#em drive

For The Last Time, No, A NASA Engineer Has Not Broken Physics With An Impossible Engine

“The problem isn't that these laws couldn't be overturned by experiment; of course they could. The problem is that physicists have performed so many experiments in so many different ways, so carefully and with such precision verifying them. These conservation laws have been confirmed for every gravitational, mechanical, electromagnetic and quantum interaction ever observed, and they always hold. In every scenario ever examined, momentum, Lorentz invariance, and Newton's 3rd law are always conserved.

And now, it's claimed that an engine, one that relies on nothing more than a simple electromagnetic or mechanical power source, overthrows all of physics. Like cold fusion. Like the EM drive. Like any perpetual motion machine. Or, like the latest absurdity, David Burns' helical engine.”

Every time a new story comes out about some idea or discovery that clearly violates a well-established law of physics, I’m quick to point out the flaws with it and to assert that this doesn’t and cannot work. I’m then quickly met with an army of non-physicists who claim that I’m too close-minded; that I’m not even open to the possibility of new technology; and that I’m not even giving it a fair shake.

German Scientists Just Tested NASA’s EM Drive… Does It Work Now?

Is the EMDrive Just Wishful Thinking After All?

After almost twenty years of trying to make the counter-intuitive Electromotive Force Drive work, the Association Aéronautique et Astronautique de Francehas reached the reluctant conclusion that it doesn’t. And while fuel-less propulsion would make deep space exploration a lot simpler (for some pretty wild values of ‘simple’) it…

The EM Drive is a propellant-less thruster technology that’s made the news a few times and I’ve talked about once or twice. That second post explains why I didn’t bother even glancing at it for the interstellar spacecraft idea I’m playing with right now. Even if it did work as advertised, the EM Drive probably would never have a high enough thrust to weight ratio to open up the galaxy to us.

And now, researchers in Germany have identified the interaction between insufficiently shielded power supply cables and Earth’s magnetic field as being a sufficient explanation for the thrust that the EM Drive has been observed to create. That doesn’t entirely rule out the possibility that the EM Drive, or the Mach-Effect thruster are still doing something, but it strongly suggests that they aren’t the revolutionary propulsion systems that seemingly defy the laws of physics that their advocates would like them to be.

Space travel powered by an “impossible” engine that breaks the laws of physics sounds too good to be true, and it probably is.

The so-called EM drive – a rocket engine powered by electromagnetic waves – has been touted as a way to eliminate fuel required for deep space exploration. The idea is championed by inventor Roger Shawyer, whose EM drive uses microwaves trapped in a conical cavity to generate thrust. In previous tests by NASA, the microwaves bouncing off the walls of the engine seemed to produce enough force to push the cavity in one direction.

When the idea was first published it grabbed headlines (including a story in New Scientist that speculated the EM drive could be “the end of wings and wheels”). But it has long been criticised by physicists who maintain that an EM drive would break one of the most fundamental laws of physics – you can’t get momentum out of nowhere. Now, it seems they were right.

Actual science article: https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/10.2514/1.B36120

This is the potential spaceship drive that - if it does what is claimed - breaks physics.

And this article shouldn't be read as "it works!" but rather "NASA fails to prove (yet) that it doesn't work"

but like,