[TexasGator]

Exactly, how does it defy the laws of physics?

[BenLurkin]

I guess you’re getting a reaction without an action. Or something.

[Sgt_Schultze]

Laws are for the little people.

[normbal]

Remember Newton’s laws of motion:

1 - You can’t win
2 - you can’t break even
3 - you can’t get out of the game.

1 - you can’t get more energy out of a system than you pump in. Entropy always takes its share, fair or not.

2 - perpetual motion is for suckers; this way to the egress, gentlemen.

3 - anything you do does something else. push something, it pushes back.

The “law” we’re being told this system violates is the one of conserved momentum, M1V1=M2V2. Mass 1 exerting velocity against Mass 2 creates another velocity proportional to the masses. Big gun shot by little guy knocks little guy over (great example of this in youtube, some Saudi prince shooting a .600 NE or something, knocking him on his butt - definitely worth the price of admission).

So there’s this chamber in which a standing wave is produced, one end larger than the other and this difference in AREA produces a difference in momentum. tiny, but, apparently, measurable.

Remember, “photons” carry momentum but no (or nearly no) mass), a standing wave should exert “pressure” on both ends of the vessel equally.

I think the basic thing everyone’s missing is, THERE’S A NET INPUT OF ENERGY. There’s an enormous LOSS there somewhere (micronewtons for a KILOWATT?), heat, I’m sure, plus a minute amount of “thrust” or linear momentum in return.

Solar panels? Forget that. Nukes. Plutonium-run devices like we’re using on Mars.

This has potential.

[Rockingham]

Using only electricity, the EM drive generates thrust without emitting (and expending) reaction mass like chemical rockets or even ion thrusters, nor does it seem to emit or absorb known subatomic particles like a photon thruster or light sail -- and it is far more powerful and efficient than those latter two mechanisms. Various explanations for the EM drive have been proposed, but none has yet been verified and accepted by the physics community.

The EM drive seems likely to have a major short-term effect in making for longer-lived satellites that did not need to rely on limited chemical fueled thrusters to maintain their orbits and orientation. In addition, by making possible lighter and more efficient space craft propulsion, within a decade or two, the EM drive could open up the Moon and solar system to relatively rapid human exploration and exploitation.

If so, the economic effects would be dramatic, creating trillions of dollars in new wealth as clean new off-world mineral and energy resources are tapped. Students may one day be asked to debate whether the EM drive was the greatest human advance since the discovery of fire, electricity, or the atom or merely since the invention of trains, automobiles, and aircraft. It really is that big a development.

[TalonDJ]

It doesn’t. It just uses physics in an interesting new way.