Abstract
In the first section of this book we’ve seen that the principle and theories of relativity say very profound things about the nature of reality. In some cases at least the implications of that principle and those theories are very counter-intuitive. From special relativity theory (SRT) we find that the inertia of things do not simply depend on their “rest masses.” Rather, their inertias depend on their energies, to which rest mass contributes but is not the only contributor. The locally measured invariant nature of the vacuum speed of light, required by the principle of relativity to preclude the identification of any preferred inertial frame of reference, forces us to treat space and time on the same footing, and leads to their conceptualization as spacetime.
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Notes
- 1.
The board supports eight multiplexed channels with 12-bit resolution. The processing is a bit slow. But if you only need an acquisition rate of 100 Hz or less per channel, all is well. If fewer than the full eight channels are used, faster acquisition rates are possible. This is much slower than present systems, but more than adequate for the purposes of this work.
- 2.
The position sensitivity is 5 Ω per 0.001 in. of displacement.
- 3.
These capacitors were provided by Jeff Day, President and CEO of the company, as he had taken an interest in the work some years earlier when his company was located near to CSUF in Santa Ana, California. Jeff visited the lab to see what was going on and invited me on a detailed tour of his manufacturing facility in Santa Ana, explaining in detail the fabrication procedures then in use.
- 4.
No one was interested in Mach effects except for Greg Sobzak, a Harvard astrophysics grad student. But I got a chance to meet John Cramer and introduce him to Peter Milonni. Greg and I had the pleasure of sharing the banquet with John, Peter, and Ray Chaio and listen to a fascinating discussion of the measurement problem of quantum mechanics.
- 5.
Only now is this changing with the creation of an NSF Ligo center at the university, the Gravitational Wave Physics and Astronomy Center under the direction of Joshua Smith.
- 6.
These short articles are still there in the form they were first produced in 1997.
- 7.
Rather than use the system in use in the lab.
- 8.
The temperature of the devices was monitored with bimetallic strip thermometers stripped from commercial freezer thermometers attached to the aluminum mounting bracket. Later, thermistors were glued to the mounting bracket to monitor the temperature electronically.
- 9.
The stage was hardened against lateral motion with an array of three tensioned fine steel wires to insure that only motion along the axis of the sensor would be detected.
- 10.
What appears to be an echo of Slepian’s scheme can be found on pages 182 and 183 of Wolfgang Panofsky and Melba Phillips’ classic text: Classical Electricity and Magnetism (2nd ed., Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 1962).
- 11.
Aside from a minute flux of electromagnetic radiation that can be expected from such a circuit.
- 12.
Tajmar’s paper was called to my attention by Phillip Ball, a writer for the journal Nature. Ball had correctly surmised that Tajmar’s arguments were an attack on Mach effects and their use for rapid spacetime transport. Ball wanted my response. I pointed out that Martin had set aside the Equivalence Principle, but that the Equivalence Principle was true, so while all Martin’s conclusions were correct if you ignored the Equivalence Principle, they were all completely bogus because the Equivalence Principle as a matter of fact is true.
- 13.
This work is found in N. Buldrini and M. Tajmar, “Experimental Results of the [Mach] Effect on a Micro-Newton Thrust Balance,” in: Frontiers of Propulsion Science (AIAA, Reston, VA, 2009), pp. 373–389, eds. M. Millis and E. Davis.
- 14.
The team members were: David Hamilton (DOE Headquarters), Bruce Tuttle (ferroelectric ceramics, Sandia National Laboratories), Don King (Sandia Directors Office liason), John McKeever (ORNL). Also in attendance were JFW, Tom Mahood, and Paul March (Lockheed liason to Lightspeed).
- 15.
By “bulk” acceleration we are referring to the fact that the conditions of the derivation include that the object be both accelerated and experience internal energy changes. The acceleration of ions in the material of a capacitor, for example, does not meet this condition. The capacitor as a whole must be accelerated in bulk while it is being polarized.
Reference
Millis MG, Davis EW (2009) Frontiers of propulsion science, vol 227, Progress in astronautics and aeronautics. AIAA, Reston
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© 2013 James F. Woodward
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Woodward, J.F. (2013). Getting in Touch with Reality. In: Making Starships and Stargates. Springer Praxis Books(). Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5623-0_4
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