[extropy-chat] unidirectional thrust

[Damien Broderick]

At 08:43 PM 3/14/2005 -0800, spike wrote:


>[I sez:] the equal
> > and opposite force goes into the magnet which is bolted to the floor and
> > hence doesn't move because the entire earth takes up the impact.
>
>The earth moves back the other way.  Not very much of
>course, being as it is 6E24 kg, but it reacts the same
>way any mass would.  Momentum is conserved.

Quite so. But the point Mike wants to assert, I gather, is that his 
favorite gadget kicks against the entire unimaginably massive Machian frame 
of the universe, thereby extracting momentum and having its way with it. 
More fashionably, perhaps one might imagine doing this magic against the 
bulk brane substrate of M Theory (or something equally audacious). The 
proponents cited by Mike do use such wishful phrases as 
`electrogravitational coupling'...

Damien Broderick