If X sucked as badly as its detractors claimed one would have thought that replacing it with something more functional would take less than the current 15 years, especially as work on X has more or less stalled for a decade.

But it's 2024 and Wayland still doesn't for example support window placement, unlike Windows, OSX and what was that? X11? Huh. I'm sure it's out of scope and anyway the user's fault for wanting it widely supported features that have niche but very important uses.

We've gone from "mechanism not policy" to "neither mechanism nor policy".

Plus anything beyond the basics is a crapshoot because there are three major semicompatible layers (wlroots, gnome, kde), so now automation has coupled into the window management scheme. It's like someone looked at the fragmentation of 90s era uni and said "hold my beer".

So... maybe.

Both Pons and Fleischman are working for the US Navy.

Given that Fleishman died 12 years ago, that's quite impressive. Almost as impressive as continuing to wok age 97, but not quite.

Pons relinquished his US citizenship in the late 90s and is now 80. He ain't working for the US Navy that's for sure.

Though it does not surprise me that having latched onto this crank drive after the crank EM drive, you're also a proponent of cold fusion. Any other fringe theories?

That's an extreme formulation. It does imply that certain efficiencies would be equivalent to perpetual motion

It does imply that exactly. Because whatever the N/W efficiency you can always crank v higher until you go net positive. Except of course there is an upper limit on v, namely c. You can work out the number of N/W required to break even at the speed of light. Turns out that's exactly the same number of newtons per watt you get for just blasting that many watts of photons out the back (photons have momentum).

So basically a drive that doesn't carry reaction mass can be no more efficient than a photon drive. That carries no reaction mass, but photons have momentum anyway, so it still conserves momentum. This is if you like a consequence of the mass/energy equivalence.

I mean sure... but bear in mind they use the word "propellantless" in their pitch, presumably to muddy the waters and confuse people who don't know physics but want to believe.

Unfortunately, too many people do not understand basic Physics and are willing to believe any and all crap, so this one will run a while, I expect.

It will.

Note how it's often the same people (angel'o'sphere) vociferously defending this one, just like he vociferously defended the EM drive. That seems to have finally petered out into a big old pile of nothingness and tumbleweeds. Perfect for the latest scamjet to fill the vacuum.

He claims a reactionless force that simply applies to an object. That works perfectly fine with my mass.

No they do not. They CONVERT chemical energy. Thermodynamics says that's not fundamentally different from converting other kinds of energy.All are equivalent.

"I already explained why, it's simple application of high school maths and physics."

I did.

Yes, I'm sure the lead scientist and co-founder of the NASA Electrostatics and Surface Physics Laboratory

So you can't find the error in my maths so you wish to try and beat me over the head with credentials.

who has nearly 900 citations

Ooh I win, I have over 9000 (actually more still but I like the meme).

when really he should have called you to find out about high school physics he missed while earning his PhD in... physics.

Honestly? Yeah he should have done!

So what makes you sure there is nothing reacted against in a different propellantless drive?

Here's the maths:

https://science.slashdot.org/c...

that only assumes the claim, that is it produces a force independent of speed. Nothing in the maths prevents the mechanism being pushing off something invisible. The independent of speed is kind of key because if it depends on speed relative to that unknown background stuff, then the implication is that there is a global rest frame, which also overturns all of physics pretty much. Note they are not claiming speed dependence relative to a global rest frame.

No it's not "whoosh", that implies you told a joke which I missed the punch line of. You fundamentally not understanding what hyperbole is has its own humerus merits for sure, but for a whoosh you need to be in on the joke, not part of it. Plus you also don't personally own the definition of "hellscape" which, since hell doesn't exist and no one knows what it looks like anyway is pretty much by definition a term of hyperbole.

You are assuming momentum is not conserved

Based on TFS, and TFA, that's a fair inference.

"Motion in space can be accomplished without thrust or external forces."

You need a curved spacetime for that, significantly curved on the scale of the object, to the point where you can exploit the somewhat ambiguous nature of centre of mass on curved manifolds. Near a small black hole might do. Earth or this solar system won't.

And they're not talking about that.

On the other hand if you're trying to flog a perpetual motion machine to a bunch of credulous cranks who are confused about physics then it's perfect since it further obscures What's going on while sounding physicsy.

A propellent less drive can push on space time.

That's some star trek level techno babble right there. Now I love me some space opera but I don't confuse it with reality.

There's a virtue in free they're are a crapton of 8051 based things because it's fast enough, had all patents expired and the tool chains are already out there too.

It's not that people think oh I need an MCU, I'll use an 8051, it's that someone designing a chip uses the core for cheap and that serves as the MCU for whatever is built around it.

I mean it's kind of fruitless to have an argument about physics work someone who won't even accept that kinetic energy is a half m v squared, but here I am. My excuse is I am at the moment tipsy and killing time on a train.

What's yours?