UFOs and Aliens

It’s a big big universe. The diameter of the Earth is about eight thousand miles, so the circumference is about twenty five thousand miles. If you could walk twenty miles a day and didn’t have to worry about little things like rivers and mountains and oceans, it would take you one thousand two hundred and fifty days to walk twenty five thousand miles. That’s over three years. The Moon is about two hundred and fifty thousand miles away. If you could walk to the Moon, it would take you over thirty years. Then Saturn is about a billion miles away. A walk to Saturn would take you more than a hundred and thirty thousand years. Then it’s about two billion miles to Uranus, about three billion miles to Neptune, and about four and a half billion miles to poor little Pluto:

Planet and moon sizes image from the PhysOrg Planet or dwarf planet article by Tanya Hill. Image credited to Primefac

After that, the distances get really big. A light year is 5,878,625,373,183.6 miles, and it’s 4.24 light years to Proxima Centauri. So our nearest star is circa twenty five thousand billion miles away. That’s 25 trillion miles, or 25 x 1012 miles, or a three-billion year walk. Then our Milky Way galaxy is maybe two hundred thousand light years across. That’s 1,175 quadrillion miles, a quadrillion being 1015. So the Milky Way is about a quintillion miles across, a quintillion being 1018. As for the size of the universe, nobody really knows, but the observable universe is thought to be 93 billion light years in diameter. That’s more than five septillion miles, a septillion being 1024. That’s a lot of miles.

You’d have to be crazy to think that aliens don’t exist

Not only that, but there are thought to be between one hundred and four hundred billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, and two hundred billion galaxies in the universe. Some say there’s a lot more galaxies than that, maybe two trillion. I’m not sure myself, but I am sure there’s a lot of stars in the universe. Maybe there’s as many as a septillion stars in the universe:

M107 Hubble image courtesy of NASA, see the Wikipedia Messier 107 article

That’s a lot of stars. So very many that you’d have to be crazy to think that none of them have any planets with life. Intelligent life. The real deal. So you’d have to be crazy to think that aliens don’t exist.

You’d have to be crazy to think that UFOs don’t exist

You’d also have to be crazy to think that UFOs don’t exist. That’s because strictly speaking, UFOs are UFOs. They are Unidentified Flying Objects. That thing in the sky might be the Goodyear blimp, or a Chinese lantern, or just a drone. But if it’s an object that’s flying, and if it’s unidentified, it’s a UFO. So, we can be sure that aliens exist, and we can be sure that UFOs exist. Of course though, the $64,000 question is this: are some of those UFOs the real deal? Are they real UFOs? The flying saucer UFOs? The things we mean when we say UFOs? Are they alien craft?

There’s no conclusive evidence that UFOs are alien craft

To answer that, we have to look at the evidence, and that’s when things get iffy. Because despite all the reports, there’s no conclusive evidence that UFOs are alien craft. Not only that, but all those hoaxers really don’t help a bit. There are old photographs of UFOs that look like obvious fakes. Some aren’t quite so obvious, but they still look suspiciously like hubcaps thrown up in the air:

1950 Redbud Illinois image by Dean Morgan, from the Express article The Truth Is Out There: 150 years of UFOs

In similar vein, there are contemporary videos that definitely look like they’ve been photoshopped. Or concocted in some other way, as per the best fake UFO videos by On Demand Entertainment. Take a look at Curry Jean’s 2009 article Top 10 Most Famous UFO Hoaxes. He starts by telling you how Michael Shermer, the editor of Skeptic magazine, got children to make UFOs then photograph them hanging from fishing line. He says “the pictures didn’t look tampered with to a professional photography analyst – he couldn’t see the fishing line, and the images were not smudged”. He also tells us how Ray Santilli disappointed believers in 2006 by admitting that the alien autopsy was faked. LOL! Then there’s the crop circles, which have always made by plonkers with planks:

Public domain Crop circle image by Jabberwocky

Come on now, did you seriously think that all those Mandlebrot crop circles were made by UFOs? Some people do, because some people just love their fantasies and their fairy tales. They want to believe, even when there’s no evidence at all for the things they want to believe in. Like angels and demons and 72 virgins in paradise. Or time travel and M-theory and the many-worlds multiverse.

Even the best UFO images are suspect

Anyway, you can find a whole lot of other UFO hoax articles, such as Tim Printy’s piece Can you fool all the UFOlogists all of the time? He ends up saying “it becomes apparent that even the best UFO images are suspect”. Also see the 2016 Express story which says a UFO expert claims there has NEVER been any real pictures taken of an alien craft. Nowadays you can even get an app that lets you generate some fake footage on your phone. FFS. My personal pet hate is alien abductions. I just sigh at the way people make up all sorts of stories. See for example the Travis Walton abduction, the McPherson Tape, and Barney and Betty Hill. I don’t believe any of it, especially the “adult” stuff, if you catch my drift. I’m not a fan of cattle mutilations either. I’m not alone with all this. Project Blue Book started in 1952 at the height of the UFO “craze”, and was wound up in 1969 with the following conclusions: 1) No UFO reported, investigated, and evaluated by the Air Force was ever an indication of threat to our national security. 2) There was no evidence submitted to or discovered by the Air Force that sightings categorized as “unidentified” represented technological developments or principles beyond the range of modern scientific knowledge. 3) There was no evidence indicating that sightings categorized as “unidentified” were extraterrestrial vehicles.

There’s no evidence that the UFOs are alien spacecraft

It’s pretty much the same now, nearly seventy years later. There’s a report to Congress due later this month. You can read about it on Mindy Weisberger’s Live Science article Pentagon’s long-awaited UFO report to Congress due this month. According to various news sources, it’s going to conclude that there’s no evidence that the UFOs are alien spacecraft. I share that sentiment when it comes to the recent US Navy videos. The footage is genuine US Navy footage, but I don’t think the UFOs are genuine UFOs. They look like camera artifacts to me:

Screenshot from US Navy video, see Leaked: Pentagon’s UFO Investigation Spotlighted In New Photos And Video

See the USA Today article by Mick West called UFO sightings: Why federal reports probably won’t point to aliens. He said things like this: “The most compelling video, ‘Gimbal’, seems to show an actual flying saucer skimming over clouds then coming to a stop and bizarrely rotating into an aerodynamically impossible position. But closer examination of this video showed that when the ‘object’ rotated, other patches of light in the scene rotated. The only possible explanation being that the rotation was a camera artifact. See his Youtube video here: Gimbal UFO: Why Does the Glare Rotate When the Horizon Does Not? The glare is rotating because the camera is rotating.

Gimbal screenshot from Mick West’s YouTube video, originally from the US Navy

Also see the Sixty Minutes video Navy pilots describe encounters with UFOs. It features Luis Elizondo and Chris Mellon. Not everybody is impressed with these guys. See for example UFO Expert May Not Have Worked for Shadowy Pentagon Program by Keith Kloor. He says this: “To the Stars, which raised more than $2 million from investors, was originally hyped as a UFO research company that would explore the ‘outer edges of science’, but its Security and Exchange Commission filing identifies it as a ‘Motion Picture & Video Tape Production’ concern”. I am reminded of Finding Bigfoot. It’s a TV show that’s been making money for ten years now. In every episode the excitement rises as they hear a howl or see some movement in the deep dark woods. But in every episode, they don’t find Bigfoot, and they haven’t found him yet. Quelle sur-prise! I am not a fan of the showmen who make money from this sort of thing. Especially when it comes to UFOs. That’s because I know they exist. Because I’ve seen them with my own eyes.

The abrupt change of direction is the thing

In July 1998 I was smoking a cigarette in the back garden at about 10 o’clock at night. I noticed a star overhead moving slowly North to South. It wasn’t a particularly bright star. I thought it was a satellite or perhaps a plane, only then I saw another one moving South to North on the same line. When they got close to one another, maybe an arm’s length thumb width apart, they both changed direction instantly, one after the other. The first one was now heading East, the second was now heading West. I ran inside and got my SLR camera with the telephoto lens and took about half a dozen pictures. Unfortunately once developed, the photographs came out totally black, every last one. I hadn’t had any practice of taking photographs of the sky at night. So I have no evidence whatsoever. But I saw what I saw. The abrupt change of direction is the thing. Or a very rapid linear acceleration or deceleration.

This technology is not consistent with the capabilities of any nation

See the Fox news piece where Will Cain talked about the level of g-forces and the change of direction, and said the US government said “this technology is not consistent with the capabilities of any nation to our knowledge”. He was talking to Jeremy Corbell, who talked about aerospace vehicles that are able to outmanoeuvre our greatest warplanes. He said “this is something that the military is very interested in, and they have been lying to the American public”. Corbell finished up emphasising that UFOs are real. Another Fox News piece features our very own Nick Pope:

Screenshot from What does the Government Really Know About UFOs?

He said this: “Every day, it seems like new information drops, things that the public and the media weren’t told. So, for example, former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe just threw into the conversation the other day, the fact that the satellite imagery of all of this and some of the speeds being reported seem to blow the theory about foreign drones out of the water“. Pope also referred to pilots and radar operators, and said “the US Navy has instructions for its pilots on what to do if they encounter these things”.  Google on Nick Pope pilots for more.

The best people to talk to are pilots

I say that because the best people to talk to are pilots. Check out the PPRuNE website. That’s the Professional Pilots Rumour Network. Search for UFOs, and there’s plenty of hits. You can read things like this: “Many Airline pilots, self included, and Military pilots have had encounters at altitude with UFOs over many decades and before the internet. Encounters are reported internally and amongst colleagues and seldom reach the media which would, of course, just love to play with it as they play with themselves. When you are fortunate to be a close witness, it is really quite serious stuff”. There’s also threads like British Airways and Virgin Atlantic reporting UFO over Ireland. Follow the links to UFOs spotted off Irish coast under investigation to read things like “the object had come up along the left side of the aircraft before it rapidly veered to the north”. There’s other sources kicking around, like this: Retired RAF pilot reveals multiple close encounters with UFOs. When you read this, you can empathize: “All four of us on the flight deck saw exactly what I saw, obviously, and agreed with my description. Furthermore, when I reported it to Nice ATC, a Pan-Am reported that he could see exactly what I saw and agreed with me. I don’t doubt that all his crew saw it as well”. You have to talk to pilots yourself to really get what they’re saying. Usually after plying them with alcohol, because a lot of them don’t want to talk. When they do, you take note of the big oval silver thing that went over the top of the Virgin Atlantic 747 at Mach 3, then stopped. And the way the crew gawked at it as they approached for long long seconds. Then zip, it went back over the top of the plane at Mach 3 and was gone, just like that. Snap!

Once you know how gravity works, you know how they do it

It’s always the same amazing acceleration, be it in the guise of linear motion or change of direction. Once you know how gravity works, you know how they do it. Imagine you’re in a spaceship travelling through space at a constant velocity. You’re weightless, floating around in there, with no g-forces acting upon you. Then you close in on planet Earth, and start to slingshot around it like the Hermes went round the Earth in The Martian. At all points in that orbital loop you stay weightless. There are no g-forces on you at all. It’s similar if you contrived a flyby past a white dwarf, You could make a gradual right angle turn, and at no point would you feel any g-forces. It’s similar again if you contrived a flyby past a small black hole. Your right angle turn wouldn’t look so gradual, instead it would look more like an abrupt right turn. But you still wouldn’t feel any g-forces:

Blue marble Earth courtesy of NASA, drawings by me

Now imagine your ship could generate an intense gravitational field in the space outside the ship. If you want to turn left, you generate a gravitational field to your left. Then you free-fall left in an orbital until you’re going in the direction you want. Then you turn the field off and continue on your way. If your field is intense your turn will be abrupt. If you want to speed up, you generate a gravitational field in front of the ship. If you want to stop, you generate a gravitational field behind the ship. If it was a really intense field you could stop on a sixpence. At no point do you feel any g-forces. On top of that, you could generate a field above the ship that exactly balances the Earth’s gravitational field, and then just sit in the sky. Or you could give the field a little extra juice and float up gradually, like a balloon. Space travel would be so much safer with artificial gravity. You could even use your field generator to contrive something akin to gravitational time dilation inside the ship. You could arrange for most of your crew to be effectively in stasis during the long journeys from star to star, with a rota for the guys on watch. You’d be wanting to do that because you wouldn’t want to use the relativistic rocket trick for time dilation. You don’t want to be travelling too close to the speed of light. For one thing you might hit something. For another, the speed of light varies with gravitational potential, and if you somehow found yourself travelling faster than the local speed of light, bad things would happen. I’ll tell you about the gamma bomb another time.

The authorities have been actively discrediting UFO evidence for decades

For now, what I want to say is this: when you’ve seen these things for yourself, and talked to expert witnesses, you know that the authorities have been actively discrediting UFO evidence for decades. Multiple witnesses see something silver and shiny flitting around the sky, and it’s dismissed as the planet Venus. Or a lighthouse. Or a weather balloon. Or a bird, a black ops plane, or a meteor. Meanwhile some academic asshole will try and tell you it was a meteor the size of a walnut or that we’re the only intelligent life in the galaxy. It reminds me of the way some say there’s no evidence of voter fraud. The evidence is right there in front of their face, but they always dismiss it, and then they get their “fact checkers” to say that’s not a smoking gun. Like I’ve been saying, this sort of thing is all too common nowadays, and not just in politics or in physics. When it comes to UFOs, the authorities always say there’s no evidence that UFOs are real. I’m not one for conspiracy theories, so I think there’s a good reason for that. You ain’t gonna like it.

NEXT

 

Edit 26/06/2021: the report is out, see Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. It uses the acronym UAP as opposed to UFO, and there’s no mention of aliens or extraterrestials. Here’s a few news reports on the report:

UFO report: US finds no explanation for sightings – BBC News
Everything we know so far about the Pentagon’s big UFO report | The Independent
‘The truth is still out there’: internet shrugs at Pentagon’s UFO findings | US news | The Guardian
Pentagon reveals all on UFOs but report finds no evidence of aliens visiting Earth (telegraph.co.uk)
UFO report reveals officials can’t explain the mysterious sightings | Fox News

This Post Has 50 Comments

  1. The Physics Hermit

    Composite images (blue marble) from the crooks at NASA and CGI ufo nonsense doesn’t impress me.

    When are you going to review the documentary entitled ‘American Moon’ that can be found on youtube?

    There we find NASA to be a bunch of lying sacks.

    1. The physics detective

      I’ll take a look. But let me tell you this: I like NASA.. I expect to be working for NASA soon.

  2. Greg R. Leslie

    Great job as usual John, I agree with most of what you think on these subjects. Starting with the Roswell Incident there has been at first a localized cottage industry than has grown into a multi-million dollar worldwide industry. Talk about cargo cults !
    With that said, there are two areas of documented data that makes me believe in intelligent alien life and that we have/are being visited: 1. The collective oral and written histories of the vast extent of human cultures that have ever existed mentioning visits from the Star People. 2. That ancient humans alone could have made the great pyramids of Egypt and Meso-America.
    On the subject of the current military videos, I would like to mention a very plausible explanation for many, if not most of pilot reports: humans for years have had the technology to made things stop,travel, change directions at high mach speeds and g-forces. These things are nothing more than photons being manipulated via military Blackbox projects to confuse and cause disorientation with pilots.
    Ladtly, I was born,raised and still live in the Dayto,Ohio,USA area, home of Wright-Patterson AFB. Many Blackbox projects are managed and carried out here. It was also the original home of Project Bluebook.
    Best of luck John working for NASA, hope ya’ll likes Florida…………

    1. The physics detective

      Hi Greg. Yes, there’s a lot of stuff in history. Enough to make me think that we have had “visitors”. But I don’t buy all the Erich von Däniken stuff I’m afraid. Or humans for years have had the technology to made things stop,travel, change directions at high mach speeds and g-forces. That’s because money talks, only I don’t see it talking about this subject. What I see is this instead:
      .
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzhP3Q5fku8
      .
      I like Florida. I saw a shuttle launch from Cocoa Beach once. I can’t remember which one it was. We’d been in Orlando and drove across to the coast via the Beeline Expressway. We had difficulty getting a motel room and I couldn’t understand why. When we finally got one the receptionist told me It’s because of the launch.. I kind of said Huh? because I’d been to the launching of nuclear submarines. And then I realised she was talking about The Shuttle. We watched it from the beach, and I took photos. Great stuff. What’s not so great is that most of the astronauts who’ve been to the Moon are dead now:
      .
      Apollo astronauts who walked on the Moon

      1. The Physics Hermit

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmDuG0n8qk8

        Gee, the physics “detective” is going to work for NASA to tell lies to children.

        Looks like space travel has been a dud so far. SpaceX video you provided is of a CGI rocket. So I provided my own video 1.5 hours long of a real detective doubting man walking on the moon.

        1. the physics detective

          Sorry, Physics Hermit, your comment was in the spam folder. Can I say though. that I am not impressed by the video you linked to. It says this: “This video is a rare video of one of Marcus Allen’s best presentations which provides ample evidence that the Apollo moon landings were hoaxed”. That’s just conspiracy theory crap. And if I didn’t believe in free speech in science, your comment would stay in the spam folder.

  3. Greg R. Leslie

    I won’t ever watch another ” 1969 Moon Landing was Faked ” video after the first one many years ago. The authors never can convince me as to why would our government and NASA spend so much time and money to decieve the public . I think it’s a case of ” delusional psychotic paranoia getting in the way of a good story ” !
    I’m glad you’ve been the the U.S. and Florida. I’m from a colder climate, Midwest America. And also possess too much Celtic,Nordic and Germanic DNA to tolerate the hot sun and high humidity. Alligators,
    poisonous snakes and giant insects don’t interest me at all either. LOL!
    If you are ever in Dayton,OhighO check out U.S. Air Force Museum, it’s bigger and better than the Smithsonian in Washington D.C..

    1. The physics detective

      Ditto. I hate all that conspiracy-theory nonsense. Why do people feel the need to indulge in that sort of thing? Especially when there’s real serious issues to look into, where the evidence is crystal clear.
      .
      Actually, my favourite place in the USA was San Francisco. Florida was nice, but it was all very flat, and rather touristy and suburban. But anyways, that was a long time ago now. I fear San Francisco wouldn’t be my favourite place now. Hmmmn. I hope everything pans out for you Greg. And for the USA in general.
      .
      Yes, I will check out that USAF museum: https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/. One day!

  4. Navid

    As the Covid pantomime continues, is it not time to put aside the old conspiracy phraseology that you were taught by a 3-letter agency. They, who inserted it into the mainstream media culture to weaponize thought after JFK’s good riddance. Call it organized crime if you want, if that talks you off the emotional ledge. The UK in 2020/20201 is a shining example of the organized collusive state that is truly diabolical, and even tries to hide antivirals from the people. Grow up.

    I find it interesting that you are talking about UFOs. People who are talking about them right about now, when the fake disclosure is coming from the criminal deep state, well I think THEY should be under scrutiny. Your data doesn’t line up with the best journalists on the matter, who have actual documentation and interviews with insiders. Then there is missing $20T that Catherine Austin Fitts discovered shovelled into special projects https://www.bitchute.com/video/1JJH24Wl4nl7/. This is not new, it’s the continuation of the German WWII state’s work. If you research NASA you will understand the connection. They don’t know how to break the news to us, all that has happened, but it will unravel.

    If you are serious about studying the alien presence, go watch the Dark Journalist. A serious academic. His interview with one of the actual conspiracy club (the Mellon family) is stunning and worth more than https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtY5iISsMAY

    Please do your homework. You have to know how to filter the fake conspiracy from the real research and if it isn’t your serious life’s work you won’t be able to navigate it.

    1. The Physics Detective

      I have a different take on it, Navid. For example, I don’t think much of conspiracy theories, but I do think JFK was shot from the front. As for who was behind it, I’d rather not say.
      .
      I will look your links.

  5. Greg R. Leslie

    Strange coincidence John, the JFK assassination is the one and only conspiracy theory I even remotely belive in !
    My personal hypothesis is : 1. Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone, 2. he was a fall guy patsy double agent, 3. it was clandestinely carried out by Castro with only Khrushchev’s blessing ,but not the rest of the Soviet regime. It was payback for the Bay of Pigs fiasco followed by the Missile Crisis. That is why Khrushchev was quietly and secretly sacked long before the West found out about it. And it is also the reason why sanctions have been continuously enforced against Cuba. All of this and the whitewash Warren Report was to keep WWIII from truly happening in 1963-64.

    1. The physics detective

      I agree with some of that, Greg. My personal hypothesis is: 1. Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone. 2. He was a fall guy patsy. 3. It was clandestinely carried out by LBJ. Hence the whitewash Warren Report.

  6. The physics detective

    Well this isn’t going to work, now is it:
    .
    https://patents.google.com/patent/US10144532B2/en
    .
    Abstract
    A craft using an inertial mass reduction device comprises of an inner resonant cavity wall, an outer resonant cavity, and microwave emitters. The electrically charged outer resonant cavity wall and the electrically insulated inner resonant cavity wall form a resonant cavity. The microwave emitters create high frequency electromagnetic waves throughout the resonant cavity causing the resonant cavity to vibrate in an accelerated mode and create a local polarized vacuum outside the outer resonant cavity wall.
    .
    Classifications B64G1/409 Unconventional spacecraft propulsion systems
    2016-04-28 Application filed by US Department of Navy

  7. Greg R. Leslie

    I too laughed when I read awhile back that the U S. Navy was going to patent EM Drive. They also have given up on railguns too, for hypersonic drive conventional ballistic systems.
    LBJ and the Dixiecrat Mafia are damn good second guess suspects as well !

  8. Zbigniew Modrzejewski

    The following is a recent documentary about 1973 UFO/Alien landing in Pascagoula, Mississippi.
    .
    You are always free to disbelieve it all, but like in a Court of Law, to be unbiased and to do justice, we need to carefully consider testimonies of multiple witnesses of this incident :
    .
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q94ythKR5A
    .
    Just six minutes of another multiple witness testimony :
    .
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7tK65tccvI
    .
    Maybe it was not “real”, but many normal skeptical people took it seriously enough not to dismiss it off hand as a hoax:
    .
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjlzeYiGLzc
    .
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zTUspQlS8E
    .

    1. Zbigniew Modrzejewski

      WOW !!!
      .
      The report is solid 9 pages LONG.
      .
      Including the cover sheet.
      ,
      Perhaps the OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE should have consulted with FBI, NSA, and with the CIA, because CIA alone had released 13 MILLION pages of declassified UFO documents:
      https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38663522
      .
      .
      https://www.space.com/1784-files-opened-national-security-agency-ufo-investigations-unearthed.html
      .
      http://www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/ufos-the-national-security-agency-nsa-collection/
      .
      http://www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/ufos-the-national-security-agency-nsa-collection/
      .
      http://www.openminds.tv/nsa-says-lost-non-redacted-ufo-files/29986
      .
      https://www.huffingtonpost.com/alejandro-rojas/government-says-it-has-lo_b_9220206.html
      .
      https://www.gaia.com/lp/content/declassified-ufo-documents-from-nsa-create-more-questions-than-they-answer/
      .
      .

      .

      .
      .
      .
      ” THE 60 MINUTES ” — interview :
      .
      On the canyon road just outside Las Vegas, Robert Bigelow‘s story takes a turn that some may find, to put it lightly, improbable. He told us this is where his grandparents had a close encounter with a UFO.
      .
      Robert Bigelow: It really sped up and came right into their face and filled up the entire windshield of the car. And it took off at a right angle and shot off into the distance.
      .
      Lara Logan: Do you believe in aliens?
      .
      Robert Bigelow: I’m absolutely convinced. That’s all there is to it.
      .
      Lara Logan: Do you also believe that UFOs have come to Earth?
      .
      Robert Bigelow: There has been, and is, an existing presence, an ET presence on the Planet. And I spent millions and millions and millions. I probably spent more as an individual than anybody else in the United States has ever spent on this subject.
      .
      Lara Logan: Is it risky for you to say in public that you believe in UFOs and aliens?
      .
      Robert Bigelow: I don’t give a damn. I don’t care.
      .
      Lara Logan: You don’t worry that some people will say, “Did you hear that guy, he sounds like he’s crazy”?
      .
      Robert Bigelow: I don’t care.
      .
      Lara Logan: Why not?
      .
      Robert Bigelow: It’s not gonna make a difference. It’s not gonna change reality of what I know.
      .
      Lara Logan: Do you imagine that in our space travels we will encounter other forms of intelligent life?
      .
      Robert Bigelow: You don’t have to go anywhere.
      .
      Lara Logan: You can find it here? Where exactly?
      .
      Robert Bigelow: It’s just like right under people’s noses.
      .
      .
      The FAA confirmed to ” THE 60 MINUTES ” that for years, it referred reports of UFOs and other unexplained phenomena to BIGELOW AEROSPACE, a company Robert Bigelow owns. He told us he’s had his own close encounters, but declined to go into detail.
      .
      http://www.cbsnews.com/news/bigelow-aerospace-founder-says-commercial-world-will-lead-in-space/
      .
      https://quantumantigravity.wordpress.com/lunar-xprize/
      .
      .

      1. the physics detective

        Sorry Ziggy, your comment was “pending approval” because it fell foul of the antispam.

  9. Jim Eadon

    Hi John
    When you slingshot around, say, a black hole, the black hole gets accelerated oppositely. Angular momentum is conserved for the total system. This is Newton’s 2nd law basically.
    Your “gravitational machine” does not balance the books AFAICT. What gets accelerated in the opposite direction of the craft? And if it is something then what is it? It leaves no detecable trace eg. no heat trace. And also what is the power source that can generate instantly so much power without exploding, and is portable enough to be flown on the craft?
    I AM a conspiracy theorist. Covid alone shows men conspire outrageously. But Newton is God, and may not be conspired against.
    Cheers
    Jim

  10. The Physics Detective

    There’s a problem, Jim. Light curves wherever there’s a gradient in the “coordinate” speed of light. Then matter falls down because of the wave nature of light – think of matter as light in a closed path, wherein the horizontal element of the path curves downwards.
    .
    In a black hole, the coordinate speed of light is zero, and it can’t go lower than that. This means the mechanism by which gravity operates just isn’t there for a black hole. I think Newton was absolutely brilliant. In my list of top physicists, he’s number one, and Einstein is number two. But I just can’t see how a black hole can fall down, which means Newton’s 2nd law is broken. See https://physicsdetective.com/we-have-to-talk-about-ligo/ for more. for more.
    .
    The power source doesn’t have to generate any power. When an object falls down, no energy is added to it. Gravity merely converts mass-energy, which is internal kinetic energy, into external kinetic energy.
    .
    PS: I am sick to the back teeth of the Covid control freaks.

  11. Jim Eadon

    Hi John,
    You’re breaking the laws of physics by saying the power source does not need to generate power. No power: then no “gradient”: nothing happens at all.
    In particular, you’re violating the sacred law of angular momentum. You are only considering the local system. The spacecraft feels no force, because it’s in the equivalent of freefall. What I am talking about is, what suddenly made that freefall happen? You created a gravitation field, or an equivalent energy field. That takes a lot of energy to do. And, when that field acts upon an object, then, like one ball colliding with another, there must be a reaction.
    You have not balanced the books, as per my original comment, which still stands. You get owt for nowt. No action (no power): No reaction (no change of angular momentum of the craft).

  12. Jim Eadon

    John,
    You ARE breaking the laws. You’re breaking Newton’s laws. You’re machine is worse than a perpetual motion machine that violates the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. You’re breaking Newton’s action = reaction law.
    As I said, you’re avoiding looking at the global picture of your magic gravitational-field (or equivalent) energy-field) engine.
    You ask, “How much power do I need?”
    The problem here is, you’re trying to have your cake and eat it. When you say you need “no power” you’re assuming that the gravitational field exists. So, for example, if you sling shot around Jupiter, you need no power, because the power source already exists to accellerate you / change your anguloar momentum (i.e. Jupiter’s grav-field).
    However, as I pointed out, for your magic UFO engine, the gravitational field does NOT exist prior to the maneouvre. In order for your right-angles maneouvre to work, you need a source of power that will accellerate (or decellerate) your craft (changing it’s velocity / angular momentum) – i.e. in your case, your gravitational field.
    In order to create that field, you need energy. The more you accellerate your craft, the more energy you need to create the field. It’s THAT field-creation that you would need a power-source for. THAT is the blind spot you have.
    And, when that energy field does act on your craft, then the total angular momentum of the system must be zero. So, something must moving the other way after your craft has left the field. Either radiation or small particles (like rocket exhaust), or an entire object (when you sling-shot, the object you’re slingshotting arouind will, itself, move oppositely, though not much if it’s really heavy). This is standard, basic physics, standard physics you’re handwaving away. HTH.

    1. the physics detective

      Yes, when I said “no power”, that was assuming the gravitational field exists. It takes no power at all to lift a ship up into the sky provided you have a big enough balloon. Ditto if you have an artificial gravitational field. As for the power to create that gravitational field, now you’re moving the goalposts. You want power to create that gravitational field? Here, take a look at Rod Nave’s hyperphysics. See his electric force example. That’s where he talks about a second’s worth of charge from a 120 watt lightbulb, and about 1.01 million tons of repulsion. So here’s your power source:
      .
      ” alt=”” />
      .
      As for laws, I’m not breaking any laws. Newton made it quite clear that gravity was not some magical mysterious action at a distance. Instead he talked of an aethereal medium refracting rays of light “gradually in curved lines”. Light has a wave nature, it curves because space is “neither homogeneous nor homogeneous”, wherein “the speed of light is spatially variable”. That’s what Einstein said. He also said it takes light rays “an infinitely long time (measured in “coordinate time”) in order to reach the point r = μ/2”. The descending light beam slows down. At the event horizon, it stops. So what’s happened to your photon momentum p=h/λ? Now think accretion disk and remind yourself that nothing can move faster than light. So what’s happened to your angular momentum? It’s gone, Jim. It just isn’t there, just as the mechanism by which a black hole falls down just isn’t there. As for standard physics, that will tell you the speed of light is absolutely constant, and that the downward photon magically acquires energy. Then it will give you all sorts of cargo-cult pseudoscience such as the holographic principle, time travelling wormholes to the parallel antiverse, and the elephant that goes to the end of time and back. And is in two place at once. Woo! Then it will tell you that the thing you saw in the sky doing right-angle turns was the planet Venus.
      .
      This is physics Jim, but not as you know it.

  13. Zbigniew Modrzejewski

    .
    Jim Eadon — ” John Duffield, THAT is the blind spot you have. ”
    .
    Hello, Jim.
    The Physics Detective is an extremely busy man with his full-time day-job as the top notch IT Consultant to Her Majesty, the Queen of England. His specialty is in the healthcare insurance industry, which also means he has to deal with the obtuse, obstinate government bureaucracies of the U.K. The ongoing Covid crisis combined with BREXIT, and Prince Harry and Meghan Merkle unending TV interviews, book-deals, and a rapidly growing number of their lovely little Royal babies in dire need of taxpayer support, have made John’s professional life a living hell for the last couple of years, or so. He also is a dedicated family man, who still makes time for his loving wife, kids and grandkids. So, please, Jim, consider cutting John some slack, would you ??
    .
    The Physics Detective — ” I’m not breaking any laws. I’m going round them. ”
    .
    Jim, in terms of physics on this blog, we are not in the XIX century anymore. When The Physics Detective says : ” I’m going round the Laws of XXI century physics “, it is not any blind spot of his, Jim, because Mr. Duffield can, in fact, do it using the XXII-nd century physics of the sub-quantum Duff Field, and its associated Daffy particle, which is not some mere God-particle, but instead, it is the most elementary sub-quantum particle of them all, a.k.a. the duck-particle, which not only can explain the mere “everything” ( the T.O.E. ), but also, most importantly, it can explain everything else, due to its hyper-advanced multi-dimensional topology, with its extra dimensions being borrowed from parallel universes, on-demand. And we will never run out of extra dimensions, because there is no end to parallel universes. The following is the first ever holographic image of the duck-particle, and also a mathematical description of its amazing physical properties: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daffy_Duck
    .
    .
    Dear Jim, it is a well-known psychological phenomenon that we all have our blind spots. We need other objective and unbiased individuals, like yourself, to take a calm, cool-headed look at emerging new ideas in order to find their natural, initial short-comings. Nobody is born a perfect genius. Not even Albert Einstein himself.
    .
    Therefore, I would like to ask you to do me a favor, and please take a closer look at my Anti-gravity Space Propulsion Engine — the SpaceDrive — and tell us all, here on John’s blog, if you see any blind spots of mine:
    .
    https://quantumantigravity.wordpress.com/experiments/
    .
    because I feel completely certain that John, as the preeminent UK Royal Physics Detective to Her Majesty, the Queen of England, will be more than happy to have this rare chance of critically examining an alternative model of gravitational sub-quantum field propulsion:
    .
    https://quantumantigravity.wordpress.com/experiments/
    .
    which utilizes my recently discovered sub-quantum knotted hopfotrino wave-particle.
    .
    The country of Canada, being essentially a British-ruled provincial territory, and me (a Canadian citizen) being a loyal subject of Her Majesty, the Queen, I wish that my scientific discovery of antigravity and the technological invention based on it, will benefit the United Kingdom on Earth, as well as establish British Empire’s military supremacy in outer space, so that the Empire will be able to strike back, soon:
    .
    https://quantumantigravity.wordpress.com/experiments/
    .
    .
    God save the Queen!
    Long live the Queen!
    .
    Ziggy https://quantumantigravity.wordpress.com/CONTACT/
    .
    .
    .

    1. the physics detective

      Ziggy, your comment was “awaiting approval”, not because I put you on any kind of moderation, but because it was very long, and contained five hyperlinks. Now, please note that 1) I am not some top notch IT Consultant to Her Majesty, the Queen of England and 2) my specialty is not in the healthcare insurance industry (Greg got that wrong) 3) it is improper to plaster email conversations all over the internet and 4) you are increasingly argumentative and abusive. Whilst I believe in free speech in science, you have overstepped the mark, particularly with your emails to numerous parties.

      1. Zbigniew Modrzejewski

        .
        Dear Mr. Duffield, my sincere apologies. Your above 4 points are well taken.
        .
        .
        .
        P. S.
        .
        There needs to be an honest debate with mutually
        acceptable arguments, to arrive at correct understanding.
        .
        I hate wasting my time on producing meta-physical speculations,
        so in my research I only limit myself to working with new experimental results.
        We can only extend one leg beyond the edge of the abyss,
        if we want to remain in contact with reality. :-))

        .
        Academic mainstream physicists are imperfect people, half of them
        is busy working to change quantum physics theory into classical waves only (silly),
        while the other half, quantum physicists, want to get rid of all waves altogether (silly),
        because we can’t build expensive wave accelerators, only particle accelerators,
        like in CERN, and particles are much easier to work with in quantum mechanics,
        like playing with little balls, instead of with old big balls (atoms). We can’t play with waves,
        because they are invisible, and also spread out like their fields everywhere.
        And everybody, without exception, quietly hates the quantum particle-wave duality,
        because it is a paradox difficult to wrap our little monkey brains around.
        .
        In the macroscopic world of our everyday experience, there is a clear and
        obvious division between matter (atoms) and energy (waves).
        .
        In the sub-atomic world, energy is made of particles, and matter is made of waves,
        and everything can be both, particles and waves, at the same time! :-))
        .
        How much sense does it make to you?
        .
        John complains that no quantum physicist
        can tell him what a quantum subatomic particle
        really is, so he went with classical Maxwell waves instead.
        .

        Prof. Netta Engelhardt, a physicist at MIT, who won a New Horizons in Physics Prize for calculating the quantum information content of black holes, admits with all honesty that the short answer to the question: What sub-atomic particle is? , is:
        .
        “ We don’t know ”
        .
        because, as you can see below, particle physicists are far from any clear consensus:
        .
        “ At the moment that I detect it, it collapses the wave and becomes a particle. The particle is the collapsed wave function.” — Dimitri Nanopoulos
        .
        “ What is a particle from a physicist’s point of view? It’s a quantum excitation of a field. We write particle physics in a math called quantum field theory. In that, there are a bunch of different fields; each field has different properties and excitations, and they are different depending on the properties, and those excitations we can think of as a particle.” — Helen Quinn
        .
        “ Particles are at a very minimum described by irreducible representations of the Poincaré group.” — Sheldon Glashow
        .
        “ Ever since the fundamental paper of Wigner on the irreducible representations of the Poincaré group, it has been a (perhaps implicit) definition in physics that an elementary particle ‘is’ an irreducible representation of the group, G, of ‘symmetries of nature’.” — Yuval Ne’eman and Shlomo Sternberg
        .
        “ Particles have so many layers.” — Xiao-Gang Wen
        .
        “ What we think of as elementary particles, instead they might be vibrating strings.” — Mary Gaillard
        .
        “Every particle is a quantized wave. The wave is a deformation of the qubit ocean.” — Xiao-Gang Wen
        .
        “ ‘Particles’ are what we measure in detectors. We start slipping into the language of saying that it’s the quantum fields that are real, and particles are excitations. We talk about virtual particles, all this stuff — but it does not go click, click, in anyone’s detector.” — Nima Arkani-Hamed https://quantumantigravity.wordpress.com/tao/
        .
        .
        .
        Now, kindly ask John what a classical Maxwell wave really is. :-))
        .
        .
        It is a solution to mathematical equations describing Maxwell’s XIX century
        theory of macroscopic electromagnetism. Nobody knows what macroscopic
        classical electromagnetic waves really are. THERE IS NO : ” really “.
        Period.
        .
        .
        There are only our limited ideas and concepts — thoughts in our small
        monkey brains. Maxwell waves are no better than quantum sub-atomic particles.
        Both are merely conceptual models. And, why THERE IS NO : ” really ” ??
        .

        “ What we observe is not the physical reality in itself,
        but reality exposed to our methods of experimental questioning,
        wrote German quantum physicist Werner Heisenberg, who was the first
        to fathom the uncertainty inherent in quantum physics. To those who
        think of science as a direct path to the truth about reality, this quote
        must be surprising, perhaps even upsetting. Is Heisenberg saying
        that our scientific theories are contingent upon our small limited brains?
        If he is, and we take him seriously, does this mean that what we call
        scientific truth is nothing but a big illusion ? ”
        .
        https://quantumantigravity.wordpress.com/nonmaterial/
        .

        Scientific truth as nothing but a big illusion ? No!
        .
        Scientific truth, as far as it agrees with experiment to a decent degree,
        is a good-enough conceptual working model, an approximate
        map of reality that we will never see as it really is,
        because the best we can do are experiments — using some physical
        phenomena to test other physical phenomena. It is a case of circular
        experimentation, akin to a circular reasoning. A dog chasing its tail. :-))
        .
        “ It is certainly conceivable that the clarity we perceive in the world is something we bring to the world, not something that is there independent of us. The clarity of the natural world is a metaphysical belief that we unconsciously impose on the situation. We consider it to be obvious that the natural world is something exterior of us and independent of our thoughts and sense impressions; we believe in a mind-independent reality. Paradoxically, we do not recognize that the belief in a mind-independent reality is itself mind-dependent. Logically, we cannot work our way free of the bubble we live in, which consists of all of our sense impression and thoughts. The pristine world of clarity, the natural [external] world independent of the observer, is merely a hypothesis that cannot, in principle, ever be verified. To say that the natural world is ambiguous is to highlight this assumption. It is to emphasize that the feeling that there is a natural world ‘out there’ that is the same for all people at all times, is an assumption that is not self-evident. This is not to embrace a kind of solipsism and to deny the reality of the world. It is to emphasize that the natural [external] world is intimately intertwined with the world of the mind.” https://quantumantigravity.wordpress.com/nonmaterial/
        .
        .

  14. Jim Eadon

    @Ziggy I was howling laughing at your reply to my post. Probably the funniest thing I’ve read all year. In fact, I’m still chucking now, even as an onimous thunderstorm rages outside.

    @John D.
    JD: “Yes, when I said “no power”, that was assuming the gravitational field exists.”
    So far you agree with me…

    JD “As for the power to create that gravitational field, now you’re moving the goalposts.”
    No I’m not. I’m demanding you obey the law of conservation of energy, which is utterly fundamental in all physics, olde and new. With no exceptions. It stems, once again, from Newton. Action = reaction, and applies to thermodynamics, QM, everything.

    JD: “You want power to create that gravitational field?”
    The onus is you to balance the books.

    JD: “Here, take a look at Rod Nave’s hyperphysics. “See his electric force example. That’s where he talks about a second’s worth of charge from a 120 watt lightbulb, and about 1.01 million tons of repulsion.”
    Given a lightbulb has zero charge, then “one second’s worth of zero charge” equals… zero charge. Zero charge corresponds to exactly 0.0, aka ZERO tons of “repulsion”.

    “As for laws, I’m not breaking any laws.”
    Yes, you really are.

    JD: “At the event horizon, [light] stops”.
    That’s true ONLY from the external reference frame, and even then, it only happens at time = infinity. From the perspective of the light itself, it DOES enter the black hole.

    JD: “So what’s happened to your photon momentum p=h/λ?”
    The photon’s momentum is perfectly conserved, actually, beacuse it never reaches zero velicity, because light always appears to be going at the speed of light, from ANY relative reference frame! Beware extrapolating to infinity, because things break at infinity. We do not have a theory of physics that behaves well at infinity.

    “Now think accretion disk and remind yourself that nothing can move faster than light. So what’s happened to your angular momentum? It’s gone, Jim.”
    No it hasn’t. It’s still there. The overall angular momentum of the system is ALWAYS conserved, with NO exceptions. Note even black holes preserve angular momentum, as a quantity known as “spin”. Incidentally, A spinning black hole behaves differently from a non-spinning black hole. And that spin increases when a rotating acretion disk material enters the black hole. (We never see matter fall in, because time at the event horizen appears, from OUR frame of reference, to stop, a subtle paradox.)

    JD “This is physics Jim, but not as you know it”
    It’s not physics at all, John.
    My point still stands, unrefuted. In order to change the angular momentum of any item, you must provide the energy to do it, in conformance to Newtons laws. We’re not even dealing here with relativistic physics, where Einsteins equations take over from Newton’s laws of motion. To get to relativistic physics in the context of accellerating a spacecraft, you need extremely, staggeringly vast sums of energy, and you aint going to store that much energy, as potential energy, on a flying craft.
    So, John, until yiou can balance the energy and angular momentum books, your UFO engine is pure fantasy. You can create an energy field to change your momentum, but, to do so, you must power up that energy field with roughly the same amount of energy as would be provided by, say, rocket engine fuel to do the same job.
    You get owt for nowt, as they say in Yorkshire.

  15. Jim Eadon

    JD “The photon’s momentum is perfectly conserved”
    CLARIFICATION
    The context of this is:
    JD “At the event horizon, it stops. So what’s happened to your photon momentum p=h/λ?”
    THAT never happens, because the photon would have to travel for an infinite time first before reaching the event horizon, and even then ONLY from our frame of reference. From the frame of reference of ANYTHING that falls into a black hole, then it’s a different story. It just falls in, and does not notice the event horizon!
    So, the photon is always travelling at C for ALL observers.
    As for the momentum, the overall energy of the system is preserved. So if the momentum of the photon changes, then the momentum of the black hole changes – Newton’s action = reaction again.

    1. The Physics Detective

      Jim: THAT never happens, because the photon would have to travel for an infinite time first before reaching the event horizon, and even then ONLY from our frame of reference. From the frame of reference of ANYTHING that falls into a black hole, then it’s a different story. It just falls in, and does not notice the event horizon!
      .
      I’m sorry Jim, but that’s just wrong. See https://physicsdetective.com/black-holes/ where I talked about MTW and the chart where the infalling body somehow manages to cross the event horizon at time t = infinity. I also talk about the elephant and the event horizon where the elephant is in two places at once. And about the schoolboy error in Kruskal-Szekeres coordinates that claims that a stopped observer sees a stopped clock ticking. It’s like the dead parrot sketch, where the shopkeeper claims a dead customer sees the dead parrot squawking and swinging on his perch. It’s science fiction based upon an ersatz version of General Relativity that flatly contradicts the original.
      .
      As for action and reaction, let’s use some science fiction for that. I use a Star-Trek transporter to send you to a point in space 93 million miles from a star. You start falling towards the star. But the star doesn’t know you’re there for 8 minutes. What happened to your reaction then? It doesn’t matter, because gravity is local. You fall down because your local space is inhomogeneous, and because of the wave nature of matter. Not because of some magical mysterious action-at-a-distance pull across 93 million miles of space.

      Edit: sorry, I’ve only just noticed your other comments. I’ll get back to you on them, but it will have to be tomorrow I’m afraid.

      1. Jim Eadon

        John, I have degrees in this stuff, and your interpretation of the equations is wrong.
        In the real world, photons do not stop. Ever. Also, in the real world, “Time” never stops.Ever. FACT.
        To achieve these impossible things, you need infinite time or energy. And the Einstein equations themselves fail when you plug infinity into them. Infinitity in: infinity out. FAIL.
        An amateur mistake is to make statements about physics based on what happens under conditions that have terms set to infinity. This is where you got confused.

        As for your star analogy, there is no paradox here. “But the star doesn’t know you’re there for 8 minutes”. So what? The gravitational field the star generates detects you. The field, virtual gravitons, so to speak, in your viscinity, interacts with you (your mass). Those interactions are the “reaction”, and that reaction then affects the star once the field ripples you caused reaches the star. But the “reaction” is with the field, and then the field affects the star later. Action equals Reaction holds. The einstein equations conform to Action equals reaction. And I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make.

        Sorry, but it does not. You do not seem to understand what the word “Relativity” in Einsteins General Relativity means.

        1. Zbigniew Modrzejewski

          Jim Eadon, 30 JUN 2021 REPLY
          ” John, I have degrees in this stuff, and your interpretation of the equations is wrong.”
          .
          Jim, your reasoning is excellent. Very clear and simple. Always in agreement with true Laws of physics. No point in trying to go around any true Laws. Otherwise, any pseudo-scientific fantasy goes.
          .
          .
          Jim Eadon — ” In the real world, photons do not stop. ”
          .
          Also, photons go slow through a denser physical medium, but once they pass into less dense physical medium, they speeds up! They could not do it having an inertial mass.
          .
          Therefore, photon’s momentum and energy is not equivalent of its non-existent inertial mass.
          .
          Perhaps inertial and gravitational mass being equal, still have essentially different natures, or aspects ?!
          .
          .

          1. Jim Eadon

            Hi Ziggy,
            Thanks for your reply. I totally agree, we must be clear and simple, as the laws of physics are the same 🙂 (more or less…) 🙂
            “Also, photons go slow through a denser physical medium”
            There is a subtle technical point here. In a material, what happens is, the photons are continually absorbed by eletrons etc. in the material. Then those excited electrons relax, emitting a new photon.
            The photons are always travelling at the speed of light. But their destruction, then a pause (excited electrons state), then a new photon emitted slows down the overall light beam. Light takes longer due to photons being destroyed and new ones created. It’s literally not the same photons coming out as went in.
            Long story short, photos are ALWAYS moving at one speed. “C”.
            HTH

        2. the physics detective

          John, I have degrees in this stuff, and your interpretation of the equations is wrong.
          .
          No, it isn’t. The “modern” general relativity you’ve been taught flatly contradicts Einstein, and is wrong on multiple counts. Even you must have noticed the contradictions in black hole physics? It all starts with the speed of light. Einstein said the speed of light varies with gravitational potential, Modern relativity says the speed of light is constant, and it’s all downhill from there. Read my articles on gravity and cosmology.
          .
          In the real world, photons do not stop. Ever. Also, in the real world, “Time” never stops. Ever. FACT.
          .
          Not so. In the real world we have black holes. A black hole is a place where the thing you call the “coordinate” speed of light, is zero. That’s actually the speed of light. So a black hole is a place where photons stop. And where time stops. I see you’ve commented on the black hole article.
          .
          To achieve these impossible things, you need infinite time or energy. And the Einstein equations themselves fail when you plug infinity into them. Infinity in: infinity out. FAIL.
          .
          That’s a straw man argument. Read what I said about Einstein saying a black hole is a place where a clock goes at a rate of zero.
          .
          An amateur mistake is to make statements about physics based on what happens under conditions that have terms set to infinity. This is where you got confused.
          .
          I am not confused. Not in the least. Because I’ve read the Einstein digital papers, whilst the general relativity you’ve been taught flatly contradicts Einstein and is wrong on multiple counts.
          .
          As for your star analogy, there is no paradox here. “But the star doesn’t know you’re there for 8 minutes”. So what? The gravitational field the star generates detects you. The field, virtual gravitons, so to speak, in your vicinity, interacts with you (your mass). Those interactions are the “reaction”, and that reaction then affects the star once the field ripples you caused reaches the star. But the “reaction” is with the field, and then the field affects the star later. Action equals Reaction holds. The Einstein equations conform to Action equals reaction. And I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make.
          .
          Don’t try to move the goalposts again. My point is crystal clear, and you know it. You’re moving towards the star, but the star isn’t moving towards you. Simple. Please don’t try and resort to “virtual gravitons”. Virtual particles are virtual, they do not exist. Instead please try to understand the mechanism by which light curves and matter falls down, and then apply it to a black hole. You will find that the mechanism just isn’t there for a black hole.
          .
          Sorry, but it does not. You do not seem to understand what the word “Relativity” in Einsteins General Relativity means.
          .
          I do. I also understand how gravity works, because Einstein explained most of it. Sorry Jim, but you don’t. You think light curves because spacetime is curved, don’t you? That’s not what Einstein said, and it’s wrong.

          1. Jim Eadon

            JD: “Not so. In the real world we have black holes. A black hole is a place where the thing you call the “coordinate” speed of light, is zero. That’s actually the speed of light. So a black hole is a place where photons stop. And where time stops. ”

            That’s where you’re wrong, you see. Your mistake is very simple. You’re ignoring the existence of General Relativity reference frames, which are the entire essence of relativitiy. I pointed it out, but you ignored my point.
            Let me help you to understand.
            REFERENCE FRAME A: Point of view (POV) of something crossing the event horizon. From that POV, time does NOT slow down at all. The object continues through the event horizon in freefall. (For a roomy “big” black hole a person could fall through and not notice anything unusual at the even horizon).
            So, time does NOT stop at this “place” for Reference Frame A.

            Reference Frame B:
            POV of someone outside the black hole, watching the accretion disk. It’s in THIS POV that they see matter slow down just before the event horizon. For them, nothing ever falls into the hole. Note, that, also, nothing ever reaches the event horizon at all! Nothing reaches that “place” where time stops. Every single photon that this observer sees is travelling at exactly C.
            QED.

            “That’s a straw man argument.”
            No it’s not. The general relativity equations do break down with infinite inputs. You get absurd answers, you start doing arithmetic with infinite numbers…

            So, John, you must go back to the drawing board, and this time draw some frames of reference. 🙂

            “My point is crystal clear, and you know it. You’re moving towards the star, but the star isn’t moving towards you. Simple. Please don’t try and resort to “virtual gravitons”. Virtual particles are virtual, they do not exist. Instead please try to understand the mechanism by which light curves and matter falls down, and then apply it to a black hole. You will find that the mechanism just isn’t there for a black hole.”

            John, no goal posts were moved. You’re ignoring the star’s gravitational field. That field is extensive, and it reacts to anything that has mass or energy. Saying that there is no reaction because the star does not move instantly is naive. There IS a reaction, the reaction is, the energy field has changed state, in a way that exactly reacts to the action upon it. (Later on this same energy field perturbation reaches the star, and then the star reacts, by moving. As for virtual particles, they do exist, in the sense they are quantum fluctuations in the quantum field (as described by Quantum Field Theory (QFT).

            “I also understand how gravity works, because Einstein explained most of it”
            If you understand it, then why do you write incorrect statements about it?

            “You think light curves because spacetime is curved, don’t you? That’s not what Einstein said, and it’s wrong.”
            Depending on mathematical definition, and POV, Light does not “curve”, it travels in straight lines, called geodesics. The mathematics says that those geodesics appear curved from the perspective of certain observers if spacetime is not Euclidean.
            Can you make an experiment that proves that spacetime is Euclidean? If you can, then, congrats, you win a nobel prize. Otherwise, you’re just talking philosophy. Time slowing down (an ugly idea, how fast does time go? 1 second per second) vs curved space-time, a more natural, and mathematically precise idea, that is 100% conistent with experiment.

    1. the physics detective

      I’ll take a look Jack. Thanks for the info.

    2. Zbigniew Modrzejewski

      ENGINEERING THE FABRIC OF SPACETIME
      .
      ” There is sufficient credible evidence of UFOs that proves exotic technologies exist that could change the world. We are aiming to build a spaceship that turns into a ball of light, and disappears, and that can travel instantaneously through space by means of engineering the fabric of spacetime. Most call it antigravity, but we are aiming to engineer spacetime itself. No one person, one government, nor one hidden institution should own this technology. Invest now, and own technology that will seem like majic. ”
      — Tom DeLonge
      .
      https://quantumantigravity.wordpress.com/WARP-DRIVE/
      .

    3. Zbigniew Modrzejewski

      Dear Dr. Sarfatti,
      It was a fascinating video!
      .
      https://vimeo.com/554469177
      .
      Thank you!
      .
      .
      Are you sure that the actual physical time-travel is possible?
      .
      I think that the actual physical time-travel is NOT possible, because time simply isn’t an autonomous physical phenomenon, or a physical entity existing in its own right. It is merely an abstraction represented and embodied in a form of physical device that we call a clock. And a clock, essentially, is a miniature merry-go-round that does not measure anything physically real.
      .
      For time to be a physical phenomenon, it would have to be made of something physical, like matter or energy.
      .
      So, before we start building our time-machine, it would be nice to answer this simple practical question: WHAT TIME IS MADE OF ??
      .
      Once we have a precise answer, what particular physical “stuff” time is made of, then it will be much more clear to us how exactly are we supposed to engineer it :
      ,
      https://quantumantigravity.wordpress.com/gravitational-waves/
      .
      Also, I would imagine that no matter how exotic meta-materials could theoretically be, at the end of the day, they are made of normal atoms.
      .
      And once we remove all enthusiastic labels, like “exotic” or “meta” that are supposed to be physical causes of the expected magic, we will see that normal atoms produce gravity, and that normal atoms have nothing to do with time-travel.
      .
      Honestly, I am holding my breath, while waiting to be proven wrong, because from the bottom of my heart, I wish humanity, at least, colonize the Solar System.

      And while I have been waiting, I discovered how exactly gravity is being produced by atoms, and based on that, I invented a real working Anti-gravity Space Propulsion Engine — the SpaceDrive — open to critical examination and cheap experimentation:
      .
      https://quantumantigravity.wordpress.com/experiments/
      .
      .

    4. Jim Eadon

      “https://vimeo.com/554469177”
      Hi Jack, in your video you say that the surfer is not really moving relative to the water that he’s around, he’s moving with the water.
      Meanwhile, when I look at the surfer, he actually IS moving relative to the water. His board is rushing over the stuff.
      “It’s controlling the way that space is warping”
      RED FLAG. To use your surfar analogy, that would be like the surfer controlling the waves. That would, of course, require an amazing quantity of energy – to move the waves.
      Then you say, “it does it with small amounts of energy”.
      Well, if you put small amounts of energy in, expect a small effect on the craft.
      This concept is ancient, and is called the relativistic warp drive, and phycisists have shown that it requires immence amounts of energy.
      I stopped watching at this point. Best,
      Jim

  16. Andy G

    Hi john.

    Found you completely by accident whilst tumbleweeding through the webverse.
    Glad i did.
    This article made me both laugh and think.
    Two activities i think the majority of we humans would benefit from engaging with on a more regular basis.

    Looks like you have a new reader.
    I’ll be back.
    Andy,
    a.k.a. Meanderthal

    1. The Physics Detective

      Hi Andy. Glad you liked it. You might not laugh so much at the next one, so here’s something to make up for that:
      .
      ” alt=”” />
      .
      For some reason your comment made me think of the movie Outlander, which I watched again last night:
      .
      A spacecraft crashes in a lake in Vendel-era Scandinavia (550-790). The only surviving occupant – a humanoid alien – retrieves a distress beacon and a computer which explains that he is on Earth, a “seed” colony that his people have abandoned…
      .
      I think it’s a great movie. The Earth is labelled a failed colony, which gives me pause for thought, as do the low-budget aliens in Star Trek. Parallel evolution is quite remarkable. For example the Saber-toothed tiger has evolved more than once.

  17. Doug C

    Engineering the drive

    So the idea would be to create a black hole in front of you, have that pull you forward, then recapture the black hole, repeat as necessary. The saving grace is that the block hole breaks momentum conservation and recapturing it retrieves the energy you used to create it. Maybe cycle it really fast so you don’t get destroyed or get too close.

    Now the question is how do you do this? I haven’t seen any speculations to manipulate space in a new way to achieve this… but I do like all the physics you have speculated about…

    Also you can’t go full black hole, just close to the limit, so momentum conservation can be violated. (It seems that as you slow light down significantly that object will react to gravity less since the speed of light is much slower for the matter within the object. If I’ve been following your posts correctly. Perhaps this effect could be detected with astronomy data, or LIGO, seeing if extremely dense objects don’t react to gravity that well. Or neutron binaries are a different mass than we think since we calculate their mass by their rotation rate? ),

    I diverge, anyway, a black hole with enough gravity to pull a ship forward would be massive and require an energy source of similar density as the black hole.

    So, perhaps a high frequency EM field would suffice. Dump enough energy onto the skin of the ship in the direction you want to move. If you can create dense enough pockets of highly energetic electrons all over the outer skin if the ship, right next to the protons in the hull, maybe you can get it to pull you in that direction….
    And now the navy patent makes more sense?

      1. Doug C

        Sorry about the double post.
        Thanks John! and thank you so much for your explanation of gravity, the universe makes a lot more sense than the way I was taught physics. I went down the rabbit hole and read all your articles on here and it’s much more convincing than any particle physics books I’ve read. Best physics I’ve learned in a long time! If I’m understanding you correctly, there is an aether, it’s just very hard to detect because of special relativity. Wouldn’t this mean there really is a frame of rest, like the one oumuamua was in?

        That image you reference is exactly what I am referring to. You can’t have a black hole because then that matter is essentially frozen out and you can’t get it back. You also need extremely close distances to have gravity be strong enough at reasonable energy costs. And you need dense enough pockets of mass to break momentum conservation so you can move without a propellent. It’s just how the hell do you do that!

        Perhaps a superconducting outer skin would allow you to create ultra dense electron pockets. Perhaps you need to apply a large voltage and squeeze them with a magnetic pinch as well, idk.

        But if you could create an experiment to shown an effect, bam, you’ve broken momentum conservation, and .. free energy may be possible, etc. Like an EM drive experiment, except with some reasonable theory behind how it could actually work.

        For example, a Planck mass at one angstrom gives you 133 m/s^2 of acceleration, if my math is correct.
        Imagine your ‘drive’ consisting of a hull 1 atom thick, you’d have to dump something like 10^20 it’s mass in electrons on it to have a Planck mass for every proton in the hull, impossible!

        1. The physics detective

          My pleasure Doug, and thanks. I think a lot of physics seems to be badly taught. For one thing it’s “all maths and no physics” according to my nephew. For another general relativity as taught now is not true to the original, in some very important ways. Then classical electromagnetism seems to ignore Maxwell’s unification. As for quantum field theory and the Standard model, that doesn’t just ignore general relativity and classical electromagnetism, it ignores the hard scientific evidence too, and E=mc². But my formal physics education goes up to A level only, so I’m no expert on this.
          .
          Yes, there is an aether. It’s space. It isn’t nothing. A field is a state of space. It’s hard to detect because of the wave nature of matter. A photon is just a wave in space, and gamma-gamma pair production plus other evidence tells you the electron is too. So detecting this aether is rather like trying to measure the length of your shadow with the shadow of your stick. It always measures the same. I don’t think special relativity really brings this out actually. It gives you some rules to tell you what you WILL measure, but it doesn’t say why. Plus I think there’s too much emphasis on spacetime, which came from Minkowski, not Einstein. Einstein gave us equations of motion. We live in a world of space and motion. Spacetime is the map, but the map is not the territory.
          .
          Yes, I think there is a frame of rest. The CMBR reference frame. It’s the reference frame of the whole universe. We can gauge our motion through the universe using that. It’s 627±22 km/s in some particular direction. See Wikipedia and https://www.astro.ubc.ca/people/scott/faq_basic.html . Sorry, I don’t know about Oumuamua, but I note this in the Wikipedia article: “This interstellar speed is very close to the mean motion of material in the Milky Way in the neighborhood of the Sun, also known as the local standard of rest (LSR), and especially close to the mean motion of a relatively close group of red dwarf stars”.
          .
          Good stuff about that image. I don’t think conservation of momentum matters much really. The guys who built the Goodyear blimp don’t worry about that. But of course when it comes to lifting something the size of a cruise ship, yes, I think the issue is how the hell do you do it? But if you can do it, even if it’s just a demonstration of the effect, even if it’s with something as insignificant as a paper clip, there is a way that you can obtain “free” energy. It isn’t really free of course, in that conservation of energy cannot be breached. But it’s as good as free. So much so, that you won’t be thinking about fusion any more, or dreaming of that red hot pipe thing that you can’t cool down. Note that displacement current is more fundamental than conduction current, and displacement current is merely a change in electromagnetic potential. So, how do you manipulate the latter? Ehrenberg and Siday did it, in a small way. See the Aharonov-Bohm effect.

  18. Doug C

    Engineering the drive

    So the idea would be to create a black hole in front of you, have that pull you forward, then recapture the black hole, repeat as necessary. The saving grace is that the block hole breaks momentum conservation and recapturing it retrieves the energy you used to create it. Maybe cycle it really fast so you don’t get destroyed or get too close.

    Now the question is how do you do this? I haven’t seen any speculations to manipulate space in a new way to achieve this… but I do like all the physics you have speculated about…

    Also you can’t go full black hole, just close to the limit, so momentum conservation can be violated. (It seems that as you slow light down significantly that object will react to gravity less since the speed of light is much slower for the matter within the object. If I’ve been following your posts correctly. Perhaps this effect could be detected with astronomy data, or LIGO, seeing if extremely dense objects don’t react to gravity that well. Or neutron binaries are a different mass than we think since we calculate their mass by their rotation rate? ),

    I diverge, anyway, a black hole with enough gravity to pull a ship forward would be massive and require an energy source of similar density as the black hole.

    So, perhaps a high frequency EM field would suffice. Dump enough energy onto the skin of the ship in the direction you want to move. If you can create dense enough pockets of highly energetic electrons all over the outer skin if the ship, right next to the protons in the hull, maybe you can get it to pull you in that direction….

    And now the navy patent makes more sense?

  19. Jeremy

    Your UFO story struck a nerve with me.

    My dad (now 80s), when he was a young man, lived in Nuneaton. He has kept weather records since he was 6 years old, and has always spent half his life looking at the sky and clouds. His first job was a painter/decorator in his dad’s business, so he was outside a lot.

    This was probably around 1960. One time, looking at the sky, he saw a bright silver object. It sat there for a considerable time, not moving at all, then suddenly he saw it move off at high speed and disappear.

    The object was seen by others, and made it into the Nuneaton and Borough Evening Tribune.

    This is not much of a story, but my dad is an immensely sober man who is not given to making up this kind of thing.

    1. The Physics Detective

      Thanks Jeremy. I think there’s been too many instances of sighting like this dismiss UFOs. What annoys me is when some skeptic says “Ok it was just a lenticular cloud” or “Oh it was just the planet Venus”.

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