you're all morons here, it's plain to see. i pity you all planet wide. you see ONE DESIGN, and claim....OH EM DOESNT WORK. well that's on you MAMMALS as you CARBON up your ATMOSPHERE and ruin earths EM fields. they use carbon to block em in mag shielding, so imagine what all ur car waste is doing to earth's em field. (GRINDING THE GEARS OF HER "EM DRIVE" OH YES!)
Thanks, Scott, for being the voice of reason on the EM drive. I've really been a bit disgusted at how the so-called science media has been fawning over a device where even the inventors can make no explanation of how it works. And as a spacecraft designer I concur that, even if it does work, it wouldn't be that useful.
We still don’t know how bicycles work. Just because we don’t understand something doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. Hell, do you have any idea how long it took us to figure out magnets? That took centuries. People thought that magnets shot out tiny invisible screw-shaped particles that pulled things together. Science is a work in process and will remain that way until we start doing things like creating our own universes. Throughout the history of science we have been wrong a lot more often than we’ve been right, and I don’t see any reason to think that the trend will change anytime soon.
@@GusCraft460 Really? We don't have an understanding of how bicycles work?! Are you screwing with me right now?... Not to mention that this video is 4 years old and the concept has been tested multiple more times since, with negligible thrust detected, usually attributed to measurement devices or interference.....
@@ryanpauloneeyed9669 look it up, we legitimately do not understand bicycles. Specifically, why do bicycles lean into a turn even without a person on them. It’s one of the unsolved mysteries of physics.
You seem to be operating under the illusion that scientists can't be fanatical, or that fanatics can't be scientific. We're all human Dan, even the scientists. Incidentally I thought Scott was perfectly reasonable, I just thought it's worth bearing in mind not everyone is the same.
Scientist 2019: afraid to jeopardize career and funding, refuses to investigate something that violates belief system. Doesn't investigate the unexplained but explains the uninvestigated.
@@lillyanneserrelio2187 More likely to be Government funded study ended early due to preliminary results of tests resulting in cancellation of continued funding.... Pretty much most research is done in the taxpool nowadays. Especially "climate science".
This is like putting small wheels on the front and big tires on the back of a race car-- a dragster! The forward tilt makes it think it's rolling downhill. The snarling motors are just to impress the crowd.
Correction: the shape is a _frustum_ not a _frustrum._ The latter is related to the word "frustrate." A frustum is the portion of a generalized cone (the set of lines passing through a given point and a given Jordan curve) which is between two parallel planes, each on the same side of the given point as the given curve. In other words, it's a cone or pyramid with the top cut off.
that's a real thing though. at the quantum level, tons of particles constantly pop into existence and annihilate with each other they are saying the EMdrive generates thrust by propelling those virtual particles away from the drive. not exactly sure if that's possible. i thought the whole point of virtual particles is you can't observe them (so no giving them momentum, either)
Here's the problem with using the quantum vacuum that way. The difference between the quantum vacuum and the old luminiferous aether is that the quantum vacuum, at least according to the best theories we've got, is Lorentz invariant. It should look the same in any inertial frame of reference. Which means it can't carry any momentum, so there's nothing to push against and have it remain vacuum. The only way to "push against" it is to transform it into a state that does carry momentum--and that's not vacuum any more, that's a state with some real particles in it. So the best you've got is still just a photon rocket.
By the way, if you're _really_ clever you might be thinking of a secondary objection here: "Well, suppose we 'borrow' some momentum temporarily from the vacuum, in the manner of a virtual particle in a Feynman diagram, move over a little and give it back? That doesn't violate conservation of momentum over the whole interaction. Suppose we start out in a frame where you have zero momentum. One minute you're here, the next minute you're over there, but your momentum is still zero when it's all over." That actually doesn't work either, and it's again because of Lorentz invariance. In fundamental physics, every symmetry is associated with a conservation law, via Noether's Theorem. Conservation of momentum is the conservation law associated with translation invariance--the laws of physics being the same in all places. But if you instead take Noether's theorem and plug in invariance under a change of inertial reference frame, what you get out is a tricky-to-state conservation law that basically says the center of mass (technically, center of energy) of a system MUST move at a velocity corresponding in the usual way to its momentum. The interesting thing is that there is no corresponding law for *rotational* motion--there's rotational symmetry, which gives conservation of angular momentum, but there's no "center of energy motion" restriction--which is why a non-rigid body in free fall can reorient itself in space, by messing with its moment of inertia, without violating conservation of angular momentum. This is how cats land on their feet (classically--no quantum shenanigans needed). But for linear motion this trick doesn't work.
Ghosts in the machine, I believe it creates dark energy. The strange motions of the universe which need dark energy to explain, are all caused by resonance energy thrust, going back in time and getting stronger. It's where the energy for the big bang came from - some scientist in the future with a "wired" copper bucket. Now look what you did!
I agree with your sentiment, but I would modify it slightly. We probably cannot know what we don't know. However, everything we know screams that the EM drive is impossible. For this reason, healthy skepticism is rational.
transcendentape the thing is that humans are inconfortable when they learn that their vision of "the truth" is false. the problem with the EM DRIVE is that every friking law of phisics say that this thing shoudn't work, yet it seems to do at least something that make it work. a huge part of our understanding of physics is based about the newtons laws. if the EM drive works, then the law is flawled. and so is everything above it. the consequences are scary and this is why we feel do reserved about this thing. because it is opening a new era for space Travel, but also because it will debunk half of the physics model in the first place.
transcendentape the thing is that humans are inconfortable when they learn that their vision of "the truth" is false. the problem with the EM DRIVE is that every friking law of phisics say that this thing shoudn't work, yet it seems to do at least something that make it work. a huge part of our understanding of physics is based about the newtons laws. if the EM drive works, then the law is flawled. and so is everything above it. the consequences are scary and this is why we feel do reserved about this thing. because it is opening a new era for space Travel, but also because it will debunk half of the physics model in the first place.
Hikmet Melih Özdemir If the drive is intereacting to something we don't yet understand, then that law is not invalid. As the paper theorizes/postulates, there could be some forces going on that have yet to be discovered in the fields of science as yet explored by man. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it's not there...
Wait, Im confused. Blowing on my own sail? What about that leaf blower gardeners use. If I held that up to my sail instead of exhaling forcefully like I'm at a DUI checkpoint, would that propel my boat? I don't see how that breaks physics because we're converting gasoline in the leaf blower into wind/ force, just not very efficiently.
@@nevyen149 Execpt they moved in the oposite direction. You can just blow the oposite direction you would like to move instead of blowing at the sail, since you get the entire recoil in that case. ;)
maybe not. as he pointed out.. .photon engine works. known science. functional, testable, demonstrable. but a photon engine is EXTREMELY inefficient. if ions DO work.. and it appears from the nasa experiment they do.. .they still have no idea WHY they work.. just that they do.
I dearly hope the scientific community is approaching this with a healthy balance of skepticism and curiosity. We understand the "laws" of physics as well as we are willing to test their boundaries. We don't need the sci-comm stonewalling development of new ideas just to hold on to established dogma. Can we get around general relativity? Can we generate unlimited energy? The correct answer is "not under our current understanding of physics, *but*..."
"I dearly hope the scientific community is approaching this with a healthy balance of skepticism and curiosity." Don't worry, science is very competitive - especially in STEM fields. Any verdict on the EM drive will be checked and triple checked with all sorts of hopes for results. This would be too big to leave up to a particular person's bias. This would be a total paradigm shift if real. It's probably not real, but you'd be hard pressed to find a consensus in any scientific community saying it's impossible.
Nikhil Menda Yes. Work is Force times the distance travelled in the same direction(W=F*s) Performance is the amount of work done in a second: P=W/t and if you express the W its P=F*s/t and "s/t" is velocity so it's P=F*v. The way I explained is basicly the same but "delta time near zero" means that we are having a true momentary speed. That is a bit more mathssy stuff. The result is the same, I just emphasized that momentary speed is avarage speed in a really small interval. (Taking dt as a a very small number which is almost zero) [same reason why we cant make out speed from a single photo] "P(t)" meaning P is a function of time.
Musky Elon it is not "perperual motion" as it still require and use energy. and for the ineficient part, yes it is not as efficient as other techs energy wise. but it make up for it by an absurd amount of delta v, wich only depend on time. and we didn't tested the supderconductor variant...
Well, if it worked, it would be kind of the only thing seriously proposed with efficiency above 1 in certain conditions. What is an inefficient perpetual motion machine?
Well, in this case, you kind of do know. The very definition of a perpetual motion machine is to have an efficiency of over 1. So, there is no such thing as an inefficient perpetual motion machine.
I hope that someday we can dispense with hyperbolic statements like "We'll have to forget everything we know about physics!" The discovery of quantum physics did not mean we had to forget everything we knew about Newtonian physics, it just explained a set of observations that didn't fit the Newtonian model. If the EM-Drive can be shown to work reliably, then a theory will have to be devised to explain it. Sounds to me like a great opportunity for learning. Even if it can be shown NOT to work, we'll probably learn something useful along the way.
I really don’t think you understand the level of contradiction this would mean. This isn’t just updating some of physics it’s quite literally contradicting one of the most fundamental laws of physics.
I built one of these on my garage. It currently powers my s10 & produces 97,000lbs of thrust. The electronics interfere with my flux capacitor tho and the drivers behind me get upset...
Well, my wife's MSU went down hard, and we (leaders and victors, apparently) can only put a 10-spot on Iowa, so, I'm planning on hiding under the covers when we are once again on the menu of the the scarlet and grey. #97 grad never lost. 😖
My feeling to the EM Drive is basically like that of SETI: it's probably not going to work, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try (though I do acknowledge that in comparison, SETI is far more likely to succeed). If I were to bet, I'd say the thrust effect is real, but there's something subtle going on that's still entirely within the realm of current physics. Like with the Pioneer anomaly that turned out to be thermal disequilibrium, or faster-than-light neutrinos that turned out to be a loose cable.
I guess if you define SETI success as simply searching and cataloging, then SETI will always be a success. I meant succeeding as in actually finding aliens.
***** When you test a rocket you simply account for the existing G force. There's no unknown forces at work. It will act exactly as you calculate. Newtonian physics
Yeah the thing with Physics is that it's quite interconected and well-tested, so if you want to claim that you have new model that violates the laws of the established model, well, now you have to explain why all other experiments *didn't* reveal what you think you've revealed. Not impossible, but it's usually more likely that you made a mistake than that all the other physicists have been making the identical mistakes for the past 50 years or so. Of course, this does happen from time to time, but if you were gambling, it would always be a better bet to wager against it's new physics this time. And in Physics, it's less about whether you "believe in" a model and more about whether the new model can accurately and quantitatively predict your experimental observations better than the old one could. New observations are only the very beginning of that process.
@@tobigforyou The thing that separates real scientists from people like flat-earth "scientists" is that real scientists WANT to be proven wrong. If they made an error, they want to know before their opinion becomes widely accepted fact. Being skeptical is the right call. The laws of physics (especially mechanical physics) are sacred. They dictate everything in the universe around us. We know there is a high chance laws exist that we aren't aware of, but we can't just change our understood laws without being entirely sure. The review process is brutal, and everyone wants to prove you wrong, because if nobody can, then we can be overwhelmingly certain you didn't make a mistake. As far as arrogance, I don't see where you saw that. He didn't claim to be smarter than the man or state that any part of it was wrong. He simply said that it didn't make sense with the current understanding of conservation of energy and momentum (the foundation of everything in mechanical physics) and that history tells us that an error will likely be found. He also said he would be really happy if he was wrong. We all would, as this would be a breakthrough in much more than just rocket science. It could be the key to unlimited free energy, pacemakers without a battery, reliable artificial gravity, etc. Before anyone is going to start losing their mind over this, it will be put through the most challenging of gauntlets.
It literally says in the video that the NASA experiment used 1 W that and produced a (very small) sustained force. The question is whether the force is explainable by an unaccounted error or if it actually implies new physics.
Being skeptical doesn't mean you're rooting against it. It just means that you are not convinced that the claim is true. As he explains in the video, if this works... We have solved the energy problem, we can easily stop and reverse global warming, we can colonize the entire galaxy if we want to. It would be the biggest breakthrough in human history... He just doesn't think it will pan out. But he will also be the first to celebrate if it does pan out.
how does this working = solved energy problem and revearse global warming? also we can colonize the entire galaxy now if we want to, having this would speed that up but it would still take well over a thousand years lol.
How to get movement out of energy only: Get some batteries Use the batteries to charge a robotic arm Make the robotic arm throw the batteries really fast Thrust
I don't think breaking science and theorems is bad. Disproving rational things is what drives science forward! I hope the EM Drive changes how we think of the Universe. This is what drives innovation.
Andrew Kovnat yeah I agree, I didn't like the way this guy discouraged the device just because it "broke" physics. If the results are true WE need to change physics not the device
WondrousHello It's just not very likely. He doesn't say, he'd be against it. Scott would love for it to work. Right now there's just more speaking against it.
After having read the article, I can see at least one potential source of unaccounted-for error. Most metals have a tendency to absorb significant amounts of atmospheric gasses on their surfaces. In high vacuum chamber experiments (CVD, electron microscopy, etc) the vacuum vessel has to be brought up to high temperature as basically every part in the system out-gasses. Due to the non-trivial amount of power being used and extremely asymmetrical nature of their apparatus, erroneous thrust might be generated from thermally induced out-gassing. They never ran the system for long enough to reach thermal equilibrium and re-introduced atmospheric pressure after only a few runs. Just a thought.
Also, why did they try to measure the temperature of a shiny metal cone with a thermal camera and/or a pyrometer? As anyone who's used a thermal camera can tell you (and as you can see for yourself in their thermal images), all you're going to see is the thermal reflection off the surface. Generally you have to paint an area of the surface black to get any meaningful measurement.
htomerif Certainly interesting. I don't remember that from the paper. I would be surprised they wouldn't have known about this because any experience with UHV systems would tell you that pretty quickly. I'm going to delve a bit more into the paper to check the vacuum setup.
First, I completely agree, except on homemade equipment to experiment. By way of for instance, one could take a look at the first cyclotron built by Lawrence back in the 30's. It is basically a coffee can sawed in half and wrapped in copper wire, and since many other first in experimental technologies got their start like that, I'd allow latitude for looks, so long as it functioned. That being said, yes, it does look rickety, perhaps, but you should never debase your argument like that.
I hope you're right in this particular case. If you think about the well-made resonant chambers, they're so precisely made, they must be thermally stabilized to keep their characteristics as designed. How would you thermally stabilize a resonant chamber in space which was big enough to push a vehicle? It could be done, but the drive will be a lot more practical if tolerances don't need to be so tight.
The way this year has been going, we might as well end it by chucking all of our physics books into bonfires in worship of our new conical god, the EM Drive.
1.2 µN per Watt would suggest that it is expelling a mass of 7.2e-13 kg per second at a speed of 1.67e6 m/s. Could it be that it is simply dislodging enough particles at the end of the cavities to do just that?
that is an interesting thing dude, it may explain how this thing don't fuck over Newtown third law, tho i don't have the math skills yet to do the math.
mytube001 no as is the waves inside could be dislodging particles on the outise of the containar due to small vibrations or whatever. as the area of the back end is larger than that of the small end, more particles would be dislodged from that side than the other
Radiation pressure inside a cavity works almost exactly like pressure from gases (the photons with random velocities are mathematically analogous to particles, they also carry momentum). So if the inventor's claim that simply tapering a microwave cavity should lead to thrust, a tapered box full of air should also propel itself! That's how ridiculous the claim is. If you know some basic calculus, it's a good exercise the vector integral of uniform normal field over an arbitrary surface is 0. In 2D this reduces to the obvious statement of how following the path of a closed curve leads you to back to where you started. Keep in mind this analysis isn't even needed because classical physics provably conserves momentum within it's axioms. That's why they had to come up with silly concepts like the "Quantum Virtual Plasma".
Gustavo - Let me ask you a simple physics question: In the "Law of Conservation of Momentum" are Virtual Particles part of the "Total System Momentum"? IN other words: If a device can PUSH on virtual particles and exchange momentum with them, then the virtual particles annihilate an LEAVE the physical presence of the device that pushed on them? IS IT a violation of physics? If a device can push on the virtual particles (exchanging momentum with them), then the particles disappear (taking that momentum with them) was there really any violation of basic physics? Or are the virtual particles part of the "Total System Momentum of the universe"
That's because it is. The quote is in reference to the fact that any reaction-less drive is also a planet killing relativistic weapon, given enough time to accelerate.
Michael Halpern That's true in real life but not fiction. Sci-fi authors tend to get bored with engines that have very slow acceleration because flights from place to place take too long. To speed up the pace of the plot they upgrade them into something that allows quick interplanetary transfers and high-G space combat, the kind of thing that's exciting for the reader. If the drive has infinite delta-V this automatically transforms every spaceship in the setting into a planet killing super-missile.
Hey man, never commented on anything on the internet before (beside facebook and what not) but I just need to say I love you're channel and check it out daily. I'm a mechanical engineering student, physics fan, and casual gamer (incuding KSP of course). Just wanted to let you know I really appreciate what you're doing and please keep up the good work.
It's not only lack of the heavy propellant. It's also lack of tanks and heavy plumbing that comes with the propellant. So weight saving would be actually even bigger.
Mass saving would be infinite. With an EM drive, as long as you can collect radiation (space is full of it) and convert it to work, you can keep thrusting. Essentially you now have infinite velocity change capability. Compare that to any non-infinite deltaV value and it's infinitely better. You would need infinite mass for a reaction drive to match it.
As far as the game mod goes. I made one huge with tweakscale. My ship cant power it but in intervals and its so freekin' soft that It would take hours of thrust to just get away from Kerbin orbit. At least I wont run out of 'gas'.
The power system needed to sustain these things would more than make up for the lack of heavy tanks and plumbing. It's the biggest limiter for ion thrusters right now. The weight of solar panels and batteries is just too great at the moment. Everyone in the electric propulsion field is basically twiddling their thumbs waiting for a breakthrough in power systems. Once that happens, you'll see ion thrusters on practically everything, including our ships to Mars. That is, unless nuclear thermal propulsion gets approved.
What about using a working EM drive for station keeping? A satellite or space station could use solar power to power the drive and thus keep itself in orbit with less or no need for propellant refueling. It could drop the maintenance cost on the ISS a fair bit. Again, assuming this thing works.
Totally. However, the pop sci press announced it as some cheap manned spaceflight gizmo. (Because: More thrust than even the things that will sent things to Proxima Centauri!)
There are already other viable methods of stationkeeeping without using reaction mass. The Earth has handy things like an electric field and magnetic field which you can use to generate a net force.
if it can use em waves to propel itself. it should then be able to use the naturally created em waves of the universe too. like air for downforce or drag on a car. altering em atmospheres or pressures i want to say to increase its efficiency. or like getting a sail boat to sail into the wind.
For practical purposes though, the ISS uses reaction mass thrusters. Generating the kind of electromagnetic fields for stationkeeping tends to play hob with equipment... a bad thing.
i hope there is some merit to this or similar ideas as, lets face it, the movie version of space ships is much more exciting and practical than having a massive rocket of which the vast majority is fuel
that's really only to escape Earths gravity. Once you're in space, when we get to a point we are building ships in space, they can get a bit closer to the images we see in movies. I'm not the person to ask but I always thought solar sails were the future of early space travel with no fuel, just using the sun. As described in some detail by Arthur C. Clarke.
John P I thought it went along the lines of, solar sail generates electricity for an engine. Like an electric car. You accelerate for half your journey turn the ship around, I mean rotate it 180 degreea, then spend the other half of the journey slowing down. It just sounded so elegant to my young ears when I first read it in a novel. Totally useless to fly around on a whim but from A to B, no fuel costs. I imagined we'd have like shipping lanes of these solar ships coming and going like we have with ships in our oceans. I got that idea wrong heh
Actually, tacking with solar sails is completely possible, and works just the same as sailing. There are even designs for statites, which are satellites which 'hover' using the solar pressure to maintain position without orbiting.
that sounds like an array of solar panels ... solar sails are a thing too though .. for capturing the solar wind i just really hope that something like the em drive becomes a reality in my lifetime .. the future will be so much more exciting if new areas of physics are discovered .. and as mentioned if you can jump in something closer to a private jet and go zipping off somewhere - and come back - rather than sitting in a tiny capsule on top of a vast quantity of propellant .. this whole attitude of "it goes against the laws of physics so it cant be real" is a little irritating because, well, at some point everyone thought the earth was flat
I want to believe SO BADLY. But ultimately, I'm an empiricist, and a rather cynical skeptic. This means that for me to trust the results 100%, the EM Drive has to work in an actual application, even if it's a "test" application such as a cubesat with some solar arrays, basic attitude control, and an EM Drive on the back. Basically, take off an Ion engine and swap in an EM Drive. Then see what happens. All I can say for certain at this point is that I know enough about it to say I don't know enough about it to make any declarative statements other than "I'm in the 'wait and see' camp".
according to the experiment it took as much energy as a human uses every day to lift less than the weight of a water drop. now we use up the same energy as a lightbulb......doing the math, modern rockets are wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy more efficient
herobrinext9 Wrong comparison, IMO. The whole reason to use the EM drive is that it uses zero propellant. Zero propellant for even the tiniest amount of thrust is a really big deal because it means you never run out of fuel, even if it takes a rather large amount of energy to get a pretty small amount of thrust. Imagine a space probe that can go from Mercury orbit to Pluto orbit. It may take 50 years to do it, but a space probe that has an EM Drive would be able to do it. Humans have not constructed anything capable of doing that yet, and IMO it's basically impossible with technology currently in use, even ion engines.
44R0Ndin zero proppelant but you still need a source of energy to power it and there is no infinite one and with this EM drivw we would take up so much battery power that it would still eb more efficient to use normal rockets
@scott manley There are a few theories out there that suggest the EM drive doesn't break the laws of physics and that it also doesn't do anything funky with 'quantum vacuums' or other such nonsensical explanations. Maybe try to find those, might be an interesting read for someone like yourself with a far greater understanding of physics than me. Also, being afraid of "the laws of physics being changed right under you" might not be the best mentality. Being skeptical is, of course, expected and reasonable. However, being scared of change simply because it's "scary" is not so smart. The laws of physics allow us to model the universe and make accurate predictions based on what we have observed in the past. Throughout history these laws have been altered numerous times by new data, allowing us to more accurately predict and model whats going on around us. While I'm not defending the EM drive (though i do believe it will turn out to be bogus), I'm also not going to discount the research that has been done on it thus far. I've heard rumors that the EM drive is being tested aboard the USAF's X-37 and on board China's new orbital laboratory. Interestingly, amateur astronomers who track the location of the X-37 claim that it has changed its orbit far more than its, albeit assumed, delta V should allow, possibly hinting at some other form of propulsion being utilized. I say some group (probably NASA) send one of these into space (without it being shrouded in secrecy) and give it a whirl, put this debate to bed once and for all. On a side note, your videos are always great and provide an outstanding means of learning about space after a long day of work. Keep it up :)
Can the microwaves just kick out some particles from one side? They have to test it for more time and check if the mass of the device doesn't get smaller.
Scott thank you for explaining the EmDrive to a layman. I would say with not having the same educational advantage on this subject as you do my interest in first reading about the 100 Year Starship and Mae Jamison and her work with them that brought me to find the EmDrive has peaked to no end. As a child, I had a national geographic collection from my subscriptions as large as my comic collection. I particularly loved the inside story on what scientists in your field "hate" and "don't want to hear". It explains the delay in progress and the preservation of standards all in a nutshell, also such an interesting cerebral tennis match. My layman example of "perpetual motion" would be me as a child standing on a skateboard using the movement of my body to make the skateboard to move in one direction. The fuel might be in dispute but I think that the comparison would be the particles bouncing around inside the container generating the same result. I can't see why you wouldn't think that wouldn't work and how you guys "hate" to hear things like that. Hence I'm not a scientist but I can see why even if it worked it may work for local space travel but interstellar travel can it really scale up to the point where enough speed could be "expelled" to generate the necessary thrust to reach Alpha Centauri, for example, that's daunting. What do I know, I'm in business development. I do think when HG Wells wrote that book about the first man on earth in 1901 and then we actually getting to the moon in 1969 speaks volumes. Only to the point that the 100yrs starship project wants us to get to interstellar travel within 100yrs. I think the technological advances from 1901 to 1969 are fair in comparison from 2012 when that project began to the next 25yrs even. I hope to see interstellar travel in my lifetime but if the government and private industry steps in then red tape, fight for rights, and patents, will stretch it to 100yrs and I won't be around. Fingers crossed either way.
NikoKun if I remember correctly their figures indicate it could hover a car on just 1Kw of power. I don't know how that could be possible, even if they could increase the efficiency by approx 3*10^6
Mr. Reinterpret Cast I read the other day they were planning the other day to have a mk2 that would have 30kN/kW. I just don't see that happening, certainly not in one generation.
everything he says that explains why it wouldn't work just makes me want to see a success, think how far into the future this could put us and how many things would change
Nacalal. nothing would change, if it worked it would only be competitive for very long term missions, that means it would still take massive developments in conventional technology before we could even reasonably deploy these engines and they would still face competition from conventional propulsion.
Nacalal even more, this thing is SIMPLE AS FUCK! it's just a cone of conductive material with a magenic field emiter, the same you have in your microwave! and even if the normal version if weak, we don't know what kind of thrust we will be able to generate if we just cool the thing down into a super conductive state, then just power it with a butload of electricity, it may not be easy not practical, but it means you can give and theoretical infinite amount of thrust to the thing, with any exaust sise, as long as you give it enough power. remember that fusion or even fission is still a thing.
sorry...but you just don't know what you are talking about..take it from me and others..this is horse shit...a steaming pile of it, the numbers are there for you to read, read them, and then THINK....
I enjoy that you have "Drumattical" peeking out behind you. Very fitting for the topic at hand, especially given the unconventional space travel means demonstrated in the cover art! Great info, great album sir.
As a 2nd year physics student (currently studying for a Electromagnetism test funny enough) this claim scares me, the idea that conservation of momentum might be thrown out of the window upsets me a lot...
Worry not, young sprat! The Scot with the maximally efficient hairstyle has your back, and will see to it your upset is unwarranted! ..just keep working on that "portable hole" doohickey that you fizziecists are so keen to get into production, as requested by the Defense Department.
JP It won't be. At least not from this device... Most of the concepts they've used to explain the apparent thrust are complete nonsense. There is one concept that uses special relativity that almost makes sense without breaking things, but results in a q factor that diminishes asymptotically with increased velocities.
Elias Overbosch Perhaps there's a wacky "momental loop" out into the 10th, or 11th, dimension into which, and from with, some energy is "flung" and then recovered? Perhaps the "ansible" is about to be discovered!? Who knows.... :)
+Elias Overbosch There IS a remarkable resemblance between the EM Drive shape, Gandalf's hat, and a moonshine still! I'm guessing alcohol was heavily involved in each of those things. yeah...
Ever heard of the Alcubierre effect, Scott? I saw a paper by NASA investigating it's potential. All I know is, we are going to need new exotic physics if we are to truly explore the solar system and beyond. Solar sails may get tiny probes to alpha centauri but not manned colony ships.
No it doesn't. You don't move and so you don't dilate time, thus no time travel. Warp involves the movement of spacetime which isn't limited by c (having no inherent mass or energy).
The Alcubierre effect is how the "warp drive" he mentioned is supposed to work. It's the Alcubierre warp drive. And it's one of the other possible space travel solutions being looked at by the same NASA team who did this experiment.
Error Error What problems? We could build a warp drive today, we just lack the fuel to run it. There is nothing about it that poses a problem with physics, it's a technical issue as we don't know how to manufacture negative energy... Yet. There's no time dilation, no possible energy requirements, no unresolved engineering questions. Once we can manufacture negative energy, it'll be no more difficult than it was to put the Voyager probes in space. Maybe easier considering that we have more advanced manufacturing tech and experience with spacecraft.
David Kelly Read what I wrote please, warp drives both generate closed time like curves (causality violations), and require exotic matter (negative energy), both of which probably make them impossible. I even provided a peer reviewed source. Also no time dilation doesn't have anything to do with the existence of casual loops. TL;DR: Right now warp drives are theoretically impossible.
Scott Manley I have a quick question whenever I watch various sci-fi there's almost always that advanced alien race that claims humans don't know as much as they think they do what if we're just wrong about how some things work or if there's some kind of condition that makes them wrong in that moment it is possible we just know very little compared to what there is to know
SPACKlick Yeah, thanks :P I already found and read it and commented about it. Other people will need it though. I didn't post a link since most YT channels auto-silence links.
Apparently he does. Someone responded to this comment with a valid link to the paper, and its been silenced. I can understand that its out of practicality, but in situations like this, it looks bad. Just above your comment there should be a comment visible with the link in it. Its not there.
SPACKlick Sucks, but your link was silenced. Log out and look at the video. Your comment isn't there. Now he didn't do it personally, its just a filter, but it happened nonetheless.
Presumably they have tested the apparatus at various orientations with respect to Earth's magnetic field lines. I would hate for this to simply be a rotational force induced by opposing magnetic fields.
LmOver I merely wonder if those conducting the tests have accounted for a possible interaction with Earth's magnetic field (i.e. rotational motion as opposed to transverse motion). I am not claiming the device actually works as its inventor claims. Like Scott Manley, I remain skeptical.
The tests from eagleworks and the repetition in the german lab did this (up, down, north, south orientations of the device) and they included the measurements in the papers they published. Dilation was also considered. The thing is, the thrust measured is still too small. If they want to prove something, they should build a bigger version and people should be patient until those results are published.
as a person who's a little more hopeful than some... i still don't think we're at the point where any skeptics 'need to face facts.' This is very, very, very early stages. Skepticism is good. What NASA's done, though, IMO illustrates we should be investing further resources into investigating the possibility.
5:10 There is a July 2015 interview with Prof. Dr. Martin Tajmer from Dresden University of Technology in German where he clarifies the intent of his research and cited paper regarding the EMDrive testing: www.grenzwissenschaft-aktuell.de/prof-korrigiert-berichte-zu-emdrive-tests20150730/ Here is my ad-hoc translation: _ Q: Dear Prof. Tajmer, is it true that you have successfully reproduced and thus proved the effect of the EMDrive in your experiments? A: No. Such an interpretation of my results is truthfully a mystery to me. Already in the abstract of my technical paper I write clearly and precisely that I cannot confirm nor disprove the effect of the EMDrive. It is true: We indeed measured thrusts similar to the predictions of the EMDrive, but also in directions that should be null. I also write that I presume that magnetic forces from the cabling cause this effect. This is why I did recommend in the article that further testing be done to sort out these (and other) possible causes. Q: How do you fundamentally view the concept of the EMDrive? A: From a theoretical standpoint, the EMDrive makes absolutely no sense. Because, in essence, it would contradict the conservation of momentum. Time and again I've been asked by my students and colleagues for my opinion, especially after some experimental data from NASA became available. That is why I wanted to conduct testing myself, to see if I could come to similar results and whether I could delete the effect through better shielding against thermic/electromagnetic effects (what most critical scientists expect). Since I have always been interested in new thrusters, I was naturally very eager to see the results myself. Q: And was this shielding successful? A: Our tests have shown that we can indeed produce similar results -- except this time we had more sensors (e.g. temperature measurements) -- and the possibility to implement some shielding. In doing so we found that there can be significant interference by the magnetic field of the cabling, which we could not completely shield against, and that the same thrusts are observed when the thruster was firing into a direction that should not have shown thrust on the thrust meter. Q: And what does that mean for the experiments so far that supposedly prove the effect of the EMDrive? A: Our testing shows that in both the apparatus of NASA and that of the inventor not all sources of error have been identified yet, and that within the scope of our accuracy of measurement we have had a baseline measurement -- with the accuracy of measurement matching the claimed effect. Hence with our apparatus we cannot comfirm or disprove the EMDrive thrusts. Further testing is necessary. Q: How do you then explain the many news items that state that you have successfully and independently confirmed the effect of the EMDrive? A: Truthfully, it is a mystery to me that these websites claim I have validated the EMDrive. At least there were also a few differing news items. I believe that everyone want and hope that we find something new. Unfortunately, the time hasn't come yet -- hopefully, though, the future will have one or the other surprise in store for us regarding this. All I have set out to do is to scientifically look at a number of effects that lead to a wrong interpretation of test data. Q: Do you yourself plan to conduct further experiments regarding the EMDrive to, say, check more sources of error? A: I am convinced we now have an apparatus with which to continue -- the interest of the students is certainly there. I think that specifically the topic of EMDrive is an excellent educational project where you can learn to identify sources of error that may not seem readily obvious. _
+Floda Reltih in the 60's it was interesting, but as time has gone on more and more evidence has appeared that supports gravity driven cosmology and contradicts plasma cosmology. Given the preponderance of evidence I'd dismiss EU as fatally flawed.
I agree that this proposal needs to be better demonstrated to prove it is legitimate but I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss. I have seen in your own videos where you explain early concepts which appear to be rather pathetic (they built it in a dining room) but once perfected are incredibly powerful. Really enjoying your videos. Better than most TV. Thank you
The Expanse (well barring the big plot McGuffin) is a fairly plausible show that doesn't play too hard and fast with the laws of physics much like the books. The depiction of nukes managing to reduce a very massive spacecraft to nothing but a debris cloud was the most egregious physics error I noted. Nukes in space are basically gigantic flashbulbs of gamma and infrared radiation, amongst other things. This is certainly damaging, especially to unshielded biological lifeforms, but it is never going to obliterate a ship down to a fine debris cloud like you see in the Expanse. One of the reasons why most theorists, be they amateurs or professional physicists/military theorists, expect weapons such as railguns or possibly lasers to be as if not more important to space combat than the nuke. Fusion drives of various types have been proposed. It's unclear whether we will ever produce a drive quite like the ones in the Expanse (I also do not know whether they were implausibly powerful from travel times shown in books/series) and certainly the reactors wouldn't look much like the ones in the show.
I was talking about power which is work over time, whereas velocity is distance over time. So I just inserted an algebraic step that I didn't think I needed to explicity explain.
Just because you dont understand how, doesn’t mean it cant work. There are plenty of things i don’t understand, that’s why i am here watching you Scott.
Isn't this the same sort of principle as the Casimir force? On the face of it, the Casimir force breaks the laws of physics because you "get force from nothing," via 2 parallel plates in a vacuum. But then quantum mechanics comes along and states that in a vacuum exists virtual particles and the cutting off of wavelengths between the plates results in a lower pressure than outside the places, resulting in an inequal force pushing the plates together. Wouldn't the same kind of principle apply where due to one end of the cone being narrower than the other, a similar situation arises where there is a lower "pressure" at one end? I've always been very interested in ways to exploit zero point energy and it seems to be a part of physics where a lot of mystery still lies.
There is no 'force from nothing' in the quantum vacuum example. Quantum mechanics simply 'discovered' a new set of interactions on a micro scale. This is not a micro scale, and thus quantum vacuum effects would be largely irrelevant or non-existent (likely both).
"On the face of it, the Casimir force breaks the laws of physics " No, the Casimir force is a *prediction* of the laws of physics. It doesn't break them at all. "you "get force from nothing," via 2 parallel plates in a vacuum. " You do not. The Casimir effect 1. conserves energy and 2. conserves momentum. "Wouldn't the same kind of principle apply where due to one end of the cone being narrower than the other, a similar situation arises where there is a lower "pressure" at one end? " No, and even if it did, it wouldn't depend on input power. It would be a property of the geometry, just like the real Casimir effect.
Ath Athanasius Jaffe is a smart guy, but I can tell you that not that many people take this sort of explanation very seriously. This is because the Casimir effect, or related effects, show up in a variety of other contexts where there are no atoms and no van der waals forces. For example, the most common way to think about particle physics at finite temperature is to calculate a kind of Casimir effect in a space that looks like a torus. Or, if string theorists are to be believed and we live in a 10 dimensional space of which several dimensions are compactified, there would be a Casimir effect associated with this compactification. It is really the boundary conditions that are important, and those do not need atoms to arise.
“You would make a ship sail against the winds and currents by lighting a bonfire under her decks? I have no time for such nonsense” I always try and keep dear Napoleon’s words in mind when thinking about this kind of stuff.
@ss is it possible that they are using a bad name for it as in "there is no reaction" going on? IE. chemical process or "explosion"?...And not referring to the result? Just a thought...
Radiation pressure is a thing. And so is the effect of light. That's one of many possible options of deflecting incoming asteroids. Shining a light on one side long enough may be enough to redirect one. (Gross oversimplification but still)
Already know what and I really hope it actually works for two reasons 1. because a fuelless engine would be revolutionary 2. because it's nice to break a law or two now and then amirite???
Mighty Beast there's no such thing as a fueless engine. Thrust requires energy. some kind of "fuel" whether it be the suns light on panels or a Nuclear Reactor will power the EM drive assuming it actually works and we figure it out. But yes. If it does work. Then it will be the hypest thing ever. :P
You know what they mean. One that does not expel an expendable substance as a reaction mass. In this case, converting electricity into movement through some sort of wizardry doesn't count.
Thanks Scott. I agree with you, I'm very skeptical but also hopeful (in a weird way) that it works out, though I don't think it will. Thanks for bringing up the comparison to photon thrusters and solar sails, as that's essentially how these things work. I do hear that they are launching a cubesat with one of these things on them to measure thrust in a vacuum. If it does work, it will beat the ion drive eventually (right now we can't scale them larger, but if it works we'll figure out how), but today the ion drive is still your best bet.
Everyone, including respected establishment, continues to perform ridiculous experiments ignoring the most basic requirements for demonstrating novel thrust. 1. Contain the power source within the device (outside power is a certain source of all kinds of errors) 2. Thoroughly monitor all external particles/waves emitted from device.
DFX2KX The Chinese, eventually, managed to contain the power within the device under test. I admit, however, it would be difficult to accurately measure all ion flux around the device, but this is of utmost importance.
Put the device under test and power supply inside a nicely symmetric conductive box on the force balance, and watch the box with an IR camera for hot spots, and a lot of potential sources for error are contained. And make sure the force being tested isn't vertical to be sure you aren't measuring simple convection.
"[the law of conservation of the linear momentum] that.. you know, you really don't want to break that..." That sounded so good :) The joke may be difficult to understand for non-physicists. "So what's so special in that? We've seen laws of physics being broke before..." But the difference is, this law of conservation is really fundamental, arguably, even more so than the one for energy. You can't just break it without invalidating the whole physics. Yes, all of it. The Noether theorem derives this law from the space symmetry using some bullet-proof math, and no amount of probably-yet-unknown quantum magic will ever change that. So yeah, don't mess with that law :)
10:50 It would be a hilarious idea if the advancement of spaceflight technology is being held back only because "physicists don't like it." Some shadow coven of scientists hunting down people who discover inconsistencies in various Laws and working to cover it up.
It is however the opposite to how scientist works. If you manage to break the laws of physics then you get a Nobel Prize. ;) (In a PnP roleplaying game called Mage: The Ascension a group of Scientist Technocrats called the Technocracy pretty much do this however. Haunt down Mages that breaks the laws of Nature as well as fringe scientist that challenge established science. In the setting Magic and Science are just two sides of the same coin.)
The laws are not usually broken. No, they are found to be limited. Einstein didn't disprove Newton's Laws, he just showed their limitations. Bohr didn't say that Maxwell's ED is pointless crap. He just said it works on a certain scale. Physisists find limitations of old theories and expand them, but don't disprove them. That's why people are so scaptical of the EM drive. Becuase it basically just breaks the laws, but doesn't show any limitations.
Reminder that the first doctor who found out that washing hands by medical professionals reduces patient's death by large margin and presented his findings, was stripped of his licence and left for dead in an asylum. Scientists are not immune to orthodoxy.
Technically the laws are descriptive not prescriptive like human laws. Meaning that there there to describe how things work. Not how they ought to work. So "breaking the laws of physics" would ether be impossible or just mean you have found out that the description we to describe the world is incorrect. It is very likely that there are a lot of assumptions we do that are wrong. Simplified models that are just close enough to for them to be useful, but do not tell the whole truth. Newtons theory of gravity is a example of this. It makes predictions that are very close to what we can observe. But... It is not 100% correct. And so if your need to be more accurate you use General Relativity to describe the motions of planets. (And when you do find this better model that describes reality even better. Then you likely to win a Nobel prize. Though that being said, Einstein never won the prize for Relativity, but he did win it for photoelectric effect. At the time Relativity was so controversial that in the end he never got the prize for that.)
Scott Manley your comments after 12:00 about hovering/accelerating are ridiculous. Hovering is a balanced force, accelerating is an unbalanced force. The two are NOT equivalent. Your use of the box thought-experimemt is grossly incorrect, and you *would* be able to tell the difference between accelerating upwards at 1 g within a 1 g gravity-field downwards (your Normal Force with the floor of the bix would be TWO g's), and hovering under 1 g. The versions you cannot distiguish are a box that is NOT under a gravity-field and is accelerating at 1 g, and a box simply sitting on the ground under a 1-g gravity field... The former is a VERY different situation than accelerating against a gravity-field (where the Normal Force experienced is the sum of ADDING the gravitational force and the net force upwards beyond what is required to simply balance that force...)
It's pretty obvious that the box thought experiment that he is referring to IS where the rocket is not under the pull of Earth's gravitational field - the diagram he used is with a rocket in space. A better diagram to accompany this specific explanation would have had the box on the right hovering against the pull of Earth's gravitational field, though the result is exactly the same as if it was resting on the ground: they are both equal to accelerating in space at 1g, and therefore both experience time dilation due to general relativity, so he is spot on and not at all ridiculous!
Not really. If you consider that photonic thrusters give (quite conveniently) thrust (1/c) N/W and P=Fv, the power that we could extract from the device would exceed its power consumption when Fv > Fc, which is of course impossible.
I'd hardly call that convenient....when the thrust output is minuscule and it takes YEARS to build up to any relativistic velocity...hardly convenient at all...
Didn't want to believe anything Manley said, but then I saw he owns a Steely Dan LP. I'm now a believer. All hail The One True Manley! Great vid as always. Keep up the good work and blowing our minds. +1.
Teddy Radko yeah, nuclear would be the only feasible way to generate 1GW. There's a problem though; Scott said that the currently tested nuclear reactors in space produce roughly 300W/kg. So 1E9W/300W/kg Watts cancel out, leaving us with a 3.34E6kg reactor. F = ma so 1,200,000N/3.34E6kg = 0.36m/s^2. That's just the reactor weight, it doesn't include the rest of the vessel, nor the EM drive's weight. *Edit:* Fixed some math, I used the figure a commenter above used for the thrust at 1GW, instead of figuring it out myself, turns out that figure was off by a factor of ten.
QuantumBraced Scott explained it in the vid. kinetic energy rises with velocity squared. double vel. means four time kin. energy. when the change of vel. is constant, over some threshold you get more kin. energy out than you put in...
QuantumBraced there is a source of energy, the electromagnetic emiter. this make this drive somewhat viable to me, as the law of conservation of energy in a given system is respected. the main problem is how the element create thrust without dispacing material. if it does not displace matter, what is pushing the thing? it can not be earth magnetic field since the thrust can be orientated, and does not varry depending on the location. it cannot be pushing agains a material of the containement field, since i did the math and it is obvious that the possible generated thrust is way too low. however, i think it is possible that the magnetic field use the cone as it's propelant, as i think it is possible that the magnetic field simply catapult electrons and ionized particules out of the back. tho the problem is that the engine seems to work when completly embelded in stuff.
E1 = Pt (electrical energy in) E2 = 0.5mv^2 (kinetic energy out) Since we have constant acceleration, v = at Apply conservation: E1 => E2, or Pt => 0.5m(at)^2 Since P, m, and a are all constant, E2 grows quadratically with time while E1 only grows linearly. Eventually, E2 will be larger than E1. So the spacecraft now has more kinetic energy than the amount of electrical energy you put in.
aardvark445 Anything under constant acceleration that does not lose mass (i.e. a reactionless drive) _becomes_ a perpetual motion machine at some velocity. If that velocity is greater than the speed of light than it isn't a problem. If you crunch the numbers NASA Eagleworks gave then it does cross that threshold below the speed of light. I did not equate the instantaneous energy to the total energy. Pt is the total energy, as t is the *total time* it has been applied. The t on both sides of the equation represent the same thing. Think about it.
Energy is not the problem. For there to be a sudden local imbalance in impulses would mean that the space around the device is not homomorph. That contradicts all we have seen so far. The "evidence" for this is shit. So it probably isn't a thing.
step 1: It's made of copper
step 2: copper is red
step 3: red things go faster
step 4: (....)
step 5: thrust
Iz not working kause itz not blu. It'z not luky
Paint some flames on it then we got something that can go 100x the speed of light
@@flatmarssociety5707 add some lightning bolts and we’ll be at messier 87 in a few minutes
you're all morons here, it's plain to see. i pity you all planet wide. you see ONE DESIGN, and claim....OH EM DOESNT WORK.
well that's on you MAMMALS as you CARBON up your ATMOSPHERE and ruin earths EM fields.
they use carbon to block em in mag shielding, so imagine what all ur car waste is doing to earth's em field. (GRINDING THE GEARS OF HER "EM DRIVE" OH YES!)
Needs more DAKKA!!!!
Looks like they might have found an exploit in the physics engine. I wonder how long until the developers patch it out?
I wouldn't worry too much, The devs haven't released a patch in 15 billion years. I think we're safe.
Pretty much abandonware by now.
PhazonSouffle I think we glazed over this in the release notes
I think they patched the dinos out, 65 million years ago... So the hope is still alive :D
..I've heard rumors that we're living in "Universe 0.7 Early Access"..
We just don't notice the server wipes. :)
Thanks, Scott, for being the voice of reason on the EM drive. I've really been a bit disgusted at how the so-called science media has been fawning over a device where even the inventors can make no explanation of how it works. And as a spacecraft designer I concur that, even if it does work, it wouldn't be that useful.
We still don’t know how bicycles work. Just because we don’t understand something doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. Hell, do you have any idea how long it took us to figure out magnets? That took centuries. People thought that magnets shot out tiny invisible screw-shaped particles that pulled things together. Science is a work in process and will remain that way until we start doing things like creating our own universes. Throughout the history of science we have been wrong a lot more often than we’ve been right, and I don’t see any reason to think that the trend will change anytime soon.
@@GusCraft460 Really? We don't have an understanding of how bicycles work?! Are you screwing with me right now?...
Not to mention that this video is 4 years old and the concept has been tested multiple more times since, with negligible thrust detected, usually attributed to measurement devices or interference.....
@@ryanpauloneeyed9669 look it up, we legitimately do not understand bicycles. Specifically, why do bicycles lean into a turn even without a person on them. It’s one of the unsolved mysteries of physics.
@@GusCraft460 check out Veritasium's video on how bicycles work. It's done through the mechanical structure of the bike itself.
@@GusCraft460 W-what is wrong with you...
I'll believe it when my microwave flies away on its own.
Jason Reel Mine does. Oh wait I got to lay off the pot :)
What yours doesn't fly? Get with the times man!
I think I can get any microwave oven to fly.
Maybe not in one direction but in many directions at once... maybe even in opposite directions...
Nevr said it would fly says has thrust small but is there.
Clearly the plug is tethering it to the wall!
I'll admit it, this video kicks my video's but; Scott is just so good at explaining this sort of thing. Hopefully I'll eventually get to eat my hat.
Anyone who doesn't watch your channel will think what you said is REALLY weird...
Didn't expect to see you here! Loved your recent toilet collab with Grant (The King of Random)!
cody in da house!!! love your vids.
Cody'sLab Got to admit both of you make awesome videos, this is the sort of educational videos I love!
Cody, yours was very scientific, which why people watch you. ;)
Scientist: thrilled to be proven wrong, and learns from the evidence.
Fanatics: enraged to be proven wrong, and denies the evidence.
I was thinking the same thing. Science is all about breaching the front lines of our knowledge base
You seem to be operating under the illusion that scientists can't be fanatical, or that fanatics can't be scientific. We're all human Dan, even the scientists. Incidentally I thought Scott was perfectly reasonable, I just thought it's worth bearing in mind not everyone is the same.
Scientist 2019: afraid to jeopardize career and funding, refuses to investigate something that violates belief system. Doesn't investigate the unexplained but explains the uninvestigated.
@@conveyor2 Another tobacco funded study ended early due to preliminary results of tests resulting in cancelation of continued funding.
@@lillyanneserrelio2187 More likely to be Government funded study ended early due to preliminary results of tests resulting in cancellation of continued funding.... Pretty much most research is done in the taxpool nowadays. Especially "climate science".
When I heard "perpetual motion", I immediately thought of The Simpsons.
"LISA, IN THIS HOUSE WE OBEY THE LAWS OF THERMODYNAMICS!"
underrated ...
I loved it when Homer became an inventor. I laughed so hard I cried when he invented the shotgun makeup applicator. ....
AND Conservation of Momentum
@@spudthegreaterusa8386 lol that was hilarious
This is like putting small wheels on the front and big tires on the back of a race car-- a dragster! The forward tilt makes it think it's rolling downhill. The snarling motors are just to impress the crowd.
To get even more out of it, it needs to be painted red!
Whether or not Confederate
battle flags increase the speed is a controversial subject.
Correction: the shape is a _frustum_ not a _frustrum._ The latter is related to the word "frustrate." A frustum is the portion of a generalized cone (the set of lines passing through a given point and a given Jordan curve) which is between two parallel planes, each on the same side of the given point as the given curve. In other words, it's a cone or pyramid with the top cut off.
The most impressive thing in this video is that amazing wall of LPs behind Scott.
Recon there's a supertramp or early genesis in there?
That was my first thought too.
@@lindongreen8922 Nah, theyre just several thousand copies of the 90's band 'Space' :)
Oooh, add some elo and it'll look a bit like my collection, but not so proud of the captain beefheart and the majic band albums.
@@SamHarrisonMusic had the spiders album on today mate!
"Pushing against quantum vacuum virtual particles"
So they fell back on good old ether.
that's a real thing though. at the quantum level, tons of particles constantly pop into existence and annihilate with each other
they are saying the EMdrive generates thrust by propelling those virtual particles away from the drive. not exactly sure if that's possible. i thought the whole point of virtual particles is you can't observe them (so no giving them momentum, either)
Zero-point
Here's the problem with using the quantum vacuum that way. The difference between the quantum vacuum and the old luminiferous aether is that the quantum vacuum, at least according to the best theories we've got, is Lorentz invariant. It should look the same in any inertial frame of reference. Which means it can't carry any momentum, so there's nothing to push against and have it remain vacuum.
The only way to "push against" it is to transform it into a state that does carry momentum--and that's not vacuum any more, that's a state with some real particles in it. So the best you've got is still just a photon rocket.
By the way, if you're _really_ clever you might be thinking of a secondary objection here:
"Well, suppose we 'borrow' some momentum temporarily from the vacuum, in the manner of a virtual particle in a Feynman diagram, move over a little and give it back? That doesn't violate conservation of momentum over the whole interaction. Suppose we start out in a frame where you have zero momentum. One minute you're here, the next minute you're over there, but your momentum is still zero when it's all over."
That actually doesn't work either, and it's again because of Lorentz invariance. In fundamental physics, every symmetry is associated with a conservation law, via Noether's Theorem. Conservation of momentum is the conservation law associated with translation invariance--the laws of physics being the same in all places.
But if you instead take Noether's theorem and plug in invariance under a change of inertial reference frame, what you get out is a tricky-to-state conservation law that basically says the center of mass (technically, center of energy) of a system MUST move at a velocity corresponding in the usual way to its momentum.
The interesting thing is that there is no corresponding law for *rotational* motion--there's rotational symmetry, which gives conservation of angular momentum, but there's no "center of energy motion" restriction--which is why a non-rigid body in free fall can reorient itself in space, by messing with its moment of inertia, without violating conservation of angular momentum. This is how cats land on their feet (classically--no quantum shenanigans needed). But for linear motion this trick doesn't work.
Ghosts in the machine, I believe it creates dark energy. The strange motions of the universe which need dark energy to explain, are all caused by resonance energy thrust, going back in time and getting stronger. It's where the energy for the big bang came from - some scientist in the future with a "wired" copper bucket. Now look what you did!
Nasa scientists be like:
- hey have you heard about the EM drive
*yea it sounds interesting
- we have a break soon
* yea
- wanna build it
*shure
Sure*
@@Jamesdavey358 its shure a Scottish form of shore dumbass
@@mmb3006 what
@@shamaur6951 some nasa engineers built the em drive during their lunch
@@mmb3006 but why’d you call the other guy a dumbass lol
my stance on this whole thing is basically: Nothing is impossible, but some things are unlikely. im hopeful, but retaining a healthy skepticism.
I agree with your sentiment, but I would modify it slightly. We probably cannot know what we don't know. However, everything we know screams that the EM drive is impossible. For this reason, healthy skepticism is rational.
Plenty of things are impossible.
transcendentape the thing is that humans are inconfortable when they learn that their vision of "the truth" is false. the problem with the EM DRIVE is that every friking law of phisics say that this thing shoudn't work, yet it seems to do at least something that make it work. a huge part of our understanding of physics is based about the newtons laws. if the EM drive works, then the law is flawled. and so is everything above it. the consequences are scary and this is why we feel do reserved about this thing. because it is opening a new era for space Travel, but also because it will debunk half of the physics model in the first place.
transcendentape the thing is that humans are inconfortable when they learn that their vision of "the truth" is false. the problem with the EM DRIVE is that every friking law of phisics say that this thing shoudn't work, yet it seems to do at least something that make it work. a huge part of our understanding of physics is based about the newtons laws. if the EM drive works, then the law is flawled. and so is everything above it. the consequences are scary and this is why we feel do reserved about this thing. because it is opening a new era for space Travel, but also because it will debunk half of the physics model in the first place.
If nothing is impossible than impossible is possible hmmm.......
Dude, newton would be mad. you can't just rewrite his third law.
1vs1 me isaac n00b
Newton's laws don't even make sense at the level this operates on.
What the heck are you talking about? It's not traveling at super-light speed.
Tlaloc_Temporal. you mean 'doesnt operate on' right?
Hikmet Melih Özdemir If the drive is intereacting to something we don't yet understand, then that law is not invalid. As the paper theorizes/postulates, there could be some forces going on that have yet to be discovered in the fields of science as yet explored by man. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it's not there...
Isn't this basically the same as blowing on your own sail?
galion1991 yeah but you get better results from blowing your own sail or at least the Myth-busters B team did.
If i could blow my own sail I'd never leave the bedroom.
Wait, Im confused. Blowing on my own sail? What about that leaf blower gardeners use. If I held that up to my sail instead of exhaling forcefully like I'm at a DUI checkpoint, would that propel my boat? I don't see how that breaks physics because we're converting gasoline in the leaf blower into wind/ force, just not very efficiently.
@@nevyen149 Execpt they moved in the oposite direction.
You can just blow the oposite direction you would like to move instead of blowing at the sail, since you get the entire recoil in that case. ;)
maybe not. as he pointed out.. .photon engine works. known science. functional, testable, demonstrable. but a photon engine is EXTREMELY inefficient. if ions DO work.. and it appears from the nasa experiment they do.. .they still have no idea WHY they work.. just that they do.
I dearly hope the scientific community is approaching this with a healthy balance of skepticism and curiosity. We understand the "laws" of physics as well as we are willing to test their boundaries. We don't need the sci-comm stonewalling development of new ideas just to hold on to established dogma. Can we get around general relativity? Can we generate unlimited energy?
The correct answer is "not under our current understanding of physics, *but*..."
Scientists love being wrong, though. Being wrong means that there's something new to learn.
Yet Scott's reaction says otherwise.
Scientists love being wrong, but I do not think the EM Drive proponents realize just how wrong this drive is
"I dearly hope the scientific community is approaching this with a healthy balance of skepticism and curiosity."
Don't worry, science is very competitive - especially in STEM fields. Any verdict on the EM drive will be checked and triple checked with all sorts of hopes for results. This would be too big to leave up to a particular person's bias.
This would be a total paradigm shift if real.
It's probably not real, but you'd be hard pressed to find a consensus in any scientific community saying it's impossible.
You...
I like you.
I *love* you.
10:10 "the amount of work done in a system is equal to the force X velocity"
Isn't that power?
work done is equal to force X distance.
Good catch!
He probably confused it with momentary performance which could be expressed as P(t)=F*v if delta time goes near zero.
Ákos Balogh would you mind explaining that a little further? I'm just in high school so I haven't really dived into much of this yet
Nikhil Menda Yes. Work is Force times the distance travelled in the same direction(W=F*s) Performance is the amount of work done in a second: P=W/t and if you express the W its P=F*s/t and "s/t" is velocity so it's P=F*v. The way I explained is basicly the same but "delta time near zero" means that we are having a true momentary speed. That is a bit more mathssy stuff. The result is the same, I just emphasized that momentary speed is avarage speed in a really small interval. (Taking dt as a a very small number which is almost zero) [same reason why we cant make out speed from a single photo] "P(t)" meaning P is a function of time.
Ákos Balogh ahh, I finally understood what you meant.
Thank you :)
Why don't they just call the photon drive a "flashlight"
But you could call your flashlight a photondrive ^^
"Sara! Please fetch me the photon drive, I think my wallet is under the bed."
Because your flashlight does not need 300 Gigawatt's of energy, just 2 AAA duracell.
Because it’s called a “torch” where I come from.
Good point.
The EM is a definite maybe, but damn look at that vinyl collection!
As far as a perpetual motion machine, the EM is very inefficient is it not?
Musky Elon it is not "perperual motion" as it still require and use energy. and for the ineficient part, yes it is not as efficient as other techs energy wise. but it make up for it by an absurd amount of delta v, wich only depend on time. and we didn't tested the supderconductor variant...
Well, if it worked, it would be kind of the only thing seriously proposed with efficiency above 1 in certain conditions. What is an inefficient perpetual motion machine?
Ilnore
well with physics you never know :)
Well, in this case, you kind of do know. The very definition of a perpetual motion machine is to have an efficiency of over 1. So, there is no such thing as an inefficient perpetual motion machine.
I hope that someday we can dispense with hyperbolic statements like "We'll have to forget everything we know about physics!" The discovery of quantum physics did not mean we had to forget everything we knew about Newtonian physics, it just explained a set of observations that didn't fit the Newtonian model. If the EM-Drive can be shown to work reliably, then a theory will have to be devised to explain it. Sounds to me like a great opportunity for learning. Even if it can be shown NOT to work, we'll probably learn something useful along the way.
That's true. However, hypergolic statements can have great merit.
@@DrMackSplackem"hypergolic statements" are the new flame posts.
If nothing else, EM-Drive research should improve the quality of shiny things to hang in trees to scare animals.
If you have a contradiction, it's not the physics that has a problem. It's you :)
I really don’t think you understand the level of contradiction this would mean. This isn’t just updating some of physics it’s quite literally contradicting one of the most fundamental laws of physics.
I built one of these on my garage. It currently powers my s10 & produces 97,000lbs of thrust. The electronics interfere with my flux capacitor tho and the drivers behind me get upset...
Obviously your flux capacitors are worn out. Update them.
Go Blue. Hopefully. You have an S10?
Well, my wife's MSU went down hard, and we (leaders and victors, apparently) can only put a 10-spot on Iowa, so, I'm planning on hiding under the covers when we are once again on the menu of the the scarlet and grey. #97 grad never lost. 😖
osumbuckeyenut it's ok Marty, where we are going,we don't need roads
Admitting you own an S10 invalidates your argument.
My feeling to the EM Drive is basically like that of SETI: it's probably not going to work, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try (though I do acknowledge that in comparison, SETI is far more likely to succeed).
If I were to bet, I'd say the thrust effect is real, but there's something subtle going on that's still entirely within the realm of current physics. Like with the Pioneer anomaly that turned out to be thermal disequilibrium, or faster-than-light neutrinos that turned out to be a loose cable.
It already does work
If you read the second section, you'll see I've already responded to what you said.
I guess if you define SETI success as simply searching and cataloging, then SETI will always be a success. I meant succeeding as in actually finding aliens.
*****
It doesn't need to be tested in a zero gravity environment. If it works in 1 G it works in micro gravity. Like a rocket.
*****
When you test a rocket you simply account for the existing G force. There's no unknown forces at work. It will act exactly as you calculate. Newtonian physics
Nothing can 'break' physics, it can only ever 'reveal' it.
The arrogance in this video is really disappointing.
@@tobigforyou it's not arrogance, it's healthy skepticism. Until more evidence is put forth, it is appropriate to maintain this level of skepticism.
Yeah the thing with Physics is that it's quite interconected and well-tested, so if you want to claim that you have new model that violates the laws of the established model, well, now you have to explain why all other experiments *didn't* reveal what you think you've revealed. Not impossible, but it's usually more likely that you made a mistake than that all the other physicists have been making the identical mistakes for the past 50 years or so.
Of course, this does happen from time to time, but if you were gambling, it would always be a better bet to wager against it's new physics this time.
And in Physics, it's less about whether you "believe in" a model and more about whether the new model can accurately and quantitatively predict your experimental observations better than the old one could. New observations are only the very beginning of that process.
@@tobigforyou The thing that separates real scientists from people like flat-earth "scientists" is that real scientists WANT to be proven wrong. If they made an error, they want to know before their opinion becomes widely accepted fact. Being skeptical is the right call. The laws of physics (especially mechanical physics) are sacred. They dictate everything in the universe around us. We know there is a high chance laws exist that we aren't aware of, but we can't just change our understood laws without being entirely sure. The review process is brutal, and everyone wants to prove you wrong, because if nobody can, then we can be overwhelmingly certain you didn't make a mistake.
As far as arrogance, I don't see where you saw that. He didn't claim to be smarter than the man or state that any part of it was wrong. He simply said that it didn't make sense with the current understanding of conservation of energy and momentum (the foundation of everything in mechanical physics) and that history tells us that an error will likely be found. He also said he would be really happy if he was wrong. We all would, as this would be a breakthrough in much more than just rocket science. It could be the key to unlimited free energy, pacemakers without a battery, reliable artificial gravity, etc. Before anyone is going to start losing their mind over this, it will be put through the most challenging of gauntlets.
An actual tsadik knows Yahuah bends "physics" at will
work = force * velocity ??!! I thought it was work = force * distance Guess I lost points on that question lol.
Yep, he'd have meant power, or work per unit time.
I want to believe! I want to believe so badly!
I wouldn't get your hopes up, they pumped a few kw into a box and it twitched a little
man you have no idea how much that tickled me.
It literally says in the video that the NASA experiment used 1 W that and produced a (very small) sustained force. The question is whether the force is explainable by an unaccounted error or if it actually implies new physics.
ariscop if you pumped a few kw into me, I'd twitch a lot. maybe I am a good rocket engine.
It actually says so-and-so micronewtons *per watt*. The paper says they did several runs, at 40W, 60W, and 80W.
I can just imagine the look on Scott Manly's face if it actually works.....
The Entity that would be worth his weight in gold
It would be worth the whole human race's weight in gold. It would be the single most important discovery short of a transluminal drive.
The Entity he's probably will be very happy. It's start of new Era in space travel.
Being skeptical doesn't mean you're rooting against it. It just means that you are not convinced that the claim is true. As he explains in the video, if this works... We have solved the energy problem, we can easily stop and reverse global warming, we can colonize the entire galaxy if we want to. It would be the biggest breakthrough in human history...
He just doesn't think it will pan out. But he will also be the first to celebrate if it does pan out.
how does this working = solved energy problem and revearse global warming?
also we can colonize the entire galaxy now if we want to, having this would speed that up but it would still take well over a thousand years lol.
How to get movement out of energy only:
Get some batteries
Use the batteries to charge a robotic arm
Make the robotic arm throw the batteries really fast
Thrust
That is basically a more complicated version of what a rocket does.
The German team later found the thrust was always to one direction of the measuring device no matter which direction it was turned.
SlenderCam Gaming Could have been the Earth's magnetic field then.
Daniel Schroedinger Thx
Damn that one direction
@@Jupiter__001_ it was, lol
It's like propulsion from Hitchhiker's Guide: The spaceship that can only make left turns.
wtf?? 2:48 .. top paragraph.. they wrote "kilotwatt" .. KILOTWATT! and this is a peer reviewed paper??
Erro de digitação comum, nada que tire a credibilidade do trabalho.
think that was probably written on a computer with spellcheck enabled for autocorrect...
Proof that this idea has no merit... and the journal that reviewed this has lost all reputation. Don't believe a word it says anymore.
Tom P. The EM drive is bogus. They are con artists who want to keep getting grant money.
epic pants y
"Lisa! In this house we OBEY the laws of thermodynamics!" Homer Simpson
I don't think breaking science and theorems is bad.
Disproving rational things is what drives science forward!
I hope the EM Drive changes how we think of the Universe.
This is what drives innovation.
Andrew Kovnat yeah I agree, I didn't like the way this guy discouraged the device just because it "broke" physics. If the results are true WE need to change physics not the device
WondrousHello It's just not very likely. He doesn't say, he'd be against it. Scott would love for it to work. Right now there's just more speaking against it.
You can't innovate if you waste all your time chasing bogus ideas that couldn't possibly work.
After having read the article, I can see at least one potential source of unaccounted-for error. Most metals have a tendency to absorb significant amounts of atmospheric gasses on their surfaces. In high vacuum chamber experiments (CVD, electron microscopy, etc) the vacuum vessel has to be brought up to high temperature as basically every part in the system out-gasses. Due to the non-trivial amount of power being used and extremely asymmetrical nature of their apparatus, erroneous thrust might be generated from thermally induced out-gassing. They never ran the system for long enough to reach thermal equilibrium and re-introduced atmospheric pressure after only a few runs.
Just a thought.
Also, why did they try to measure the temperature of a shiny metal cone with a thermal camera and/or a pyrometer? As anyone who's used a thermal camera can tell you (and as you can see for yourself in their thermal images), all you're going to see is the thermal reflection off the surface. Generally you have to paint an area of the surface black to get any meaningful measurement.
htomerif Certainly interesting. I don't remember that from the paper. I would be surprised they wouldn't have known about this because any experience with UHV systems would tell you that pretty quickly. I'm going to delve a bit more into the paper to check the vacuum setup.
They left the drive in the vacuum for weeks to strip the surface of gasses
htomerif wouldn't NASA account for that based off of previous experiments with low thrust devices?
I thought the same thing!
First, I completely agree, except on homemade equipment to experiment. By way of for instance, one could take a look at the first cyclotron built by Lawrence back in the 30's. It is basically a coffee can sawed in half and wrapped in copper wire, and since many other first in experimental technologies got their start like that, I'd allow latitude for looks, so long as it functioned.
That being said, yes, it does look rickety, perhaps, but you should never debase your argument like that.
I hope you're right in this particular case. If you think about the well-made resonant chambers, they're so precisely made, they must be thermally stabilized to keep their characteristics as designed. How would you thermally stabilize a resonant chamber in space which was big enough to push a vehicle? It could be done, but the drive will be a lot more practical if tolerances don't need to be so tight.
The way this year has been going, we might as well end it by chucking all of our physics books into bonfires in worship of our new conical god, the EM Drive.
MetalSlimeHunt #PRAISETHECONE #MAKESPACEGREATAGAIN
MetalSlimeHunt everything else we wanted hasn't went with common belief why should this. I for one welcome the idea but as always I have my doubts.
All hail the magic traffic cone.
I. for one, welcome our new conic overlords.
iConic overlords
1.2 µN per Watt would suggest that it is expelling a mass of 7.2e-13 kg per second at a speed of 1.67e6 m/s.
Could it be that it is simply dislodging enough particles at the end of the cavities to do just that?
Snagabott hmm that's something I hadn't considered. I wonder if they measured the mass before and after, I still haven't read the paper.
that is an interesting thing dude, it may explain how this thing don't fuck over Newtown third law, tho i don't have the math skills yet to do the math.
But isn't the cavity closed at both ends?
mytube001 no as is the waves inside could be dislodging particles on the outise of the containar due to small vibrations or whatever. as the area of the back end is larger than that of the small end, more particles would be dislodged from that side than the other
Fair enough. But surely it would easy to detect that?
I heard it runs on Memes,
I like to call it the Meme Drive
you can't spell meme without EM
I'm with Douglas Adams and his Infinite Probability Drive
Radiation pressure inside a cavity works almost exactly like pressure from gases (the photons with random velocities are mathematically analogous to particles, they also carry momentum). So if the inventor's claim that simply tapering a microwave cavity should lead to thrust, a tapered box full of air should also propel itself! That's how ridiculous the claim is.
If you know some basic calculus, it's a good exercise the vector integral of uniform normal field over an arbitrary surface is 0. In 2D this reduces to the obvious statement of how following the path of a closed curve leads you to back to where you started.
Keep in mind this analysis isn't even needed because classical physics provably conserves momentum within it's axioms. That's why they had to come up with silly concepts like the "Quantum Virtual Plasma".
Gustavo - Let me ask you a simple physics question: In the "Law of Conservation of Momentum" are Virtual Particles part of the "Total System Momentum"? IN other words: If a device can PUSH on virtual particles and exchange momentum with them, then the virtual particles annihilate an LEAVE the physical presence of the device that pushed on them? IS IT a violation of physics?
If a device can push on the virtual particles (exchanging momentum with them), then the particles disappear (taking that momentum with them) was there really any violation of basic physics? Or are the virtual particles part of the "Total System Momentum of the universe"
But what about the EDM drive?????????
+Clayton Doty that's my turntables, rotating the tunes at 45 or 33&1/3 RPM
Uses accelerated mosh pits to generate thrust
Yes
What about EDAM drives? Those are infinitely more cheesy.
Well it's 2019 and to me it looks like this one is going the way of 'Cold Fusion'.
No it isn't ...
@@TomKappeln Are you suggesting that this is real? Or that cold fusion is real?
@@michaelsommers2356 It's 2021, not 2019 ... lol
@@TomKappeln So what?
Friends don't let friends use Reactionless Drives.
Cary Weaver sounds like a quote off of the Atomic Rockets website.
That's because it is. The quote is in reference to the fact that any reaction-less drive is also a planet killing relativistic weapon, given enough time to accelerate.
nerd1000ify yes but the amount of time it takes for all fuelless propulsion systems to accelerate (i am counting solar sails) is so slow
Michael Halpern
That's true in real life but not fiction. Sci-fi authors tend to get bored with engines that have very slow acceleration because flights from place to place take too long. To speed up the pace of the plot they upgrade them into something that allows quick interplanetary transfers and high-G space combat, the kind of thing that's exciting for the reader. If the drive has infinite delta-V this automatically transforms every spaceship in the setting into a planet killing super-missile.
nerd1000ify many scifi authors just don't use normal space-time for long distance travel
Phil Mason did a really good breakdown of the energy requirements vs the EmDrive. Needless to say, it's demonstrably unrealistic in its current form.
Hey man, never commented on anything on the internet before (beside facebook and what not) but I just need to say I love you're channel and check it out daily. I'm a mechanical engineering student, physics fan, and casual gamer (incuding KSP of course). Just wanted to let you know I really appreciate what you're doing and please keep up the good work.
It's not only lack of the heavy propellant. It's also lack of tanks and heavy plumbing that comes with the propellant. So weight saving would be actually even bigger.
Mass saving would be infinite.
With an EM drive, as long as you can collect radiation (space is full of it) and convert it to work, you can keep thrusting. Essentially you now have infinite velocity change capability.
Compare that to any non-infinite deltaV value and it's infinitely better.
You would need infinite mass for a reaction drive to match it.
Solar sails have those qualities without the drawbacks of breaking the laws of physics!
As far as the game mod goes. I made one huge with tweakscale. My ship cant power it but in intervals and its so freekin' soft that It would take hours of thrust to just get away from Kerbin orbit. At least I wont run out of 'gas'.
The power system needed to sustain these things would more than make up for the lack of heavy tanks and plumbing. It's the biggest limiter for ion thrusters right now. The weight of solar panels and batteries is just too great at the moment. Everyone in the electric propulsion field is basically twiddling their thumbs waiting for a breakthrough in power systems. Once that happens, you'll see ion thrusters on practically everything, including our ships to Mars. That is, unless nuclear thermal propulsion gets approved.
What about using a working EM drive for station keeping?
A satellite or space station could use solar power to power the drive and thus keep itself in orbit with less or no need for propellant refueling. It could drop the maintenance cost on the ISS a fair bit.
Again, assuming this thing works.
Totally.
However, the pop sci press announced it as some cheap manned spaceflight gizmo.
(Because: More thrust than even the things that will sent things to Proxima Centauri!)
There are already other viable methods of stationkeeeping without using reaction mass. The Earth has handy things like an electric field and magnetic field which you can use to generate a net force.
Probbably, but first they need to improve the efficiency or get bigger solar pannels. Those few uN/W seem like a problem right now.
if it can use em waves to propel itself. it should then be able to use the naturally created em waves of the universe too. like air for downforce or drag on a car. altering em atmospheres or pressures i want to say to increase its efficiency. or like getting a sail boat to sail into the wind.
For practical purposes though, the ISS uses reaction mass thrusters. Generating the kind of electromagnetic fields for stationkeeping tends to play hob with equipment... a bad thing.
I love that a super smart physicist also knows that vinyl sounds better :)
i hope there is some merit to this or similar ideas as, lets face it, the movie version of space ships is much more exciting and practical than having a massive rocket of which the vast majority is fuel
that's really only to escape Earths gravity. Once you're in space, when we get to a point we are building ships in space, they can get a bit closer to the images we see in movies.
I'm not the person to ask but I always thought solar sails were the future of early space travel with no fuel, just using the sun. As described in some detail by Arthur C. Clarke.
solar sails are great but what if you want to fly in the opposite direction ... tacking in space?
John P
I thought it went along the lines of, solar sail generates electricity for an engine. Like an electric car. You accelerate for half your journey turn the ship around, I mean rotate it 180 degreea, then spend the other half of the journey slowing down.
It just sounded so elegant to my young ears when I first read it in a novel. Totally useless to fly around on a whim but from A to B, no fuel costs. I imagined we'd have like shipping lanes of these solar ships coming and going like we have with ships in our oceans. I got that idea wrong heh
Actually, tacking with solar sails is completely possible, and works just the same as sailing. There are even designs for statites, which are satellites which 'hover' using the solar pressure to maintain position without orbiting.
that sounds like an array of solar panels ... solar sails are a thing too though .. for capturing the solar wind
i just really hope that something like the em drive becomes a reality in my lifetime .. the future will be so much more exciting if new areas of physics are discovered .. and as mentioned if you can jump in something closer to a private jet and go zipping off somewhere - and come back - rather than sitting in a tiny capsule on top of a vast quantity of propellant ..
this whole attitude of "it goes against the laws of physics so it cant be real" is a little irritating because, well, at some point everyone thought the earth was flat
I want to believe SO BADLY.
But ultimately, I'm an empiricist, and a rather cynical skeptic.
This means that for me to trust the results 100%, the EM Drive has to work in an actual application, even if it's a "test" application such as a cubesat with some solar arrays, basic attitude control, and an EM Drive on the back.
Basically, take off an Ion engine and swap in an EM Drive. Then see what happens.
All I can say for certain at this point is that I know enough about it to say I don't know enough about it to make any declarative statements other than "I'm in the 'wait and see' camp".
thunderf00t did a video explaining why EM doesnt even work
according to the experiment it took as much energy as a human uses every day to lift less than the weight of a water drop. now we use up the same energy as a lightbulb......doing the math, modern rockets are wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy more efficient
herobrinext9
Wrong comparison, IMO.
The whole reason to use the EM drive is that it uses zero propellant.
Zero propellant for even the tiniest amount of thrust is a really big deal because it means you never run out of fuel, even if it takes a rather large amount of energy to get a pretty small amount of thrust.
Imagine a space probe that can go from Mercury orbit to Pluto orbit. It may take 50 years to do it, but a space probe that has an EM Drive would be able to do it.
Humans have not constructed anything capable of doing that yet, and IMO it's basically impossible with technology currently in use, even ion engines.
44R0Ndin zero proppelant but you still need a source of energy to power it and there is no infinite one and with this EM drivw we would take up so much battery power that it would still eb more efficient to use normal rockets
44R0Ndin yeah, agreed, but until we can actually make an EM drive that is efficient and properly works, we're gonna have to stick to testing
As a retired DJ, my fav part is Scott's puppy DJ pillow. The content was great as usual!
Thanks for talking about this topic Scott, I've been wondering what a more informed person's opinion on this thing.
@scott manley There are a few theories out there that suggest the EM drive doesn't break the laws of physics and that it also doesn't do anything funky with 'quantum vacuums' or other such nonsensical explanations. Maybe try to find those, might be an interesting read for someone like yourself with a far greater understanding of physics than me.
Also, being afraid of "the laws of physics being changed right under you" might not be the best mentality. Being skeptical is, of course, expected and reasonable. However, being scared of change simply because it's "scary" is not so smart. The laws of physics allow us to model the universe and make accurate predictions based on what we have observed in the past. Throughout history these laws have been altered numerous times by new data, allowing us to more accurately predict and model whats going on around us. While I'm not defending the EM drive (though i do believe it will turn out to be bogus), I'm also not going to discount the research that has been done on it thus far.
I've heard rumors that the EM drive is being tested aboard the USAF's X-37 and on board China's new orbital laboratory. Interestingly, amateur astronomers who track the location of the X-37 claim that it has changed its orbit far more than its, albeit assumed, delta V should allow, possibly hinting at some other form of propulsion being utilized.
I say some group (probably NASA) send one of these into space (without it being shrouded in secrecy) and give it a whirl, put this debate to bed once and for all.
On a side note, your videos are always great and provide an outstanding means of learning about space after a long day of work. Keep it up :)
Even when smoke started coming out of my head, I think your video was very interesting.
Can the microwaves just kick out some particles from one side?
They have to test it for more time and check if the mass of the device doesn't get smaller.
There's another problem: Random photons (microwaves) might just escape from the thruster due to tiny holes/leaks.
but if that was the case then the em drive would have less thrust than a photon drive right?
Gotta say, that Thumbnail is Brilliant.
Gotta thank the posters at somethingawful for coming up with that idea.
Wait, you go to Something Awful? You don't look like a goon.
Scott thank you for explaining the EmDrive to a layman. I would say with not having the same educational advantage on this subject as you do my interest in first reading about the 100 Year Starship and Mae Jamison and her work with them that brought me to find the EmDrive has peaked to no end. As a child, I had a national geographic collection from my subscriptions as large as my comic collection. I particularly loved the inside story on what scientists in your field "hate" and "don't want to hear". It explains the delay in progress and the preservation of standards all in a nutshell, also such an interesting cerebral tennis match. My layman example of "perpetual motion" would be me as a child standing on a skateboard using the movement of my body to make the skateboard to move in one direction. The fuel might be in dispute but I think that the comparison would be the particles bouncing around inside the container generating the same result. I can't see why you wouldn't think that wouldn't work and how you guys "hate" to hear things like that. Hence I'm not a scientist but I can see why even if it worked it may work for local space travel but interstellar travel can it really scale up to the point where enough speed could be "expelled" to generate the necessary thrust to reach Alpha Centauri, for example, that's daunting. What do I know, I'm in business development. I do think when HG Wells wrote that book about the first man on earth in 1901 and then we actually getting to the moon in 1969 speaks volumes. Only to the point that the 100yrs starship project wants us to get to interstellar travel within 100yrs. I think the technological advances from 1901 to 1969 are fair in comparison from 2012 when that project began to the next 25yrs even. I hope to see interstellar travel in my lifetime but if the government and private industry steps in then red tape, fight for rights, and patents, will stretch it to 100yrs and I won't be around. Fingers crossed either way.
I hope it works.. and if it does, it'll be interesting to see how the superconducting version performs.
NikoKun if I remember correctly their figures indicate it could hover a car on just 1Kw of power. I don't know how that could be possible, even if they could increase the efficiency by approx 3*10^6
Is that in the works? If the effect is that dramatic they should have done that one first :) Then there would be no doubt
Mr. Reinterpret Cast I read the other day they were planning the other day to have a mk2 that would have 30kN/kW. I just don't see that happening, certainly not in one generation.
How so? Can't you just dip the whole thing in liquid nitrogen and fire it up? :D
everything he says that explains why it wouldn't work just makes me want to see a success, think how far into the future this could put us and how many things would change
Nacalal. nothing would change, if it worked it would only be competitive for very long term missions, that means it would still take massive developments in conventional technology before we could even reasonably deploy these engines and they would still face competition from conventional propulsion.
But that is just one part of this. Like Scott said this will change everything that we know about physics.
Nacalal even more, this thing is SIMPLE AS FUCK! it's just a cone of conductive material with a magenic field emiter, the same you have in your microwave! and even if the normal version if weak, we don't know what kind of thrust we will be able to generate if we just cool the thing down into a super conductive state, then just power it with a butload of electricity, it may not be easy not practical, but it means you can give and theoretical infinite amount of thrust to the thing, with any exaust sise, as long as you give it enough power. remember that fusion or even fission is still a thing.
sorry...but you just don't know what you are talking about..take it from me and others..this is horse shit...a steaming pile of it, the numbers are there for you to read, read them, and then THINK....
I enjoy that you have "Drumattical" peeking out behind you. Very fitting for the topic at hand, especially given the unconventional space travel means demonstrated in the cover art! Great info, great album sir.
As a 2nd year physics student (currently studying for a Electromagnetism test funny enough) this claim scares me, the idea that conservation of momentum might be thrown out of the window upsets me a lot...
Worry not, young sprat! The Scot with the maximally efficient hairstyle has your back, and will see to it your upset is unwarranted!
..just keep working on that "portable hole" doohickey that you fizziecists are so keen to get into production, as requested by the Defense Department.
JP It won't be. At least not from this device... Most of the concepts they've used to explain the apparent thrust are complete nonsense. There is one concept that uses special relativity that almost makes sense without breaking things, but results in a q factor that diminishes asymptotically with increased velocities.
Elias Overbosch well who knows... I'll remain skeptical, I have more pressing concerns to worry about (the aforementioned test) anyway.
Elias Overbosch
Perhaps there's a wacky "momental loop" out into the 10th, or 11th, dimension into which, and from with, some energy is "flung" and then recovered?
Perhaps the "ansible" is about to be discovered!? Who knows.... :)
+Elias Overbosch
There IS a remarkable resemblance between the EM Drive shape, Gandalf's hat, and a moonshine still! I'm guessing alcohol was heavily involved in each of those things. yeah...
Ever heard of the Alcubierre effect, Scott? I saw a paper by NASA investigating it's potential. All I know is, we are going to need new exotic physics if we are to truly explore the solar system and beyond. Solar sails may get tiny probes to alpha centauri but not manned colony ships.
sulijoo The Alcubierre drive is even more problematic, because it allows causality violations (time travel).
No it doesn't. You don't move and so you don't dilate time, thus no time travel. Warp involves the movement of spacetime which isn't limited by c (having no inherent mass or energy).
The Alcubierre effect is how the "warp drive" he mentioned is supposed to work. It's the Alcubierre warp drive. And it's one of the other possible space travel solutions being looked at by the same NASA team who did this experiment.
Error Error What problems? We could build a warp drive today, we just lack the fuel to run it. There is nothing about it that poses a problem with physics, it's a technical issue as we don't know how to manufacture negative energy... Yet.
There's no time dilation, no possible energy requirements, no unresolved engineering questions. Once we can manufacture negative energy, it'll be no more difficult than it was to put the Voyager probes in space. Maybe easier considering that we have more advanced manufacturing tech and experience with spacecraft.
David Kelly
Read what I wrote please, warp drives both generate closed time like curves (causality violations), and require exotic matter (negative energy), both of which probably make them impossible. I even provided a peer reviewed source.
Also no time dilation doesn't have anything to do with the existence of casual loops.
TL;DR: Right now warp drives are theoretically impossible.
There must be a hell of a story involved with those LPs in the background.
I think it's too good to be true, this is too similar to the hype over "cold fusion" for me to take seriously.
Ryan Lowry well cold fusion doesn't totally violate the laws of physics.
The cold fusion claims were driven by even less experimental observations, and yet cold fusion has more basis in science than the emdrive.
this doesnt either.
Scott Manley I have a quick question whenever I watch various sci-fi there's almost always that advanced alien race that claims humans don't know as much as they think they do what if we're just wrong about how some things work or if there's some kind of condition that makes them wrong in that moment it is possible we just know very little compared to what there is to know
You need to find a new place for your lapel mic because it kept scraping your beard ;d
A link to the paper in the description might be nice...
SPACKlick Yeah, thanks :P I already found and read it and commented about it. Other people will need it though. I didn't post a link since most YT channels auto-silence links.
Scott doesn't do that blindly as far as I can tell. I've certainly not had links blanked on here before.
Apparently he does. Someone responded to this comment with a valid link to the paper, and its been silenced. I can understand that its out of practicality, but in situations like this, it looks bad. Just above your comment there should be a comment visible with the link in it. Its not there.
SPACKlick Sucks, but your link was silenced. Log out and look at the video. Your comment isn't there.
Now he didn't do it personally, its just a filter, but it happened nonetheless.
Yeah, I see that now. Slightly disappointed.
Just ran across this again. Any news in the 5 years since? Any proof it actually works yet?
Presumably they have tested the apparatus at various orientations with respect to Earth's magnetic field lines. I would hate for this to simply be a rotational force induced by opposing magnetic fields.
Paper does not make this clear.
quantumac sorry to say this will never work.
LmOver I merely wonder if those conducting the tests have accounted for a possible interaction with Earth's magnetic field (i.e. rotational motion as opposed to transverse motion). I am not claiming the device actually works as its inventor claims. Like Scott Manley, I remain skeptical.
The tests from eagleworks and the repetition in the german lab did this (up, down, north, south orientations of the device) and they included the measurements in the papers they published. Dilation was also considered. The thing is, the thrust measured is still too small. If they want to prove something, they should build a bigger version and people should be patient until those results are published.
if the thing actually produce thrust. it has to be investigated further. it's as simple as that.
even if this thing fails we may find something new! But dont get to hyped!
yeah that's what is happening now. It's standerd
thats what she said
I agree. I understand physicists' resistance. But at some point you need to face facts.
as a person who's a little more hopeful than some... i still don't think we're at the point where any skeptics 'need to face facts.'
This is very, very, very early stages. Skepticism is good.
What NASA's done, though, IMO illustrates we should be investing further resources into investigating the possibility.
Your comment about drivers "around here" is spot on!
5:10
There is a July 2015 interview with Prof. Dr. Martin Tajmer from Dresden University of Technology in German where he clarifies the intent of his research and cited paper regarding the EMDrive testing:
www.grenzwissenschaft-aktuell.de/prof-korrigiert-berichte-zu-emdrive-tests20150730/
Here is my ad-hoc translation:
_
Q: Dear Prof. Tajmer, is it true that you have successfully reproduced and thus proved the effect of the EMDrive in your experiments?
A: No. Such an interpretation of my results is truthfully a mystery to me. Already in the abstract of my technical paper I write clearly and precisely that I cannot confirm nor disprove the effect of the EMDrive. It is true: We indeed measured thrusts similar to the predictions of the EMDrive, but also in directions that should be null. I also write that I presume that magnetic forces from the cabling cause this effect. This is why I did recommend in the article that further testing be done to sort out these (and other) possible causes.
Q: How do you fundamentally view the concept of the EMDrive?
A: From a theoretical standpoint, the EMDrive makes absolutely no sense. Because, in essence, it would contradict the conservation of momentum. Time and again I've been asked by my students and colleagues for my opinion, especially after some experimental data from NASA became available. That is why I wanted to conduct testing myself, to see if I could come to similar results and whether I could delete the effect through better shielding against thermic/electromagnetic effects (what most critical scientists expect). Since I have always been interested in new thrusters, I was naturally very eager to see the results myself.
Q: And was this shielding successful?
A: Our tests have shown that we can indeed produce similar results -- except this time we had more sensors (e.g. temperature measurements) -- and the possibility to implement some shielding. In doing so we found that there can be significant interference by the magnetic field of the cabling, which we could not completely shield against, and that the same thrusts are observed when the thruster was firing into a direction that should not have shown thrust on the thrust meter.
Q: And what does that mean for the experiments so far that supposedly prove the effect of the EMDrive?
A: Our testing shows that in both the apparatus of NASA and that of the inventor not all sources of error have been identified yet, and that within the scope of our accuracy of measurement we have had a baseline measurement -- with the accuracy of measurement matching the claimed effect. Hence with our apparatus we cannot comfirm or disprove the EMDrive thrusts. Further testing is necessary.
Q: How do you then explain the many news items that state that you have successfully and independently confirmed the effect of the EMDrive?
A: Truthfully, it is a mystery to me that these websites claim I have validated the EMDrive. At least there were also a few differing news items. I believe that everyone want and hope that we find something new. Unfortunately, the time hasn't come yet -- hopefully, though, the future will have one or the other surprise in store for us regarding this. All I have set out to do is to scientifically look at a number of effects that lead to a wrong interpretation of test data.
Q: Do you yourself plan to conduct further experiments regarding the EMDrive to, say, check more sources of error?
A: I am convinced we now have an apparatus with which to continue -- the interest of the students is certainly there. I think that specifically the topic of EMDrive is an excellent educational project where you can learn to identify sources of error that may not seem readily obvious.
_
+Scott Manley FYT
How about a photons and phase shifted photons.
They erase each other by the end, so you can't detect anything,
but they still pushing.
hey scott, can you give us/me your view on the plasma/electric universe theory as opposed to the standard model/accepted theory
+Floda Reltih in the 60's it was interesting, but as time has gone on more and more evidence has appeared that supports gravity driven cosmology and contradicts plasma cosmology. Given the preponderance of evidence I'd dismiss EU as fatally flawed.
I'd dismiss the EU as fatally flawed too. [Insert Brexit Joke Here] =P
daxdigitalus
I am disapointed but is an expected response
daxdigitalus Well, it is flawed as a matter of fact.
Floda Reltih lord forbid he go off facts instead of plasma woohoo
I agree that this proposal needs to be better demonstrated to prove it is legitimate but I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss. I have seen in your own videos where you explain early concepts which appear to be rather pathetic (they built it in a dining room) but once perfected are incredibly powerful. Really enjoying your videos. Better than most TV. Thank you
This sounds like the drives they got in the expanse a show i think you should do a vid on oh and "Remember the Cant."
No they were fusion drives.
+Trace Greene nah, The Expanse ships use fusion torch drives.
Oh well i am not very smart science wise why i watch Scott but to me as a normie the show seems fairly plausible anyhow fusion drive got it
The Expanse (well barring the big plot McGuffin) is a fairly plausible show that doesn't play too hard and fast with the laws of physics much like the books. The depiction of nukes managing to reduce a very massive spacecraft to nothing but a debris cloud was the most egregious physics error I noted. Nukes in space are basically gigantic flashbulbs of gamma and infrared radiation, amongst other things. This is certainly damaging, especially to unshielded biological lifeforms, but it is never going to obliterate a ship down to a fine debris cloud like you see in the Expanse. One of the reasons why most theorists, be they amateurs or professional physicists/military theorists, expect weapons such as railguns or possibly lasers to be as if not more important to space combat than the nuke.
Fusion drives of various types have been proposed. It's unclear whether we will ever produce a drive quite like the ones in the Expanse (I also do not know whether they were implausibly powerful from travel times shown in books/series) and certainly the reactors wouldn't look much like the ones in the show.
What about if the nuke was inside the ship? With nothing but space ship in every direction the nuke should do more damage right?
Wait, why did you say work = force * velocity? Is that a slip of the tongue, or something I don't understand? (work = force * distance)?
I was talking about power which is work over time, whereas velocity is distance over time. So I just inserted an algebraic step that I didn't think I needed to explicity explain.
NOT TO NORMAL PEOPLE ANY WAY MATE
I never doubted you! I assumed the misunderstand was on my end...
Work= force * velocity = mass* velocity^2
joules= (kg/s^2)*m/s=(kg*m^2)/(s^2)
No, work = force*distance. He meant to say Power = force*velocity.
Just because you dont understand how, doesn’t mean it cant work. There are plenty of things i don’t understand, that’s why i am here watching you Scott.
Isn't this the same sort of principle as the Casimir force? On the face of it, the Casimir force breaks the laws of physics because you "get force from nothing," via 2 parallel plates in a vacuum. But then quantum mechanics comes along and states that in a vacuum exists virtual particles and the cutting off of wavelengths between the plates results in a lower pressure than outside the places, resulting in an inequal force pushing the plates together.
Wouldn't the same kind of principle apply where due to one end of the cone being narrower than the other, a similar situation arises where there is a lower "pressure" at one end?
I've always been very interested in ways to exploit zero point energy and it seems to be a part of physics where a lot of mystery still lies.
There is no 'force from nothing' in the quantum vacuum example. Quantum mechanics simply 'discovered' a new set of interactions on a micro scale. This is not a micro scale, and thus quantum vacuum effects would be largely irrelevant or non-existent (likely both).
"On the face of it, the Casimir force breaks the laws of physics "
No, the Casimir force is a *prediction* of the laws of physics. It doesn't break them at all.
"you "get force from nothing," via 2 parallel plates in a vacuum. "
You do not. The Casimir effect 1. conserves energy and 2. conserves momentum.
"Wouldn't the same kind of principle apply where due to one end of the cone being narrower than the other, a similar situation arises where there is a lower "pressure" at one end? "
No, and even if it did, it wouldn't depend on input power. It would be a property of the geometry, just like the real Casimir effect.
Ath Athanasius Jaffe is a smart guy, but I can tell you that not that many people take this sort of explanation very seriously. This is because the Casimir effect, or related effects, show up in a variety of other contexts where there are no atoms and no van der waals forces. For example, the most common way to think about particle physics at finite temperature is to calculate a kind of Casimir effect in a space that looks like a torus. Or, if string theorists are to be believed and we live in a 10 dimensional space of which several dimensions are compactified, there would be a Casimir effect associated with this compactification. It is really the boundary conditions that are important, and those do not need atoms to arise.
Absolutely Awesome! Thankyou so much for your generosity and amazing video.
“You would make a ship sail against the winds and currents by lighting a bonfire under her decks? I have no time for such nonsense”
I always try and keep dear Napoleon’s words in mind when thinking about this kind of stuff.
@ss No I appreciate that. I can't see how it could possibly work either. I want to believe!
@ss we forget it is receiving electrical power in to get this thrust so it isnt free energy per se
@ss is it possible that they are using a bad name for it as in "there is no reaction" going on? IE. chemical process or "explosion"?...And not referring to the result?
Just a thought...
Wait, so if I turn on a flashlight, is the light shooting out of it causing a small force pushing it towards me?
Isaiah Schwartz
Yep. It's also losing mass too.
But the effects are so minuscule as to be irrelevant in a practical sense.
Radiation pressure is a thing. And so is the effect of light. That's one of many possible options of deflecting incoming asteroids. Shining a light on one side long enough may be enough to redirect one. (Gross oversimplification but still)
we will just glue a few thousand to the back of a spacecraft
Photon's dont have mass, only momentum, sorry for the english
TheZuca Chaves Sorry you have to feel persecuted for bad English, even though yours is better than native speakers who don't know more than English.
While we're waiting for news about the EM Drive, why don't you show us your Vinyl collection? Looks huge!
I like these old videos of him just reclining on a couch pulling apart some idea. It's very chill
Do a video on your Record Collection! It's huge!
ua-cam.com/video/zn2D2a3yKr8/v-deo.html
"I'm Scott Manley; fly safe, in your flying car"
Hearing Scott manley do an impression of Scotty is exactly why i subscribed. Quality content.
01:23 Geez, and I thought I had a lot of vinyl records. Apparently not, Scott Manley does!
Already know what and I really hope it actually works for two reasons 1. because a fuelless engine would be revolutionary 2. because it's nice to break a law or two now and then amirite???
Mighty Beast there's no such thing as a fueless engine. Thrust requires energy. some kind of "fuel" whether it be the suns light on panels or a Nuclear Reactor will power the EM drive assuming it actually works and we figure it out.
But yes. If it does work. Then it will be the hypest thing ever. :P
Mighty Beast yeah it's fun to change our understanding of the universe! :) lets fuck general relativity uuuuuuup
You know what they mean. One that does not expel an expendable substance as a reaction mass. In this case, converting electricity into movement through some sort of wizardry doesn't count.
Mighty Beast didnt even watch the video eh?
gajbooks SPACE MAGIC IS BEST MAGIC! fun for everybody!
Thanks Scott. I agree with you, I'm very skeptical but also hopeful (in a weird way) that it works out, though I don't think it will. Thanks for bringing up the comparison to photon thrusters and solar sails, as that's essentially how these things work. I do hear that they are launching a cubesat with one of these things on them to measure thrust in a vacuum. If it does work, it will beat the ion drive eventually (right now we can't scale them larger, but if it works we'll figure out how), but today the ion drive is still your best bet.
Everyone, including respected establishment, continues to perform ridiculous experiments ignoring the most basic requirements for demonstrating novel thrust.
1. Contain the power source within the device (outside power is a certain source of all kinds of errors)
2. Thoroughly monitor all external particles/waves emitted from device.
that gets quite difficult when you are talking microwave equipment, as well as monitoring extremely small thrust values.
DFX2KX
The Chinese, eventually, managed to contain the power within the device under test. I admit, however, it would be difficult to accurately measure all ion flux around the device, but this is of utmost importance.
Put the device under test and power supply inside a nicely symmetric conductive box on the force balance, and watch the box with an IR camera for hot spots, and a lot of potential sources for error are contained. And make sure the force being tested isn't vertical to be sure you aren't measuring simple convection.
"[the law of conservation of the linear momentum] that.. you know, you really don't want to break that..."
That sounded so good :) The joke may be difficult to understand for non-physicists. "So what's so special in that? We've seen laws of physics being broke before..."
But the difference is, this law of conservation is really fundamental, arguably, even more so than the one for energy. You can't just break it without invalidating the whole physics. Yes, all of it. The Noether theorem derives this law from the space symmetry using some bullet-proof math, and no amount of probably-yet-unknown quantum magic will ever change that. So yeah, don't mess with that law :)
You're keeping an open mind, that's the important thing.
10:50 It would be a hilarious idea if the advancement of spaceflight technology is being held back only because "physicists don't like it." Some shadow coven of scientists hunting down people who discover inconsistencies in various Laws and working to cover it up.
It is however the opposite to how scientist works. If you manage to break the laws of physics then you get a Nobel Prize. ;)
(In a PnP roleplaying game called Mage: The Ascension a group of Scientist Technocrats called the Technocracy pretty much do this however. Haunt down Mages that breaks the laws of Nature as well as fringe scientist that challenge established science. In the setting Magic and Science are just two sides of the same coin.)
The laws are not usually broken. No, they are found to be limited. Einstein didn't disprove Newton's Laws, he just showed their limitations. Bohr didn't say that Maxwell's ED is pointless crap. He just said it works on a certain scale. Physisists find limitations of old theories and expand them, but don't disprove them. That's why people are so scaptical of the EM drive. Becuase it basically just breaks the laws, but doesn't show any limitations.
Reminder that the first doctor who found out that washing hands by medical professionals reduces patient's death by large margin and presented his findings, was stripped of his licence and left for dead in an asylum. Scientists are not immune to orthodoxy.
Technically the laws are descriptive not prescriptive like human laws. Meaning that there there to describe how things work. Not how they ought to work.
So "breaking the laws of physics" would ether be impossible or just mean you have found out that the description we to describe the world is incorrect. It is very likely that there are a lot of assumptions we do that are wrong. Simplified models that are just close enough to for them to be useful, but do not tell the whole truth. Newtons theory of gravity is a example of this. It makes predictions that are very close to what we can observe. But... It is not 100% correct. And so if your need to be more accurate you use General Relativity to describe the motions of planets.
(And when you do find this better model that describes reality even better. Then you likely to win a Nobel prize. Though that being said, Einstein never won the prize for Relativity, but he did win it for photoelectric effect. At the time Relativity was so controversial that in the end he never got the prize for that.)
Make Phyisics Great Again
The scientific establishment is so dark.
I would love to see an update on this.
Scott Manley your comments after 12:00 about hovering/accelerating are ridiculous. Hovering is a balanced force, accelerating is an unbalanced force. The two are NOT equivalent. Your use of the box thought-experimemt is grossly incorrect, and you *would* be able to tell the difference between accelerating upwards at 1 g within a 1 g gravity-field downwards (your Normal Force with the floor of the bix would be TWO g's), and hovering under 1 g. The versions you cannot distiguish are a box that is NOT under a gravity-field and is accelerating at 1 g, and a box simply sitting on the ground under a 1-g gravity field... The former is a VERY different situation than accelerating against a gravity-field (where the Normal Force experienced is the sum of ADDING the gravitational force and the net force upwards beyond what is required to simply balance that force...)
If hover force is balancing itself against gravity (a decelerating force), is it not an accelerating force?
It's pretty obvious that the box thought experiment that he is referring to IS where the rocket is not under the pull of Earth's gravitational field - the diagram he used is with a rocket in space. A better diagram to accompany this specific explanation would have had the box on the right hovering against the pull of Earth's gravitational field, though the result is exactly the same as if it was resting on the ground: they are both equal to accelerating in space at 1g, and therefore both experience time dilation due to general relativity, so he is spot on and not at all ridiculous!
I really kinda do wanna break conservation of momentum though
10:16 doesn't the same problem arise if we consider photonic thrust?
+Edoardo Giaimo photonics thrusters lose mass though, conserving energy and momentum.
Not really. If you consider that photonic thrusters give (quite conveniently) thrust (1/c) N/W and P=Fv, the power that we could extract from the device would exceed its power consumption when Fv > Fc, which is of course impossible.
I'd hardly call that convenient....when the thrust output is minuscule and it takes YEARS to build up to any relativistic velocity...hardly convenient at all...
Conveniently for the calculation, not for space travel ☺
Didn't want to believe anything Manley said, but then I saw he owns a Steely Dan LP. I'm now a believer. All hail The One True Manley!
Great vid as always. Keep up the good work and blowing our minds. +1.
what if you pump 1GW of power into it?
guys we need to move the planet get out the em drive
Maurizio Pavel a lot of thrust?
Maurizio Pavel 1.2kN of thrust but then you really need a nuclear reactor or two
You melt the chamber
Teddy Radko yeah, nuclear would be the only feasible way to generate 1GW. There's a problem though; Scott said that the currently tested nuclear reactors in space produce roughly 300W/kg. So 1E9W/300W/kg Watts cancel out, leaving us with a 3.34E6kg reactor. F = ma so 1,200,000N/3.34E6kg = 0.36m/s^2.
That's just the reactor weight, it doesn't include the rest of the vessel, nor the EM drive's weight.
*Edit:* Fixed some math, I used the figure a commenter above used for the thrust at 1GW, instead of figuring it out myself, turns out that figure was off by a factor of ten.
Scott, you should write up a patent on that EM drive perpetual motion generator.
Just in case. ;-)
TY for all your hard work and content contributions
I for one welcome our new laws of physics!
How is an EM drive a perpetual motion machine? You do have a source of energy.
QuantumBraced Scott explained it in the vid. kinetic energy rises with velocity squared. double vel. means four time kin. energy. when the change of vel. is constant, over some threshold you get more kin. energy out than you put in...
QuantumBraced there is a source of energy, the electromagnetic emiter. this make this drive somewhat viable to me, as the law of conservation of energy in a given system is respected. the main problem is how the element create thrust without dispacing material. if it does not displace matter, what is pushing the thing? it can not be earth magnetic field since the thrust can be orientated, and does not varry depending on the location. it cannot be pushing agains a material of the containement field, since i did the math and it is obvious that the possible generated thrust is way too low. however, i think it is possible that the magnetic field use the cone as it's propelant, as i think it is possible that the magnetic field simply catapult electrons and ionized particules out of the back. tho the problem is that the engine seems to work when completly embelded in stuff.
E1 = Pt (electrical energy in)
E2 = 0.5mv^2 (kinetic energy out)
Since we have constant acceleration, v = at
Apply conservation: E1 => E2, or Pt => 0.5m(at)^2
Since P, m, and a are all constant, E2 grows quadratically with time while E1 only grows linearly. Eventually, E2 will be larger than E1. So the spacecraft now has more kinetic energy than the amount of electrical energy you put in.
aardvark445 Anything under constant acceleration that does not lose mass (i.e. a reactionless drive) _becomes_ a perpetual motion machine at some velocity. If that velocity is greater than the speed of light than it isn't a problem. If you crunch the numbers NASA Eagleworks gave then it does cross that threshold below the speed of light.
I did not equate the instantaneous energy to the total energy. Pt is the total energy, as t is the *total time* it has been applied. The t on both sides of the equation represent the same thing. Think about it.
Energy is not the problem.
For there to be a sudden local imbalance in impulses would mean that the space around the device is not homomorph.
That contradicts all we have seen so far.
The "evidence" for this is shit.
So it probably isn't a thing.
Nice one. Watched 4 videos from other channels on this subject, trying to get my head round it. A penny dropped on watching this. Thanks!