Saturday, November 19, 2016

The improbable is possible... no this is not another post about the Cubs nor Trump

After months of speculation and leaked documents, NASA's long-awaited EM Drive paper has finally been peer-reviewed and published. And it shows that the 'impossible' propulsion system really does appear to work.

The NASA Eagleworks Laboratory team even put forward a hypothesis for how the EM Drive could produce thrust – something that seems impossible according to our current understanding of the laws of physics.

In case you've missed the hype, the EM Drive, or Electromagnetic Drive, is a propulsion system first proposed by British inventor Roger Shawyer back in 1999.

Instead of using heavy, inefficient rocket fuel, it bounces microwaves back and forth inside a cone-shaped metal cavity to generate thrust.

According to Shawyer's calculations, the EM Drive could be so efficient that it could power us to Mars in just 70 days.

But, there's a not-small problem with the system. It defies Newton's third law, which states that everything must have an equal and opposite reaction.

More at this link: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/5dqx0k/its_official_nasas_peerreviewed_em_drive_paper/?st=IVPL474Z&sh=013af0aa

3 comments:

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

This is yuge.

deborah said...

YUGE, I tells ya!

"bounces back and forth" reminds me of an excellent time-travelerish movie, Primer.

Methadras said...

The EM drive may work, however, I don't think you can scale it and get any meaningful thrust out of it. I don't even think you can pop popcorn with it either.