Physics-Defying Space Drive Confirmed by NASA, May Revolutionize Spaceflight

[GabeZhul]

The thing about modern physics, and the reason why no physicist would ever claim anything violates momentum conservation, is that momentum is basically DEFINED to be conserved. It is the conserved current due to translational symmetry of the theory. If we get a weird source of momentum somewhere our formulation of the theory was incomplete (i.e. we forgot something).

Now, on to the facts. Note that we can COMPLETELY SCRATCH the original "inventor" and his explanation because he never submitted it to peer review. That's never a good sign.
Moving on to Dr. Yang ( http://www.emdrive.com/NWPU2010translation.pdf ) my eyes already hurt from the lack of LaTeX. If a freshman handed this in I would immediately give it back to him and tell him to make an effort at presenting his findings if he wants to be taken seriously. Now I know that Dr. Yang's team published it ONLY in Chinese and this is a translation, and they submitted it to peer review, but I really can't take this seriously in the way this is presented. Especially if we take into account that Dr. Yang's team is several orders of magnitude off the NASA results. In conclusion the current experimental data on the subject is scetchy at best. Note: wikipedia claims there was an official english peer reviewed paper submitted by Dr. Yang and claims to link to the PDF but it doesn't work for me. If anyone could find the PDF I'd appreciate it.
Now the last of the actual (peer reviewed) sources I could find to explain this is http://arxiv.org/abs/1302.5690v3 . Now it's already a great sign that this is on arXiv. However, even the author admits that this is still highly speculative. It's simply a possible way to explain a very strange effect that we don't even know is there yet. No physics had to be violated.

TL;DR: [b/]STOP MISREPRESENTING SCIENCE IN THE SCIENCE SECTION[/b]

Just what I wanted to say.

Also, have you read the NASA paper? They did the test in a sealed vacuum chamber... that wasn't in use. In other words, it had air in it.
Now then, what happens when you unevenly fire microwaves at a structure like that engine? Well, it creates heat-difference!
And what does heat-difference create? AIR-FLOW THAT CAN SERVE AS THRUST!
Seriously, they forgot to control for something that ridiculously simple?! Especially when they are measuring their results in microNewtons?

 

[Kahani]

"A single electron weighs about 9.10938291 ×10−31 kg"

small yes but no "no mass".

according to da internet

electricity is a flow of electrons

so too is an electromagnetic wave

No it isn't. Electrons and photons are entirely different things.

microwaves in particular have been used to transmit power over long distances and nasa has worked before of the possibly using them to beam down power from orbital solar arrays.

Transmitting power has absolutely nothing to do with generating thrust.

if this thing basically "fires electricity out the back"

It doesn't. Aside from the fact that photons are still not electricity, the whole point is that it doesn't fire anything out the back. It wouldn't be vaguely controversial if that were the case, since we already know that's a perfectly valid way to generate thrust, albeit a very weak way which needs large solar sails to make use of the effect.

[b/]STOP MISREPRESENTING SCIENCE IN THE SCIENCE SECTION[/b]

Indeed. NASA has "confirmed" that this thing works by producing results several orders of magnitude different from what anyone else has claimed. That's what us physicists would generally refer to as "not a confirmation at all". There are also little bits like this in the abstract:

Thrust was observed on both test articles, even though one of the test articles was designed with the expectation that it would not produce thrust.

In other words, the NASA tests explicitly contradict the previous claims.

 

[Azuaron]

...scetchy...

I'm sorry, I can't take your comment about not being able to trust science if the translation isn't properly formatted seriously when you misspell "sketchy".

 

[giles]

I'm sorry, I can't take your comment about not being able to trust science if the translation isn't properly formatted seriously when you misspell "sketchy".

Ah, the unwarranted arrogance of native english speakers
Also I have to question your literacy if you would summarize my post as "not being able to trust science if the translation isn't properly formatted". The experimental results are s[b/]k[/b]etchy either way, I was simply complaining about the illegibility in the translation of the theoretical explanation proposed by Yang for two reasons:
1) I'm interested and it's supposedly based on classical electrodynamics, so given some effort I could probably understand it within a reasonable time span
2) the escapist article we're supposedly discussing here specifically makes a statement about the theoretical side of the device ("physics-defying", "violating" momentum conservation etc.) so that's the relevant part.

The full explanation why I don't trust that translation is rather lengthy and boring. Being lazy, I simply pointed to the biggest red flag: the abyssmal, borderline unreadable format.

 

[lassiie]

Also, have you read the NASA paper? They did the test in a sealed vacuum chamber... that wasn't in use. In other words, it had air in it.
Now then, what happens when you unevenly fire microwaves at a structure like that engine? Well, it creates heat-difference!
And what does heat-difference create? AIR-FLOW THAT CAN SERVE AS THRUST!
Seriously, they forgot to control for something that ridiculously simple?! Especially when they are measuring their results in microNewtons?

Yes, I am sure you are smarter then all the scientists at NASA who worked on this

 

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

Ooh! Can we go for the option that breaks Physics?

That's always fun :3

 

[GabeZhul]

Also, have you read the NASA paper? They did the test in a sealed vacuum chamber... that wasn't in use. In other words, it had air in it.
Now then, what happens when you unevenly fire microwaves at a structure like that engine? Well, it creates heat-difference!
And what does heat-difference create? AIR-FLOW THAT CAN SERVE AS THRUST!
Seriously, they forgot to control for something that ridiculously simple?! Especially when they are measuring their results in microNewtons?

Yes, I am sure you are smarter then all the scientists at NASA who worked on this

Not all the guys at NASA, just the tiny little lab with a dozen or so possibly biased scientist whose entire job is doing low-cost testing on different improbable propulsion methods on a shoestring budget (hence the possible bias and the need for validation).

Also, the guys who managed to crash a space-probe by forgetting to convert imperial measurements into metric were also NASA employees. If your entire argument is "Well, they work at NASA so their test must be perfect!", you are just using an argument from authority.

This entire "breaking the laws of physics" thing smells like the old cold fusion (and the more recent "faster than light neutrino") debacle to me: A bunch of people with credentials making an elementary mistake during calculations/testing and the news media jumping on it before they could figure out the kinks and fix it up. This would also explain why their device was getting "thrust" even when offline and all the other issues with the experiment.

This is of course the best case scenario. In the worst case it could be as bad as a perpetual motion machine baloney.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Remember that there is nothing that can break the laws of nature- merely our understanding of them. And any honest scientist will tell you that our understanding is still woefully incomplete.

Love the cynicism of the scientist: the Cannae Drive, as in "I cannae do it Captain!"

Or "I cannae break th' laws o' physics, Cap'n!"

 

[veloper]

Could be that both the chinese and the NASA scientists made a mistake.

Could also be that this is the start of the science-magic that is needed to reach the stars.

Hoping for the latter, but more likely the first.

 

[nekoali]

This sounds like fun and interesting possibilities. However, I am disappointed it wasn't named 'impulse dive'. Way to drop the ball there, scientists.

 

[Avaholic03]

Maybe I'm wrong, but aren't some scientists still in disagreement about what exactly makes an airfoil produce lift, or how a curling stone actually curls? Just because we don't have a completely bulletproof explanation for why it works doesn't mean that it won't work. Call me cautiously optimistic about this one.

 

[happyninja42]

Not all the guys at NASA, just the tiny little lab with a dozen or so possibly biased scientist whose entire job is doing low-cost testing on different improbable propulsion methods on a shoestring budget (hence the possible bias and the need for validation).

Which is what they're doing. They've just posted the results of their test, with the intent to try and debunk it, and they couldn't so far. So they published their results. More people will run the test again and again, and if it holds up, then it will have more validity as a valid thrust system. If not, it will be debunked. I'm not sure why you assume they're biased, when the article states they duplicated the test with the intent to try and debunk it? That seems to be the opposite of being biased to it working.

Also, the guys who managed to crash a space-probe by forgetting to convert imperial measurements into metric were also NASA employees. If your entire argument is "Well, they work at NASA so their test must be perfect!", you are just using an argument from authority.

They've also sent many many people into space and to the moon, as well as countless satellites and probes without having any significant problems. On a track record, they've had more hits than misses in the "we do stuff in space" department. Not saying they're perfect, but of all the agencies in the world that deal with space related stuff like thrust and propulsion, they've got a pretty good house to draw from in the science department.

This entire "breaking the laws of physics" thing smells like the old cold fusion (and the more recent "faster than light neutrino") debacle to me: A bunch of people with credentials making an elementary mistake during calculations/testing and the news media jumping on it before they could figure out the kinks and fix it up. This would also explain why their device was getting "thrust" even when offline and all the other issues with the experiment.

Which is why they're doing test after test? This is what, the 3rd round of testing from 3 separate agencies? All they've done is post their results so far. It's going to keep getting tested. Now I agree that it could be a case of the news rooms getting wind of something crazy and jumping on it to fill air time, but still, the results so far suggest it might be accurate. They'll keep picking at it like crazy, don't worry. They're science/space nerds. Like people on the internet, they will obsess over every minor detail and try and pick it apart with a zeal.

This is of course the best case scenario. In the worst case it could be as bad as a perpetual motion machine baloney.

True, it could be total bunk, that's certainly possible, but until then I'm content to just let them do their tests over and over until they figure it out.

 

[Lightknight]

Wait, from the Nasa Abstract it says that the null drive also gave positive thrust results:

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20140006052.pdf

"Thrust was observed on both test
articles, even though one of the test
articles was designed with the ex
pectation that it would not produce
thrust. Specifically, one test article contained internal
physical modifications that
were designed to produce
thrust, while the other did not (with the latter be
ing referred to as the ?null? test article). "

How the hell did the null drive test produce thrust if it was modified not to?

 

[medv4380]

We'd need c thousand or so years at least to get to our nearest neighbor..and considering that we as a species under got global language shifts every 500 years or so and civillization uphevalas every thousand years or there abouts... theres almost a certainty that the explorers and the people back home would be speaking entirely different languages, coming from different cultural perspectives and references. The explorers we send would be as alien to us as any alien we could think of.

You should brush up on modern linguistics. Modern day language drift has drastically been reduced, and in part reversed. Most thank TV for that change. Accent Reduction is a nice change, and will defiantly impact your 500 year shifts.

Any explorers we send will almost certainly speak the same exact language they leave with. Maybe some minor changes. For 500 years, or more they won't have any significant updates to their technology, and to maintain the existing equipment they'll have to know the language it was written in. Language changes because things change, but if things stop changing (because you don't want to break your spacecraft) then language wont be affected by much drift.

TLDR;
Past performance is not indicative of future returns.

 

[Makabriel]

TL;DR: [b/]STOP MISREPRESENTING SCIENCE IN THE SCIENCE SECTION[/b]

QUIT TRYING TO SCIENCE MY GEEK NEWS SITE

Next you're gonna tell me the sinkholes in Russia aren't made from the Great White Worms that have come to devour us all..

 

[direkiller]

Wait, from the Nasa Abstract it says that the null drive also gave positive thrust results:

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20140006052.pdf

"Thrust was observed on both test
articles, even though one of the test
articles was designed with the ex
pectation that it would not produce
thrust. Specifically, one test article contained internal
physical modifications that
were designed to produce
thrust, while the other did not (with the latter be
ing referred to as the ?null? test article). "

How the hell did the null drive test produce thrust if it was modified not to?

because when you heat an object it forces air around it to move.
They were most likely expecting it, so they wanted to see if the working one generated any additional thrust over the null.

 

[Lightknight]

Wait, from the Nasa Abstract it says that the null drive also gave positive thrust results:

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20140006052.pdf

"Thrust was observed on both test
articles, even though one of the test
articles was designed with the ex
pectation that it would not produce
thrust. Specifically, one test article contained internal
physical modifications that
were designed to produce
thrust, while the other did not (with the latter be
ing referred to as the ?null? test article). "

How the hell did the null drive test produce thrust if it was modified not to?

because when you heat an object it forces air around it to move.
They were most likely expecting it, so they wanted to see if the working one generated any additional thrust over the null.

One "was designed with the expectation that it would not produce thrust." That quote sounds like the opposite of the thing you said, "They were most likely expecting it".

That's why the part I quoted is significant to mention. They both produced thrust even though one was specifically designed not to. Did someone screw up and accidentally insert jet fuel or propellants of some kind?

 

[raankh]

Nowhere do I see NASA validating the idea or claiming proof of anything. The abstract just says that tests were inconclusive and that they need to automate the frequency control to get reliable results. Their obtained results can't be explained by our current understanding. It's only the news sites that claim proof or validation....

(also, if the device would emit Hawking radiation as reaction mass, it could conceivably conserve momentum while being a virtual particle exchange. "Splitting the quantum plasma" sounds Star Trekky enough to me )