NASA Develops Near-Light Speed Engine That Defies the Laws of Physics
NASA Develops Near-Light Speed Engine That Defies the Laws of Physics: Picture an engine that can go up to ninety nine percent of the speed of light with no use of any fuel. Yes, you read it right this is what a NASA engineer is currently working on, a structure which may well redefine the very laws of physics.
Many applications will require these engine’s instantiation, so where or how will they be generated? If they are not traveling space then what will supply their energy needs if not propellant? And perhaps the biggest question: Were it possible for humans to navigate in creation in vehicles driven by such an engine? These are questions that we should turn to now in more detail.
Engine That Breaks Laws Of Physics
This is a problem as humans are eager to explore and investigate all that is out there in space and it is too big for us. Let’s even assume we could travel at the speed that the universe allows, then the neighboring star is years away.
A second innate drive is to solving big problems and in his spare time, NASA engineer David Burns has done just that. He has devised an engine theory that, to him, would take human being to ninety-nine percent speed of light as it has no propellant.
Burns has posted this idea on NASA’s Technical Reports Server where he refers to it as ‘Helical Engine. ’ The principle is that it operates based on how mass behaves where relativistic velocities—velocities almost equal to the velocity of light in a vacuum are attained. Still, it has not been through a professional peer review or has not been published on a refereed journal yet.
Predictably, this article has generated a lot of hysterical activity, very similar to the first days of the EM Drive. Some have gone ahead and propose that this engine could really ‘defy the laws of physics. čním
In passing, it is necessary to note that the EM Drive was NASA’s first try at building a faster-than-light engine. That still brings us to the question, what is the EM Drive or how does it work?
EM Drive – a concept of the spacecraft propulsion system – radio frequency resonant cavity thruster was invented in 2001 by a British electrical engineer who has 48 years of the experience in Space and Defense industries named Roger Shawyer. Some is reported to create thrust by reflecting internal microwaves, in direct defiance against the law of conservation of momentum and other known laws of physics. The media had named it the ‘Impossible Drive. ’
In more extraordinary interpretations of physics, explanations on how the EM Drive works can be given. It is suggested it operates with the vacuum energy of space-time although vacuum energy has no substance to ‘apply force’ on. Some propose that it could imply a brand-new type of momentum or turn out to be indications of new physics at work.
This device apparently has no official design; anyone who asserts to have invented it has not fully elaborated on how this object works or the part that is involved in the process of operation; as a result, it cannot be understood whether a given item is a sample of this drive or not.
In 2016, the NASA’s Advanced Propulsion Physics Laboratory, witnessed a slight amount of thrust that could be observed during one of the trials but, this observation has not been repeated again. Subsequent researches have attributed the measured thrust above to a systematic errors induced by various environmental factors including the Earth’s magnetic field and temperature gradients. In March 2021, the scientists of the Technical University of Dresden wrote three papers whereby they pointed out that the thrust was in fact accidental and due to outside influence.
The same can be said about the Helical Engine, though its concept is rather questionable and even if we leave aside the fact that it has to go against the laws of physics to work, it would still be a highly energy-inefficient means of propulsion. While some experts are skeptical, one man who is not, is NASA engineer David Burns, who believes the idea is worth pursuing.
Burns has used what one might call a ‘paradox to illustrate his concept. ’ Just imagine a box with a weight inside it and on both its ends there is spring and the weight moves side to side. What this would do in a vacuum is shake the entirety of the box and yet the weight appears to be totally motionless, akin to a GIF that has been weighted. This was the reason why Burns theorized that if the mass of the weight increased in one direction it would provide a stiffer force in that direction, which would result in thrust.
However, this concept seems to violate another postulate, that of conservation of total momentum, according to which total momentum of a system cannot change unless a net external force acts on this system. Einstein’s special relativity states that an object would gain mass as its velocity increases to that of light so this has to be taken into consideration by design for particle accelerators. The counterweight could be the particle accelerator and instead of a simple box and rod design it can be made in helical – hence ‘Helical Engine’.
As stated by Burns, ions that are trapped in a loop are made to travel at relativistic velocities; a change in their velocity is made to occur to produce thrust. The only change would be the ions that move within a vacuum line through electric and magnetic field. However, the engine would dwarf a standard aircraft carrier; be approximately 656 feet long and 40ft in diameter; and would consume 165MW of energy to produce force of one newton – the equivalent of a power station!
It is not the first initiative of propulsion-free ideas to come up with space vehicles. During the 1970s, an U. S inventor Robert Cook patented something he called a “Cook gravito inertia disc” that supposedly generated centrifugal force converting it to linear motion. The Shawyer’s EM Drive also tried to develop thrust without propellant, as did none of those concepts, as both do not work due to breaking the law of conservation of momentum.
The experts, who tried the EM Drive, think that the problems which might be faced by the Helical Engine, exist. To apply this principle to the Helical Engine, one physicist from the Technical University of Dresden says: ‘All inertial propulsion systems—so far—have never worked in friction-free environments. ’
Burns has done this on this concept on his own without help from NASA and he states that its really expensive. Yet he speculates about how one might ‘get back’ lost energy from heat and radiation and presents thoughts on how to save momentum such as using the spin of the ions.
‘I know that this could end up like EM Drive or cold fusion,’ Burns says. ‘You have to be ready to get into risk and failure I suppose It is not easy to come up with a new idea, and make it work. ’
Nonetheless, we shouldn’t completely rule out the idea. Given that technology is rapidly developing with newly discovered discoveries in aerospaces, nobody would be surprised if the crafts that can travel at the speed of light become real life depictions of what futuristic societies are all about.
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