1

NASA has been testing an EM drive for a while. Although the initial results appeared positive, the scientific community was skeptical because these results would violate conservation of momentum. Much criticism was directed at the fact that thermal convection might be causing the results. However the more recent results were conducted in a vacuum.

What does this mean for the believability of this drive? Should we still be skeptical of the drive? If so, what explanations could there be now that convection currents have presumably been ruled out.

Casebash
  • 2,784
  • This is asking for an opinion, which makes it off-topic. Perhaps you could rephrase your question to be less of an opinion? – Kyle Kanos May 05 '15 at 03:39
  • @KyleKanos I don't think this is an issue. It isn't a question of the form, "What is your favourite mathematical law in physics?" – Casebash May 05 '15 at 03:41
  • Your question Should we be skeptical is asking for an opinion on the state of the EMdrive. Some people will be skeptical, some people won't. Both will tell you their thoughts on it. – Kyle Kanos May 05 '15 at 03:43
  • FWIW I think this is a question that deserves to be answered here. It might be more on topic on Skeptics though. (I don't know for sure, I'm not a participant there.) There have been a lot of articles praising the new success (mostly on obscure news sites, which is a bad sign), and if someone has the knowledge to address them from a less frothy perspective they'd be doing the public a favour. – N. Virgo May 05 '15 at 03:45
  • 2
    The publication medium has gone from an obscure refereed journal in 2010, to an unrefereed conference proceeding in 2014, to a forum post on nasaspaceflight.com. It's not even clear to me whether what's in the press now is a new measurement or if it's re-reporting by somebody who missed the hubbub last summer. – rob May 05 '15 at 03:46
  • @Nathaniel Thanks for the recommendation. If it gets closed here, then I'll try over there, but I expect that people here would have a much better idea of whether we should believe what we are hearing. – Casebash May 05 '15 at 03:50
  • 1
    @Casebash Quick answer: No, that stuff ain't gonna fly. – Danu May 05 '15 at 05:27
  • What does it mean? Absolutely nothing. :-) – CuriousOne May 05 '15 at 06:08
  • see http://www.forbes.com/sites/ethansiegel/2015/05/04/no-nasa-did-not-accidentally-invent-warp-drive/ basic gist: extraordinary claims, but no extraordinary proof, still a few new developments (Force measured a bit greater than measurement uncertainty, apparantly). – mart May 05 '15 at 08:15
  • @mart: Forbes was always known as an A+ peer reviewed journal. – CuriousOne May 05 '15 at 09:46
  • never said that. the articel imho asks some questions that would be interesting for the OP – mart May 05 '15 at 09:58

0 Answers0