Reactionless Space Drives Taken Seriously

bjn writes "The Observer ran an article on Sunday about reactionless space drives running on zero-point energy. The article was a bit light, but it seems that the concept is now being taken seriously enough that they are organising international conferences." Well, anyone can call a conference. This seems like some very long-range research going on - interesting, but don't expect anything tangible for quite some time.

Comments

Re:very long term? can you read, michael?

[bcrowell]

Here and here are some more substantive NASA web-pages on this. One paper referred to there that pooh-poohs the whole idea is by Lawrence Krauss, who is a real physicist and not a nut. I have to be very skeptcial when they quote this guy Graham Ellis in the original article saying "If we are right, we should be able to build our first small rockets and use them to keep satellites in their correct orbit in about five years." This statement is obviously garbage if you know anything about physics. It sounds to me like NASA started a legitimate long-range academic study on this, but it has also attracted a lot of nut cases.

I hate to sound like a stuffy academic, but I have a PhD in physics, and the whole thing sounds goofy to me. I'm not an expert on this kind of zero-point-energy-of-empty-space stuff, but it seems to me that to release the zero-point energy of empty space, you have to leave that space in a lower energy state after you're done. We don't know if such a lower-energy state even exists.
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Re:very long term? can you read, michael?

[krlynch]

it seems to me that to release the zero-point energy of empty space, you have to leave that space in a lower energy state after you're done.

Indeed it would seem that way to me too, if you were truly "extracting" the zero point energy from the vacuum.

We don't know if such a lower-energy state even exists.

And we might hope that such a state doesn't, because it would mean that the current vacuum state is a "false vacuum" meaning that it is unstable and will eventually decay into the true vacuum....and in the true vacuum, physics as we know it may not hold, portending the end of a universe capable of sustaining life as we know it!

I hate to sound like a stuffy academic, but I have a PhD in physics, and the whole thing sounds goofy to me.

Sounds goofy to me too, and I haven't finished the PhD yet....but then again, most of the stuff I do for my research sounds pretty goofy to me as well :-)