Chinese Said to Be Working on “Impossible” Space Drive
A controversial British inventor could be on the verge of changing the way we move through space. Roger Shawyer’s ‘Impossible’ space drive, also called the Emdrive (short for electromagnetic drive), has been dismissed by many mainstream scientists; but now Chinese researchers say they have confirmed his theory and are busy building a demonstration model. If they are right, space travel may become a lot more feasible, and the Chinese could be the new leaders in space.
Shawyer is a scientist whose work with radar and communications systems has been previously published. He claims that his drive will convert electrical energy into thrust via microwaves. When New Scientist Magazine published a story on his drive late last year, a firestorm of criticism ensued. According to Wired.com John Costella, an Australian physicist wrote, “It is well known that Roger Shawyer’s ‘electromagnetic relativity drive’ violates the law of conservation of momentum, making it simply the latest in a long line of ‘perpetuum mobiles’ that have been proposed and disproved for centuries. His analysis is rubbish and his ‘drive’ impossible.”
Nevertheless Chinese scientists at Northwestern Polytechnical University (NPU) in Xi’an are undeterred, while early U.S. interest in Shawyer’s Emdrive has apparently not born fruit.
Could history be repeating itself? Robert H. Goddard, the American inventor of the liquid fueled rocket, found little interest here in his pioneering work which later led to the development of German rocketry which destroyed much of London during the blitz of World War II. After the war, America’s rocket program was built on German technology which had been built on the American Goddard’s discoveries.
Einstein & Newton Autistic?
Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton had more in common than deep insight into the workings of the physical universe. Both geniuses, it seems, had a form of autism. That, at least, is the view of researchers at Cambridge and Oxford universities who now claim that the two great scientists suffered from Asperger’s syndrome—a condition involving eccentricity, lack of social skills, obsession with complex topics, and difficulty communicating. The same, of course, could be said of many other eccentric geniuses from Nikola Tesla to John Keely.
Einstein, say the researchers, showed signs of the syndrome at an early age. He was a loner and repeated sentences obsessively. As an adult, he was a notoriously confusing lecturer. On the other hand, they concede, he did make intimate friends, had numerous affairs, and spoke out on politics. The latter traits we are expected to interpret as ‘normal.’
One cannot help but wonder how much the new analysis owes to current intellectual fashion—à la ‘political correctness.’ In the world of conventional science, where anything other than standard materialist thinking is considered hallucinatory, can there ever be a true appreciation for what it takes to really think outside the box? It is worth remembering, as any auto mechanic can tell you, that it takes an eccentric to turn a crank.
Russian Perpetual Motion in Space?
Perpetual Motion (PM) may be impossible on earth, as ordained by Newtonian physics, but could it be operating in space? We’re not talking here about merely orbiting the Earth, which some might call perpetual motion. According to the news agency Pravda, Russia has successfully deployed a PM machine on one of its satellites. Installed at Yubileiny, Russia’s main satellite production facility, the PM engine has reportedly been operating for almost a year and is making it possible to move the satellite from one orbit to another. The device, it is said, “discharges no reaction mass.” Valery Menshikov, director of the Institute for Space Systems, made the announcement in April.
Usually meant to refer to a machine that could run forever—producing more energy than it consumes—the practical achievement of perpetual motion is considered to be, in fact, impossible, inasmuch as the law of conservation of energy dictates that energy cannot be created or destroyed. Of course, there are those who quibble with such assertions, suggesting that indeed there may be hitherto undiscovered streams of energy in the universe into which we may yet learn to dip our paddle wheels, thus obtaining energy from sources once thought not to exist. The history of electricity has followed those lines. More recently, some experiments with so-called zero point energy have shown considerable promise in this area.
At this point it is not clear exactly what kind of device the Russians have deployed, but Menshikov says the first tests were conducted in the summer of 2008. The new engine, purportedly, lasts for 15 years and can be started about 300,000 times. That may not be perpetual, but it will do for now.
Dear Sirs;
Some of you may be interested to see my web site, section “perpettuum”. There are three PDF files (yellow)
Regards,
Oldrich