Reddit mentions of Greenglow & the search for gravity control

You should really check out his book - they may only be small effects but there may be ways to amplify them.

If this is what the BBC is putting out for science journalism these days, they've lost a lot of respect and credibility. The article starts out with being misleading:

>The theorists say: "This is theoretically possible." The engineers then figure out how to make it work, confident the maths is correct and the theory stands up.

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>These camps are not mutually exclusive of course. Theorists understand engineering. Engineers draw on their deep understanding of the theory. It's normally a pretty harmonious, if competitive, relationship.

They completely omit experimental physicists. Experimental physicists are the ones who design and build physics experiments. They are the ones with the understanding of theory, not the engineers. Don't get me wrong, I work with (mostly electrical) engineers, daily, and am continually impressed with their technical ability, but their knowledge of any advanced theory is almost non-existent. Their theoretical knowledge rarely goes beyond their undergraduate general education requirements (a couple of semesters of intro physics, and maybe an a little electromagnetic theory for the EEs). It's the experimental physicists who both have a theoretical understanding, through graduate-level course work in physics and keeping up with the latest updates in journals, and (usually) some engineering or technical ability that allows them to build experiments and interface with both theorists and engineers. Of course many engineers are employed to help develop the finer points of systems in physics experiments, but those systems themselves are usually first developed by physicists, e.g. fast electronics for data acquisition systems.

Going back to the article:

>Yet occasionally these two worlds collide. The theorists say something is just not possible and the engineers say: "We're going to try it anyway - it's worth a shot."

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>There is one field of science where just such a contest has been raging for years, perhaps the most contentious field in all science/engineering - gravity control.

There is no contest, just like there is no contest about the existence of global warming. The contests exist only in the minds of people who doesn't really have a grasp of the subject. No reputable physicist - theorist or experimentalist - believes gravity control is possible with out current level of understanding. Why? Because we only understand gravity classically, i.e. General Relativity. There is no good theory of quantum gravity, what you'd likely have to understand to have any sort of "gravity control". I have never met an engineer who even understands GR, it's usually just not relevant to them, and Ron Evans seems no different, except he seems to embrace his ignorance and runs with it.

If you read Evans' book on Project Greenglow, it is the definition of crank science. It is filled with crackpot gems such as:

>Nowadays we might think of the ether in terms of the quantum vacuum of space.

No. That's not what the vacuum is or anyone who any understanding of quantum field theory will say it is. You can thumb through the text yourself and find - if you have some understanding of advanced theoretical concepts in physics - even more egregious violations of the laws of physics and our current understanding. Don't believe anything Evans says.

Again, returning the to BBC article:

>In the US, Nasa aerospace engineer Marc Millis began a parallel project - the Breakthrough Physics Propulsion Program

NASA needs to stop hiring crackpots like Millis and White, they give it a bad name. Millis has been posted here before and has developed ideas which include, but are not limited to:

>The differential sail was a speculation that it might be possible to induce differences in the pressure of vacuum fluctuations on either side of sail-like structure

Again, this shows a poor or non-existent understanding of some fundamental concepts in physics. It boggles the mind as to why NASA keeps hiring guys who have little to no understanding of them, to basically act as theorists. It's making NASA look like it doesn't know what it's doing in this area.

>Out of the blue, a Russian chemist called Dr Eugene Podkletnov claimed he'd stumbled on the answer by accident. By using rapidly spinning superconductors Podkletnov claimed he'd managed to create a "gravity shield".

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>Yet to theorists like Dr John Ellis, at Cern, it was no surprise when nothing came of it: "So this guy had the idea that by messing around with superconductors he could change the strength of the earth's gravitational field? Crap!"

Ellis' mocking reaction is in line with probably all reputable physicists. No one thinks superconductors can manipulate or block gravity in anyway, unless they've come up with a unified theory of gravity and electromagnetism, which of course, they haven't. Podkletnov, and by extension Tajmar, are engaged in fringe physics (fringe does not mean pushing the bounds, it means it's out of bounds and nonsensical), at best. Both display a clear lack of understanding of physics, and Tajmar's frequent publications in dis-reputable journals on topics that no real physicist would touch, demonstrate this.

The article then throws in a reference to the accelerating expansion of the universe and dark energy:

>Yet just when it seemed the engineers were running out of ideas, it was theoretical physics which threw them a lifeline.

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>Recently it was discovered that the universe was not just expanding, but accelerating in its expansion, and suddenly the theorists had some explaining to do.

Yes, theorists have some explaining to do, but it most certainly doesn't throw these wrong ideas about gravity and propulsion "a line". No one knows what's causing the accelerating expansion of the universe, but that doesn't give anyone license to go "Well, we don't understand it, but it has to do with gravity, therefore, free propulsion system!". No. That would have been like late 19th century biologists saying they don't understand the mechanism for evolution (genetics) but they know it has to within biology, therefore "...the fountain of youth!". It displays a lack of understanding of the topic and the mechanism through which science progresses.

The article rounds off with the emdrive for which there is no evidence. None has been published in any reputable physics journal and the experiments so far would not be accepted by any reputable physicist, yet that doesn't stop the article from proclaiming:

>One device survived, almost unnoticed, from the Greenglow days - a propellant-less electromagnetic or EmDrive, created by British aerospace engineer Roger Shawyer.

Survived? No. It's been more than a decade and the thing 1.) still claims to violate Newton's Laws 2.) still not flying 3.) still has no evidence for its claims 4.) still not taken seriously by physicists.

As Ellis puts it in the article:

>"With the EmDrive, unlike a rocket, nothing comes out of it. So I don't see how you can generate momentum out of nothing."

Yes.

If this is a taste of what Horizon will show then the BBC has seriously taken a step down in credibility and the network heads should reconsider airing this, and consult actual physicists for more than just a couple of lines. If the program's point isn't to point out these are crackpot ideas and teaches how to spot them, then they will be doing a huge disservice and harm to science education for the general public.