Historical research guide · 0985 · 2012
The Morningstar Energy Box
Paul Murad · Morgan Boardman · John Brandenburg · Jonathan McCabe · Wayne Mitzen
In one minute
John Searl’s rotating magnetic device, and the version of it built by the Russian researchers Godin and Roschin, are two of the most-repeated stories in the anomalous-propulsion literature — and hardly anyone has built one. Paul Murad, Morgan Boardman, John Brandenburg, Jonathan McCabe and Wayne Mitzen built one, ran it, weighed it and took the numbers to the AIAA aerospace sciences meeting in January 2012. Their machine, the Morningstar Energy Box, is a main ring carrying a ferromagnetic fluid with laminated rollers running around it, the rollers held in place by a mechanical cage. Their account of how it works uses rotating electromagnetic fields and differs from both earlier ones. The Russian team had reported losing up to 35 percent of the weight of a 375-kilogram armature. The Energy Box, weighing 190 pounds, showed a few pounds at steady state in early runs, tens of pounds while the rotation was changing, and 14 pounds — 7.3 percent — in a final series.
Connection
Chapter 8 is about reducing the inertia and weight of a machine by the fields it carries rather than by throwing mass out of the back, and this is one of the few cases where a team actually built the disputed hardware, weighed it and published the numbers at a mainstream aerospace meeting; chapter 11 collects the rotating-field and superconductor weight-change experiments this one belongs with.
From the source
The Morningstar Energy Box is a derivative of the Searl device and of the variant built by the Russian scientists Godin and Roschin: laminated rollers and a main ring with ferromagnetic fluid are used to enhance the electrical and magnetic properties, and the rollers are constrained by a mechanical cage.Abstract, sentences 1 and 2; AIAA 2012-0998
The operational theory the authors give for the Energy Box uses rotating electromagnetic fields, and is different from either Searl’s account or the Russian one — the nomenclature of the paper is the ordinary vocabulary of field theory, magnetic field, electric field, current and Poynting vector.Abstract, sentence 3; nomenclature list
The claims being tested are stated plainly: the Russian team reported self-acceleration sufficient to generate electricity, a large weight loss when the device was spun in one direction and a weight gain when it was spun in the other, and discrete magnetic walls around the machine. The authors record that at the time of writing no one had validated them.Abstract, sentences 4 and 5
The Energy Box found a similar phenomenon regarding the discrete magnetic walls, and saw both weight gain and weight loss, although not at the same magnitude as the earlier reports.Abstract, sentence 6
The numbers are given directly. Against a reported loss of as much as 35 percent of the weight of a 375-kilogram armature, the Energy Box in an early test lost only 2 to 5 pounds of its 190 pounds at steady state; during transient changes of rotation the weight change reached 20 to 40 pounds; and a last test series recorded a weight loss of 14 pounds, a 7.3 percent change, at steady state.Abstract, sentences 7 to 9
What to watch: the authors conclude that they saw phenomena similar to the earlier reports as well as a loss of weight, and that the device may represent an advanced propulsion scheme for space travel. The measurement that would settle it is an independent build weighed on a calibrated balance that carries the whole apparatus and its mount, with the thermal, buoyancy and magnetic-coupling paths to the scale characterised before the run and the rotation direction reversed within the same session.Abstract, final sentence
The way in
https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2012-998How to cite it
Paul Murad, Morgan Boardman, John Brandenburg, Jonathan McCabe, Wayne Mitzen (2012) The Morningstar Energy Box doi:10.2514/6.2012-998