This is Harold White's research group, and they have claimed many times to have validated the EM drive (and other fringe items). When I saw the headline I suspected it was him again, and sure enough, it was.<p>Google around to find out all you need to about him and his work. And whenever you see such a headline, look to see if it is his group again.<p>I'll let each of you learn about him on your own :)
When this Emdrive stuff first hit the news, I was positive it was just another crackpot idea or scam that wasn't being properly tested, in the vein of E-Cat or the 100s of other examples of 'physics breaking' inventions you could find with a cursory Google search.<p>However, the fact that so many labs, including Eagleworks, are building these and detecting thrust from them is making it start to grab my interest. I'm still extremely skeptical, but some of that skepticism is starting to give way to genuine excitement for the 'what if?' factor.
About time to settle this issue one way or another by launching one of these devices and pointing it towards the moon. Either flies or it doesn't.
I find the coverage of this drive simply bizarre. There is nothing impossible about it, in principle.<p>We know E=mc^2 (mass and energy are equivalent).<p>We know that rockets move by ejecting mass at high speed in a direction counter to the desired direction of movement. The rocket shifts forward an equivalent amount (m1v1=m2v2).<p>We know that it is possible to focus EM radiation emissions.<p>So far so good.<p>The "magic" here (used in the sense of sufficiently advanced tech, of course), is that the EM emission is entirely unidirectional.<p>So instead of throwing mass out the nozzle, we're throwing energy. And since E=mc^2, we get the same effect: RmRv=E/c (rocket mass times rocket speed equals Energy over c (since m2v2 = (E/c^2)c).<p>Very, very, very cool.
meanwhile in reddit<p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/EmDrive/comments/3r8jo0/next_big_future_nasa_eagleworks_has_tested_an/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/EmDrive/comments/3r8jo0/next_big_fu...</a>