Sir Arthur C. B. E. Wholeflaffers A.S.A. wrote:

<snippage here and there>

The laws of physics by Stanton Freidman

I am sick and tired of people complaining that one or another law of physics
would have to be violated by flying saucers, and, therefore, since I am a
nuclear physicist, how can I say some UFOs are alien spacecraft?

  By having some evidence to present vs. guessing? Failure to do so is religion, not science.

There is a long list of such supposed violations: It would take too long to get
here from other star systems. It would take too much energy to get here from
other star systems. Right angle turns are impossible. High accelerations would
violate the laws of physics. People can't be taken through walls without
damaging the walls or the people. Etc. ad nauseum.

What we seem to be dealing with are claims by people who don't understand the
laws of physics, who have no comprehension that the feasibility of accomplishing
a particular objective is almost completely dependent on the engineering
assumptions made, and that much of the blind acceptance we give to today's
technology would have been totally rejected by other noisy negativists 100 or
more years ago.

  No, that's turf defending (AKA politics).

Acceleration

>...Dr. Stapp actually lived through deceleration of 43 Gs >(From over 600 mph to zero), for a fraction of a second

Right angle turns

Some have said that saucers making right angle turns violate the laws of
physics. The laws of physics say nothing about the possibility of making rapid
right angle turns. Our present jet and rocket technology, which work by carrying
along something thrown out the back end, is not capable of providing right angle
turns, because we cannot rapidly change the direction of the rearward thrust.

  Note unmentioned connection between acceleration and "the possibility of making rapid right angle turns". If you're doing 600 mph and make a right angle turn, you just pulled 43 gees which may be "survivable" once (I note Dr. Stapp's subsequent medical difficulties and the fact that nobody else tried it went unmentioned), but repeatedly? I don't think so.

  What has thrust deflection tech (Harrier etc.) have to do with right angle turn capability?

A magneto-aerodynamic system which could provide rapid changes of the direction
of electric and magnetic forces probably could provide right angle turns. More
likely there is a technique about which we know nothing.

  What is a "magneto-aerodynamic system" supposed to mean? Some kind of tech that interacts with Earth's feeble geomagnetic field? Don't make me laugh.

Sonic booms

...If the air is electrically ionized (made to be a conducting
plasma) then there may NOT be an accompanying sonic boom.

  Evidence for supposition?

Energy and time

I have been told that getting here from another solar system in a time shorter
than the average person's life span would take far too much energy and would
violate the laws of physics, or it would take thousands or millions of years.
The fact is that the feasibility of any space travel is based upon the
assumptions made.

As I noted in my "Challenge to SETI Specialists" (see my Web site at
www.vj-enterprises.com/sipage.html), a "scientific" calculation in 1941 oft he
required initial launch weight of a chemical rocket able to get a man to the
moon and back concluded it would be a million million tons.

Dr. Campbell was off by a factor of 300 Million! He made all the wrong
assumptions, such as single stage rockets, a limit of 1G acceleration, using a
retrorocket to slow down when approaching earth on the return, assuming much too
low an exhaust velocity, and assuming that the rocket would have to provide all
the energy.

  Some progress has been made since 1941.

  What was the launch weight of the Apollo vehicles again?

  What has interplanetary travel economics (being charitable about identifying Luna as a planet) to do with interstellar travel economics?

We use cosmic freeloading such as the earth's rotation of 1000 mph when
launching to the east near the equator, the gravity field of the moon to pull in
the rocket, and the earth's atmosphere to slow us down on return. It was Dr.
Campbell's ignorance that was the problem, not the laws of physics.

Another misunderstanding of the laws of physics comes from people pointing out
that since one would have to approach the speed of light (670,000,000 mph) to go
to nearby solar systems, the amount of energy required would be humongus because
the mass of the rocket increases as one approaches the speed of light. However,
it only takes one year at 1G acceleration to get close to the speed of light.

>

If one uses nuclear fusion of deuterium (heavy hydrogen) and helium-3 (light
helium one produces charged particles which can be directed by electric and
magnetic fields) then there is ten million times as much energy per article as
they can get in a chemical rocket. The particles are born that way and are not
accelerated to that energy.

  You still can't carry enough fuel to get anywhere interesting. BTW, how do you plan to neutralize the charge on the exhaust? If you don't, you get no thrust after a short while because it won't leave the nozzle.

In addition, time slows down for things moving that fast to the point that at
something like 99.99 % of light speed, it only takes a little over six months
pilot time (not counting acceleration time) to go the 39 light year distance to
Zeta l and Zeta 2 Reticuli.

  What's the fuel weight/payload weight ratio?

Also, if one uses gravitational assist (the traveler doesn't provide the energy)
as we do on all our deep space probes, the increase in mass wouldn't matter
anyway. A black hole would be quite convenient.

  If there were any in a convenient location. Are there?

Moving through walls

"But Stan, how do the laws of physics permit people to be pulled through walls
and windows without breaking them or the person?" I haven't the faintest idea. I
am sure that 150 years ago the idea of having information enter a closed room
and be reproduced to make pictures and sounds on TV and radio sets using
electricity, which also wasn't known at that time, would have been thought
absurd.

  Persons are not EM waves. This isn't the Star Trek Universe.

New nanotechnology techniques are truly as extraordinary as the breakthroughs in
quantum mechanics, relativity, radioactivity, and solid state physics over the
past century or so. Does anybody really believe that the progress has stopped? I
certainly don't.

  What's that got to do with the subject?

That we cannot either explain or duplicate what to us seems like anomalous
technology, doesn't mean a more advanced society didn't get there a long time
ago. It is our lack of understanding that provides the limits, not the laws of
physics.

  Doesn't mean they did either.

Limited realms

Remember that the closest-to-each-other pair of sun like stars, Zeta 1 and 2
Reticuli, are a billion years older than the sun. An important aspect of the
laws of physic is that they apply in limited realms. Einstein's relativity
involving increase of mass and slowing down of time is only significant at
velocities near that of light, or in situations where the conditions are very
different from "normal"-for example, near very very dense black holes or neutron
stars.

  Bullshit. It's merely noticeable to the puny human sensorium under those conditions, as opposed to being blatantly obvious to instrumentation at shirtsleeve velocities and densities.

Quantum mechanics, on the other hand, normally deal with the world of the very
small. In the biological sciences we find that a great variety of very new micro
scopes enable us to see the very small world.  Nanotechnology and quantum dots
are part of that very small world.

  So?

The myriad of applications for lasers, from the check-out counters, to CDs, to
very sophisticated analyses of materials, to the surgeon's special tools
frequently accomplishing what was thought to be impossible shoul dhelp us
recognize that violations of the laws of physic are not really very common.

  None of the above are examples of "violations of the laws of physics".

What new realms will be discovered in the next decade or in the next century?
New variations on old theme of the world of physics?

  Yeah, just keep praying to the Space Brothers.

  Mark L. Fergerson