Question |
| Asked by: |
Victor Geere |
| Subject: |
Alex Jones and friction in space |
| Question: |
Alex Jones seems to have pulsating propulsion sorted out on earth. The only thing preventing it from working in space or air is the lack of friction. My hypothesis is that inertia generated by a flywheel* could generate such friction.
The pulsating propulsion will also need to be changed to something that does not require gravity. Like a water jet contained in a capsule, shooting water against the front inside wall of the capsule, using the same principle as Alex's original invention. ...with friction provided by the flywheel*.
*a flywheel that is spinning with one point of it's axis pointing towards the direction of travel and the other pointing away from the direction of travel.
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| Date: |
4 April 2005
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Answers (Ordered by Date)
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| Answer: |
arthur dent - 05/04/2005 23:35:55
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| | Alex Jones has not got anything sorted out; he died some years ago from complications associated with alcoholism.
Arthur
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Victor Geere - 06/04/2005 11:49:10
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| | Alex Jones sorted pulsating propulsion out. The device moved and that earns him a place in history. His device gives me hope that a self contained propulsion device like a gyroscope will be able to fly and when that happens he will have played a part in that. While the greatest of them had much to say, Alex seems to have kept to himself and got the job done. That is an example worth following.
"Some say, some do, some both, but few."
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Nitro MacMad - 09/04/2005 13:01:23
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| | Dear Arthur Dent (David F.),
Alex Jones may not have won the cigar for getting as far as a continuous impulse drive machine. However his thoughts went far further than anyone in “conventional science” went in the past three hundred years. He produced machines (seriously larger versions of one I had made some time before) that were considered impossible by Newtonian physics.
These (single stroke) machines, without slip/stick, move “impossibly” outside their starting dimension.
So simple the machines, that I suspect of the many that have viewed his machine working in the video section of this web site, few will have realised its importance or bothered to duplicate the work. They should, as it is the starting point.
Why you feel it necessary to have a dig about his having died from alcoholic problems, as though it was some strange kind of retribution from the god of science meted out to him for having dared to have a thought that he didn’t read in a book, beats me. Anyway, he was (for a time at least) a Rydunian so a death from alcohol is almost mandatory for a genius (some say the two are linked) and, regrettably, for many other of those nice people.
Regards
NM
PS Glad to see your later inputs are nicing up a bit.
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Eric James ----- - 30/04/2005 09:26:53
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| | Victor,
The other day I was trimming my beard and inadvertently placed my trimmer on the bathroom counter with it still running.
I observed that the said trimmer immediately began to move accross the surface of my bathroom counter, seemingly of its own accord, in a linear fashion.
Upon close observation and inspection, I realized that the trimmer blades move back and forth very rapidly and the motor has an unbalanced crank attachment that drives said blades.
Sitting down in my debri strewn study, I began to ponder the mathematical relations between the various driven masses and non-driven masses (the main body).
My observations are as noted:
1) Gravity acts to adhere the trimmer to the surace of the counter via friction with said surface.
2) The oscillating masses of the blades and motor crank temporarily break (overcome) this friction adhesion by accelerating masses internally at a rate that causes the body to react oppositely with such force that it causes motion against said friction.
3) The trailing cord, angle of placement toothpaste spittle and a variety of other factors coincide to make this motion more prevaent in one direction, versus the equal and opposite direction.
Therefore, I conclude that Wahl (the trimmer's manufacturing company) had developed the "pulsating propulsion" drive long before this Alex Jones fellow.
I hope they got a patent!
Eric
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Victor Geere - 30/04/2005 22:33:01
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| | I also have a Wahl, but didn't think it would work well in this context. You proved me wrong. By the way, the beard trimmer was introduced after Alex's experiment, but the original Wahl dates back to 1919. How is this post relevant? Don't think about gyroscopes while you are shaving your head, you'll think in circles. ...or is that the key?
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Nitro MacMad - 30/04/2005 23:04:17
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| | Dear Eric,
We enter this world with the ability to believe anything – Father Christmas, monsters under the bed, even that our god (or scientific belief) is the only true god (or scientific belief) and therefore all others must be false
I have often thought that to save our time (or, more likely, that of our teachers) our education is as much to do with closing doors to what is held by our teachers to be impossible, as it is to do with opening doors to what is possible. After a typical education, therefore, who but the average nutter in a shed (I prefer inventive genius) is going to waste their time looking behind the doors our educators have taught conceal nothing useful.
Because of this educational handicap it is with little hope that I suggest you try and throw open a few doors, squint your eyes to the blinding light beyond, and try and start your new learning at the (rather noisy) videos on this site showing crude but crucial experiments that I believe are the first faltering steps towards a new science.
To even approach this new learning successfully you will need to look, not to the confirmation of your present learning or the easy bypassing or rubbishing of others explanations as they struggle to understand (any pratt can do that), but to try to see if there is any path there that your teachers weren’t able to, or couldn’t bother to, lead you down.
I suggest you start with a look at the video of Alex Jones’ machine that parallels a machine I made long ago, which built on my other experimental proofs and which triggered my epiphany.
It (Alex Jones’ device) does not, as you wrongly imply above, have anything whatsoever to do with the stick slip process that you have so laboriously described in your bathroom observations and which is well understood to all but the beginners on this path.
What it does show, if you can be bothered to tear yourself away from your preconceptions, is a device that moves (horizontally and without slip stick) outside its starting dimensions without chucking anything away.
This is as important as Mikolaj Kopernigk’s observations built on by Galileo. I suppose I shouldn’t expect much for a while as it took until 1992 for the Catholic Church to admit that errors had been made in the case of Galileo, though Pope John Paul 11 still did not admit that the church was wrong to convict Galileo on a charge of heresy because he dared to notice that the Earth rotates around the sun.
Happy learning (hope springs eternal).
Kind regards
NM
PS Not raining now but dark now so still no gardening – still grumpy.
PPS I guess a Wahl must be some badly balanced diesel powered American device – all our British beard trimmers have to be damped and gyro stabilised by law.
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Eric James ----- - 01/05/2005 00:49:47
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| | Nitro,
I'm glad that you were interested in my tongue-in-cheek ("cheeky," for you Brits) response to the question.
I must admit that I only inferred that it was a stick-slip drive.
I haven't been able to access anything on this Alex Jones thing other than finding stuff about a UFO/conspiracy radio show pesonality. Is this the person you are referring to?
Can you provide a link to your reference?
Eric
P.S. I live in sunny California. You should try it, the grumpiness just melts away...
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Nitro MacMad - 01/05/2005 11:21:53
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| | Dear Eric'
Go to the home page on this site, then click on gallery and chose your starting point. Strange to think that you are probably just waking up in sunny Californieay while I have been out for hours in my garden (sunny at last) murdering weeds. Must go as I have a gang coming round for "Bean Jar". This is a local delicacy (?) that causes near terminal flatulence. Still, if the wind is in the right direction we can get our own back on the french for the smell of garlic when the wind is in the wrong direction.
Kind regards
NM
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Eric James ----- - 01/05/2005 17:19:40
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| | Nitro,
In "Gallery" I see lots of pretty pictures of gyroscopes (I wish I had some of 'em!). However, I find no mention of "Alex Jones."
A Google search only finds this forum page where you have been mentioning him and otherwise, an Australian UFO/conspiracy radio personality.
Do you have a specific URL?
ERic
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Nitro MacMad - 01/05/2005 22:28:33
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| | Dear Eric,
Gallery - Heretic.
Kind regards
NM
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Eric James ----- - 02/05/2005 01:45:05
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| | Nitro,
Okay, now I know what you're talking about. Very interesting.
My first impression is that only the contact with the Earth and gravity allows this to work as it translates an angular momentum into linear momentum.
The distance it gets would be due to the the falling gyro's resistance to motion across its axis and its torquing against the mast. This torque is restricted by the platform (on wheels) and its contact with the Earth, so it simply translates into linear momentum.
There are some other very interesting observations regarding it too.
It seems that the gyro actually creates a kind of temporary and dettached fulcrum for gravity to leverage the device against (similar to my own concept, have you seen it yet?).
Obviously, the falling gyro doesn't just fall like a pendulum and stop the forward progression of the platform by hitting the mast. More like, it "relaxes" against the mast and relieves the torque.
In space, this would clearly not work so technically it cannot work in isolation and therfore Newton's laws aren't really all that applicable to it. Conservation of energy laws are though.
I'd hypothesize that the energy to create the motive force comes directly from the gyro itself. It'd be interesting to compare the gyro's power requiements under load and just hanging loosely. I'd bet the difference in requirements to keep the gyro powered would more than cover the needed energy to propel the platform.
Lastly, I don't think Professor Laithwaite understood that Newton's laws are generally in regard to isolated systems. This system is clearly not isolated.
Good stuff!
Eric
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John Sutton - 19/05/2005 12:53:17
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| | Thanks to Nitro's guidance (in another thread on this forum), I have also downloaded and viewed the heretic video. It is interesting but (for me) far from conclusive! The 4 funny little wheels with their fixed axles which support the trolley seem to offer the possibility of providing a reaction at the surface of the bench. And the way Alex Jones starts the thing off with his hands provides another possibility for an external impulse. I want to see such a device mounted on an "air bed" and the motion initiated (i.e. the gyro released from its starting position) by an electromechanical relay. Then (it it works!) we will really have something to ponder.
But I agree with Nitro, building such a device (along the lines of the Laithwaite/Dawson patent) is the place to start. I find it incredible that such a device has not been built, at least, that is the result of my researches this far. Or perhaps there have been many such devices built and none of them work, and people don't like to admit that they have "wasted" their time?
But this is *not* a waste of time. My perspective is this: Laithwaite reckoned there was something in it and he sacrificed a great deal because of that belief. Maybe he was right and maybe he was wrong but we owe it to him and ourselves to find out.
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Nitro MacMad - 07/06/2005 20:03:02
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| | Dear John Sutton,
Alex Jones device is far from free of faults. For those that cannot be faffed to make the effort or been to busy with life, as is usually the case, to make their own devices to better understand the start of “the path” his device must seem to fall well short of any kind of proof of “unopposed action”. I have to admit that the device does indeed look from the video view as though it is helped on its way. This view is unfortunate and incorrect as it needs no such help.
I regret that unless you are prepared to make a similar device you will have to take my word (please make a device) that a similar (though smaller and simpler) device I made before I had heard of Eric Laithwaite or Alex Jones produced a similar (though smaller) unopposed displacement. This last statement is technically incorrect as its displacement does have opposition but, as you would expect with a gyro device, the opposition is displaced by 90 degrees and, as in the “Alex machine”, the opposition is fed to the mass of the earth (because it has wheels not rollers – use Nitro’s law to figure why).
To ensure that I could not accidentally influence my machine, its start input was (not provided by a fall under gravity like the “Alex machine” but instead) provided by an elastic band to provide torque to its main shaft (I did say that my version was simpler! OK. “Crude”, then!). This elastic band was held in tension by a thread and the thread burnt through to release the bands kinetic energy to remove any accidental influence by the nutter in a shed (inventive genius).
It surely doesn’t take an inventive genius (or his Mr Hide alto ego) to figure a way of cancelling out the opposing torsional forces of my early single pendulum device, or that of Alex Jones. Twin opposed pendulums (you will have to adjust gyro rotation) are a good starting point and contra rotating main shafts should follow on. You won’t be able to switch off gravity (as the centrifugal force – no apology – of orbiting craft appears to) but if you can extend your imagination just a little you will see that something as simple as an elastic band and opposing rotating masses will work without the need for gravity. I am not suggesting that NASA try propelling the next Mars lander with an elastic band (though they have done far dafter things!)
I’m afraid I have been suffering from a slight (I bloody-well hope!) medical problem. No! Not mental delusions brought on by my close proximity to LySergic acid Diethylamide users in the sixties (Indeed, I claim to be the only person that lived through the sixties who can remember that the sixties were still good without LSD) but a circulating pump problem. They don’t make ’em like the old “Sigmunds”, you know. Thus, little progress is happening in the shed and I regret to say that my responses to this forum have been a bit grumpier of late – for this I am sorry.
Kind regards
NM
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