I freaked out a tiny, tiny bit reading that. The very idea is so fucking exciting.
The "Impossible" Engine is real, NASA says so!
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I freaked out a tiny, tiny bit reading that. The very idea is so fucking exciting.
Assuming his math is correct, it can cut the travel times on a mission to Mars nearly in half. And that is with the very small returns they are getting on these test drives. Hopefully with some more testing and refining of the design (and, y'know, figuring out why it is actually working), they can improve on those returns.
Do it.
I want green space women by next year.
i will settle for body paint and costumes though.
If the engine is scalable as they seem to believe it is, then this should not be a problem.
Are you calculating over a realistic orbital intercept or taking earth-mars distance and calculating on that?
TheLostBigBoss
Banned
I want to believe
Ether_Snake
å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®
If it's good for pushing a spaceship, isn't it good to push turbines? Why would it be used specifically for rockets and not to generate power? (I have no idea idea what this is all about)
I was just thinking about this a few days ago. I really wanted this to be a thing.I'm pretty happy things are moving forward. Even if it doesn't work out, hopefully some good knowledge will be gained from it.
Fusion Pizza
Member
Wow, fuck yes.
Tbh, while i still don't think the thing actually work, i'm a bit perplexed at all the "it violate the conservation of momentum" crowd. I mean, there are already experiments which violate the conservation of momentum, the most famous being described by Fenyman in its book about eletromagnetism (17-4), as the disk with charged spheres that start spinning when you stop flowing current in its central solenoid . The solution to the paradox is that the momentum that is being "given" is the one lost by the field and as such give a total momentum to the material.
But if i can create such a field with simply currents and solenoids, this mean that we already accept that we just need electricity (movement of electrons) to create "real" momentum.
Now, why would it be so hard to believe that virtual electrons, created and destroyed constantly, may do the same in an hard vacuum? Casimir effects are very real, and already proved that "virtual" electrons can act on "real" matter.
Why would this be much different? If someone could explain where i'm going wrong, i'd be glad because it's bugging me.
EDIT: also technically, a laser pointer create thrust with just electricity, while being absurdly inefficient.
The drive uses electricity to produce thrust, so pushing turbines with it doesn't really make much sense. It's also a comparatively tiny amount of thrust that it generates, so it's only really practical in the vacuum of space.
The English Conquistador
Member
Epsilon-delta
Banned
I'm happy seeing this thread bumped.
Exciting times.
Exciting times.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
Oh good, I figured that a bump likely meant this was debunked, but apparently not. Still exciting
Alcoremortis
Member
So did they ever explain why the null engine produced the same amount of thrust as the real engine?
bodyboarder
Member
The cynic in me figured this would surely have been a hoax.
Don't let me down science!
Don't let me down science!
titiklabingapat
Member
And apparently, they have done experiments where two instances where two [articles that are as far as 15 miles apart react as if they are the same one. It's called entanglement, iirc. It's fucking crazy,
hipbabboom
Huh? What did I say? Did I screw up again? :(
From what I've read, the models for quantum mechanics are still incomplete and their are a few competing theories still battling it out including those who say we should just use the most excepted models and not question it. This is the segment of scientist that bother me because they seem to beholding to one viewpoint and anything that cannot be explained by that viewpoint that's observable through experimentation, they simply want to dismiss as errors. That doesn't seem very scientific.
Entanglement yeah. It's like one particle reacts to a change in its entangled partner.
Evil_Silver
Banned
The power of imagination allows human beings to dream about the impossible long enough for us to make it a reality. Please let this be real and successful.
Evil_Silver
Banned
The great thing about the scientific method is that it creates the opportunity for change. The problem is, human beings don't like change, especially when change challenges their deeply rooted assumptions and beliefs.
If something it's observable by verifiable and repeteable experimentation, you can be sure it will change the theory. Faster-than-light neutrinos would've been one case for example, but in the end it was proven as an error. Big statements (newton conservation of momentum is not true) require likewise big proof.
unholyrevenger72
Banned
Time relative to people on earth or passengers on a space craft moving near the speed of light?
Epsilon-delta
Banned
Quantum entanglement suggests the distance between the two particles has no range when they act as one. Whether its the distance from one end of a galaxy to the other, or are on opposite sides of the known universe.
Nope. Proper proof they require, "big" proof they do not.
Big in the sense that people will be less likely to accept it until multiple verified sources confirm it.
Not sure why u felt the need to make a pointless correction when you understood perfectly what the sense of my post was.
The Shogun
Banned
Mass Effect will be real life. Yaaassssssss!!!!!
I may be overreacting / overconfident
No ship as we intend it can travel near (relatively speaking) the speed of light. 10% is probably the most optimistic estimate, and at that speed, relativistic time dilation effects are minor (0.5% slower time frame).
This doesn't make FTL travel possible... The universe can be soul crushing in how feeble we are relative to it.
So this is essentially a zero-point energy harvester?
I don't think it's a ZPM. It couldn't power up the antarctic chair, and even if it did, we don't have any drones left.
Slayer-33
Liverpool-2
Holy fucking fuck, excite.
Edit - Wtf did I quote, lol
Post was meant for the new info.
Flintty
Member
Nope, it's not built for that kind of test (getting it retrofitted will take too long) and there's only one direction that thing is going.
Down 
Demon Lizardman
Banned
So can we get some men to mars or not?
jellies_two
Member
The reasons this is interesting, or puzzling, is the part where it is reactionless.
At first it looks like it isn't a free energy machine because of course it needs power to provide the thrust, right? pump a lot of electricity in, get a few micro newtons of thrust out. So what? But because it is reactionless, once it reaches some low speed, the thrust starts to be worth more than the power used. And this keeps growing as the speed rises. Once the vehicle is only a small way between earth and mars, the drive is producing free energy (or taking it from somewhere that nobody yet understands).
(PS: This is why spacecraft using gravity slingshots to accelerate should fire their boosters during the part of the slingshot where they have very high speed, because the value of the booster is so much more there than when they are travelling slowly).
With a lot of ifs
If it works in a vacuum
If the thrust is real.
If the thrust is the same at any speed.
(etc)
BTW the inventor states that if the device is tethered, as you would have to to measure thrust, no thrust can be measured.
However if it is _accelerating_ then it will produce more acceleration in the direction opposite to the open end of the funnel. Presumably also you could infer the thrust if it were on a frictionless dolly, by watching the speed.
This complicates testing of the thrust produced considerably, because normally you measure the thrust of something by tethering it.
At first it looks like it isn't a free energy machine because of course it needs power to provide the thrust, right? pump a lot of electricity in, get a few micro newtons of thrust out. So what? But because it is reactionless, once it reaches some low speed, the thrust starts to be worth more than the power used. And this keeps growing as the speed rises. Once the vehicle is only a small way between earth and mars, the drive is producing free energy (or taking it from somewhere that nobody yet understands).
(PS: This is why spacecraft using gravity slingshots to accelerate should fire their boosters during the part of the slingshot where they have very high speed, because the value of the booster is so much more there than when they are travelling slowly).
With a lot of ifs
If it works in a vacuum
If the thrust is real.
If the thrust is the same at any speed.
(etc)
BTW the inventor states that if the device is tethered, as you would have to to measure thrust, no thrust can be measured.
However if it is _accelerating_ then it will produce more acceleration in the direction opposite to the open end of the funnel. Presumably also you could infer the thrust if it were on a frictionless dolly, by watching the speed.
This complicates testing of the thrust produced considerably, because normally you measure the thrust of something by tethering it.
eot
Banned
I'm not sure if you're confused whether or not violating a conservation law is a big deal, or whether or not this thing actually does, but you kind of answered your own question. A photon is an excitation of an electromagnetic field and it does carry linear (and angular) momentum. And no, there certainly aren't any experiments that violate the conservation of momentum!
No, you aren't "harvesting" anything in this case. You're still losing energy, you're using virtual fields to convert energy to momentum.
This is still problematic but there are various things already that show the possibility of real-effects of virtual particles, like the theoretical black hole evaporation and the casimir effect. Those still mantain momentum however.
Pagusas
Elden Member
Nope, it's not built for that kind of test (getting it retrofitted will take too long) and there's only one direction that thing is going.
Down
I dont mean add it to the ISS as a usable engine, I mean send up an experimental engine and test it inside (or outside of) the ISS. Where better to prove an engine ment for space works, than out in space! Give it a try, if you can prove it actually moves forward, then success! On to building bigger, more badass ones. If it doesn't, then back to the drawing board.
So space Internet is a possibility?
No i'm saying that if we already accept the transferring of momentum from fields to particles, i'm not sure why transferring momentum from virtual photons to real particles would be that different.
There are already mostly accepted theories that involve virtual photons either applying forces (Casimir) or stealing momentum and mass (black hole evaporation), but this is apparently much different, i'm just not seeing exactly how.
Obviously a violation of momentum conservation would be a huge deal, but it has to be proven this would actually be. First we have to understand how it work (if it does).
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