Occasionally it’s a good thing to wonder what we are really tapping into with these Woodward Effect (W-E) based Mach Lorentz Thrusters (MLT) just to know what kind of limits we will have to accommodate in our energy usage if we switched our energy needs entirely over to a W-E based energy cycle.  And most likely, with the photonically observable universe having a minimum of 10^80 atoms, (The Earth has approx. 10^50 atoms) that per the W-E are the source for and instantaneously interconnected with these proposed gravinertial waves, skimming off a few thousand quads of energy per year, (A quad is 10^15 BTU or 1.0544x10^18 Joules with the energy consumption of the world (1996) being around 300 Quads per year.), doesn't amount to a hill of beans in the big scheme of things when considering the universe is our backyard, especially if gravinertial waves are not bound to the Brane/universe we find ourselves on. 

But when trying to explain to an educated professional that doesn't have the luxury of studying this weirdness over the last seven years of their lives trying to understand it, they want to see an obvious energy source being depleted by one or more energy sinks.  So let’s see what magnitude of energy might be available if we can really make these W-E MLTs work.  It's a simple question of what energy source are we using and depleting with these W-E based MLTs and this is a question that any politician is going to ask before they will support this new energy cycle.  So IMO the energy tapped by the W-E has to come from either slowing down the universe's rate of time, or we are decreasing the average kinetic energy/temperature of each atom in the universe(s).  

So let's say the straight forward approach works and we infer that the later is the case then the total available kinetic/chemical energy of the universe could be roughly estimated by looking at the chemical bond energy in two mol of water.  This is 118,000 calories or 4.184 J/cal = 493,712 Joules, which implies that each molecule of water when broken up into its atoms yields 493,712/1.2044x10^24 = 4.099 x 10^-19 J/molecule or approximately 1x10-19 Joules/atom.  Multiplying by the number of atoms in the universe we get 1x10^-19 x 1x10^80 = 1x^61 Joules of potential energy to tap from the W-E if we only look at the kinetic and potential energy wrapped up in the outer electron shells of each atom.  If we look at the nuclear portion, well you get the idea...  Now dividing 1.0x10^61 Joules/1.0544x10^18 Joules/Quad = 9.48x10^48 Quads of energy available for use by all comers.  So let's say our robust solar system based civilization uses 10,000 quads of energy per year from our W-E MLTs with a really horrible extraction efficiency of only 0.001%.  That implies that we could provide a W-E derived energy source for 9.48x10^48 Quads/1x10^9 quads/year = 9.48 x 10^39 years and if we assume that a billion civilizations in the causally connected universe are doing the same thing, then the estimated life time of this energy source based on chemical reactions alone is 9.48^39 years/1x10^9 civilizations = 9.48x10^30 years.  For reference, the estimated life time of the universe is 15x10^9 years.  So 9.48x10^30/15x10^9 = 6.32x10^20 eons if an eon is defined as the current life time of the universe we live in.

But wait, the reason I used the bonding forces in decomposing water into their constituent parts in estimating the possible W-E based energy reserves is that a.) I happen to know them due to my lox/hydrogen rocket engine research and b.), its representative of a fairly strong chemical reaction that could be taken as a typical potential energy per atom.  But I had a friend point out to me that on a universal scale, 80% hydrogen and 20% helium electrical plasmas are much more representative of the bulk of the universal baryonic matter.  So how would one determine the potential and kinetic energy of a proton and a helium nucleus?

I would assume that we would first have to add up the complete ionization energies for the electron around the hydrogen nucleus and the two electrons around the helium nucleus.  That is the kinetic energy of the electrons in the plasma.  Next would be to make an estimate of the kinetic energy of the quarks that make up the proton in the hydrogen atom and the two protons and two neutrons in the helium atom.  That figure I don't know off the top of my hat, but we are taking nuclear binding forces here instead of chemical ionization energies, so the available kinetic energies will be 7-to-9 orders of magnitude higher than my previous water decomposition example.  So in the end analysis, my previous energy reserve estimates based on chemical bonding get boosted by at least seven orders of magnitude when taking hydrogen and helium plasma as the primary constituents of the universe.  Well I said that my first guestimate was on the low side!

Now my firend also made the observation that "we" might have something to do with the recently measured expansion rate of the universe increasing instead of decreasing, becuse we are just starting to use the W-E for MLT experiments, so I'll point out to you an interesting fact.  The expansion rate of the universe was slowing as expected until, I think 5-to-8 billion years ago.  If the universe is 14 billion years old, then that would have allowed about 7 billion years for life and intelligence to have evolved on older star systems.  Perhaps other much older civilizations than ours started using the W-E based energy extraction systems in large scale 5-to-6 billion years ago. And what do you know, the MLT's "exhaust" turns out to create an acceleration of the expansion of the universe.  If this is true, then my idea about the MLTs changing the rate of time may be closer to the truth, but I got the sign wrong.  Food for thought.

Nope, it’s not going to be a problem using the W-E to power our civilization or anybody else’s for that matter in the foreseeable future, even if my above estimates are a number of orders of magnitude off reality...