The Triune Brain and Inventors' Squabbling

The Triune Brain concept, popularized by Carl Sagan, may be able to explain the squabbling amongst inventors, such as that between Tesla and Edison over the basic nature of power generating and transmission systems, and among the greats of the early days of electronics, who sometimes got into quite abusive confrontations. The decision as to who thought of what first and who implemented some concept physically first, seemed to reduce the very brainy innovative functioning mind down to something resembling pre-schoolers fighting over who owns which toys.

What brings this subject up again to me right now, is a post on yahoogroups solar power satellite place forum, by Mark Reiff. The post tells about a type of spacecraft propulsion system that seems to violate Newtonian Physics. http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/solarpowersatelliteplace/message/407 in which he refers in turn to an article in Wired Magazine
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-02/06/emdrive-and-cold-fusion The post declares that working demonstration devices have been made of a "propellant-less reaction drive." Existing spacecraft propulsion systems depend on expelling propellant at high velocity, so as to produce an equal and opposite thrust in the opposite direction, thus accelerating a spacecraft or maintaining a satellite's position in orbit. These systems depend on having mass aboard to be used up while producing the thrust; and, the propellant eventually gets used up and no more thrust from the reaction engine is possible thereafter.

The "EmDrive" propellant-less reaction engine described in Reiff's post, turns out has been explored since about 1990, it says, but gets lots of scoffs from many esteemed entities, since it flagrantly would violate Newtonian physics. Yet it claims that demonstration devices have been built by the British engineer Roger Shawyer and now Yang Juan in China too.

It may be hard to forgive large esteemed entities such as corporations or even NASA, when they snatch new concepts from lone innovators and give the ideas to well-funded and academically esteemed researchers, who then are unable to produce much of value, and thus the innovative ideas are discredited or thinking is deliberately diverted away into non-productive paths. Yet this behavior is understandable in the light of the need to maintain a steady pace of development and utilization based on long established technology, playing it safe and yet they are ever fearful of something new coming up and obsoleting all of that which their fame and fortune depends. Definitely not a tolerable situation; thus inertia just maintains the original path, while the innovative concepts are denigrated to show the supremacy of the conventional ways.

Yet the concept of a propulsion device that violates Newtonian physics has been around a long time. I recall in my Junior or Senior year in high school, of reading about the Einsteinian relativistic drive, which similarly would seem to violate Newtonian Physics, by producing thrust without expelling propellant as in an ordinary reaction engine driven system.

The basic concept of the Einsteinian relativistic drive, as I understood it circa 1953-1954, was of a closed system in which mass was cycling back and forth between two ends of a closed system. However, the mass was accelerated to relativistic velocities when going in one direction, but when that particle is returning to its starting point, the mass traveled much slower. It was the same mass stream cycling back and forth, and not being used up. But the thrust of the relativistic mass in one direction unbalanced the more Newtonian thrust of the mass going back in the opposite direction. For example, a particle of the mass stream in one direction was accelerated up to say 99% of the velocity of light, and thus a large mass being shoved to provide reaction to the enclosed system; but that particle only travels half that velocity when returning back to its starting point, and thus very little relativistic mass for thrust in that direction. Thus the particles in transit in the direction at near the velocity of light, would be half the number going in the return direction, yet the overall particulate mass transfer remains constant, and no propellant is used up in the process.

But how to demonstrate that Einsteinian relativistic closed system spacecraft thrust engine with the technology of the mid-1950's, was not apparent to me. And, since it seemed to violate Newtonian physics, and was beyond my high school math skill-set at the time, I set it aside, but not forgotten.

The device as described in Reiff's post, would also appear to produce unbalanced thrust in defiance of Newtonian physics, and thus reminds me of the Einsteinian relativistic propulsion concept. So maybe they are related or even the same thing. Could be that resonant coherent waves can trap particles to speed them up to velocities approaching the velocity of light, thus amplifying their mass for thrust in one direction, but having the particles return back but traveling back at far below relativistic velocities. It seems to me that Shawyer and Yang may have implemented the mid-1950's Einsteinian relativistic propulsion system concept in physical devices, at long last.

At this point, human behavior starts getting expressed. A way of looking at Carl Sagan's triune brain description of each human being, is akin to a totem pole where are three loosely connected brains, the top one is like a wizard; the middle one is like a mammal; and the bottom one is like a reptile. And in human relationships, the reptiles interact like reptiles do, while the mammals are interacting like mammals do, and the wizards interact like amazing wizards do - in this case dreaming up the relativistic propulsion concept and implementing it. But the reptilians are fighting over territory, credit, reward due; and the mammalian brains are fighting over mammalian-herd hierarchical position with its due rewards.

Enormous royalties were sometimes paid to the proclaimed inventors; a nice reward for their work of innovation. The squabbles amongst the innovators as to who came up with what idea and used it to build a device utilizing the concept, ultimately would end up at the patent office, who would review the documents provided by the various innovators, and decide from the documents, who did what first, and therefore was due all the royalties produced through the manufacture and use of beneficial devices thus available to civilization. No doubt back in those days, even as is happening in present times, the snatching or destruction of documents that would have proven someone was the originator of a concept as reviewed by the patent office, goes on. And there are huge factors of academic esteem - on which fame and fortune rests - as well as corporate declaration of technological territory for their exclusive exploitation (or suppression) that pretty much squash the lone innovators who explore where others don't go in technological innovative concepts, but are unable to secure their documents against snatching for use by more esteemed and wealthy users. (I have been struggling with this problem for decades, more severely very recently, very skilled intruders digging ever deeper into my few remaining documents I made of my concepts over the decades - then they even smugly say that my concepts either don't work or if they do, I must have stolen them from some academically esteemed person, instead of originating them myself. Lots of reptilian ego and mammalian herd status stuff going on.)

Carl Sagan's ever brilliant technological comprehension and communication skills, has once again provided basis for comprehension of inventors' squabbles, through the concept of the Triune Brain. Thanks again, Carl, for having been there for humanity.