General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: NASA Tests "Impossible" Perpetual Motion Drive; Says it Works [View all]Treant
(1,968 posts)Perpetual motion = perpetual energy. Even in space, there's a tiny, micro amount of friction--which would become very, very important as you accelerate.
Effectively, in this case, externally generated electricity turns into thrust. Energy goes into the system. Thrust comes out. It's no different from a conventional rocket except that you don't have to carry fuel.
It's as inaccurate to call this perpetual motion/thrust/energy as it is to call a solar sail perpetual motion. Both simply use external particles--solar photons in the sail's case, particle pairs in this one.
In both cases, however, distance from the Sun matters if you're using solar panels for this engine. They're very nice things, but not terribly effective in the outer solar system and completely ineffective in interstellar space.
We'd need a different energy source to generate electricity further out. Historically, we use a nuclear engine for that. And nobody's claiming you can exploit this quantum trick to generate the electricity that also generates the thrust (if they were, the claim becomes extraordinary and the proof becomes correspondingly more rigorous).