situation, that scientists who know GR do not
like my results for personal reasons, and that quantum physicists
do not understand the background because of the totally different
methods used by them. They find calling the consequences rather provoking,
and take the consequences as pure claim, since they do not grasp
the logic. -
You should pursue my argumentation with Master Bilge. :-)

Kind regards
Ulrich

Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.

Marginal question: How do you write your postings, that you need
a virus check ?

(Bilge) wrote in message ...
Steve Shires:
(Bilge)

Stop changing your story to fit the circumstances. If you had
read anything about this experiment you'd know that the person who
has created the biggest obstacle is podkletnov himsekf, who has
witheld information on the experiment.

No, he wasn't an 'obstacle'. He provided enough information concerning
the *principal* features of the design but wanted to patent it as an
application of his discovery of a weight-loss effect (he could not
patent the discovery itself).

Apparently, these "principle features" were not enough to replicate the
experiment and no one was able to get additional details.

He just didn't want chancers stealing
his design and claiming it for themselves. The New Scientist magazine
ran a detailed article with a diagram, the kind of information Ning
Li's team could have used as a starting point for their own
experiments in this field. As you appear to have read the background
to Podkletnov's experiment you ought to know this already.

And what I know is that unlike what you've suggested, there have
been a number of attempts to replicate the experiment, including
attempts by nasa and boeing. Each of those organizations spent
more money than most research groups receive in funding for
a year, judging by the materials, equipment and personel involved.

Maybe there's more to this phenomenon than can be revealed by throwing
money at it. The search for hot fusion has absorbed (you'll correct me
if I'm wrong) in excess of $15 billion and the search for it goes on,
but only because theoreticians are convinced there's no 'cold fusion'.

[...]
I asked for your drawing.

See comment above, i.e.'He just didn't want chancers stealing his
design and claiming it for themselves.' Is that your game then?

Hardley. An experiment for which details are not available is
not a scientific experiment. You have no details available whatsoever,
apart from a description that indicates the best you could have done
was observe very ordinary physics. I suspect you've exaggerated the
numbers if not invented them. To the best I can tell from your
picture, the apparatus wouldn't spin at a few hundred rpm without
coming apart, let alone 4200 rpm.

In my experiment with the magnets, both of them rotate together
and ferromagnetic materials are poor conductors so we can safely
dismiss the effects of induced currents and additional magnetism. Of

No, you cannot.

course, I had already performed the same experiment using unsupported
balsa wood disks in order that a critical rate of rotation for
levitation could not be confused with the variables associated with
conducting and/or magnetic materials. What is your explanation for the
similarity between the magnetic and non-magnetic cases, apart from the
fact that you forgot about the latter?

No, but there is no way you can spin an unsupported balsa wood disk
at 12,000 rpm. The air friction alone would stop it in short order.
The air friction from spinning it at all would create a pocket of
warm air underneath it. Since you have no detailed drawings or
any details at all, I suspect this is another case where you've either
ignored the possibility of ordinary physics or simply made everything
up.

No, I made sure that I replicated my experiment, running the motor at
its limit of 12,000 rpm until the *directly* driven balsa wood disk
accelerated upwards to the wingnut on the armature that held the
driving rods, in front of witnesses at the University of Kent. The
'magnetic' version is one I produced later but the freely rotating
sample behaves in a very similar fashion. How do I check the rate of
spin? by reading the oscilloscope trace of the voltage across the
motor. Peaks alternating upwards and downwards represent points in the
rotation of the armature at which contact between the commutator
brushes and split-ring is broken, resulting in sparking. Two peaks,
representing the minimum and maximum amplitudes of the trace, indicate
one revolution of the armature. Reading off the period of rotation I
then calculate the revs per second.

Where is your analysis of the systematic effects?


If you didn't calculate this effect,

I take it to be negligably small; not enough to support a 7gm magnet.

That is what separates science from crackpottery. You assume everything
but the effect you are interested in is negligibly small and get ****ed
off when a detailed analysis finds that the only effect that's negligibly
small is the one of interest.

[...]
podkletnov to provide the information about exactly what his
material was? The Yttrium-Barium-Copper-Oxide, which was their
best guess was a $600,000 item. It appears you just read some
blurb about the experiment and set up something that shows a
completely ordinary electromagnetic phenomenon.

And that would explain the rising of the spinning *balsa wood*.

Your evidence is no better than the evidence I have for claiming to
levitate with the magic words "abacadabra". Since both nasa and boeing
have spent a good bit of money investigating podkletnov's claims and
podkletnov himself only claims the effect was possible with a very special
high Tc material (which he hasn't divulged), your claims about balsa wood
are up to you to prove. Out of the most basic requirements for an
experiment - hypothesis, data, methodology, data, error analysis and
conclusion, you have a conclusion. Your conclusion is what you have
for an hypothesis and what you conclude was predetermined by your
own desire to reach that conclusion.

Are you claiming to have spun a commercially purchased,
14 inch magnetic disk at 4200 rpm?

Certainly not.

Well, gee, it's not possible to read your mind and you have no
detailed information, so I can only guess from what you do say.

When I broached this subject I only mentioned the reports of
gravitational modification associated with superconducting materials
as examples of researchers not properly replicating experiments whose
results conflict with the current paradigm. I also mentioned the late
Professor Laithwaite's levitating gyro experiment and would have
thought it obvious that my own experiments related to his
demonstration of a levitating gyro, not to weight loss in samples
placed above spinning superconductors. Of course, you then made some
sort of connection between the superconductor experiments and my own
purely electro-mechanical model. Typical theorist.
You may consider Professor Laithwaite's demonstration of
'gyroscopic levitation' at Imperial College to represent a safer kind
of experiment with spinning masses than those that you seem to think I
have not carried out. A Scottish engineer, Sandy Kidd, described the
occasion in his 'Beyond 2001'. '(Laithwaite) dragged the big,
cumbersome contraption (i.e. the gyro) across the laboratory floor and
heaved it on to a set of scales. 'This thing weighs fifty pounds,' he
confirmed, panting from his exertions. 'I'm now going to show you the
basic concept of Sandy's (anti-gravity) machine, how a gyro builds up
energy and then uses it to escape from an applied force.' He then
asked me to start rotating the gyro with an electric drill which
slotted into the centre of the wheel. Within seconds it was spinning
at 2000 rpm. The professor, who had previously been straining to hold
the gyro just above the floor, now hoisted it easily up to hip level.
He then started swinging the enormous object round and round, like the
gyros on my (Sandy Kidd's) machine, until suddenly the huge wheel
soared into the air above his head as if it had suddenly lost its
weight. 'You just force it to go round a bit faster than you think it
can and it goes up in the air,' he commented..as the wheel floated
above him like a halo....
The (camera) crew were fascinated by what they had just filmed and
several of them later tried out the wheel for themselves to prove that
the gyro's behaviour was no illusion.'
Since I imagine you could easily gain access to a suitably heavy
gyro plus a pair of scales and, as you put it,
Any idiot can buy a dremel tool that runs at 30,000 rpm
replicating this one should not prove much of a problem for you.

[...]
You've essentially provided an excellent example of how not to perform
an experiment. You investigated no ordinary effects that would result in
what you claimed to have observed.

No ordinary, i.e. commonly observed, effects *do* result in what I
claim to have observed in this instance.

Ordinary effects like vibration, 'propellor shaping' of samples, drive
rods pushing the sample upwards by lateral pressure and such like, you
mean? All of these obvious complications were minimised or completely
avoided.

Since you have no calculations or measurements for _any_ of these
things, you stating that they were minimised or avoided is a blatant
fraud.

I tensioned most of the guide rod to ensure that different parts of it
possessed different resonant frequencies, the disks are completely
symmetric and the drive rods cannot push against the sample since they
are not in contact with it, their only connection with it is via
magnetic attraction. How would you measure vibrations or 'calculate'
'propellor shaping' within the budget I have mentioned?

I had the motor placed above the sample so that the drive
rods projected *downwards* for the balsa wood drive design.

That means nothing to me. I have no drawing of the apparatus to
view and you have no data that represents a control study. You
don't even appear to have done such studies of your apparatus.

Of course
nobody can take account of all the factors that might interfere with
the demonstration of just one effect on its own. Just most of them.

I've done real experiments. The actual data taking reuires the least
amount of time and effort of any part of the experiment. Quantifying
the errors and designing apparatus to minimize those errors takes the
most time. You've never quantified _any_ sources of error and your
design objective was low cost. Well, it would be nice to build things
like airplanes with that as the only design objective, but flying
reliably (or at all) comes first. Most people won't accept someone's
word that an airplane is safe, when all of them crash on takeoff.

[...]

Then do the experiment yourself and 'make up' your own numbers for it
from the data it provides.

So far, you have not given any indication that it's worth spending
$10 and the time and effort required. I'd have to spend a few days
in a machine shop just to build something that wasn't a safety hazard
to use in spinning the disks. Go stick a chuck wrench in a lathe,
turn on the lathe and see how far it flies when you turn it on,
if you don't believe me.

said. I
certainly wouldn't get near anything you built, for fear of having the
pieces come flying out.

So, it's more like 'I wouldn't want to be caught playing around with
anything like *that*', eh?

I've personally designed and built things which are potentially
dangerous and and had to justify them with drawings and tests. I have a
good idea of what is required for mechanical integrity, given some
numbers. The numbers you gave indicate you either got lucky or fabricated
the numbers. I suspect both.

Well, the pieces don't come flying out of
*my* model (though I suppose I could fit a perspex shield to it just
in case) and it does what it did when I first completed it, regularly
and reliably. I have no reservations about demonstrating it's
operation to members of the Institute of Physics.

Then by all means, do so and report back afterward.

Hopefully a strategy meeting on November 12th will provide an
opportunity for this.

Steve Shires.

Steve Shires:
(Bilge) wrote in message

And what I know is that unlike what you've suggested, there have
been a number of attempts to replicate the experiment, including
attempts by nasa and boeing. Each of those organizations spent
more money than most research groups receive in funding for
a year, judging by the materials, equipment and personel involved.

Maybe there's more to this phenomenon than can be revealed by throwing
money at it.

Maybe so and I suggest not throwing more money at it until
there's more to it.

The search for hot fusion has absorbed (you'll correct me
if I'm wrong) in excess of $15 billion and the search for it goes on,
but only because theoreticians are convinced there's no 'cold fusion'.

The search for hot fusion succeeded quite well. It was found in
the sun which is but one of the billions of examples directly overhead.
An example of man-made hot fusion is the hydrogen bomb. Sunlight
and the results from the nevada test sight demonstrate the existence
of hot fusion rather convincingly. I've already discussed cold
cold fusion. It was studied by nuclear physicists long before pons
and fleishmann had anything to do with it. Physicists predicted and
observed the process via muon catalysis. You simply wish to believe
the data faked for a news conference (and admitted as such by pons
and fleishmann themselves) rather than the scores of scientific
studies that found no such process occurs without a muon catalyzing
it.

I've also told you how well kevin wolf was funded for doing such
experiments and I know this from having known kevin and having contact
with him on a daily basis before, during and after his cold fusion
experiments. Kevin's experiments seem to be cited often as supporting
cold fusion, by the cold fusion zealots. Unfortunately, the cold
fusion zealots misrepresent his data, make blatantly false statements
regarding kevin's personal belief in cold fusion as well make blatantly
false statements regarding "disincentives" from pursuing cold fusion.

At best, kevin's belief in cold fusion could be called ambivalent. He
was less optimistic, to put it politely, about how carefully performed
were many experiments that reported positive results. The cold fusion
propagandists make numerous misstatements regarding kevin and his
research. For one, kevin had his office at the cyclotron, but he
was a nuclear chemist, not a nuclear physicist. The cold fusionites
engage in hypocrisy by dismissing the arguments of nuclear physicists
as the logical fallacy of appaling to authority, then deliberately
misrepresent kevin as a physicist in the belief that doing so enhances
his credibility. Apart from the hypocrisy, it's an insult to kevin's
work. Second, kevin was not pressured to abandon cold fusion. The
experiment was still running as late as 1995 as it cost essentially
nothing to leave it set up. If anything, he was pressured to do the
opposite.

Two other chemists in the department were making similar claims. They
really wanted kevin's data to support their claims although their claims
were consderably more optimistic than kevin's data could support. He
resolved that problem by sitting on the fence and noting some "anomolous
radiation" and being rather vague about it's origin, which was suspected
to be the direct result contaminated palladium. The cold fusionites seem
to suffer from selective memory here, as kevin was also the person who
traced the palladium to its origin and believed it to be contaminated.
One of the chemists in question continues to pursue cold fusion as
well as the "science" of alchemy via experiments to turn mercury into
gold via explosions.

So far you've addressed none of this other than your single-sentence
conspiracy mantra. It's really ironic that the crackpot contingent uses
terms like "tow the party line" and "prevailing view" so ubiquitously as a
counter argument to science which is supported by experimental data. All
of you sound like you are "towing the party line" to support the
"prevailing view" of conspiracy crackpots.

[...]
No, but there is no way you can spin an unsupported balsa wood disk
at 12,000 rpm. The air friction alone would stop it in short order.
The air friction from spinning it at all would create a pocket of
warm air underneath it. Since you have no detailed drawings or
any details at all, I suspect this is another case where you've either
ignored the possibility of ordinary physics or simply made everything
up.

No, I made sure that I replicated my experiment, running the motor at
its limit of 12,000 rpm until the *directly* driven balsa wood disk

You have not addressed what I asked. Where are the data and
documentation indicating anything you claim is attributable to the
effect you concluded is responsible?

accelerated upwards to the wingnut on the armature that held the
driving rods, in front of witnesses at the University of Kent. The
'magnetic' version is one I produced later but the freely rotating
sample behaves in a very similar fashion. How do I check the rate of
spin? by reading the oscilloscope trace of the voltage across the
motor.

Where is your calculation showing the effect of eddy currents?
For that matter where is your data and the analysis of all
of the sources of experimental and systematic error?

[...]

When I broached this subject I only mentioned the reports of
gravitational modification associated with superconducting materials
as examples of researchers not properly replicating experiments whose
results conflict with the current paradigm.

You've clearly shown that your definition of "properly replicating"
means replicating the conclusion. I've done enough experiemental
physics to know that the only "paridigm" that would apply in general
is that everyone would like to do an experiment that flies in the
face of conventional wisdom. It's just that no one wants to do one
so badly that they're willing resort to faulty experiments and
skewed data to do it. You've demonstrated that aren't even interested
in exploring the possibility that any of this has an explanation
in everyday ordinary physics. I have news for you. In 99%+ of
the experiments done, the data are easily explained by ordinary
physics, so if you can't get used to the idea of doing experiments
for the sake of whatever information they offer, you should get used
to the idea of being disappointed most of the time.

purely electro-mechanical model. Typical theorist.

Wrong. I'm an experimentalist. I've designed and constructed
major pieces of equipment for every experiment I've ever done
all the way down to soldering boards, machining parts,
grinding my own tools to machine the parts and everything in
between.

[...]

Since I imagine you could easily gain access to a suitably heavy
gyro plus a pair of scales and, as you put it,
Any idiot can buy a dremel tool that runs at 30,000 rpm
replicating this one should not prove much of a problem for you.

I also personally own enough electronics equipment to do the
experiment and have enough physics knowledge to do it a lot
better, but that isn't the point. You've given no good reason that
I should spend any time doing the experiment that could be better
spent doing something else - anything else. To the best I can
determine, your experiment is nothing more than a prop for
a concusion you had already drawn.

I tensioned most of the guide rod to ensure that different parts of it
possessed different resonant frequencies, the disks are completely
symmetric and the drive rods cannot push against the sample since they
are not in contact with it, their only connection with it is via
magnetic attraction. How would you measure vibrations or 'calculate'
'propellor shaping' within the budget I have mentioned?

I never suggested that your budget was realistic. You did. Calculations
are free. You do them yourself. You write programs to do calculations
where required (which is often). You're posting to a newsgroup, so I
assume you have a computer. If so, you can install linux on it have
everything you need to perform calculations with more computing power than
most physicists had less than a decade ago. A decade ago, a 166 MHz alpha
was a big deal. As to the budget required for any preliminary
investigation, your objection is faulty. The lack of funding to do the
experiment properly doesn't relieve you from having to do the experiment
properly before announcing the results (as pons and fleischmann). If you
find that to be a problem, then you have some idea of what every
experimentalist encounters when having to choose experiments that get the
most physics for the least cost based upon a realistic (and quantified)
assessment of the experiments' limitations.

Write an editorial in a newspaper asking that more public funds
be set aside for reasearch. Write your freindly government official.
Write the corporations who essentially sponsor nothing until the
public has paid for the bulk of any reasearch leading to a product.
Research groups are not bottomless money pits regardless of what
you and other consipracy theorists would like to believe.

[...]
Then by all means, do so and report back afterward.

Hopefully a strategy meeting on November 12th will provide an
opportunity for this.

You don't need a meeting to discover a strategy that will succeed.
The only option is to perform precise experiments which quantify
everything that could raise an objection that the result is due
to known physics. Only a conspiracy theorist would spend more effort
in developing a strategy to thwart objections than studying enough
physics to overcome them.

Steve Shires:

alternative/extra spatial dimensions and the like. It is easy to
generate fantasy tensor algebra but not so easy to even suggest
experiments to test its reliability. I suspect the theories are not
testable, i.e. meaningless.

That comes from not knowing enough about the theories to understand
the physics in the theories. Is it immediately obvious to you how
to test the so-called, conserved-vector-current hypothesis which
states that mediators of the weak force responsible for beta decay
differ by a rotation of isospin? My guess is, no. However, physicists
who understand the physics in that statement, do know the physical
consequences and have done experiments to test it. You can't do
physics without knowing some physics or by just reading the science
section of the newspaper any more than you can do gymnastics by
without ever having been on the equipment or by reading the sports
page.

Bill Hobba wrote:
As people who read what I write know I am primarily interested in the
theoretical side of physics but I greatly enjoy commentary by those with
a
more experimental bent - it tends to keep you honest. I remember when I
was
younger and my father was alive - he was an electrical engineer with a
more
practical bent on things. I would often do things like read a book on
designing loudspeakers for instance - get all excited about some ideas
(such
as putting the loudspeaker in a spherical enclosure to minimise standing
waves) then go and see dad and say - gee wouldn't this be a great thing
to
try - then clunk - you come back to earth pretty quickly. After awhile
you
realize that all these supposedly great ideas you have had has almost
certainly occurred to others but when examined in the light what is
possible
they fall apart.

Ueb wrote:
Why actually do you study physics ? ;-)

Because I like the way simple physical concepts when expressed in the
language of mathematics has all these powerful consequences. For example
it is not obvious a priori that the symmetry properties of an inertial
reference frame imply the transformations must be linear - but when
expressed mathematically it is a snap. Similarly for SR + the EM
interaction being 'linear' giving Maxwell's equations - it certainly is not
obvious that it should - but mathematically it is easy.

Let say that I'm an electrical and acoustical engineer. You certainly
know from your dad what that means. (I could well be your father. :-)
Since I have no problem with the related math (as many engineers have ,
even the practical bent on things made me see the particles as
outcome from GR including EM.
We have now the paradox situation, that scientists who know GR do not
like my results for personal reasons, and that quantum physicists
do not understand the background because of the totally different
methods used by them. They find calling the consequences rather provoking,
and take the consequences as pure claim, since they do not grasp
the logic. -

Again I really have no idea what your taking about.

ueb wrote:
You should pursue my argumentation with Master Bilge. :-)

They are your issues not mine - I hold conventional views.

Ueb wrote:
Marginal question: How do you write your postings, that you need
a virus check ?

I use outlook express and AVG free - the crap that appears at the bottom is
part of the way it integrates. I find it preferable to not having any virus
protection at all.

Thanks
Bill


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Bilge wrote:
You've clearly shown that your definition of "properly replicating"
means replicating the conclusion. I've done enough experiemental
physics to know that the only "paridigm" that would apply in general
is that everyone would like to do an experiment that flies in the
face of conventional wisdom.

I too am acquainted with some scientists that work at the CSIRO - (a friend
of mine Geoff Toomey does research on geophysical computer models).
Speaking to them it is obvious they would love to find something wrong with
current theories because that would indeed enhance their professional
reputations. That is something those that hold alternate theories often
forget - the establishment would love to be found wrong.

Bilge wrote:
'It's just that no one wants to do one so badly that they're willing resort
to faulty experiments and skewed data to do it.'

Naturally - because that would hurt their professional reputation rather
than enhance it. A highly respected medical researcher here in Australia
was caught out doing that - all his previous probably valid research was
then called into question - and I doubt he would ever get a job again.

Thanks
Bill


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