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New Test Supports NASA's Controversial EM Drive
An anonymous reader writes: Last year, NASA's advanced propulsion research wing made headlines by announcing the successful test of a physics-defying electromagnetic drive, or EM drive. Now, this futuristic engine, which could in theory propel objects to near-relativistic speeds, has been shown to work inside a space-like vacuum. NASA Eagleworks made the announcement quite unassumingly via NASASpaceFlight.com. The EM drive is controversial in that it appears to violate conventional physics and the law of conservation of momentum; the engine, invented by British scientist Roger Sawyer, converts electric power to thrust without the need for any propellant by bouncing microwaves within a closed container. So, with no expulsion of propellant, there’s nothing to balance the change in the spacecraft’s momentum during acceleration.
They've gone into plaid?
Well the tests keep showing the damn thing works! Maybe it's just magic. Works based on fairies flying out of an engineer's butt, or something. Hopefully it doesn't break the universe :-/
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Actually, the test shows that is not fairies flying out of the engineer's butt, but rather invisible unicorns pushing the unit. Those tricky magical bastards....
In case you haven't seen it yet...
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
They say one of the limiting factors (aside from violating the laws of physics) is the political will to launch a large nuclear power plant into space. The solution is obvious: use Cold Fusion to power the EM drive. There is great efficiency here because they can get two Nobel prizes with only one gadget.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
If two magnets get close enough and snap together are they violating conservation of momentum when forces are acting on them to accelerate toward each other?
Of course not. The total momentum of the system stays zero.
When I was a kid, I tried to make a self-propelled car by putting magnets on the back and front bumpers of a toy car, reasoning that the front magnet would attract the back one, and therefore produce thrust. When I built it, I learned a valuable lesson: it doesn't work. Because the force pulling the back magnet forward is exactly counterbalanced by the force pulling the front magnet backward.
The EM drive is closely analagous to this idea. Except that they didn't figure out when they were eight that this will never work.
https://xkcd.com/1404/
Area man refuses to accept that something was demonstrated by a scientific experiment can possibly be true - insists that his knowledge of science as an 8 year old was more advanced than that of actual actual specialized scientists.
So it's powered by a typical Comcast bill
Table-ized A.I.
On the actual surface of Alpha Centauri? Probably not.
A theoretical physicist, an applied physicist, and an engineer walk into a bar.
The engineer says, "Thanks barkeep, may I have another?"
The bartender bets the three that he can serve them beer at FTL speeds.
The theoretical physicist says, "Preposterous! That would violate all sorts of fundamental laws including causality!"
The applied physicist says, "If it works, it doesn't matter what your theory says!"