Letter to New Scientist

[unixronin]

A letter to New Scientist, regarding the recent article by Justin Mullins on Roger Shawyer's supposed "electromagnetic relativity drive":

Dear Editors,

I am forced to admit gross disappointment with the fact-checking on the article about Roger Shawyer's so-called electromagnetic drive.  To cite simply the most egregious of the problems with the article, Shawyer's device could operate as described in the article only by violating the principle of conservation of momentum.  It appears Shawyer has neglected to consider, in his calculations, the axial component of the radiation pressure vector against the conical side of his microwave vessel.  I have more than a slight suspicion that when the complete vector sum is calculated, the overall net thrust will turn out to be zero.  The handwavium about reference frames is exactly that: empty hand-waving, pure smoke and mirrors.  Relativity is not applicable here.

It's rather like the Far Side cartoon showing three scientists standing around a whiteboard filled with calculations, interrupted in the middle by the words "And then a miracle happens".  One of the scientists is saying, "I think you need to be a little more specific here."  That's pretty much what's happening in Shawyer's explanation of his device:  Relativity and reference frames are being invoked in place of "And then a miracle happens."  It betrays a complete lack of understanding of relativistic reference frames by either Shawyer or Mullins -- or perhaps both.

Still, I'm sure Shawyer could probably get the US Government to throw money at him and his device, just as they've been throwing money for ten years into the bottomless hole of the supposed "hafnium grenade" based on "nuclear isomers".  Even if the science behind that idea worked (which there continues to be no evidence it does), who but a jihadist suicide bomber is insane enough to volunteer to carry and throw a hafnium grenade with a fifteen meter throwing range and a five hundred meter lethal radius?  Perhaps more importantly, given that only jihadist suicide bombers are insane enough to use such a weapon, exactly who in the Pentagon was insane enough to think that trying to develop one could ever possibly be a good idea?  And can we fire him?  (Right now, please, before he approves anything else.)

I started reading New Scientist nearly thirty years ago.  Back then, it was a solid scientific journal for the educated layman.  It's slipped downhill since, more to the level of Scientific American; that is sad, but forgivable.  This article, however, is on the level of Popular Science; and that is a gutter into which New Scientist cannot sink, and survive.

Comments

[danjite.livejournal.com]

Can't say I am surprised...

It sounded too good.

[7leaguebootdisk.livejournal.com]

Just because it would be a gernade sized package doesn't mean you would make a gernade out of it, for example, that is the size of warheads in shoulder fired anti aircraft missles, they would love a more powerful warhead, but the missle can only be so big.

Is that the one that the atom has a electron in an energetic state long term, and on being triggered kicks out an x-ray?

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Actually, the hafnium grenade was, indeed, to be packaged in a grenade form factor. Nuclear-tipped air-to-air missiles and nuclear artillery shells already exist. (I know for a fact there is an 8"/206mm nuclear artillery shell in the US arsenal, and I believe there to be a 155mm nuclear round, though I'm not certain of that.)

The handwavium explanation of "nuclear isomers" has, as I best recall, something to do with some vague mumbling about nucleii with their protons in specific arrangements, I believe, which supposedly yield large amounts of energy when falling back into a lower-energy arrangement. (Or something like that. I have no evidence that Berman and Pilar are not consultants on this "project", beyond the fact that neither dilithium nor inverse nebulon fields have been mentioned in connection with it.) Since, to the best of my knowledge, we have not ascertained for certain whether nucleons HAVE any fixed arrangement in the nucleus (and in fact, my best understanding is that the nucleons are believed to be in continuous motion), this yields some severely elevated readings on my bogometer.

[7leaguebootdisk.livejournal.com]

well, at the lowest energy state, the electrons sit in their lowest orbital, in higher states, they will kick out a photon when they drop to a lower state. I think there are varying amounts of stability in higher energy levels, something stable that will kick out an x-ray when triggered is rare, but not imposible. That much is chem 101, and I don't know much more.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Yes, but this whole "nuclear isomers" thing doesn't have anything to do with electrons, to the best of my (admittedly limited) recollection.

Then, it's all made-up gobbledegook technobabble anyway, with little if any actual basis in physics, so who really cares?

[7leaguebootdisk.livejournal.com]

I was thinking about something else, you are correct

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_isomer

But IF you could stimulate it to drop into a lower state on command, it would make a nifty explosive.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Looking at that article, it appears there's a little more to the "nuclear isomer" issue than I recalled. It still doesn't look as though it's anywhere remotely close to practical, though.