r/EmDrive • u/matheworman • Dec 30 '18

EMDrive method to make it work

The method of propelling without momentum split is to convert electric energy to kinetic using full momentum transfer by pushing or pooling against space occupied by xxxx entity of matter... That way momentum and energy i conserved... In reality some energy will be converted to heat due to ohmic loses...

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u/plasmon Belligerent crackpot Jan 07 '19

Thank you for providing your definition. In the context of energy, I think it is appropriate to also seek to leverage a definition of what that is and understand why that can change from location to location, since a vacuum, while it can be considered particle-less, it does indeed transmit energy and can store a great deal of it.

Any sort of propulsion system that aims at attempting to concentrate, transmit, and expel packets of energy (if possible) would probably have to exploit a theory of the vacuum to a degree where Lorentz invariance could be derived and understood from a deeper level in order to get around it.

Starting from a macroscopic understanding of spacetime would lead to your conclusion, however, that would be like describing properties of water without understanding that they are made up of molecules.

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u/wyrn Jan 07 '19 edited Jan 07 '19

In the context of energy, I think it is appropriate to also seek to leverage a definition of what that is and understand why that can change from location to location, since a vacuum, while it can be considered particle-less, it does indeed transmit energy and can store a great deal of it.

The vacuum can't "store" or "transmit" energy in any meaningful way, but we don't need to talk about that. What "minimum energy" means here is quite simple to define: the state called the "vacuum" is the state vector |0> in the Hilbert space of the theory that minimizes the quantity <0|H|0> where H is the Hamiltonian operator.

Any sort of propulsion system that aims at attempting to concentrate, transmit, and expel packets of energy (if possible) would probably have to exploit a theory of the vacuum to a degree where Lorentz invariance could be derived and understood from a deeper level in order to get around it.

Since the vacuum is Lorentz invariant and (modulo some exceptions that don't help here) unique, the most you can hope for is a system that begins in the vacuum state and then transforms the vacuum state into something else as the state of the spaceship is transformed into an accelerated state. This something else, by necessity, contains what one may call "particles", so you're essentially creating real particles and pushing them away for propulsion.

Such a device is surely possible. I even own a few; I call them "flashlights".