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UnevenEdge

The EM-Drive has been peer reviewed.


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Posted

http://www.forbes.com/sites/briankoberlein/2016/11/19/nasas-physics-defying-em-drive-passes-peer-review/#33fec11b76e2

 

For those that are not in the know, the EM drive is a fuel-less propulsion device. Something that basically... should not exist according to the laws of physics as we understand them. But it does.

 

Newton's third law states that for every action, there is an equal an opposite reaction - and thus there is no reaction without an action. However the EM drive produces thrust - moves itself forward without creating any action at all. It just bounces radio waves around inside a specially designed cavity - purely with electricity, and is somehow able to create a reaction.

  • 2 weeks later...
Posted

Maybe it's like the Planet Express Ship engine...it doesn't move at all, it moves the universe around it  :o

 

...

 

and with that contribution, I shall leave the Science folder and ne'er return

Posted

That's all cool but the last I heard it didn't produce much energy at all...maybe if it was modified for short journeys because it would take a very long time to travel elsewhere.

  • 2 weeks later...
Posted

In terms of long-distance space travel, it's not always nearly so much about how much you accelerate as it is how long you can continuously accelerate.  If the EM Drive's apparent thrust actually holds up in practice, the fact that it doesn't require any reaction mass means that it can accelerate a spacecraft indefinitely, enabling it to eventually reach far greater speeds than a craft using chemical propellant, or even ion drives.  Another system of propulsion that doesn't require a reaction mass is the solar sail, which relies on the radiation pressure of the Sun's light to adjust a spacecraft's trajectory and has already been tested.

 

(Seriously though, I'm holding out for an Alcubierre drive.)

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