EM Drive fails in the latest test

a reply to: Archivalist

No doubt. But this was a big mystery for a few years as to why it was creating thrust. The standard model could not explain the energy. Now they can. There are problems with the standard model (locality, observation, etc.) but it has been very successful in prediction and engineering.

I think we should be cautious looking for "magic" solutions we can't understand. I feel better now that we cleared the decks on this matter. I don't do physics for a living, but I had a ton of college courses in the 1980's when I was trying to decide what to do when I graduated. I really thought about this hard and long when the first results were in. Now my faith is restored in the standard model for some practical physics. Not everything - still problems that underlie the basic assumptions (mentioned above) but at least we can still keep working the numbers and discovering new things - not to mention building stuff that works.

As a professor told me once - work the math and keep your head down, and make some money. That is what the standard model provides us with. Or you can try and figure out locality and wave collapse functions, and die poor. Or you might just figure it out, and still die poor. And hated.

Cheers.

a reply to: 727Sky

the source link is incorrect, the Technische Universität Dresden tested their own Em-drive design based on thier own concepts, not any version created by nasa eagleworks, similar devices like the hall effect thruster tested in the x-37 and shawers latest designs look to be promising.

a reply to: Archivalist

A hall effect thruster is more efficient and produces more thrust... so... it seems unlikely.

And meanwhile....

Lockheed launches its special "disc" shaped craft late at night for test /mission flights to who knows where, with its silent, propulsion system.

And triangle aircraft of various sizes are still seen travelling just above treetops in cities, at impossibly slow speeds and in dead silence in the late night hours, all around the World.

Perhaps if scientists were actually allowed to communicate with each other, on a World wide scale, without all the secret squirrel hidden stuff......then maybe the human race may technologically progress more than it has.

a reply to: gort51

Perhaps if scientists were actually allowed to communicate with each other, on a World wide scale, without all the secret squirrel hidden stuff......then maybe the human race may technologically progress more than it has.

Yep top secret classification has probably done more to stifle actual technical scientific progress than anything else we can imagine. The stamp of Top Secret or even confidential has been demeaned to the point it is as much political and a means of protecting TPTB as much as anything IMO.

However some considerations are based on TPTB actually wanting the population to progress.

I sometimes wonder if the real PTB just want us peons barely smart and educated enough to work a machine or to follow orders without another thought. Makes the control of the masses much easier...

a reply to: 727Sky

Still, you gotta wonder what generated the thrust in earlier experiments.

Could it still be useful in some way even if it doesn't push against spacetime.

originally posted by: chr0naut
a reply to: 727Sky

Still, you gotta wonder what generated the thrust in earlier experiments.

Could it still be useful in some way even if it doesn't push against spacetime.

The radiation was creating thrust by interacting with the electromagnetic field of the earths core. It is a 1/cube function of distance, an inverse, so although it could be used, you would still need a source of electromagnetic (4th force) radiation to propel any mass. This means as the engine left earth (or the sun) it would inversely have less power (or force) to "push" against. So, it could be used to power craft, but as it went further away from the electromagnetic source, it would either require more power or lose thrust.

The standard model can give you the actual numbers. I am to old and tired to do this kind of math anymore, but it would not provide a low-level constant acceleration like originally thought. The constant acceleration was what had everyone puzzled, and hopeful, and confused. Good testing figured it out, along with, I am certain, some horrible nights at a chalk board and writing programs.

Standard model still wins, even though it is not correct. Correct enough for today at least.

ETA:

The standard model fails on the question of locality. Several papers were written in the 1930s to address this problem, but no one really pursued them because the SM worked so well. In the 1950s the "many worlds" thesis was proposed, but to pursue this meant and end to an academic career, and because the SM worked, who cared? People put their heads down and did the math, and made money with new discoveries. As I recall the big problem is that entanglement occurs and remains despite distance, but because the particles were photons (which have no intrinsic time associated with them), there is no internal conception of space. So local particles remain local no matter where they are in space time. They are esentiallyat all points in space and time until they stop moving at the speed of light.

If you were riding on a photon from a billion miles away, say a star, and came to earth and hit the sensors in the back of my eye, no time would have passed for you. But I could (with velocity adjustment) see that you had been traveling for a billion years. But to you, you would be at all points in space at the same time for those billion years, because from your perspective no time had passed while you were in all those places. This is the problem with locality in what the popular media refers to as "space time". This is a big problem with the SM, but not many people work on it because to do so you need a university to sponsor your, and no universities are very willing to touch this right now. I may explain the collapsing wave function some time, but once again, too old and tired tonight.

originally posted by: chr0naut
a reply to: 727Sky

Still, you gotta wonder what generated the thrust in earlier experiments.

Could it still be useful in some way even if it doesn't push against spacetime.

While you're wondering what generated the thrust, I'm wondering if NASA was right that there wasn't any as the OP article suggests:

NASA scientists detected a tiny amount of thrust while testing the drive in a vacuum, although they were hesitant to attribute the discovery to anything except experimental error. As it turns out, they may have been right.

I'm guessing they were right.

If you are wondering what caused the experimental error, I'm wondering that too, but not really that much since the science didn't seem solid and error can come from a number of things. I remember reading at one point that NASA hadn't yet ruled out thermal expansion as a possible source of the experimental error (or thrust if it wasn't error), and I don't know if they ever did rule that out or not, but I'm sure that's not the only possible source of error.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

See my post above yours.

a reply to: JasonBillung
The German team said that, but has NASA confirmed that was the source of the error in their experiment?

a reply to: 727Sky

There can be grave implications for some types of technology getting into the open. Not to mention it's easier to control the population or maintain political supremacy in world politics when you have a throttle on what types of innovation make their way to the white world. Look at how powerful the petroleum market is and how it contributes to America's hegemony. If they started publicly releasing EM/Quantum research data from the last 75 years, I think it'd make a lot of people angry and could also instantaneously dissolve America's position. As always, by controlling information, you remain in control.

originally posted by: Archivalist
"fails"

One failure is a different kind of success.


"Thrust from an interaction with Earth's magnetic field."

Perhaps this device has a different future ahead of it.

The problem being that the amount of thrust generated is literally worthless in gravity and the atmosphere, it’s only application was as a final stage for long duration space flight.

a reply to: 727Sky

Recently a research team in Germany conducted an experiment on the drive using resources such as an extreme vacuum

I feel like this is doing it the hard way.
Making a stand alone object that only depends on itself to function is the wrong approach.

Better IMO, to create a machine that has more of a symbiotic relationship to the universe it will be moving in.

I was always more of a fan of using the stars as power for our space vehicles.

a reply to: 727Sky

"I sometimes wonder if the real PTB just want us peons barely smart and educated enough to work a machine or to follow orders without another thought."

That's exactly what "They" want, for exactly the reason you stated.

The simple fact of the matter is that stupid people are easier to control and generally believe what they are told, factor in mass media to the equation, and the system is almost perfect.

a reply to: scraedtosleep

I was always more of a fan of using the stars as power for our space vehicles.

You need space vehicles first to get to the stars.

Stars which the light you see is from the past. They might not even exist anymore.

originally posted by: scraedtosleep
a reply to: 727Sky

Recently a research team in Germany conducted an experiment on the drive using resources such as an extreme vacuum

I feel like this is doing it the hard way.
Making a stand alone object that only depends on itself to function is the wrong approach.

Better IMO, to create a machine that has more of a symbiotic relationship to the universe it will be moving in.

I was always more of a fan of using the stars as power for our space vehicles.

Do let us know when you get how to do that figured out. :-p

originally posted by: gort51

Perhaps if scientists were actually allowed to communicate with each other, on a World wide scale, without all the secret squirrel hidden stuff......then maybe the human race may technologically progress more than it has.

Weirdest and most ill thought out comment iv read in a while... scientists talk... all the time, about a great many things. There is no gagging or restraining order that we all have to sign or worry about men in black suits to come take us away. I mean, iv not been picked up yet, and been posting here for a while.

Your post is filled with the standard issue paranoia dronings of "OMG NWO" and little else appears to be cognitively happening.

Are there secret things happening? Probably yes. is everything you said remotely true... nope.

a reply to: Masisoar

You mistakenly think only America does any science at all... EM and QM research has been an international effort for the best part of a century...

a reply to: BigDave-AR

It is being worked on.

Solar power and battery storage.

Once we have these two things we can become a space fairing civilization.

Everything will change with these two technologies.

a reply to: scraedtosleep

Unless you have a lot of time on your hands it's going to take more than batteries.