bertietaylor <bertietaylor@myyahoo.com> wrote:

> lar3ryca wrote:
>
> > On 2024-04-07 16:00, bertietaylor wrote:
>
> >> Now the last bit indicates why physicists avoid Arindam. Hmm. He is not
> >> the first original thinker to be persecuted for demonstrating originality.
> >> I don't see why he should be killfiled by everyone here. It takes all
> >> sorts, what.
>
> > Yes it takes all sorts, and some sorts just aren't worth the effort to
> > bother with. I have people in my killfile for a wide variety of reasons,
> > and I suspect that anyone that has a killfile does as well. The more
> > killfiles a regular poster is in is probably a good indicator of just
> > how annoying they are.
>
> Hmm, quite a mismatch! Arindam was killfiled by everybody, so must have
> been really annoying.

He violated the 11th command of Usenet,
(beware)

Jan

--
"Thou shalt not be boring"

Peter Moylan <peter@pmoylan.org.invalid> wrote:

> On 12/04/24 09:04, Paul Wolff wrote:
>
> > I wasn't looking for this, but for something else, when I came across
> > what Nature (the journal) apparently called a U.S. patent for a
> > perpetual motion machine. Physicists may like to take a look:
> >
> > https://patents.google.com/patent/US6960975
>
> I only skimmed it, but I was struck by this bit near the end.
>
> "whereby providing for the gravitational imbalance such that the highest
> pressure of inflationary vacuum state is pushing said space vehicle
> forward in modified spacetime at a speed possibly approaching a local
> light-speed, the local light-speed which may be substantially higher
> than the light-speed in the ambient space."
>
> He's not only getting free energy. He seems to have come up with an FTL
> drive at the same time.

Harvesting zero-point energy for free energy
and/or reactionless 'rocket' drive
is quite popular these days.

The problem with it is that the quantum vacuum energy
has no preferred frame. (it is the same in every frame)

So there is nothing to push against,

Jan

J. J. Lodder wrote:

> bertietaylor <bertietaylor@myyahoo.com> wrote:

>> lar3ryca wrote:
>>
>> > On 2024-04-07 16:00, bertietaylor wrote:
>>
>> >> Now the last bit indicates why physicists avoid Arindam. Hmm. He is not
>> >> the first original thinker to be persecuted for demonstrating originality.
>> >> I don't see why he should be killfiled by everyone here. It takes all
>> >> sorts, what.
>>
>> > Yes it takes all sorts, and some sorts just aren't worth the effort to
>> > bother with. I have people in my killfile for a wide variety of reasons,
>> > and I suspect that anyone that has a killfile does as well. The more
>> > killfiles a regular poster is in is probably a good indicator of just
>> > how annoying they are.
>>
>> Hmm, quite a mismatch! Arindam was killfiled by everybody, so must have
>> been really annoying.

> He violated the 11th command of Usenet,
> (beware)

> Jan

So one gets killfiled here for being a stubborn boring racist who is also delusional with their crackpot physics notions expressed in a strange English.

Rich!

bt

On 12/04/2024 03:49, bertitaylor wrote:
> Well, I suppose Arindam must make a cheap permanent motion machine to
> show that he was right.
> How the physicists will react to that, should be interesting to watch!
>
> My bet is that he will succeed, for he has already done apparently
> impossible things like violating the principle of inertia.

Hold your breath, Bertie. (I'm rooting for you on this one.)

On 12-Apr-24 9:51, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
> On 2024-04-11 23:36:53 +0000, Peter Moylan said:
>
>> On 12/04/24 08:25, lar3ryca wrote:
>>> On 2024-04-07 16:00, bertietaylor wrote:
>>>
>>>> Now the last bit indicates why physicists avoid Arindam. Hmm. He is
>>>> not the first original thinker to be persecuted for demonstrating
>>>> originality. I don't see why he should be killfiled by everyone
>>>> here. It takes all sorts, what.
>>>
>>> Yes it takes all sorts, and some sorts just aren't worth the effort
>>> to bother with. I have people in my killfile for a wide variety of
>>> reasons, and I suspect that anyone that has a killfile does as well.
>>> The more killfiles a regular poster is in is probably a good
>>> indicator of just how annoying they are.
>>
>> Every now and then I empty my killfile completely, on the grounds that
>> some short-term pests are probably gone by now. Now seems like a good
>> time to do it again, now that Google Groups has disappeared into
>> oblivion.
>
> I did that a couple of months ago. I've surprised at how few former
> inmates have had to be readmitted. I don't think even Peeler is in it at
> preset.

I shall try some judicious pruning.
Presumably, the earliest entries in my killfile are the least likely to
be still operating.

--
Sam Plusnet

occam <occam@nowhere.nix> wrote:

> On 12/04/2024 03:49, bertitaylor wrote:
> > Well, I suppose Arindam must make a cheap permanent motion machine to
> > show that he was right.
> > How the physicists will react to that, should be interesting to watch!
> >
> > My bet is that he will succeed, for he has already done apparently
> > impossible things like violating the principle of inertia.
>
> Hold your breath, Bertie. (I'm rooting for you on this one.)

[boring factual mode on]
It is the same thing, nowadays.
Energy and momentum conservation have grown together
into the conservation of the energy-momentum 4-vector.
You cannot have one without the other.

Routinely applied, and of course verified,
at every shot of every particle accelerator in the world.
Much sought after: (apparent) failure of energy-momentum conservation
heralds new physics, a new particle perhaps, and a ticket to Stocholm,

Jan

occam wrote:

> On 12/04/2024 03:49, bertitaylor wrote:
>> Well, I suppose Arindam must make a cheap permanent motion machine to
>> show that he was right.
>> How the physicists will react to that, should be interesting to watch!
>>
>> My bet is that he will succeed, for he has already done apparently
>> impossible things like violating the principle of inertia.

> Hold your breath, Bertie. (I'm rooting for you on this one.)

Let's get sporting!
What are the odds of his making one within say six months, or one year, or ten?
Any bookie around?

bt

bertietaylor <bertietaylor@myyahoo.com> wrote:

> occam wrote:
>
> > On 12/04/2024 03:49, bertitaylor wrote:
> >> Well, I suppose Arindam must make a cheap permanent motion machine to
> >> show that he was right.
> >> How the physicists will react to that, should be interesting to watch!
> >>
> >> My bet is that he will succeed, for he has already done apparently
> >> impossible things like violating the principle of inertia.
>
> > Hold your breath, Bertie. (I'm rooting for you on this one.)
>
> Let's get sporting! What are the odds of his making one within say six
> months, or one year, or ten? Any bookie around?

Pascal applies,

Jan

J. J. Lodder wrote:

> bertietaylor <bertietaylor@myyahoo.com> wrote:

>> occam wrote:
>>
>> > On 12/04/2024 03:49, bertitaylor wrote:
>> >> Well, I suppose Arindam must make a cheap permanent motion machine to
>> >> show that he was right.
>> >> How the physicists will react to that, should be interesting to watch!
>> >>
>> >> My bet is that he will succeed, for he has already done apparently
>> >> impossible things like violating the principle of inertia.
>>
>> > Hold your breath, Bertie. (I'm rooting for you on this one.)
>>
>> Let's get sporting! What are the odds of his making one within say six
>> months, or one year, or ten? Any bookie around?

> Pascal applies,

Don't see how. God, Heaven and Hell are not involved. Only numbers are involved for profit or loss.
So what should be the odds for officially announced impossibility? Billion or million or thousand to one?

bt

> Jan

On 13/04/24 09:59, bertietaylor wrote:
> J. J. Lodder wrote:
>
>> bertietaylor <bertietaylor@myyahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>> occam wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 12/04/2024 03:49, bertitaylor wrote:
>>>>> Well, I suppose Arindam must make a cheap permanent motion
>>>>> machine to show that he was right. How the physicists will
>>>>> react to that, should be interesting to
>>> watch!
>>>>>>> My bet is that he will succeed, for he has already done
>>>>>>> apparently
>>>>> impossible things like violating the principle of inertia.
>>>
>>>> Hold your breath, Bertie. (I'm rooting for you on this one.)
>>>
>>> Let's get sporting! What are the odds of his making one within
>>> say six months, or one year, or ten? Any bookie around?
>
>> Pascal applies,
>
> Don't see how. God, Heaven and Hell are not involved. Only numbers
> are involved for profit or loss. So what should be the odds for
> officially announced impossibility? Billion or million or thousand to
> one?

I suspect that you missed Jan's reference to Pascal, so let me rephrase
Pascal's reasoning for you.

If free energy would be infinitely valuable, but there is an
infinitesimal change that anyone will come up with it, which way should
you be betting?

Or, to put it another way, what is the result of mutiplying infinity by
zero?

--
Peter Moylan http://www.pmoylan.org
Newcastle, NSW

Peter Moylan wrote:

> On 13/04/24 09:59, bertietaylor wrote:
>> J. J. Lodder wrote:
>>
>>> bertietaylor <bertietaylor@myyahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>>> occam wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On 12/04/2024 03:49, bertitaylor wrote:
>>>>>> Well, I suppose Arindam must make a cheap permanent motion
>>>>>> machine to show that he was right. How the physicists will
>>>>>> react to that, should be interesting to
>>>> watch!
>>>>>>>> My bet is that he will succeed, for he has already done
>>>>>>>> apparently
>>>>>> impossible things like violating the principle of inertia.
>>>>
>>>>> Hold your breath, Bertie. (I'm rooting for you on this one.)
>>>>
>>>> Let's get sporting! What are the odds of his making one within
>>>> say six months, or one year, or ten? Any bookie around?
>>
>>> Pascal applies,
>>
>> Don't see how. God, Heaven and Hell are not involved. Only numbers
>> are involved for profit or loss. So what should be the odds for
>> officially announced impossibility? Billion or million or thousand to
>> one?

> I suspect that you missed Jan's reference to Pascal, so let me rephrase
> Pascal's reasoning for you.

I was thinking he was referring to Pascal's wager, which is well-known.

> If free energy would be infinitely valuable, but there is an
> infinitesimal change that anyone will come up with it, which way should
> you be betting?

Free energy cannot be infinitely valuable, for energy is just like any other commodity. No commodity is infinitely valuable.
Free energy may be cheaper and certainly more environmentally friendly than other sources.
Like, free energy from the sun, the wind, the tides, geo-thermals, etc. may be, or may not be cheap as compared to the certainly polluting coal or oil fossil fuels.
They all do cost money to generate, to transmit or store; there is nothing free really. Only what makes more sense given the situation.

> Or, to put it another way, what is the result of multiplying infinity by
> zero?

Anything of everything, of course. Infinity times zero, or zero divided by zero, gives us anything of everything. In other words, what is indeterminate. Still, there is such a thing as sport, and in gambling there we take our chances depending upon the stated (but variable) odds.

Shortage of bookies, what. Invisible horse, this Arindam!

bt

On 2024-04-11 06:29, bertitaylor wrote:
> - snip -
>
>>> Has it been confirmed that Bertie and Arindam aren't close mates (or
>>> even the same person)?
>
>> No, they are not the same. I detect no flowery Hindi in Bertie's
>> English. Plenty of Hindi-Bindi in Arindam's English. He is a true
>> Chaiwallah.
>
> Huh?
>> Bertie is a recent AB groupie. And he has not yet made the sort of
>> remarks Aridnam was well know for.
>
>> "These thoughts arise because the Einstein-Gandhi bigJew-guj-Jew two for
>> the price of one buy one get one free bunny-ah combo pack suppresses my
>> Vedic-Arya self with success." (Arindam Banerjee post.)
>
> Whew. That flowery stuff may smell sweet to some, but not so much to
> others! What's a bunny-ah?
>
> On another note, is it fair to quote a kill-filed entity?

Of course it is. That entity can read it or not. It is of no interest to
the kill-filer.

--
Did it bother ayone else that the guy in the "Operation" game
was clearly awake?

lar3ryca wrote:

> On 2024-04-11 06:29, bertitaylor wrote:
>> - snip -
>>
>>>> Has it been confirmed that Bertie and Arindam aren't close mates (or
>>>> even the same person)?
>>
>>> No, they are not the same. I detect no flowery Hindi in Bertie's
>>> English. Plenty of Hindi-Bindi in Arindam's English. He is a true
>>> Chaiwallah.
>>
>> Huh?
>>> Bertie is a recent AB groupie. And he has not yet made the sort of
>>> remarks Aridnam was well know for.
>>
>>> "These thoughts arise because the Einstein-Gandhi bigJew-guj-Jew two for
>>> the price of one buy one get one free bunny-ah combo pack suppresses my
>>> Vedic-Arya self with success." (Arindam Banerjee post.)
>>
>> Whew. That flowery stuff may smell sweet to some, but not so much to
>> others! What's a bunny-ah?
>>
>> On another note, is it fair to quote a kill-filed entity?

> Of course it is. That entity can read it or not. It is of no interest to
> the kill-filer.

A kill-filed entity cannot expect fairness from those who have kill-filed them.
They should care as little for the kill-filers as the kill-filers care for them.

The fairness issue I raised was out of generality.

A kill-filed entity must be ignored, not quoted, by the kill-filing community.

Gratuitously quoting what the kill-filed may have written amounts to theft of intellectual property on one hand; and show of heed for their opinion on the other. It also opens the field for the victim's vilification by putting misleading words in their mouth.

I find it disgusting for the kill-filers to discuss, let alone quote, anyone comprehensively kill-filed by them.

bt

On 12/04/2024 23:09, bertietaylor wrote:
> occam wrote:
>
>> On 12/04/2024 03:49, bertitaylor wrote:
>>> Well, I suppose Arindam must make a cheap permanent motion machine to
>>> show that he was right.
>>> How the physicists will react to that, should be interesting to watch!
>>>
>>> My bet is that he will succeed, for he has already done apparently
>>> impossible things like violating the principle of inertia.
>
>> Hold your breath, Bertie. (I'm rooting for you on this one.)
>
> Let's get sporting!

What's more sporting than you holding your breath? For one, six or
twelve months - I'll take them all.

occam wrote:

> On 12/04/2024 23:09, bertietaylor wrote:
>> occam wrote:
>>
>>> On 12/04/2024 03:49, bertitaylor wrote:
>>>> Well, I suppose Arindam must make a cheap permanent motion machine to
>>>> show that he was right.
>>>> How the physicists will react to that, should be interesting to watch!
>>>>
>>>> My bet is that he will succeed, for he has already done apparently
>>>> impossible things like violating the principle of inertia.
>>
>>> Hold your breath, Bertie. (I'm rooting for you on this one.)
>>
>> Let's get sporting!

> What's more sporting than you holding your breath? For one, six or
> twelve months - I'll take them all.

Good idea - now go demonstrate how to hold your breath for one, six or twelve months.

bt

bertietaylor <bertietaylor@myyahoo.com> wrote:

> J. J. Lodder wrote:
>
> > bertietaylor <bertietaylor@myyahoo.com> wrote:
>
> >> J. J. Lodder wrote:
> >>
> >> > bertietaylor <bertietaylor@novabbs.com.invalid> wrote:
> >>
> >> >> J. J. Lodder wrote:
> >> > [massive snip of irrelevancies]
> >> >> > Indeed. Maxwell constructed his equations in such a way
> >> >> > that waves propagating at the speed of light do come out.
> >> >> > (because of experimental hints that this needed to be the case)
> >> >>
> >> >> Other way around.
> >>
> >> > You really need to read up on the history of the subject.
> >>
> >> Let me give a very brief summary.
> >>
> >> Roemer, Huyghens, Fizeau... were involved in finding the speed of the
> >> light in various ways.
>
> > Correct.
>
> >> By that time, they had worked out the values of
> >> electrical permittivity and magnetic permeability. They had also worked
> >> out what are now known as Maxwell's laws. In those laws, the two constants
> >> mentioned were present.
>
> > Wrong.
>
> No, it is what is taught in text books.

You are confusing the textbooks of now
with the state of the art as Maxwell knew it.

> >> Maxwell combined the four laws, ...
>
> > Wrong. If it was merely combining, others would have done it sooner.
>
> Any invention could have been done sooner, if others had thought of it
> before the inventor. Which is why dates are important, along with the
> publicity for the invention.
>
> He was the first, and so, it is known as Maxwell's laws and Maxwell is
> given the honour of having found out that the speed of light was what is
> found from the known constants of electrical permittivity and magnetic
> permeability.

See? Your understanding of it is completely unhistorical,

Jan

--
[massive snippage]
If you would want to educate yourself you could have a look at
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Maxwell%27s_equations>

J. J. Lodder wrote:

> bertietaylor <bertietaylor@myyahoo.com> wrote:

>> J. J. Lodder wrote:
>>
>> > bertietaylor <bertietaylor@myyahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>> >> J. J. Lodder wrote:
>> >>
>> >> > bertietaylor <bertietaylor@novabbs.com.invalid> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> >> J. J. Lodder wrote:
>> >> > [massive snip of irrelevancies]
>> >> >> > Indeed. Maxwell constructed his equations in such a way
>> >> >> > that waves propagating at the speed of light do come out.
>> >> >> > (because of experimental hints that this needed to be the case)
>> >> >>
>> >> >> Other way around.
>> >>
>> >> > You really need to read up on the history of the subject.
>> >>
>> >> Let me give a very brief summary.
>> >>
>> >> Roemer, Huyghens, Fizeau... were involved in finding the speed of the
>> >> light in various ways.
>>
>> > Correct.
>>
>> >> By that time, they had worked out the values of
>> >> electrical permittivity and magnetic permeability. They had also worked
>> >> out what are now known as Maxwell's laws. In those laws, the two constants
>> >> mentioned were present.
>>
>> > Wrong.
>>
>> No, it is what is taught in text books.

> You are confusing the textbooks of now
> with the state of the art as Maxwell knew it.

My textbooks are still in use.

>> >> Maxwell combined the four laws, ...
>>
>> > Wrong. If it was merely combining, others would have done it sooner.
>>
>> Any invention could have been done sooner, if others had thought of it
>> before the inventor. Which is why dates are important, along with the
>> publicity for the invention.
>>
>> He was the first, and so, it is known as Maxwell's laws and Maxwell is
>> given the honour of having found out that the speed of light was what is
>> found from the known constants of electrical permittivity and magnetic
>> permeability.

> See? Your understanding of it is completely unhistorical,

My understanding is not limited by your ignorance.

bt

> Jan

On 13/04/24 20:55, J. J. Lodder wrote:
> bertietaylor <bertietaylor@myyahoo.com> wrote:
>> J. J. Lodder wrote:
>>> bertietaylor <bertietaylor@myyahoo.com> wrote:

>>>> Maxwell combined the four laws, ...
>>
>>> Wrong. If it was merely combining, others would have done it
>>> sooner.
>>
>> Any invention could have been done sooner, if others had thought of
>> it before the inventor. Which is why dates are important, along
>> with the publicity for the invention.
>>
>> He was the first, and so, it is known as Maxwell's laws and Maxwell
>> is given the honour of having found out that the speed of light was
>> what is found from the known constants of electrical permittivity
>> and magnetic permeability.
>
> See? Your understanding of it is completely unhistorical,

What we now call Maxwell's equations is the culmination of discoveries
by many people, most notably Coulomb, Ampere, and Faraday. It is
generally believed that Maxwell's contribution was to take all these
results and combine them in one integrated set of equations. Well, yes,
he did manage to combine the results to some extent, but his equations
didn't look like the ones we now know. The modern formulation should
probably be called Heaviside's equations, but somehow Maxwell got the
credit.

And were the equations valid? After all, they were derived from thought
experiments. I think Hertz was the one to check them properly.

The whole convoluted story (I have simplified it a lot) is not unusual
in the history of science. A new discovery is rarely due to one person
getting a flash of insight. All research is a matter of people building
on other people's results, and there usually isn't a point at which we
can say "this one person finally got it right". If we were honest about
the contributors to what we now call Maxwell's equations, the list would
look like the list of authors on a paper in particle physics.

--
Peter Moylan http://www.pmoylan.org
Newcastle, NSW

On 11/04/24 22:29, bertitaylor wrote:

>> "These thoughts arise because the Einstein-Gandhi bigJew-guj-Jew
>> two for the price of one buy one get one free bunny-ah combo pack
>> suppresses my Vedic-Arya self with success." (Arindam Banerjee
>> post.)
>
> Whew. That flowery stuff may smell sweet to some, but not so much to
> others! What's a bunny-ah?

That question has never been answered. Googling did not help. A speaker
of Indian English could probably tell us what a bunny-ah is, but we seem
to have lost our Indian regulars.

But a lot of Arindam's utterances are unclear. For just one example, I
can understand the Einstein-Jew connection, but I have no idea how
Gandhi fits into the picture.

--
Peter Moylan http://www.pmoylan.org
Newcastle, NSW

Peter Moylan wrote:

> On 13/04/24 20:55, J. J. Lodder wrote:
>> bertietaylor <bertietaylor@myyahoo.com> wrote:
>>> J. J. Lodder wrote:
>>>> bertietaylor <bertietaylor@myyahoo.com> wrote:

>>>>> Maxwell combined the four laws, ...
>>>
>>>> Wrong. If it was merely combining, others would have done it
>>>> sooner.
>>>
>>> Any invention could have been done sooner, if others had thought of
>>> it before the inventor. Which is why dates are important, along
>>> with the publicity for the invention.
>>>
>>> He was the first, and so, it is known as Maxwell's laws and Maxwell
>>> is given the honour of having found out that the speed of light was
>>> what is found from the known constants of electrical permittivity
>>> and magnetic permeability.
>>
>> See? Your understanding of it is completely unhistorical,

> What we now call Maxwell's equations is the culmination of discoveries
> by many people, most notably Coulomb, Ampere, and Faraday. It is
> generally believed that Maxwell's contribution was to take all these
> results and combine them in one integrated set of equations. Well, yes,
> he did manage to combine the results to some extent, but his equations
> didn't look like the ones we now know. The modern formulation should
> probably be called Heaviside's equations, but somehow Maxwell got the
> credit.

Heaviside expressed the relations between the electric and magnetic fields, in the current vector form, which is convenient. Vector representation was initiated by Heaviside, to the relief of all design engineers.

Maxwell's contribution in the original would not have had such vector representations, so they must have been clumsy in comparison to the elegance of the Heaviside vector representations of the four equations.

> And were the equations valid? After all, they were derived from thought
> experiments. I think Hertz was the one to check them properly.

How Maxwell used the extant practical knowledge to come to the travelling wave equation, I do not know. It must have taken many pages of complex maths going by that early understanding, without vector notation. At that time, Newton-Amperian action-at-a-distance electrodynamics was in vogue, with the Ampere relations that involved two current values f(i1,i2) for the attractive or repulsive forces (depending upon current orientation).

The vector formations of the four primary Maxwell's equations involve only a few pages of advanced mathematics, to lead us (by use of curl and divergence operators for differentiations) to the travelling wave equation, involving both the known values (by experiment) of electrical permittivity and the correspondingly assigned value of magnetic permeability; that in turn leading to the velocity of the electromagnetic wave, which matched that of light in free space as known from Fizeau's experiment.

No thought experiments here! Thought experiments entered physics from the days of Einstein. Maxwell's formulation was from pure mathematics, representing till then the height of theoretical physics, leading to the inescapable conclusion that light is an electromagnetic travelling wave. The wave nature of light was further explored in terms of interference patterns, diffraction, refraction, polarisation...

bt

> The whole convoluted story (I have simplified it a lot) is not unusual
> in the history of science. A new discovery is rarely due to one person
> getting a flash of insight.

It always happens that way, only some fool of a paper-pushing academic could think otherwise.
The solitary genius leads in the most important discoveries, and the rest have to follow. In due course, whether gnashing their teeth, or not.
Arindam of course, comes to mind, with his ground-breaking work on inertia violation.
(Thanks for mentioning him and thus introducing me to his works.
I am so thrilled to read his writings!)

If we were honest about
> the contributors to what we now call Maxwell's equations, the list would
> look like the list of authors on a paper in particle physics.

Ugh!

bt

On 2024-04-11, Peter Moylan wrote:

> On 12/04/24 09:04, Paul Wolff wrote:
>
>> I wasn't looking for this, but for something else, when I came across
>> what Nature (the journal) apparently called a U.S. patent for a
>> perpetual motion machine. Physicists may like to take a look:
>>
>> https://patents.google.com/patent/US6960975
>
> I only skimmed it, but I was struck by this bit near the end.
>
> "whereby providing for the gravitational imbalance such that the highest
> pressure of inflationary vacuum state is pushing said space vehicle
> forward in modified spacetime at a speed possibly approaching a local
> light-speed, the local light-speed which may be substantially higher
> than the light-speed in the ambient space."
>
> He's not only getting free energy. He seems to have come up with an FTL
> drive at the same time.

Two for the price of one!

--
"Gonzo, is that the contract from the devil?"
"No, Kermit, it's worse than that. This is the bill from special
effects."

Adam Funk <a24061@ducksburg.com> wrote:

> On 2024-04-11, Peter Moylan wrote:
>
> > On 12/04/24 09:04, Paul Wolff wrote:
> >
> >> I wasn't looking for this, but for something else, when I came across
> >> what Nature (the journal) apparently called a U.S. patent for a
> >> perpetual motion machine. Physicists may like to take a look:
> >>
> >> https://patents.google.com/patent/US6960975
> >
> > I only skimmed it, but I was struck by this bit near the end.
> >
> > "whereby providing for the gravitational imbalance such that the highest
> > pressure of inflationary vacuum state is pushing said space vehicle
> > forward in modified spacetime at a speed possibly approaching a local
> > light-speed, the local light-speed which may be substantially higher
> > than the light-speed in the ambient space."
> >
> > He's not only getting free energy. He seems to have come up with an FTL
> > drive at the same time.
>
> Two for the price of one!

That's possible only for relativity denialists,

Jan

bertietaylor <bertietaylor@myyahoo.com> wrote:

> J. J. Lodder wrote:
>
> > bertietaylor <bertietaylor@myyahoo.com> wrote:
>
> >> J. J. Lodder wrote:
> >>
> >> > bertietaylor <bertietaylor@myyahoo.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> >> J. J. Lodder wrote:
> >> >>
> >> >> > bertietaylor <bertietaylor@novabbs.com.invalid> wrote:
> >> >>
> >> >> >> J. J. Lodder wrote:
> >> >> > [massive snip of irrelevancies]
> >> >> >> > Indeed. Maxwell constructed his equations in such a way
> >> >> >> > that waves propagating at the speed of light do come out.
> >> >> >> > (because of experimental hints that this needed to be the case)
> >> >> >>
> >> >> >> Other way around.
> >> >>
> >> >> > You really need to read up on the history of the subject.
> >> >>
> >> >> Let me give a very brief summary.
> >> >>
> >> >> Roemer, Huyghens, Fizeau... were involved in finding the speed of the
> >> >> light in various ways.
> >>
> >> > Correct.
> >>
> >> >> By that time, they had worked out the values of electrical
> >> >> permittivity and magnetic permeability. They had also worked out
> >> >> what are now known as Maxwell's laws. In those laws, the two
> >> >> constants mentioned were present.
> >>
> >> > Wrong.
> >>
> >> No, it is what is taught in text books.
>
> > You are confusing the textbooks of now
> > with the state of the art as Maxwell knew it.
>
> My textbooks are still in use.

Yes, that is precisely what is wrong with them,
if you want to understand Maxwell in the original.

> >> >> Maxwell combined the four laws, ...
> >>
> >> > Wrong. If it was merely combining, others would have done it sooner.
> >>
> >> Any invention could have been done sooner, if others had thought of it
> >> before the inventor. Which is why dates are important, along with the
> >> publicity for the invention.
> >>
> >> He was the first, and so, it is known as Maxwell's laws and Maxwell is
> >> given the honour of having found out that the speed of light was what is
> >> found from the known constants of electrical permittivity and magnetic
> >> permeability.
>
> > See? Your understanding of it is completely unhistorical,
>
> My understanding is not limited by your ignorance.

Giving up on you,

Jan

Peter Moylan <peter@pmoylan.org.invalid> wrote:

> On 13/04/24 20:55, J. J. Lodder wrote:
> > bertietaylor <bertietaylor@myyahoo.com> wrote:
> >> J. J. Lodder wrote:
> >>> bertietaylor <bertietaylor@myyahoo.com> wrote:
>
> >>>> Maxwell combined the four laws, ...
> >>
> >>> Wrong. If it was merely combining, others would have done it
> >>> sooner.
> >>
> >> Any invention could have been done sooner, if others had thought of
> >> it before the inventor. Which is why dates are important, along
> >> with the publicity for the invention.
> >>
> >> He was the first, and so, it is known as Maxwell's laws and Maxwell
> >> is given the honour of having found out that the speed of light was
> >> what is found from the known constants of electrical permittivity
> >> and magnetic permeability.
> >
> > See? Your understanding of it is completely unhistorical,
>
> What we now call Maxwell's equations is the culmination of discoveries
> by many people, most notably Coulomb, Ampere, and Faraday. It is
> generally believed that Maxwell's contribution was to take all these
> results and combine them in one integrated set of equations.

Not really. Maxwell's genius was to see
that there must be a missing term in those combined equations,
and in providing it.

> Well, yes,
> he did manage to combine the results to some extent, but his equations
> didn't look like the ones we now know. The modern formulation should
> probably be called Heaviside's equations, but somehow Maxwell got the
> credit.

Heaviside (and Lorentz) did call their version of it
"Maxwell's equations", and with good reason.
(while we are at it, Newton didnt write F = ma either)
> And were the equations valid? After all, they were derived from thought
> experiments. I think Hertz was the one to check them properly.

Yes, and to strip all the garbage out of their conceptual framework.

> The whole convoluted story (I have simplified it a lot) is not unusual
> in the history of science. A new discovery is rarely due to one person
> getting a flash of insight.

Maxwell's flash of insight was really necessary to get there.

> All research is a matter of people building
> on other people's results, and there usually isn't a point at which we
> can say "this one person finally got it right". If we were honest about
> the contributors to what we now call Maxwell's equations, the list would
> look like the list of authors on a paper in particle physics.

To be fair: Weber and Kohlrausch did provide the vital clue
that something with the dimension of a velocity
(and magnitude ~c) was needed in the equations of electromagnetism.

Many people tried to get it in, including Weber himself,
only Maxwell got it right.

There really is no reason to belittle his achievement,

Jan