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The 'Impossible' EM Drive Being Tested By NASA May Finally Be Explained (technologyreview.com)

MarkWhittington writes: The EmDrive, the so-called "impossible" space drive that uses no propellant, has roiled the aerospace world for the past several years ever since it was proposed by British aerospace engineer Robert Shawyer. In essence, the claim advanced by Shawyer and others is that if you bounced microwaves in a truncated cone, thrust would be produced out the open end. Most scientists have snorted at the idea, noting correctly that such a thing would violate physical laws. However, organizations as prestigious as NASA have replicated the same results, that prototypes of the EmDrive produces thrust. How does one reconcile the experimental results with the apparent scientific impossibility? MIT Technology Review suggested a reason why.

10 of 532 comments (clear)

  1. It's obviously burning Thetans. by FreeBillClinton · · Score: 5, Funny

    Have they tried analyzing this thing with an E-meter?

  2. Re: Hoverboards by U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...in space, even tiny amounts of thirst are useful.

    It's true that a lot of comets are made of ice, but still I don't see the connection...

  3. Re: Quantized inertia? by Space+cowboy · · Score: 5, Funny

    To be fair, assuming no race conditions, we'd never know if they took us offline. We could be running then stopping and running then stopping, and as long as the state was preserved, we'd never know (being part of that state).

    "stop the world, I want to get off" just became a real thing...

    --
    Physicists get Hadrons!
  4. Re:Quantized inertia? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    > We'll eventually find out we really live in a simulation...

    And only the soul programs that have been save()d will be uploaded to the next life.

  5. Re: Quantized inertia? by Space+cowboy · · Score: 5, Funny

    If both time and space are quantised to the extent that we're the simulation, there's some interesting corollaries to do with numerical instability - basically that the computational steps in time have to be below a certain limit or spatial anomalies will occur, and vice versa.

    And vice versa. :)

    --
    Physicists get Hadrons!
  6. Re:Quantized inertia? by Jeremi · · Score: 5, Funny

    We'll eventually find out we really live in a simulation...

    If you ever find yourself experiencing an uncontrollable urge to do something you wouldn't normally do, it's probably because you're being clicked-and-dragged.

    --


    I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
  7. Re:Quantized inertia? by cfalcon · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'm pretty sure I've been replaced with a simple shell script.

  8. Re:Quantized inertia? by religionofpeas · · Score: 5, Funny

    Sometimes I feel like I'm a dancing paper clip offering unwanted advice to people.

  9. Turtleology by Tablizer · · Score: 5, Funny

    The lopsided nature of the cone causes the Ether Turtle's shell to become warmer than its belly. This difference is uncomfortable to reptiles and makes it shift around a bit, causing the turtle underneath to adjust to compensate, in turn triggering a similar re-shuffling of the turtle below it, and so on all the way down, causing the universe to shift position relative to the probe.

  10. Re:Quantized inertia? by Shimbo · · Score: 5, Funny

    But of course we are living in a simulation. How else would you explain the apparently inborn feeling that there is a higher being or beings that controls the rules of the Universe, and observes us constantly even when we are alone or in the dark?

    To quote Douglas Adams: "that's just perfectly normal paranoia. Everyone in the Universe has that.”