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It's official: NASA's peer-reviewed EM Drive paper has finally been published

Posted on 11/19/16 at 10:43 pm
Posted by wickowick
Head of Island
Member since Dec 2006
45803 posts
Posted on 11/19/16 at 10:43 pm
LINK

quote:

After months of speculation and leaked documents, NASA's long-awaited EM Drive paper has finally been peer-reviewed and published. And it shows that the 'impossible' propulsion system really does appear to work.

The NASA Eagleworks Laboratory team even put forward a hypothesis for how the EM Drive could produce thrust – something that seems impossible according to our current understanding of the laws of physics.

In case you've missed the hype, the EM Drive, or Electromagnetic Drive, is a propulsion system first proposed by British inventor Roger Shawyer back in 1999.

Instead of using heavy, inefficient rocket fuel, it bounces microwaves back and forth inside a cone-shaped metal cavity to generate thrust.

According to Shawyer's calculations, the EM Drive could be so efficient that it could power us to Mars in just 70 days.


quote:

But, there's a not-small problem with the system. It defies Newton's third law, which states that everything must have an equal and opposite reaction.

According to the law, for a system to produce thrust, it has to push something out the other way. The EM Drive doesn't do this.

Yet in test after test it continues to work. Last year, NASA's Eagleworks Laboratory team got their hands on an EM Drive to try to figure out once and for all what was going on.





Posted by MikeyFL
Las Vegas, NV
Member since Sep 2010
9593 posts
Posted on 11/19/16 at 11:26 pm to
quote:

It defies Newton's third law


Guess it ain't a law anymore.
Posted by lagallifrey
Member since Dec 2013
2010 posts
Posted on 11/19/16 at 11:42 pm to
quote:

It defies Newton's third law,


That's a pretty bold statement to make when they don't even understand how it works.
Posted by Ham Solo
Member since Apr 2015
7729 posts
Posted on 11/19/16 at 11:50 pm to
Where can I preorder?
Posted by Ole War Skule
North Shore
Member since Sep 2003
3409 posts
Posted on 11/20/16 at 6:18 am to
"It's pretty complicated stuff, but basically the currently accepted Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics states that particles do not have defined locations until they are observed"



I've never understood this. Don't now. Pretty sure I never will.
Posted by lagallifrey
Member since Dec 2013
2010 posts
Posted on 11/20/16 at 8:40 am to
quote:

I've never understood this. Don't now. Pretty sure I never will.


That's because it doesn't make sense at all if taken to be actually true. It is a philosophical interpretation of the data, and allows for easier calculations. It's a workable model for some bizarre quantum mechanical data. But if you think about it literally being true, it doesn't make sense. It's also one that perhaps couldn't be proven untrue due to the inherent limitation on testing position/vectors of particles.
This post was edited on 11/20/16 at 8:41 am
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