Conference noted::sf

Hmmm, anti-gravity drives are nice because you don't have to throw 
mass out the back to make them work.  They would just go along 
whatever field lines you happened to be in.  They are not nice 
because (as far as I know) there are no examples of 
negative gravity.

However, magnetic fields come in two polarities.  Given a sufficient 
supply of magnetic monopoles, one could let monopoles pull a
ship along the galactic magnetic field.  When you got to your destination
and wanted to go back, all the south monopoles would have to be changed
to north ones and vice-versa.  Tacking across the field 
lines could be done by having a big electro-magnet in the center of 
the ship for applying torque.   The galactic field is kind of weak, but 
that just means that you have to have more monopoles to get a given force
on the ship.

We've been looking for monopoles for some time.  One interesting
idea for a source was the big magnets used to separate 
steel scrap metal from non-ferrous metals.  These magnets have 
terrific fields, and thousands of tons of metal go past them, so if 
there were any monopoles in the scrap, they would be likely to lodge 
in the magnet pole pieces.  No luck, though.  Two experiments did 
find some evidence for them, though.  One was a superconducting ring 
in a field-free environment.  If a monopole went through the ring, a 
current would be induced in it.  Since the ring was superconducting, 
the current would persist forever.  After some months, they did in 
fact find a current induced in the ring.  The current was of the size 
that one monopole would have induced.  That was nice, but it was 
just one event and so wasn't much to base a theory on.

The other experiment was also a single event.  In a cosmic-ray 
experiment sent up in a balloon, they found one track of a super 
heavy particle.  The particle would be around the right mass for a monopole,
but other things might also have caused the track.  Frustrating.

For a star drive, we don't want to fool around with single 
particles.  Either we find a big source of them somewhere or we make 
them from scratch.  Making them would be better, because we need to 
reverse the sign on them anyway once we want to return.   If we 
never want to return (say, for interstellar probes), then a natural 
source would be OK.  We might find them in the asteroid belt, because 
there is some thought that they would collect in the cores of planets,
and the belt might be a shattered planet.   We would have to be 
careful when mining them, though, because they would zip into the 
core of the sun if they got away.  Tricky little devils, but useful.

/jlr

Re .1:

> Hmmm, anti-gravity drives are nice because you don't have to throw
> mass out the back to make them work.

You still must expend energy.  If G(X) is the gravitational potential energy
of the ship at point X; A is either the starting or finishing point of the
ship, whichever has a lesser gravitational potential; and B is the point of the
journey with the greatest gravitational potential, then the ship must be able
to expend at least G(B)-G(A).  It might be possible to make a ship more
efficient by using antigravity, but it is still going to need a lot of energy.

> They would just go along whatever field lines you happened to be in.

This mistake is almost as old as science fiction magazines.  An antigravity
drive would push perpendicular to the "field lines", not parallel to them.

> They are not nice because (as far as I know) there are no examples of negative
> gravity.

What do you need negative gravity for?  If you can get off a planet with
regular gravity, there is an easy way to get down.  It's called falling.

> However, magnetic fields come in two polarities.  Given a sufficient
> supply of magnetic monopoles, one could let monopoles pull a
> ship along the galactic magnetic field.

Again, you go through fields, not along them.

> When you got to your destination and wanted to go back, all the south
> monopoles would have to be changed to north ones and vice-versa. 

Unless the theory of conservation of energy is not a law, destroying a
monopole which has pulled itself somewhere or creating a monopole which would
try to leave a place will take as much energy as pushing the monopole to a
"neutral" position and destroying it or creating it in a "neutral" position and
pushing it to the location.

> Tacking across the field lines could be done by having a big electro-magnet in
> the center of the ship for applying torque.

This is not quite clear.  Are the monopoles involved in this "torque"?  Or is
it just the electromagnet against the resident field?  In what way is this
"torque" created?


				-- edp

re .2:

Sure, you still have to expend energy in order to get out of a 
gravity well.  It's easy to work out how much: it's the kinetic 
energy acquired by falling from infinity, i.e. the kinetic energy at 
escape velocity.  For the earth it's 6 x 10^7 joules/kg  or about 
17 kilowatt-hours / kg.  That's about a dollar's worth of electrical power.
That's vastly more efficient than rockets, because 
rockets spend most of their energy lifting their own fuel.

Monopoles falling along a magnetic field are also trading potential 
energy for kinetic, and it's true that the energy difference would 
have to be made up when you want to go the other way.  Again, though, 
that's more efficient than rockets, because you're not accelerating stuff
only to later throw it out the back.

>> They would just go along whatever field lines you happened to be in.

> This mistake is almost as old as science fiction magazines.  An antigravity
> drive would push perpendicular to the "field lines", not parallel to them.

Perhaps you are thinking of a different definition of field line?  To
me, the lines in a field point along the direction that a force would
be exerted.  Now, an electric charge _will_ feel a force 
perpendicular to the magnetic field lines.  A monopole, however, 
would move along them. 

>> They are not nice because (as far as I know) there are no examples of negative
>> gravity.

> What do you need negative gravity for?  If you can get off a planet with
> regular gravity, there is an easy way to get down.  It's called falling.

An object with negative gravity would repel one with positive gravity
(actually, I should have said negative mass).  An antigrav drive would 
use negative mass in order to lift itself off a planet.

With regard to tacking across the field lines, a few vector diagrams
of the forces have convinced me that an electromagnet won't help.  An
electromagnet interacting with the galactic field would turn the ship,
but it would not produce a net force across the field lines.   Some 
other force would have to be applied: either gravity (by means of swing-bys
of stars) or regular rockets.

One other thing:  in order to decelerate the ship, the polarities of 
the monopoles would have to be changed halfway through the trip, not 
at the end as I previously said.  That's bad, because then the energy 
needed to do that would have to be carried along instead of picked up 
at the destination.

/jlr

Re .3:

> Sure, you still have to expend energy in order to get out of a
> gravity well.  It's easy to work out how much: it's the kinetic
> energy acquired by falling from infinity, i.e. the kinetic energy at
> escape velocity.  For the earth it's 6 x 10^7 joules/kg  or about
> 17 kilowatt-hours / kg.  That's about a dollar's worth of electrical power.
> That's vastly more efficient than rockets, because
> rockets spend most of their energy lifting their own fuel.

That's abut a dollar's worth of electrical power when you buy it from your
local power company.  Putting it in a spaceship and taking it somewhere costs
money.  I'm not saying this precludes antigravity, just that they are not a
perfect solution.  They are likely to be much higher efficiency than chemical
rockets, but how much?

> Monopoles falling along a magnetic field are also trading potential
> energy for kinetic, and it's true that the energy difference would
> have to be made up when you want to go the other way.

The efficiency of current energy storage techniques is going to limit how much
of the energy difference can be reused by traveling in the reverse direction.

> Perhaps you are thinking of a different definition of field line?  To
> me, the lines in a field point along the direction that a force would
> be exerted.  Now, an electric charge _will_ feel a force
> perpendicular to the magnetic field lines.  A monopole, however,
> would move along them.

An electric field or a magnetic field is represented as a function whose domain
is the set of points in space and whose range is the set of three-space
vectors.  The diagrams showing field lines commonly seen in physics texts obey
certain rules (approximately):

	The tangent to a drawn line at any point is parallel to the value of
	the field at that point.

	The density of drawn lines at any point is proportional to the
	magnitude of the field at that point.

So an electric charge would feel a force parallel to the electric field lines. 
But a monopole would not feel a force parallel to the magnetic field lines.
There is a very simple reason for this:  magnetic field lines are closed
curves.  If a monopole felt a force parallel to the magnetic field lines, it
could be accelerated indefinitely, which violates the law of conservation of
energy, which is one of my favorites, and I am not willing to get rid of it
yet. 

If someone can define "monopole", I can dig out Maxwell's equations and try
to see what the results would be.

Let me add that currently observed magnetic field lines are closed curves.  If
monopoles exist, there may be open field lines, but the existence of closed
lines would still be sufficient to preclude forces parallel to them.

> An object with negative gravity would repel one with positive gravity
> (actually, I should have said negative mass).  An antigrav drive would
> use negative mass in order to lift itself off a planet.

Since the articles were discussing antigravity, I assume some way of opposing
gravity is being considered.

> One other thing:  in order to decelerate the ship, the polarities of
> the monopoles would have to be changed halfway through the trip, not
> at the end as I previously said.  That's bad, because then the energy
> needed to do that would have to be carried along instead of picked up
> at the destination.

You are such a spoilsport.  Decelerating is easy:  Just keep going until the
ship hits the planet.  I guarantee it will decelerate.

Further, since everybody is so gung-ho about recovering energy and reusing it,
you could take the kinetic energy of the ship when it decelerates and use it
to relaunch the ship at a later time (after extensive repairs, no doubt).


				-- edp

I'd better retract my statement about monopoles, parallel forces, and closed
magnetic field lines.  Electric field lines can also be closed, when there is
no charge present, and a charge in such a field still feels a force parallel
to the field vectors.

There are still problems in this.  Creating a magnetic field requires energy.
This energy resides in the field.  When an electric charge is acted upon by
the field, the force is normal to the direction of motion, so no work is done
upon the charge, so no energy is removed from the field.  But when an electric
charge is acted upon by an electric field, the force may be non-perpendicular
to the direction of motion, so it will do work on the charge (or have work done
upon it).  This means energy must be removed or added from the field.

Perhaps the change in the combined field of the ambient field and the field
due to the charge explains this?  That is, if one considers the ambient field
and the field due to the charge at time zero, and the energy in the field is
calculated (by integrating the square of the magnitude of the field over all
of space and doing some other funny stuff), and this result is compared to the
energy in the field when the charge has been moved a short distance, the
difference will equal the amount of work done upon the charge.  I'm afraid I
did not study much electromagnetic dynamics.  Can anyone verify this?

Getting back to monopoles, they are really going to mess up things.  Consider
an atom.  It has electrons circling the nucleus.  They must create magnetic
fields.  If monopoles existed, could they absorb some of the energy of the
magnetic fields and cause the atom to collapse?  It may be time for disrupter
guns to reappear in the literature. 


				-- edp 

Please bear with me, I'll figure out what I was trying to say when I said
ships will not travel along magnetic field lines.  I know I knew why once.  It
may be this:  The magnetic field lines in the vicinity of the Earth go from
the South pole to the North pole.  Any ship traveling along these lines will
not get very close even to the Moon, let alone other objects in the universe.

The restriction obviously applies only in the vicinity of the Earth.  I wonder
if the geometry of magnetic fields throughout the rest of space will interfere
with travel that uses monopoles? 


				-- edp

Re .1:

A problem with discussing "antigravity" is that it comes in 2.5 flavors
(two real, 0.5 assumed).  I will differentiate the two real concepts:

1) Cavorite and its imitators.  Made famous in Wells' _First Men In the Moon_.

2) Worp and its equivalent, as in the short story "Some Notes on the Worp
   Reaction" by someone whose name elused me.  A humorous story.

Cavorite was a material that blocked gravity, just as a board will block
out sunlight.  The "gravity shadow" thus created enables spacecraft, etc
to ttravel by selectively blocking out unwanted attractions and letting
the rest of the "universe" attract the ship in the desired direction.
Okay if you want to throw out the laws of the conservation of energy; like
Eric, I don't want to do that just ye, since I, too, am rather fond of it.

Worp stands for *powered* antigravity.  Since we're not sure about the 
mechanism of gravity, we can't (***yet***) know whether it is or isn't
possible to generate something that would counter the effect.  If we can, 
however, _it would have to follow the laws of conservation_, meaning that,
with 100% efficiencies, it would follow the laws of potential and kinetic
energies.  Using a fuel cell, say, might give us a reasonably compact source
of electricity for such a purpose, yet ....

I haven't yet had access to the papers in .0, but I sustect they're talking
about things of the worp variety...

Steve Kallis, Jr.

[I just realized: this brings a whole new dimension to "Worp factor" :-)]

I knew I had a copy of "The Available Data on the Worp Reaction" somewhere,
it just tokk a little time to find it.  The story's by one Lion Miller,
and it was anthologized in 1963 in a Collier paperback _Fifty Short
Science Fiction Tales_, edited by Groff Conklin and Isaac Asimov.
The orginal copyright is 1953, by Fantasy House.  The story is about
an autistic (except for an occasional "Wheee!") kid who, at the age
of 6, starts collecting all sorts of junk, which he eventually assembles
into a contraption that levitates itself, accompanied by a wierd blue
glow.  Worp (first name Aldous, I think) demonstrates the contraption for
a few days, the disassembles it in the exact reverse order from how he built
it.  The story is all of two or three pages long.  But I'll never forget it.

len.

In re .8:

I remember the "Worp" story too, now that you mention it.  I read that
anthology at quite a young age, and in retrospect, I'd say it had a major
influence on my subsequent addiction to SF.

Wish I knew what became of my copy....

					-- Roger

re .9:

I know it's been anthologized elsewhere.

Jerry????

Steve Kallis, Jr.

According to William Contento's INDEX TO SCIENCE FICTION ANTHOLOGIES AND
COLLECTIONS, "The Available Data on the Worp Reaction" appeared in two
anthologies other than the aforementioned one:

13 GREAT STORIES OF SCIENCE FICTION (ed. Groff Conklin)
BEST SF 3 (ed. Edmund Crispin)

--- jerry

Re: 224.7 thru 11

When I've had the time, I've been working my way back through the notes.

When I hit 224.7, I thought "Sum' bitch, I got this in VMS!".

So here it is:




           [from 13 GREAT STORIES OF SCIENCE-FICTION, edited by 
           Groff Conklin, (c) 1960 by Fawcett Publishing, Inc.]


                 The Available Data on the Worp Reaction

                                  by

                              Lion Miller


----------------------------------------------------------------------------

If the word "deadpan" had not already been invented, it probably would  have 
been  to describe this little jape. It is a masterpiece of mock-seriousness, 
and also a proper spoof on the heavy-handed styles of thousands of pendantic 
"official"  bureaucratic historians. Oh, that anguished reference to "insuf-
ficient data"!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------



The earliest confirmed data on Aldous Worp, infant,  indicates  that,  while 
apparently normal in most physical respects, he was definitely considered by 
neighbors, playmates, and family as a hopeless idiot. We know, too, that  he 
was a quiet child, of extremely sedentary habits. The only sound he was ever 
heard to utter was a shrill monosyllable, closely  akin  to  the  expression 
"Whee!"  and this only when summoned to meals or, less often, when his enig-
matic interest was aroused by an external stimulus, such  as  an  odd-shaped 
pebble, a stick, or one of his own knuckles.

Suddenly  this child abandoned his accustomed activity. Shortly after reach-
ing his sixth birthday--the time is unfortunately  approximate--Aldous  Worp 
began  a  series of exploratory trips the the city dump which was located to 
the rear of the Worp premises.

After a few of these tours, the lad returned to his home one afternoon drag-
ging  a  large cogwheel. After lengthly deliberation, he secreted said wheel 
within an unused chicken coop.

Thus began a project that did not end for nearly twenty  years.  Young  Worp 
progressed  through childhood, boyhood, and young manhood, transfering thou-
sands of metal objects, large and small, of nearly every  description,  from 
the  dump to the coop. Since any sort of formal schooling was apparently be-
yond his mental capacity, his parents were pleased by the activity that kept 
Aldous  happy  and  content. Presumably they did not trouble themselves with 
the esthetic problems involved.

As suddenly as he had begun it, he  abandoned  his  self-imposed  task.  For 
nearly  a  year--again,  the  time as approximate due to insufficient data--
Aldous Worp remained within the confines of  the  Worp  property.  When  not 
occupied with such basic bodily needs as eating and sleeping, he moved slow-
ly about his pile of debris with no apparent plan.




One morning he was observed by his father (as we are told by the latter)  to 
be selecting certain objects from the pile and fitting them together.

It  should  be noted here, I think, that no account of the Worp Reaction can 
be complete without certain direct quotations from Aldous'  father,  Lambert 
Simnel  Worp.  Concerning  the  aforementioned  framework the elder Worp has 
said, "The thing that got me, was every (deleted) piece  he  picked  up  fit 
with  some  other (deleted) piece. Didn't make no (deleted) difference if it 
was a (deleted) bedspring or a (deleted) busted egg beater, if the (deleted) 
kid stuck it on another (deleted) part, it stayed there."

Concerning  usage  of  tools  by  Aldous  Worp,  L. S. Worp has deposed: "No  
tools."

A lengthier addendum is offered us by L. S. Worp in reply to a query which I 
quote  direct:  "How  in  God's  name  did he cause seperate parts to make a 
whole?" (Dr. Palmer) A. "The (deleted) stuff went together tighter'n a  mal-
lard's (deleted), and nobody--but *nobody*, Mister, could get 'em apart."

It  was obviously quite stable, since Young Aldous frequently clambered into 
the maze to add another "part", without disturbing its  equilibrium  in  the 
slightest.

The  foregoing,  however  sketchy, is all the background we have to the cli-
mactic experiment itself. For an exact report of the circumstances attendant 
upon  the  one  "controlled"  demonstration  of the Worp Reaction we are in-
debted to Major Herbert R. Armstrong, U. S. Army Engineers, and Dr.  Phillip 
H. Eustace Cross, A.E.C., who were present.

It  seems  that, at exactly 10:46 A.M., Aldous Worp picked up a very old and 
very rusty cogwheel ... the very first object he had retrieved from oblivion 
from  the  junk-pile,  so long ago when he was but a tad of six. After a mo-
ment's hesitation, he climbed  to  the top  of  his  jerry-built  structure, 
paused,  then lowered himself into its depths. He disappeared from the sight 
of these trained observers for several minutes. (Dr. Cross: 4 min., 59  sec. 
Maj. Armstrong: 5 min., 02 sec.) Finally Aldous reappeared, climbed down and 
stared fixedly at his creation.

We now quote from the combined reports of  Maj.  Armstrong  and  Dr.  Cross: 
"After  standing  dazed-like for a few minutes, Worp finally came very close 
to his assembly. There was a rod sticking out with a brass ball of a bedpost 
fastened  to it. Aldous Worp gave this a slight tug. First, we heard a rush-
ing sound, something like a waterfall. This sound  grew  appreciably  louder 
and, in about fifteen seconds, we saw a purplish glow emanate from *beneath* 
the contraption. Then, the whole congeries of rubbish arose into the air  to 
a  height  of  about  three meters and hung there, immobile.  The lad Aldous 
jumped around with every semblence of glee and we distinctly  heard  him re-
mark 'Whee!' three times. Then he went to one side of the phenomenon, reach-
ed down and turned over the rusty wheel of a coffee mill and  his  'machine' 
slowly settled to earth."




There  was, of course, considerable excitement. Representitives of the Armed 
Services, the Press Services, the A. E. C., various Schools for the Advanced 
Studies,  et  al.  arrived in droves. Communication with Aldous Worp was im-
possible since the young man had never learned to talk. L. S. Worp,  however 
profane,  was  an earnest and sincere gentleman, anxious to be of service to 
his country; but the above quotations fron his conversations  will  indicate 
how  little light he was able to shed on the problem. Efforts to look inside 
the structure availed little, since the closest and most  detailed  analysis 
could  elicit no other working hypothesis than "it's all nothing but a bunch 
of junk" (Dr. Palmer). Further, young Worp obviously resented such  investi-
gations.

However,  he  took great delight in operating his machine and repeatedly de-
monstrated the "reaction" to all beholders.

The most exhaustive tests, Gieger, electronic, Weisendonk,  litmus,  et  al. 
revealed nothing.

Finally,  the importunities of the press could no longer be denied and early 
in the afternoon of the second day, telecasters arrived on the scene.

Aldous Worp surveyed them for a moment, then brought his invention  back  to 
earth.  With  a  set look on his face, he climbed to its top, clambered into 
its bowels and, in due course, reappeared with the ancient cogwheel. This he 
carefully  placed in its original resting place in the chicken coop. System-
atically, and in order of  installation,  he  removed  each  part  from  his 
structure  and  carefully  returned it to its original place in the original 
heap by the chicken coop.


Today,  the  component parts of the whole that was Worp's Reaction are scat-
tered. For, silently ignoring the almost hystericasl pleas  of  the  men  of 
science and of the military, Aldous Worp, after dismantling his machine com-
pletely and piling all parts in and over the chicken coop,  then  took  upon 
himself  the  onerous  task  of transporting them, one by one, back to their 
original place in the dump.

Now, unmoved by the occasional berating by L. S. Worp, silent before  an in-
frequent  official interrogation, Aldous Worp sits on a box in the back yard 
of his ancestral home, gazing serenely out over the city  dump.  Once  in  a 
very  great  while  his  eyes light up for a moment and he says "Whee!" very 
quietly.

============================================================================

"Whee!", indeed.

     						Don

    maxwells Equations in Differential form
    
    __            dD
    \/ X H = J + ----
                  dt
    
    __          dB
    \/ X E = - ----
                dt 
    
    __
    \/ * D = p
    
    __
    \/ * B = 0
    
                                        __
    with monopoles, the last becomes    \/ * B = m
                                        __            dB
    and probably the second becomes     \/ X E = M - ----
                                                      dt
    
    where M is magnetic current density and m is the magnetic charge.
    
    sm

    Anybody remember Asimov's story called "the billiard ball"?
    I think it was collected in _ASIMOV'S MYSTERIES_.
    It's about the rivalry between two brilliant scientists; one the
    pure ivory tower type, the other a razzle-dazzle publicity hound.
    Anyway, the razzle-dazzle guy eventually develops an anti-gravity
    field generator, but doesn't understand why it gives off a blue
    glow. For a PR stunt, he sets up a demonstration with the anti-grav
    field in the center of a pool table and invites his rival to shoot
    a pool ball into the field so we can see it bob around in mi-air.
    (the two frequently play pool together) Well, the ivory tower guy
    makes a perfect 4 bank shot and the ball is barely moving as it
    enters the field. Then all hell breaks loose. Suddenly, the
    razzle-dazzle guy is sitting in his chair with a neat hole the size
    of a billiard ball through his heart.
    Seems the anti-grav device works by "flattening out" space so that
    anything in the field is essentially massless. Well we all know
    what speed massless particle travel... The blue glow was caused
    by air particles bumping into the field, zooming out the other side
    and ionizing away all that kinetic energy.
    
    
    now if you could only get the field generator to iclude itself in
    the field... instant light-speed!
    
    sm

               <<< DECWET::DOCD$:[NOTES$LIBRARY]PHYSICS.NOTE;1 >>>
                   -< On the existance of Schrodinger's Cat >-
================================================================================
Note 98.0                   New gosh-wow experiment.                   6 replies
CADSYS::COOPER "Topher Cooper"                       41 lines  19-DEC-1989 09:36
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The current issue of Physical Reveiw Letters (Volume 63, #25;
    Dec-18-'89) contains a description of an experiment which, if
    confirmed, is stunning in its implications -- in a word antigravity.
    
    The article appears on pages 2701-2704, and is entitled "Anomalous
    Weight Reduction on a Gyroscope's Right Rotations around the Vertical
    Axis on the Earth."  It is by Hideo Hayasaka and Sakae Takeuchi of the
    Department of Radiation Engineering of Tohoku University.
    
    Basically, they take small, high-speed gyroscopes and weigh them in
    a vaccuum on a laboratory scale.  They find a definite reduction
    of weight when they are rotated rightward, but none when they are
    rotated leftward.  The effect is unchanged by the degree of vacuum,
    magnetic shielding, whether the current is on in the accelerating
    motors when the weight is measured, time of day, month or year, the
    kind of scale used, or the orientation (up or down) of the gyroscope. 
    It is quite cleanly linear with rotation rate, and changes with the
    weight of the rotor  (only two weights were reported, so linerarity is
    unclear).
    
    The magnitude of the effect is as follows: at 12K rpm a gyroscope with
    a 175.5 gm rotor lost 10.9 mgm (.006%); while a 139.9 gm rotor
    gyroscope lost 7.1 mgm (.005%).
    
    They seemed to have done a thorough analysis for artifacts, up to and
    including general relativity calculations of the effects of coupling
    between the earth's rotation and the gyroscope's.  I am, of course,
    not qualified to judge their completeness nor the accuracy of their
    calculations, but the Journal's reviewers presumably are and found no
    obvious errors (it should be noted, however, that this is a quick
    publication Journal, and the reviewer's make no claim to the
    thouroughness of review of other kinds of Journal).  Of course, such
    a radical claim will require at least one clear replication before
    being accepted -- given the basic simplicity of the apparatus, this
    should not take long to occur (or fail to occur).
    
    The authors only statement about the theoretical implications was
    "...the experimental results cannot be expalained by the usual
    theories."
    
    					Topher

    Spindizzies!

    Re: -2
    
    That reminds me of an article I saw on a science show we have here in
    Australia.
    
    There is this guy in Scotland whose made this gyroscope based machine
    which is powered by a model aircraft engine.
    
    The article showed the machine attached to a counter balance via a
    series of pullies. When the device was 'fired-up' it started to rise.
    Apparently some tests had already been carried out and all of the
    normal excuses have been ruled out, e.g. loss of weight due to fuel
    loss etc.
    
    The article didn't go into a lot of detail, but here's hoping !
    
    Mike

    The Dean Drive surfaces again.  Amazing.

    re: <<< Note 902.2 by LUGGER::REDFORD >>>

    >>> The Dean Drive surfaces again.  Amazing.
    
    Care to enlighten us?  I couldn't find anything in 224.* other than a
    similar comment...
    
    - steve

    
    	Kowabunga! The Dean Drive! Yeah!
    
    	I think I still have those old Astounding/Analogs buried away
    	some where in the attic.
    
    	bob

    So enlighten those of us who aren't so fortunate as to have those
    old Astounding/Analog mags in our attic somewhere.
    
    What IS this "Dean Drive"?????????
    
    Skip

I believe the fellow's name was Norman Dean.  In 1951 he got a patent from
the U.S. Patent Office for a space drive that turned angular momentum into
linear momentum.  I heard the patent office got lots of grief for this from
scientists who said they should have demanded a working model.  (They might
have.)

There is a copy of the patent at the MIT Science Fiction Society's library,
or at least, there used to be when I was a keyholder.  I looked at it but
never read the SF magazines about it.

I first heard of the Dean Space Drive when visiting relatives in rural
Georgia for a summer.  There was a high school science teacher named Mr.
English who ran a summer program for local teens; he was a tenant of my
aunt's so I sort of got inserted into it.  He was a nut for the thing.
He claimed that a working model had been demonstrated; I don't know, and he
died a couple of years later before I had enough physics to ask penetrating
questions.

The simplified description of the basic idea works like this:  you build a
gismo with rotating weights.  Probably two counter-rotating to cancel
torque effects.  The rotating weights follow a trajectory inside the box so
that they are revolving about a shaft but at varying distances.  On one
side, the radius is short; on the other, the radius is long.  On the long
radius side, the CENTRIFUGAL FORCE is greater, so the device produces
thrust in that direction.

Now, according to the physics I was brainwashed with, centrifugal (outward)
force is an "illusion", because what is actually happening is that you are
feeling a reaction from the real centripetal (inward) force that is
required to make you follow a curved rather than a straight path.

I recall reading about a perpetual motion machine many years ago in a
Life/Science Library book.  It looked a lot like this, except that it was
based on leverage.  It seems that gravity would pull down more effectively
on the long radius side than on the short radius side, and this would keep
the thing turning.

I have never done a detailed analysis on either scheme, but it does seem
plausible that the work done in the perpetual motion machine would all
cancel out.  Still, it would be interesting to see a working model.  Even
if it turned out to work, we'd probably only find that we were effectively
turning the mass of the earth into energy.  The falling weights do
productive work over a small angle, so you need lots of them, and one
weight falling would have to lift several.

This space drive thing is a lot more controversial.  It would be so
obviously useful, I had fantasies all through junior high school about
building a flying saucer with it.  When I saw The Navigator (Disney), I
recognized that element perfectly -- so I wasn't alone.  Energy storage
might be made very efficient if you didn't have to worry about mass ratios. 
(How many ergs in a pound of U-235?)

I have heard two interesting critiques of it, both of the cold fusion/wet
blanket variety.  One claimed to have "explained" a working model, by
saying that it generated thrust but not lift, and hand-waved about friction
and non-linearity to show how an electric drill driving a shaft that
disappeared into a box could make the box move in a straight line without
an external opposite reaction: "Have you ever made a chair move across a
floor without touching anything else, by pumping the chair like a swing?" 
This is undoubtably why the claims explicitly include "lift".  It would be
truly impressive to demonstrate such a non-linear friction effect with air
(I recall a Tom Swift, Jr. book with a flying car that worked by friction
between air and spinning drums), so they'll have to show it works in a
vacuum.

The other critique claimed to mathematically show how it could work.  A lot
of our mathematical approach to physics is based on the idea that the world
is very very nearly linear.  It takes a godawful energy density (by our
earthly standards) to change the characteristics of space-time.  What do we
call the derivatives of position?  1: velocity; 2: acceleration; 3: surge
(I think); 4, etc.: ?  Apparently, if there were a non-linearity in the 3rd
or 4th derivative, the world would seem nearly as we understand it but the
Dean Space Drive would work.  I have never seen a rigorous treatment of
this, but if it works there will be changes somewhere.

I am never happy about descriptions like "illusionary" forces.  Not one of
the physicists who denigrated this device to me had even attempted the
mathematical model, much less tried to build one.  When I told my freshman
advisor at MIT that I wanted to think about ideas like manipulating
gravity, he suggested that I study metaphysics, not physics. There is a
very real (?) force of scientific orthodoxy to overcome for an idea that
works -- so intense that history is sprinkled with valid ideas that were
"before their time."

I look forward to reading this book.  I'll get my money's worth even if
it's only science fiction (as I rather expect).  I'd LOVE to see a working
model, in a vaccuum, working off batteries (no power cord or other external
connections), with even a few percent efficiency.  Wouldn't you?  What
should the test chamber be made of to rule out magnetism or electrostatic
effects, so we know that we can't explain it away?

						-- Spencer

>I look forward to reading this book.  I'll get my money's worth even if
>it's only science fiction (as I rather expect).  

There are better science fictions than that.  I hope that no one would spend 
their hard earn money on this kind of pseudo science stuff, but I guess
to each his own.  Besides, I read horoscopes too.

Eugene

    Hmm you now Eugene you hit the question with the hammer (or some
    such).  IS it pseudo science stuff?  Or, has he found something
    that we've been overlooking in physics?  Has he found the secret
    to how a bumble bee flys?  You have to admit, that we as humans
    are not infalliable and the possiblity of overlooking some part
    of science in our own narrowminded acceptance of physical laws of
    motion are all quiet possible.  Further, I've learned enough about
    statistics and such to know that you can prove and disprove anything
    you like with numbers and mathmatics, it's all a matter of knowing
    which formula to use.  Shoot... I used to have a Science teacher
    who stressed that we shouldn't except anything based on mathmatics...
    then would set down on the board an algabraic formula that proved
    conclusivly that 1 + 1 = 3.... It was all a matter of manipulation.
    
    So the question remains... is it pseudo science, or has the gent
    actually stumbled in his ignorance across some secret of physics
    that we didn't realize.  
    
    Skip

    re .8,
    
    Believe me Skip when I say something is pseudo-science.  I maybe wrong
    when I declare something to be a scientific break through (as in the
    case of cold fusion), but when I say something is pseudo-science, 
    then it must be.
    
    As to the "math" your teacher "manipulated", it is just that--a
    deliberate missuse of mathamatical tools.  Such trick cannot fool any
    half way competent mathamaticians.  My view of mathematics is just the
    opposite.  Mathematics is the only sure thing in life.  When you prove
    a theorem in math, the theorem will be true be it in heavens high or
    hells hot.
    
    In the realm of science, certainties decrease when you go from physics
    to chemistry to boilogy to zoology to psychology.  By the time you get
    to sociology, all theory is bunk...
    
    I am afraid my note has very little to do with science fiction, but so
    is this discussion.
    
    Eugene
                                                    

    Hmmm... you being a mathmatic wiz would make you more the expert
    then me I'm afraid... still, the manipulation was intersting to
    watch.  Wish I could remember how it was done, I'd love to have
    someone explain where the extra number came from, it bogled my mind
    for two weeks and I gave up. 
    
    Still, I find it hard to believe that physics and mathmatics has
    reached the point that it's all conclusive, surely it's possible
    that there are realms of it that we have yet to touch.  I'm not
    saying that the Dean Drive or whatever is real, I'm asking if it
    is possible that this guy has hit into a new realm that was considered
    impossible for one reason or other but isn't once the theory is
    explored fully.  
    
    As for cold fusion... the last article I read on it said that it
    was after all a bunk and does not yet exist.  I believe it was a
    pair of Stanford students who last claimed to have found it?  But
    that was last year sometime and my memory is failing me.  I believe
    that what they had produce was a natural phenomena that had actually
    been produced before but when applied to a larger scale would not
    happen.  I'm talking in laymen terms and am really lost here...
    as I said it was last year when I read the last article and once
    it was announced as being a failure, I "dumped" the info from my
    mind.  
    
    So much for scienc though... I was never much in the mathmatics
    department once I finished geometry in high school, I should have
    stuck with it.  But, alas, my interests went on to other things
    instead (Biology).  I do agree with your chart though... it seems
    that our skills fall off as we reach psychology and psychiatry.
    Both are still considered a realatively unexplored field with the
    majority of discoveries in them only being made in the last 15 years.
    
    Skip

    It is a longstanding myth that the bumblebee defies the laws of
    aerodynamics.
    
    Apparently a student during the '40's proved that a bumblebee can't fly
    by diligently applying formulae for fixed wing aircraft.
    
    Obviously, the bee is no such thing. When I was an undergrad, we proved
    that such a bee could indeed fly.
    
    Anytime theory and practice don't agree, the theory becomes modified or
    the observations are improved until the two are in line. Anything else
    is psuedo-science.
    
    Danny W.
    

    re: .11
    
    Then it sounds like the teoreticians who say this gyro-thingy won't
    work are the best candidates for the psuedo-science lable. He's
    appearantly showed the thing to lots of people, and none of them have
    come up with a good dis-proof. If his machine really does work, and the
    "scientists" just refuse to modify their theories they are the fakes. I
    think we should probably wait until we've read his book before claiming
    that he's got nothing. We (I mean mankind) know too little about the
    way things like gravity work, to be saying we already know what is and
    isn't possible. Our theories on gravitation are spotty at best. Maybe
    gravitons start out with a rightward spin, so they won't stick to a
    rightward gyro-scope - if you happen to believe in gravitons in the
    first place... I say we just don't know.
    
    Cheers!
    
    Charlie

    re .12,
    
    The bumble bee thing was done as a joke.  Everyone in the field knew
    the guy did the fixed wing calculation.  Had it been a serious problem,
    every scientist in the field would have jumped into the problem.  Such
    blatant mismatch between theory and experiment would have caused major
    storm in the scientific community.  Anyone working in fluid dynamics
    knows how difficult to solve the Navier-Stokes equation, and anyone who
    claims to have proved the bumble bee thing is a you know...
    
    I agree with .11.  This Dean machine thing violates some fundamental
    laws of nature as we know it.  If such thing ever exists, it must be
    operating at the sub-atomic level where our approximation does not work
    very well.                                             
    
    Eugene 

    My college happened to have a patent archive in its library, so one day
    I looked up the design of the Dean drive.  It is modestly described as
    a device for "converting rotary motion in to linear motion."  Note the
    use of "motion," not "momentum."  Of course, any wheel converts rotary
    to linear MOTION.
    
    The thing, as best I remember, looks like a box or frame suspended by
    springs on a stick.  Inside the box are two counter-rotating off-center
    cams.  It looks as if, when the cams are made to rotate, it would
    bounce vigorously up and down on its springs.  It might make a dandy
    mechanical pogo-stick rider.
    
    I asked my physics professors about this.  They had heard of it or
    things like it.  The experimental evidence for defying gravity is that,
    if you put a motor-powered Dean drive on a bathroom scale and turn it
    on, it weighs less.  Very nice.  But none have been observed to weigh
    nothing or to float.
    
    The conventional view is that the lower weight-reading comes from the
    scale's internal friction.  It takes time for the needle to move from
    one reading to the next.  The drive's unbalanced cams make it jounce up
    and down on the scale very quickly.  If the scale had zero or very
    short response time, we would see that the average reading remained
    unchanged, but since the response time is long compared with the
    drive's period of oscillation, tricks can be played.  If the drive's
    upswing is long and gentle, while its downswing is short and strong,
    the average pressure on the scale will still be equal to the drive's
    static weight, but the scale will have more time to response to the
    upswing than the downswing.  So it looks like it weighs less.
    
    People have also tried dropping Dean drives off of buildings and timing
    the descent.  Reading errors and the fact that the thing wiggles as it
    drops made the results pretty useless.
    
    It is certainly true that the scientific community is as starchy and
    conservative as many another academic community.  But it is also true
    that the fringe-science people are uncritical in their own directions. 
    How to decide?  Well, let the Scottish fellow with the gyroscopes
    invite some reporters to watch the thing fly.  It doesn't fly; it only
    weighs less?  Then this sounds depressingly familiar.
    
    Also consider that, while it is possible that he has found a loophole
    in the laws of conserving linear and angular momentum, those laws
    derive from pretty straightforward math, based on Newtonian mechanics.
    And Newtonian mechanics has been tested with great rigor -- rigor great
    enough so that we do indeed see where its edges are in several
    directions.
    
    So, in the interests of intellectual honesty, you might not want to
    give Dean drives and their kin a 0% chance, but you might be justified
    in making the a priori percentage very small.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    Re .12:
    
    > He's appearantly showed the thing to lots of people, and none of them
    > have come up with a good dis-proof.
    
    A disproof of WHAT?  Read what's in .0.  In the article, the reporter
    says Sandy Kidd published a book, Sandy Kidd claims, Sandy Kidd says
    the machine turns angular momentum into linear momentum, Sandy Kidd's
    book says this and that, et cetera.
    
    Nowhere in the article does it say the machine works!  Nowhere does the
    reporter say "I saw the machine fly" or "I saw the machine move" or
    even "I saw the machine wiggle a little".
    
    There is no report here of a working machine, so there is nothing for
    scientists to disprove.
    
                                      
    				-- edp

    The problem with many of the inventions that claim to contradict known
    science is that the inventors don't know enough science to interpret
    the results of their experiments.
    
    In 1977 I investigated two inventions for a company that was doing
    research in solar energy. One of the inventions was a method of
    generating heat by spinning drums in oil, the other a combined solar
    space-heating/electrical generator. Both inventors made outlandish
    claims and both had received considerable newspaper attention. Both had
    stated that they had found the answer to the energy problem and that
    the "big companies" were trying to suppress their inventions.
    
    I visited the guy with the spinning drums,  accompanied by a professor
    from MIT who was a consultant to my company. We instrumented his system
    with a complete data collection system and found that he was wrong when
    he claimed 98% efficiency--it was virtually 100%. He had not measured
    the heat output of the electric motor that drove his drums. He was
    ecstatic. Of course, all he had was a cumbersome  and noisy method of
    converting electricity to heat. Baseboard electric heaters are also
    100% efficient; unfortunately, electrical generation is the inefficient
    part of the process. Anyway, he was undaunted, and was soon quoted in
    the papers: "An MIT professor said it was 100% efficient."
    
    
    The second inventor had taken a number of commercial 3"  solar cells,
    put a conical reflector over each one and put them all in large, metal
    boxes that had a translucent plastic cover facing south. Ducts carried
    forced air through each box. The inventor claimed it was 99% efficient.
    When I looked at it, I was blinded by stray reflections from the
    reflectors and the boxes, so it was pretty obvious that much energy was
    being reradiated, making me doubtful that the claimed efficiency would
    stand up to scrutiny. The inventor showed me his instrumentation--a
    thermocouple placed in the center of the collection duct. He had
    calculated the heat output by using the cfm  marked on the fan and the
    temperature rise measured by the thermocouple. He had no method of
    measuring insolation. Any heating contractor could should show you
    numerous errors with this experiment. When I pointed out a few, the
    inventor showed my his ultimate proof--his utility bills were lower
    than they had been the previous year!
    
    These instances don't prove anything about the case in hand, but  I'd
    be skeptical anytime anyone claims to have an invention that
    contradicts basic science.  The cause of science is to allow knowledge
    to be improved upon without blindly accepting every claim that comes along.
    
    Danny W.
    

    .16,
    
    Hmm...  I wonder why you guys still bother with those things.  The
    French patent office quit that kind of venture over a hundred years
    ago.
    
    Eugene

    re .15
    I believe it has flown....
    				see the Note about the crop circles in the
    South of England.   ;-)

If it was published "on Thursday" following the 5th of August, then it
should have been out for 12 days now.  Anyone got a copy?  Assuming that it
is only available so far on the other side of the Atlantic from me, can I
get someone to buy me a copy?  You can read it first, if you don't read too
slowly...

Any takers please send me e-mail to implement deadlock resolution, and I
will mail a cheque, air post, to a single such individual for cost of book
and postage, modulo currency conversion costs.

I don't read horoscopes or play the lottery, but I read a lot of SF.  I
even like L. Ron Hubbard's SF (but not religion).  Just because you don't
think this is entertainment doesn't mean I can't.

						-- Spencer

    re: .10
    
>    watch.  Wish I could remember how it was done, I'd love to have
>    someone explain where the extra number came from, it bogled my mind
>    for two weeks and I gave up. 
    
    Just in case you're interested this is probably close to the "proof"
    you were shown:
    
    	Given: 	a=b=1
    
    		a=b 			; given
    		aa=ab			; multiply both sides by a
    		aa-bb=ab-bb		; subtr b-squared from both sides
    		(a+b)(a-b)=b(a-b)	; factor both sides
    		(a+b)     =b		; cancel out the (a-b) factor
    		(1+1)	  =1		; substitute the values
    		2 = 1			; conclusion!
    
    Does everyone see the flaw?
    
    Sorry for the diversion...
    
    None of the US book stores I went into had the book (Beyond 2001...) on
    their "to-be-published" lists for the next several months.  If anyone
    does get their hands on a copy please supply the ISBN.
    
    - steve

Dividing by 0 is illegal.

The replies numbered .20 thru .41 here were moved from another topic. 
All references within them to reply numbers should be adjusted by adding
20.  E.g, in .40, "re .10" should be read as "re .30".

Re .40

By the way, in your "proof", it is not necessary to say a=b=1, it is
only necessary to say a=b as the given.  If you do, then the last few
lines become:

    		(a+b)     =b		; cancel out the (a-b) factor
    		(b+b)	  =b		; substitute the values, a=b, given
                2b        =b            ; collecting terms
    		2 = 1			; divide by b; conclusion!

re .41

Yup, but it will still confuse 9th-graders.

Dave C.

    re: Beyond 2001
	I saw this in a bookshop in Edinburgh, Scotland , yesterday.
    
    	It is more like a personal history than a technical book.
    	No detail is given about the invention. The only solid material
    is the text of a report by the Australian Company who checked it
    out. They support the weight loss ( a short appendix covers this,
    again no details of the invention)
    
    	He seems to have taken it to Imperial College in London ( prestige
    University) and shown it to Eric Laithwaite (well known for linear
    motors). Laithwaite almost lost his "reputation" here a few years
    back when he investigated gyros and produced similar claims to
    this guy. Interestingly, it was Laithwaites demos on TV which prompted
    the guy to develop the invention.
    
    	I'm sorry I can't give the ISBN but I'll look in Reading at
    the weekend when I'm home and postthe ISBN then.
    
    				Geoff

Article: 45538
From: jdr@starflight.Corp.Sun.COM (Jon Roland)
Newsgroups: alt.society.futures,sci.space
Subject: Bosonic Transport
Date: 1 Jul 92 02:35:48 GMT
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
 
One of the more interesting lines of scientific speculation concerns
the possibility of getting matter to interpenetrate. Not just at the
quantum level, but using bulk matter.
 
The applications for such a capability would be endless. We might be
able to operate at high speeds through dense media without being
concerned about things like friction or collision.  No ordinary
enclosure would be immune to penetration. We would build underground
cities and pass between them and outer space without having to have
access ports or connecting tubes.
 
As it happens we have found one way to get matter to interpenetrate. It
is called superconductivity.
 
Elementary particles, the basic constituents of matter, have a property
called spin, which is quantized, so that it can only take half-integral
values -- 1/2, 1, 3/2, 2, 5/2 ....  Particles having fractional spins
are called fermions. They include electrons and protons, the most
common constituents of ordinary matter. Particles with integral spins
are called bosons. The photon, or particle of electromagnetic
radiation, is a boson.
 
Greatly simplifying the physics, we can say that fermions can only get
so close to one another, even if they are electrically neutral or their
charges are neutralized, as they are in a neutral atom. This is why the
electrons of an atom do not collapse into the nucleus, why atoms keep
their distance from one another, and why atoms and molecules don't
easily pass through one another. Bosons can, however, be packed as
closely as their electrical charges permit, if they have electrical
charges. Photons can pass right through each other without affecting
each other in any way.
 
Fermions can also get close to bosons. It is fermions which give
ordinary matter its complex structures, such as molecules and men, and
which cause it to consist of mostly empty space instead of packing
together.  This property of fermions is the basis for our perception of
material objects as "solid" and inpenetrable.
 
The current favored theory of superconductivity posits that pairs of
electrons become bound together, their spins aligned in the same
direction, while keeping a certain distance between them, and travel
together along parallel paths through the superconducting medium.
These pairs, called Cooper pairs after the physicist who proposed the
theory, together have a combined integral spin and function as a boson.
As a boson, they do not interact with the atoms in the superconducting
medium, other than to be confined within that medium, but pass right
through the spaces between them without being deflected or slowed down.
This can continue as long as the temperature of the medium remains
below the critical value, above which the atoms have enough energy to
break up the Cooper pairs.
 
In theory, it is possible for arbitrarily large collections of fermions
to act as a single boson if they are bound together in spin alignment
and there are an even number of them. A golf ball, a space ship, even
an entire planet could be a boson, interpenetrating ordinary matter
at will. In practice, it is difficult to see how such a collection
could be achieved or maintained. Getting pairs of electrons to do so at
the temperature of liquid Nitrogen is one thing. One can imagine
binding the particles of a large object together by surrounding them in
an extremely strong electromagnetic field which would align all their
spins, but such a field is likely not to be compatible with life
processes or with the structural integrity of the object. If they could
be bound, then a bosonic state could be maintained by simply adding one
electron as required to make the total number of fermions even.
 
The problem would be to prevent single fermions in the collection from
leaving this bound state at random, at a rate that would make it
impossible to detect and respond to the need to add a fermion, such as
an electron, to keep the number even, or to prevent odd fermions
entering the collection randomly from outside. Any field which
contained the collection would itself have to have a distinct boundary
in order to control a precise number of particles, and perhaps align
any fermions that enter its range.
 
If the field were electromagnetic, it would have to consist of an
extremely complex sum of oscillating fields which reinforced in a
confined volume of space and canceled out everywhere else. Elementary
particles themselves can be described as such fields.  However, it is
not obvious how we could do that for a region of space with a more
convenient size or shape. Even if the field could control the entry and
exit of low-energy particles, there would still be the problem of
perturbation by high-energy particles, such as cosmic rays and natural
background radiation.
 
One suspects that it might not be possible to maintain a bosonic state
100 percent of the time, but perhaps only 95 percent of the time, in
which case there would remain a significant residue of interaction
which might cause some damage to living tissue and to the integrity of
structures. If so, it might not be a state in which travelers would
want to remain for long periods of time. Bosonic travel would then be
something akin to space travel, involving exposure to a low but
cumulative level of damage which would cause health problems, increase
equipment maintenance costs, and perhaps carry a risk of occasional
catastrophic failure.
 
Assuming that bosonic transport could be done, then, it seems likely by
this analysis that it might not be a favored mode of transport for most
people in the normal course of their lives, but might be confined to
expendable robots and to experimental specimens who would not be
subjected to it very often or for long periods of time.
 
While in a bosonic state, a vehicle would be nearly invisible from the
outside, except perhaps for effects of its passage on matter in the
vicinity, which might take the form of a glowing aura or various kinds
of disturbances.
 
---
 
The physicist Enrico Fermi once looked up at the sky and asked "Where
are They?" What he meant is that since starfaring seems possible, even
though at less than the speed of light it might take many generations
for a starship to get from one star to the next, and if there are other
civilizations in the galaxy with the technical capability for space
flight, then it should be possible for a single such race, pausing at
each planetary system to develop and build more starships, to expand
through the galaxy at an average rate of 0.1 lightspeed, which would
enable them to visit every star in the galaxy within about 1 million
years, a very short timespan in the life of a galaxy.
 
Assuming we are not the first such civilization in this galaxy, then
why hasn't Earth been visited before? Based on reasonable estimates of
how many suitable planets there are likely to be in the galaxy, we
should expect to be visited about every couple of years by members of a
new species.
 
The answer may be that starfaring beings live in starships, and that
when they station such starships on a planet, they site them
underground. If each such starship-city had a million such beings, then
we could have a million such cities, each representing a different
species, buried beneath our feet, housing trillions of aliens, and
never know it. Some of them may have been here for longer than there
has been life on Earth.
 
On theoretical grounds, it is not surprising that an advanced
civilization might be living in subterranean cities, or even that such
a civilization might have been doing so for longer than humans have
been living on the surface. We think of living in scattered settlements
on the surface as normal, but that arises out of our background as
first, hunter-gatherers, and then as herder-farmers, depending on
other life forms to gather energy in the form of sunshine for us to
harvest. That kind of economy requires a dispersed habitation pattern.
 
Unfortunately, once a species gets beyond the hunter-gatherer stage, it
becomes destructive of the natural ecosystem. It then has only a
limited amount of time to evolve to the next stage, in which it totally
separates its life-support system from the natural ecosystem. This
necessarily involves withdrawing into cities designed and operated like
giant starships, which are sealed from their external environment and
which recycle all materials, using only a little energy to maintain
normal function.  We can imagine starship-cities that could last for
millions of years, using only available sources of energy, such as
solar or geothermal. A plausible size for such a starship-city might be
1 or 2 kilometers in diameter. Such a city could house perhaps a
million beings similar to human beings at a high level of comfort.
 
It can be shown that there is no viable compromise between scattered
and compact living. Anything less than sealed cities can last for, at
best, a few thousand years before collapse. Even with nanotechnology,
there would appear to be a minimum size for such habitats, the size of
a city, and therefore only one basic way for members of a civilization
to live if it is to last very long.
 
Starship-cities could be built in space, inside asteroids, or on the
surface of a planet, but there they would be subject to hazards like
radiation, corrosion and weathering. They would last longer and be less
expensive to maintain if built underground. A few thousand years after
making the transition to living that way, the members of such a
civilization might come to find life on the surface of planets
disagreeable and abnormal, in much the same way that many people used
to living in luxury hotels find camping disagreeable.
 
Human civilization now has only a few decades to make the transition to
living in such starship-cities. If it does not, it will collapse, and
humanity will descend to the stone age, with only a few scattered bands
of nomads living in a desolated wilderness.  If at least a few humans
do make this transition, then their descendants can have a bright
future, and civilization could continue for millions or even billions
of years.
 
---
 
jdr@starflight.corp.sun.com, starflt@uunet.uu.net
Jon Roland
Starflight Corporation, 1755 E Bayshore Rd #9A,
Redwood City, CA 94063-4142, 415/361-8141

Lacking the ability to respond via usenet...

If a large collection of particles, such as a person, could be made to behave
like a boson, what would keep the person from collapsing to a point or
dispersing in all directions?

The implication of subterranean cities permanently in bosonic state is amusing,
alien or otherwise.  It beats spindizzies.

I am skeptical of the assertion that the only alternative to steady state is
destruction, which is the premise used to justify having to live in
self-contained cities.  A steady-state system (e.g., Niven's "water empires")
seems just as vulnerable to catastrophes as a chaotic system.

I am skeptical of the assertion that a habitat the size of a city is the
minimum for long-term stability.  A loose-knit community of smaller habitats
seems quite plausible.

The theory that we should be getting visited by a new alien species every
couple of years also has problems.  Do they never interact with each other?
If they are out there, why should they hang around earth and risk getting
attacked by xenophobic humans?  Having visited earth in the past, perhaps there
is a (public?) library where newcomers can satisfy their curiousity.

Lots of these ideas have been kicked around in the SF literature.

    Re .45:
    
    You can respond via Usenet; I'll post directions in a new topic.
    
    
    				-- edp

Article: 3227
From: kevoboyle@aol.com (Kev OBoyle)
Newsgroups: sci.space.tech
Subject: Re: Interstellar propultion system
Date: 25 Aug 1994 17:22:02 -0400
Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364)
 
In article <14630.9406091803@thor.cf.ac.uk>, sarmdj@thor.cf.ac.uk (MATTHEW
JONES) writes:
 
>In the Guardian (UK newspaper) today, it was reported that a Uni of
>Wales guy called Miguel Alcubierre, had a workable (!) warp drive
>theory, where the drive system inflates spacetime behind the craft,
>while simultaneously contracting it in front. The craft experiences no
>adverse relativistic effects apparently, as it travels, as far it is
>concerned in a bubble of normal spacetime, while traveling at
>super-light speed!
 
Damn!! I'm a never published science fiction author/hobbist (really a
computer consultant), and that was my idea!!!  One of the really cool side
effects of this concept (which I call "Gravity surfing") is that in a
region of space where external gravitational sources are distributed
evenly then the colapsed space infront of the traveler would appear to be
more massive than the inflated space behind so in effect the ship could
freefall  toward the carrot of "dense" space and as it moves forward so
does its target. (also, the premise of a good artifical gravity system).
So, how many people know whats missing here??  
 
...The mechanism. We are talking about bending space/time: No small
feat there!  I concocted a method where certain atomic nuclei like Fe
(which is extremely well ordered and dense)  are set to spin in a
magnetic field and bombarded with protons.  When the protons hit the
Iron Atom the atom spins asymetrically for a moment producing a micro
gravity wave. Through some-- admittedly black box-- MAZER effect the
gravity wave is propagated and magnified through several strata of
spinning iron nuclei until a large curve in space is produced. Voila,
Warp Drive.  Anyhow, it works for me (but I'm not a physicist). 
 
A more conventional star ship would probably employ several different
technologies.  Built propperly, A small Ion driven vessel could utilize
gravity assist and a mile wide gossimer parasol (which of course has
wonderful magneto-electric properties) to exit the helio-pause via moon
based Laser cannon and solar wind, then invert the parabola of the parasol
(or face the opposite direction whichever is easiest) send an oscelating
magnetic field through it and scoop up all the interstellar particles in
its path with this. The Particles would then be focused  and excelerated
(again using electro Magnetics ).  Finally, just as they are being ejected
out of the back of your ship, you'd burn them with Ions (or photons) so
they yield forth every ounce of inertia.  Your parasol acts as a radiation
shield stearing energized particles into the engine and you can fly around
at about 1/4 the speed of light.  The big thing is leaving the helio-pause
with enough inertia to engage the RAM scoop.  
 
I'd love to get feedback no any of these ideas.
 
E-mail me at:    kev oboyle @ AOL.com
 
Oh, also, I'd REALLY appreciate any more info on the Miguel Alcubierre
Warp Drive.
 
Thanks,

Kevin O'Boyle
Kevin M. OBoyle

Article: 3441
From: bgoffe@whale.st.usm.edu (William L. Goffe)
Newsgroups: sci.space.tech
Subject: Warp Drive?
Date: 12 Sep 1994 10:20:13 -0500
Organization: University of Southern Mississippi
 
I recently came across an interesting article in the Oct. 1994 issue
of the _American Scientist_. On pp. 422-3, there is a a short article
by Michael Szpir titled "Spacetime Hypersurfing?" It describes a paper
by Miguel Alcubierre, a physicist a the University of Wales in
Cardiff, in the May issue of _Classical and Quantum Gravity_.  Our
library doesn't get it, so I couldn't read the orginal (like I could
read it anyway). 
 
Alcubierre suggests that one might be able to distort spacetime in the
following way:  A region of space in front of the ship is contracted,
and behind is expanded, so a ship would in effect travel by surfing on
this distortion in spacetime faster than the speed of light to an
outside observer. 
 
This would seemingly violate special relativity, but the article
explains that inside the distortion, the speed of light would would be
unchanged. In other words, light in the distortion would travel along
with the distortion, which would move faster than light outside. 
 
In addition, the ship would experience no acceleration, and there
would be no time dilation for the ship. 
 
The item that makes this appear to be a bit far off is that it
requires exotic matter, which has a negative energy density. Exotic
matter is gravitationally repelled by "normal" matter. However, it is
thought that exotic matter might actually exist, or could be made. In
fact, Alcubierre came up with the idea from the concept the theory of
an inflationary universe, which uses exotic matter. 
 
I find it a bit interesting that this hasn't appeared in the rest of
the popular press. I guess Stephen Jay Gould was correct in his book
_Wonderful Life_ when he said that science journalists only read a
subset of journals like _Nature_ and _Science_ for their ideas.
Clearly, _Classical and Quantum Gravity_ isn't on many of their
reading lists (nor on mine, to be honest). 
 
Finally, as a sanity check, I was pleased to note that this article
didn't appear in the April issue. 
 
Obviously, given my sig, questions on this should go elsewhere.
 
  .---.   Bill Goffe                                 bgoffe@whale.st.usm.edu
 (    |   Dept. of Econ. and International Business   office: (601) 266-4484
  )__*|   University of Southern Mississippi             fax: (601) 266-4920
    (_|   Southern Station, Box 5072
          Hattiesburg, MS 39406-5072

Article: 3463
From: jfc@athena.mit.edu (John F Carr)
Newsgroups: sci.space.tech
Subject: Re: Warp Drive?
Date: 13 Sep 1994 22:46:42 GMT
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
 
In article <351rjd$2h1l@whale.st.usm.edu>,
William L. Goffe <bgoffe@whale.st.usm.edu> wrote:

I read the article.  It didn't talk about practical applications, but the
concept doesn't sound useful for a spacecraft drive.  Because gravity waves
travel at lightspeed a spacecraft won't be able to push itself forward
faster than light using fields it generates.  However, it might be useful
as a sort of interstellar cable car system, with prepositioned devices to
generate the space distortion (timers can be used to move the distortion
according to predetermined schedule) and drag the spacecraft along its route.
 
If you have a lot of exotic matter, you may be able to do something more
interesting than a warp drive.  Maybe you could make a stable wormhole.
 
-- 
    John Carr (jfc@mit.edu)