Maths is a language, a specialist one, it can be used just like any other language it’s just better at its specialization.
You know very well that if the angles of the triangle didn’t add up to 180 degrees, formulas would be different and our universe would be different, yet Maths would still exist.
this discussion became useless : everybody is contradicting the others only because he has his own definitions of terms… for example, I could say that science is a set of knowledge, so math is science, and I also agree that math is a language (it’s not a contradiction), I also agree that physics are applied mathematics… could we speak about EM Drive propulsion ?
Somebody would have a flying car made of microwave ovens by now if this EM Drive thingy really worked, the tech is apparently so simple that a teenager can construct a working prototype and it has been common mainstream knowledge for what more than a year?
It’s a glitch or some physical effect that is perfectly reasonable once we nail it down, would be nice if some new science came out of it, but it’s bound to be underwhelming after claims of interstellar travel. IMO.
I wish it was some sort of quantum drive or a gravity drive, it’s most probably not. We need one of these things in space to be sure.
We were talking about it, the topic itself is “is it real or not?” The answer is no, the em drive has shown zero potential. You and david, however, have turned it into a “what if it was real though?” thread, and are taking up arms against those who point out it isn’t with illogic and poorly made similes/metaphors.
Guys this is devolving pretty fast. If you want to argue over the philosophy of math/science start another thread for it.
I don’t think there’s much more to discuss on the topic either. No one here is actively researching it to prove or disprove it’s validity which is what’s really necessary to further the discussion. We can all armchair it as much as we want but it’s pretty pointless. No one is going to be satisfied with the other opinion without clear evidence.
To sum things up, it should be very clear that that due to the implications working as it does, it should require a lot of reproducible evidence(with a experimentally testable theory) to break through the skepticism of mainstream science. I said it before - Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Breaking CoM is certainly an extraordinary claim(and any theory that works around it requires extraordinary evidence as well).
The anomalous thrust can still be error. Looking at it objectively, occams razor points towards error rather than breaking a commonly accepted conservation law that has been mathematically proven to exist(Noether’s theorem for the curious). It is far more likely that it is error. Unfortunately, to show this in a way that proves it beyond a reasonable doubt we need more evidence through more experiments. That’s something no one here can bring to the table unless you feel like building one of these in your garage along with extremely accurate sensing equipment which doesn’t generally exist outside of a lab.
So unfortunately both opinions must wait. Stop arguing in futility about who’s right and wrong because frankly there is no way to “prove” the other wrong. Currently, it’s more likely that it’s error if you look at historical work. That’s not an opinion, just an observation on the current evidence. If you can’t accept that then you’ve already made up your mind of your own basis of reality and no amount of evidence will change it.
I couldn’t say more.
My first intention was to heard by real scientists that the experiments really happened and could seem serious (made by a real scientist and really make by NASA’s lab). In fact I wanted at this moment, read a reaction from @Skyentist and @Kichae (the two I imagine scientist IRL)
When some of you told that it looked serious but it was total crap (SOMETHING NOT PROVED YET, so ironic from people that denigrate the inventor because it didn’t prove its idea yet) and there is nothing to say more, then my intention became to obtain a real discussion about possibilities of explanations, admitting this machine can work without breaking CoE. This would be very interesting.
If nobody is interested on discussing about how it could be possible without breaking this law, then the topic can be closed.
Wait what?
If an article in Nature was reporting an actual CoE-breaking device, it wouldn’t be improper. It would be the biggest deal since someone found out that Water wasn’t actually elemental, it would wreck our entire model of how the world is working and it would mean Mankind will have wiped itself out in the next millennium, sure. But it wouldn’t be improper.
It is also not going to happen - though fell free to write science-fiction about it, there are lots of interesting stories to build with it.
How is that ironic? The burden of proof is on the EM Drive guys, not the rest of the world.
Here’s an illustration:
I’ve built an antigravity system at home.
It’s using di-gravitic and gravity conducting materials, that I obtained by getting suer-conductors resonating at just the right frequency (don’t try it at home unless you are trained with liquid helium cooling system) - it creates quantum field fluctuations that actually make the material conduct gravity the same way many materials are conducting magnetism.
I’ve managed to get about 2000€ from state subventions to build the prototype, and I’ve measured about a reduction of 0.011 Newton (at ± 0.010 Newton).
I’ve even managed Science&Vie to publish an article on it.
On the other hand, there is no peer-reviewed paper out there about my theory on how it works, and no independent team has managed to reproduce my results yet.
(Also, my previous prototype showed 0.16 Newton, but my instruments were less precise at the time, with a margin of error of 0.15 Newton.)
Would that be enough for you to believe I’ve just demonstrated antigravity?
That’s the problem. It does violate CoE.
It’s almost the same as if you were asking “a real discussion about possibilities of explanations of this free-energy machine, admitting it works without breaking the laws of Thermodynamics”.
Or “a FTL reaction drive, admitting it works without breaking Relativity”.
Now, you can discuss the effects of what this machine would have if it did work (spoiler: everyone dies), the same way you can discuss the effects of an efficient torch drive or a FTL jump drive or a tractor beam or di-gravitic material. And there are very interesting discussion to have there indeed.
But that’s science-fiction, not science news.
We did: it simply can’t.
Now, if you don’t care about it being the EM Drive itself, and simply wants a (practical) reactionless drive that isn’t breaking physics from Newton up, there are a few “cheat” theoretical drives.
First, you can replace your exhaust by neutrinos, or similar “ghost” particles (if others exist, I don’t actually know). It is still actually a reaction drive, but with no perceptible exhaust. Nice if you don’t want to be visible as a miniature sun, or to turn the spaceport into radioactive glass when taking off. But you’re still bound by the Tyranny of the Rocket Equation (e.g. big big tanks).
More interesting, you can have “distant” reaction drives: instead of pushing against their own exhaust, they push against ambient mass, be it specific bodies like a nearby planet or the whole local Universe. Basically, you are pointing your tractor beam at something and letting Newton drag you in turn. No need for big big tanks, then! Though it is still trivial to make relativistic kill vehicles, so let’s hope your tractor beam is more efficient at decelerating from high speed than accelerating to it. Unfortunately, we have no idea if that is even theoretically possible, but at least it is not forbidden by physics as we know them.
But the EM Drive? It does break them, there is no going around that.
And again, you should really, really wish it is indeed not working. You don’t have to care about wrecking physics, but you should care about wrecking planets. With a microwave oven. Hell, if you are a believer, you should pray for it. Nothing short of a miracle would make it work, and nothing short of a miracle would keep us safe if it did.
OFF-TOPIC: Sciences don’t depend on mathematics, so there’s no such thing as science=applied mathematics (you are the one making that for yourself, but it’s not an accurate concept, because your statement says that a science depends on mathematics in order to exist), tho in order to explain them, maths are the best tool, but we could use any other way, like empirical explanations, or such, which are used even before maths were invented and developed.
ON-TOPIC: As of proving if something can really be a real phenomena, several evidences need to be put, even if they don’t have the theories to explain it, they should be able to explain in which point it breaks the known theories, and how, which at this moment, they still don’t do.
Well. What I really meant was them trying to submit the paper to Nature. The alternative at the other end of the improperness spectrum, a “falsification” that failed to identify the source of supposed experimental error, would be just as improper. That’s the analogy.
This is what I meant. You guys know the future. You know the experiment. Hell, it’s curious that you’re not just saving everyone the trouble of experiments and identifying the source of the anomalous results.
Cool I’m not alone feeling this incredible irony of the situation : “-It’s a total fake. This is not science. -how do you know ? - trust me”…
I give up. That the first time on this site I’m so upset with you guys…
Then use the word universe. B5 used it in religion all the time.
Humans break the natural order all the time.
Ah. Such falsification wouldn’t be published in Nature, as it would be below the standards of the journal and be refused until corrected - that’s one of the things peer-reviewing is useful at, as peers would catch it and demand for the sigma to be given.
On the other hand, if they do get an article published in Nature about the EM Drive, that would mean we should take them more seriously.
Things can still be wrong in Nature, but a kind of wrong that requires to stop and pay more attention.
You are confusing several things here.
First, the experiments themselves were sloppy, with results at the limit of the precision (and actually decreasing a thousandfold at precision increased as much), and in one case the unpowered test device displayed the same thrust.
Rigorous tests with clear results that are reproduced by independent teams would receive serious attention, regardless of how preposterous the result would seem. The more preposterous, though, the more merciless attention would be put in searching for an experimental mistake somewhere - but at some point, if it held, the results would be accepted.
One such example would be the acceleration of the Universe’s expansion, or the seemingly impossible way galaxies rotate, giving birth to the dark energy and dark matter theories respectively. That took everyone by surprise, but the results were clear, unambiguous and confirmed by independent sources, and scientists went on and went back on the drawing board for models fitting those results.
Those are the two examples I have in mind, but there are many other examples through modern history.
But if you think finding that lightspeed is always a constant no matter what was a stone in the glasshouse for scientists, this is a nuclear hand grenade. It would be like waking up and seeing the Moon circling Earth at ten times its speed - in the same exact orbit.
And if it did happen, scientists would be forced to accept it and try to make it fit. Not before checking if the atmosphere is somehow bending light in new ways, if they can’t find some form of engines attached to the Moon, if it wasn’t actually an hologram or if something wasn’t giving hallucinations all of Mankind, though.
Second, the theoretical explanation cobbled together to explain the anomalous thrust is breaking the laws of physics in way is considered by the great majority of scientists (the people whose job is to study the subject) as bulldust.
Why? Well, for starters, they claim it doesn’t break conservation of momentum, though it really does. It also break some other stuff (like vacuum being the same in every direction IIRC) without explaining how or why.
So you have sloppy, unverified experiments with a microwave oven in a metal box barely registering something centuries of science are saying is wrong en bloc, but that people (mistakenly) really, really want to be true(*), used as support for a theory that fit in existing models like an elephant in a shoebox, written by someone making a beginner’s mistake.
Following a pattern that is starting to feel common (memory of water, cold fusion, dean drive…), always with the same (negative) results in the end.
So yeah, we feel pretty comfortable predicting that independent, rigorous experiments will disprove it.
You asked the opinion of real scientists?
At least @Kichae is one here. So are Dr Rhys Taylor and Dr Ethan Siegel, which I linked above on the subject. Both are giving pretty unambiguous, damning and detailed statements about it. And so is any scientist I could read on the subject that was not themselves working on the EM Drive.
If the lengthy explanations of the people whose job is to be expert in the domain aren’t convincing you, I’m not sure what you could ask for.
And again, if you want to discuss what would happen if it actually worked, well, I like hard-SF and that can be pretty fun (until the part where everyone dies).
(*) SF dystopia idea: A democratically parliamentary body is now in charge of amending physical laws in the name of the People.
Someone needs to write that.
It’s something to say that’s there one chance upon a billion that the thrust is not explained by an error or external phenomenon, and something else to say “it will be disproved”, the first is probably right, the second stupid.
Quite frankly, I doubt it’s as high as one chance upon a billion, by many orders of magnitude. Why? Because we are many billions on Earth, including people of the last few centuries, and many more people are making outlandish experiments as we tend to assume. I was joking about the antigravity drive a few posts above, but there are people working on their own at this very instant.
If that kind of stuff had as much as one chance upon a billion to work, we would have the stars by now.
But let’s go with it.
Scientists, as professional requirement, tend to be circumspect and will ask for a few more zeroes. Add to that it’s not really possible to give a sensible probability for it to work and the relatively low cost of making new experiments (if they needed a second ISS to test it, I doubt they would bother), and they will go for “better safe than sorry” just in case.
As an engineer, I would take the chance without blinking.
The only reason I would ever bother testing it, that would be if it’s less cost than ignoring/arguing with whoever asked.
It’s actually rather expensive and dangerous to test the drive. An improperly sealed chamber can cause the magnetron to spit out radio frequencies well in excess of any FCC regulations. Do it once and its a blip on a radar, do it more times, and the FCC comes knocking on your door and confiscates everything.
I will say this though, it is much more likely that the EM drive works then at any point so far. Eagleworks is a respected entity in this field and their inability to account for the spurious thrust is extremely positive news for proponents of the system.
Before that the only positive results were from the actual inventor, chinese paper factories (they’ve been known to publish tons of inaccurate and faulty data, most people disregard anything coming from them), and DIYers.
Eagleworks has ruled out most of the obvious sources of thrust, and are working on further tests to attempt to explain the thrust using our current understanding of physics. I would say one in a billion or even one in a million odds are fair at this point.
I’m not saying NASA should divert their entire budget to this effort or that universities across the globe need to immediately start investigating this, rather that they should stay the course and let Eagleworks keep spending only thousands of dollars to further experiment with this drive/phenomena.
Do you not find it odd that the finer the instruments used can measure, the lower the thrust becomes?
I’m not sold on the idea that it is any more likely than when it was first introduced.
Interesting discussion. I don’t really think I’m qualified or knowledgeable that I can add anything of scientific substance, however I will say this: I often see disagreements like this one stemming from what I believe is a simple misunderstanding.
The sense I’m getting from Kamui or Cinder is that they’re open to the possibility of the EM drive being proven true. It doesn’t necessarily mean they think it’s likely or that they believe it has so far shown any merit in achieving this lofty goal.
I believe there’s an important distinction here that’s really overlooked all too often. There’s a difference between “not believing something is true” and “believing something is untrue”. The first is not a claim to knowledge, but an abstention of belief until the claim can be substantiated by hard evidence. Here in this example, the burden of proof is on the other person. The second example, however, is a claim to knowledge that now requires proof of its own. It’s easier, say, to not believe in something because it’s not been proven, than it is to set out to prove something isn’t true. In the same way that it is easier to prove something exists (just a single demonstration is enough) as opposed to proving something cannot or does not exist.
It’s also not very scientific, in my opinion, to go about asserting that something is not true. It’s not only safer but much healthier for science in general to express its skepticism by studying the evidence and deciding whether or not to withhold belief instead of fighting a claim with a counter-claim, which would incur its own burden of proof.
Which is still beside the point. Confidence is no substitute for data.
I expect it’s noise. The only thing I’m sure of is that finding the source of noise is more valuable than making a fuss about how it’s so much or so not likely to be something or other, or trying to make your mind up before the data is rock solid. That’s just backwards.
Data first. Brainstorming second. (Tentative) conclusions third. When all’s said and done it’ll have been interesting noise, in that it took so much work to suss out.
Exactly my POV.
I totally agree with this, but I also think that the value of “making a fuss about how it’s so much or so not likely to be something or other, or trying to make your mind up before the data is rock solid” is not 0 at all, on the contrary…
Sure, overwhelming evidence is not proof, and in the particular domain of hard science, is not enough to be used as proof. So they must indeed reproduce it, so it can be disproved and forgotten along Dean, hafnium batteries and cold fusion. Particularly as it will only cost a few thousand dollars to do so - a hefty sum for an individual but a drop in the bucket even for cash-strapped governmental organizations like NASA.
Note, however, that overwhelming evidence is enough to replace proof in any other domain other than hard science. Engineering, justice, journalism, sociology, philosophy, marketing, finance… To put it simply, in any day-to-day life or even societal decision-making situation, that level of evidence is as good as proof.
Let’s make a parallel: do you know when the rotation of Earth (and, by extension, the heliocentric model) was actually proven? Hint: it wasn’t by Galileo.
And yet, way before that, it was used in every practical application. Hell, the “unproven” model was even used to put the Gregorian calendar together.
Overwhelming evidence, even in the absence of formal proof, is good enough.