thrust, gravitational waves and their detection

[hoola]

If one were to have an inertial thruster, would that also constitute a gravitational wave transmitter of sorts?  Even though it may function on simple conscepts on the macro scale, aren't all gravitaional effects based upon the same fundamental laws near or at the plank scale, and if the thruster causes a synthetic gravitational vectorized force, does that remove it from such considerations, and onto something else? How would a thruster behave if impinged upon by a gravity wave crossing it's thrust vector at various angles? Could GW signals be detected by causing distortions within a thruster set at a fixed pattern and an incoming wave might distort the scope trace? Would dropping a bowling ball from a height onto a thick concrete pad cause GWs to be created?  What simple way would create the largest amplitude of GWs that would be easily attained?

Edited June 30, 2020 by hoola

[swansont]

Yes, an accelerated object emits gravitational waves (unless the acceleration involves certain symmetries), but the issue is one of scale. The earth orbiting the sun radiates about 200 Watts, for example. Mundane masses will radiate much, much less.

[hoola]

A pertubation from a mundane acceleration is tiny, but if it happens proximate to a proposed reciever,  could the inverse square law offer a local GW amplitude capable of detection? I would think it would require an acoustic barrier with some form of sound cancellation, or ideally be done in a vaccuum. Perhaps the stack could be placed in a vaccuum chamber, and any testing could not acoustically affect any readings..      Is deceleration  equivalent to an accelration in creating GWs? thanks 

Edited June 30, 2020 by hoola

[swansont]

37 minutes ago, hoola said:

A pertubation from a mundane acceleration is tiny, but if it happens proximate to a proposed reciever,  the inverse square law might offer a local GW amplitude capable of detection.  I would think it would require an acoustic barrier with some form of sound cancellation, or be done in a vaccuum. Is deceleration  equivalent to an accelation in creating GWs? thanks

Show me the math. (if you can't do the math you can't make this claim) You should know, for example, that gravitational wave interaction strength drops off as 1/r, not 1/r^2

Acceleration is a vector. The only thing different about a deceleration is you know the sign (i.e. all decelerations are accelerations)

 

[hoola]

A possible way around interference from the sound created in a violent test is that GWs travel at the speed of light and the acoustic signature will arrive later,.  By using a gated scope input that is triggered off just after an estimated GW  signal arrival time, or directly muted with an impact sensor with a small delay to allow any ringing to complete post impact.

Edited June 30, 2020 by hoola

[swansont]

Numbers or none of this matters.

[hoola]

Yes, you are almost certainly correct. When I get my upgraded setup going, the thrust will probably disspear, or be so far down in the noise as to be useless. I suspect interactions are happening between the stack and the two generators and aux power supply that are inadequately shielded from the scale itself.  A millinewton thruster would have been done well before now if it were possible get anything more than the micronewtons that the Shawyer and Woodward are claiming.

[swansont]

I wasn’t aware they claimed their drive derived thrust from gravitational waves.

[Strange]

On 6/30/2020 at 1:10 PM, hoola said:

A pertubation from a mundane acceleration is tiny, but if it happens proximate to a proposed reciever,  could the inverse square law offer a local GW amplitude capable of detection? I would think it would require an acoustic barrier with some form of sound cancellation, or ideally be done in a vaccuum. Perhaps the stack could be placed in a vaccuum chamber, and any testing could not acoustically affect any readings..      Is deceleration  equivalent to an accelration in creating GWs? thanks 

If we assume that things scale linearly (almost certainly not true) then, based on the first gravitational waves detected, you would need two masses of around 7kg total, spinning round each other at nearly the speed of light to generate an equivalent signal (i.e. causing movement of less then the size of a proton).

So, not at all practical.

I don't remember the exact figures, but I seem to remember that if those two merging black holes had been at the distance of the sun, the gravitational waves would have had almost no perceptible effect on earth. Even though they carried away several solar-mass equivalents of energy is a few milliseconds. Gravity is very, very weak.

[hoola]

@ swansont...I don't think either team has directly said that, but I do raise the question of how thrust, if they (or anyone) are indeed producing it, is related to GWs at the fundamental levels.  Is propellantless thrust synthetic gravity and closely related, or psuedo gravity, and not? @ strange...I was thinking about how an instantaneous  local event, not  how a remote merger or other natural  phenomena, might be detected.   With a rapid deceleration of a massive object directly in front of a proposed sensor, could proximity allow detection?  Would the 58 megaton thermonuclear explosion set off by the soviet union have created GWs at any theoretically detectable level , if it happened proximate to ligo?

[swansont]

It’s not like there has been good confirmation, and it depends on RF, so in addition to gravitational waves being way, way too weak, it’s also not the right interaction.

25 minutes ago, hoola said:

 Would the 58 megaton thermonuclear explosion set off by the soviet union have created GWs at any theoretically detectable level , if it happened proximate to ligo?

Spherical symmetry isn’t conducive to gravitational waves. 

[Strange]

41 minutes ago, hoola said:

@ strange...I was thinking about how an instantaneous  local event, not  how a remote merger or other natural  phenomena, might be detected.   With a rapid deceleration of a massive object directly in front of a proposed sensor, could proximity allow detection? 

And I am just trying to give you an idea of the sort of massive scale you would need to be dealing with, even at close range, to produce something that can only just be detected by, perhaps, the most sensitive device on the planet.

Quote

Would the 58 megaton thermonuclear explosion set off by the soviet union have created GWs at any theoretically detectable level , if it happened proximate to ligo?

I'm not sure it would. And they would be swamped by the physical vibrations caused by the explosion. 

[hoola]

yes, strange, but the gravity signal would get there at the speed of light, along with other emf, neutrons, gamma waves, etc...if they could be divided out just before vaporization...lol....

.for what it's worth,  in my last test before moving everything to the warehouse, I am getting 10mg of weight increase with a 300v supply, a clock freq of 2.5mhz, and a scan freq of 300hz. The tone coming out of the stack now is so loud I have to use ear protection.  I am afraid to turn up the supply any more for fear of cracking the piezos. I have had a small chunk fall out of one the ceramic rings, and had to replace it, but that may have been a manufacturing defect...The NFB circuits are affecting the scan once more in this new, higher frequency. .....@ swansont....what if 2 adjacent nukes went off at the ligo, would that satisfy the non-symmetry aspect? thanks

Edited July 1, 2020 by hoola

[swansont]

36 minutes ago, hoola said:

yes, strange, but the gravity signal would get there at the speed of light, along with other emf, neutrons, gamma waves, etc...if they could be divided out just before vaporization...lol....

Neutrons do not travel at c; they are not EM radiation 

36 minutes ago, hoola said:

.for what it's worth,  in my last test before moving everything to the warehouse, I am getting 10mg of weight increase with a 300v supply, a clock freq of 2.5mhz, and a scan freq of 300hz. The tone coming out of the stack now is so loud I have to use ear protection.  I am afraid to turn up the supply any more for fear of cracking the piezos. I have had a small chunk fall out of one the ceramic rings, and had to replace it, but that may have been a manufacturing defect...The NFB circuits are affecting the scan once more in this new, higher frequency. .....@ swansont....what if 2 adjacent nukes went off at the ligo, would that satisfy the non-symmetry aspect? thanks

Where is the non-spherical component? If each one will not radiate, you’re just doing 0 + 0

[hoola]

It has occured to me that the thrust is real, but caused by an acoustic standing wave created above or below the stack depending on which way the stack is driven. I will need to get a vaccuum chamber and test within that to falsify my results.

[Mordred]

How can you get thrust from a gravity wave when the oscillations are fluctuating from a background spacetime geometry in contraction and expansion. Ie the x and y axis for the H+ or h× axis ? There isn't an inherent single direction but a quadrupole change. 

This has differences compared to a water like Dipolar behavior.

[hoola]

at this point I agree with about anyone who says it won't develop any thrust in space. It is almost certainly getting the small thrust I am seeing from the acoustic oscillation effects that I have described.  Having to wear hearing protection  on some high frequency tests was the tip off that I had an acoutic standing wave issue I hadn't yet considered and must test for.  As the noise increased, the scale reading went up, but that was certainly just the sound waves pushing the stack up or down, depending on which way the stack was driven.....I will test in helium first. If I still get the10 milligram weight changes I have been getting, then I will make a partial vaccuum followed by a hard vaccuum if warranted.....that should settle the issue.  I have emailed  SSI.org who are the umbrella organization that is supporting the woodward thruster efforts, and have asked them if they are doing their testing in a vaccuum.  The shawyer engine was criticized as not developing true thrust under ambient air, so was loaned to NASA who tested it in a vaccuum and found it did develop thrust....of course it works on microwaves,  and may not apply to the piezo case...... I hope to hear from SSI  this month on the vaccuum question...Thanks for your input.

Edited July 2, 2020 by hoola

[hoola]

@ mordred....let me give you the explanation offered by the SSI group of how they say their device functions.  A person at the front of a boat  with an empty bucket fills the bucket with water from the lake  and then walks to the back.  The boat advances forward  3 feet as a result. At that point they dump the water and walk back to the front with the empty bucket. This  initially stops the boat and then makes it go back slightly less than three feet.  There is more mass going back than forward, and the boat goes forward in overall movement. If this cycle is repeated thousands of time per second by an electically driven mechanical device, you have continuous movement in space, or thrust in the lab, as they are claiming in their piezoelectric assy..  If you have heard this story before or something similar and know it's failings, please advise...thanks

[swansont]

2 hours ago, hoola said:

@ mordred....let me give you the explanation offered by the SSI group of how they say their device functions.  A person at the front of a boat  with an empty bucket fills the bucket with water from the lake  and then walks to the back.  The boat advances forward  3 feet as a result. At that point they dump the water and walk back to the front with the empty bucket. This  initially stops the boat and then makes it go back slightly less than three feet.  There is more mass going back than forward, and the boat goes forward in overall movement. If this cycle is repeated thousands of time per second by an electically driven mechanical device, you have continuous movement in space, or thrust in the lab, as they are claiming in their piezoelectric assy..  If you have heard this story before or something similar and know it's failings, please advise...thanks

That’s not reactionless, if there’s a bucket of water involved. There’s a mass flow rate which relates to the thrust.

In a vacuum you lose this analogy. Plus, it has nothing to do with gravitational waves 

[hoola]

sorry for any misunderstanding...the claim is for propellantless  propulsion, not reactionless, and with the added benefit of no physical exhaust coming out.  Why would being in a vacuum on earth ,  or in microgravity in space prevent it to function,  plus why considerations of GWs in this situation?

Edited July 2, 2020 by hoola

[swansont]

4 hours ago, hoola said:

sorry for any misunderstanding...the claim is for propellantless  propulsion, not reactionless,

What’s the distinction here? What has momentum going in the opposite direction?

 

[hoola]

the person with the bucket has the (variable) momentum, and has more going back then going forward since the bucket is emptied at the back.

[swansont]

15 hours ago, hoola said:

the person with the bucket has the (variable) momentum, and has more going back then going forward since the bucket is emptied at the back.

The water is the propellant, if it leaves the device. If it doesn’t, then you’re limited in how far you can move. The CoM stays put.  

[hoola]

a good enough effort to pick the water up and pour it out without affecting velocity would make that consideration negligible...just as similar issues of a light breeze or a changing tide would affect any outcome. .Mass variations seem enough to overcome trivial issues such as these. I will try this. I will call my friend Steve and setup a test at the local resevoir.

[swansont]

You haven’t clarified anything. Does anything leave the device, in this water analogy? Usually water is thought of as being outside of the craft