cks you designed to be ~exotic~ or whatever, and those rabid jerks at Disney can only grit their teeth now!EmDrive proven to work in a vacuum · 12:55pm May 2nd, 2015
I'm still fighting that damn cold, so I'm not mentally in a good state to sum up cutting edge science, but I'll try.
Short version, we might have found a flippin' warp drive, but we —as even the scientific community, have no idea how it actually works.
Slightly longer version, outright stolen from Wikipedia since I'm simply not well enough to do it myself, but this is stuff that needs to be spread around.
EmDrive (also RF resonant cavity thruster) is a proposed spacecraft propulsion device invented by British aerospace engineer Roger Shawyer, who develops prototypes at Satellite Propulsion Research Ltd (SPR),[1] the company he created for that purpose in 2000.[2] The device uses a magnetron to produce microwaves which are directed into a metallic, fully enclosed conically tapered high Q resonant cavity with a greater area at the large end of the device, and a dielectric resonator in front of the narrower end. The inventor claims that the device generates a directional thrust toward the narrow end of the tapered cavity. The device (engine) requires an electrical power source to produce its reflecting internal microwaves but does not have any moving parts or require any reaction mass as fuel. If proven to work as claimed, this technology could be used to propel vehicles intended for all forms of travel including ground travel, marine travel, sub-marine travel, airflight and spaceflight.[3][4][5][6][7][8]
There were some detractors that thought it was 'just' a new, novel way to move air around by ionization, but that hypothesis is showing early signs of being debunked. More vacuum tests are needed, but near every lab in the world with the gear is apparently gearing up to do just that.
Still, not only might we 'soon' have a practical warp drive if this pans out, but some of the early results are damn near impossible according to physics as we know them.
The thing creates thrust... by seemingly no movement or force being applied. There's even some talking about it outright violating the conservation of momentum, even if that claim is under heavy fire right now.
Oh, and according to early results, a laser moving through the field generated by the EmDrive will speed up. 
That's right, they might have made light go faster in a vacuum.
Needless to say, if that turns out to be more than bad data, physics as we know them might need to be re-written. A total paradigm shift for the whole field.
I do wonder, will this turn string-theory into the next phlogiston? A bunch of beautiful, near sublime math... turned near backwards because we simply didn't have the right gear to double check something that 'tiny?' 
Anyway, interesting times to be alive to be sure. 
Again, sorry for such a shallow treatment of what might be such important news, but my concentration is just too frayed at the moment from the cold.
Eh. It's most likely bad data. The best microwaves (which have less energy than laser energy, by the way) could do in this case is slow the laser down. From our perspective of light, according to relativity, it has the common maximum speed in a vacuum. It's probable it moves faster when we aren't looking at it (that's a huge oversimplification, though!), but that'd only be way out in outer space. By our current detection standards, light's maximum speed remains at the current speed. Until we can defy relativity, I don't expect us to detect light moving faster than light any time soon.
In short - this has not been replicated by the normal means of what you'd call replication.
As an example, this is three teams testing the performance of an car engine, one getting 0.03 miles per gallon +-10%, one getting 50 miles per gallon +-20%, and the other getting 200MPG. With none of the error bars lining up.
The other problem is that this also implies - egregiously in some cases - free energy.
For example, some of the numbers that have been bandied around of 1300N/100kW would, if you strap this engine to a circular track in a vacuum going 300MPH or so, let you extract 200kW of power while needing 100kW for internal use.
This is such a ridiculously enormous claim to make - that dwarfs any space use (you can get to orbit with 10kg of lithium ion batteries, for example) that enormous levels of proof need to be provided. At the very least, we need a replication in the normal sense of same size of effect to begin to investigate this.
Yeah, I posted about this the other day. Really interesting stuff. What interests me the most right now is that it's NASA that is reporting these findings. That means that, regardless of how far the theory has come the past years, there is a lot more credibility to this report than any other up until now.
3036668 NASA is just a bunch of people.
This is not the settled view of NASA. This is several people in a lab.
3036651
Well, there is vacuum energy and near equally as controversial vacuum catastrophe.
(According to the theories/math the vacuum energy we can detect should be 10^113, not the piddly 10^-9 we're currently seeing. It's one of, if not the biggest 'oops' in modern physics, and nobody knows why.)
Know that even the theoretical tapping of vacuum energy is highly controversial right now in its own right, but that could explain the numbers.
And in that case... well, we might actually have found a source of long-term free energy. Now, THAT would be huge.
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I do 110% agree that more studies are needed before those type of claims gets said as more than wishful thinking, though. I don't think anybody —be they scientist or layman, wish a repeat of what 'happened' with cold fusion.
Still, that even such a lauded organization as NASA is perking their ears enough to write officially about, rather than 'just' quietly tinkering away at a long-shot does seem rather promising.
A lot of work and study still needed to be done, but really interesting stuff for inital results. Fingers crossed, and all that.
3036670
That's true. But you never hear about any pseudo science from Nasa. It warrants.. it warrants something?
I was actually reading about this last night. Here is a nice summary on the subject.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/34cq1b/the_facts_as_we_currently_know_them_about_the/
I dunno. I take these prognostications of "revolutionary new drives" and "physics will need to be rewritten" with a grain of salt... the size of Tom.
I remember reading about a supposed reactionless drive "invented" in the 1950s, and it turned out to be bunk. I'm open to new ideas and revolutionary thought, but always remember that it needs to be tested and verified a lot first.
Not significant news. Call me when they get better funding and publish.
I'm with 3037163 here.
It'd be really cool if it turned out to be true. Like, I'm shitting my pants in an unrestrained nerd-gasm type of cool, but I am a naturally skeptical dude.
Of course, if more tests prove that this is real, I will commence with said pants shitting.
Sorry to hear that cold is still lingering, but that's some pretty cool science if it turns out to be real. I had heard a much abbreviated version of this from an acquaintance, so it is neat to see he wasn't full of shit.
So... how badly would you say that cold has impacted your writing speed? *cough cough* this weeks status update *cough*
3038196
Add +1002 on the last figure, and that's sadly about as much that's changed. I've simply not been clear headed enough to trust myself with writing anything as complicated as... well, a story chapter.
I've been feeling sick and twisted enough to get started on the outlines for both the spin-offs, though! So some progress, at least!
That's rude. Phlogiston made a whole lot more sense than string theory and had more experimental evidence for it to boot.
But yeah, that thing seriously shouldn't work at all, so my guess is that it probably doesn't. If magnetrons could do that, especially with that kind of energy efficiency, then my microwave oven really ought to be on its way into orbit right now, along with my cellphone. I'm really reminded of N-Rays by this story; the scientific community sadly isn't any more immune to the occasional bout of overenthusiastic stupidity than anyone else is.
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That's actually two rather good points.
In my defense though not nearly as many would get what I'm saying if went for 'the next luminiferous aether' or something. That, and since one of the theoretical applications for purified Phlogiston would have been anti-gravity I thought it a cute parallel.
Still, I do agree that it's not quite time yet to bust out the champagne.
But hey, if nothing else it might be the next cold fusion, and worth talking about for just that.
3044029
True enough. I'm still totally awarding you a Nerd Demerit for this, though, because it wouldn't be a warp drive even if it worked. No gravity bubble.
Ironically, the luminiferous ether arguably actually exists again these days - the idea that electromagnetic radiation is really just a local variation on a universal field is starting to become fairly popular. You might have heard of it as the Higgs-Field, what with CERN making all the idiots go crazy recently and giving the term a lot of public exposure.
3044081
I'd personally argue that the concept of 'warp drive' have moved from the particular original concept to simply being a synonym for 'FTL travel' thanks to English having moved on, just as the science itself has...
But no~o, not my nerd card!
interesting