Magnetic Propulsion

trains don't fly, they do sorta float a few inches but not over the ground, over a special track. Area 51 does indeed exist, its a not so secret base in the Nevada desert, mostly used for development of newer AIRPLANES, no green guys and flying saucers. they have however had many test flights of vehicles that boggle the mind as to the speeds they have attained for a few moments, no Martians though, sorry

Gravity field manipulation makes more sense than magnetic repulsion when theorizing about advanced propulsion concepts that could exhibit the conditions you have mentioned.

It makes sense to me. Magnetism seems to abound...at least in our solar system.

Using the push/pull of planetary magnetic fields would also make long range space travel possible, without the need for lots of fuel.

As I watch stupidity unfold among humans, it's too depressing to consider that we are the most advanced species in the universe.

http://www.iki.rssi.ru/mirrors/stern/earthmag/planetmg.htm

Well, I don't believe in flying saucers, but magnetic fields probably would not work.

The reason is that not everything is magnetic or magnetic enough to repel.

Even if it did, sudden acceleration would still be a problem for the human body, so no right angle turns.

However, an anti-gravity field generator would work. The reason is gravity accelerated every atom equally. Falling off a cliff is a good example. Every atom in your body is accelerated uniformly and you feel weightless.

The problem here is no one really knows what gravity is, so developing a generator is a little out of our technical reach.

Lastly, physics is giving us a glimpse at the possibility of a warp-drive. Warp drive does not actually move the space ship, but moves the space around the ship.

Who says they are human?

How do we get around Newton's 3rd Law?

Appeals court.

Don't quit your day job.

Oh, never mind, you already did.

Well they tried it for ship propulsion on the Yamato I, but the effienciency isn't very good.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetohydrodynamic_drive

Thank you for sharing your views through this Post.

After some poking around, I boosted the rating of your thread. It wasn't a one star thread to begin with. I thought it was a good question.

Some interesting reading...

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2000/ast04oct_1/

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11375-spacecraft-may-surf-the-solar-system-on-magnetic-fields.html

http://www.universetoday.com/98770/voyager-1-riding-on-a-magnetic-highway-out-of-the-solar-system/

http://vimeo.com/6498080

Electromonopoles anyone? Otherwise, against what do you push?(see lyn's #5,above).

Each of the planets has a magnetic system and, I imagine, there is an overall effect from the system, say a magnetic field from the sun with bumps from the planets. lets go surf the fields.

What about Spin Ice magnetic monopoles?

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2009/sep/03/magnetic-monopoles-spotted-in-spin-ices

Drew K

That's cool.

I like physics, but physics doesn't like me. I can only handle the Cliff notes; anything deeper, and my cheese starts slipping off my cracker.

I think there's a lot more to magnetic fields than we recognize...as well as ways to utilize them.

If the needle on a compass points north there must be some magnetic pull, so could you take that compass needle and mount it on four tiny wheels and let it go north on its own? Would it move?

No.

But if we didn't have gravity or an atmosphere, and the earth was smooth as glass....

There's enough energy to turn a light, small needle that has almost no friction, because there's a south pole, too. It's pulling the other way.

That's about it.

Try it with a sewing needle floating on a glass of water.

If the south pole is pulling the other way then the two poles would have the same pull at the equator, correct? So if you were north or south of the equator would one pole have a stronger pull than the other? Or do the magnetic fields overlap to create equal pull no matter where you start?

Actually, poles have been known to split into more than one pole at times through Earth history. This generally happens at the start of a pole reversal.

The magnetic field is also not necessarily uniform across the globe.

The ends of the magnetic rod are being pulled toward either pole, it wouldn't matter if one was stronger than the other, the rod would allign along a straight line between the two.

If you deflect the rod off of that line you can measure the force of it trying to reallign, that force will increase until you reach perpindicular to the north south line.

If there were a fluctuation in the field that might be measured by changing where the rod is fixed from the middle to a location 1/3 from one end then again at 2/3 and measuring the force of deflection. If the force is greater when the rod is fixed at one of the locations then that pole is in a stronger field.

If you look at a picture of magnetic field lines you will see that the closer you get to the source the stronger the field is, the higher the density of magnetic flux. But like I said the needle will always align along a line between the sources (unless acted upon by another magnetic field).

Drew K

Actually the needle is not being pulled. It is aligning itself to the ambient magnetic field.

But if you rotate it off the alignment the ends will be pulled creating a moment about the axis trying to turn it back toward the alignment.

Drew K

I suppose you could look at it both ways - the field of the needle seeks to realign itself with the ambient field, and pulls its own neddle along with it. I was objecting to the idea that the external field did the pulling.

True, it is the fields interacting with each other; but the net result is a force acting on the needle until the system is at the lowest potential possible.

Drew K

We agree then :)

I don't think that magnetics would work. A maglev is sorta like a motor except that the track is one winding and continuous and the other winding in on the train. That way it can work. In a flying saucer, where would the other winding be?

On another note about flying saucers and area 51. There have always been some reports about unidentified flying objects, but if you look at the reports over time, you will note that the reports of flying saucers went way up between Edwards Air Force base and Southern Nevada in the 50's. Then slowed to the normal trickle sometime in the 60's. A few of the details of the Air Force contracts have now been released about their experiments with this concept. Basically, they did fly, but humans had a hard time controlling them. Could computer assist change this? Humans had problems with the F16 until computers were upgraded. Also, basically the designs I have seen are more of a funny shaped flying wing than an actual saucer.

Good thing they didn't look like Ritz crackers, or we would be calling them "flying crackers". That would not be funny.

The primary thing you must understand is that magnetism is a fairly short range force. If you want propulsion, you need a force that can accelerate your craft throughout the universe. Good luck having that without having under your control all of the energy in the universe.

Oh, and by the way, not all planets have a significant magnetic field. Why not just figure out how to warp space in front of and behind the spacecraft, then no g forces are felt. (at least not on Star Trek).

I wonder if these guys ever stopped to consider that the minimal air currents certainly weren't strong enough for travel.

http://www.livescience.com/4142-spiders-fly-hundreds-miles.html

Perhaps by creating certain heavy elements or particle combinations which may (or may not) manipulate gravity or teleportation physics a flying saucer is able to move. But the question becomes, how do I get the energy to do this if it is possible? One thought on this is, power is teleported and channeled dynamically (similar to wireless power???) with little or no waste.

The Pitch and Bias drive is similar to what I was thinking

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Propulsion_Physics_Program#Pitch_drive_and_bias_drive

The idea is teleportation of a seed particle in front of the craft, bombarded subsequently with a beam of particles (neutrons?) necessary for forming short lived gravitational isotopes (similar to black hole matter?).

I imagine the particles to,

gravitationally pull the craft,
rapidly decay to lower densities before reaching the ship,
then harmlessly pass through the center/around outside perimeter.


Exploration of this type of technology would require more research into finding islands of stable elements with higher atomic numbers.

Imagine being able to create atom(s) dense enough and short lived enough to pull you at a designated length away. You teleport the atom/plasma to a precise location and collide it with whatever necessary to draw you toward it.

If you were going to turn 90 degrees without turning into soup, you'd need to have a field uniform, sized and positioned correctly to counter the inertia.

Perhaps some day we will create filtered lenses to channel solar particles toward a destination with enough energy to keep a cleared path and repeaters placed as necessary to keep the beam focused for the "gravity elevator" and the radiation harvested to power a secondary collision defense system.

This is really cool.

http://physics.aps.org/story/v27/st17

This is magnetic propulsion: http://www.engadget.com/2012/02/29/railgun-test-fire-video/

I dropped a magnet in the dirt once. I always think of that when people talk about magnetically propelled UFOs. I have this mental image of little bits of iron coating the underside after it has landed. Should be great for collecting scrap metal for salvage.

what you must realize is that the magnetic force only excists in our time because the time is defined here twisty

so as a higgher ... "bullsh¡t" nope ... beings the aliens (mostly reside at 5D, 6D) don't go messing with lowwer (self-looping) times (nor use magnetics as a primary product)

...

if i quickly scan my mind for relateds ... - i don't think they have 3/4D tech

rather they enter here (3/4D) with insertion of "4/5D violation area" ?? why you can see it ... im not shure but lets say your mind goes into excited state where your able to "choose the time(future)" you "look at" ... temporarily(such as alowwable violation)

(((i donno much speciffics about this)))

I'm not sure how it works, but MRI machines can generate enough of a field to move metal objects inside a person's body. If flying saucers do exist, I'm betting on them using magnetism for propulsion. There may be a way to generate a force field and instantly reverse the field or turn it on or off. If you could think of a magnetic field in terms of AC; instead of reversing 60 times a second, could we reverse that field 186000 times per second? Maybe that could be "hover mode" and by varying the frequency we could move in any direction quickly by pulling toward one pole and repelling the other pole.

It would still have to be an astronomically strong field. If you could generate a field like that and you could control the intensity of north and south poles you should have no trouble maneuvering around the poles and northern quarters of the planet.

In the northern hemisphere you would push a north pole beneath you and a south above. Control closer to the equater would be more difficult.

Problem is this is a picture of an ideal polar magnetic field, the sun tends to mess with the shape of the field the farther away you go (nothing some alien supercomputers couldn't handle).

Pretty picture huh?

Drew K

What was Tesla working on? Philadelphia Experiment being one of the more notable..Also, his ideas of using the Earth's magnetic fields to generate electrical power to transmit back to Earth, if I am not mistaken (But I have been wrong MANY times before).

I don't want to rain on everyone's parade, but there are some serious issues trying to use magnetic fields for propulsion, particularly for intra-stellar navigation (let alone extra-stellar travel).

First, the force induced by the flux density of the magnetic field falls off with the cube of the distance:

F = 1 / r³

So the repulsive force generated by the ship would quickly lose effectiveness as the it moves away from the magnetic field of the planet and quickly approaches zero.

Second, not all planets have magnetic fields, so your sources for reactive magnetic fields are very limited.

Basically, the physics for this form of intra-stellar propulsion just does not exist with the exception of Hollywood or books of fiction.

To answer the question about what an extraterrestrial space ship might use for propulsion, my guess is that the most promising mechanism would be some form of warping of space.

The problem with magnetic propulsion (even if it worked) is that it is still limited to the boundary limit of the speed of light. Even if you could reach that speed (and you can't), the closest star is still 4.5 years away (ignoring time it takes to accelerate and decelerate the ship), which is much too long to do anything meaningful as far as travel goes within our own galaxy (which is about 100,000 light years across).

The only known alternative is to either warp space or tunnel through space-time. The latter seems much less practical from a scientific principle compared to what we understand about warping space.

Finally, finding Earth amongst nearly 300 billion other stars in the Milky Way is like looking for a needle in a haystack the size of our solar system.

Our electromagnetic footprint only extends about 100 light years in radius from Earth since we have not been "radio active" for very long. 100 light years is a tiny radius compared with a radius 50,000 light years (the Milky Way).

Odds are we are quite invisible to any other civilization that might be out there. Given that we have never received any form of extraterrestrial electromagnetic communication it seems unlikely that there is anyone even remotely near us either.

I'm just gonna call you the rain man.

This discussion actually led me to an idea...and it doesn't mean it's a good one.

Can we use small solar arrays and electromagnets, in conjunction with the earth's magnetic field, to prevent the orbital decay of our satellites...keeping them in place without conventional fuel?

They have been experimenting with ion drives for that purpose. I can't recall if they were solar powered or not.

I'm wondering if magnetism itself couldn't be utilized.

If we were able to reverse polarity, depending on where the satellite was located, it seems like, (from space), we could overcome the gravitational pull of the earth.

Probably way too inefficient. Generating those kinds of fields takes a lot of power.

Darn. I guess I wasn't the first one to think of it.

http://www.zarm-technik.de/zt_web_products_torquers.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetorquer

http://www.vectronic-aerospace.com/space.php?p=torquer

I wasn't trying to set you up. I really hadn't heard of it before. Pretty cool.

Another problem would be the fluxuating nature of the fields and the way they interact with the sun's magnetic field.

I did hear that Jupiter has an enormous magnetic field that stretches into neptunes orbit. I was curious as to how a gas giant could have such a field when (Hawking) the discovery channel show explained that under intense gravity hydrogen forms a crystalline structure that is magnetic.

The original question was what are our thoughs on this. My thoughts are it might be possible, given unlimited energy or new technology.

Drew K

It's fun to think about anyway.

Hmmm...magnetic crystals.

Regardless of how aliens might have gotten here...and accepting the possibility for the sake of discussion...

If we are the equivalent of a science project/ant farm, it changes the scenario and negates the need to address a number of the perceived problems/issues, while explaining others. The hypothesis does rankle many.

Since my first interest in UFOs in the '70's, I started hearing that the truth about aliens would be disclosed in a graduated, controlled manor so that the public could adapt to it and accept it without panic being created. It never materialized during my tenure of active interest. The most recent revival of that projected scenario is The Disclosure Project AFAIK). Well, maybe partially. The book, Hollywood vs. The Aliens: The Motion Picture Industry's Participation in UFO Disinformation, makes the case that there has been collusion, but the punch line, so to speak, has never arrived. Physical proof is demanded by skeptics.

The subject can be entertaining for a while, but when nothing much ever happens that is hyped, (or is ignored by almost all mainstream media) one loses sustained interest in the subject. Ancient Aliens has kept the subject alive on cable/satellite in recent years. I do keep tabs periodically, but it is more like checking some food in the refrigerator to see if it has spoiled.

You wrote, "Physical proof is demanded by skeptics."

That's called 'the scientific method'.

Anything else is simply voodoo.

I know what you mean. While Voo Doo has connotations, and has branched out to many uses. Its root meaning is derived from the religion titled by that name, which, I think, may be your characterization.

I hope you don't think I accept it as reality as a belief or on faith. I don't accept is as a reality the way we do the Sun, which, most of us see every day. (Blind people have to go on indirect evidence, like heat and the testimony of those around them.) Even though I lost active interest in the subject many, many years ago, I read enough "cases" to not discard the baby with the bath water. Something is going on and there are credentialed people calling for a larger scientific effort to discover what it is. It is also why I do occasionally check the status of investigation. To dismiss it out of hand without investigating it at all, is not scientific. But due to the volatile nature of the subject and its tendency to call into question one's mental stability, it isn't hard to understand the lack of enthusiasm by most scientific minds for entering the field.

I just found this article about an author, Leslie Kean, and the book she has written entitled, UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go on the Record. And I also see it is in the university library. So I intend to check it out and see what is being presented.

Physical evidence does exist, depending on what level one expects or demands. A panel of scientists organized by a physicist at Stanford University, concluded there is enough physical evidence to warrant serious study. Until further notice, though, I take it all with a grain of salt, as per my previous comment of how it will all come to light... be disclosed... in the near future.

Actually, it's hard to imagine anyone not rooting for it to be true, except those whose religion might need some altering, and have their worldview disturbed. For some, it would fall right in line with a quite different explanation of religious saviors.

I wouldn't hold my breath.

Who among us is without flaw, credentials aside?

There are endless reasons why people say and do the things they do.

Yes, everyone may wish it was true. Some of us wish too much, but wishing does not make it so and without credible proof, we are left with nothing more than wishful thinking.

Agreed. But the "we" who are left with wishful thinking, does not included everyone.

It boils down to individual experience. If we have no experience of any facet of the phenomenon we then can choose to give credence to the testimony of others who say they have... or not. The general conclusion of those who have analyzed what evidence/testimony we have is that around 5% of the "cases" are not easily explainable by current scientific understanding. Those 5% have had some kind of experience. They may not understand what they experienced, but in the majority of cases, I, for one, don't doubt the sincerity of their perception that they experienced something. What, is what ongoing investigations should be about.

Many people refer to the Drake Equation when discussing the possibility of intelligent life in the universe. It was apparently intended as nothing more than a motivation to other scientists to engage in dialog about the topic, as there is no basis for the formula. It is, also, nothing more than wishful thinking in the guise of mathematical manipulation.

On a lighter note, there is a humorous book about the phenomena, entitled, How to Get Abducted by UFO Aliens. Haven't read it, but it looks funny.

The earth's magnetic field is about as powerful as a refrigerator magnet.

Using that as a means of "equal and opposite force" would require a huge displacement and very light weight equipment. With that kind of force, who needs a skin on a ship? Just keep your atmosphere trapped in a magnetic bottle around your "ship." Probably not going to meet the "light weight" parameter!