118 posts to finally read what I was searching for !! An example of attempt on “what if” !!! Only a question : why have you been so long !!? 
I haven’t mocked anybody with fantasy creatures, thank you very much. Maybe you could kindly assume I’m not being a combative asshole about this? I’m using an example that we can all agree upon as being unlikely to explain why my level of skepticism isn’t unscientific. There is only slightly more evidence in favour of this EM Drive thing working than there is for unicorns existing. And the Invisible Unicorn is common trope used to explain how burden of proof works in these situations.
No it wasn’t. Not even close. Not in the mainstream media, anyway. Neither was the criticism of the arsenic eating bacteria story, nor the debunking of the gravitational waves discovery. These Science by Press Release events always get a disproportionate amount of coverage for their “discovery” over their retraction.
No. Saying “that’s not a thing” doesn’t make you immediately wrong. Just because you can never prove a negative doesn’t mean the negative is never true. In fact, it’s because of this that the burden of proof lies with the claimant. It’s perfectly safe to say “that’s not a thing” until there’s strong evidence in favour of it. Again, the Invisible Unicorn: It’s not unreasonable for you to say there’s no such thing as an invisible unicorn until someone can show you strong evidence to the contrary.
Elves and fairies don’t exist. The pyramids weren’t built by aliens, and they don’t have mystical energy. Qi isn’t real, and Reiki doesn’t work. There is no teapot in orbit around the Sun somewhere beyond Mars. None of these statements are immediately wrong. None of them. Not until someone finds the teapot, discovers and measure the pyramid energy, locates archaeological evidence of alien builders, or finds the bloody Keebler factory.
Excuse me? I haven’t assumed anyone here is more or less clever than anyone else. All I’ve done is explain how the scientific method and burden of proof tie together. If people don’t like it, that doesn’t make them dumb. It doesn’t change the way science, as an institution, works, either, though.
Yes. Yes it is. It’s exactly a matter of physics, because the EM Drive is an experiment in physics. You don’t get to claim otherwise because it hurts your hope for this thing working.
Ok. Mind explaining where logic supports this thing working where physics doesn’t? Because there’s no logic that takes us to “impossible space drive”.
Worse, you never here people say “There’s a very low chance that this pencil will fall to the ceiling if I drop it.” Unless it’s about the EM Drive, in which case you apparently become public enemy #1.
It doesn’t to physicists, though. And it didn’t 17 years ago, either. And even then, those results were published in The Astronomical Journal and The Astrophysical Journal, which are the two leading journals for cosmological work, and the discoverers went on to win Nobel Prizes for that work. The EM Drive, on the other hand? Definitely appears to violate the laws of physics, and does so at a very fundamental level. And the results have been published on websites. Scientists don’t publish work they think is meaningful and on a good foundation to websites. They do that when they want to avoid scrutiny and peer review.
The Casimir Effect, and indeed all quantum effects we’ve seen to date, all abide by the conservation of momentum. I mean, conservation of momentum is, quite literally, the foundation of all of physics to date. Forces? Indeed, our entire understanding of dynamics relies on it. If momentum does not need to be conserved, we actually don’t know how anything works.
We would have noticed this a long, long time ago.
This isn’t about dogmatism. This is about something smelling very fishy, and a whole lot of people holding their noses talking about what a nice day it is.
Right. So, you were looking for a specific response, not an honest one, then?
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NO and again NO !! Evidence is relative to your point of observation, don’t forget that ! There’s no absolute evidence nor any “evidence reference”… of course there’s a good answer, but at the moment, you can’t know what it is, so the good answer for the moment is “I don’t know” and/or “it’s probably…”. AND LET PEOPLE BELIEVE IN UNICORNS UNTIL YOU CANNOT PROVE THEY DON’T EXIST !
No chance for you I make my best to be agnostic, not atheist. I know I cannot prove or disprove the existence of God or Invisible Unicorns. I choose to don’t believe in Invisible Unicorns, and I choose to believe that the God humans are searching for has the entire universe as Its body, and if you followed what I said above about separation of spirit and body, you know now what I think about God (I think we’re all part of it, in fact, each time I hear or read the word God, I replace it by Universe (try it works great)), and Invisible Unicorns.
It happens that i make the same error than you some times, to believe that there is something absolute in my point of view, but I’m aware that it is an error, and I always work on. You should definitely try.
not at all, I meant this is this type of exchange I’m searching for, not specifically this answer, because I’m not qualified to know if it makes sense, I just know that in terms of logic, it’s the best answer I’ve read from now in this thread.
I never stated that, though. The laws have been found inadequate throughout history under circumstances that did not fit the original conditions. Quantum physics is not bound by all the same laws as macro physics, for example. However, the conservation of momentum has so far been found to be applicable at all levels of observation, with no deviation. My point is not that the law is infallible, but that it is what this drive claims to overthrow.
One of these arguments is a well-documented, well-established, and here-unto never found to be wrong law that has applied at every scale we have tested it at to date. The other is the claims of one man with a great deal of monetary investment, many casual experiments, and at best, a handful of professional grade experiments with results that are too close to the margin of error to be considered evidence until further testing is conducted.
I am not so dogmatic as to claim that I know the drive doesn’t work provided adequate validated and reproducible evidence. I am willing to state when something is clearly not working as intended, and I’m not particularly mindful of how it may hurt someone’s feelings just because they wish it to be true.
Edit: Additionally, I am frustrated by the amount of resources spent on something that is far inferior to other experiments that could prove more useful. The device itself is not overly expensive to produce, no. But that does not account for manhours spent researching, building, refining, and testing the device (I assure you all, the scientists do not do it for free). Vacuums are not cheap to produce. I attended a college with a small (one cubic meter) vacuum chamber, and it was almost never used because projects rarely met the level of justification needed to fund its operation. These resources are not just wasted once experimenting on this fantastical concept, but twice because it’s not being spent on something more likely to succeed.
I don’t see a government institution researching unicorns do you? 
I expect you to use the psychic research example as a counter arguement. Your arguement seems a shitty cop out for insulting the intelligence of another person to be honest.
Sorry I don’t understand what you are trying to communicate here. As far as I read nobody claimed that this EM drive 100% invalidates any laws of physics. What people said was simply that just because it might seem to go against everything we think to know doesn’t make it impossible.
To say that this device is complete bogus and to imply that research should be stopped because the explaination the inventors deliver smell like bullshit - is not very scientific.
Your argumentation isn’t consistant. Why can’t this EM drive not be one of these things that require us to refine our understanding of physics?
What is not scientific is the announcement, publication, and pushing of a science experiment that has yet to yield any rigorous results. What is not scientific is the “I don’t have to prove it works to say it works, you have to prove it doesn’t” attitude that I see time and time again on subjects ranging from EM drives to vaccine denial.
What is scientific is a healthy dose of skepticism, combined with a desire to ensure bad information does not live and spread through the minds of the generally badly informed public.
FYI, the Invisible Unicorn and Russell’s Teapot are common thought experiments to show the fallacy of demanding the evidence be provided by those who would deny the hypothesis. If you take such examples personally, I have bad news for you.
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Why is this EM drive one of the things that requires us to refine our understanding of physics?
Does it move especially fast?
Is it produced of some exotic materials?
Does it provide interactions with dark matter? Dark energy?
The burden of evidence is on you, not me.
How do you know how many resources are spent on this?
I would argue, even if it is very unlikely that this isn’t bullshit, if it were to deliver new information it would be invaluable.
nobody said that, can’t you understand that only you, Kichae and Parisbre56 are here to affirm things ?
the others are saying “why not”, because we cannot say more for the moment.
Here, let me Google that for you.
If we assume 40 hours per week, 52 weeks per year, that comes out to 15-20 dollars per hour per person. If the experiment takes ten people ten hours to complete from design to construction to analysis to publication, that is 1,500 dollars at a minimum. Things that increase the cost:
- Number of people involved is probably greater than ten.
- Number of hours spent is far greater than ten, guaranteed.
- Eagleworks is probably not entry-level scientists and engineers, so the $/hr goes up.
I don’t have an exact figure for you. What I do have is the fact that the experiment is not nearly as inexpensive as everyone makes it out to be.
Then stop claiming to be on the side of science. Science should always, always, always be performed under the assumption of “Why does this not work this way?”
If you get an answer that denies the question, then you have evidence that it does.
No these are commonly used to denounce stuff that isn’t even debatable. I would like you to use them in a discussion with steven hawking and then claim that it wasn’t meant to be insulting.
These are just some examples used that would open the possibility for a need to refine these laws. How do you know that there isn’t something we haven’t noticed yet that could change our understanding? Your opinion is very dogmatic.
Why, I simply stated that this could be something if it delivers new scientificly proven results. You are the one that claims it is impossible, where is your evidence? Sorry a memorized understanding of physics doesn’t cut it in this case.
A lot of assumptions on your part is the only thing I got out of this.
this thread is awesome ! Everything can happen it’s like the quantum thread, there’s no more logic
My turn : the first minute is for you @Red_Syns 
(it’s a joke, I think we all need it ;))
That is the reason the burden is on you, not me. You are the one who says it can be so. I am the one who says no. Your inability to grasp this simple concept is beyond me.
I would like you to find a scientist who is as well known and well regarded as Steven Hawking who says “Yes, this is a definite possibility.” Go ahead. I’ll wait. I won’t hold my breath, but I’ll wait.
What am I assuming? Did you even click the link? Do you think the NASA personnel working on this project are doing it for free? Tell me what is the worse assumption, that the personnel working on the project are getting paid entry-level salaries (or better), or that they are working for free?
Wow, I think you are under the impression that the argument:
Works in your favor when you say:
Funny! Please read again and think it over.
Instead of belittleling me you could actually try to deliver sound arguments. Thank you.
I have the Law of Conservation of Momentum backing up my argument. It has been observed and experimented upon countless times, each time affirming its correctness at all levels of the physical universe from quantum to galactic.
You have “Ah…because it might, but I have nothing to show as to why it might.”
Please elaborate as to which argument is more sound, again? kthxbai
The fact that some well-known jerks that we should keep unnamed use it as an insult because they can’t tolerate people not sharing their beliefs and splash it with at thin veneer of scientific polish is not actually quite a reason to call the entire thought experiment “insulting”.
They are actually valid thought experiments when used in the right context. It simply is rarely used properly.
That is, until I’m rich enough to launch a microsat with a ion drive bound to solar orbit, and gene-splicing becomes a bit either…
That said, the Yeti would have been a way better example up there.
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Did I claim that? I don’t remember…
One thing is for sure, he probably wouldn’t say that it is 100% impossible that there is something that makes this drive work.