From The NY Times: The Pentagon's Secret UFO Program

[marduk]

the "government" is made up of a disparate and complex web of numerous depts, factions and interests. to assign The Government the capacity or will to propagate this elaborate shell-game to "direct our attention away from something" is unlikely. sometimes things are as they appear.

Except this is coming directly from one source, right?

 

[KACTUS]

Except this is coming directly from one source, right?

actually I count 3 who have independently corroborated elements of the story: luis elizondo, harry reid, and david fravor. or, i mean they all could be pawns, just as I could be an unwitting pawn used by "them" to counter anyone who's onto their plot. or maybe i'm not unwitting! I mean it never ends.

 

[Thomas R Morrison]

Here's the problem I have with gravitational propulsion systems:

Even if one were able to create a localized superdense region of mass/energy above a craft to give it lift (somewhere on these forums I calculated it would take something on the order of godzilla's mass/energy compressed to a 1cm sphere 1cm above a F22 sized craft to lift it) - the combined gravitational field of the object would still exist to earth's gravitational field.

Therefore, even though the craft would exhibit an upward lift due to gravity from the mass/energy region it created, the craft and the mass/energy field would still plummet towards the earth because nothing is holding the mass/energy field up.

It would be like trying to sail a boat by using a fan to push on the sail.

Apparently I’m so close to this idea that I’ve never explained it properly. That’s not how gravitational field propulsion works at all – it’s way cooler than that.

The Newtonian explanation is the simplest model so I’ll use that one for pedagogic purposes, but the underlying concept works in general relativity as well. Robert L. Forward wrote about it in his 1990 paper Negative Matter Propulsion, which is a milestone paper as far as I’m concerned (although Bondi probably deserves the bulk of the credit for discovering the idea in the first place).

Here’s the basic principle of operation: if you have a gravitating mass, we’ll call it +M, and set it next to an equivalent magnitude of negative mass, we’ll call it –M, then the gravitational interaction between the two is surprising and unique. The positive mass attracts the negative mass, but the negative mass repels the positive mass. So the two masses don’t get closer to each other, but instead the positive mass accelerates away from the negative mass at the same rate that the negative mass accelerates toward the positive mass. The two continue to accelerate together indefinitely along the common axis. Note that this doesn’t require any expenditure of energy, and it doesn’t violate any of the conservation laws because the negative mass terms (negative kinetic energy and momentum) cancel out the positive mass terms. It gets much more complicated when we look at the technical details in the context of general relativity, but that basic idea is still perfectly valid and the core principle at work with the Alcubierre warp drive that’s been so controversial.

The primary objection to the idea, of course, is that there’s no such thing as “negative matter.” And as far as we know, that’s true. In fact physicists were so troubled by this idea of negative mass that they came up with a postulate to forbid negative mass states, and they called it the positive energy theorem.

But it turns out that you don’t actually need negative mass to make this work; all you need is to create a negative value of stress-energy tensor. And this can be done because pressure accounts for three components of the stress-energy tensor, and pressure can be negative (aka "tension"). So in theory, positive matter can generate a negative stress-energy tensor, which acts physically exactly like a negative mass. A similar principle is the leading explanation for dark energy, by the way – the energy in every cubic volume of spacetime is positive but it generates a negative gravitational effect. And the inflationary era of the Big Bang appears to be driven by something similar as well.

This technique of generating a negative effective mass using positive matter was recently proven to be feasible within the context of general relativity in these two academic papers, which also explain why the positive energy theorem doesn’t apply to the accelerating universe that we live in:

“On negative mass,” Jonathan Belletête and M. B. Paranjape, 2013
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1304.1566.pdf

“Negative mass bubbles in de Sitter space-time,” Saoussen Mbarek & M. B. Paranjape, 2014
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1407.1457.pdf

And there are other approaches to producing a negative value of stress-energy tensor as well. Now that we know that these states are physically permissible, it’s an engineering problem rather than a theoretical problem.

That's part of the problem though, right?

I mean if they're that compartmentalized (and I agree that they are), you have large information loss between compartments.

Let's look at it from a network topology perspective. You have a bunch of nodes connected by the ability to send and receive information. That's how the internet works. It's likely how your brain works.

Now imagine there's a node that receives information but never transmits it. It's dark. The response from the other nodes - mathematically - to keep the network up and running - is to route around the dark nodes.

The dark nodes stop getting information and sit there.

Corporations are the same way. Any organization I've been a part of has been the same way. It's part of the underlying mathematical structure of information flow.

So, if such a compartmentalized organization existed that had insider knowledge of what these things were, consumed information but never gave it out... soon it wouldn't get any. And it would sit there with it's proverbial thumb up it's anus, navel gazing.

It would be a dead node on the network, a bad sector on someone's hard disk, a failed CRC check. In short, it would be ignored and soon useless.

I would take it even further and say that it’s not just a “large information loss” between compartments – highly compartmentalized programs that collect and analyze data on unexplained aerial devices are probably more like a black hole, with little if any data leaking out.

But they’d still get lots of data, because there’s an official bureaucratic protocol for sending pertinent information into them. I can’t recall the name of the document that proved that this protocol exists, but I recall hearing John Greenwald talk about following it to the correct destination within the military and then giving them a call to see if he could use FOIA requests to get some documents out. They weren’t forthcoming, naturally. But then he found a sister agency in Canada, and got lucky with a helpful person on the phone who ended up sending him a treasure trove of documents that he subsequently received and uploaded to his site The Black Vault.

So unlike information systems, bureaucracies can maintain functioning compartmentalized programs indefinitely, because other departments in the government are happy to have a destination to send their weird reports and wash their hands of them.

I think the only thing it's taught us is that someone wants to control the narrative of what is happening.

I think that’s mostly true (though it's also taught us that the program exists and we've also learned new details about the Nimitz case from the pilots and the video) but I don’t see anything sinister about it. Luis Elizondo and the people he’s working with now, simply thought that the people had a right to know, and that officials within the government (like Gen. Mattis) needed to know that our sensitive airspace is not secure, so they can do something about it (like developing the technology required to defend against intrusions by these advanced anomalous devices).

They’re absolutely driven to change the narrative. But that’s because the existing narrative (“people who believe in ufos are nutters”) is not only an ugly application of disinformation techniques against the public – it’s also bad/reckless/dangerous policy.

So I couldn’t be happier that they’ve taken great personal and professional risk to change the narrative; in fact, most of us have been trying to do the same thing for decades, and with their help, we’re finally making some real headway. I never thought I'd live to see the day when mainstream news media reported on this subject seriously, yet here we are.

Honestly I'm kind of baffled by folks who are going out of their way to turn this into some kind of diabolical conspiracy or shameless money grab. I guess some people just have no capacity for judging character. But it's plain as day to me from watching these people talk and seeing what's going on, that these guys are our allies - they agree with us that exotic aerial devices are being observed in our airspace, and they're doing their best to prove it, and they want to figure out how these devices outperform our most advanced aircraft almost as badly as I do. Good on them; I hope they succeed with all of those objectives, and transform the world in the process. It's about damn time.

From Facebook:
Bruce Maccabee
Yesterday at 12:13pm

Because of the recent revelation that the government supported research in alien technology, WE SHOULD INITIATE A Class Action Lawsuit against the Air Force and U.S. Government agencies

I totally understand why he’s so pissed, but I think this is a wrong-headed strategy. If we subject the government to legal action over this, they’ll lock down the information that we want even more tightly, or simply destroy it. And it compromises the people who are now currently working to get that information out, by setting up an adversarial situation between us and the people on the inside who are trying to help. And they are trying to help: those videos didn't get declassified by themselves - people on the inside did that.

We’d be far better served by giving them immunity from this kind of thing. It’s better to just say “look – it really sucks that you guys have been lying to us and defaming us about this subject for seventy years, but that’s water under the bridge: give us your findings and the supporting data which isn’t reasonably classified for valid national security reasons, and we can kiss and make up.” That’s the only way we have any chance of getting the information out, and finally opening up serious scientific discussion about it. This is way too important to get all vindictive about it - I say we offer them a carrot instead of the stick (and frankly it's obvious that they have the bigger stick anyway).

 

[Randall]

... Or they could be exactly what they appear to be: as confused and in the dark as we are.

The question hinges again on just who we mean by "they". Some people know nothing. Some know enough to know they're in the dark and are therefore confused. And some know a lot more about what's going on. They would be the people who track and pursue UFOs in real time. Those people have a chain of command to follow, and I think it's fair to assume that in the military there's a communications and reporting system for events and whatever actions are taken in response to them.

So If interceptors are launched as a result of an object being detected, there are going to be a number of people directly involved in that operation, starting with the people manning the detection equipment, to the people they report the incursion ( bogey or whatever ) to, to the people in communication with whoever is sent to investigate, to the people actually investigating, and then those involved in the debrief following the event. So it's simply not reasonable to think that there's nobody who knows a lot more than the average citizen ( or government employee ) who is not privy to that level of involvement.

 

[SRL+]

As I said. It was just an effort to mollify a U.S. Senator by throwing him a bone.

I agree will both you & Redfern’s assessment where perhaps a little something (fodder for the faithful) is better than a whole lot of nothing with one additional observation, and that is; not one penny of DeLonge’s fundraising is earmarked for UFO research.

Then again, you may disagree and suggest there's absolutely nothing being gained from these recent disclosure(?) events. In this case I would concur with you because you've been there, done that, and bought the t-shirt..., a couple of times over.

 

[Randall]

Here's the problem I have with gravitational propulsion systems ... It would be like trying to sail a boat by using a fan to push on the sail.

Personally I tend to agree. At least to some extent. TM has one workaround. There are a couple more. Paragliding aside, one is to think of the fan as not being attached to the boat. So let's say we get a really powerful fan, throw it up in the air behind the sail and turn it on. It will blow on the sail and push the boat forward a bit. Now imagine being able to constantly throw fans up there that self destruct before they fall. You'd get a constant wind. You get the idea? Now you can replace the fan with a different propulsive force like an explosion, and when we do that we essentially get rockets.

Translating that over to an antigravity system, the first thing to realize is that the nature of gravitational attraction is that it conforms to the inverse square law. Basically that means that the farther the distance the greater the reduction in the effect. So if the effect can be momentarily applied to an object that is very close, that object will be drawn toward it strongly while something ( like the Earth ) will be relatively unaffected. To do this you'd have to apply the effect at molecular distances throughout the entire craft. That way the effect would be confined to the craft rather than the surrounding environment. Hypothetically it could be done by energizing nanoscale receptors that convert the energy temporarily to mass. The lighter mass would be momentarily drawn more toward the heavier mass, the field would then cycle off lowering the mass of the attractors causing a mass/energy conversion to kinetic energy ( movement ).

Or ( and this is actually my pet theory ). It's not really antigravity propulsion at all, but a cross between something like The Matrix and Stargate, where reality is plotted out by some vast system ( natural or otherwise ) in a manner than can be tapped into so that coordinates can be set and instructions can be given to relocate whatever you want wherever you want without having to physically move it through space. If that's the way this all works, then distances become irrelevant and the whole problem is solved. Navigation would be done by some sort of system analogous to a GPS, but linked directly into the reality generator. That's the premise of the sc-fi novel I started. The new Star Trek Discovery seems to have hit on a similar idea.

 

[marduk]

Apparently I’m so close to this idea that I’ve never explained it properly. That’s not how gravitational field propulsion works at all – it’s way cooler than that.

The Newtonian explanation is the simplest model so I’ll use that one for pedagogic purposes, but the underlying concept works in general relativity as well. Robert L. Forward wrote about it in his 1990 paper Negative Matter Propulsion, which is a milestone paper as far as I’m concerned (although Bondi probably deserves the bulk of the credit for discovering the idea in the first place).

Here’s the basic principle of operation: if you have a gravitating mass, we’ll call it +M, and set it next to an equivalent magnitude of negative mass, we’ll call it –M, then the gravitational interaction between the two is surprising and unique. The positive mass attracts the negative mass, but the negative mass repels the positive mass. So the two masses don’t get closer to each other, but instead the positive mass accelerates away from the negative mass at the same rate that the negative mass accelerates toward the positive mass. The two continue to accelerate together indefinitely along the common axis. Note that this doesn’t require any expenditure of energy, and it doesn’t violate any of the conservation laws because the negative mass terms (negative kinetic energy and momentum) cancel out the positive mass terms. It gets much more complicated when we look at the technical details in the context of general relativity, but that basic idea is still perfectly valid and the core principle at work with the Alcubierre warp drive that’s been so controversial.

The primary objection to the idea, of course, is that there’s no such thing as “negative matter.” And as far as we know, that’s true. In fact physicists were so troubled by this idea of negative mass that they came up with a postulate to forbid negative mass states, and they called it the positive energy theorem.

But it turns out that you don’t actually need negative mass to make this work; all you need is to create a negative value of stress-energy tensor. And this can be done because pressure accounts for three of the terms in the stress-energy tensor, and pressure can be negative (aka "tension"). So in theory, positive matter can generate a negative stress-energy tensor, which acts physically exactly like a negative mass. A similar principle is the leading explanation for dark energy, by the way – the energy in every cubic volume of spacetime is positive but it generates a negative gravitational effect. And the inflationary era of the Big Bang appears to be driven by something similar as well.

This technique of generating a negative effective mass using positive matter was recently proven to be feasible within the context of general relativity in these two academic papers, which also explain why the positive energy theorem doesn’t apply to the accelerating universe that we live in:

“On negative mass,” Jonathan Belletête and M. B. Paranjape, 2013
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1304.1566.pdf

“Negative mass bubbles in de Sitter space-time,” Saoussen Mbarek & M. B. Paranjape, 2014
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1407.1457.pdf

And there are other approaches to producing a negative value of stress-energy tensor as well. Now that we know that these states are physically permissible, it’s an engineering problem rather than a theoretical problem.


I would take it even further and say that it’s not just a “large information loss” between compartments – highly compartmentalized programs that collect and analyze data on unexplained aerial devices are probably more like a black hole, with little if any data leaking out.

But they’d still get lots of data, because there’s an official bureaucratic protocol for sending pertinent information into them. I can’t recall the name of the document that proved that this protocol exists, but I recall hearing John Greenwald talk about following it to the correct destination within the military and then giving them a call to see if he could use FOIA requests to get some documents out. They weren’t forthcoming, naturally. But then he found a sister agency in Canada, and got lucky with a helpful person on the phone who ended up sending him a treasure trove of documents that he subsequently received and uploaded to his site The Black Vault.

So unlike information systems, bureaucracies can maintain functioning compartmentalized programs indefinitely, because other departments in the government are happy to have a destination to send their weird reports and wash their hands of them.


I think that’s mostly true (though it's also taught us that the program exists and we've also learned new details about the Nimitz case from the pilots and the video) but I don’t see anything sinister about it. Luis Elizondo and the people he’s working with now, simply thought that the people had a right to know, and that officials within the government (like Gen. Mattis) needed to know that our sensitive airspace is not secure, so they can do something about it (like developing the technology required to defend against intrusions by these advanced anomalous devices).

They’re absolutely driven to change the narrative. But that’s because the existing narrative (“people who believe in ufos are nutters”) is not only an ugly application of disinformation techniques against the public – it’s also bad/reckless/dangerous policy.

So I couldn’t be happier that they’ve taken great personal and professional risk to change the narrative; in fact, most of us have been trying to do the same thing for decades, and with their help, we’re finally making some real headway. I never thought I'd live to see the day when mainstream news media reported on this subject seriously, yet here we are.

Honestly I'm kind of baffled by folks who are going out of their way to turn this into some kind of diabolical conspiracy or shameless money grab. I guess some people just have no capacity for judging character. But it's plain as day to me from watching these people talk and seeing what's going on, that these guys are our allies - they agree with us that exotic aerial devices are being observed in our airspace, and they're doing their best to prove it, and they want to figure out how these devices outperform our most advanced aircraft almost as badly as I do. Good on them; I hope they succeed with all of those objectives, and transform the world in the process. It's about damn time.


I totally understand why he’s so pissed, but I think this is a wrong-headed strategy. If we subject the government to legal action over this, they’ll lock down the information that we want even more tightly, or simply destroy it. And it compromises the people who are now currently working to get that information out, by setting up an adversarial situation between us and the people on the inside who are trying to help. And they are trying to help: those videos didn't get declassified by themselves - people on the inside did that.

We’d be far better served by giving them immunity from this kind of thing. It’s better to just say “look – it really sucks that you guys have been lying to us and defaming us about this subject for seventy years, but that’s water under the bridge: give us your findings and the supporting data which isn’t reasonably classified for valid national security reasons, and we can kiss and make up.” That’s the only way we have any chance of getting the information out, and finally opening up serious scientific discussion about it. This is way too important to get all vindictive about it - I say we offer them a carrot instead of the stick (and frankly it's obvious that they have the bigger stick anyway).

I explored the use of dark energy to lift an object in another thread, and besides the energy consumption being enormous and that we don’t actually know what dark energy is or how to produce it, there would be some real world downsides to it.

If you expand space under the craft to give it buoyancy against gravity, you’d be expanding the space that matter hangs out in.

So you’d get complex pieces of matter like human beings and trees blowing apart, and the density of the very ground it flys over becoming low. First a liquid, then a gas if the object was hovering near the ground.

This doesn’t seem to happen and seems like it would be a bummer of an effect anyway.

 

[marduk]

Personally I tend to agree. At least to some extent. TM has one workaround. There are a couple more. Paragliding aside, one is to think of the fan as not being attached to the boat. So let's say we get a really powerful fan, throw it up in the air behind the sail and turn it on. It will blow on the sail and push the boat forward a bit. Now imagine being able to constantly throw fans up there that self destruct before they fall. You'd get a constant wind. You get the idea? Now you can replace the fan with a different propulsive force like an explosion, and when we do that we essentially get rockets.

Translating that over to an antigravity system, the first thing to realize is that the nature of gravitational attraction is that it conforms to the inverse square law. Basically that means that the farther the distance the greater the reduction in the effect. So if the effect can be momentarily applied to an object that is very close, that object will be drawn toward it strongly while something ( like the Earth ) will be relatively unaffected. To do this you'd have to apply the effect at molecular distances throughout the entire craft. That way the effect would be confined to the craft rather than the surrounding environment. Hypothetically it could be done by energizing nanoscale receptors that convert the energy temporarily to mass. The lighter mass would be momentarily drawn more toward the heavier mass, the field would then cycle off lowering the mass of attractors causing a mass/energy conversion to kinetic energy ( movement ).

Or ( and this is actually my pet theory ). It's not really antigravity propulsion at all, but a cross between something like The Matrix and Stargate, where reality is plotted out by some vast system ( natural or otherwise ) in a manner than can be tapped into so that coordinates can be set and instructions can be given to relocate whatever you want wherever you want without having to physically move it through space. If that's the way this all works, then distances become irrelevant and the whole problem is solved. Navigation would be done by some sort of system analogous to a GPS, but linked directly into the reality generator.

In your example, throwing the fan would provide thrust in the opposite direction - and the fan’s thrust back at you would be about the same (assuming 100% energy transfer from the fan).

So you’d stay put.

Even a fast switching application using energy alone wouldn’t change the gravitational frame problem - the whole apparatus would still be in earth’s gravity well.

You’d need some way to flatten space time - and even the cosmological constant doesn’t do that. It stretches empty space. If it’s curved, it would stretch the curve in theory, but galaxies don’t appear to be ripping themselves apart so that may not be possible.

I would love it if we could beam people anywhere, but if that were true there would be no need for ships at all, would there? You’d just go somewhere.

 

[jhh]

I reviewed the early-on information regarding all of this as it became available.

Initially, I filed it under the column of obviously a 'psyop', the objective unknown.

Today, I spent some time reviewing what the 'talking heads' had to say.

An examination by Jon Rappaport of the persons involved with the DeLonge group.
Over time, he seems to do a good job of 'investigate journalism' and is quite interesting regarding the history of the players.
A quick read.
Will the next UFO disclosure be “biological threats from outer space?”

also, Grant Cameron has a recent vid discussing the White House / Podesta / Wikileaks /DeLonge connections.
Again, for me, was worth the listen. It tracks back to 2015 involving TD / JP and other tidbits.
43 min.

LindaMH (yes, I agree) interviews George Knapp
I thing it was worth while to listen as George has had a close relationship with R Bigelo. 1 hour.
start at 10. min. to reduce stress !

I don't profess to know anything. I simply collect information.

 

[mike]

While the involvement of Bigelow's company could be seen as a boondoggle, It also works as a way to avoid the FOIA aspect.

Bigelow is perfect since he seems to be the only board member.
Bigelow Aerospace, LLC: CEO and Executives - Bloomberg

He doesn't have to answer to anyone, and as a private company is not subject to FOIA laws.

 

[mike]

I say we offer them a carrot instead of the stick (and frankly it's obvious that they have the bigger stick anyway).

There may be another stick in the mix though. Its long been part of the narrative that the ET's themselves are pressing for disclosure, and that the govts were given time to acclimatize the people of earth to the idea.

Not saying that's whats happening, but its within the realms of possibility.

For years, Close Encounters has been the subject of fervent speculation in the UFO conspiracy community, with even some of the most level-headed of researchers inclined to believe it was part of an official UFO acclimation campaign. Such speculation can be traced back to the production of the movie itself. On July 23, 1976, after a hard day’s shoot, around forty of the Close Encounters cast and crew (including stars Richard Dreyfuss and Melinda Dillon) gathered in the sticky night air of Mobile, Alabama to hear a lecture on UFOs delivered by Hynek (who had been flown in for a brief cameo in the film’s closing scenes). It was shortly after this lecture that the co-star of the movie, Bob Balaban (who plays the character of translator David Laughlin) spoke of an intriguing rumour that had been circulating during the production – “a rumour,” said the actor, “that the film is part of the necessary training that the human race must go through in order to accept an actual landing, and is being secretly sponsored by a government UFO agency.” I asked Close Encounters production designer Joe Alves if he had heard any such rumours during the shoot and if there was any substance to them. “There were a lot of rumours,” he replied ambiguously, before changing the subject.

The Disclosure Activists Have Arrived to Take On the ET Truth Embargo

Conspiracy theorists have claimed for years aliens have been visiting Earth and world leaders are aware, but it has been kept from the public under an alleged "truth embargo" amid fears of the impact it would have on religion and the rule of law.

But now The Disclosure Activists claim and number of recent UFO file declassifications, means the lid is about to come off once and for all.

In a statement, the organisation said "the historical stance of widespread denial and misinformation has shifted".

Group, co-founder Russell Calka: "Recently there is a systematic effort from within the US and other world governments to release this information to the public."

EXCLUSIVE: World is 'about to be told ALIENS EXIST and are HERE on EARTH'

 

[Randall]

In your example, throwing the fan would provide thrust in the opposite direction - and the fan’s thrust back at you would be about the same (assuming 100% energy transfer from the fan). So you’d stay put.

That's not the orientation. A diagram or something would have probably helped. I'm thinking of basically spring boarding the fan up vertically with the blades facing the sail. The opposite reaction to that is downward, but the spinning fan blades would be accelerating air from behind the fan forward into the sail. Yes the fan would also be propelled backward some, but because the fan has more mass than the air, it would still cause a relatively slight breeze that would push on the sail, and because the fan isn't attached to the boat, there would be a small residual forward force. More efficiently you could then simply substitute explosions, and so on until you get a rocket.

Even a fast switching application using energy alone wouldn’t change the gravitational frame problem - the whole apparatus would still be in earth’s gravity well.

Yes and each section of the craft affected by its own field would be in it's own gravity well too. For that matter everything with mass is in it's own gravity well. The point is that you can have wells within wells where each mass moves according to its own properties, and all you need to do is move the craft. Then it can maneuver itself in or out of the relatively static well of the Earth.

You’d need some way to flatten space time

Not really. You only need to move the craft. Then you are able to move it in and out of the other gravity wells surrounding it. Converting mass energy to kinetic energy could do that. We already do it with rockets. Instead of using a chemical conversion resulting in an explosion, we'd be using a direct energy to mass conversion. Don't ask me how. I think nuclear subs use a direct mass to electricity conversion. I don't know how they do that either.

 

[marduk]

actually I count 3 who have independently corroborated elements of the story: luis elizondo, harry reid, and david fravor. or, i mean they all could be pawns, just as I could be an unwitting pawn used by "them" to counter anyone who's onto their plot. or maybe i'm not unwitting! I mean it never ends.

I had thought all three actually tie back to the same part of the military - maybe I was wrong?

 

[Thomas R Morrison]

I explored the use of dark energy to lift an object in another thread, and besides the energy consumption being enormous and that we don’t actually know what dark energy is or how to produce it, there would be some real world downsides to it.

If you expand space under the craft to give it buoyancy against gravity, you’d be expanding the space that matter hangs out in.

So you’d get complex pieces of matter like human beings and trees blowing apart, and the density of the very ground it flys over becoming low. First a liquid, then a gas if the object was hovering near the ground.

This doesn’t seem to happen and seems like it would be a bummer of an effect anyway.

I don’t think you understand – gravitational field propulsion isn’t just some idle speculation with the kind of glaring flaws you’re suggesting here; this has all been worked out theoretically, and there’s no debate that it would perform as calculated within the context of general relativity. So I can address your objections specifically.

First, it’s a purely geometrical effect, so once the system is gravitationally charged, there is no energy consumption (other than minor efficiency losses within the control system). Significant energy consumption only applies to reaction propulsion, like rockets and jets. And it’s not a matter of lifting something by placing a source of positive gravity above a device, or by placing a source of negative gravity below it. Gravitational field propulsion requires both polarities of gravitational field interacting with one another.

And we’re not talking about neutron-star magnitudes of gravitational field gradient (positive or negative), as your example suggests. It would only require gradients as steep as, for example, the magnetic field gradient of a pair of interacting neodymium magnets. Those are very strong, but they’re not nearly strong enough to tear themselves apart at the molecular level, as you described. With a relatively weak acceleration field of only one Earth gravity (aka 1g), such a device would reach the speed of light within a year. At dozens of g’s, like we find with rare earth magnets (as a strictly analogous example), obviously that time would be reduced dramatically.

And as long as you maintained a fairly linear gradient within the craft through proper engineering (or by confining the craft sufficiently far from the tidal forces as we see with the Alcubierre drive), then the craft and the passengers within it wouldn’t feel a thing – they’d simply uniformly “free fall” in the direction of acceleration. That’s why this model explains UAP maneuvers so well – what looks like dramatic accelerations of 100s of g's from the outside, involves no significant internal acceleration forces at all on the inside. Looking out the window of such a craft zigzagging through the sky, the world below would simply seem to zigzag around like a movie on the wall.

Such a device passing over matter, or landing, wouldn’t generate a field strong enough to affect the matter in any noticeable way – primarily because the field strength would only be high enough to support the weight of the craft against the Earth’s field of 1g, but also because as Usual Suspect mentioned the field strength would fall off by 1/r^2, where r = the radius of the gravitating element on board the craft. So operating near the Earth the effective range of the field is actually very small and fairly weak – unless it’s accelerating at 100s of g’s between the stars where there’s very little matter and it’s in a plasma state anyway.

 

[marduk]

That's not the orientation. A diagram or something would have probably helped. I'm thinking of basically spring boarding the fan up vertically with the blades facing the sail. The opposite reaction to that is downward, but the spinning fan blades would be accelerating air from behind the fan forward into the sail. Yes the fan would also be propelled backward some, but because the fan has more mass than the air, it would still cause a relatively slight breeze that would push on the sail, and because the fan isn't attached to the boat, there would be a small residual forward force. More efficiently you could then simply substitute explosions, and so on until you get a rocket.

That’s just good old reaction propulsion though, isn’t it? You’re expending fans themselves as fuel?

Yes and each section of the craft affected by its own field would be in it's own gravity well too. For that matter everything with mass is in it's own gravity well. The point is that you can have wells within wells where each mass moves according to its own properties, and all you need to do is move the craft. Then it can maneuver itself in or out of the relatively static well of the Earth.

The wells within wells are all still moving relative to each other though. For example, we’re most directly affected by earth’s gravity well, but we are still subject to the sun’s gravity well, too - if we launch off the earth, we’re still stuck in the sun’s gravity well.

Not really. You only need to move the craft. Then you are able to move it in and out of the other gravity wells surrounding it. Converting mass energy to kinetic energy could do that. We already do it with rockets. Instead of using a chemical conversion resulting in an explosion, we'd be using a direct energy to mass conversion. Don't ask me how. I think nuclear subs use a direct mass to electricity conversion. I don't know how they do that either.

I think what Tom is trying to get at is that if you can flatten space/time, then you’d just hover there by default without using reaction thrust to do it. Which would explain what we see.

It’s just that nothing I know of actually flattens space/time except the absence of mass.

 

[marduk]

I don’t think you understand – gravitational field propulsion isn’t just some idle speculation with the kind of glaring flaws you’re suggesting here; this has all been worked out theoretically, and there’s no debate that it would perform as calculated within the context of general relativity. So I can address your objections specifically.

First, it’sa purely geometrical effect, so once the system is gravitationally charged, there is no energy consumption (other than minor efficiency losses within the control system). Significant energy consumption only applies to reaction propulsion, like rockets and jets. And it’s not a matter of lifting something by placing a source of positive gravity above a device, or by placing a source of negative gravity below it. Gravitational field propulsion requires both polarities of gravitational field interacting with one another.

And we’re not talking about neutron-star magnitudes of gravitational field gradient (positive or negative), as your example suggests. It would only require gradients as steep as, for example, the magnetic field gradient of a pair of interacting neodymium magnets. Those are very strong, but they’re not nearly strong enough to tear themselves apart at the molecular level, as you described. With a relatively weak acceleration field of only one Earth gravity (aka 1g), such a device would reach the speed of light within a year. At dozens of g’s, like we find with rare earth magnets (as a strictly analogous example), obviously that time would be reduced dramatically.

And as long as you maintained a fairly linear gradient within the craft through proper engineering (or by confining the craft sufficiently far from the tidal forces as we see with the Alcubierre drive), then the craft and the passengers within it wouldn’t feel a thing – they’d simply uniformly “free fall” in the direction of acceleration. That’s why this model explains UAP maneuvers so well – what looks like dramatic accelerations of 100g’s from the outside, involves no significant internal acceleration forces at all on the inside. Looking out the window of such a craft zigzagging through the sky, the world below would simply seem to zigzag around like a movie on the wall.

Such a device passing over matter, or landing, wouldn’t generate a field strong enough to affect the matter in any noticeable way – primarily because the field strength would only be high enough to support the weight of the craft against the Earth’s field of 1g, but also because as Usual Suspect mentioned the field strength would fall off by 1/r^2, where r = the radius of the gravitating element on board the craft. So the effective range of the field is actually very small, and fairly weak – unless perhaps it’s accelerating at 100s of g’s between the stars where there’s very little matter and it’s in a plasma state anyway.

How would you do it without negative matter or energy?

How would you keep the effect going? What would happen at the boundary of the albecurrie drive? All hell should break loose there as geometry gets all inverted.

My point is that anything that warps space/time should essentially kill anything that approaches the craft (think spaghettification like near a black hole) or break the molecular bonds that make us hip ‘n happening speculators.

None of that is what we see. If it’s a localized effect, it would need to be localized within the skin of the craft... and then it wouldn’t actually go anywhere.

 

[Thomas R Morrison]

How would you do it without negative matter or energy?

How would you keep the effect going? What would happen at the boundary of the albecurrie drive? All hell should break loose there as geometry gets all inverted.

My point is that anything that warps space/time should essentially kill anything that approaches the craft (think spaghettification like near a black hole) or break the molecular bonds that make us hip ‘n happening speculators.

None of that is what we see. If it’s a localized effect, it would need to be localized within the skin of the craft... and then it wouldn’t actually go anywhere.

Actually the initial Alcubierre warp field was designed with the field confined to a very thin shell, a bubble around the craft, and it works out just fine. So the field may in fact be contained in the hull of the craft. It's a little weird/counterintuitive, but the metric has been checked out and it's valid - it's sort of like a self-contained spacetime conveyor belt.

And you're still thinking of extremely intense and steep field gradients. It wouldn't take neutron-star-like gradients to perform the maneuvers we've observed - not by a long shot.

And if you check out the papers that I provided above you can see how a fluid under tension can yield a negative effective mass. But there are some even more interesting options using the electromagnetic stress-energy tensor. It's of course no picnic to achieve the requisite levels of tension (either fluid and/or electromagnetic) but that's an engineering problem now rather than a theoretical one, so it's simply a matter of time before we get there.

 

[marduk]

A couple of thought experiments come to mind.

They are controversial but testable. Controversial because the tests would likely really piss off whatever it is.

If it’s using magnetic fields as propulsion, an emp should render it (at least temporarily) inoperable. One could imagine configuring a sensor grid that auto triggers a directed emp if it detects an anomaly. Of course this would be very dangerous if it misidentified a human aircraft, or caused some damage to a very advanced alien craft. But it would answer many questions. If the magnetic field holds back a plasma envelope, this should allow it to dissipate. Alternatively, firing a magnet attached to a grounded power cable should short it out.

If it’s using gravity or space/time warping as propulsion, then one could employ gravitic sensors instead. In this case, throwing a chunk of super dense or degenerate matter at it should cause some fireworks. Hell, even depleted uranium fired from a gauss cannon would probably do. As it got caught up in the updraft from it’s gravity drive, it should essentially become hyper accelerated straight towards the center of the effect - the craft itself.

Perhaps a combination of the two.

Let me be clear: I’m offering a thought experiment here and NOT suggesting someone actually do this.

 

[marduk]

Actually the initial Alcubierre warp field was designed with the field confined to a very thin shell, a bubble around the craft, and it works out just fine. So the field may in fact be contained in the hull of the craft. Its a little weird/counterintuitive, but the metric has been checked out and it's valid - it's sort of like a self-contained spacetime conveyor belt.

And you're still thinking of extremely intense and steep field gradients. It wouldn't take neutron-star-like gradients to perform the maneuvers we've observed - not by a long shot.

And if you check out the papers that I provided above you can see how a fluid under tension can yield a negative effective mass. But there are some even more interesting options using the electromagnetic stress-energy tensor. It's of course no picnic to achieve the requisite levels of tension (either fluid and/or electromagnetic) but that's an engineering problem now rather than a theoretical one, so it's simply amount of time before we get there.

Can you point me at something that would show the field actually being contained within the craft being accelerated?

 

[Randall]

That’s just good old reaction propulsion though, isn’t it? You’re expending fans themselves as fuel?

Yes. The force applied to the spinning blades creates kinetic energy that's transferred to the air and then to the sails. I'm just trying to apply your fan analogy to the workaround for antigravity in a way that takes it step by step through familiar physics.

The wells within wells are all still moving relative to each other though. For example, we’re most directly affected by earth’s gravity well, but we are still subject to the sun’s gravity well, too - if we launch off the earth, we’re still stuck in the sun’s gravity well.

Yes. But as you notice, then we're also maneuvering through the fields, which is the whole point.

I think what Tom is trying to get at is that if you can flatten space/time, then you’d just hover there by default without using reaction thrust to do it. Which would explain what we see.

Yes. I was talking about other ideas, and personally, I don't see the whole spacetime analogy as equivalent to actual space and time. TM and I had some rather intense back and forth on that, and the main points I made there have not been resolved. In particular the fact that yes we do see light bend around massive objects, however all that means is that we can plot the actual position of the object emitting the light by calculating the amount of lensing, and then drawing a straight line to where it actually is rather than where it appears to be. Logically then, being able to do that means space itself isn't actually curved. It just means certain things in space behave as if space is curved. TM says that point is moot. I say knowing the actual location as opposed to the apparent location isn't moot.

It’s just that nothing I know of actually flattens space/time except the absence of mass.

Like I said. I don't think it works that way in real life anyway. It's purely conceptual. It allows us to make accurate calculations of how certain things are going to behave. But I think warp drives are an extension that goes beyond real world function. We still don't really know how gravity is imparted onto mass. It's a "fundamental property of nature". Once we figure it out like we have the EM force and can physically create all sorts of relationships between matter and energy that allow us to do stuff like we do with electric motors, then we'll be getting someplace. Imagine how magical an electric motor would seem a millennia ago.