What is the EmDrive?

this show. Well anyway, but we warp around sometimes, warp around, warp warp yes, okay, sorry, Well, today we're gonna be talking about not just one listener request, but a topic we have gotten lots of requests about in the past few weeks, right, right, But generally we've been getting requests. I think this is sort of like some people are confusing a couple of topics and sort of putting them

into the same category, but understandably. So let's let's back up and tell the story of the so called NASA M Drive. First of all, I'm just gonna have to say I don't think it is quite correct or appropriate to call it the NASA M Drive. From what I can tell, it is not in essence a NASA project. The M Drive is sort of a concept. Uh, there's there's one main model, but then others that are very similar.

And then recently we've had some experiments by a subdivision of the Johnson Space Center at NASA who have tested versions of the M drive, and we'll talk more about that that division a little bit later in the episode. Right, But I don't think there, I don't think it's really correct to call it the NASA M Drive, so we'll just call it the M drive. So, simply put, the M drive is a proposed method for generating thrust in

space without propellant. It's a propellantless drive, which is um or at least propellant in the way that we we generally understand propellant, because there are some weird, wacky, uh quasi explanations of what might be going on in which we could be talking about a quantum propellant. But we'll get to that too, sure, Okay, So let's look at how today's space vehicles work. So today's space propulsion is pretty much all based on Newton's third law, which is

pretty good as a good law. Yeah, it's also known as the conservation of momentum. And that's where Newton said that you can't keep a witch in your basement unless you pay attacks to the local region. No, that was the fourth thought. Sorry, just holy grail. The conservation of momentum. So it's for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. You've heard this one before. You could paraphrase. This is the sort of throw the medicine ball method,

as I've called it. So imagine you're sitting in a rolling office chair on a very smooth surface, and you've got one of those big heavy medicine balls in your and your feet are not on the ground, you're not adding, you're not embracing against anything. And now you just take that ball in your hands and you throw it as hard as you can. What happens, well, the ball goes off in one direction and then you roll away in the opposite direction. And this is the basic principle behind

a chemical rocket engine. So in a chemical rocket engine, you burn fuel to eject lots of mass or propellant. The goal of the burning in a rocket engine is the exhaust um. So you're going to be throwing all this hot gas out the back of the rocket. And then, of course, because of conservation and momentum, the rocket gets pushed forward with a proportional force, and there's actually a mathematical way to determine what that force is going to be. Yeah,

it's incredibly simple. Actually it's too. To figure out momentum. You take the mass of the body that's going to be that's that's in motion, and you multiply that with its velocity. No Velocity is speed in a set direction, and that's really important with momentum when you're talking about conserving momentum. So, uh, the mass of the propellant in this case is very low, We're not it's especially compared to the rocket itself, right, it's much smaller, but velocity

is incredible. So you multiply those two things together. Well, meanwhile, you've got the rocket which has got a certain mass. As long as the the the momentum is going to be greater than the rocket, then obviously you're going to have to uh, if you if both sides of that equation have to be equal, you have to have some velocity with the rocket going in the opposite direction. That's what's conserving the momentum. Uh, So the rocket will end up moving through space in the opposite way from the

direction of the propellant um. And if you want to picture this relationship with just a concrete example. Imagine instead of the big medicine ball, you sit in the rolling office chair and you shoot a gun. Right, the weight of the bullet that's not much mass. It's a very low mass object, but it escapes with very high velocity, and it's probably gonna make you roll, maybe as much or more than the medicine ball. So that's your basic thing.

That's just your basic rocket. Right, That's just the way that uh well, that's the way the universe works that our understanding of physics has. This is one of the fundamental laws, this conservation of momentum. You cannot create it, you cannot destroy it. You can only conserve it, right, right, you can move momentum around. Yeah, So it's not just chemical rockets though. This is all methods of space propulsion that we have that follow Newton's third law. So, for example,

you have something like ion thrusters. Now this is this can be classified as a type of electric propulsion, but

it's still accelerates by ejecting propellant. In this case, the propellant is ions or charged particles that are being sort of electrically gathered and flung out the back of the vehicle, and it's a relatively low amount of mass, but it can accelerate it at very high speed and you can have you know, you can have a constant acceleration where the acceleration itself might not be very drum attic, but over time, because you're accelerating, you're building onto that velocity,

you get faster and faster and faster. It's just that that you know, uh, acceleration is very smooth and slow, but that doesn't mean the speed is slow. The speed will just get additively. It starts out not fast. Right now, you might be thinking, wait a minute, now, I can think of some methods of travel in space that aren't based on throwing mass out of the back, Like what about a solar sale or what about beamed propulsion. Well,

in both of those cases, you're still conserving momentum. It's just that instead of throwing something out the back, you're letting something push you from the outside. Right because radiation, electromagnetic radiation has forced So a solar sale would like stretch out a big reflective sale and let the sunlight

push it out away from the sun. Or you might have some kind of system where you could beam energy or something or beam ions at an object in space to push it forward, and that's I'll find that also is still obeying Newton's third law. Yeah, the interesting thing here is that we often think of electromagnetic radiation is not possessing any mass, right, like the idea that um a photon is. We often think of it as a massless particle that carries light. However, it's kind of massless. Yeah,

it has a relativistic mass, so there's that. But but also the interesting thing about momentum with electromagnetic radiation is that we're really looking at the energy of the particle. And the way you determine the momentum of a of electro magnetic waves is that you take the energy and you divide it by the speed of light. Now, the speed allow is a huge number, so unless that energy is truly astronomical, it's also going to be a very very very small number when you're done with that division.

But that's the momentum of that electromagnetic wave. So in other words, as you might imagine, it takes a lot of energy to create a little momentum using electromagnetic radiation. Right. But of course, even in these scenarios where we're talking about electromagnetic radiation or something having some kind of momentum like a force that can impart. The laws of physics tell us that you can't accelerate a closed system because

what we're talking about there is an open system. So you might have a solar sale that even if you um discount say like like charged particles and and stuff like that, flying into things that do have mass. If you're just talking about radiation pressure pushing on a solar sale, that's an open system. It's being fed energy from the

outside right now. According to the everything we understand about the laws of physics, you cannot accelerate a closed system, a system that doesn't have mass or energy coming in or going out. Right. So, Uh, one example I have seen that I read in an article somewhere was that imagine that you are sitting in the driver's seat of a car and the engine isn't on. Uh. This is John Byas is analogy. There we go, thank you, thank you, and that you push on the steering wheel in order

to try and make the car go. That doesn't work. Uh. You know that as a closed system, and there's nothing going in there to make that. Plus as you're pushing here obviously pushing yourself backward. It's all being equalled out. Nothing's happening. Momentum is preserved within the system, but you don't get an external motion there. The car won't move right right, even the Flintstone's car. If you know, if you're moving your feet, that's a that's a fricative surface

pushing against that that is an open system exactly. So so yeah, according to the laws of physics, we know of three ways to move something. You can eject mass like chemical rocket. You can push against something like we do with the Flintstone car, feet in the Flintstone car, the wheels of a car with an engine. Or you can be pushed by something like a sail in the ocean or a solar sail. That's conservation and momentum. We've, as far as we know, with one passe double exception

now never ever seen this violated. So that brings us to the thing that may or may not be an exception. And before we get too much into m drive, which I mean, obviously we haven't gotten into it really at all yet. But before we really leap into this, we should also say you're gonna hear a lot of hypothesizing going on among the three of us. And that's because this is actually something where every single research organization that has taken a look at it has come up with

a different means of explaining what the heck is going on. So, if you are listening to this hoping that we're going to give you the definitive answer as to does the M drive work, does it not work? If it does work, why does it work, I just want to go ahead and yeah, I got to warn you that's not happening, not yet anyway, certainly not definitely not us Right, Well, we'll offer plenty more cafaats as we go down the road,

because this is getting into territory. I think that even weird for lots of physicists, as we are by no means physicists. So we're doing We're doing our best here, folks. But so let's talk about the M drive. The M drive is sort of you could also call it the RF resonant cavity thruster. That's what has been referred to in some of the literature RF, meaning radio frequency UM. It is one system, and not the only one ever proposed that attempts to challenge the absolute necessity of propellant

for for space travel, like we're talking about. It wants to generate thrust like a traveling force without propellant. Okay, So the m drive was invented by the UK aerospace engineer Roger Shawyer. Uh sometime around the year two thousand and shaw You're created the company's Satellite Propulsion Research or spr Ltd in the early two thousands around the device and to sort of uh promote his research. But the

basic idea is actually pretty simple. Like once you get into the physics, the math is incredibly complic hated, but the device itself is pretty simple. Yeah. The idea is you're bouncing microwaves around inside a very specifically designed cavity, right that will turn pure DC electricity just creating that yeah, electric energy into microwaves that generate thrust without ejecting any mass.

So in other words, you've got a chamber. There's no opening in that chamber, so there's no way for the microwaves to escape because otherwise the microwaves will be acting like the propellant that we had talked about the previous ones. So and and as I said, that would be a very inefficient means of generating thrust because electromagnet magnetic radiation is very low momentum. But uh, imagine that you've got this. This is yeah, this is not even pushing from the outside. Right,

You've got a closed off chamber. All the microwaves are in. Microwave radiation is inside that chamber. There's nowhere for it to go. But one end of the chamber is wider than the other end of the chamber. And that, according to the various tests and the various design documentation that we've come across, is the secret. Right, that's the that's the thing that that design is. Yes, and it's integrally important to creating that thrust. Yeah, let me try to

explain it a little better. So I found a two thousand six paper where show your attempts to explain his theory and sort of diagram how the thing works. Again, it's lots of advanced math. I am not qualified to evaluate it or tell you whether whether his math is correct or incorrect, but I can at least look at what he's proposing. So the paper is called a Theory of Microwave Propulsion for Spacecraft. And here is how you claimed it would work. You have a magnetron it's like

in a microwave oven. Your your microwave has one of these, and it's just it's like a vacuum tube that turns electricity into microwave radiation. And then you have a quote closed papered wave guide. A wave guide is usually just going to be it's some kind of like pipe or something. It's a it's a device that guides electromagnetic radiation or waves in some way for a machine to make use of.

And in this case it has to be specifically like he says, closed and tapered, so it's not open, and it uh, it is like you said, it's bigger on one end than it is on the other. And the magnetron generates microwaves. The microwaves are fed through a tube into this specially designed wave guide. And then this is a quote from his paper. He says, the group velocity of the electromagnetic wave at the endplate of the larger section is higher than the group velocity at the endplate

of the smaller section. Thus, the radiation pressure at the larger endplate is higher than at the smaller endplate. So he's saying there's going to be despite the fact that it's a closed system. There's going to be greater radiation pressure on one part of this system than on the other, which if you have a pressure your differential, this should result in the thrust in. Yeah, and that's an important thing,

unidirectional thrust. Right, Like you can without bracing against anything, sit in a rolling chair and rock back and forth. You know what? What But what would you need to do to generate unidirectional thrust? That's the question. And even with this description it's still I mean, if you start thinking about the laws of momentum, it still sounds pretty

confusing because you're talking about a closed system. Uh, think of it as if you were in um to to macro size this to get out of the electromagnetic world. Imagine that you've got a spacecraft and it has one wall that's larger. You know, it's shaped in almost a triangular way. Where you have one and that's very wide, and one and that's that's much more narrow. They both

have flat walls. And you get three quarters of your crew to line up against the wide portion and the last quarter to wine to line up on the on the the smaller portion, And tell everyone put your hands on the on the wall and push as hard as you can, you would not expect the spacecraft to move through space. Because so though Sawyer has an answer for this, Okay, So he's got a theory about why this works. And what he claims is that his device um because of

relativistic considerations. That again, we're not qualified to evaluate the physics of those. Some other people who are kind of qualified do seem rather dubious. Uh, because of relativistic considerations, it's not a closed system. It's actually an open system once you've take into account these quantum physics that he's talking about. Yeah, so if you just go and look at like the fact on his website, he tries to

explain it. So he says, for example, the thrust is the result of the reaction between the end plates of the wave guide and the electromagnetic wave of propagated within it. Okay. Again, while that sounds like a closed system to me, but he says it not because at the propagation velocities and this is a quote, at the propagation velocities uh, parentheses greater than one tenth the speed of light closed parentheses,

the effects of special relativity must be considered. Different reference planes have to be used for the E M wave and the wave guide itself. The thruster is therefore an

open system and a net force can be produced. So he's invoking relativistic physics like a like a sort of like Lorenz transformation, essentially saying that that to your your point of reference is what determines whether the system is open or closed, and that from one point of reference, it appears to be a closed system, but if you

change your point of reference, it's an open system. It's very similar whenever we get into discussions about about speed and time, about how your experience of time is going to remain the same no matter how fast you're traveling, but your speed of time compared to someone else's speed of time will change, well, will appear to be different based upon your both relative speeds relative to one another.

Um So, so it's one of those things where like without a further deeper understanding on my part, my first, my my knee jerk reaction, I completely admit this is based off ignorance. But my knee jerk reaction is you're using special relativity like a get on a jail free card, like like well it's only or or obi wan Kenobi would be like, well, it's only a closed system from a certain point of view. I'm like, you're gonna make me watch a prequel trilogy where I learned that you're

just a big liar, Mr Obi one. Okay, So well, let's get back to where all of this sort of hype in the media has come from. Yeah, because in the past month or so, there have been so many stories in the popular media that have been talking about and that's where all of our requests came from, too, is like in the last month. Yeah, but this is

not the only time this has come up. In fact, you if you go back over the year, you will see sort of a cycle of like resurgence and then dying off of M drive related hype a theory you do, Yeah,

at least of the dying off part. Well, yeah, okay, So there have been times when there's some supposed new somebody comes out and says something about M drive and this may be shaw Your's M drive or any other similar form of sort of like closed microwave propulsion, right, because he's not the only person who's been working on this. They're they're very similar technologies. You might even call them parallel.

That are, they're being considered and tested. But like so, let's say within the past year or so, you've seen a headline that says something like NASA confirms impossible space drive or something like that, right, Uh, that sounds exciting. Yeah, NASA confirmed it. Yeah, we like NASA. NASA does good work, I'm sure, and that is in reaction to, uh this presentation that came in July from a team out of

the Johnson Space Center, which we mentioned before. Yeah, and their presentation was called, quote anomalous thrust production from an RF test device measured on a low thrust torsion pendulum rolls off the tongue and uh so the division we keep talking about this, this group within NASA has a name Eagle Works. Well that's that's a that's an unofficial name. They don't have. It's you know, based on skunk worksite, actually legal works. It's done by the folks from scrubs.

I don't get that reference at all. Is NASA's Advanced Propulsion Research Group. Yeah, you could also say they're the ones who are given the amazing responsibility to investigate the least likely, most fringe, most far reaching possible hypotheses because the idea being that. Sure, a lot of these ideas that were coming up with and I'm not speaking just

about the M drive. I'm talking about lots of stuff here, warp drive exactly, at warp drive and that kind of I'll mention warp drive with the M drive as well a little bit later too. But at any rate, Uh, they're they're in charge of looking at all these things because even though many of them may be extremely unlikely to ever work out, if one of them does, we

definitely want to get in on that. So right, well, I mean, you can understand why people might be excited about this if there is a test that seems to indicate, oh, maybe you could generate thrust without ejecting mass. I mean, propellantless drive would revolutionize space dravel would be It would wreck physics departments across the world too. I mean you would you would have to rewrite the books on physics.

You would have to at least sit there and say, all right, for your basic classical system this holds true. But in these cases addendum to classical physics and we'll actually talk about that at the end of this episode, Like what this means, Yeah, yeah, sure, okay, but but so in this July uh paper, I believe it was

a conference presentation, conference presentation. Yes, yes, now that's totally correct. Um. The group leader of Eagle Works one Dr Harold Sonny White, proposed that the M drive should in fact be able to provide thrust because the quantum vacuum. They're giant quotation marks around that, y'all. The quantum vacuum should function the same way that propellant ions do in a magneto hydro dynamics drive. So let's unpack all of this just a

little bit. No idea what hydro dynamics drive is, Well, it has something to do with the leader of the League of Evil Mutants, right, Welcome to Die, right, And then apparently one of the Spider Man villains is in there too, with Hydroman there, and so obviously the comic book villains are are are deep and NASA is what we're getting into. Lauren, can you explain this? Did you look this up? I can? I can explain this a

little bit. Okay, So, so quantum vacuum. Quantum vacuum is the term for the concept that the vacuum of space is not empty, but rather is is filled with like Heisenberg uncertainty related virtual particles and photons that simultaneously exist and don't exist sporadically and or predictably the way that they do. So, Yeah, like the vacuum of space is full of quantum possibility, right, and and if there's a possibility, that means that at least some of the time there's

a reality. So if you think of this like I think of it, I always go back to electron tunneling because that goes back to my my technology stuff. So electron tunneling the the electron doesn't necessarily tunnel through anything. This is a term that we use for things like when you're making a transistor and if they transistor gate is too narrow, sometimes an electron can appear to have tunneled straight through the gate, but it doesn't leave a hole or anything. What happens is you've got a field

that somewhere within that field the electron exists. So there's a percentage of probability that the electron will exist at any given point in that field. If that field can overlap a gate, that means that there are there is a possibility the electron could exist on the other side of the gate and as long as there's a possibility. It means that sometimes there is an electron on the

other side of that gate because nature finds a way. Yeah, well, and an electronics This is what we call a bad thing because you don't want your electrons to be able to go through the gates of the gates are not open. That's the gates are designed to stop them exactly. You're supposed to have the control flow of electricity. Also in dinosaur amusement parks um, that is a very bad probability. I'm sure we'll find that out in the in the

upcoming documentary World. Okay, so so we've got a quantum vacuum, but what about magneto hydrodynamics. Okay, that is the fancy term for a type of plasma physics, and quantum vacuum is not a thing that is really agreed upon solidly by the physics community, but magnetohydrodynamics totally are. It's basically, when a conductive field slashes around, and it's also in the presence of a magnetic field, it will generate electrical currents.

Those currents will muck around to the magnetic field, producing mechanical forces that'll muck with the fluid and with anything else that happens to be nearby. Now see this makes perfect sense to me, and this is why we're talking about electro magnetism, the the the the relationship between electricity and magnetism. So if you have a magnetic field, uh, and you've got a conductor, then clearly you're going to have the ability to generate to induce electricity to flow.

I mean, that's the very basics of a lot of our electrical electricity power grids here. Okay, can you give me a concrete example and explain how it would work? All right, So let's say that you've got a an iron nail and you've got a copper wire that's wrapped around the iron nail, and then you introduce that to a fluctuating magnetic field. Now fluctuating is important in this case.

But if it's a fluctuating magnetic field that will induce electrons to flow through that copper wire, so induced electricity to flow. It's the same thing we're talking about here, except we're talking about plasmas rather than you know, a like an actual magnet or an electro magnet. But it's it's the same basic principles it's the principles of electricity and magnetism working together and they kind of feed off

of one another. Sure where does the mechanical force come in? Oh, well, that would just depend upon you having some sort of magnetic system that would have to be able to react to, uh, the actual magnetic forces. I mean, you would have to for for a mechanical thing, for a physical force to happen. I would imagine you have to have some sort of possibly ferro magnetic material to be attracted to it. Otherwise I can't. I don't know where you would get mechanical

forces from that point. Otherwise, Um, it's it's a bit of physics that I do not understand. The caveat number like thousand of this podcast episode, scientists say that this is tot's a real thing, y'all. So I believe them. You could have it be a mechanical force, now that I think on it. If you've got a plasma, the mechanical force may just be the fluid I motion of the plasma. The fact that the magnetic forces are going to force the plasma to change different shapes, that could

be it as well. So uh yeah, anyway, fascinating stuff. This parody actually made a vehicle out of this? Yes? Actually, um, okay, So magneto hydrodynamic drives are engines that capitalize on this weird trick of physics, maybe by using the mechanical force created by the system to push against matter that's nearby and propel a vehicle forward. I think that's what the

m drive is talking about. But in practical, tested, reproducible systems, UM, you can use the mechanical force created by the system to funnel a liquid like like water or air through a series of ducks running the length of a vehicle. So the vehicle therefore moves forward from the force of the fluid that it's it's funneling being pushed out through the back end of the vehicle. Wait a minute, is this the Red October in then for Red October caterpillar drive?

Is that what it was? No? No, that was that was nuclear stuff. But but this is this is similar, um, and they're actually no no, wait no, I think in the I think it is. It's a nuclear powered magneto hydrodynamic drive system. It's a it's a possibility. Obviously that was fiction. It's the caterpillar driven fiction. I'm sorry. I interrupted you. I'm sorry, please go ahead. No, no, Mitsubishi did make a real submarine back in the early nineties that contained this kind of drive. It was powered by

superconductive coils containing liquid hydrogen um. Well, and it was also powered by seawater, because that's what it was pushing through the system, right, right, Yeah, So so this sub was called the Yamato one, and it was pretty badass but also really impractical because it had a top speed of like nine miles per hour a k a about

fifteen kilometers PERU. That might be comparable to some objections people have raised about the m trun Right, but so, all right, what Dr White of Eagle Works is saying is that if you suppose that the quantum vacuum of space contains enough particles to push against or maybe through, uh magneto hydro dynamic type drive, then it could it could work. Okay, Well I don't know whether that's true or not, but that's interesting that he says. So yeah,

I mean that's all I have to say. Yeah, It's it's one of those things where where at some point you have to say, well, this this is dealing with a level of understanding beyond my own and I can't really have an opinion about it beyond that. Okay, well,

let's talk about actual tests. I mean there there have been tests, yeah, there, And this is why but er I think repeatedly getting excited because there have been multiple tests, some done I think in the United States in China where they're like, okay, well we're building one of these things, some kind of electromagnetic drive system, like an M drive or or a CANAI drive. You know, it's bouncing microwaves inside an apparently closed system and generating thrust one way

or another. Like in China, They've been doing some right since twenty ten or so, this this team out of China has been publishing research concerning this sort of technology. As the last thing that I saw from them was that they were working on ways to monitor these devices from the inside with like embedded therma couples, because monitoring this kind of system is pretty important to make sure

that it doesn't explode um. But but but they have not this team out of China has not yet provide an explanation for how an M drive would provide propulsion in a vacuum. And well, I mean not not one that's been widely accepted by the scientific community. And an important thing to call or or an important thing to point out rather is that none of the tests on M drive technology have been conducted in vacuums yet, which

is a really important variable in this whole space travel equation. Right. Well, I mean, so one of the things we need to look at is a lot of these tests do report results. They say, hey, hey, this we generated some number of micro Newton's of force or not force of thrust. Yeah, so they register some tiny amount of apparently unidirectional thrust. They say, we we put it on a you know, a machine that will gauge if there's thrust, and they did register some tiny, tiny, tiny amount of thrust. Now,

the question is why did they register that. Is that because the device is actually working as proposed, or because there's been some kind of error, or because uh, you know, there's something wrong with how the experiment is devised, right right, Maybe there's some kind of factor that they have not taken into account, a couple of which we will discuss later on um. But so all of this hype recently, uh you know, up until now, no one has tested

this in a vacuum. Someone from Eagle works um. An engineered by the name of Paul March went on an enthusiast web forum called NASA space Flight dot Com and said that NASA has built, has has run a successful vacuum test of an M drive, And that is what

I think all of these news sources are going bonkers about. Yeah, because the the important thing we need to point out here with the vacuum versus non the know in atmosphere tests is that, uh, there are other variables that could affect measurement right where you could end up having a false positive on an outcome. For example, you might think that your M drive has produced thrust, but in fact a nigh undetectable breeze could have affected the um the measurement,

And that was one of the things. That's why people are saying, you have to have a successful test within a vacuum environment to rule out some of these other variables. Plus that's the environment that this thing would be working in in the first place. Yeah, I mean, there are a lot of things that can happen if you don't actually have a vacuum. So so we've heard this report apparently on an internet forum that there finally has been a successful vacuum test. But that's a report on an

internet forum. Yeah, and it's a really cool internet forum. Apparently some of the like a bunch of engineers from Eagle Works hang out there and kind of bounce ideas off of this community of like minded enthusiasts. So, you know, but internet forum. Yeahah, so, so if you just look at the ones that have been published with the not

fully vacuumized, that'd be the term. The chambers that are that are not actually if a full vacuum um you could I I've seen it suggested by some critics that perhaps heating the air could cause convection currents that could move the device, and that and then you get the false positive. The device seems to move on its own, but it's actually because of convection currents. Obviously, that is something that you could eliminate by putting it through a

vacuum chamber. Another criticism I've seen some critics make is simply that these are hyper sensitive test conditions. It's not registering huge amounts of force, very very small. Yeah, I've seen it compared to you know, it's orders of magnitude below the weight of a raisin. Yeah, I've I've also heard that it's significantly lower than what had been predicted.

Although to be fair and at least one UH incarnation of this device, it was said that it would only work if the device were already in motion and not uh work. You couldn't use it to to start, you had to be moving already and then it would uh

provide an acceleration. But um either way, you know, the measurements were talking about a very small and some would even argue well within a margin of error where you know, the the the amounts being measured are smaller than what you could UH safely expect is beyond error with the metric the measurement devices you're using. Yeah, and another thing that that multiple critics have pointed out is that it seems like the more accurate the test conditions are, the

smaller the registered force appears to be. So like the better the test is, the less force they seem to detect. Another thing I've seen quite a few scientists and science writers do is sort of register mirthful skepticism at the suggestion that the action of the devices made possible by

this quote quantum vacuum, virtual plasma. And the thing that is that they've never heard of such a thing and do not understand what it is, with the implication that it's just kind of made up, like it's not a real thing, like it might as well have come out from a Star Trek Next Generation episode ye be followed by reverse the polarity. Again, that's something that I think we can't really comment on, but I've seen actual physicists

making that all. I've at least seen physicists say I have no idea what this is supposed to mean, like this is my field of study, and I do not know what that is supposed to mean, which maybe it doesn't mean that. It doesn't necessarily mean that the phrase is complete nonsense. It may be a weird way of explaining something that truly exists, but it's just a weird way of saying it. And that's why the physicist would say, like, I don't without further explanation, I don't know what this

means literally. But there have been a lot of good criticisms basically of the hype around this device, and I think a lot of the criticism is not necessarily directed at the actual like the Eagle Works scientists who are testing it, but more at the more the media for sort of overplaying the results. Yeah, definitely, yeah, or not even the Chinese team or a shower, but the media, which is fair because a lot of right you know, sure, well,

I mean, you know, we work in this field. It's easy to get excited about something that seems to be new and revolutionary, especially if it's going to have us redefine the laws of physics, right, and that's that's a tall order. Think it's less exciting when the new and revolutionary thing has happened like four times in the past decade.

But sorry, right, well, I was going to say that, Um, you know, I read a thing in Astronautes where there was a you know, the the The author was criticizing the media reaction mainly like like Lauren was saying, and less about you know, the actual people behind it, but went on to say things that we're really thought provoking

to me. For one thing, it was in that post where I read about shaw Your's design supposedly only working once the engine was already in motion, that it would not be able to provide thrust until it was already moving, which, as as the author pointed out, makes it very difficult to measure you know you're yeah, yeah, you've complicated things

significantly at that point. And also it all seems to contradict all the the miraculous findings that are happening, like well the guy who designed it said, oh, it shouldn't be working, and people are like, hey, look how well it's working, or you know, it appears something appears to be working. Now you could argue that perhaps UH, it would work better in the already in motion model that

Shaw your head said was necessary in the first place. Um, there's definitely a ton of enthusiasm and criticism about this, and to be honest, it's so it's so early really, I mean, we we talked about it being discussed as far back as in that era, but still from an actual testing perspective, it's so early on that it's it's hard to draw any kind of conclusions about There are also other weird UH revelations about this. There were some there's some talk about possibly this could be a lead

into a warp drive where it's actually warping spacetime. There was some talk about the using lasers to UH to see if any space time warping was taking place, and that it appeared to be so and then other people say, well, that's weird because in other devices that are using much more high powered microwave and other forms of transmissions, you don't see this. And it's you would figure that as you're adding more energy into the system, the effect would

be greater and greater. So wouldn't we have already seen this by now? I mean the relative amount of power that's being used in these m drives is very very small. You look at something like the large Hadron collider and you think, why haven't we seen some of these same effects in this other and this other methodology. Even if that wasn't what we were looking for, it should be so pronounced that it it would be impossible to to not see it, right, So there are a lot of interesting

questions along those lines. It's and it may be that there are totally legitimate answers that we just don't know the We don't know the right questions to ask or where to look. Yet It's possible, but it's you know.

One thing to keep in mind is the more outlandishould we get, or at least the more the more we have to start really reconsidering our uh idea of how the universe works, the greater the proof needs to be to justify that decision, right, all right, Well, I think that should sort of lead us into the conclusion of this discussion, which is, like, what does this all mean? Yeah, I mean, I mean I look at this, Yeah, what

what could it mean? Because obviously, we, like we've said many times, we don't know how to evaluate the scientific merits. We've read a lot of what seems like very rational and level headed criticism of it. I'm fine if people want to keep testing this and and and find out maybe there are some kind of results you can show in a much better controlled test environment that actually would satisfy a lot more scientific skepticism. But let's say you

do find some really significant looking results here. It seems like there are three options. Either conservation of momentum is wrong, or this doesn't violate conservation of momentum but exploit some kind of loophole in physics we don't understand yet. Or there's just an error. There's just something we we did wrong. So and it's like, what is how do we choose between these different possibilities. Well, for following as Razor, we

go with the the measurement error. Yeah, because that's the that's the if it doesn't require you to redefine the laws of physics, because obviously that would require the most amount of proof for that to be justified, or it doesn't require inventing or describing new laws of physics that complement the ones we already know. Uh, then you know, the most likely answer is that it comes down to

either a measurement error human error. There's some problem in the math um that seems to be the most likely, and you usually you know, it doesn't necessarily always work out this way, but the reason why it's a it's a rule is that more often than not, the simplest explanation, the one that requires the least amount of energy for it to happen, is the right answer. Yeah, I've seen a lot of critics of these results. Uh. Compare it to the thing that happened a while back with the

supposedly faster than light neutrinos. You know, so there was a test. I don't remember when that was. Was that, I think, yeah, I think it was one or two years ago, a few years ago. Um, but but yeah, there was supposedly a test result that had detected massive particles neutrinos moving faster than light yeah, Um, and everything we know about physics tells us that's not possible. You know, so if if you go by Einstein and and we all know that we probably should like he's given us

a lot of reasons. We've seen the loss of relativity hold up so many times and fail I think zero times, Um, that it would be very strange to suddenly detect own annoy. We've been wrong about this for decades and decades. But and so when when people looked back into the experiment, they were like, oh, right it was. It was in fact an experimental error caused by malfunctioning equipment. Essentially, like

the way it wart was this. You you had a time when the new trinos were admitted, in a time when they were detected, and that amount of time appeared to be less than what it would have taken light to go from those two points. But then essentially what was found out, and I'm oversimplifying, is a stopwatch was off. I think there was like a loose wire or something.

So so it was a it was a false reading that gave the impression that the new trinos had arrived earlier than they should have, but in fact, upon uh further inquiry, it does not. It wasn't the case. So although it did lead to some great knot knock jokes, which was which was uh new Trino knock knock nice Yeah, the new Trino anti telephone. Yeah, so so things like that.

But at any rate, I agree, I think it reminds me quite a bit of that now it I hope that it turns out there's something in this that ends up being, uh, you know, a viable me means of creating thrust, because well, yeah, that'd be amazing. Yeah, but it would be beyond phenomenal, it would be, so there's we have every reason to want it to work out.

And also, like, I just really loved attending physics. That's my favorite day whenever we get to say, like, oh, everything that we knew about the universe was a little bit wonky. Where's my least favorite days when we have to change the dictionary so that literally literally means the

opposite of literally. Well, you know, there is a certain mindset you can kind of get into when you're trying to properly practice scientific skepticism where you want to say, okay, hold on, now, let's let's you know, not get carried away. Let's look at all the possibilities, and that's a good thing to do, you know, I totally advocate that, But at the same time, we also do need to remember

to be open minded. You know, people have been wrong about things before, even things they were really certain about. It seems really like we're probably not wrong about conservation of momentum. But but who knows. I mean, I I am all. I'm all for people doing these experiments, though I have seen people question whether tax money should be used to do experiments that seem to violate the laws of physics. You know that are pretty well understood. Yeah, if it were. If there were, I don't know what

I think. If there were at least a very compelling argument that lots of physicists said, this makes sense that it was not uh, it was not defying the law of momentum, that it was actually working within that system.

If there were, if there were a lot of there seemed to be a lot of agreement, Like if Shawyer came out and said no, no, no, here's how I think it's working, and everyone said that's really cool, then I would be like, let's go ahead, because the potential benefit is so huge that it would be worth the investment and if it didn't work out, then it didn't work out. Yeah, and again, to be totally fair to them, they do say it doesn't violate conservation of momentum. They

fall into the loophole category. I say that they're something else about physics, that it's exploiting and it's not actually violating Newton I think, um, you know, I I am definitely on the side of you want to always add some skepticism and critical thinking to your science. It's absolutely necessary. But you don't want to fall into the trap of denialism.

You're don't you're denying something even the potential of working. Uh. I mean, that's why most of the actual reports from scientists I've seen have said I don't know how this could work, as opposed to this doesn't work. Right there there. You might say it sounds like they're hedging their bets, but really what they're saying is they're being responsible. According to what we know about science, this should not work.

But that's according to what we know. There could be stuff we don't know that explains why it would work if in fact it does. That's yours is responsible science. Yeah, yeah, uh so, Yeah, so you're if you're out there and you're like, no, no, I swear I can show you how it works by all means, you know, please, we'd love to hear about that. Yeah, so we we look forward to following up on this story. Now. You know,

we said that the story has had cycles. I think that the reason for the excitement dying down is that the the studies that where an effect was measured, the effects have always been so small and difficult to replicate. That that's why it kind of dies down. You don't tend to see a big hoop lah over uh you know, uh,

promising technology fails to work. That doesn't tend to happen, right, But if if you if you say you're coming out with the technology that is meant to change the world that grabs headlines, if it doesn't work out, unless it's a truly spectacular failure, it just you know, people just don't notice anymore. But they but they try not to schedule the in science, right, yeah, you don't don't. Don't live, don't make a live television event of your test of

the m drive. You might have egg on your face unless you're approaching it from a truly like objective scientific approach, thing. We're gonna do our best and see if there's a measurable effect here as opposed to wait, I got something to sell you. You know you don't want to do with that approach. That would be terrible. Well, this has been really fun, y'all. Yeah, this was one of those where we have actually had him Drive on our list

for a while before people started asking about it. You know, one of these things about because it is from one of the older cycles, and also just because you know, it is a forward thinking kind of thing, like the idea of the warp drive or this space drive that would not require us to carry an enormous rocket filled with Yeah, you don't because obviously that makes it harder and it limits how far you can go. So this was one of those really important things that we definitely

wanted to talk about and it was exciting. Yeah, and and thank you so much to everyone who wrote in and her just talk about it. Yes, I encourage you to keep writing in because we depend upon hearing from you to figure out what we're gonna talk about next. Otherwise it's us just kind of sitting around saying what's

on TV? Spiders again, the future of Morse. But hey, did you see that scientists fed carbon nanotubes to spiders that then spun silk that were carbon infused spider silk with the strongest tensile strength of any fiber produced here too, for I am not it happened this week. Yeah, pretty exciting.

There's another there's another episode right there, all right, But if you guys have any suggestions that are not spider related, you can disappoint Lauren, but inform the rest of us by writing to fw thinking at how Stuff Works dot com, or drop us a line on Facebook, Twitter or Google Plus. At Twitter and Google Plus, we are fw thinking. Just search fw thinking at Facebook. We will pop right up, leave us a message, and we will talk to you

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