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Introvert

Member
Nov 5, 2017
334
NASA veteran's propellantless propulsion drive that physics says shouldn't work just produced enough thrust to overcome earth's gravity


Dr. Charles Buhler, a NASA engineer and the co-founder of Exodus Propulsion Technologies, has revealed that his company's propellantless propulsion drive, which appears to defy the known laws of physics, has produced enough thrust to counteract Earth's gravity.

A veteran of such storied programs as NASA's Space Shuttle, the International Space Station (ISS), The Hubble Telescope, and the current NASA Dust Program, Buhler and his colleagues believe their discovery of a fundamental new force represents a historic breakthrough that will impact space travel for the next millennium.

"The most important message to convey to the public is that a major discovery occurred," Buhler told The Debrief. "This discovery of a New Force is fundamental in that electric fields alone can generate a sustainable force onto an object and allow center-of-mass translation of said object without expelling mass."

"There are rules that include conservation of energy, but if done correctly, one can generate forces unlike anything humankind has done before," Buhler added. "It will be this force that we will use to propel objects for the next 1,000 years… until the next thing comes."

I don't have a masters degree.

Are we Star Trek now?
 

Musician

Member
Oct 29, 2017
300
Sweden
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Still, I'll allow myself to get excited. It's such s nice feeling after all
 
May 26, 2018
24,044
Is this another one of those "we rushed to get a story about people who rushed to get results and in six months we find out it's all bullshit" kind of things?
 

Horp

Member
Nov 16, 2017
3,714
Nope.
They maybe built something physicists say shouldnt work (but i highly doubt it) but not something physics say shouldn't work - because that would be magic.
 

Typhon

Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,136
I feel like this claim has been made before.

Wikiwand - EmDrive

The EmDrive is a concept for a thruster for spacecraft, first written about in 2001. It is purported to generate thrust by reflecting microwaves inside the device, in a way that would violate the law of conservation of momentum and other laws of physics. The concept has at times been referred to...
 

Ostron

Member
Mar 23, 2019
1,965
It reads A BIT like "EM Drive ate our lunch but we did it before now they are violating patents and stealing our work LOOK AT OUR RESULTS LOOK AT ME"... but regardless this race is interesting to follow as there's undoubtedly something there but we don't know exactly what or how useful it will end up being.
 

BAW

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,940
So this is like going from fossil fuels to electric drive but for space travel… right?
 

Crazymoogle

Game Developer
Verified
Oct 25, 2017
2,890
Asia
I feel like this claim has been made before.

Wikiwand - EmDrive

The EmDrive is a concept for a thruster for spacecraft, first written about in 2001. It is purported to generate thrust by reflecting microwaves inside the device, in a way that would violate the law of conservation of momentum and other laws of physics. The concept has at times been referred to...

Just a few of the warning bells from the article:
  • The guy's deck has a slide with the quote "Could explain EM drive".
  • His company presented at a conference for "alternative propulsion technologies"
  • The article describes how their solution was only generating 10 mN and now suddenly has enough to meet/exceed 1g
  • A whole paragraph is spent on him being mainly concerned about patents
I'm all for new tech and even 10mN is something, but this is firmly in the "wake us up when they prove it" category.
 

beat

Member
Oct 28, 2017
2,591
Remember when LK-99 was going to be a room temperature superconductor that would revolutionize the world? =/

Cause this isn't that but it's also not entirely not that.
 

Nostremitus

Member
Nov 15, 2017
7,781
Alabama
I assumed this was about the EM Drive, but apparently, it's a different engine...

Someone else needs to replicate it and rule out every single other possible source of thrust before jumping on the "new fundamental force" hype train.
 

iksenpets

Member
Oct 26, 2017
6,523
Dallas, TX
Remember when LK-99 was going to be a room temperature superconductor that would revolutionize the world? =/

Cause this isn't that but it's also not entirely not that.

I mean, the room temperature superconductor stuff is at least plausible within current understanding of the universe, whereas this is claiming to have circumvented basic laws of inertia. I'd be prepared to believe a dozen superconductor claims before I'd believe this. Would really need to see multiple duplications of the result before it's even worth giving the time of day. Until then it's just EmDrive redux
 

LinkStrikesBack

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 27, 2017
16,398
Is this another one of those "we rushed to get a story about people who rushed to get results and in six months we find out it's all bullshit" kind of things?

Probably yes, this is another one of those.

If you can generate force without propellant you've got a method to generate infinite energy, and the second law of thermodynamics hasn't hung around so long by taking claims like this seriously.


The website for the "conference" is very much not an academic style one, using Google forms to take applications, lol
 

Skade

Member
Oct 28, 2017
8,885
e02e5ffb5f980cd8262cf7f0ae00a4a9_press-x-to-doubt-memes-memesuper-la-noire-doubt-meme_419-238.png
 

dennett316

Member
Nov 2, 2017
2,983
Blackpool, UK
Kind of reads like some of the claims that ElectroBoom on YouTube sometimes discusses... where someone has used magnets to turn a paperclip or something and claim it's free energy.
 

Keuja

Member
Oct 27, 2017
2,186
I wish it was true... but it's probably not. It will be either a scam or measurement errors. You would think a potentially civilization-altering discovery of a new fundamental force would makes headlines on major news channels but nope, only reported on an obscure science website lol
 

Titantodd

Member
May 3, 2023
2,056
Maybe instead of propellant, it runs off the power of belief. Maybe by us all being cynical and doubtful we just ruined a potentially world changing technology.

We just need to send our belief and force of will and we can escape Earth's gravity, everyone!
 

Vena

Community Resettler
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
6,533
You cannot just violate physics as if it were some rad rebellion and not listening to the rules.

This needs a whole lot of receipts.
 

TheBee

Member
Oct 18, 2023
686
Why are people acting like anti gravity is something from the year 4026 that have no chance of being engineered in present day? I'd say it was almost inevitable that we'll see anti gravity tech in our own life time.
 

NPVinny

Member
Dec 13, 2017
792
After reading the article, I'm optimistic. This is the same thing as what was happening with the EmDrive (whose thrust was later verified by NASA), the thrust being generated is based on the principles of electrostatics (which Dr. Buhler is one of, if not the leading peers in that field) and they made sure to construct a chamber that should have gotten rid of possibility of the measured thrust coming from unknown sources.

I'd love to see the responses from other experts in the field, but the possibilities are exciting.
 

LinkStrikesBack

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 27, 2017
16,398
Why are people acting like anti gravity is something from the year 4026 that have no chance of being engineered in present day? I'd say it was almost inevitable that we'll see anti gravity tech in our own life time.

Then you're not looking at this from any discipline even tangentially related to physics because either it already exists in devices such as, say, helicopters, or it's sci-fi mumbojumbo
 

LinkStrikesBack

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 27, 2017
16,398
After reading the article, I'm optimistic. This is the same thing as what was happening with the EmDrive (whose thrust was later verified by NASA), the thrust being generated is based on the principles of electrostatics (which Dr. Buhler is one of, if not the leading peers in that field) and they made sure to construct a chamber that should have gotten rid of possibility of the measured thrust coming from unknown sources.

I'd love to see the responses from other experts in the field, but the possibilities are exciting.

The EM drive has long been debunked as measurement error, just like this almost certainly will be, if it's not entirely outright fabricated
 

TheBee

Member
Oct 18, 2023
686
Then you're not looking at this from any discipline even tangentially related to physics because either it already exists in devices such as, say, helicopters, or it's sci-fi mumbojumbo

It's like claiming in 1950 that playing a game like GTA VI on your TV is sci-fi mumbojumbo, or claiming in 1850 that flying from the US to Australia is sci-fi mumbojumbo.

It's inevitable that we'll have anti gravity technology.