There Is No Escape From Physics Even By The Engine Impossible Of NASA
Gokul Saravanan (Author) Published Date : May 23, 2018 14:46 ISTScience
The Impossible engine named EM Drive, the concept is simple, preparing an alternative thruster for future deep space travels. The engine likely to work by bouncing the microwaves inside an enclosed conical container and exhale it to provide thrust to the spacecraft. Previously, this theory had been successfully published its finding after passing the peer review and showed up in the headlines for a day. Later NASA showed up in the headlines after their EM drive test result that leaked somehow claiming that the NASA had witnessed the slightest movement of the engine with the help of sensitive pendulum sensor in an artificially created vacuum space.
As soon as the paper touched the headlines physicists around the globe laughed over the face of NASA and said their project defying the fundamental law of physics, the law of conservation of momentum. The physicists considered that NASA proposed no-fuel engine will not work as there is no possibility for a forward momentum without an opposite force acting on its back.
The EM Drive project is funded by Roger J. Shawyer, an aerospace engineer and a director of UK based satellite propulsion Research Ltd. Now the EM Drive has been taken under test by a group of scientists from the TU Dresden University. Hardly their test results concluded that the physicists who laughed at the face of NASA are absolutely right. But what on earth caused the thrust during the first test of NASA? It seems the new test explained that too. The German team shot up the NASA that they observed the thrust due to a short of error.
For this, the German researchers created a prototype of NASA's EM Drive with copper and supplied with a small amount of power. They tested the EM Drive in a vacuum space with a sensitive balance that made by their own that uses lasers to mark the movement. The German researchers conclude that they too noticed the thrust but they believe that the thrust caused by some other thing, not by the EM Drive.
According to the German research findings, their sensitive balance could even measure the Sub-micro Newton level force. In the recent test, they calculated nearly 4 micro-Newtons of thrust in the power supply of 2 watts. The German team achieved a measure of twice the thrust that achieved by the NASA previously. But yet they are not satisfied as they felt that result seems hard. They changed the direction of the thrust by changing the whole direction of the EM Drive. Practically any applied power should produce zero thrust in a vacuum when changing the course but they felt the thrust had not changed a little. They measured an unchanged thrust that acting upon it even after the change of direction. Hence they concluded that some other force is acting over the EM Drive for its thrust.
They started their test again but this time along with the earth's gravitational force. They got the same level of thrust after the gravitational field test. Now they came to a point of decision that some other thing might be Earth's Gravity. The German researchers concluded that the EM drive is not really powered by the microwave or any sort of electromagnetic waves. But hardly powered by the earth's magnetic field. This system will not work if it reaches the deeper space, that too certainly to a far distance away from the earth.
Now the German team decided to cover the engine with Mu-Metal sheets to dismantle the complete system from the action of earth's gravity in the future tests. They believe that this could possibly reveal the real face of the EM Drive and make the future interstellar space travel in a completely different way.