Warp Drive Confirmed? EMDrive Warp Field Works In A Vacuum

[Alar]

Let me know once they manage to launch a probe or something with it and manage with actual FTL... hell, it doesn't even have to translate to FTL. Even near light speeds would be badass and a major breakthrough. I could live to see the fucking solar system colonized. I could HELP COLONIZE the solar system.

Please don't let me down, Nasa.

 

[Scars Unseen]

Let me know once they manage to launch a probe or something with it and manage with actual FTL... hell, it doesn't even have to translate to FTL. Even near light speeds would be badass and a major breakthrough. I could live to see the fucking solar system colonized. I could HELP COLONIZE the solar system.

Please don't let me down, Nasa.

Doesn't even have to be anything like light speed. Just getting one to move stuff from here to orbit without having to burn fuel would revolutionize the space industry. The solar system doesn't need FTL. It just needs cost efficient engines.

 

[Aetrion]

To be honest, just having it work is massive in and of itself, since a lot of what would use such drives would likely be built in orbit anyway.

Yea, but getting materials up into orbit is probably still the biggest hurdle to making any kind of spacetravel widespread.

 

[Vivi22]

Now to piss everybody hoping that this tech will improve as fast as airplane tech did, NASA's budget just got cut by 40%.

NASA doesn't need to build the fuckin thing.

I'm sure any of the half a dozen companies looking to get into the space business would love to start developing this stuff, not to mention the satellite tv companies and the GPS companies. Let them do the leg work, then NASA can focus on sending someone to Mars... and back!

The last thing the world needs is for the private sector to become owners of the means to quickly and efficiently travel our solar system, let alone beyond it. Aside from the obvious fact that government investment in space travel is the reason anyone actually bothered with space travel and private companies are only now catching up to NASA from a few decades ago, nothing good has ever come from letting the private sector handle everything. The so called free market is largely responsible for most of the problems we have in this world such as the horrors of the American healthcare system, global warming, the slow death of the oceans, and plenty of other major threats to human welfare.

NASA absolutely needs to be involved in this as organizations who are able to engage in pure research and exploration without concern for generating a direct profit from their efforts serve a very valuable function. Namely trying to stop us all from killing our species so we can have a new iPhone.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Haha, like magic. It's literally blowing my mind that this works. And even more mindblowing is how they don't know why it works entirely....

"Nothing happens in contradiction to nature, only in contradiction to what we know of it." - Dana Scully, X-Files

The laws of physics can get really funky in certain edge-cases. You should see what ultra-cooled liquids can do- like crawl up the sides of their container. Superfluidity is neat!

 

[Nimcha]

First of all, it generates thrust in violation of the law of conservation of momentum.

That's a bit presumptuous. I remember this site reporting that particles were going faster than the speed of light at CERN some time ago. I was hoping not to see that again.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

Every time humanity has had a leap forward in technology, we have had scores of Nay-sayers... nay-saying, that it would be the death of us all. I blame this technologies extremely complicated nature as to why the Negative Nancie's haven't crawled out of their caves to shout at the sky.

 

[Paragon Fury]

We're coming Green Skinned Women! We're coming, even if we have to fuck the laws of sciences themselves to get there!

 

[Cowabungaa]

Reminds me of when we first managed to create lasers. In the early days, as far as science was concerned, lasers were all just quantum magic. That they worked was clear, how exactly they worked was another matter. Maybe it'll be the same with this thing.

I easily admit that I really hope that this doesn't end up being another flop, like we've seen with seemingly 'revolutionary' inventions lately. And we know that bombshells like that do happen, like the internal combustion engine, like the printing press, the internet, the steam turbine, you name it. Fingers crossed that this is another in that long list.

 

[mad825]

Every time humanity has had a leap forward in technology, we have had scores of Nay-sayers... nay-saying, that it would be the death of us all. I blame this technologies extremely complicated nature as to why the Negative Nancie's haven't crawled out of their caves to shout at the sky.

Every time humanity has had a leap forward in technology which failed we have someone yapping on about people being too negative and just look at the positives. Don't worry, be happy. Ignorance is a bliss. The three wise monkeys.

Your criticism of the cliché is a cliché. Get over it. Honestly, you're being hyperbolic by saying "that it would be the death of us all". Only the vocal minority (mostly religious) say that rhetoric.

Like anything new, there isn't enough evidence to say either way but right now it's new and therefore it's gets the used cars salesman treatment. After all, money is the agenda.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

Every time humanity has had a leap forward in technology which failed we have someone yapping on about people being too negative and just look at the positives. Don't worry, be happy. Ignorance is a bliss. The three wise monkeys.

Your criticism of the cliché is a cliché. Get over it. Honestly, you're being hyperbolic by saying "that it would be the death of us all". Only the vocal minority (mostly religious) say that rhetoric.

Like anything new, there isn't enough evidence to say either way but right now it's new and therefore it's gets the used cars salesman treatment. After all, money is the agenda.

Re-read what I wrote, carefully.

But in case you missed it again, let me point out the obvious message for you,

Spoiler

I was mocking the people who say that any new technology would be the death of us all, and that their lack of understanding of this technology is the only thing that is keeping them from flooding Facebook with propaganda and lies

 

[crypticracer]

Now to piss everybody hoping that this tech will improve as fast as airplane tech did, NASA's budget just got cut by 40%.

NASA doesn't need to build the fuckin thing.

I'm sure any of the half a dozen companies looking to get into the space business would love to start developing this stuff, not to mention the satellite tv companies and the GPS companies. Let them do the leg work, then NASA can focus on sending someone to Mars... and back!

The last thing the world needs is for the private sector to become owners of the means to quickly and efficiently travel our solar system, let alone beyond it. Aside from the obvious fact that government investment in space travel is the reason anyone actually bothered with space travel and private companies are only now catching up to NASA from a few decades ago, nothing good has ever come from letting the private sector handle everything. The so called free market is largely responsible for most of the problems we have in this world such as the horrors of the American healthcare system, global warming, the slow death of the oceans, and plenty of other major threats to human welfare.

NASA absolutely needs to be involved in this as organizations who are able to engage in pure research and exploration without concern for generating a direct profit from their efforts serve a very valuable function. Namely trying to stop us all from killing our species so we can have a new iPhone.

We did get the whole industrial revolution thing. The railroad. And isn't China worse despite not having a free market? It's true the free market isn't working out exactly as hoped, but I don't know how advanced we would be without it.

I think the biggest question to all of this is if I can finally have my stupid flying car. It's been almost a century sinceevery science fiction radio play, magazine, story, cartoon, movie and stupid future city amusement parks promised we'd be jetting around Mars by now.

 

[Recusant]

First of all, it generates thrust in violation of the law of conservation of momentum.

That's a bit presumptuous. I remember this site reporting that particles were going faster than the speed of light at CERN some time ago. I was hoping not to see that again.

Presumptuous? Not at all. CERN waited months trying to explain the apparent problem themselves; they couldn't. The "Laws of Physics" are not the immutable principles that govern the universe; they are a human attempt to map said principles. Consider Galileo. He ran into opposition because if the Earth orbited the sun, stars would have noticeable parallax shift. They didn't. The evidence plainly supported a geocentric theory of astronomy. Had Galileo had access to nineteenth-century equipment, he could've shown the parallax shift, but he didn't. He ended up being correct- but the evidence didn't support him.

Granted, the sentence probably should've said "apparently generates thrust in violation...", but that's beside the point. The evidence indicates that many important accepted theories aren't completely correct. What about that is not worth reporting?

 

[Erttheking]

Last time I read a sci fi novel where technology was used that was not entirely understood, it was created by aliens and ultimately used as a weapon to try and wipe out the whole human race. I'm going to remain optimistic about this though.

I could be completely wrong here, but are you talking about the Lost Fleet? I only asked because I just got done reading that series and something like that happens there.

OT: Well...hot damn. This is interesting.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

I am getting hyped by science again. This usually ends up in either something awesome or something bitterly disappointing.

Whatever happens, I'm drinking a toast to scientific advancement either way.

 

[GabeZhul]

*sigh* It pains me to see how many people are taking this seriously. This whole EM drive hubbub has been around for nearly a decade and it presented all the telltale signs of a free energy machine scam from the very beginning: lone genius with revolutionary ideas, "verification" by third parties that cannot be reached, minuscule effects that can be explained by methodological errors in the experiments and continuously inflating claims.

I have seen this pattern too many times to even get worked up. It will most likely end up like all other over unity free energy machines: romping around in the media for a while, getting a few gullible investors to spends some money on it, and when they cannot provide any proper evidence for their claims (or worse yet, it turns out they were an actual scam) it will quietly disappear without a trace only for a different version of it to re-appear a decade later to try the same thing again. Sad and infuriating, I tell you.

As for the "warp drive" part, let me just drop this here:
http://www.fromquarkstoquasars.com/did-nasa-just-accidentally-discover-warp-drive-spoiler-alert-no/

I also blame the media for this. When the last EM Drive hubbub was around it was already determined that it wasn't "NASA scientists" who did the experiments but an independent lab with NASA funding, yet now we have this hubbub that takes a forum post of one of these researchers/engineers and poses it as if it was an official announcement from NASA. And the worst of it? Every single news site is just running with it because it is a perfect click-bait title! The lack of fact-checking and even basic scientific expertise on the part of news editors is getting worse by the minute...

Call me when the results are actually published in a proper, peer-reviewed paper, then we can talk about it. Until then this entire thing is firmly shelved in my "baloney" folder.

 

[Nimcha]

First of all, it generates thrust in violation of the law of conservation of momentum.

That's a bit presumptuous. I remember this site reporting that particles were going faster than the speed of light at CERN some time ago. I was hoping not to see that again.

Presumptuous? Not at all. CERN waited months trying to explain the apparent problem themselves; they couldn't. The "Laws of Physics" are not the immutable principles that govern the universe; they are a human attempt to map said principles. Consider Galileo. He ran into opposition because if the Earth orbited the sun, stars would have noticeable parallax shift. They didn't. The evidence plainly supported a geocentric theory of astronomy. Had Galileo had access to nineteenth-century equipment, he could've shown the parallax shift, but he didn't. He ended up being correct- but the evidence didn't support him.

Granted, the sentence probably should've said "apparently generates thrust in violation...", but that's beside the point. The evidence indicates that many important accepted theories aren't completely correct. What about that is not worth reporting?

That's all fine and dandy, but in 100% of the cases in these sort of stories so far whenever someone talks about a law being broken it's not the case and it's a measurement error. That was the case with CERN, they even said so in the first publication of the results. Conveniently ignored by websites such as these. The 'evidence', as you call it, indicates nothing until it has been correctly interpreted.

I understand this isn't a scientific website so I'm willing to cut them some slack but some journalistic standards should be upheld in my opinion. The word 'apparently' is not besides the point, it is exactly the point. It would still be a sensationalist piece, but at least it wouldn't make claims it cannot support.

 

[Cowabungaa]

le snip

Journalistic sensationalism aside, because Star Trek-ian warp drive it obviously is not (no bending of space going on, that's Alcubierre territory), but at least give the researchers some credit. [http://nextbigfuture.com/2015/02/update-on-emdrive-work-at-nasa.html]

They did write a paper [http://www.libertariannews.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/AnomalousThrustProductionFromanRFTestDevice-BradyEtAl.pdf] as did the Chinese research team in 2013, it's not just some random lab with NASA funding (Mister White [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_G._White_%28NASA%29] ain't no random hack, and they're working from the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center for a reason) and despite these results needing obvious verification and reproduction (which they acknowledge and are planning to do) just dismissing this as baloney isn't exactly fair either.

I mean come on, they're going to replicate this at the Glenn Research Center if they reach 100 micronewtons of thrust. If it pulls that kind of attention it's okay to get a little excited about the possible prospects regarding our understanding of theoretical physics and possible space flight applications. I'm pretty excited and am definitely waiting anxiously for new experiments, keeping my fingers crossed that this passes the rigors of the scientific method.

And y'know what? Optimism is a-okay. Makes life a lot better.

 

[GabeZhul]

le snip

Journalistic sensationalism aside, because Star Trek-ian warp drive it obviously is not (no bending of space going on, that's Alcubierre territory), but at least give the researchers some credit. [http://nextbigfuture.com/2015/02/update-on-emdrive-work-at-nasa.html]

They did write a paper [http://www.libertariannews.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/AnomalousThrustProductionFromanRFTestDevice-BradyEtAl.pdf] as did the Chinese research team in 2013, it's not just some random lab with NASA funding (Mister White [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_G._White_%28NASA%29] ain't no random hack, and they're working from the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center for a reason) and despite these results needing obvious verification and reproduction (which they acknowledge and are planning to do) just dismissing this as baloney isn't exactly fair either.

I mean come on, they're going to replicate this at the Glenn Research Center if they reach 100 micronewtons of thrust. If it pulls that kind of attention it's okay to get a little excited about the possible prospects regarding our understanding of theoretical physics and possible space flight applications. I'm pretty excited and am definitely waiting anxiously for new experiments, keeping my fingers crossed that this passes the rigors of the scientific method.

And y'know what? Optimism is a-okay. Makes life a lot better.

If they actually get replication and publish a proper paper, then I will believe it. Until then, as I said, there are just too many red flags to take this seriously. I would say that in the best case scenario this is going to be yet another faster-than-night neutrino hubbub. Maybe I will be wrong, but I have seen this exact same pattern too many times already.

As for journalism, the real problem is twofold: I blame the journalists for peeking over the shoulders of scientists while what they are working on is not verified and then blowing what they see out of proportion in the headlines, but I also blame the scientists themselves for describing their own research with superlatives and often adding completely bonkers buzzwords to it in order to appeal the same journalists. This is the reason why we keep ending up with "star-eating zombies" and "intelligent alient dinosaurs with laser weapons"...

 

[spartan231490]

Just stop. This is not a warp drive. This is a warp field being created God knows how inside the device. This is literally worlds apart from intentionally generating a large, stable warp field around a space ship, and controlling that field to create FTL travel. As far apart as the discovery of fire and the creation of a jet engine.