Blackbird and the secrets it holds.

[broli]

When I get stuck with something I usually take a rest and go YouTube surfing. The universe then has a unique way in showing you what you need. Some years ago I saw this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyQwgBAaBag&t=14s

Derek from Veritasium has a Phd in physics his videos also go through rigorous scientific validation, he wont upload or claim anything that didn't go through rigorous scientific validation. I respect Derek as he does not let his education or bias get in the way, but most importantly I love him because his videos are a great example on how science education should be done.

So what is special about Blackbird? Well, given an initial push, it keeps accelerating with or against the wind direction (which does not matter) and keeps doing so until the pilot hits the breaks or something breaks. Seemingly gaining kinetic energy out of nowhere. But how can that be? Isn't that like trying to fly by pulling on the straps of your boots? Against newtons third law, against the 2nd law of thermodynamics, so many laws broken!

Well something everybody seemed to have missed besides its creators is the interplay of two things. Rigid body dynamics and constraints. Derek calls it "mechanical advantage" in the video but that is not completely true. There is more going on that just a linear lever effect which just trades distance for force.

First you have the propeller generating a forward force because it is forced by the wheels to do so. Then you have the wheels which can somehow overcome the counter-torque that comes from this and rolls forward. It is not ONLY a lever effect or mechanical advantage as in both cases the back torque of the propeller will be greater than that of the wheels and blackbird would get nowhere. I did the analysis I encourage you to do the same.

The real answer is rigid body dynamics and constraints.

Take a rigid body floating in space problem. Given a force acting on any point of the rigid body:



We want to know how it will behave. If you were paying attention in class you know to apply the following two rules:

• Take the force an apply it on the CoM of the body
• Decompose the force at the point of action, so it becomes perpendicular to the distance vector from the CoM. And use this as a force couple to calculate the torque on the body.

Using these two rules we get:



If the moment of inertia, or rotational mass as I would like to call, it is also defined we can fully define the motion of said rigid body and the rigid body starts to rotate CW as it moves in the direction of the force. So far so good, nothing new or special.

However lets introduce something new, something we call earth. Lets leave space and take our rigid body with us back to earth. On earth we have something new to play with called "constraints", a magical ability to link masses together and constrain their positions and rotations.

Lets add a first constraint point and apply the same force:



It doesn't take a genius to see that the body would rotate CW. The same direction as it rotated in space.

Now lets use our freedom on earth to relocate the constraint point and see what happens:



Would you look at that, the same force but the rotation direction has changed just by changing the location of the constraint point. We can freely choose how the torque acts while its linear "component" remains in the same direction. A pretty cool feature if you ask me.

This is the true secret of Blackbird and any OU effect.

It took me a few months to figure out why I saw OU effects in FEMM, the path was long and painful. But I am sure you are much smarter than me and will grasp the significance of this quicker.

Without gravity and friction, these constraints are not possible. Constraints are the diodes of the universe we choose in which direction to point them. The universe has given us lego blocks to play with in the form of mass and how to constrain and structure them. Our imagination is the only limit. We have arguably only used the positive side of friction so far but friction also comes in a "negative" flavor, allowing us to direct the immense potential energies found in earths gravity OR in its rotation OR in magnets, etc etc... and turn it into vast amounts of linear kinetic energy. And the key lies in how rotation is being constrained, whether it is the domains of ferromagnetic materials or gravity its all the same because it IS the same force on all scales. A line and a circle, or what physicists call a particle and field. Friction, the power to constrain them and let them interact is the so called "theory of everything". A force glossed over so quickly and taken for granted that students dont even have the time to wonder how it does what it does.

For some, even this explanation will not be satisfactory. They will "believe it when they see it". However all around us are processes we dont see, yet each and everyone is keeping us alive, so they are not real either? This ridiculous notion comes from materialistic based minds that grabbed on hard matter 100 years ago and never let go. Past scientists were not like this, they explored the visible and invisible. Philosophy was a great part of science until it got dissected out of it and discarded as being useless.

However I found its better to believe before you see, as without imagination you get nowhere. I am also done asking myself how 100 years of science could have missed such a simple and fundamental property of nature as even posting this takes time and energy which I rather could have spent on building and sharing cool ideas. But here we are, first having to go through the many walls of mans ego, before he can accept fault and move on with his life to cooperate in the new reality that is ahead.

[F6FLT]

"In summary:

Upwind, the rotor harvests the power from the oncoming air and drives the wheels, as would a wind turbine.
Downwind, when the vehicle is traveling faster than the windspeed, the ground is the fastest-moving medium relative to the vehicle, so the wheels harvest the power and impart it to the rotor, which propels the vehicle."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackbird_(wind-powered_vehicle)

If we understand that this was surprising at first, it is more surprising to still see extravagant gibberish on this subject years later, when everything has been perfectly explained and has become flawlessly clear among those capable of rational thinking, see the bibliography of Wikipedia references.
This need to see magic everywhere and to imagine "secrets" revealed to initiates, particularly among those who want to find alternatives to a science that they do not understand, is a psychological aberration of human nature, as we see in religion. This is the kind of thing that completely opposes the search for energy solutions and constantly wastes our time.

[broli]

"In summary:

Upwind, the rotor harvests the power from the oncoming air and drives the wheels, as would a wind turbine."

True, until we start to go faster than the "wind".

"In summary:

Downwind, when the vehicle is traveling faster than the windspeed, the ground is the fastest-moving medium relative to the vehicle, so the wheels harvest the power and impart it to the rotor, which propels the vehicle."

I always find this to be the funny part of the argument AGAINST there being anything special with the cart. You and your sources can seem to acknowledge the fact there is power transfer ACCELERATING the cart forward beyond said wind speed. Please tell my ignorant moronic brain where this "harvested" power, you just quoted, came from? A power seemingly being able to overcome the resistance torque of the propeller pulling the cart forward, perpetually accelerating it. You and your "physics" friends seem to gloss over these basic things, as someone with a simple basic mind like mine I must understand the basics before I can understand the great knowledge you hold that effortlessly understands the full picture.

You do realize that a shovel can only get you deep into the ground but not out, at some point you will realize you have dug yourself too deep into the hole. But luckily we always have a choice and unlimited chances to try over, if we can set aside our ego that is. Either set aside your ego, accept failure, call for help and have a laugh about the experience. Or double down on that fragile ego, not call for help and remain there in that dark cold hole until death-by-ego is the only remaining option left. We always have a choice and I wonder which one you will choose.

I dont tend to hold grudged against people, sure you can be annoying and obnoxious at times but the beauty of true freedom is that we can also choose to avoid or not listen to people if we want. Man can build whatever he wants nature does not care, however what nature cares about is how we adapt to the change it throws at us. Something which the physics community has hardly been doing the last 100 years, at best in the form of ridicule, dismissal, chasing beautiful equations or plain ignorance and at worst by funding fraud, greed and self interest. And then they wonder why so little choose to follow a scientific career. Scientists used to be rockstars that showed us the many wonders the universe holds through stories and experiments, not preachers of old defunct ideas, filling young minds with layers upon layers of equations that describe fundamentally simple things. Equations are fine in order to build stuff, they give us certainty over what we build, equations are the language of computers and engineers. The job of the physicist is to unravel the story of the universe and bring those stories to the masses. You dont tell stories through equations, you tell them through natural language. If you cant explain the story of the universe to a child you have failed as a seeker of truth and perhaps its time to look for a new job.

Nature is not "harsh", it has simple rules for any species to thrive in: Observe, Experience, Cooperate and Imitate in order to thrive and evolve... OR dont and be rolled over by it, go extinct and be recycled by it so next generations get their chance to thrive and evolve. But the choice is always yours to adapt, but remember the wheel of the nature is always moving forward and does not stop spinning for anyone.

[Chet K]

Sorry to interrupt
Yes this "revelation " has given many musings to the "what ifs"
IMO
An experiment ( thoughts?) towards a bigger claim ( more obvious "irrefutable " gain mechanism )
Would seem that the proper arrangements could just fly ?( for lack of a better word ..by "leveraging" itself against the atmosphere ( density).
The reason I write the above ... can't remember his name .... However another claim was a gent who played with foils
( I believe for autonomous ocean data collection?)
He stated he could sail up the Nile all the way to its headwaters against the current flow
With no sail
Just the foils ..yeah .. I  get the variables and "how it works "
It just seems like there should be more .... Advancement or uses ..


This has always been an interest since I tried to grasp " apparent wind" and sail boats going faster than the wind
( iceboats ( big multi masted vessels too ..100+ mph before automobiles..)

With modern foil tech in water it's 5 times wind speed now ??

Love the topic broli.
Respectfully
Chet K
PS
Or in a totally different direction ( experiment suggestion?) to prove some overlooked attributes?
Edit for broli below
Now I understand your use of the word....

Friction
Thank you for the perspective!

[broli]

Sorry to interrupt
Yes this "revelation " has given many musings to the "what ifs"
IMO
An experiment ( thoughts?) towards a bigger claim ( more obvious "irrefutable " gain mechanism )
Would seem that the proper arrangements could just fly ?( for lack of a better word ..by "leveraging" itself against the atmosphere ( density).
The reason I write the above ... can't remember his name .... However another claim was a gent who played with foils
( I believe for autonomous ocean data collection?)
He stated he could sail up the Nile all the way to its headwaters against the current flow
With no sail
Just the foils ..yeah .. I  get the variables and "how it works "
It just seems like there should be more .... Advancement or uses ..


This has always been an interest since I tried to grasp " apparent wind" and sail boats going faster than the wind
( iceboats ( big multi masted vessels too ..100+ mph before automobiles..)

With modern foil tech in water it's 5 times wind speed now ??

Love the topic broli.
Respectfully
Chet K
PS
Or in a totally different direction ( experiment suggestion?) to prove some overlooked attributes?

Atleast someone is using their brain. And yes "wind" can be replaced with any medium you choose. Water, feathers, magnetism.... As long as you have something riding between a "hard" and "soft" interface. IE the ground and the air. The magic part is not the medium used, it is why something "soft" and "hard" can interact in such unique way.

For the 1000th time....FRICTION. Which I exapnded on in the first and previous posts on it. We see particles and fields all the way down to quarks and all the way up to matter and dark matter. Yet no one stopped to ask, why is there a pattern of something "hard" interacting with something "soft". What is the force of friction really? Why does it contain a "sign" in its very definition, why does it seem to transcend time and remain the same in different reference frames regardless of the relative velocities these two interact with. Why does it also come in two types, sliding and rolling friction. All basic questions, yet no one seemed to have stopped and wondered about these questions? Surely all the brilliant minds out there should have been curious enough to wonder about such basic things in nature, no?

[Allcanadian]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyQwgBAaBag&t=14s

Interesting video.

The first thing I noticed is that nobody seems to know exactly how the DWFTTW tech works. Oh they offer some amateur explanations but like the wikipedia article they never explain anything that matters. The what, when, where and why of things are missing. A typical non answer.

The second thing I noticed was expected near the end of the video. They go on and on about energy but seem to have no idea where the extra energy to propel the craft faster than the wind comes from. Obviously, the extra energy must come from the wind but the mechanism of conversion seems to have eluded everyone.

We could also note the pattern similar to FE devices.
1)Someone builds a device made of a limited number of common components which looks very simple on the surface.
2)Nobody can seem to understand exactly how it works.
3)Nobody can seem to understand exactly where the energy comes from or why.
4)Due to a lack of understanding most claim it must violate the COE and be a perpetual motion machine, *facepalm*.

AC

[chief kolbacict]

He stated he could sail up the Nile all the way to its headwaters against the current flow
With no sail

And yes "wind" can be replaced with any medium you choose. Water, feathers, magnetism.... As long as you have something riding between a "hard" and "soft" interface. IE the ground and the air. The magic part is not the medium used, it is why something "soft" and "hard" can interact in such unique way.

Why should I,  when we were at the OU.com
cited as an example for water instead of air and earth the project "Artemis technologies."?
That is about something completely different there.   There is no second point of support in water.

[Chet K]

[quote
chief kolbacict

  There is no second point of support in water.
End quote

Chief
Perhaps a design or engineering opportunity ( a novel use of friction)?)

Respectfully
Chet
PS
I really like broli's
Friction concept ( as a path to gain .. ,this topic and playing with the "Friction" concept
Gave me some "traction" between the ears ...

Yeah could be circular musings
However ,
No stone left unturned!

[F6FLT]

True, until we start to go faster than the "wind".

I always find this to be the funny part of the argument AGAINST there being anything special with the cart. You and your sources can seem to acknowledge the fact there is power transfer ACCELERATING the cart forward beyond said wind speed. Please tell my ignorant moronic brain where this "harvested" power, you just quoted, came from? A power seemingly being able to overcome the resistance torque of the propeller pulling the cart forward, perpetually accelerating it. You and your "physics" friends seem to gloss over these basic things, as someone with a simple basic mind like mine I must understand the basics before I can understand the great knowledge you hold that effortlessly understands the full picture.

You do realize that a shovel can only get you deep into the ground but not out, at some point you will realize you have dug yourself too deep into the hole. But luckily we always have a choice and unlimited chances to try over, if we can set aside our ego that is. Either set aside your ego, accept failure, call for help and have a laugh about the experience. Or double down on that fragile ego, not call for help and remain there in that dark cold hole until death-by-ego is the only remaining option left. We always have a choice and I wonder which one you will choose.

I dont tend to hold grudged against people, sure you can be annoying and obnoxious at times but the beauty of true freedom is that we can also choose to avoid or not listen to people if we want. Man can build whatever he wants nature does not care, however what nature cares about is how we adapt to the change it throws at us. Something which the physics community has hardly been doing the last 100 years, at best in the form of ridicule, dismissal, chasing beautiful equations or plain ignorance and at worst by funding fraud, greed and self interest. And then they wonder why so little choose to follow a scientific career. Scientists used to be rockstars that showed us the many wonders the universe holds through stories and experiments, not preachers of old defunct ideas, filling young minds with layers upon layers of equations that describe fundamentally simple things. Equations are fine in order to build stuff, they give us certainty over what we build, equations are the language of engineers. The job of the physicist is to unravel the story of the universe and bring those stories to the masses. You dont tell stories through equations, you tell them through natural language. If you cant explain the story of the universe to a child you have failed as a seeker of truth and perhaps its time to look for a new job.

Nature has a very simple rules: Observe it, Experience it, Cooperate and imitate it, adapt and evolve or... die and be recycled so the next generation can thrive. Your choice, the clock is ticking.

More than 20 lines of digressions to say nothing, that's impressive.
And if you add: "above all, no need to think", you end up having to appeal to the ego to make the most intelligent scientists, who have explained the blackbird perfectly, look like psychiatric patients. But you've missed the point.
The notion of ego is very relative, you forgot you had one, and it prevents you from going to the scientific evidence.

Even if you remove all the digressions, there's nothing consistent left in your speech. It's only from the authors of the blackbird papers on Wikipedia that logical, solid reasoning and evidence come.
If you haven't figured out by now that speed isn't energy and isn't conserved, you're in trouble. It's like an electrical potential. Is it any wonder that by charging one capacitor with a 1.5v battery, then another, then another, then putting them in series, you can have a voltage 3 times greater than the battery, and that if you connect them to the battery, you can even pass current through them, the opposite of the current generated by the battery? With wind speed, same thing. The speed of the blackbird is no more related to wind speed than the voltage of the battery is to the set of capacitors. But energy is.

[TinMan]

The blackbird works simple by the sail moving down wind slower than the vehicle it is attached to.
Most people see a propeller, but it is not. It is a rotating sail, and the face of that sail moves down wind slower than the vehicle it is attached to.
It is just the same as your pushbike in top gear, where your foot moves slowly forward in relation to the bike, but fast in relation to the road.


Brad

[Allcanadian]

F6FLT

you end up having to appeal to the ego to make the most intelligent scientists, who have explained the blackbird perfectly, look like psychiatric patients. But you've missed the point.

That's wonderful, could you point us to the "intelligent scientists, who have explained the blackbird perfectly" because I would love to have look at it. Most of what I have read to date is nonsense which never explains exactly how the energy from the wind is converted allowing the device to move faster than the wind.

Don't get me wrong I know exactly how it works I just want to hear someone else try to explain it. I scoured the net and all I could find are generalities and baseless opinions.

AC

[F6FLT]

...
Most of what I have read to date is nonsense ...

I'm afraid that someone who talks about the absolute existence of a magnetic field lacks the basic physics needed to give a peremptory opinion on scientific publications, and to understand them.

[F6FLT]

Even scientists have been fooled by their false intuition. This is what happens when you don't stick to the laws of physics in principle, and when in practice you don't respect the precept: "shut up and do the math".
However, we already had the solution to the DWFTTW in 1969, at the Wikipedia link:
http://projects.m-qp-m.us/donkeypuss/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/Bauer-Faster-Than-The-Wind-The-Ancient-Interface.pdf
For the up-wind, it's the same principle.

The simplest way to understand it is to look at the electrical equivalent. The wind provides the energy, which is the battery. Its speed is the potential.
If you have a 12v battery, there's nothing to stop you making a small voltage-boosting circuit, which from the battery voltage provides a floating voltage of 18v, which you add to that of the battery to obtain 18+12=30 V. This is the equivalent of DWFTTW at 2.5 times wind speed. This elevator circuit is the equivalent of the gear that enables you to change the speed of the wheels in relation to that of the blades, and therefore in relation to the relative wind speed.

[F6FLT]

Its incredible how you can quote a paper which goes rigorously over the MATH and CONFIRMING the rotational lever effect by concluding that YES you CAN go faster than the "wind" or "water":
...

What don't you understand?
You can go faster than the wind upwind or downwind, and there's no theoretical speed limit, only those due to losses.
No problem with that. That's what I've always said. No "secrets", only the laws of physics. What is your point in 2 lines ?

[broli]

What don't you understand?
You can go faster than the wind upwind or downwind, and there's no theoretical speed limit, only those due to losses.
No problem with that. That's what I've always said. No "secrets", only the laws of physics. What is your point in 2 lines ?

Ah yes the good old "I knew it all along" strategy.

I dont blame you, I couldn't believe it myself at first. But I am going to stop wasting my time and energy here. So yeah good luck with that shovel of yours.

[TinMan]

 

author=F6FLT link=topic=4672.msg112535#msg112535 date=1717014077

What don't you understand?
You can go faster than the wind upwind or downwind, and there's no theoretical speed limit, only those due to losses.
No problem with that. That's what I've always said. No "secrets", only the laws of physics. What is your point in 2 lines ?

You can go faster than the wind upwind

This I would like to see.


Brad

[F6FLT]

Ah yes the good old "I knew it all along" strategy.
...

Like everyone else, I was surprised when the story broke.
I studied it and understood. It's been 12 years.
Maybe you need more than 12 years to understand that, I don't.

[F6FLT]

This I would like to see.


Brad

Let's talk about relative wind. If the machine were moving at wind speed (relative speed = 0), it would not be subjected to any force. The condition of motion relative to the wind, i.e. relative to a reference frame linked to the wind, is therefore symmetrical, forwards or backwards, depending on the orientation of the blades or gear direction.

What you really need to remember is that you don't need energy to move forward, only to overcome friction and accelerate. So as long as we can recover a little energy from the wind, we can use it without limit to go faster, there's no impediment in principle but practical limits, that's for sure.
The art of the machine lies in harnessing the wind's energy while minimizing the exposure of the entire machine.

[broli]

Let's talk about relative wind. If the machine were moving at wind speed (relative speed = 0), it would not be subjected to any force. The condition of motion relative to the wind, i.e. relative to a reference frame linked to the wind, is therefore symmetrical, forwards or backwards, depending on the orientation of the blades.

What you really need to remember is that you don't need energy to move forward, only to overcome friction and accelerate. So as long as we can recover a little energy from the wind, we can use it without limit to go faster, there's no impediment in principle but practical limits, that's for sure.
The art of the machine lies in harnessing the wind's energy while minimizing the machine's exposure to the wind.

I will take this as a change of heart and let go of my own ego and our little "argument" and move forward.

The real race will not be against the wind on earth but against the "wind" of space, achieving super luminal speeds in the not so distant future.

[F6FLT]

I will take this as a change of heart and let go of my own ego and our little "argument" and move forward.

The real race will not be against the wind on earth but against the "wind" of space, achieving super luminal speeds in the not so distant future.

[broli]

Like everyone else, I was surprised when the story broke.
I studied it and understood. It's been 12 years.
Maybe you need more than 12 years to understand that, I don't.

If I discovered it 12 years ago and with my dumb building skills I probably would have not be able to do much with it either. However in 12 years time a lot has changed, 3d printers have become very advanced and cheap making it possible for anyone to build and validate their ideas much easier and faster. They went from DIY projects that you had to build yourself to unboxing them and immediately start printing fast. I couldn't have done it without them (shout out to Bambu Lab) as I am just an unskilled IT nerd.

If you dont have one you better get one, at least for a short while, there could be what I call the "toilet paper effect" run on fast 3d printers. As people will think that is what they need to make "energy producing machines". I definitely hope not but humans can be very unpredictable. My two workhorses are plenty for me. But only buy 3d printers to use them not to be a scalper folks. And dont underestimate our Chinese brothers and sisters, they can always figure out a way to produce anything faster than the rate its sold at so that ALL can afford and enjoy the best ideas not only the "lucky" few. That is their true power.

[CITFTA]

Has anyone else watched the follow up video where a Physics prof bets Derek 10,000 dollars that Blackbird didn't really go faster than the wind?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCsgoLc_fzI

The physics behind how Blackbird actually works is pretty interesting.

[bistander]

See reply #33 here:

https://www.overunityresearch.com/index.php?topic=4616.msg112558;topicseen#msg112558
bi

[TinMan]

See reply #33 here:

https://www.overunityresearch.com/index.php?topic=4616.msg112558;topicseen#msg112558
bi

I think broli has had 1 too many booster shots.

The workings of the blackbird are simple, not complicated.
The propellor is nothing more than a rotating sail, that moves down wind slower than the wind.
As the sail rotates, it's surface is always changing position back into the wind, thus making it's surface go down wind slower than the wind, which allows the vehicle travel down wind faster than the wind.


Brad

[broli]

I think broli has had 1 too many booster shots.

Yeah you could say that, always has been my biggest problem. Too much enthusiasm, sharing too much and moving too fast, until I slip and plant on my face and embarres myself in front of the whole world .

I think broli has had 1 too many booster shots.

The workings of the blackbird are simple, not complicated.
The propellor is nothing more than a rotating sail, that moves down wind slower than the wind.
As the sail rotates, it's surface is always changing position back into the wind, thus making it's surface go down wind slower than the wind, which allows the vehicle travel down wind faster than the wind.


Brad

I never said it was complicated in fact quite the opposite. I just wanted to make a point as people were fixated on "wind" and "propellers" only. I wanted to show that it generalizes to any "soft" medium and to any "hard" immovable object (the ground in blackbirds case). This generalization extends to Wind, Water, Feathers, Fur, Rubber, Magnetism and whatever soft medium aka "field" we desire if we can also make it ride on something that is hard and "immovable" aka a "particle".

The universe provides infinite energy, however I have learned that convincing others of your ideas takes more energy than even the universe can provide . But that only means that my spark was not strong enough to light a fire, so I just need to retry and retry until it lights and becomes a fire no one can ignore.