EM Drive propulsion : fake or serious?

Two things.

First thing is that that doesn’t need proof because it’s an axiom. Math is not something natural, not something you can find in the wild. Math is a construct of the human brain, a set of rules we have created to help us in our lives. Upon the foundation of those rules (or variations of those rules, see non-eucledian geometries) we build other rules or discover properties of the constructs created by those rules. You can’t compare science to math because math works with something that is concrete, something we have built, a system with known building blocks from which we tend to build or discover other structures. In science we usually use the inverse process. We go from the higher level to the lower level.

Second thing is that in Principia Mathematica there is actual proof that 1+1=2. So some mathematicians really did bother with such things when at the time they thought that Math is something real. That they could use their minds to create a perfect self-consistent and self-proving system that would hold some absolute truth of nature, like the philosophers of old. In fact, some mathematicians still believe that Math is something real, something that exists and we discover, not something we have created.

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assuming you are right and math is only a construct of the human brain : humans being part of the nature, are you saying that human brains, that created mathematics, are able to create things that are not part of the nature ? With reductio ad absurdum it’s easy to understand the error in what you said… or it says that you assume human soul and human body don’t make one

math is on the nature (everybody knows the famous example of Fibonacci). And also explain me what is the difference between axiom and convention I don’t get it, and explain me what it changes in the fact that people saying that they can’t believe without proof on something are lying ?

Maths have no measures, because maths are not a real thing, but we use it to measure real things, giving it a measure unit, in other words is an agreement, an axiom,
Math is NOT on nature, because nature is not absolute, maths are absolute (1 is 1, 2+2=4), there are not absolutes on nature, if anything, quantum mechanics talk about an absolute nature but even there are inconsistencies (quantum energy = e but e can also be decomposed!!). There are no maths on nature, it’s not that we have maths on nature, but we have maths that MATCH what happens on nature, which is a whole different thing.

We find laws of nature that we describe by equations, and for the moment everything we scientifically confirmed is construct in functions, equations, etc… (construct upon equality in fact), but math is not on nature ? Math can make you and I discuss right now, and we are part of the nature I think.

And math are not absolute… 2 +3 = 3 +2 is not always true for example… geometry is on nature too, and it’s also a very important part of math… I definitively don’t understand how you could imagine that humans can create something their own without being imitating the nature itself, the nature they and all of their thoughts are part of…

Unless the other idea that it using virtual particles is correct,then we just have to reevaluate one relatively tiny piece. That virtual particles mutable instead of immutable and deal with whatever fallout that has.

It interesting that you say Sawyer math is junk when according to some reports his paper is being peered review and will be publish in a major journal next year.

The question of whether this drive produces thrust and where and how that thrust is being produce won’t be answered by the theorists, it will be answer by the experimentalists. The maths can and will be work out at a later date.

I’m probably going to say something really stupid, but is it possible that the opposite quantity of movement that must exist to not break the conservation of momentum is applying in another referential (or countered by something else) than the quantity of movement that make the object moving, making this quantity not “perceived” on the other referential ?

Sorry if it is really stupid, don’t have the necessary skills on physics to know if it makes no sense…

[quote=“Kichae, post:29, topic:1425”]
The wonderful thing about burden of proof, though
[/quote]It is not burden of proof. The source of the signal, instrumental or thrust, is not found yet. End of.

[quote=“Kichae, post:31, topic:1425”]
where is Tajmar’s in Science or Nature?
[/quote]Tajmar’s experiment is very curiously done when you actually examine the report, and Shawyer’s involvement then seems like too much of a coincidence.

Have you read Dr Rodal’s papers?

curiously done in what way ?

because maths are just a base to have an approach to nature, a way to understand how it works without huge explanations, even tho maths NEVER represent 100% accurately what happens on nature, but they match pretty well what happens there, i’ve never seen a nature phenomena being represented 100% by a math model never on my electronic engineer life, we need several math models indeed, to have an APPROACH to what happens on nature, with a MARGIN of ERROR, which is out of any math axiom, but we TRY to explain those margins with Maths using a probabilistic approach, but math NEVEr, till today, has never been a way to represent 100% accurately what happens in reality, even tho with the infinite possibilities on maths, we always find a way to represent that somehow, but again, never at 100% accuracy

Check it out yourself… People must stop relying on word of mouth and MSM articles. Go look at the reports with your own eyes.

I just say that math is on nature, that is not saying that we totally understand it, and that our representation of mathematics with our symbols and axioms match perfectly with nature… I think considering how we are not perfectly understanding nature is not proving that math is not on nature.

But you’re right we’re not understanding everything

because things we invent on our minds, even if they match reality, it doesn’t mean it exist on nature, Maths are a concept, and concepts are not real, as ideas are not real either, but we make them real through actions, this is the same thing, this is why Maths are not a science to start with.

btw sorry everyone for de-railing the thread but some things need to be pointed out before it goes beyond misconception

Note the difference in what I said. I didn’t say math is not part of nature. But I did say math is not natural, that it does not appear naturally in nature. You won’t find an equation roaming around in the fields, waiting for you to capture it with your giant butterfly net. Math is as much part of nature as a game of chess or a computer program is. Anyway, that’s more of a semantic argument that’s not really important right now.

The important thing is Axioms. Axiom is something that we take to be true without need for proof. So, for example, Euclid, when codifying the rules of geometry (geometry at the time being primarily a set of rules developed by farmers, builders and similar people concerned with measurements (some say that most of the early work of creating the rules of geometry happened in Egypt, because of the need to know where everyone’s farm plots were after the Nile floods receded)) said that “In a plane, given a line and a point not on it, at most one line parallel to the given line can be drawn through the point.” (he actually did not say exactly that, but it’s close enough). But he didn’t say that because he found a line and a point somewhere and tried to draw a parallel line. Because lines do not exist. They are a pattern. A construct of the human brain. Someone, somewhere decided what lines are. He created the idea of lines, the rule of lines, because that idea, that pattern was a useful tool, a useful rule. Any other rule you create from that rule is true and it’s logical with no need for experimentation. You can just prove that it’s 100% true without a speck of doubt. It’s pure logic. There’s nothing to believe in. Because it’s something that isn’t real. It’s an idea, something created in your mind, a set of rules, a logic. The moment you accept the axioms as 100% true then you accept anything deduced from those axioms as being 100% true.

Which is why I mentioned non-eucledian geometries. If you change that little rule Euclid created, you come up with alternative geometries, geometries where, for example, you can have more than one parallel lines crossing a point. They were able to change that rule because they could. Because it wasn’t something true. It was just a rule. You can create any set of rules you want, any set of axioms. And you can use those axioms to to find more rules, more tools, more patterns that emerge from those axioms. But whether or not you create those things is irrelevant for the physical world. They are just rules, just ideas. They may be useful ideas of course, useful rules that you can apply to patterns in the real world and come up with useful results. Or they may be ideas that are completely useless. True, 100% precent true beyond doubt (at least in that system of axioms), but useless.

Or, for another example, consider the rules of a game of chess. We know that the bishop only moves diagonally and stops when it encounters another piece. We accept that when we play chess as something that is true. There’s no need to prove that the bishop only moves diagonally because we have created the rule that says that the bishop only moves diagonally. And we can always create another game, different from chess, that will have a bishop moving in a different manner, with a different set of rules. And for that game, those rules will be equally true and without need for proof. For the same reason you don’t need to prove that 1+1=2. Because it’s just a rule we accept.

What you are talking about with the Fibonacci example is patterns. The human mind is good at spotting patterns. And math is a tool that is perfect for describing and discovering patterns. To say that math exist in nature because of the Fibbonaci example is to say that stocks exist in nature because there is a stock market or that metres exist in nature because there are things that are a metre long. Or to put it differently: There are people who believe in numerology or that the number 23 is mysteriously linked to everything. They see patterns in nature because they look for patterns and they believe that because math has rules for some of those patterns that means that nature is governed by math. Which is not true. Math is just a useful tool, sometimes used for observing and making deduction about the patterns found in nature. In fact, it was created for exactly that purpose. But on its own it is a construct completely irrelevant to nature. It just is.

tl;dr: There’s nothing to prove there because that’s just something that we consider to be true in math. That’s what axiom means, something that doesn’t need proof, the base for the creation of a system.

I hope I made my point. It’s hard to discuss such abstract topics, especially when English is not my first language. I’ll stop now, to prevent the thread from going further off topic. Feel free to continue in another topic if you find the subject interesting.

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I got your point that we build our rules but you didn’t get mine that we are a construction of nature and even our thoughts have a physical exitence, that was my point, but we should stop here, we’re never going to understand ourselves on this I think…

noun
1.
the material world, especially as surrounding humankind and existing independently of human activities.
2.
the natural world as it exists without human beings or civilization:

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/nature?s=t

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None of that is actually needed, it’s nice to have, sure, but if this thruster were to work and could be applied to a real world application then we don’t need to know why it works. That’s not a revolutionary idea, we already do it a lot especially in the world of medicine.

Of course I am also sceptical that it can be applied to a real world application. Space seems to be the only practical location for live trials and that’s far too expensive for something that is quite likely to fail when all external influences are removed.

Sorry, I got hung up on the " 2 + 3 = 3 + 2 is not always true" bit. When, exactly, is that not true @kamui ?

Most of the scientific community dismisses the research because:

  1. It breaks all known physical laws, with no explanation
  2. The experiments are not well designed at negating all possible exterior influences
  3. The supposed readings are at a scale so small, they fall within the realm of error of the instruments used

Until those three problems are dealt with, there is no reason for anybody to believe a word said about how the experiment is a success.

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I agree with you here. If something works, it only needs to be able to be replicated to be of value. However, until someone spends serious cash to prove it works outside of any significant influence, the concept is unlikely to be found worthwhile. Perhaps, when we finally have a permanent station in space, some scrap material will be used to prove it once and for all.

@Bentware : I use nature as I use the word universe, no difference for me. Nature is everywhere, we are part of it.

@Red_Syns and @Kichae
on a non-commutative set (“ensemble” in french not sure for the english term), 2+3!=3+2

it is like to say that in this sort of mathematical set, the order counts. Alain Caunes worked a lot on non commutative maths, especially on non-commutative geometry (Fields medal for it).

  1. it breaks all known pysical laws ??? really ?
  2. The NASA ones, apparently, are made seriously
  3. it’s a possibility, but not more. Hope it is not an error of measurement…

if it can help to travel into space and we only have to use standards ways to enter/exit atmospheres, it’s still an incredible discovery I think (hoping it is not explained by an error)