THE NASA WARP DRIVE STORY

There's been a story percolating around the internet that NASA may have accidentally discovered, or have created, a "space warp" in its tests of the EM engine. This was one of those stories that many of you noticed and sent various articles to me, and it does require paying attention to, both for what is said, and is not said. First, let's look at a couple of the more popular presentations of the story, one of which, incidentally, is from Russia's Sputnik website in its English language version:

NASA May Have Accidentally Created a Warp Field

Did NASA Mistakenly Create a Warp Field?

Now, according to Sputnik, the process was discovered when laser interferometers were fired through the field produced by the so-called EM drive, during which it was observed that the lasers were traveling faster than light, and producing the type of intereference pattern that would be produced by a "warp bubble":

"According to posts on NASASpaceFlight.com, a website devoted to the engineering side of space news, when lasers were fired through the EmDrive’s resonance chamber, some of the beams appeared to travel faster than the speed of light.

"If that’s true, it would mean that the EmDrive is producing a warp field or bubble.

Mysterious Universe pulled the following comment from a space forum after the tests:

“That’s the big surprise. This signature (the interference pattern) on the EmDrive looks just like what a warp bubble looks like. And the math behind the warp bubble apparently matches the interference pattern found in the EmDrive.”

Now note that the Sputnik article references the one from Mysterious Univese, and that Mysterious Universe references the observation is being made by commentators on the story:

"Which brings us to today’s warp field buzz. Posts on NASASpaceFlight.com, a website devoted to the engineering side of space news, say that NASA has a tool to measure variances in the path-time of light. When lasers were fired through the EmDrive’s resonance chamber, it measured significant variances and, more importantly, found that some of the beams appeared to travel faster than the speed of light. If that’s true, it would mean that the EmDrive is producing a warp field or bubble. Here’s a comment from a space forum following the tests.

"'That’s the big surprise. This signature (the interference pattern) on the EmDrive looks just like what a warp bubble looks like. And the math behind the warp bubble apparently matches the interference pattern found in the EmDrive.'" (Emphasis added)

So, the story really boils down to a comment made by someone on a forum, not by NASA itself. Nothing to see here, move along. Right?

Well, true enough, as far as it goes, for the Mysterious Universe article ends with this recommendation, which makes perfect sense:

"To prove that the warp effect was not caused by atmospheric heating, the test will be replicated in a vacuum. If the same results are achieved, it seems to mean that the EmDrive is producing a warp field, which could ultimately lead to the development of a warp drive."

So Sputnik is simply copying the Mysterious Universe article. Nothing to see here. Move along.

But things begin to get really interesting when one turns to this article, which reviews the whole development much more thoroughly:

Evaluating NASA’s Futuristic EM Drive

Now notice something: when the first tests were made on the EM drive, the tests were not performed in hard vacuum, and hence some physicists and scientists objected that the results being obtained with th EM engine were simply due to thermal heating, and that no thrust in hard vacuum could be possible, since the quantum medium itself is assumed to be "frameless" and hence, one cannot "push agsinst it". The trouble is, the tests of the EM engine have now been performed in a hard vacuum, and the device is still producing thrust:

"The tests reported by Dr. White’s team in July 2014 were not conducted in a vacuum, and none of the tests reported by Prof. Yang in China or Mr. Shawyer in the UK were conducted in a vacuum either.

"The scientific community met these NASA tests with skepticism and a number of physicists proposed that the measured thrust force in the US, UK, and China tests was more likely due to (external to the EM Drive cavity) natural thermal convection currents arising from microwave heating (internal to the EM Drive cavity).

"However, Paul March, an engineer at NASA Eagleworks, recently reported in NASASpaceFlight.com’s forum (on a thread now over 500,000 views) that NASA has successfully tested their EM Drive in a hard vacuum – the first time any organization has reported such a successful test.

"To this end, NASA Eagleworks has now nullified the prevailing hypothesis that thrust measurements were due to thermal convection."

Assuming for the sake of argument that this is true, then an important question is raised:

"After consistent reports of thrust measurements from EM Drive experiments in the US, UK, and China – at thrust levels several thousand times in excess of a photon rocket, and now under hard vacuum conditions – the question of where the thrust is coming from deserves serious inquiry."

With this in hand, consider carefully the end of the article:

"For the last three years, Dr. White’s team has been conducting experiments to find out whether it is possible to measure, with an interferometer, a distortion of spacetime produced by time-varying electromagnetic fields.

"The ultimate goal is to find out whether it is possible for a spacecraft traveling at conventional speeds to achieve effective superluminal speed by contracting space in front of it and expanding space behind it.  The experimental results so far had been inconclusive.

"During the first two weeks of April of this year,  NASA Eagleworks may have finally obtained conclusive results.  This time they used a short, cylindrical, aluminum resonant cavity excited at a natural frequency of 1.48 GHz with an input power of 30 Watts.

"This is essentially a pill-box shaped EM Drive, with much higher electric-field intensity, aligned in the axial direction.  The interferometer’s laser light goes through small holes in the EM Drive.

"Over 27,000 cycles of data (each 1.5 sec cycle energizing the system for 0.75 sec and de-energizing it for 0.75 sec) were averaged to obtain a power spectrum that revealed a signal frequency of 0.65 Hz with amplitude clearly above system noise.  Four additional tests were successfully conducted that demonstrated repeatability.

"One possible explanation for the optical path length change is that it is due to refraction of the air.  The NASA team examined this possibility and concluded that it is not likely that the measured change is due to transient air heating because the experiment’s visibility threshold is forty times larger than the calculated effect from air considering atmospheric heating.

"Encouraged by these results, NASA Eagleworks plans to next conduct these interferometer tests in a vacuum." (Emphases added)

In other words, using their laser interferometers, NASA has concluded that the path changes of laser light were beyond the margins of change by refraction, and due to the presence of something else, a "space-time" bubble or "warp" perhaps, but the only way to test this theory is to conduct the interferometry experiment in a hard vacuum.

In other words, the story is that NASA may have discovered small "space-time warps" in its tests of the EM drives... maybe, but it is still too early to predict.

So what's my high octane speculation here? It's quite simple, if one really looks at what is being said here, and that implication may be gleaned by asking a simple question: if they are trying to find evidence of a space warp via interferometry in the EM drive(or even just to test the feasibility of the drive for space travel, with or without space warps), and if such effects could only be truly verifiable by tests in a hard vacuum, then why bother with tests that are not in a hard vacuum to begin with? Why not just "cut to the chase" so to speak?  The article implies one answer, namely, that if such effects were observable, then some fundamental conceptions would have to be rethought completely:

"A note of caution is that Dr. White’s simulations do not assume that the Quantum Vacuum is indestructible and immutable.  The mainstream physics community assumes the Quantum Vacuum is indestructible and immutable because of the experimental observation that a fundamental particle like an electron (or a positron) has the same properties (e.g. mass, charge or spin), regardless of when or where the particle was created, whether now or in the early universe, through astrophysical processes or in a laboratory."

But leaving this aside, the fundamental questions remain: why were these tests not performed in a hard vacuum to begin with? My high octane speculation of the day is that they probably were, and that they might have indicated the same results (requiring that fundamental re-think), and that's the real rub, for that rethink would imply that the public consumption physics is fundamentally flawed, and that certain people have known about it for some time.That would also be by implication  a disclosure of a whole black projects world and its hidden projects (and science). Additionally, that "rethink" would have far-reaching implications, not the least of which would be for potential weaponization, and that is the problem. There's another problem, though, represented by this line of thinking, and that is that if such experiments were already conducted in the vacuum, then their results were probably already highly classified. Thus, what we may be looking at is a controlled, slow drip disclosure of information. The real news will be what those experiments in hard vacuum show, and if the genuine results will be disclosed. For the moment, the cat is out of the bag with the EM drive, and will be very hard to put back in. So a real positive result in hard vacuum that is repeatable and confirmed will be a huge news item, if and when it does occur. And if and when it does, than on that day human history will have changed in a far more fundamental way than the discovery of nuclear fission. Making that discovery, if and when it does occur, will of course be a far cry from actual practical application. But by the same token, it's worth recalling that it was a mere seven years (or six years, if you accept the revisionist theory of a Nazi atom bomb test in 1944), from the discovery of nuclear fission to actual functioning a-bombs. And it's worth recalling DARPA's goal of having the USA be warp capable in 100 years. Perhaps they know something we don't, and perhaps what they know is related to this strange story, with experiments strangely performed in such a way - i.e., not in a hard vacuum -  as to be of no value whatsoever in determining the feasibility of EM drive for space travel. the other possibility? Well, that's implied by the speculation itself: suppose such tests were conducted, and proved either positive (or conversely, negative). One way to bury the story would be to simply release nagative results (if those results were genuine, or, if not, cooking the books to make it look that way). So the real focus here will have to be on independent testers, and on their ability to report and duplicate results in hard vacuum.

See you on the flip side...

 

Posted in

Joseph P. Farrell

Joseph P. Farrell has a doctorate in patristics from the University of Oxford, and pursues research in physics, alternative history and science, and "strange stuff". His book The Giza DeathStar, for which the Giza Community is named, was published in the spring of 2002, and was his first venture into "alternative history and science".

14 Comments

  1. sagat1 on May 14, 2015 at 12:26 am

    Another MSM story regarding the EM Drive’s invention… The space travel meme is certainly going up a gear.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3080846/Fly-moon-FOUR-hours-British-scientist-says-s-secret-Star-Trek-s-wrap-speed.html



  2. Doc Skinner on May 13, 2015 at 1:58 am

    Remember the 2011 OPERA experiment’s faster than light neutrino anomaly? They thought they measured a faster than light event but it turned out to be bad instrumentation involving a loose optical cable. Same deal here maybe?



    • Joseph P. Farrell on May 13, 2015 at 8:37 pm

      That could VERY well be. Like another commenter here, I’ve seen no DATA that suggests a faster than light phenomenon was recorded. Nonetheless I think the story is one to watch closely.



  3. [email protected] on May 10, 2015 at 11:24 am

    I’ve seen no data that claims FTL was observed I have seen some data that the lasers took a longer time so either there was refraction or space expansion. NOTHING supported length contraction from the sparse results reported from the laser interferometer test.



  4. basta on May 7, 2015 at 7:52 am

    And I should add, I came to this conclusion while I was reading an official NASA pdf, downloaded off their site, which outlines a “Roadmap” for human exploration of Mars.

    In it I came across this commentary, put in a bubble on a mission flow chart: “Mission mode decision somewhere around here.” It struck me as a not-very-scientific jargon, to say the least, and I the font/typeface but could not believe what I was seeing, so I opened up my word processor and retyped the phrase just to check: Comic Sans.

    Hahaha. A big fat NASA joke, and it’s on us.



  5. basta on May 7, 2015 at 7:28 am

    After some reflection, I think this whole EM/warp drive story is a set-up and smells like a classic limited-hangout/bit of misdirection.

    If you’ve ever seen a metallic, weirdly non-aeordynamic and definitely not ET-produced tin can go skipping by above your city, then you know that anti-gravity tech already exists that can easily be adapted to get to Mars — and doubtless was decades ago.

    It’s another red herring to throw the gullible off the trail (“Oh cool! Just like Star Trek! But it’s gonna take a hundred years to get it to work… “) and keep us in this steampunk paradigm while the black-ops boys go zipping around the solar system in their non-disclosed toys.



  6. yankee phil on May 6, 2015 at 12:32 am

    After the Heim theory experiments of 2005-2006 that established a space aether is present and can be manipulated with vortice magnetic fields spinning in opposing directions,this news from NASA sounds more like an announcement format for a perceived “new” space craft propulsion system that was discovered by “accident” so they can bring the systems out in the open and begin immediatly deploying spacecraft to mine,deploy satellites etc without having to explain the science,which will become classified (unlearnable). Lets connect a couple of old diesel electric locomotives drive systems(DC current) together and power up our own die glock,anyone out there interested?



  7. Hawkeye Lockhart on May 5, 2015 at 8:25 pm

    The USS Enterprise lives to ride another day! . . . . as the IXS Enterprise!
    “Warp drive, Mr. Scott!”
    NASA scientist Dr. Harold White is leading the effort to make interstellar space travel a reality. The IXS Enterprise has been unveiled as the spaceship that would make faster-than-light warp speed flight possible by early next century.
    100 Year Starship Project – http://100yss.org
    Dr. White SpaceVision 2013 Video – http://bit.ly/1lnPUEx
    IXS Enterprise Rendaerings by yard2380 Flickr – http://bit.ly/1nxhkbc
    NASA Technical Reports Eagleworks Lab – http://1.usa.gov/1oeaP0o
    Gizmodo – http://bit.ly/1oedxTC
    Extreme Tech – http://bit.ly/TKA9NN



  8. moxie on May 5, 2015 at 12:14 pm

    Speaking of space warping, when are they going to discuss creating a stasis/time bubble?



  9. loisg on May 5, 2015 at 11:18 am

    “That’s the big surprise. This signature (the interference pattern) on the EmDrive looks just like what a warp bubble looks like. And the math behind the warp bubble apparently matches the interference pattern found in the EmDrive.”

    I don’t really think this was an accidental discovery if the math supports the findings, these experiments were to test the math findings to make certain of the theory.



  10. marcos toledo on May 5, 2015 at 11:11 am

    Did you notice on L2 Most Watched on the NASASpaceFlight.com website a cutaway of a man XB-37-38. Ten man four crew plus six passenger space shuttle. What do they mean vacuum in space there all kind of X-rays, Cosmic rays, Particles and Aether buzzing around out there. Then there is the stories since the late nineteenth century of aeronautical experiments that are still only whispered about. And the two io9.com articles about interstellar technology at the beginning of this decade so why the continuing dog and pony show own we had the technology to explore and colonized space since Destination Moon film premiered.



  11. old97polarcat on May 5, 2015 at 6:51 am

    Sounds to me like and effort to catch the science-types up to speed on what’s been going on in black projects for 60 years. I suspect a unwilling disclosure of sorts is on the way, and it’s the egg-heads who will take hardest the loss of their supposed understanding.



  12. Lost on May 5, 2015 at 6:09 am

    130 years of repeated detection of the ether. Denied repeatedly.

    Called something else. With claims of the “math” says it can’t be there. And when someone points out that math is a model not the thing(s), more math is introduced to lock attention on that puzzle.

    Reportedly, of course, T T Brown had his devices surfing on something and in a vacuum in the 1950s.

    Wilhelm Reich was clearly cohering something. And it’s not like Reich was the first to note the formation of proto life, if not more; others, known to Reich, had made similar points in the 19th and early 20th centuries, backed up by a lot of experimentation.

    The examples just go on and on.



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