Just my physics idea..
Getting to space is hard..
If humans are to travel to other stars, we need a completely new unimagined propulsion system. Although our industries are trying to transition to cleaner fuels, rocket fuel will likely continue to be used as the best means of leaving Earth’s gravity. But once in orbit, we no longer need very powerful engines, just efficient ones, which is why most rockets are made up of two stages; an upper stage usually carrying a single space vacuumed optimised engine, and the lower stage (1st stage) doing the bulk of the work in getting to space.
Once in orbit, only small pushes translates to big distances since there is no air to slow you down, but the distance to the next star is almost infinite away when compared to the distance to our moon. Thousands of years can pass before reaching the nearest star.
Every engine is based on the physics principle that you need to throw something out of the back as to get moving forward. With rockets, they use compressed gas, and ignited it as it travels through the engine so that burst out with maximum energy. The problem is that fuel is heavy and takes up a lot of space, if you want to go far, you need bigger rockets as to carry the extra fuel.
It would be nice if a potential craft could extract energy from space itself, and some do, using onboard solar panels paired with an ion drive engine, which is basically something that spits out electricity in the form of ions. Doesn’t produce a lot of power, but its efficient and does get used to guide a craft in the right direction.
My Ideas…
I have two completely separate ideas for a new propulsion system that uses possible quirks in physics. Warning: You will need at least some basic understanding of physics and a good amount of patients and focus..
Quirk 1 : Electromagnetism travels at the speed of light
Electromagnetism travels at the speed of light because both are the same thing, nothing new here, but we can possibly use the delay in travel time to our benefit..
Imagine two electro-magnets (air core solenoids) about 10cm apart aimed at each other. We turn one of them on, and are able to watch the magnetism propagate in slow motion. The moment the magnetism reaches the second electro-magnet, we turn this on (in manner in which it attracts, and turn the first one off). Am I correct in that only the second one would move towards the first one?
As the magnetism from the second electro-magnetic propagates back to the first one, the first one in turned on, but in an opposite current, creating repulsion, (while the other electro-magnetic is turn off). Am I correct in that now only the electro-magnetic which is on is being repelled?
ie. would putting this setup on a single platform, and oscillating the power in this manner (at around 3ghz?) could generate one directional movement?
Quirk 2 : Electrostatic attraction could be curved
Having one positively charged plate and one negatively charged plate will create an attraction force between them. What happens when a dielectric plate is put partially between them. Does the attraction move around the dielectric plate making the attraction off-centre? If so, then such a device on craft would make the device move in the opposite direction of the dielectric material. Voltage would have to be increased as to create a significant force, but would expect it would charge the available space and pull the craft towards it. It maybe the problem with this idea is that the dielectric object also feels a force being applied, which could cancel out these forces. But a dielectric material responding to charges would seem odd.
Why publish here:
I’m publishing these ideas because I cant find any material on the internet about this and no category to which to publish this to. So if/when its discovered in the future, I can at least say I thought of it first! ~~~~ Seb Gibbs 7 Feb 2023 (23:00+1000) ~~~~
Some background
The first idea came to me about 6 months ago when thinking generally too hard about electromagnetism, and have already tried to talking to people in forums without any success. My posts just deleted from physics forums for ridiculous reasons like well it hasn’t been tested and another was that apparently I proposing an engineering question! The second idea came to me just this evening while thinking again about how the “ion lifter” works. I don’t think the lift is coming from ions at all as it still works on AC power. I think it works because of the upper conductor being smaller and causing an over saturation of photon space in that region. This would change the attraction between to the two poles as to bend upwards.
