Theory of a Mach Effect Thruster

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1. The Mach effect thruster uses Mach’s principle — the statement that the inertia of a body is the result of the gravitational interaction of that body with the rest of the mass-energy in the universe — to produce a constant acceleration in a device undergoing internal energy changes and mass fluctuations. It requires no propellant, needing only 100 to 200 watts of electric power, and the thrusts at present are on the order of a few micro-newtons.Abstract and Introduction

2. The operating principle is to push on the object while its fluctuating mass is larger and pull back while it is smaller, which produces a steady linear acceleration detectable in the laboratory. Rapid energy fluctuations are made by applying high alternating voltages to a stack of lead-zirconium-titanate dielectric crystals, whose piezoelectric and electrostrictive properties also force the stack to accelerate. Simply charging and discharging a capacitor will not do it — only the ordinary energy-over-c-squared mass change appears unless the capacitor is also undergoing bulk accelerations.Section A, The MET Experiment

3. The device tested was eight discs of lead-zirconium-titanate, two millimetres thick and nineteen millimetres across, glued together with an embedded accelerometer, clamped between a 4.5 millimetre aluminium cap and a 16 millimetre brass disc and bolted inside a Faraday cage on a sensitive torsion balance. Driven at its 39.3 kilohertz resonance at 185 volts, drawing about 170 watts, it produced a clear thrust of just over two micro-newtons across a fourteen-second pulse.Section A, with Figs. 3 and 4

4. Spurious signals are removed by running the device facing forward on the balance beam and then reversed, by rotating the Faraday cage through 180 degrees, averaging a dozen runs each way and taking the difference, so that every thrust signal which does not reverse cancels. Thermal expansion is excluded because the six stainless steel bolts hold the stack under compression and the aluminium and brass expand faster than the ceramic, and Dean drive bearing vibration is excluded because it would not reverse and so averages to zero.Section A, run protocol and control tests

5. Woodward’s mass fluctuation formula can be derived from the linearised Einstein field equations written in Maxwell-like gravito-electromagnetic form, by taking the momentum form of the geodesic equation and allowing the rest mass to vary with time — a route the authors obtained independently three ways. The result adds to the ordinary Poisson equation two mass-fluctuation terms, one in the square of the first time derivative of the mass and one in its second time derivative, together with a term in the square of the acceleration over the square of the speed of light.Section B, New derivation of the Woodward mass change equation, Eq. (27)

6. The linearised theory can produce the mass fluctuation but cannot explain how the accelerating device and the rest of the universe exchange momentum, so the authors turn to the Hoyle-Narlikar theory of gravitation, a fully Machian direct-particle theory in which mass arises only from interaction with all other mass, written in terms of half-retarded and half-advanced mass waves and reducing to Einstein’s field equations in the smooth-fluid limit. Its extra terms reproduce Woodward’s mass fluctuation terms up to numerical factors of three and four. Hawking’s 1965 objection — that advanced waves blueshift to infinite energy in an expanding universe — is answered by admitting negative energy density, which is what present-day cosmology already attributes to dark energy.Section B, Hoyle and Narlikar, and Conclusions

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How to cite it

Heidi Fearn, James F. Woodward, Keith Wanser (2014) Theory of a Mach Effect Thruster doi:10.2514/6.2014-3821

Where it sits in the curriculum

• Inertial mass reduction, the Navy patents and transmedium craft
• Inertia and gravity from the vacuum