Chinese Say They're Building 'Impossible' Space Drive

[n2doc]

By David Hambling September 24, 2008 | 10:29:00 AM



Chinese researchers claim they've confirmed the theory behind an "impossible" space drive, and are proceeding to build a demonstration version. If they're right, this might transform the economics of satellites, open up new possibilities for space exploration –- and give the Chinese a decisive military advantage in space.

To say that the "Emdrive" (short for "electromagnetic drive") concept is controversial would be an understatement. According to Roger Shawyer, the British scientist who developed the concept, the drive converts electrical energy into thrust via microwaves, without violating any laws of physics. Many researchers believe otherwise. An article about the Emdrive in New Scientist magazine drew a massive volley of criticism. Scientists not only argued that Shawyer's work was blatantly impossible, and that his reasoning was flawed. They also said the article should never have been published.

"It is well known that Roger Shawyer's 'electromagnetic relativity drive' violates the law of conservation of momentum, making it simply the latest in a long line of 'perpetuum mobiles' that have been proposed and disproved for centuries," wrote John Costella, an Australian physicist. "His analysis is rubbish and his 'drive' impossible."

Shawyer stands by his theoretical work. His company, Satellite Propulsion Research (SPR), has constructed demonstration engines, which he says produce thrust using a tapering resonant cavity filled with microwaves. He is adamant that this is not a perpetual motion machine, and does not violate the law of conservation of momentum because different reference frames apply to the drive and the waves within it. Shawyer's big challenge, he says, has been getting people who will actually look into his claims rather than simply dismissing them.

more:
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/09/chinese-buildin.html

[CJCRANE]

1. Forget a hybrid...

I want a "perpetuum mobile"!

:D

[Wilber_Stool]

2. That's just aa rip off of the

Infinite Improbability Drive.

[n2doc]

5. That's just Improbable. This one is Impossible! n/t

[YankeyMCC]

3. I thought this was going to be something like the Improbability Drive

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Improbability_drive

Now that would be cool.

[Wilber_Stool]

6. COKE!!

You owe me a coke. Same time, same link.

[phantom power]

4. Hmm...

It appears to obey conservation of energy, but in a very strange way. Thrust decreases as velocity increases.

Assuming it can really work, which I don't feel qualified to judge. To me, this seems like the critical claim:

Q. How can a net force be produced by a closed waveguide?

A. At the propagation velocities (greater than one tenth the speed of light) the effects of special relativity must be considered. Different reference planes have to be used for the EM wave and the waveguide itself. The thruster is therefore an open system and a net force can be produced.

Something about that seems dodgy to me, but I don't feel qualified to judge that either.

[Johonny]

7. It doesn't work

besides that it's a great invention. Tested, failed, ignored already by US space agency.

[Indenturedebtor]

8. Hey the first people to attempt flight didn't get off the ground right away either

You never know... The primary treatment for Mania was discovered because an insane doctor thought he could transfer insanity from person to person by injecting them with piss. Sometimes it's best just to try it again and see what happens in that insane sort of way :crazy:

Good on em!

[GreenPartyVoter]

9. "The primary treatment for Mania was discovered because an insane doctor thought he could transfer

insanity from person to person by injecting them with piss."

Say what??

[Indenturedebtor]

10. Here you go - linky linky

The history of scientific discovery is littered with freakin nutbags :D

http://science.jrank.org/pages/3953/Lithium-John-Cade.html

[GreenPartyVoter]

11. I just found another link on that. I still refuse to try Lithium. I don't care how much better it

works than other meds out there. Way too toxic.

[Indenturedebtor]

12. Yeah it's nasty ish. Always a pro vs con, and that one has some serious cons

Edited to add: You should check out the Leewenhook (sp?) guy who really discovered microorganisms - he was I think a paranoid schizophrenic! Interesting cat.

[GreenPartyVoter]

13. I think it is true what they say that genius is next to madness. I always do my best

creative work when I am manic.

[Indenturedebtor]

14. Makes sense :D n/t

[Johonny]

15. never bet against the law of physics

you will always lose.

It's not against the laws of physics to fly, what he was trying to do... well doesn't produce any thrust. It was measured, it doesn't work and the science behind it simply isn't sound. But feel free to prove me wrong.

[Indenturedebtor]

19. If it's that simple why are these people building it? Honest question n/t

[Realityhack]

23. Same reason N-Rays were all the rage for a few months. n/t

[phantom power]

16. A writeup on why this drive does not work:

But hang on a minute! When a particle bounces elastically off a wall, doesn’t the wall feel a force that is perpendicular to the wall? Of course it does: if you remember your high school physics, you subtract the initial momentum vector from the final momentum vector, and the resultant force points into the wall. (OK, it’s actually called the ‘impulse’, not the force, but it’s effectively the same thing for what we’re talking about here).

Now look back at Shawyer’s Figure 2.4. He has Fs1 and Fs2 pointing perpendicular to the axial direction, not perpendicular to the cone’s walls.

His arrows are wrong.

(...)

Shawyer throws relativity into his paper, if only because he really can’t avoid it for a particle that moves at the speed of light (well, is light, or its cousin, anyway). Maybe some weird spooky relativ-istic effect makes Shawyer’s scam drive work? Fortunately (for us, not Shawyer), relativity doesn’t change a thing. I purposefully described every-thing above in terms of momentum.

It turns out that one thing that relativity does not change is that momenta can still be added together, just like they can in Newtonian mechanics.

http://www.assassinationscience.com/johncostella/shawyerfraud.pdf

[Dead_Parrot]

17. Given that Costella also thinks the moon landings were a hoax...

...I'll file this in my special place.

[Dead_Parrot]

18. It certainly sounds impossible

But given that spooky interaction at a distance was recently clocked at http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v454/n7206/abs/nature07121.html">at least 10,000 times the speed of light, which is also impossible, I think I'm going to wait and see.

[Occulus]

20. That's something I've never understood

"Spooky action at a distance", aka entanglement. Doesn't this amount to the transmission of information at faster-than-light velocities between an entangled pair?

Entangled particles could be on opposite sides of the galaxy, right? And the "spooky action" still occurs, as if they were side by side?

I guess the more we learn, the more we discover we don't know...

[hunter]

21. Nope. No information.

I figure the entangled pair does stay in one place, and it's the rest of the universe passing on by. When we observe two entangled entities from different places on the surface of the universe to which our physical existence is confined, we are looking back to the single point at which the two entities were entangled. The only action here is our own observation, and any spookiness we feel is the stark realization that our perception of this universe is woefully inaccurate.

Evolution is prejudiced against adaptations that do not contribute to the survival of a species. Our minds have evolved to favor intuitive models of the universe that represent reality only so far as these models are useful for the continuation of our species. An intuitive understanding of quantum physics has never been of any use to our species, thus we find quantum physics confusing.

[TheWraith]

22. "No information" my ass.

The No Communication Theorem is full of it--simply the fact of observing action-at-a-distance IS information.