If magnetism pervades space, can interaction with these fields generate force for propulsion? These fields are weak but what about extremely powerful superconducting magnets? Even if the force is small it could add up over long periods, and since no mass is needed it would be a "massless" drive that does not violate any physical laws.
Way back in another life I did some calculations similar to that.
I don't remember details anymore, but there were some observations that some (deep space) astronomical object somewhere was accelerating and there were no models at the time that would explain that. I tried to explain it by a magnetic dipole in an non-homogeneous interstellar magnetic field.
If you know the gradients and the dipole moment you can calculate the force on the dipole.
I think it required a magnetar-level dipole to get some non-trivial forces out of the interstellar field. Anyway, I don't know if that theory ever got anywhere. Probably not. I never got any calls back from the people I presented that work to.
A spaceship would have a much lower mass than a star or whatever I was calculating that for, so I guess the requirements would be lower. Still, my gut feeling would be a magnet much beyond what you can do with today's superconductors. It would also only allow a one-way travel along the local field gradient. No round trips.
Hmm... so bottle a magnetar and you get apparently (but not really) "massless" propulsion. All we have to do is bottle a magnetar... umm... without the magnetic field ripping the spacecraft and anything in it to shreds... and do it with quantities of energy small enough to control (and dissipate waste heat) without melting the spacecraft into a blob of liquid metal. Got it. :)
So slightly more imaginable than the Alcubierre drive in that it does not break known laws of physics or require vast quantities of unobtainium (negative mass, lots of antimatter, etc.), but completely impractical with current or foreseeable technology. Might also be fundamentally impractical since the energy/mass requirements to generate a field powerful enough to overcome gravity and other forces acting on the spacecraft might be too large... the thrust/weight ratio math might not work even for micro-gravitational fields.
As with the compass, the orientation of your magnetic dipole against the field is unstable, so now you need a second propulsion system for maintaining the unstable orientation of the dipole.
Reaction wheels saturate and are therefore more suited for precise attitude control than as a source of sustained torque. Once they saturate you need to unload the accumulated momentum via some other mechanism. Thus, you do need a second propulsion system such as thrusters, light sail etc.
You can take the momentum back out of the wheels by rolling the magnet to the other side of the unstable equilibrium so that the wheels have to accelerate in the opposite direction to keep it steady.
For similar reason you can't use Earth's magnetic field to lift stuff - it's so weak you need impractically strong magnet (note) and/or impractically big and at the same time lightweight structure.
(note) and it must not be permanent magnet, as the sibling explains - you must vary the magnetic field to "convert it" into electric field which then does the lift
Electric fields do the work there. A charged particle in a magnetic field feels a force (Lorenz force) that act perpendicularly to its velocity. But work is only work if the force is applied in the direction of its velocity. Essentially it's changing its direction of momentum, but not its magnitude.
On the other hand, some magnetic fields (not all) can be transformed into electric fields by a change of reference frame. In that case, the electric field can be used to do work. But I don't believe that's possible on these scales.
Electrostatic would be a better choice. A great example I've seen is on the Hyperphysics website. It calculates two electrons with like charges of 1 Coulomb for 1 second repel each other with a million tons of force.
edit: For magnetism I believe the force comes from virtual photons maybe electrostatic is on a different scale, either bigger or smaller.
everybody on 4chan /sci was talking about this a few weeks ago. seems like you can get incredible thrust from solar wind that increases proportionally with radius from the sun for constant acceleration, all with a small standard electric motor. upon cursory investigation by me it seems sorta legit. needs testing beyond earth orbit but ground tests are reported to be successful.
Bit of a tangent, but I was curious about the circle lake in that picture of LOFAR[1]. That can't be naturally occurring can it? It looks like a moat, and I see lots of irrigation channels nearby. But maybe it was carved by a glacier. There's another LOFAR location[2] next to a park that has a lot of glacial lakes in it.
Looks like it was placed in a normal agricultural field in the Netherlands. It is mostly long patches with "moats" at the sides (irrigation) like all the other ones around that location. And they made sure cows could not get on it by making it surrounded by a bigger patch of water as the observational stuff is placed in a circle, I guess. But this is a non-educated opinion based on observation only.
It's very common to see these water ditches in the Netherlands, since 1/3 of the country is below sea level. Land rescued from water is called a polder: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polder
>"One method, pioneered by the English scientist Michael Faraday back in 1845,
detects a magnetic field from the way it rotates the polarization direction of light passing through it.
The amount of “Faraday rotation” depends on the strength of the magnetic field and the frequency of the light. So by measuring the polarization at different frequencies, you can infer the strength of magnetism along the line of sight. “If you do it from different places you can make a 3D map,” said Enßlin."
This has been a popular fringe scientific theory for many years under the title Electric Universe Theory. Fringe for sure, but its lead proponents tend to be real scientists referencing real, peer-reviewed literature.
>This has been a popular fringe scientific theory for many years under the title Electric Universe Theory.
They're not at all related.
>but its lead proponents tend to be real scientists referencing real, peer-reviewed literature.
They have real PhDs, some of them from respectable universities, but it's an incestuous group that has people not participate in studies so they can all peer review each other in "journals" with no real standing.
If I read it correctly, it only eliminates the conflict between a couple different ways to measure the rate of expansion in the early universe. Dark energy is about the rate accelerating over time, which is a different thing. I do wish they had addressed it explicitly.
