The bells of joyful news have begun ringing-- after quite the hiatus, the EM drive has returned!
Researchers from China’s space agency have released a video
through state media in which they show what appears to be a fully functioning
EM drive.
For those who are unfamiliar to the EM drive, here’s the
crash course. An EM drive, also known as a radio frequency resonant cavity
thruster, is theorized to be able to generate thrust without the need of a
propellant. The thrust is of the electromagnetic world that is produced from
bouncing microwaves back and forth inside a cavity.
Think of it like this -- a person is sitting inside of a box
and they are faced with a task to make the box move. They do so by pushing out
the walls and moving around inside of the box. Also, to top it all off, the
total momentum generated by the drive increases as it moves.
If an EM drive is to enter our current world of reality, it
would be revolutionary, to say the least. Faster space travel and cheaper
spaceflight costs would be guaranteed.
China announcing such a great feat has raised some eyebrows.
Before the release of the video, there were two breakthroughs in the world of
the EM drive. The first was a peer-reviewed NASA paper claiming the very real
possibility of the successful operatives of such a machine... at the very least
hypothetically. The second was China claiming that the operatives of the EM
drive one hundred percent possible.
However, after the release of the NASA peer-reviewed paper,
it was deemed skeptical. However awesome the possibility of an EM drive in our
current world, there is a downside... the EM drive goes against Newton’s third
law of motion which is why many are skeptical towards the NASA peer-reviewed
paper and of China releasing the video.
Newton’s third law of motion that states that to everything
there is an equal and opposite reaction which, in our Universe, based off of
that law, is impossible to generate without a propellant.
Brice Cassenti, advanced expert of propulsions of the
University of Connecticut explained why an EM drive is to raise eyebrows:
“Action and reaction is a direct result of the conservation of momentum, the
violation of such a basic law as the conservation of momentum would invalidate
much of the basis for all of physics as we know it.”
As lovely as it sounds, the likelihood of this EM drive
being the one to revolutionize physics as a whole and create a whole new era of
space travel is highly improbable. Also, some such as Yahoo news (as though
they’re entirely credible...) wrongly describe the EM drive as a warp drive.
A warp drive is a faster-than-light spacecraft propulsion
system that is oftenly used in Sci-Fi works such as Star Trek. Common sense deems
the likelihood of a warp drive basically impossible. The reason being is that
the speed of light is the “speed limit” of our Universe, as Neil Degrasse Tyson
put it. Also, reference the theory of relativity to further confirm how
improbable it is to travel faster than the speed of light. Sorry, folks.
Technology such as an EM drive, currently seems worlds away.
As a result, unfortunately, our space traveling adventures are currently
situated in the current, classic rocket propulsion technology. But, shed no
tears-- new tech is being developed as your eyes scan the lines of this
article.
For example, depending on how Earth and Mars align, one trip
of SpaceX’s Interplanetary Transport System could be shortened to a mere 80
days. Elon Musk, CEO and founder of SpaceX, believes in and strives to shorten
the trip down to 30 days.