IT IS A VAST Cosmos out there, the nearest star to
Earth, Proxima Centauri, is so far away its light takes 4.3 years to reach us
travelling at the speed of light, 300,000 Km/s, while our Milky Way galaxy is
100,000 Ly across. Travelling over oceans of space requires speed and novel propulsion
systems to allow spacecraft to reach speeds close to light velocity.
A radio frequency (RF) resonant cavity thruster is
a proposed new type of electromagnetic thruster. Unlike conventional
electromagnetic thrusters, they are designed to use no reaction mass, and to
emit no directional radiation. Their design principles are not supported by
prevailing scientific theories, and they apparently violate the law of
conservation of momentum.
A few variations on such thrusters have been
proposed. Aerospace engineer Roger Shawyer designed the EMDrive in 2001, and
has persistently promoted the idea since then through his company, Satellite
Propulsion Research.
Researchers
say the new EMDrive could carry passengers and their equipment to the moon in
as little as four hours.
A trip
to Alpha Centauri, which would take tens of thousands of years to reach right
now, could be reached in just 100 years.
Last summer
the controversial design for the EMDrive received a boost as German scientists
confirmed that it does in fact work.
The
EMDrive propulsion system would permit travel at speeds until now only seen in
science fiction.
The
system is based on electromagnetic drive, or EMDrive, which converts electrical
energy into thrust without the need for rocket fuel.
The
concept of an EMDrive engine is relatively simple. It provides thrust to a
spacecraft by bouncing microwaves around in a closed container.
Solar
energy provides the electricity to power the microwaves, which means that no
propellant is needed.
According
to classical physics, the EMDrive should be impossible because it seems to
violate the law of conservation of momentum.
The law
states that the momentum of a system is constant if there are no external
forces acting on the system – which is why propellant is required in
traditional rockets.
But
subsequent tests - further backed up by this announcement - have shown that the
idea could revolutionize space travel.
Bouncing
microwaves around in a ‘closed container’ is strange idea, except in it is not
actually a closed container, on the Quantum scale it is open throughout, and
Quantum fluctuations are happening in the container.
In
quantum physics, a quantum fluctuation (or quantum vacuum fluctuation or vacuum
fluctuation) is the temporary change in the amount of energy in a point in space,
as explained in Werner Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. It means that conservation
of energy can appear to be violated, but only for small times. This allows the
creation of particle-antiparticle pairs of virtual particles. The effects of
these particles are measurable, for example, in the effective charge of the
electron, different from its "naked" charge.
The copper
and steel of the EMDrive has a molecular structure made up of atoms, at lesser scales
the atoms are composed of smaller atomic particles, and there is a lot of empty
space between the orbital electrons and the nucleus.
For
example, the simplest atom is that of Hydrogen, it contains one neutron, and
proton that make up the central nucleus, while there is a single electron in
orbit around it. If the nucleus happened to be the size of an apple, then the
distance of electron would be a third of a mile distant. That is a lot of empty
space on the quantum scale of our Universe.
In my
opinion on this atomic scale, while the drive is closed to the vacuum of space,
microwaves are not, and can interact with quantum particles surrounding the EMDrive.
The
space inside the EMDrive is not empty; it contains quantum pairs of atomic
particles that the microwaves can interact with.
If
physicists can better understand this process, much better propulsion systems can be
designed to reach light speed in a shorter time so that we can reach for the stars.
Richard
Pearson
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