Wikipedia

[aberlary]

What is with those people who cut and paste wikipedia articles and post them as answers? I think that most people here are aware of Wikipedia. If they really need to cite Wikipedia, at least use a link instead of pasting a whole page.

[kiwi]

What is with those people who cut and paste wikipedia articles and post them as answers? I think that most people here are aware of Wikipedia. If they really need to cite Wikipedia, at least use a link instead of pasting a whole page.

I have quite a few friends who have to dine from a 56k dial-up (which due to their remote location drops well below that already frugal supply at times).... to load up an article through a link more often than not requires a packed lunch and thermos (not being pedantic, for some its damn frustrating.... but see your point also)

I wonder how Art Carlson, et al, deal with the progress of Eric Lerner's PFF work while happily banning the man from editing his own bio?,...

http://www.lawrencevilleplasmaphysics.c ... &Itemid=90 ....

and wonder if Art might consider this "maverick" as qualified in passing comment on the subject...

Code: Select all

Díaz has spent nearly his entire career laboring to convince anyone who would listen that his idea will work, but that career has also taken several turns in the process. One day in 1980, he was pitching the unlimited potential of plasma rockets to yet another MIT professor. The professor listened patiently. “It sounds like borderline science fiction, I know,” Chang Díaz was saying. Then the telephone rang. The professor held up a finger. “Why, yes, he’s right here,” the surprised engineer said into the receiver, then handed it over. “Franklin, it’s for you.” NASA was on the line.

http://www.popsci.com/technology/art...ts-mars?ref=nf

[kiwi]

the last link go's to a "lost-page" .... hope this works

http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation ... and-beyond

[jjohnson]

Chang-Diaz's ion thruster is supposed to be installed as a trial on the ISS, to see if it can provide thrust to help keep its orbital altitude (minimal atmospheric drag still eats away constantly, requiring chemical thrusters to keep it up.)

He's done a good job developing this device. It has a very high specific thrust, and uses relatively a small amount of light propellant because it can move it so fast. F = m a. Unfortunately, it requires a lot of electricity. Now if he could pair this with Lerner's DPF, they might have a good, long-range propulsion system. Nuclear (fission) is a.) massive, and b.) dirty (radioactive). Solar isn't a dense enough power source, particularly if your goal is to go farther out in the solar system. Pesky engineering problems!


Jim

[mharratsc]

How about ion thruster + 'satellite tether'?

It still burns me that the so-called 'satellite tether debacle' was a blessing-in-disguise that no one recognized... properly controlled length of the collector would provide all the power they would need for an orbital device. :\

[jjohnson]

Wouldn't there be a net loss of energy somehow? Dragging a tether through thin air molecules adds a mechanical drag vector, just as with the space station. If the tether also generates electricity, that is more work being performed, exacting another energy penalty (Lenz's Law, force opposing a linear conductor's motion). Even if the electrical energy were delivered and stored aboard the orbiting spacecraft, and then directed into producing ion thrust to counteract the drag, it still seems like a net loss of energy.

Moving a conductor full of electrons whose net vector along the tether is radially "up" (or down, if the tether is pointed away from the nadir) through a magnetic field is bound to have a vector added that is normal to both the charges' velocity vector and the direction of the magnetic field through which they are being moved, unless their motion is precisely parallel to the local magnetic field lines. If the magnetic field varies with time, that adds another dimension to the net force on the conductor. I'm not exactly sure what direction the Earth's (or any other local) magnetic field direction actually is in low earth orbit. Maybe the net force wants to rotate the cable in a Larmor-radius orbit, which might exert a torque on the craft or wrap the tether around it? Thought experiments aren't all easy.

By the way, another thought, I am having a hard time picturing an actual closed circuit here, from space through the tether to the ship and back into space, so perhaps the problem is that there isn't one, and the dragging tether tries to force the electrons into a storage device - capacitor or charging a battery or whatever - and the result is a large charge imbalance (voltage differential) and if enough of a differential occurs it might just arc over and "explode" as the electrons try to go somewhere to equalize. Maybe that's what happened before. If the tether can generate X kW per second, the ship had better have some way of handling it effectively! Maybe lightbulbs all over the outside! Maybe a tether loop

"Make a wish, Bobby."

[mharratsc]

Jim... has anyone ever told you that your brain is absolutely hyperactive? For an architect, you are an amazing electrical engineer, wow! o.O

In truth, my knowledge of the physics of it is weak. Be that as it may- a logical analysis of what NASA reported is simply that this tether generated waaay more current than what they planned for!

So the next logical question is- what was it that generated the unanticipated level of current?

I submit the below as possibilities:

Magnetic induction of dragging the conductive tether through the Earth's magnetic field? Maybe, but you would think they would have had the formula for that one and would've planned accordingly.

Static charge build up? I wouldn't think that the diffuse atmosphere would have that much friction occuring, personally, but then again orbital speed might offset the sparse molecular population.

So lastly, I wonder if it is possible if it was interacting with/crossing a double-layer of the atmosphere? That could account for quite a bit of unforseen current, if that tether was dragging through a DL and arced it out, I would think.
Naturally I couldn't find anything at all that might confirm or deny that. They had posted the missions working altitude in one of the talks that they had regarding the fiasco, but I have no idea if that would be some plasmaspheric boundary or not.

I confess- this is more 'hunch' on my part than 'due scientific progress'...hopefully the other members here will forgive me for that! Regardless- the tether experiment picked up more current than they had expected by a large factor, and that intimates to me that it should therefore be a profitable power source for other such low orbit equipment- IF they get their ducks in a row and figure out how to regulate it...

[mathew]

Hello friends-
Seems to me that the tactics employed by the people at wiki are working hard to obscure the EU. some of what i have found is quite humorous such as searching for "electric sun".
The inspiration for me to start this thread however, was the highly polished dis-info / obfuscation done on Velikovsky.
Aside from the usual 'quackademia rhetoric', wiki is very skilled in what the leave out.
No mention of predictions confirmed, or books such as v. reconsidered, or I. M. & carl sagan. (don't want the kiddies getting their little minds mixed up in such lucid analysis)
And of course no mention of thunderbolts, mythopedia or other such works.

This page on plasma cosmology says it is in need of an expert- maybe the time has come to crack wiki!

From Wiki-

Plasma cosmology has been developed in much less detail than mainstream cosmology and lacks many of the major predictions and features of the current models. In mainstream cosmology, detailed simulations of the correlation function of the universe, primordial nucleosynthesis, and fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background radiation, based on the principles of standard cosmology and a handful of free parameters, have been made and compared with observations, including non-trivial consistency checks.[citation needed] Plasma cosmology generally provides qualitative descriptions and not any systematic explanation for the standard features of mainstream cosmological theories.

Laughable!

[kiwi]

Chang-Diaz's ion thruster is supposed to be installed as a trial on the ISS, to see if it can provide thrust to help keep its orbital altitude (minimal atmospheric drag still eats away constantly, requiring chemical thrusters to keep it up.)

He's done a good job developing this device. It has a very high specific thrust, and uses relatively a small amount of light propellant because it can move it so fast. F = m a. Unfortunately, it requires a lot of electricity. Now if he could pair this with Lerner's DPF, they might have a good, long-range propulsion system. Nuclear (fission) is a.) massive, and b.) dirty (radioactive). Solar isn't a dense enough power source, particularly if your goal is to go farther out in the solar system. Pesky engineering problems!


Jim

fogot about this .... thanks Jim

[psi]

Also, reading through the deletion history and Wikipedia discussions on Electric Universe theory and certain aspects of Plasma Cosmology is truly puzzling. Interesting to read the original entries (from around 2006), that later were deleted or heavily rewritten.

Hi Siggy -- and everyone else. Please see my new thread about using the Wiki deletion of the EU theory entry as a case study in Wikipedia failure. Anything that you or anyone else on this thread can do to help put the topic in focus would be very helpful, including links, if you have them, to the relevant history and discussion threads. I would be especially interested to learn if there is any evidence of malfeasance in the record keeping, since the ideal of Wikipedia is complete transparency of historical records, etc. But do some of these disappear if an entry is deleted?

Thanks for anyone who can help out with this.

Here's the link to my new thread: http://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/forum/phpB ... f=6&t=4282

[psi]

Does anyone know why there is no wikipedia entry on Electric Universe theory?

After it was claimed to be pseudoscience, it was decided that there were insufficient reliable sources describing the subject, and it was not notable (compared to mainstream subjects). A copy of the article appears here.

Thanks very much for that link. Does anyone know, or can anyone find resources on, what criteria of "notability" were used to support the vote to eliminate? Having gone through a similar discussion/debate (in which I one point I, the originator of the page, was basically told to "shut up" by a wiki editor) on another topic I know something about how that term can be used, for good or ill, on wiki (by the way that vote in that case supported retention and the page remains).

Just as an afterthought. Mixing the argument of "pseudo-science" with the argument "lack of notability" is what gives the morons who want to censor these subjects their power. Ironically, Wikipedia has a category "pseudo science," including several hundred entries:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Pseudoscience

I'm not arguing that EU theory should be included in the category, but noting the irony that the entry has been completely deleted, because it is allegedly "pseudoscience," while entries on topics like "creation science" and "daffy's elixer" -- whatever the hell that may be -- are allowed to stand. In order to mount an effective campaign against the wiki censors, we would have to wrap our minds around that kind of hypocrisy and expose it for what it is. Of course, the progress made in EU science since the deletion is also relevant, but given the level of apparent credibility of the entry already in 2006, it is apparent that scientific support by itself is useless without the rhetoric to fight the machinations of the censors.

[psi]

The inspiration for me to start this thread however, was the highly polished dis-info / obfuscation done on Velikovsky. Aside from the usual 'quackademia rhetoric', wiki is very skilled in what the leave out.
No mention of predictions confirmed, or books such as v. reconsidered, or I. M. & carl sagan.

Its interesting to me that there is a big tie in here with global warming theory (AGW), which received a huge impetus from Sagan's argument that the hotness of Venus was due to Co2 "greenhouse" effect and not to the causes Velikovsky posed. The fear of earth becoming "another Venus" has motivated an entire industry of groupthink "science" devoted to rescuing the planet from something that was an illusion to begin with. Since it is now clear to me after some reformation of thinking that the AGW theory at least in its most vaunted public appearances is little better than a pseudo-scientific fraud, it might be worth connecting the dots by returning with some concentration to the problem of Venus and that original V & S debate. I'm not sure V was right about everything, but I know that S was definitely wrong about the cause of all that heat. Maybe this is just repeating what's already been said on other threads, but I find the linkage to be intriguing.