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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.
Its not a violation of the laws of conventional physics.
Some of the microwave radiation escapes, thats where your thrust comes from. Matter propellant isn't used, energy is the propellant. What I don't get is why people keep calling it controversial or defying the laws of physics. To defy the laws of physics, it would have to accelerate with no energy supplied to the system at all, but it has a supply of energy it is expending.
Remember kids, in our universe Matter and Energy are more or less one and the same and completely interchangeable IF you have sufficient spare energy :)
Photons of light (which are EM just like microwaves, just a different frequency) impart energy on things the impact, this is well known ... where do they think a solar sail comes from?
Like you said, they may not understand how the microwave radiation is moving the device, but saying its breaking the laws of physics just makes it clear to anyone listening that you have made no attempt to understand what it does.
This is the drive output portion of the Impulse drive from startrek, once refined of course ... the input portion would be fusion generators to power it all to some useful energy level.
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If nobody knows how it works, how did the guy invent it?
Just like penicillin.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
But, if they call it an engine, it must have a lot more specific impulse / momentum than just beaming microwaves off the back of the device. You CAN move by pointing a flashlight the opposite way (in space), but the acceleration is so low that you'll be dead of old age before you've moved a meter. So this must clearly be different and quite a few orders of magnitude better.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
The other thing you get when you generate RF is eddy currents in nearby materials, generating magnetic fields from nearby materials. Nothing to see here, move along...