It works! An ‘impossible’ fuel-free engine that defies the laws of Physics has been proven to work by numerous independentlaboratories. However, researchers are still unsure as to how it actually works.

Scientists are sure how it works since the so-called EmDrive defies all known laws of physics

The ‘impossible’ fuel-free engine called EmDrive could transport astronauts to Mars in just 10 weeks has been proven to work, even though no one known how or why it works. The revolutionary engine creates thrust by bouncing microwaves in a closed chamber and is powered only by solar energy.

While researchers have pointed out the engine is an impossible concept since it defies all known laws of physics, the engine has turned out to be a feasible option for future spacecraft.

Now, scientists have come up with a theory that could explain how it can actually work. In the next coming months, the engine will undergo peer review as scientists hope it can become a reality shortly.

The idea, however, isn’t new. The concept was proposed for the first time 16 years go when researcher Roger Shawyer came up with the incredible idea. Since 2000, four independent research facilities including one belonging to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration have recreated the drive and even though it creates thrust, no one has been able to explain how. The EmDrive converts electrical energy into thrust without the necessity for rocket fuel. Classical physics suggest that this engine should not work since it appears to violate the law of conservation of momentum.

According to the law, the momentum of a system is constant if there are no external forces acting on the system –because of this, propellant is used in traditional rockets.

However, Dr. Mike McCulloch of Plymouth University firmly believes he might have figured out the impossible drive, and his explanation is based on a new theory of inertia, describing the resistance of massive objects to changes in motion and acceleration.

A prototype of the ‘impossible’ fuel-free engine

The idea as to why inertia exists at all has puzzled researchers for centuries.

Dr. McCulloch proposes that inertia can be explained from an effect predicted by Einstein’s theory of general relativity called ‘Unruh radiation.’ This effect states that if there is an acceleration in a vacuum, empty space will contain gas particles at a temperature which is proportional to that of the acceleration, meaning that that universe basically heats up objects as the accelerate.

Dr. McCulloch suggests that inertia can be defined as the pressure exerted by the Unruh radiation on an accelerating body. Size matters, this is why when accelerations involved are smaller, like the case of the EmDrive, the wavelength of Unruh radiation gets larger. At extremely low accelerations, wavelengths become simply put, too large to fit into the observable universe. Researchers suggest that as a result, inertia may only take on whole-wavelength units over time, causing it to become ‘quantized.’

Researchers have discovered that at extremely low accelerations, inertia jumps unexpectedly in value, an effect already observed by scientists previously when spacecraft perform a flyby of Earth, causing them to move much faster that what scientists calculated they should.

However, we could be looking at the same thing in the EmDrive by reducing the size of allowed wavelengths of Unruh radiation.

One of the images from an as-yet unpublished paper on the EMDrive.

According to Dr. McCulloch, since photons have an inertial mass, they experience inertia when they perfect. However, since due to the EmDrive truncated cone, the Unruh radiation in tiny.

According to a report by MIT, the cone allows Unruh radiation of a certain size at the large end but only a smaller wavelength at the other end. The inertia of photons inside the cavity changes as these bounce back and forth. In order to conserve momentum, they are forced to generate thrust.

McCulloch says there is some evidence that exactly this happens. ‘This thrust reversal may have been seen in recent Nasa experiments,’ he says.

The next step is to test out the EmDrive on a larger scale, and if it works, it could carry both passengers and equipment to the moon in just four hours, or take them to the red planet in just ten weeks. The EmDrive will be a huge thing if it works on a larger scale since it would make it possible for humans to travel outside our solar system. Fro example, a trip to Alpha Centauri would take tens of thousands of years with our current technology, however, using the EmDrive engine, a trip to Alpha Centauri would take just 100 years.

Journal Reference:

http://arxiv.org/abs/1604.03449

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/emdrive-nasa…

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive…

Featured Image Credit: StarTrek Movie

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Researchers have revealed what actually lies under the western parts of the icy continent of Antarctica.

There is a hidden world under Antarctica, in a new study, researchers have shown giant ‘wetlands’ 800 metres beneath the Ice in western Antarctica. Thanks to the Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling (WISSARD) project financed by the National Science Foundation (NSF) researchers are one step closer to discovering exactly what lies beneath the thick ice sheets covering most parts of the icy continent.

Reports indicate that Lake Whillans — first discovered in 2007, covering a staggering area of 20sq miles— which lies beneath 800 meters of ice in Western Antarctica is eerily similar to a ‘wetland.’

Researchers hope that further studies will allow them to understand how sea levels rise, and how ice behaves in response to global warming.

“It is amazing to think that we did not know that this lake even existed until a decade ago.,’ said Helen Amanda Fricker of Scripps, who initially discovered Subglacial Lake Whillans in 2007 from satellite data.

‘It is exciting to see such a rich dataset from the lake, and these new data are helping us understand how lakes function as part of the ice-sheet system.”

Researchers now know that Subglacial Lake Shillans is fed by ice ad contains small amounts of seawater from ancient marine sediments which can be found on the seabed of the lake. The water of the lake periodically drains to the ocean through some channels connecting the lake, however, with insufficient energy to carry much sediment.

The new data will allow researcher to better comprehend the extensive biogeochemistry and mechanics of Lake Whillans, but will also help them improve current models of how Antarctic subglacial lake systems interact with the ice located on the surface and the sediments located below it

Three separate papers analyzed the studies obtained in January of 2013, when the WISSARD project managed to successfully drill through the ice sheet reaching Subglacial Lake Whillan, retrieving water and sediment samples from a body of water that had remained in isolation from direct contact with Earths Atmosphere for thousands of years.

Two of the most interesting papers were those published in Geology and the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

According to lead author Alexander Michaud, of Montana State University, they used data taken from a 38-centimeter (15-inch) long core of lake sediment to characterize the water chemistry of the subglacial lake and its sediments. They discovered that lake water primarily originates from melting at the base of the ice sheet covering the subglacial lake and that there was a minor contribution from seawater, trapped in the sediments under the ice during the last interglacial period, a time when the Antarctic ice sheet eventually retreated.

Scientists have found that the ancient, isolated reservoir of ocean water has the ability to affect the biogeochemistry of this lake system.

The second paper published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, lead author Timothy Hodson of Northern Illinois University and his colleagues looked at core sediments taken fro the lake in hopes of discovering more about the relationship of the ice sheet, subglacial hydrology, and underlying sediments. Their discoveries show that while numerous floods pass through the lake every once in a while, the flow of the floods lacks energy in order to erode extensive drainage channels.

Researchers concluded that that the environment beneath the Icy continent is very similar to a wetland within the coastal plain on other parts of the planet.

What we have to understand is that around 170 million years ago, Antarctica was part of the supercontinent called Gondwana. Around 25 million years ago, Antarctica as we know it, gradually broke apart from Gondwana.

According to research, Antarctica was not always cold, dry, and covered in ice sheets. Au contraire, during its long history, Antarctica was located farther north and experienced a tropical or temperate climate, meaning that it was covered in forests, and inhabited by various ancient life forms.