Science!! Fucking magnets, how do they work?

iannis

Musty Nester
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Do you think the same level of funding will exist in the next few years? Are most of the programs funded for multiple years at a time?

An awful lot of it runs directly through the States and the DoD.

Trump isn't going to be burning any books, and he's talking about giving the DoD a bigger cut, not cuts. So no, I don't think that research funding will be a particular focus of his administration.
 

Ao-

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
<WoW Guild Officer>
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An awful lot of it runs directly through the States and the DoD.

Trump isn't going to be burning any books, and he's talking about giving the DoD a bigger cut, not cuts. So no, I don't think that research funding will be a particular focus of his administration.
I thought most of it was run through the DoE? These distinctions are the part I really don't get...
 

ZyyzYzzy

RIP USA
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No. DoE owns some national labs. They get a ton of work from DHS/DoD/others. Almost all their programs are non-DoE funded
 
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tad10

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That reads like Furry criticism, I have no idea if he's right or not. I'd tend to side with NASA over random reddit commenter though.

The reverse-thrust comment by random reddit guy is stupid. 1. It's not a factor of 2, only for the 80W test. 2. The real weirdness is (a) that there is one reverse run at 60W and one forward run at 80W where the value is 1/2 that of the other two results and (b) that there is a big difference between 40W and 60/80W but very little difference between 60 and 80W.

The latter result is suggestive that EmDrive is a real thing but it is also suggestive that the actual force is lower than what they think it is. Think of pushing a metal block across a surface with friction - if you're force < friction block doesn't move, if force > friction it moves.
 

iannis

Musty Nester
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That reads like Furry criticism, I have no idea if he's right or not. I'd tend to side with NASA over random reddit commenter though.

One thing I've learned from askscience over the years is that even highly educated people, true experts in a specific narrowly focused band of research science, will have brainfart days.

It used to happen more. Ask science pretty much went to shit about five years ago. It's more on a high school level these days or freshman college (which is fine I guess) but back in the day there were a lot more technical threads and you'd see two mods w/ similar flairs arguing and schooling each other over some fairly esoteric and completely dumbass misconception or assertion that one of them made.

Which, of course, is why peer review exists.
 

tad10

Elisha Dushku
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Reddit guy comfirmed 100% correct super genius.

Yes, he is totes "comfirmed."

Anyway, the frothing anti-EM guys are all pretty much idiots I'm just going to point out one quote from the mess Tuco posted:

"Their force measurements don't scale with power as one would expect." This is nonsense. One would 'expect' that the em drive wouldn't work at all. If it does work, it works off of physics we don't know.
 

iannis

Musty Nester
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That pathological science speech was an interesting read.

I feel like I'm missing some context though. And, from just that speech linked, i'm not sure if it fits his definition of pathological science or if it would be more appropriate for him to just label it as a general allison effect. The EM drive stuff is lacking in claims 3) Claims of great accuracy and 5) Criticisms are met with ad hoc excuses. 1 and 2 are on point though, and honestly 6 shouldn't even be included. That's a retrospective social justification rather than an attribute. And 4 is going to be true of ANY theoretical science at this scale and is thus not useful or applicable as an attribute of anything. You can make a case for 4 about any science having to deal with any subject too small to be imaged by an optical microscope.

How many PBS specials on "Quantum mechanics... so weird, right?!?!!" or "Special Relativity: actually if you think about it, it doesn't make a lot of sense -- but it's probably true!" does it take to get 4) off the list.

So really, using his own criteria, he's less than half right in his abstract criticism. I am not educated enough to comment on his specific criticism, though I do suspect some of it is valid. So all I can talk about is his abstract. If we toss #6 away because it's obviously just a form of group politics being as it is an appeal to social inclusion, and toss #4 away as not being a valuable objective metric of anything at all past certain scales (which we are past).. then he's... 50% right. OH MY GOD, MAYBE HIS CRITICISM IS THE PATHOLOGY AS DEFINED BY HIS OWN PATHOLOGY. TIME IS A FLAT CIRCLE.
 
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Palum

what Suineg set it to
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Didn't they chuck one of them in space? Well, is it moving?

Ain't exactly rocket science.
 
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Furry

WoW Office
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Yall mother fuckers like to talk about me like I'm crazy, but what the fuck have I said about the EM drive? I said that it was an interesting idea that needs more proof.

Looks like proof is here, bitches. Now the question is, what part of science does this inevitably crush? I think there's a roundabout way to say it disproves QE through showing that light has minimal mass. Prepare for your incoming dick entanglement fags.
 

Tuco

I got Tuco'd!
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I don't really stand with the above skeptical posts, but I am a skeptic of the EMDrive and think that widespread systemic error from bad experimentation methodology is more likely than the EMDrive working.

I think the way forward for the EMDrive is for them to attempt to improve the efficiency and overall strength of the device. As the thrust of the device increases it should drown out experimentation error.

I know Shawyer has been working on some superconductive surfaces for his EMDrive:
https://www.ipo.gov.uk/p-find-publication-getPDF.pdf?PatentNo=GB2537119&DocType=A&JournalNumber=6647

But I don't know when he expects that to roll out.
 

Chanur

Shit Posting Professional
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Yall mother fuckers like to talk about me like I'm crazy, but what the fuck have I said about the EM drive? I said that it was an interesting idea that needs more proof.

Looks like proof is here, bitches. Now the question is, what part of science does this inevitably crush? I think there's a roundabout way to say it disproves QE through showing that light has minimal mass. Prepare for your incoming dick entanglement fags.

It hasn't been posted on R/Physics so it can't be true.