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Firstly, I'd like to point that I’m from Brazil, so forgive me for any errors in my writing.

Today, i found myself reading a journal who said that NASA is closer to detecting Warp Bubbles predicted by the Alcubierre propulsion system, which is a theory that i find interesting inside the actual physical model. But then i came across with the term "EmDrive" which, according to Roger J. Shawyer, is a propulsion device capable of creating and arranging microwaves in such a way that it could propel a spacecraft to extreme speeds.

I behaved with skepticism and looked for evidence. First, i read about a Chinese group of scientists who produced, on a replica of the machine, a total thrust of 750 mN with 2500W of power, and i assumed that it was junk science. But then I searched more and discovered about another group of scientists at NASA, the EagleWorks, who had successfully managed to produce 91.2 µN of thrust with 17W of power. According to them: “the RF resonant cavity thruster design, which is unique as an electric propulsion device, is producing a force that is not attributable to any classical electromagnetic phenomenon and therefore is potentially demonstrating an interaction with the quantum vacuum virtual plasma.”

But the problem with this “invention” is that it violates the conservation of momentum (and probably other physical theories).

What is the opinion of the scientific community about the subject?

Felipehamm
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    Congrats, you have found two groups of people who are publishing junk, not just one. – CuriousOne May 01 '15 at 01:32
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    See also http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/135115/ and http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/129566/\ – Kyle Kanos May 01 '15 at 01:53
  • The other discussion was created before the Chinese team and NASA supposedly "tested" the device. There is quite a lot of new data going around. – Felipehamm May 01 '15 at 01:58
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    "Data going around" is not the same as quality science. More importantly, the actual laws of nature generally don't care about it... – CuriousOne May 01 '15 at 01:59
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    One of the Chinese papers on the net (http://www.emdrive.com/NWPU2010translation.pdf) is written incredibly poorly. None of the actually relevant design details has been documented, the experimental part lacks a discussion of obvious error sources and no attempt seems to have been made to rule out these systematic error sources with control experiments. Calibration and systematic and statistical error analysis are shoddy, at most. In my experimental physics classes this kind of work would have been an F and a sure fail. – CuriousOne May 01 '15 at 03:02

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