NASA Eagleworks Has Tested an Upgraded EM Drive 203
An anonymous reader writes: A team of researchers at NASA's Eagleworks Laboratories recently completed yet another round of testing on Engineer Roger Shawyer's controversial EM Drive. While no peer reviewed paper has been published yet, engineer Paul March posted to the NASA Spaceflight forum to explain the group's findings. From the article: "In essence, by utilizing an improved experimental procedure, the team managed to mitigate some of the errors from prior tests — yet still found signals of unexplained thrust."
Controversial? (Score:1)
If your source for saying it is controversial is a link to another slashdot article saying it has been tested successfully by a different lab before, you are just using the word wrong.
Re:Controversial? (Score:5, Insightful)
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There's another weird aspect beyond that one: the EM radiation is released into a sealed (non-microwave-permeable) chamber. The QED thrusts ought to be canceled out by the photons reflecting off both ends of the chamber.
Given the thrusts in question, I'm not sure which is weirder, the presence of a net thrust at all given the chamber being sealed, or the roughly three orders of magnitude more thrust than a photon drive would have, but either one suggests that something very odd is happening here.
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That would be true if the walls of the test chamber were perfect mirrors. Which is pretty unlikely.
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Uh... you can't be stationary in spacetime. Everything always moves at c.
Re: Controversial? (Score:4, Funny)
Who is this Einstein guy all you kids keep bringing up? Is it someone on reddit?
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Scientists (Score:5, Interesting)
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Why aren't radio satellites pushed out of orbit? (Score:2)
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Wasn't this effect measured on Voyager? It is an extremely small effect, but my understanding was that there is a measurable effect from the photon pressure generated by a radio antenna. In the case of the EM drive though, the photons can't escape the system and have not been measured escaping from the test setups.
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You're confusing the EM Drive with a photon drive. The EM Drive requires a sealed resonant cavity. A photon drive requires an open-ended reflective emitter. Photon drives are, essentially, standard reaction drives that derive their thrust from the photons being shot out the back of the drive. The EM Drive - assuming it really works - is something else entirely, because there's nowhere for the photons to go; the net thrust they impart on the chamber seems like it ought to be zero.
As a side note, experimental
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For me to confuse an EM Drive with a photon drive, I would have to believe in the EM Drive. I happen to be a member of a private club called AMSAT that has its latest cubesat in orbit right now, and that is OSCAR 85 in a series running since 1963. Obviously, there isn't really anything standing in the way of testing this on a cubesat. I'm sure that if you can raise something's orbit that there will be a lot more attention. Until then, color me dubious.
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I have no problem with the mission of investigating fringe theories. But I don't think they deserve a bit of publicity until they raise an orbit in space. I know a guy at CERN who had a bad connector, and it told them something was happening faster than light.
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And this is a good thing, This is just exactly how science works - people repeatedly testing it and testing it until we finally come up with a theory as to why it works the way it does, and what applecart gets upset because of it.
Perhaps there's some new science out there. Maybe. Or it's something that's just been
Re:Scientists (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. This is an extraordinary claim because it at appears to violate one of the most sacred law of physics (the conservation of momentum) for which we have previously never had even the slightest hint might not hold.
That said unlike Mr. Rossi and his eCat for example there is no cloak of secrecy involved here. All details are out in the public for anyone to build one and test it out. This is where in part the fuss is arising because even the best labs are unable to show that it is baloney that every fibre of our beings tells us it should be.
In the end no matter how dear we hold the principle of conservation of momentum verified experimental results trump ALL theories without exception.
Personally I am highly sceptical of the EM drive. However I have to concede that the experimental results are so far with it, and thus further investigation is entirely warranted. In fact I would go further and say that further investigation is absolutely required.
Re:Scientists (Score:5, Interesting)
And for those who don't understand why the conservation of momentum is one of the most "sacred" laws, you might want to check out Neother's theorem.
If this device is real, then it means that the laws of pyhsics are not constant but instead vary across time and space. The implications are vast, and the corollary of that is that it's a very, very, very well tested law.
It's hard to overstate how extraordinary the claims really are. And while ultimately experiment trumps all else, there have been a lot of experiments showing the contrary too and it's awfully easy to let errors slip in somewhere (see the recent articles on the number of incorrect papers being published).
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Important correction, if this device is real and the most outrageous explanation for it is assumed to be true ...
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Doesn't really matter what the explanation is if it's generating thrust with no reaction mass: whatever the explanation it would be the biggest result of the last 350 years.
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It would be an extremely interesting result, but it wouldn't be as outrageous and unlikely as a violation of conservation.
For example, reaction against virtual particles or dark matter. Sure, that's very interesting new physics, but it's not so incredibly unlikely as violation of the conservation of momentum.
That's the thing. Nobody involved is making such an extraordinary claim as that. Rather, the extraordinary claim is being ascribed to them and then used to justify rejecting not only their results so fa
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Nobody involved is making such an extraordinary claim as that.
You missed the eariler claims where the results were "derived" using relativity. No vortual particles were involved.
For example, reaction against virtual particles or dark matter. Sure, that's very interesting new physics, but it's not so incredibly unlikely as violation of the conservation of momentum.
I'm pretty sure virtual particles don't work like that. They model the interaction of forces, if you're making them and sending them out somewhere
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Even relativity based explanations would be less outlandish than a claim to violate conservation.
If it is virtual particles, it would be the second time they have had a measurable real world effect.
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Even relativity based explanations would be less outlandish than a claim to violate conservation.
Not really, no, given that relativity has conservation of momentum rather thoroughly baked in.
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It cannot be reacting against dark matter because it is located on earth and the biggest and I mean huge massive problem with the whole dark matter thing is that there is none of it on earth, or even anywhere in the solar system.
So something that is supposed to constitute over 80% of the entire matter of the universe is utterly absent in our solar system. We know it is absent because the primary reason for believing it exists is that we cannot explain observed galactic rotation with the amount of matter we
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>problem with the whole dark matter thing is that there is none of it on earth
Where do you get that claim? As I understand it dark matter is expected to probably be pretty much everywhere within galaxies, including constantly flowing through the Earth. As for there being no obvious effect locally - that's because it's expected to be so diffuse as to have no measurable effect on such small scales - some tiny fraction of a gram per cubic kilometer if I recall correctly. It's only on the scale of hundreds
Re:Scientists (Score:5, Insightful)
A working prototype counts as a pretty damned good proof of concept, at least until someone can demonstrate how it cheats.
Sure, someone might eventually figure out a way that it doesn't really cheat conservation of momentum - And that finding might have its own useful applications.
Re:Scientists (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure verified experimental results trump everything. The problem at the moment is that the forces the device produce are very small 100uN. That means there is still the possibility that there are flaws in the experiment and the effect is not real. A bit like those superluminary neutrinos a while back.
My gut feeling at this point is stop messing about with an 80W drive, and build something a bit bigger say a few kW at least. That way the produced thrust should be large enough to rule out experimental errors. Of course this would require money...
Re:Scientists (Score:5, Interesting)
My gut feeling at this point is stop messing about with an 80W drive, and build something a bit bigger say a few kW at least.
OK, I'm going to go into some depth here because this is common sentiment, even from what I've read coming from Eagleworks, and it's probably wrong. Here's why I say that:
The inventor of the EMDrive is a retired aerospace engineer - he's too old to want to test anything but threw the idea for the EMDrive out there with a low-power test early in retirement as more or less an act of mental masturbation. Why is this important? Because his prior work, from which the EMDrive stems, is a laser-gyroscope functioning on the exact same principles as the EMDrive in reverse capable of measuring absolute accelerations based on relativistic effects without any outside coupling to the surrounding environment. Why is this important? Because it works so well it is in use in missile guidance systems and has been for decades. People tend to refer to Shawyer as a quack but he is the inventor of it, the invention came from sound and proven theory and all the hype about violating conservation of momentum isn't even correct based on the theory.
How does this relate to the "make it bigger" mentality? Shawyer's theory states the greatest way to improve thrust from existing models would be to make a perfect-Q cavity, at which point 1KW of power would be enough to lift a small car at Earth gravity. This isn't a difficult test - you just need a superconducting cavity. Thus far nobody has built an EMDrive with a superconducting cavity because they think Shawyer is just a crazy guy that stumbled into something interesting.
TL;DR: don't make it bigger, just make it superconducting.
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Eh, don't like your characterisation of 'mental masturbation', but I'll skip over that and agree with other things you have said. In particular, the superconducting part.Niobium is old-school, and has to be cooled so close to absolute zero that it is expensive and cumbersome. That being said, it should be sufficient for a test of an emdrive - if thermal effects can be properly addressed. Magnesium diboride does not require quite as low a temperature, but is still difficult to get into the ultra-smooth, ult
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I agree, in that if the only difficulty with high-TC superconductors was burnout (assuming burnout happened after the time needed to conduct the experiment), then it would be worth constructing. But that's not the problem. The problem is that the high-Tc superconductors are ceramics, and getting them annealed at the proper dimensions and smoothness is difficult. An insufficiently constructed RF cavity of this type wouldn't burn out, it just wouldn't function with sufficient efficiency to properly demonstrat
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Thus far nobody has built an EMDrive with a superconducting cavity because they think Shawyer is just a crazy guy that stumbled into something interesting.
At this point I don't give a shit if he is a kook that stumbled on it, dreamed it up, or it was given to him by enchanted faires he whistled up on his magical butt flute. Lets build a large prototype and see if it works.
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Because his prior work, from which the EMDrive stems, is a laser-gyroscope functioning on the exact same principles as the EMDrive in reverse [...]
This is complete hogwash. The effects cannot be related because the laser-gyroscope is based fundamentally on rotational velocities being absolute. Linear velocities (even without Einstein's relativity) are relative. OTOH, it makes some sense that an engineer who developed their intuition based on laser-gyroscopes would misapply that intuition to "invent" the EMDrive.
Shawyer's theory states the greatest way to improve thrust from existing models would be to make a perfect-Q cavity [...]
Can you point to an actual theoretical explanation/prediction of the effect? Shawyer himself said [eurekamagazine.co.uk]:
I am just a microwave engineer and all that matters is that it works.
This was in reference to his claim (in
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1KW is about what you'd use for a microwave oven.
Thinking that amount of energy can lift a car IS crazy
Pfft, shows what you know.
One kilowatt (737.56 foot pounds per second, 1.34 British horsepower) will, if driving an (ideal) winch, lift a small car (say, a ton) at about 1/3 foot (4", or 10cm) per second. Half that speed for a mid to large sized car.
The trick is using an EM drive to move something as efficiently as a winch and cable.
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>The problem at the moment is that the forces the device produce are very small 100uN. That means there is still the possibility that there are flaws in the experiment and the effect is not real.
Jesus. Its depressing to read this shambles criticism for the hundredth time. .
100 micro grams too hard to detect above noise?
Are you living in a time before ancient greece?
In 2012 the most accurate modern weighing scales could literally detect a septillionth of a gram ( Adrian Bachtold et all Barcelona )
100 mic
Re:Scientists (Score:4, Informative)
The problem is not the absolute smallness of 100 micro-Newtons. The problem is the relative size of 100-micro-Newtons compared to the forces that exist in the experimental apparatus. It is like confusing absolute signal level with the signal to noise ratio. Yes, we can easily measure the weight of a snowflake. But if the total thrust from this 100 watt drive is equivalent to the weight of a snowflake then I am exceedingly unimpressed. If you read the fine post that is linked to, you will see that this is literally down in the level of noise that can be produced by ground loops and so on. The author is basically saying that they tried to remove even more noise sources than last time and still have not yet tracked down what is causing the extremely tiny anomalous thrust they have measured.
I am a physicist so I am well aware of just how bloody difficult it is to track down and account for every form of noise and error in experiments like this one. Or in the experiment that measured neutrinos traveling faster than the speed of light. I am often cautioning my friends to not get too excited about weak experimental results like this that contradict foundational physical theories. I also cautioned people to not get too excited about the so-called "face on Mars" for the same reasons. Lots of fascinating things are seen in weak signals that are close to the experimental noise floor.
In addition, I have not seen any reasonable theoretical explanation for the anomalous force that is purported to power the EM drive. There is certainly no relationship between the purported physics of an EM drive and the actual physics of a ring laser gyroscope. Nor have I seen any reasonable theoretical explanation for why the thrust should scale as a large power of the input energy. Yet many people here who ignore the experimental challenges of measuring the weight of a snowflake on top of the forces acting on an apparatus dissipating 100 watts of RF energy seem to blithely accept these remarkable and, AFAIK unfounded, theoretical claims as gospel truth.
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> I have not seen any reasonable theoretical explanation for the anomalous force that is purported to power the EM drive
The only thing that critics have managed to say about emdrive theory over 10 years is " muh momentum "
What else can we reply when there is no actually theory presented that we can reply to or refute? All we have to go on is some micro-wave engineer claims that he has invented a device that violates conservation of momentum without providing any reasonable theory for how it might work. Your attempt to blame the critics for the complete lack of theoretical underpinnings by the inventor is ridiculous. The inventor himself said [eurekamagazine.co.uk]:
I am just a microwave engineer and all that matters is that it works.
In addition, the Anonymous Coward engineer claims:
Emdrive has been experimentally verified by 5 institutions with results published.
(emphasis added)
Have experime
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The only thing that critics have managed to say about emdrive theory over 10 years is " muh momentum "
And the only thing historians can say about the Abraham Lincoln died from a gunshot wound theory over 100 years is "muh big hole in the head". What's your point?
Maybe it's because engineers keep saying stupid things like: extracts the 4momentum of light, converting it to 3momentum, .
Good Lord, that is even worse then quantum vacuum virtual plasma
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Well the low output could be because we have only accidentally stumbled across whatever it happening. Once it is researched and fine-tuned and a better drive is built, it will likely be far more effective and efficient.
Science is full of examples where the first way of doing a process was terribly inefficient or plain wrong-headed but better and faster and smarter ways came along later. So I am not knocking their puny output power just yet. That it works at all is great. It means there is more to do.
Re:Scientists (Score:5, Interesting)
One of two things is going to come out of this: they will determine that it's real, in which case we'll have some new physics to work with; they will determine it is experimental error, in which case we'll have a better understanding of how to measure small forces when the device is relatively large, in both air and a vacuum.
Either of these is a good thing; I'd bet on the second but would be happier with the first. In any case, the best course is to remain sceptically hopeful and continue testing.
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Look again at who is involved. These people are not basement psychoceramics looking for a wealthy backer.
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Nope, not at all backward backward. Science needs to fit reality, we don't ignore reality because it doesn't fit our best models - That very attitude, that the High Priests of Science rule over their domain with an iron book, has done more to foster an anti-intellectual attitude in the modern world than the creationists could ever pray for.
Now, whether or not you can get anyone
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Vacuum drive (Score:2)
Re:Scientists and Conservation (Score:4, Insightful)
At first glance this sounds for all the world like another perpetual motion machine. It deserves a second glance.
We (Physicists) know for absolute fact that a phenomenon called "dragging the metric" exists. The results are small, but every attempt at verification shows that the effect exists, and that general relativity predicts the magnitude of the effects. It is conceivable (though absolutely unverified) that a device might create it's own drag on the metric, and thus provide "impossible" thrust.
History is replete with experiments that show impossible results (two slit electron experiments, superconductivity) that have turned out to be true. Any experiment that provides verifiable evidence that contradicts theory shows that the theory is wrong, period. (Feynman Lectures)
The ostensible effect is small, and right up against the boundaries of bad science, but it needs to be verified, again and again, until the numbers either show that it doesn't exist, or show that it does. And if it doesn't exist, it's important to know -why- the results seemed to show it. This one is a long shot, but hey, -somebody- wins the lottery. Stick with it.
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This one is a long shot, but hey, -somebody- wins the lottery. Stick with it.
Bad analogy, often nobody wins the lottery, and they have a new drawing the next week with all the loser's money thrown in the pot to make it interesting for the new suckers...
Any experiment that provides verifiable evidence that contradicts theory shows that the theory is wrong, period. (Feynman Lectures)
Also not quite the right Feynman spirit. The easiest person to fool is yourself, so you need to avoid the Millikan-Ehrenhaft measurement problem...
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The problem is that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. /. is wrong.
This always repeated myth in
A proof is a proof, regardless how extraordinary, extravagant or hillarious the claim is.
This is an extraordinary claim because it at appears to violate one of the most sacred law of physics (the conservation of momentum) for which we have previously never had even the slightest hint might not hold.
This is the second fault. You don't know how it works, but you already know it violates the law of co
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THANK you.
Drives me nuts how people trot out this line of Sagan's like it's some inviolate law.
Evidence is evidence. It's absurd to change the standards of evidence based on your BELIEFS of what you think you should find. It's the most anti-scientific stance imaginable.
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Oh look, an attempt at proof-by-overly-simplified-analogy. How cute.
Results must be independently repeatable. That's not requiring extraordinary evidence, that's normal evidence.
Your coin toss example fails the basic, perfectly normal test of not being repeatable by a third party. Asking for someone else to repeat the result is not requiring "extraordinary" evidence, just the standard that everything else must meet.
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A proof is a proof, regardless how extraordinary, extravagant or hillarious the claim is.
Well... yes and no. Even a mathematical proof isn't just a proof, because humans are involved in creating and checking it. A complex proof requires considerable work, and occasionally even a fairly sturdy result has to be withdrawn and reconsidered. Some examples. [stackexchange.com]
Real-word experiments are never "proofs" in the mathematical sense. Directly, the only thing you can say about an experiment is "this thing yielded this result on this occasion". Everything else is extrapolation, and there are many different ways t
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As no one involved in the two EM drive principles I'm aware off ever claimed 'new physics' and both physical principles are explained with ordinary physic, I don't see your point ;)
It is the Nay-sayers who always claim (without giving any foundation) that this is new physics.
But if you see new physics, why don't you tell us wich?
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That is exactly what I meant by extraordinary proof, and that people don't understand that is both sad and depressing if not unsurprising.
So a handful of unpublished results that have not been peer reviewed is insufficient proof. This needs multiple independent results, and frankly something more than 100uN of force produced.
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and the fact that it appears to violate such laws is the EXACT reason one needs some extraordinary proof that the claim is in fact correct.
Again: no it does not.
Ordinary proof is enough. There is only proof, in science we do not distinguish between "normal proof" and "extraordinary proof". Only idiots do that.
And again: because it appears to violate No, it does not appear to violate it It only could appear to violate the law of conservation of momentum if we new exactly how the apparatus worked and if we
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Personally, I prefer to divide the claims. The primary claim is that the EM drive produces thrust that is not a result of lorentz force, air currents, or other conventional explaination. Some sort of new physics would be necessary for that to be true, but not necessarily anything crazy like violation of the conservation of momentum.
The most extraordinary claim would be that conservation of momentum is actually being violated. I haven't seen any attempt to perform an experiment that would demonstrate that. I
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This is an extraordinary claim because it at appears to violate one of the most sacred law of physics (the conservation of momentum) for which we have previously never had even the slightest hint might not hold.
No, we've been here before. Beta decay seemed to violate conservation of momentum and energy, and it took years before physicists discovered that there was another particle with no charge or mass that carried the missing momentum and energy. If these experiments turn out to be correct, we'll certainly end up with some pretty exciting discoveries, but throwing out conservation laws probably won't be on the list.
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It doesn't necessarily violate conservation of motion if the action and reaction are taking place in a way we didn't know about and therefore don't measure.
For example, if the EM drive is pushing against a force we don't perceive, then it IS having an action that conserves motion. We just aren't measuring it correctly so it merely appears to be happening by magic.
A real world example of this would be a linear motor. One of the fancy roller coasters will do for an example. The linear motors on the track p
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this post is the planet Venus, please ignore (Score:2)
Now just hook up your Rossi E-Cat to it for power any you can fly your woowoo-mobile to meet the space brothers, just like on the Kansas album cover.
Would you like to know more? [blogspot.com]
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I pretty sure that Shawyer read "relativity for Dummies" and now thinks he knows it inside and out.
physicists? (Score:3)
How does the "law of conservation of momentum" square with the the momentum imparted by photons? (iirc it's the light pressure from fusion that keeps stars from collapsing on themselves)
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Photons carry momentum away from the electron when they are emitted ("recoil") and to the electron that absorbs them ("pressure"). This momentum is real and measurable. https://goo.gl/CkjOxe [goo.gl]
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Due to the photons being pushed forwards and backwards in the cavity, that cannot be the reason. Harold White postulates that the law of conservation of momentum is not affected, that the drive is indeed transferring momentum to space-time though an interaction with the virtual particles that are continuously popping and collapsing everywhere.
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Harold White postulates
In other words, he's making stuff up with nothing to support it.
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Not really. More like he has shown some way that claiming the effect to be real is NOT equivalent to claiming that conservation of momentum is violated. Basically that the claim of the EM drive producing thrust is not as outrageous as the detractors claim it is.
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You then go back and conduct more experiments to try and prove or disprove some or all of those postulates. Rinse, repeat, refine.
It's like what happens when you discover that in certain conditions, t
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It's ordinary pressure, not light pressure that keeps stars from collapsing.
I don't even have a solid-state drive yet! (Score:2, Funny)
My my how technology continues to march on. I haven't even upgraded any of my systems to the new-fangled solid-state drives. Is this new EM drive going to have a higher storage capacity or are they just faster?
To boldly go where no man has gone before (Score:1)
Really really slowly.
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Yes, even a slight constant acceleration gets us where we want to go if it remains constant over long period of time.
A reactionless drive, or perhaps a drive that simply reacts on an unknown principle, could allow us to build ships that could feasibly make interstellar trips. If you don't have to carry your reaction mass around with you and throw it out the back, you have a range only limited by the amount of energy you can produce, and the amount of mass you have to accelerate is significantly lessened.
Oh God not again. (Score:2)
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It didn't get past peer review because:
1) they aren't presenting a theory as to what is causing it which can be evaluated.
2) the lack of said theory means that there is a violation of a well accepted principle of the Conservation of Momentum and no one is explaining why that isn't the case, or how that could be possible.
3) there is reason to believe that the experimental apparatus is unable to account for all variables and noise, particularly for the very small discrepancy which has been observed.
and of cou
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You are wrong, the force is statistically significant. Their measurement values are above the error bounds. They already have statistically significant results, it's just not big enough to rule out other influences.
So they have shown no such force by your own omission. Did you even read this out loud?
Also your wrong. They measure forces in the noise of their own instruments. Secondly their controls give forces of the same levels. That is in the fucking noise. I don't care if it is the noise of the instrument or the estimated systematic errors. *it* *is* *not* *significant*. They even fucking say that in the abstract!
Shit science is shit science.
An erg's worth (Score:2)
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Not having a good theory to understand what is going on makes even a space test sort of iffy.
Someone was looking at building a cubesat to evaluate this, but space tests are expensive and mass budget is limited. Hopefully, they are able to demonstrate this properly without a space test, or they may never get their chance to test it sufficiently at all.
What's going on here? (Score:3)
This is genuinely confusing. Who the hell is claiming that this is a violation of the conservation of momentum? I haven't seen any such claims from any of the people actually doing the experiments. There's probably a zillion alternative explanations, all more likely.
Once and for all, this violation of conservation of momentum BS is a strawman.
why the controversy? (Score:2)
First, I am a physicist.
Second, why is this controversial? Light (including microwaves) has momentum, and we absolutely use it to move things around. We have been using optical tweezers in labs for a long time. Without including pressure from photons, we wouldn't understand stars.
If you told me that a magnetron and horn antenna produced absolutely no impulse at all, I wouldn't believe you.
This is VERY interesting. How do you maximize thrust? But it's not shaking the foundations of physics.
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This particular experiment doesn't allow the photons to escape. The device is a horn with no opening in it.
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Yeah, ok, see that one's pretty hard for me to believe. I don't even believe they've tested for that yet.
They're getting a bunch of non-linear mixing and don't know what's coming out or where, or they're getting heating somewhere unusual,l or something like that. One way or another, there are photons coming off that thing as a result of powering up that magnetron.
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I am not very familiar with their mechanism, but from what I read, no light is emitted. So it is absolutely irrelevant that light has momentum.
Their claim is that they are extracting mommentum from the ( quantum )vacuum. Something very dubious.
Fight Club (Score:2)
When I saw this post my first thought was "Oh cool, a fight to watch". As usual it didn't disappoint.
It's like Dawkins -v- Christians. Neither side is going to win, both are pretty angry with the other.
A total waste of time and emotion.
When the hell did Science become an official world religion?
My guess is that it's a legacy from church persecution for challenging their version of "truth"
"He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an
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Give us a break ... I mean ... line breaks!
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I think he's channeling Timothy Dexter [gutenberg.org]. The foil is always shifting but the tin remains the same.
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Re:Summary (Score:4, Interesting)
However, it's a shame that we're so bombarded with crap these days that the default conclusion is that everything is BS unless it's unequivocally shown to not be.
It's fair to assume that an extraordinary claim of this magnitude is wrong. Think about what it's saying. There have been a lot of very precise and importantly repeatable experiments performed in physics over the years. None have found a variation in the laws of physics over space or time. A single, new experiment reporting a minute force (100nN) claims they do in fact vary.
What's more likely? An experimental error in which 100nN on an 80W device (think about the relative scale of the device and size of the force) has been missed somewhere or the most ground breaking physics result of the last 350 years?
Other reasons to be suspicious: the device was first invented theoretically using relativity. This was clearly wrong as relativity has conservation of momentum baked in at a fundamental level (via Noether's theorem). Eventually someone found the specific mistake he'd made in the maths.
The device apparently works anyway but via a different mechanism. Either you've got the mother of all coincidences, or you've got a case of severe optimism mixed with the difficulty of measuring really tiny forces on large objects with a lot of power going through them.
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Unruh effect may be responsible for the EMdrive effect, and also may explain why galaxies don't fling themselves apart, without the need for bizarre concepts such as 'dark matter' and 'dark energy'. The problem with Unruh's theory is that we have lacked the ability to test it, until, perhaps, now - with the EMdrive. See this paper by McCulloch: http://www.ptep-online.com/index_files/2015/PP-40-15.PDF
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You know what they say : Science is rarely "Eureka!" and more often "Mmm, that's strange..."
And by "they", you mean Asimov: "The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I found it!) but 'That's funny ...'"
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
For example the german dude (has a patent on an antigravity device i may add), showed no force out of the errors, yet claimed there was a force anyway. btw NASA does not endorse these results. Reputations based
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Eagleworks is an actual lab at the Johnson Space Center, and it does have a budget and NASA employees.
The problem is that their budget is very, very small, and that this is effectively something they are doing on their spare time.
There's real concern that such a small budget isn't enough to build sufficient apparatus to be able to adequately test the claims being made, and that's a pretty fair reason to believe that there is some error in the experiment.
However, this isn't the case of some guys from out of
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Unlike the experiments that have been done by a number of quacks, experimentation is being done by third parties and are showing the expected results. This alone puts the apparatus above the quackery of various Cold Fusion devices, for instance. There's no secrecy or begging for grant money.
Nevertheless, all this means is that it is worth further investigation. There are significant amount of reasons to believe that this is not really working as suggested, but it is not a matter of "working because I sai
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Wow, such anger, much distortion! It HAS been replicated. there IS published experiments, peer reviewed. Are Tajmar and Fielder not respectable enough for your tastes? Some people, which may include 'gavron', call themselves physicists but are really just engineers who took some physics in college, and now don't want to think that there's so much more physics that they have to learn. There are huge frontiers in physics, but there are usually are abstract and at one end of the scale or the other: cosmologic
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No, it hasn't.
Stop making up stuff. Just because you post it on slashdot doesn't make it true.
This is 100% NON-REPLICATED NON-PUBLISHED NON-PEER-REVIEWED NON-SCIENCE.
I used block letters so there could be no doubt. You know?
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I used block letters so there could be no doubt. You know?
I know someone else who likes to randomly switch into block letters...
http://www.timecube.com/ [timecube.com]
Re: (Score:2)
So, if the replication in different labs, by different teams, using different test apparatus, doesn't constitute replication... what does?
As I said above, you're full of shit. You know what's less scientific than not publishing a theory? Sticking your hands over your ears and shouting really loudly that something isn't real, no matter how many times it's demonstrated.
You're an idiot, with no better understanding of science than a young-earth creationist.
Yelling online... you deaf or just dumb? (Score:2)
Yeah, you're full of shit.
NOT counting the inventors, it's been duplicated in four separate experiments at two different labs: China's Northwestern Polytechnical University in 2010, NASA's Advanced Propulsion Physics Lab (Eagleworks) in 2014 and twice in 2015 (the latter of which is the test being reported here).
Also, it's pretty clear you don't understand how scientific publication works. For that matter, you seem unclear on the entire concept of "science" itself. Publication is not, and can never by, scie
Re: (Score:3)
Eagleworks is NASA. Not anyone can't just 'rent a NASA facility'. The crackpot, here, is you!