Finnish Scientist Provides Another Explanation For The 'Impossible' EM Drive (examiner.com)

MarkWhittington quotes a report from Examiner: Ever since the EmDrive entered the news about a year or so ago, it has sparked considerable controversy. The device is alleged to work by using microwaves that produce, in some fashion as yet unknown to science, thrust. Many scientists suggest that the EM drive is impossible as it violates known physics. However, a number of tests conducted in Great Britain, Germany, China, and at NASA's Eagleworks at the Johnson Spaceflight Center have resulted in thrust that cannot, as yet, be explained by experimental error. The International Business Times reported that a Finnish scientist has published an article in a peer-reviewed science journal with a possible explanation as to how the drive works. International Business Times writes, "A new peer-reviewed paper on the EmDrive from Finaland states that the controversial electromagnetic space propulsion technology does work due to microwaves fed into the device converting photons that leak out of the closed cavity, producing an exhaust. The research, entitled "On the exhaust of electromagnetic drive," is published in the journal AIP Advances 6 and is the brainchild of Dr Arto Annila, a physics professor at the University of Helsinki; Dr Erkki Kolehmainen, an organic chemistry professor at the University of Jyvaskyla; and Patrick Grahn, a multiphysicist at engineering software firm Comsol."

Comments

Kinda sounds like how a LASER works

[fzammett]

You've got a cavity. Inside you pump some energy. The energy is nominally trapped and bounces around. Eventually, some of it finds its way out in a coherent way. Seems like the paper is describing a similar explanation as to how LASERs work, roughly-speaking. Sounds plausible for sure.

Re:But what if we fed it more power?

[Required Snark]

No, it's different the cold fusion. The people who discovered this do not claim any magic sauce. No information is being withheld.

This is proceeding the way that scientific progress normally works. An experimenter found an effect that did not fit in the current paradigm. Other experimenters found similar results. Now theoreticians are coming up with hypothesis that may explain the result. Other theoretical types will either agree or disagree. Other experiments will be done to test the hypothesis. Eventually a general consensus will emerge. It's all completely normal.

Remember it was 100 years ago that Einstein predicted gravity waves, and they were just detected. Eventually can be a long time.