Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Esna Pitoojee]

Welp. They've apparently got a functioning model of an EmDrive, a kind of reactionless drive that works by projecting microwave radiation into a specifically-shaped cavity. This is the third independent confirmation after the original inventor of the device, who was widely discredited as a quack.

I'm hesitant to get hype for a physics-breaking discovery after the whole FTL neutrino thing turned out to be a fluke, but if this works? The engineering and physics implications are huge.

[Silas Vitalia]

These things are hard to replicate, and the amount of thrust so tiny that the experiments are notoriously easy to generate false positives.   Kudos if somehow everyone else was just getting some physics basics wrong, but it's more than likely experimental error.

Momentum, she no lika not bein' conserved.

[Ibrahim Tash-Murkon]

Exactly what Silas said. I would do naughty, naughty things to get our species access to a reactionless drive but the possibility of their existence is unfathomable given everything we know about the Universe. The tests we know about (especially the Chinese one which was run on equipment not geared even remotely to detect the small thrust of the engine) are probably the result of errors in measurement. Plus, Newton may have been a crazy bastard but Conservation of Momentum has a pretty solid track record.

If I'm wrong, however, I won't just eat my words, I'll eat my words with a giant word eating grin on my face. A reactionless drive that requires only electricity means that we are going to Kerbal Space Program the shit out of this solar system.

[Nicoletta Mithra]

I always wonder why the standard reaction to some experiment that gives results that don't align with natural laws seems to be that the scientists denounce the experiment as not to be taken serious, instead of first doing the experiment themselves to check the purported results.

It reminds one of the oft-used repressive phrase to the effect that what is not allowed (in this case, by natural law) cannot happen and which the sciences nowadays so often put at the feet of religion, while apparently using it themselves just as often. It seems to be a human thing found in all human activities.

Anyhow, my rant won't change any of that. ^_^ Maybe now that Nasa got involved the broad scientific community will start to check the results instead of dismissing them out of hand as they are 'impossible'. Then we might find out if they are or not.

P.S.: It's good to see you guys here excited about that experiment and eager to see it tested! <3 I just read the linked article and got that gut reaction over the story of this fellow who designed this 'engine' having been denied the testing of his results by a third party for so long and even as the Chinese did, that western scientists apparently still dismissed this out of hand because the Chinese design was flawed, instead of doing better.

[Ibrahim Tash-Murkon]

I guarantee that 99% of the propulsion scientists that see this would love it to be true. However, two centuries of experimentation has confirmed the Law of the Conservation of Momentum (which is not to say that scientists would eject that stubborn bastard just as soon as they could). If this engine works I will s*ck d*ck to fund it because it would revolutionize everything from satellite station-keeping to interplanetary travel but, frankly, a couple of hundred years of observational and mathematical confirmation of Newton's Second Law stack very much in the favor of this device being a fault in current understanding of space travel.

[Morwen Lagann]

P.S.: It's good to see you guys here excited about that experiment and eager to see it tested! <3 I just read the linked article and got that gut reaction over the story of this fellow who designed this 'engine' having been denied the testing of his results by a third party for so long and even as the Chinese did, that western scientists apparently still dismissed this out of hand because the Chinese design was flawed, instead of doing better.

Personal guess, the dismissal of the Chinese experiment was out of similar reasons to why people are dismissive of the notion of North Korea being able to do anything but launch a rock into the ocean.

[Nicoletta Mithra]

I see that people have reasons to dismiss the Chinese experiment. Still, that should be motivation to any true scientist to do better and make the experiment themselves, no?

I also see that there is a track record of the Law of the Conservation of Momentum being confirmed again and again. But maybe there are ways to harmonize that law with the results of that experiment?

Yah, probably the engine doesn't work and the positive results are due to some error in measurement or somesuch. Yet, that shouldn't stop one from actually testing if that's so. I see that there is also the problem of resource allocation and there are a lot of experiments that promise positive results and where resources are probably better spent on.

But all that is different from just saying that this micro-wave engine is impossible ('We have a law of nature that prevents that thing from working.') and thus don't deem it worthy of testing. For as improbable as it may be, we might be wrong about the Law of the Conservation of Momentum in some way.

[Shiori]

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20140006052 "Testing was performed on a low-thrust torsion pendulum that is capable of detecting force at a single-digit micronewton level, within a stainless steel vacuum chamber with the door closed but at ambient atmospheric pressure."

And their explanation goes straight for "..producing a force that is not attributable to any classical electromagnetic phenomenon and therefore is potentially demonstrating an interaction with the quantum vacuum virtual plasma," rather than, say, "we may have made a really inefficient jet engine."

Sigh, close tab.

[Lyn Farel]

P.S.: It's good to see you guys here excited about that experiment and eager to see it tested! <3 I just read the linked article and got that gut reaction over the story of this fellow who designed this 'engine' having been denied the testing of his results by a third party for so long and even as the Chinese did, that western scientists apparently still dismissed this out of hand because the Chinese design was flawed, instead of doing better.

Personal guess, the dismissal of the Chinese experiment was out of similar reasons to why people are dismissive of the notion of North Korea being able to do anything but launch a rock into the ocean.

Unlike DPRK, the Chinese are perfectly capable scientists and space explorers.

[Morwen Lagann]

I was speaking less about belief in the individual scientists, but more the government that has a fairly firm stranglehold on what information goes in and out of the country.

[orange]

Ya, until the test setup is at near vacuum, I remain skeptical of any result.  I lack an understanding of the quantum mechanics, but I can recognize a test setup flaw.

[Ibrahim Tash-Murkon]

The dismissal of the Chinese experiment isn't political, they did it in an industrial setting not tuned to the incredibly fine levels of measurement needed to test the device (not to mention overturn one of the most fundamental laws of the Universe as we understand it). I am not opposed to continued testing. I think every avenue, no matter how unlikely, should be pursued in the continuing quest of mankind to build me a vacation home on Mars. However, I just find it much more believable that instead of unraveling our understanding of how things can move some people have just got a few cases of bad test results. I'd love to be wrong but I really, really doubt that I am.

But, by all means, toss one of those things out of the ISS and see what happens.

"Testing was performed on a low-thrust torsion pendulum that is capable of detecting force at a single-digit micronewton level, within a stainless steel vacuum chamber with the door closed but at ambient atmospheric pressure."

Ridiculous. 

[Ibrahim Tash-Murkon]

Oh, sorry for the double post, but adherence to the Law of the Conservation of Momentum isn't a pseudo-religious faith. On top of hundreds of years of consistent experimental confirmation, it is further confirmed by common sense. The words "reactionless drive" should sound like gibberish. It might as well be "driveless drive" or "reactionless reaction". Things move, whether it be here on Earth or out in space because something imparts momentum to them. In other words they are pushed. A reactionless drive is a device which would move without any push. It creates momentum in a manner which would have to be described as magical. It is movement without movement. It's very name is contradictory.

[orange]

It creates momentum in a manner which would have to be described as magical.

It is supposedly quantum mechanics; not Newtonian or Einsteinian.  Most of quantum physics is best described as magically.

Not saying this device works, but that quantum physics is mindbendy.

[Ibrahim Tash-Murkon]

It creates momentum in a manner which would have to be described as magical.

It is supposedly quantum mechanics; not Newtonian or Einsteinian.  Most of quantum physics is best described as magically.

Not saying this device works, but that quantum physics is mindbendy.

For a device that might provide reactionless thrust by means of virtual particles in accordance with what we understand of quantum physics I would direct you to the quantum vacuum plasma thruster. Often confused with the EMdrive but on slightly better ground.

And I would like to emphasize again, I am not a naysayer out of some contrarian reasoning. If I am wrong and this sort of thing works I will be the most ecstatic and joyous supporter. However, the Universe as we know it does not care for these sorts of things at all. The bastard.