So was it a hoax or a mistake by its inventors?
The warp drive will have to wait
31–40 of 88 posts
Re: The warp drive will have to wait
#32In case you are curious about some data. There is a German maker who has been posting about his experiments as well. https://hackaday.io/project/10166-flying-an-emdrive
This is win-win: if it works awesome happens. If it fails then you're left with the experience of having built a little satellite!
Re: The warp drive will have to wait
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
If it's free energy or free momentum, using only physics that has been perfectly described in hundreds of millions of contexts and experiments, for one and a half centuries, using mathematics that don't allow for either, you can rule out this alternative. The likelihood that free momentum and free energy are possible is indistinguishable from 0. They are empirically impossible in the strongest reasonable sense the wo…
The critical detail here is that this is neither free energy nor free momentum in this setup. Energy is pumped in, and some momentum is generated - that's incredibly boring and not at all something that should raise any skepticism. The question of what in the hell was being pushed against to convert that energy to momentum, on the other hand, is a really interesting question, but not one to deeply pursue until we're…
Momentum is conserved independently, it can not be created from energy without spilling some the other way (into whatever you're pushing against).
The vacuum is a translation invariant state so you can't push against it to get momentum either, but you can create particles out of it and then push against those. That's what electro magnetic thrusters do. They generate photons. The effect is just super tiny.
Re: The warp drive will have to wait
#34Re: The warp drive will have to wait
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or, it's a scientific breakthrough. That won't happen often, but it also can't be ruled out completely.
If it's free energy or free momentum, using only physics that has been perfectly described in hundreds of millions of contexts and experiments, for one and a half centuries, using mathematics that don't allow for either, you can rule out this alternative. The likelihood that free momentum and free energy are possible is indistinguishable from 0. They are empirically impossible in the strongest reasonable sense the wo…
Re: The warp drive will have to wait
#36https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&ie=UTF8&prev=_t... The critical passages - translated by myself Page 2: The hint: "Again it showed the same behavior - until the drive was directed towards the top for testing purposes. Usually, the drive is put on a torsion balance in a way that it can best turn the scale left or right. With the drive directed towards the top nothing should be measurable. [...] However, t…
Re: The warp drive will have to wait
#37So was it a hoax or a mistake by its inventors?
That's sort of an unnecessary dichotomy. Enthusiasm doesn't mean hoax, and the mistake was propagated by more than just the inventors. Everything suggests that it was just science in action. There was an experiment, and it failed to reject the null hypothesis of 'no thrust'. A few groups have repeated the experiment, but not to the experimental power needed to thoroughly reject it. This test seems to be a more defini…
Re: The warp drive will have to wait
#38Re: The warp drive will have to wait
#39In case you are curious about some data. There is a German maker who has been posting about his experiments as well. https://hackaday.io/project/10166-flying-an-emdrive
Re: The warp drive will have to wait
#40In case you are curious about some data. There is a German maker who has been posting about his experiments as well. https://hackaday.io/project/10166-flying-an-emdrive
Holy mackeral, that is cool. I really appreciate the "well, let's just try it" approach. I can't wait to see what happens when he launches his little satellite. If it shows positive results, lots of people will replicate it. This is win-win: if it works awesome happens. If it fails then you're left with the experience of having built a little satellite!
That's called "science." :)