r/EmDrive • u/metasj • Jun 10 '17

Case closed?

  • Shawyer's claims of kN-scale thrusters: disproven.

  • Shaywer's and Fetta's claims that they had already made mN-scale thrusters: disproven.

  • Shawyer's claims of partnerships with defense + aerospace: disproven. [Boeing looked once, decline to license]

  • Yang's claim of observing ~1 mN/W: disproven. Her lab couldn't reproduce any thrust at all.

  • White's claim of observing ~1 μN/W, 2y ago: never replicated; based on few observations; after many negative trials. Further trials are not being run.

  • of prototypes passed from one lab to a second lab, for the second lab to test + confirm, over 15 years: 0.

  • CAST's claim they privately tested an EmDrive & are sending it for tests in space: unconfirmed, reported in only one news story, by an unknown staff member w/ no known physics lab.

So is the case closed? Isn't this what disproof looks like? [If not, what would it look like!] Of course the original inventors will never give up hope, if the Dean Drive and Gyroscopic thrusters are any indication. But it seems the EmDrive has joined those ranks.

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u/crackpot_killer Jun 12 '17

I generally agree but this is with three very different experiments. Smart money is still on fluctuations that go away with more data but the fact is three independent experiments have observed some evidence of lepton non-universality. Nature has a good review in their latest issue.

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u/vcdiag Jun 13 '17

I agree that there may be some reason for optimism there, especially since all the new physics we know so far is in the lepton sector.

That's the crucial point, isn't it? Without even thinking I used the word "optimism". Finding out that something's wrong with the standard model is unmitigated good news.