{"id":4004,"date":"2016-11-19T14:35:17","date_gmt":"2016-11-19T18:35:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paleotechnologist.net\/?p=4004"},"modified":"2021-06-23T00:53:11","modified_gmt":"2021-06-23T05:53:11","slug":"non-newtonian-motion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.paleotechnologist.net\/?p=4004","title":{"rendered":"Non-Newtonian Motion…?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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UPDATE:\u00a0<\/strong> 2021 here; the EM drive appears to have been refuted. To the best of our current understanding<\/a>, there is insufficient evidence to reject the null hypothesis.<\/p>\n

Boo. But if it doesn’t work, we need to know that so we work on something else.<\/p>\n

——–<\/p>\n

The EM drive, weird as it sounds, just keeps passing peer review<\/a>. It’s starting to look like we’ve found something genuinely new here — an inertial drive! Until recently, that was considered science-fantasy by most — a way of changing velocity without “pushing” against something else.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In short, it throws Newton’s third law of motion out the window.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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This copper frustum could end up being as famous as the first transistor.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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It’s a very small effect — about 1.2 millinewtons per kilowatt, give or take ten percent or so. That’s a very subtle effect — one millinewton is about one twentieth of the force needed to lift a dime — but one that can be constantly applied over hours, days, weeks, months, or years, with no propellent needed.<\/p>\n

If it works — if this effect is real — we’ll be able to build much more efficient (meaning faster, cheaper, and larger) long- and medium-distance spacecraft.<\/p>\n

And if past technologies are any indication, the test model is probably terribly inefficient. Faraday’s first electric motor, after all, was just a wire spinning around in a mercury bath. From such humble beginnings, however, came all of our modern electric motor technology.<\/p>\n

TL;DR (physics geeks): Don’t look now, but conservation of momentum might not be a thing, after all.<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

TL;DR (everyone else): If this works, we just got\u00a0a LOT better at building spaceships. Not faster-than-light better (at least this year), but way, way better. Like go-to-Mars-for-the-week-someday better.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NASA’s counterintuitive EM drive keeps passing peer review. If these results are valid, we just figured out how to make much more efficient spaceships. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[218,385,235],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-currentevents","category-mad-science","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paleotechnologist.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paleotechnologist.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paleotechnologist.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paleotechnologist.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paleotechnologist.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4004"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.paleotechnologist.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4004\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4788,"href":"https:\/\/www.paleotechnologist.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4004\/revisions\/4788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paleotechnologist.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paleotechnologist.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paleotechnologist.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}