Does this video show a revolutionary new propulsion system or is the rotation simply a byproduct of convection?
The British National Space Centre's technology and industrial policy deputy director has told Hyperbola that 2010 could see a workshop on the Emdrive to bring together the expertise to tackle the "underlying physical phenomena" that is seen in the video above
The video purports to show the microwave propulsion system known as the Emdrive produce enough static thrust to rotate a mass on an air bearing but other phenomena may be involved
Below is a presentation about Emdrive that is similar in its content to the presentation given by Emdrive's inventor Roger Shawyer yesterday here at the CEAS 2009. The two differ in that the presentation below gives information on Chinese and US interest in Emdrive, which Shawyer declined to answer questions on yesterday, while the presentation shown at CEAS had information about a vertical take-off and landing vehicle flight test programme
The UK government has investigated the Emdrive before. Beyond references to these grants on Shawyer's website and in his presentations further detail is not readily available on the web, bar this freedom of information request. Interestingly it suggests that the government paid reviewers of Emdrive were, well, flummexed
For further information about the history of this mysterious propulsion system there is always Wikipedia and its page that outlines the "controversial" history - but like so many Wikipedia pages some of its links to supporting information don't work sadly
And it hasn't persuaded the Chinese because according to Wired magazine the Chinese have apparently revealed that they are working on an Emdrive of their own - and Shawyer mentions in his presentation that he has visited the country - and that they have reproduced the rotation seen in the video
So Hyperbola asks itself, is Emdrive the cold fusion of the 21st century or not?
For further information about the history of this mysterious propulsion system there is always Wikipedia and its page that outlines the "controversial" history - but like so many Wikipedia pages some of its links to supporting information don't work sadly
And it hasn't persuaded the Chinese because according to Wired magazine the Chinese have apparently revealed that they are working on an Emdrive of their own - and Shawyer mentions in his presentation that he has visited the country - and that they have reproduced the rotation seen in the video
So Hyperbola asks itself, is Emdrive the cold fusion of the 21st century or not?
on October 29, 2009 1:43 AM | Reply
I would like to know what was said at the conference on Tuesday.
on October 29, 2009 11:56 AM | Reply
Essentially Roger Shawyer gave a brief overview of Emdrive, mentioned international interest and this Chinese work on the topic and then talked about the flight test vehicle that he says could be built and flown in three years and then gave a very speculative talk on what Emdrive means and how it could be applied to spaceplanes and space exploration.
on October 29, 2009 5:04 PM | Reply
You seem to be implying that cold fusion does not work, or that it was not replicated. That is incorrect. It was widely replicated and hundreds of mainstream peer-reviewed journal papers have been published describing these replications. See:
http://lenr-canr.org
This month, very significant progress was reported in a conference sponsored by the ENEA (the Italian Energy Agency), the Italian Physical society and others, described in the above link.
on October 30, 2009 5:22 PM | Reply
Suppose your taxes are better spent investigating this garbage than our taxes for investigating refinancing.
on October 30, 2009 8:25 PM | Reply
If I were investigating this device, the first thing i would do is disconnect the horn cavity from the feed and install a water cooled load termination of similar mass. If it still spins on the air bearing table then the thrust is obviously just coming from stray forces created by the other equipment. The next step would be to encase the entire system in ferrite loaded RF absorber material so that it's truly closed loop with respect to EM and magnetic fields as its inventors claim. If it passes all these tests, then I'd say it warrants funding for development and flight testing under independent supervision.
on November 1, 2009 4:35 PM | Reply
Hi, The freedom of information link seems not to work.
Mind providing a new link?
on November 2, 2009 10:19 AM | Reply
Rather this than moat cleaning
on November 2, 2009 10:49 AM | Reply
The file has been pulled from the website, which is the South East of England Regional Development Agency website - the organisation that originally gave the grant. I have a copy of the grant FOIA pdf and will post it once I have overcome a small technical obstacle thanks to Bill Gates
on November 2, 2009 2:21 PM | Reply
If all this is puedoscience nonsense why did the gov fund it then review progress and then give more funding and are now still investigating it.
on November 2, 2009 3:05 PM | Reply
It is odd isn't it? The SEEDA document is even more odd when it says "none of the reviewers judged themselves competent to assess the theoretical basis for the EM Drive and instead suggested that it should be assessed on a purely experimental basis." Perhaps the next review is to assess it on an experimental basis?
on November 3, 2009 8:11 AM | Reply
It's a wonder that we ever got out of the caves. After all, when rocks just sit there, they don't give rise to fire, and they strike together sometimes when falling down from eroding cliffs without starting fires, so it would be stupid to try striking them together to light one, right?
The Greek philosphers' attempt to explain the world without experimental investigation didn't get very far, did it.
Experiments can still produce unexpected results. We don't know everything.
I'm not claiming with authority that it will work, but won't it at least be fun to try, and to figure out how the thrust that has been observed and demonstrated is being generated?
on November 3, 2009 8:07 PM | Reply
This might be related in reverse to the relativistic solution proposed by Jan Naudts for Casimir cavities that only make hydrogen "appear" to have a fractional state that have resulted in claims of excess heat energy (LENR, Mills hydrino, and sonoluminescence). Waveguides are known to create supression modes that inhibit spontaneous emission, A relativistic interpretation might say these emissions aren't supressed but rather exist in different inertial frames like muons accelerated by gamma rays. The EM drive doesn't need the Casimir geometry because it is not trying to rectify energy from the sea of chaotic vacuum fluctuations, rather it uses a microwave source and radiation to "allegedly" press against these same vacuum fluctuations curving space time inside the cavity relative to the ambient field falling around it. any reduction in the acceleration rate inside vs outside will result in the cavity dragging behind in opposition to the faster field falling outside the cavity. Alternate THEORY for Hydrino based on Relativity http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/blog/7200-alternate-theory-hydrino-based-relativity-26779.html
on December 3, 2009 8:30 AM | Reply
I found the original paper's three references a bit odd and the math poorly annotated and overly confusing. Can someone explain how the device avoids violating the conservation of momentum rule? It seems like he's using special relativity to conjur an exception but I thought SR obeys COM too. That said, it's been a long time since college physics. I hope he has something but I'm skeptical when things are made unessesarily hard to understand.
on January 7, 2010 5:24 AM | Reply
I'm no Physicist but I am an engineer....Taking a look at the very slim pickings available on the internet of Videos, Photos & Diagrams of this world changing 'Anti-Gravity' device, it doesn't appear to be too difficult to construct a similar machine, in all but the most underfunded universities or colleges in the world, and have it investigated thoroughly and properly...
I mean, come one.....it's only a Magnetron, a Copper cone, a Cooling system (For which personally I would probably have suggested refrigerant instead of water, no doubt due to the fact that I'm a refrigeration engineer!) and some control electronics and monitoring equipment.
...Or am I missing something? Is the idea of a reactionless drive that contravenes the basic laws of the universe so proposterous that the Physics elite/students wouldn't dare be seen to dabble with such nonsense...?
I do seem to remember reading somewhere, that somebody (No doubt someone who also new everything) once said, that the sound barrier could never be broken.....
Please, Please, Please...Somebody build another one and prove it...either way.
on January 8, 2010 10:40 AM | Reply
It will be proven soon enough as the Chinese are working on it, so therefore the US government will be working on it to make sure that they don't fall behind. Really its a smart move of Shawyer to play the "politics of fear" which is one of the largest motiviational forces in the world.
If its true, then both governments will have it soon, it may be kept as a black technology out of our sight for a while, but eventually will filter through to the public.
on April 8, 2010 3:36 AM | Reply
The system is utterly implausible. These kinds of systems *always* violate conservation of energy.
If the system can cause it to move in one frame of reference, by taking energy, so it is causing it to stop in another, also by taking energy. The total energy in the second frame of reference has *decreased*.
Straight away you can see this has violated energy conservation.
That kind of thing works with rockets, because rockets have an exhaust to give up the energy to. This system emits no exhaust and hence energy isn't conserved.
on August 1, 2010 1:19 PM | Reply
The laws of physics get in the way. The only way to get to another planet is to break light speed. The so called great scientist of today are so stuck in their ways. Unless we move past the laws of physics we will never get off this planet. Emdrive is a good start to real space travel. Some body needs to break the laws of physics so we can get past our close minded thinking.