*Gravity and Inertia in General Relativity DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.99760*

It quickly became apparent that the pendulum force detection system has one great advantage over all other force detection systems. It eliminates the significant inertia of the parts of other systems, For example, the significant mass of the beam and counter masses of a torsion balance disappear. All that remains is a few tens of grams for the plastic platform and adjustment screws added to the mass of the support structure. Why is this important? Well, the answer to the Newtonian vibrational artifact hypothesis, from the outset, has been that simple vibration induced in a system by the addition of energy, but no momentum, cannot produce a steady deflection of a force detection method by the conservation of momentum. Only the generation of a real force in the system can produce a steady deflection of force detection apparatus. The counter argument to this obviously correct momentum conservation argument is that induced vibration may produce a stick–slip mechanism in the parts of the system that result in the relative motion of parts of the system, and the motion of the part of the system attached to the force detection apparatus may displace the force sensor. While a transient displacement of a force sensor may result from such action, a steady displacement cannot occur for no steady, real force is generated by this process, and the restoring force of the force detection sensor will quickly re-zero the force sensor. Surprisingly, this obviously correct counter, counter argument has fallen on at least some deaf ears.

The beauty of the pendulum force detection scheme is that with large enough forces, the stick–slip scheme of the Newtonian hypothesis can easily be discriminated from the production of a real force. This is possible because the Mach effect forces in the new devices produce forces large enough (hundreds of micronewtons) to cause displacements of the pendulum on the order of hundreds of microns. The vibrations allegedly responsible for these displacements, however, have amplitudes less than a few hundred nanometers, known by direct observation with a Polytech laser vibrometer. The only way small amplitude vibrations can produce large amplitude displacements is by a stick–slip mechanism. And momentum conservation applied to this mechanism demands that the vibrating device and the support structure move in opposite directions with equal opposite momenta to preserve the location of the center of mass of the system as no net real force is generated. Since the mass of the support structure is roughly half the mass of the device, detection of these motions is a simple matter of simultaneous measurement of the positions of the device and support structure. If especially initially they move in opposite directions, you are looking at a Newtonian artifact. If they move together in the same direction, a real force is being generated in the device.

**Figure 3** shows a device mounted on our pendulum platform with the vacuum chamber and torsion balance in the background in our lab. The positions of the device and support structure are measured with two Philtech position sensors as shown in **Figure 4**. The motion of the pendulum is only very lightly damped by the leads to the thermistor in the cap of the device that records the temperature of the device. In addition to the two position and temperature measurements, the voltage and current in the power circuit were monitored. Data were acquired and displayed with three Picoscopes and a Logitec BRIO webcam that captured the motion of the device in a movie displayed along with the Picoscope outputs, the entire screen being captured with software. A typical composite display screen is shown in **Figure 5**. The record of each run consists of the display screen capture movie and the strip-chart recording of the positions, voltage and temperature of one of the Picoscopes. The display screen movie is used to calibrate the position measurements in the strip-chart for conversion to force measurements.

The strip-chart recording for this run is shown in **Figure 6**. The fuzz on the gray trace of the support structure position has been post-acquisition cleaned up by a 10 Hz low pass digital filter and the temperature trace (green) has been added. Two

## **Figure 3.**

*The pendulum force sensing aparatus. The platform, the triangular green piece of plastic in the center of the picture, is suspended on three monofilament fibers attached at the ceiling of the room.*

important inferences follow immediately from the data in **Figure 6**. First, since the two position sensors track together, it follows that a real force is generated in the MEGA impulse engine. The "level shifts" of the position traces are not consistent with "Newtonian vibrational artifacts". Second, the prompt changes in the position traces at power on and off, allowing for some power on switching transient overshoot, indicate the presence of a steady force during the powered interval – as expected.

Resonances where Mach effect thrust is found, to date, have been located using the frequency sweep function of our Rigol signal generator, the present source of the single frequency sine function that drives a Carvin DCM-2000 power amplifier and 4 to 1 matching transformer. Once a suitable resonance is located, short 5 second constant frequency pulses are used to fine tune the optimal driving frequency.

*Gravity and Inertia in General Relativity DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.99760*

**Figure 4.** *The position sensors are the two steel tubes on the left attached to micrometer stages.*

This procedure will soon be supplanted by the automated routine on a Piezo Drives ultrasonic drivee that also supports resonance tracking.

The force that corresponds to the power-on displacement in **Figure 6** can be computed from the length of the pendulum, 1.85 m, the mass of the "bob", 0.23 kg, and the voltage to distance scale factor determined from the run movie, where for the device trace (red) a displacement of 0.5 mm correspond to a voltage change of 4.5 volt giving 0.11 mm per volt as the scale factor. The "level shift" from the incoming trace to the switching transient at power-on is about 2 volts, so the displacement produced by turning on the force is about 0.22 mm.. The vertical force on the pendulum is mg, or 2.3 newtons. The force that produces the 0.22 mm deflection is just the sine of the deflection angle, 2.2 X 10<sup>4</sup> m divided by 1.85 m, or 1.2 X 10–4. This multiplied times the 2.3 newton force gives 250 micronewtons, a force 250 times larger than the largest forces produced with old style Mach effect thrusters.

### **Figure 5.**

*A screen capture of the display screen for a run in progress. Three Picoscope displays are on the left and a movie of the device is on the right. In the upper left strip-chart recording the red and gray traces are the device and support structure positions, and the blue trace is the rectified voltage across the device. Below the strip-chart are the FFT power spectrum of the current (left, note the prominent first and second harmonics) and the waveform (right, voltage blue and current black traces) displays. The movie on the right is used to calibrate the position traces in the strip-chart so that the positions can be converted to force measurements.*
