
New NASA Emdrive paper shows force of 1.2 millinewtons per kilowatt in a Vacuum - diggernet
http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/11/new-nasa-emdrive-paper-shows-force-of.html
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maverick_iceman
Ah, not this again. Just because they are NASA doesn't mean they are immune
from pseudoscience.[1][2]

[1] [http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2015/05/26/warp-
dri...](http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2015/05/26/warp-drives-and-
scientific-reasoning/)

[2]
[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/outthere/2014/08/06/nasa-v...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/outthere/2014/08/06/nasa-
validate-imposible-space-drive-word/#.VCYphStdU3c)

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vorotato
Firstly, warpdrives aren't pseudoscience. The author is not claiming that they
presently have a warp-drive. They are merely claiming they have some evidence
that one might be theoretically possible. This isn't that inconceivable, sure
it might take a thousand years before we could actually implement it.

Finally about the "EMDrive" there's no reason to believe that energy isn't
escaping it, but that it's doing so in a way that something might be learned
outside of imprecise measurements.

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apsec112
Before anyone gets too excited, remember that there are hundreds of papers
"proving" that humans have psychic powers.

[http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2010/12/study-looks-
brai...](http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2010/12/study-looks-brains-
ability-see-future)

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EvgeniyZh
Not by NASA

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Pfhreak
The file name is: Q-Thruster In-Vacuum Fall 2015 Test Report.pdf

That hardly suggests that there's a new Emdrive paper, and the linked blog
doesn't have sufficient detail about the paper to suggest that the paper is
new either.

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EvgeniyZh
There is PDF file. You can read and check if it's new or not.

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grzm
I am going to be very happy when I come across an explanation to this that
makes sense to me. Certainly interesting stuff, regardless of whether it
works. We're going to learn something either way. Yeah, science! </pinkman>

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gaur
Yeah, we're going to learn that some experimenters are sloppy.

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dhdhchdjsnx
How many times do these results need to be replicated before you'll believe
them?

So far the thrust results have been replicated more than the majority of
economics and social science research (i.e. more than zero times).

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witty_username
It violates the conservation of momentum; so it needs to replicated many many
times.

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StanislavPetrov
What tablet did god write this law on?

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zeroer
Well, you're right that it's not a mathematical certainty that momentum is
always conserved.

But there's such a mountain of evidence for it that we should have a very high
bar for claims that it's violated. Thermal effects and measurement error are
both likely sources of the discrepancy.

But another reason to be skeptical is that Noether's Theorem tells us that a
violation of conservation of momentum is only possible if the laws of physics
are not translation invariant, and we should be able to use the violation of
conservation of momentum to illustrate a specific instance where physical laws
are not translation invariant. _That_ would be Earth-shattering. (But not,
strictly speaking, impossible)

~~~
out_of_protocol
... or the law was bypassed, somehow. Also huge news if confirmed

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zde
It works in practice, but does it work in theory?

