Cannae/EmDrive

[PB666]

E. M. D. protests his innocence, saying the world just doesnt understand their relationship.

Q. Uncertainty testified in court, smiling, my work is complete.

[Mazon Del]

I would love a web comic based on this.

[Scotius]

Interesting clip of Emdrive-esque design in action. Enjoy

[Sean Mirrsen]

Interesting clip of Emdrive-esque design in action. Enjoy

How exactly is that Emdrive-esque? The clip would have certainly been helped by some manner of description. It doesn't look like anything particular.

[Scotius]

Sorry. Not Enough Information

https://neolegesmotus.wordpress.com/page/2/

Here's the link to relevant website, where creators of this engine describe their invention.

[ZetaX]

Sorry. Not Enough Information

https://neolegesmotus.wordpress.com/page/2/

Here's the link to relevant website, where creators of this engine describe their invention.

All I see is something that reeks crackpot. No actual physics, no science, no nothing is shown there. Just the claim to have invented an incredible thing, without any evidence.

[Scotius]

I know But the same can be said about Emdrive. Yet somehow it creates a force that still hasn't been explained, and was interesting enough for NASA to start looking into it. Maybe ASPS found another way to dip into the same source of power?

And by the way:

http://conspiracy-cafe.blogspot.com/2015/03/kosmos-2499-is-it-spy-or-assassin-or.html

An article about secret Russian sat weighting about 50 kg. but packing almost 200 m\s dV.

Food for thought

Yes, i know it's most probably a test bed for bleding edge maneuvering (but still conventional) thruster. Which is kept under tight wraps - just like American mini-Shuttle. But still...

[sal_vager]

To be honest I'm really surprised we aren't seeing tons of magic engine and perpetual motion guys clamoring for attention for their devices now that the EM drive has been discovered, yelling "I told you so" or similar.

In fact it's all gone pretty quite, I guess that may be because all they have is easily staged videos where a guy pulls on a wire, hyperbole websites with no science and fantastical claims that have not got a hope of being taken seriously by the scientific communities, and just hoped to drum up publicity and venture capitalist funding and then trying to make something that works (or disappearing with the money).

Now there is a drive that seems to actually work it looks to have taken the wind out of a lot of these magic engine peddlers, all the attention is on the EM drive.

It's harder to sell something that doesn't work when there's something that does...

[Scotius]

There is another thing that veers into conspiracy territory. As someone on NSF forum pointed out, both Chinese team of prof. Yang and NASA Eagleworks went very silent as of late. Originally report from Eagleworks new experiment was to come out more than a month ago. Only Sawyer, Tajmar and smaller private experimentators publish any reports about their work. Coincidence?

[ZetaX]

I know But the same can be said about Emdrive

No. While very likely being not what many think it is, EM is being tested (->science) and has a public blueprint (->everyone can try it).

The link you gave is just a claim that someone sometime made some magic thingy that does something violating physics.

[PB666]

There is another thing that veers into conspiracy territory. As someone on NSF forum pointed out, both Chinese team of prof. Yang and NASA Eagleworks went very silent as of late. Originally report from Eagleworks new experiment was to come out more than a month ago. Only Sawyer, Tajmar and smaller private experimentators publish any reports about their work. Coincidence?

In science, they have been partially scooped, it would seem. So now they got to go back and double down. I don't think the blown capacitor excuse will fly anymore, they need to use good electronics and increase power.

[Frozen_Heart]

There is another thing that veers into conspiracy territory. As someone on NSF forum pointed out, both Chinese team of prof. Yang and NASA Eagleworks went very silent as of late. Originally report from Eagleworks new experiment was to come out more than a month ago. Only Sawyer, Tajmar and smaller private experimentators publish any reports about their work. Coincidence?

Well delays on everything is normal for NASA. If they say their report is coming out on a certain date, just add a few years to that and its probably more accurate.

[CptRichardson]

There is another thing that veers into conspiracy territory. As someone on NSF forum pointed out, both Chinese team of prof. Yang and NASA Eagleworks went very silent as of late. Originally report from Eagleworks new experiment was to come out more than a month ago. Only Sawyer, Tajmar and smaller private experimentators publish any reports about their work. Coincidence?

Eaglework's primary report isn't supposed to come out for another month and a half, and the 'conventional' scientists threw a damn hissy fit and put a gag order on them until the tests are complete.

[Mazon Del]

I don't think the blown capacitor excuse will fly anymore, they need to use good electronics and increase power.

We are in the stages of their development schedule where that is pretty much the plan. Their initial test article (the one with the capacitor problem) was mostly there to answer the question of "Is there something here, or is it measurement error?" to their satisfaction. They have since spent some effort to create a modified test article that can be produced by other interested parties that does not have the cap problem but is designed still for the low powers. Low power because at higher powers it gets harder to say for certainty that you aren't having some weird interaction with something like the Earth's magnetic field.

They should currently (by now) be performing tests with a higher power version that is less finessing the question and more "what happens if we crank it to 11...safely.".

[Crusher48]

So now cracked.com is using this.

http://www.cracked.com/photoplasty_1626_23-insane-things-science-gets-closer-to-creating-every-day_p2/

[RuBisCO]

Has Anyone posted this yet? Ok so a basic EM drive is just a cone shaped copper resonance cavity and a magnetron... How is it so hard to test these things? These things can literally be made out of scrapes in Romania! How come we have not had 10+ independent test by now?

[K^2]

Because nobody cares about whether it generates a force. That's been well established by now. What people want to know is whether there is some obvious reaction force. And these are very difficult to exclude. In the setup in video, for example, magnetic interaction in power supply wiring cannot be trivially excluded, for example. Another common concern is air currents, which can also not be discounted here. List goes on.

[RuBisCO]

Because nobody cares about whether it generates a force. That's been well established by now. What people want to know is whether there is some obvious reaction force. And these are very difficult to exclude. In the setup in video, for example, magnetic interaction in power supply wiring cannot be trivially excluded, for example. Another common concern is air currents, which can also not be discounted here. List goes on.

Well sure and with a dozen independent researchers I'm sure each and every possible cause (other then reaction less thrust) can be explored. The cost though is low, this is not a tokamak reactor, this is something that can be made with a microwave oven and copper sheet metal.

[K^2]

Well sure and with a dozen independent researchers I'm sure each and every possible cause (other then reaction less thrust) can be explored. The cost though is low, this is not a tokamak reactor, this is something that can be made with a microwave oven and copper sheet metal.

In this case, main cost is time. Just about everyone who has access to the right equipment, like vacuum chambers, and knows how to carry out the experiment precisely enough and accounting for all the variables properly, would probably consider it a wild goose chase not worth pursuing, because they have thier own research, which they actually expect positive results from.

I'll admit, though. I'm starting to get curious. If I still had access to test equipment I'd need, I'd probably be running my own experiments by now.

[Scotius]

At least three NSF users are building their own test devices and rigs currently. One of them (rmfguy) already started preliminary tests. There is also a team testing a 'baby-Emdrive' - an engine about the size of coffee mug

[cptdavep]

At least three NSF users are building their own test devices and rigs currently. One of them (rmfguy) already started preliminary tests. There is also a team testing a 'baby-Emdrive' - an engine about the size of coffee mug

I wonder if it's possible to make one small enough to fit on a cubesat? Someone could stick one in space and see if it really works quite cheaply!

[KerikBalm]

Just a thought (I doubt this EM-drive works), I'm not sure its been proposed before...

Basic conservation of energy calculations done by physicist in the late 1800s were showing that the Earth and sun couldn't be much more than 20 million years old...

Of course, geologists and biologists looked at what they saw, and thought that the calculations had to be missing something.

The calculations were (generally) solid, and to arrive at a longer age, there needed to be some unaccounted for energy source, or conservation of energy would have to be violated.

In the end, conservation of energy held, and they found another energy source -> nuclear reactions.

*if* this thrust is real (and not ablating/interacting with the test chamber ... ie it would still produce thrust in interstellar space), we have to assume either conservation of momentum is violated, or there is some unaccounted for reaction mass.

There is some form of mass which we are aware that exists, but can't readily measure. Dark matter... that stuff that makes galaxies rotate much faster than they should.

Just as elements were assumed to be indivisible, unchangeable when they weren't.... what if we had a device which could cause an interaction with dark matter, while at the moment we ignore dark matter completely?

Dark matter shouldn't be in clumps like normal matter... and its supposed to make up a lot more of the mass of the universe than observable matter.

Would the local concentration of dark matter be high enough to provide useful quantities of reaction mass?

Is it at a higher concentration than say... the solar wind? (its total mass is much more than the observable universe, but here in the solar system, we have a very high local concentration relative to interstellar space).

Does anyone know if you had a device that could interact with dark matter, would you have a denser reaction mass than that of a magnetic sail that just interacts with the solar wind?

*If* it works in a total vacuum, I think, as before with the age of the Earth, we should be looking for a missing source of something that will make conservation laws hold.

Barring ablation of the device, interaction with Earth/the test facilities by EM forces, etc.... then we've got to find the missing reaction mass

Dark matter is really the only source of mass that I could think of that we could easily miss.

Of course... what are the odds that one can invent a dark matter thruster by chance, and have it be so simple?

Edited August 11, 2015 by KerikBalm

[Ralathon]

I wonder if it's possible to make one small enough to fit on a cubesat? Someone could stick one in space and see if it really works quite cheaply!

I wouldn't call 100k cheap. Sure, it's cheap for spaceflight, but it's not exactly spare change.

- - - Updated - - -

Of course... what are the odds that one can invent a dark matter thruster by chance, and have it be so simple?

Pretty much nonexistent. We don't know what dark matter is, but it seemingly does not interact via the electromagnetic force. If it did we could see it and our spacecraft would slow down when moving through it. Considering that microwaves are electromagnetic waves this shouldn't have any effect on dark matter.

It is also an untestable hypothesis. We don't know what's causing the thrust of this EM drive. So its a bad idea to draw "all of physics is wrong" as a conclusion. Drastic changes like that are only warranted when all mundane causes are ruled out.

[CptRichardson]

I wouldn't call 100k cheap. Sure, it's cheap for spaceflight, but it's not exactly spare change.

- - - Updated - - -

Pretty much nonexistent. We don't know what dark matter is, but it seemingly does not interact via the electromagnetic force. If it did we could see it and our spacecraft would slow down when moving through it. Considering that microwaves are electromagnetic waves this shouldn't have any effect on dark matter.

It is also an untestable hypothesis. We don't know what's causing the thrust of this EM drive. So its a bad idea to draw "all of physics is wrong" as a conclusion. Drastic changes like that are only warranted when all mundane causes are ruled out.

Given that we picked up a signature that remarkably resembles a warp field when the Eagleworks tried it on a lark, I wouldn't be so sure that it isn't a dark matter drive. One working hypothesis is that it alters the curvature of space-time within it which might have a net effect.

[KerikBalm]

"Pretty much nonexistent. We don't know what dark matter is, but it seemingly does not interact via the electromagnetic force. If it did we could see it and our spacecraft would slow down when moving through it. Considering that microwaves are electromagnetic waves this shouldn't have any effect on dark matter."

- Fair enough

"It is also an untestable hypothesis. We don't know what's causing the thrust of this EM drive. So its a bad idea to draw "all of physics is wrong" as a conclusion. Drastic changes like that are only warranted when all mundane causes are ruled out. "

- That is the opposite of what I was suggesting. I first gave an example of where observations appeared to contradict conservation of energy >100 years ago. In the end, they were just overlooking a source of energy.

Now there is an observation that appears like it might contradict conservation of momentum.

If such a contradiction were to occur, that would cause the "all of physics is wrong" conclusion.

Instead, I'm trying to think of sources of reaction mass that may have been overlooked.

I'd believe Dark matter is behaving in some odd way, before I'd throw conservation of energy and momentum out the window. I would think that this would sound more reasonable to you as well.

Of course... some error in the test setup sounds even more reasonable... but I've not kept up to date on any repeats, but if the results are reproducible, its more reasonable to look for overlooked reaction mass than to say its a reactionless thruster.

FWIW, Its only untestable for as long as one cannot get good measurements of dark matter.