NASA Veteran Behind Propellantless Propulsion Drive Announces Major Discovery (thedebrief.org) 259
Longtime Slashdot reader garyisabusyguy shares a report from The Debrief: Dr. Charles Buhler, a NASA engineer and the co-founder of Exodus Propulsion Technologies, has revealed that his company's propellantless propulsion drive, which appears to defy the known laws of physics, has produced enough thrust to counteract Earth's gravity. "The most important message to convey to the public is that a major discovery occurred," Buhler told The Debrief. "This discovery of a New Force is fundamental in that electric fields alone can generate a sustainable force onto an object and allow center-of-mass translation of said object without expelling mass." "There are rules that include conservation of energy, but if done correctly, one can generate forces unlike anything humankind has done before," Buhler added. "It will be this force that we will use to propel objects for the next 1,000 years until the next thing comes."
To document his team's discovery as well as the process behind their work, which Dr. Buhler cautions is in no way affiliated with NASA or the U.S. Government, the outwardly amiable researcher presented his findings at a recent Alternative Propulsion Energy Conference (APEC). Filled with both highly-credentialed career engineers and propulsion hobbyists, APEC is an organization The Debrief once referred to as the World's Most Exclusive (And Strange) Anti-Gravity Club. In conjunction with that presentation, "The Discovery of Propellantless Propulsion: The Direct Conversion of Electrical Energy into Physical Thrust," Dr. Buhler also sat down with APEC co-founder and moderator Tim Ventura to explain how his past in electrostatics, which is his primary area of expertise, ended up being a key component of his discovery of this new force. [...]
Up next, Buhler says his team is seeking funding to test their devices in space to better understand the force at work. "We're hoping to do some demos," said Buhler. "Some space demos. That's what we're trying to get some funding to do. I think that would be a great way to show off the technology." Besides proving once and for all that the force they are seeing is real, the accomplished engineer believes that such tests could encourage other scientists to search for an explanation of what exactly it is they are seeing. "I think it's a good opportunity for people to run these tests, look at them, watch them go in space, watch it move in space, and then say, "what does it imply? What are the implications?'" Until that time, Buhler says he believes his work proves that the force they are seeing is "fundamental" and that understanding it is the next logical step. "You can't deny this," he told Ventura. "There's not a lot to this. You're just charging up Teflon, copper tape, and foam, and you have this thrust."
So, while his team believes their experiments speak for themselves, the veteran scientist says he also believes it is the job of science to analyze and understand this discovery. If successful, he thinks it may even address some of the harder questions in science, including the nature of dark energy or even space/time itself. "It's easy to make these things," he said, "so it's a tool for the scientific community to use to try to explore those hard questions." If there are companies or individuals interested in working with Exodus Propulsion Technologies, Buhler asks that they reach out via their LinkedIn page.
To document his team's discovery as well as the process behind their work, which Dr. Buhler cautions is in no way affiliated with NASA or the U.S. Government, the outwardly amiable researcher presented his findings at a recent Alternative Propulsion Energy Conference (APEC). Filled with both highly-credentialed career engineers and propulsion hobbyists, APEC is an organization The Debrief once referred to as the World's Most Exclusive (And Strange) Anti-Gravity Club. In conjunction with that presentation, "The Discovery of Propellantless Propulsion: The Direct Conversion of Electrical Energy into Physical Thrust," Dr. Buhler also sat down with APEC co-founder and moderator Tim Ventura to explain how his past in electrostatics, which is his primary area of expertise, ended up being a key component of his discovery of this new force. [...]
Up next, Buhler says his team is seeking funding to test their devices in space to better understand the force at work. "We're hoping to do some demos," said Buhler. "Some space demos. That's what we're trying to get some funding to do. I think that would be a great way to show off the technology." Besides proving once and for all that the force they are seeing is real, the accomplished engineer believes that such tests could encourage other scientists to search for an explanation of what exactly it is they are seeing. "I think it's a good opportunity for people to run these tests, look at them, watch them go in space, watch it move in space, and then say, "what does it imply? What are the implications?'" Until that time, Buhler says he believes his work proves that the force they are seeing is "fundamental" and that understanding it is the next logical step. "You can't deny this," he told Ventura. "There's not a lot to this. You're just charging up Teflon, copper tape, and foam, and you have this thrust."
So, while his team believes their experiments speak for themselves, the veteran scientist says he also believes it is the job of science to analyze and understand this discovery. If successful, he thinks it may even address some of the harder questions in science, including the nature of dark energy or even space/time itself. "It's easy to make these things," he said, "so it's a tool for the scientific community to use to try to explore those hard questions." If there are companies or individuals interested in working with Exodus Propulsion Technologies, Buhler asks that they reach out via their LinkedIn page.
If it can counter act Earth gravity (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: If it can counter act Earth gravity (Score:3)
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TFA says that only the part that actually does the magic can generate 1g of thrust but adding stuff to it like landing gear, gyroscopes, control fins, etc would be too much.
I don't know why he cares about generating 1g of trust on earth's surface anyway. Generating a tiny fracton of that in space over a long period of time is fantastic, if he could really do it, which, well, we all remember the EmDrive, which they sent up to space last year but never actually managed to test somehow, but which has recieved
Re: If it can counter act Earth gravity (Score:2)
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1g ... one gravity. Earth gravity acceleration.
Not "grams".
Re: If it can counter act Earth gravity (Score:2)
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He has problems with "physics". I told him more or less the same thing several times.
Switch off the engine, and then get perpetual energy for ever. That is so idiotic it is beyond believe. Because that logically would work with any kind of engine. And we all know: it does not. Lolz.
Waddya mean? Here's this new force of nature in action https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] ;^)
Measuring thrust in G's is a bit of weirdness too.
This has all of the earmarks of a bog standard 21st century grift. We can expect one of those 3D animations on Youtube to "prove" how this thing works.
Re: If it can counter act Earth gravity (Score:4)
Sophons (Score:2)
Re: If it can counter act Earth gravity (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: If it can counter act Earth gravity (Score:4, Insightful)
Or put it on the outside of a wheel, make it go in circles, then power a generator off it, and tap off some of the power for the propellentless drive...
And sell the infinite free energy at a profit.
But it's NOT a perpetual motion machine, see, it's a magical physics drive so it MIGHT work, because he left that bit off so it's OK it might be in flagrant violation of the laws of Thermodynamics (as well as conservation of momentum).
The whole reactionless drive actually being a thinly disguised perpetual motion machine makes people so angry I've had it in my sig for months. I've had lots of weird counter arguments which range from "perpetual motion machines don't exist so you're wrong" (which is kind of missing the point) to simple applications of Newton's laws being met with a flurry of invective as if angry, rude shouting can overturn the laws of physics.
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Why does Thermodynamics require humiliation as its last resort, and was Eddington perhaps making a snide criticism of thermodynamics and its ultimately human psychological underpinning?
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Minor pronoun antecedent problem I suppose.
He's saying if your theory violates the laws of thermodynamics then your theory (i.e. you) will collapse in humiliation. Thermodynamics will always win.
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Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.
Sir Arthur Eddington
English astronomer (1882 - 1944)
What if violations of thermodynamics are too strange for your poor brains to imagine, yet?
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What if violations of thermodynamics are too strange for your poor brains to imagine, yet?
We can imagine all sorts of violations of the laws of thermodynamics. Space opera sci-fi runs on them, for example. The problem isn't a lack of imagination, it's that we can see what the consequences of our imagination are and the results are absurd.
I am very very confident that perpetual motion machines cannot exist in this universe, and to say otherwise is possibly the most extraordinary of claims. It is therefore go
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Universe itself seems to be perpetually in motion.
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There already are violations of laws of thermodynamics, we just overlook them at the given scale the problem occurs.
Particles in a 100% sealed vacuum spontaneously appear. Heisenberg's principle also comes into play here.
How do these randomly appearing particles not violate the first law? Where does their heat energy come from if there was nothing there prior? How did they get there?
Re: If it can counter act Earth gravity (Score:5, Informative)
I love how your sig says "unite behind the science" and then say... well, all of that!
The first law of thermodynamics is the law of conservation of energy. That has literally everything to do with all of physics everywhere. It is baked into every physical law we have described at the deepest level. They are all time invariant so energy must be conserved.
I'm curious as to how you think you can just pick and choose which bits of physics apply, and why you think loud, angry responses make that so. But do go on.
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Omg this is fucking hilarious.
If only there was an internet where you could check this stuff before embarrassing yourself. The train you are getting modded down is because you are saying wrong things and I'm getting modded up for saying things that are actually informative.
Anyway here's some internet for you:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
That's not conservation of energy, that's about equilibrium.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
That is about conservation of energy, it says so on the first line. Here let
Re: If it can counter act Earth gravity (Score:4, Informative)
That might be the most myopic description I've ever heard of thermodynamics. That's like saying the field of electronics is all about how electrons move through copper.
Thermodynamics is an enormous field of which gas dynamics is a very tiny fraction. More generally, thermodynamics describes how energy moves between its various forms, what factors affect those changes in form, and the fundamental laws that govern those transformations. I would even hazard to say that description itself may be too narrow.
From the scant details given, it seems the technology discussed here is about converting the energy stored in electrical fields to kinetic energy. That very much involves thermodynamics, and at least the very first law of thermodynamics, that energy cannot be created nor destroyed, but only change forms.
Re: If it can counter act Earth gravity (Score:3)
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I think propellentless and taking no energy are very different things.
I disagree, because the claim isn't that propellentless requires no energy it's that if you are given a propellentless drive, you can construct a machine which outputs more energy than is required to run it. This means a propellentless drive is equivalent to a perpetual motion machine, so since the latter cannot exist, the former cannot as well.
Here's the thing. Assume you have a drive that produces 1N per Watt of power with no propellant
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exactly, you could spin up a flywheel, then slow it down with regenerative braking and extract all that free energy.
What did you use to spin up the flywheel?
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That's an extreme formulation. It does imply that certain efficiencies would be equivalent to perpetual motion, but if the amount of energy required were sufficient to offset the gain in relativistic mass & potential energy I don't believe the argument fails. And it might be able to use half that energy, as the contradiction doesn't occur until it returns to the origin. And there's no thermodynamic reason that staying stable in a gravitational field should require any energy. (Anything in orbit is an
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That's an extreme formulation. It does imply that certain efficiencies would be equivalent to perpetual motion
It does imply that exactly. Because whatever the N/W efficiency you can always crank v higher until you go net positive. Except of course there is an upper limit on v, namely c. You can work out the number of N/W required to break even at the speed of light. Turns out that's exactly the same number of newtons per watt you get for just blasting that many watts of photons out the back (photons have mo
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Re: If it can counter act Earth gravity (Score:2)
I generally agree with you, but the issue I'm having with your example is that it starts with something producing a certain amount of force per watt (e.g., 1 N per W). Any example starting with that will run into the paradox that you're referring to. So the more general claim is that it's impossible to create a machine that produces a constant force per unit energy expended, correct? Are the inventors claiming their "drive" can do that? If so, I don't need any more evidence to decide that it's total nonse
Re: If it can counter act Earth gravity (Score:2)
Apologies, I said "per unit energy" there and I meant "per unit power". Point still stands, if that's what they're claiming, no more evidence needed.
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Or put it on the outside of a wheel, make it go in circles, then power a generator off it, and tap off some of the power for the propellentless drive...
And sell the infinite free energy at a profit.
But it's NOT a perpetual motion machine, see, it's a magical physics drive so it MIGHT work, because he left that bit off so it's OK it might be in flagrant violation of the laws of Thermodynamics (as well as conservation of momentum).
The whole reactionless drive actually being a thinly disguised perpetual motion machine makes people so angry I've had it in my sig for months.
Your sig has just had new life breathed into it. First thing I thought of is that if this thing has 1G of thrust, it would be unencumbered by earth's gravity so would escape earth's gravity well. But that's what happens when we use made up terms for thrust. People just never give up on that perpetual motion stuff. This is the 21st century people, can't we at least make new claims based on harnessing zero point energy? I guess he's basing his "new force of nature" on the silly old lab experiments of levita
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Look at the bold part in the quote: how the funk would that work?
It wouldn't. That's the point.
IF the propellentless drive worked, you could get free energy. You cannot get free energy. Therefore the propellentles drive cannot exist.
Anyway, I know this will be met with a flurry of invective, which you will turn around so that somehow you no longer accept the thing you literally pointed out to me (which you seemed to not realise was precisely my point) and somehow come round to the conclusion that propellent
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Money, of course. It's much easier to string people along by saying "if only we had $30,000,000 to launch the full-scale version!"
It's a contemporary version of a "Dean Drive", with enough of a sketchy and poorly reviewed patent to encourage people who crave a propellant free drive for use in space.
Re:If it can counter act Earth gravity (Score:4)
I propose calling this sort of thing an N3 drive, in recognition of the fact that what the various inventors are really claiming is a means of bypassing Newton's third law.
Nice to see that TFA follows the common science-reporting practice of telling you next to nothing about how this new breakthrough is supposed to work while going on at length about its myriad benefits.
Re:If it can counter act Earth gravity (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, Newton made law that says propellant free drives do not exist?
It's an obvious corollary of the maths, yes.
How does a Mag Lev Train work then?
It pushes off the maglev track, which is bolted to the Earth, so the Earth is it's reaction mass (i.e. propellent).
How does an MHD submarine drive work?
same as a regular one, but it uses MHD to exert a force on the water, not a propeller. The water is the reaction mass, i.e. propellent.
How the fuck does a railgun work?
The rail (and whatever the rail is bolted to) is the reaction mass.
Newton never made/found/imagined a law of physics that forbids propellant free engines.
Apart from the third law. You know the equal and opposite reaction one. Without reaction mass (i.e. propellent) there is no reaction.
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I'm honestly not sure. I think fundamentally there is a lot of confusion mixing up common and technical terms and reaching the wrong conclusions.
I'm trying to use the term "reaction mass" consistently because that's what matters. Propellant is the only option for reaction mass for travel through free space. For rockets, propellant and traction mass are synonymous if course. Naturally there wouldn't be any controversy if people were talking strictly about propellent, but I would think that was obvious given
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As described the device violates energy-momentum conservation (the relativistic combination of momentum and energy), one of the most tested laws of physics, at scales from subatomic particles to planetary motion (maybe to galaxy clusters, but dark energy / dark matter *could* be viewed as a failure of that law - but most likely are not). That is an extraordinary claim and re
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In his description in the video at 1:08:09 left since he does not show
Re:If it can counter act Earth gravity (Score:4, Informative)
in recognition of the fact that what the various inventors are really claiming is a means of bypassing Newton's third law.
> Oh, Newton made law that says propellant free drives do not exist?
Yes, Newton' third law: every action has an equal and opposite reaction. In physics, usually phrased as "law of conservation of momentum": if you push mass in one direction, you have to push other mass in the other direction such that the sum of the momentum is zero.
> How does a Mag Lev Train work then?
Magnetic fields push down on the Earth.
> How does an MHD submarine drive work?
Electromagnetic forces push water backwards
> How the fuck does a railgun work?
Electromagnetic fields push the acceleration magnets backwards
> Newton never made/found/imagined a law of physics that forbids propellant free engines.
He did; Newton's third law.
> What the funk are you learning in your schools? Physics.
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There isn't much to push off in space. It seems fairly obvious to me. Taking it to space rules out a whole slew of Earth related forces that skeptics would assert this is using in some manner such as the Earth's magnetic field and so on.
Of course given that there is a giant interconnected mess of gravitational pulls throughout our solar system and the galaxy I've always wondered that nobody seemed to be looking at pushing/pulling on them in a more serious way than old school newtonian senses.
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Of course given that there is a giant interconnected mess of gravitational pulls throughout our solar system and the galaxy I've always wondered that nobody seemed to be looking at pushing/pulling on them in a more serious way than old school newtonian senses.
Because that doesn't exist. People are already making the most of what the unintuitive ends of Newtonion physics has to offer, using gravitational slingshots, the Oberth effect, Hohmann transfers and so on. There isn't really anything else left.
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Does your sig actually say more about you than about perpetual motion machines?
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It does: my sig has nothing to say about perpetual motion machines. They don't exist, I assume everyone knows this.
I think the mental gymnastics people (particularly angel'o'sphere) employ to avoid understanding that an EM drive is equivalent to a perpetual motion machine is funny. That is indeed saying something about me.
Re: If it can counter act Earth gravity (Score:2)
Agreed and this point is exactly my problem with one statement in the article:
"The magnitude [10 mN] is not important, really, since anything above zero would work in space!"
Actually it is important because it's easy to get fooled by external influences when the effect is tiny. If he was measuring 50 N of force it's easy to eliminate subtle testing artifacts, e.g., interactions with Earth's magnetic field. So in this case either scaling up to larger forces or getting into space seem like the only options.
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If you mean Pons and Fleischman by "the cold fusion guys", I am convinced they were honest. They just did really bad science there, so they were also arrogant and stupid. But they followed sound scientific practices by publishing everything, so while they messed up, they remained scientists. But here is anther "cold fusion" guy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] That one is a scammer.
In the case at hand, there are tell-tales that point to "scam", in particular the absence of sufficiently peer-reviewed publ
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"In this house we obey the law of thermodynamics!"
- Homer
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Publication? (Score:3)
OK .. how about publishing in a peer reviewed journal. They even accept totally faked results these days (see below references), so why not this?
Top science journals accepting fake results:
https://www.vice.com/en/articl... [vice.com]
https://www.theverge.com/2024/... [theverge.com]
https://www.chemistryworld.com... [chemistryworld.com]
Prove It (Score:5, Insightful)
Show us the evidence.
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YHBT
HTH
HAND
P.S. Triggered much?
Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
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too good to be true? (Score:2)
I'm skeptical for 2 reasons:
How could we not have detected this effect earlier? Are humans just that stupid?
If the key to interstellar propulsion is this simple and efficient then it does invoke the Fermi paradox. Where are all the aliens zipping about on static electricity powered ships?
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Generally humans are stupid and only about 20% are accessible to rational argument. That means if a scam or delusion is presented convincingly, about 80% of the population have no rational defenses. They may or may not have their own irrational convictions that disagree with the scam or delusion, but that is all that protects them from falling victim.
As to the subject, especially engineers have fallen for kidding themselves hard on some phenomena they observed and failed to do proper verification and anal
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You can only give a theoretical explanation, if you have one.
Pons and Fleischman did not have one. So they just published their results. And got shit stormed for it. They did not even ask for funds. They only published their results. And: at my university, KiT, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology: we duplicated he results just finely. Like many other institutes did. BUT: we do not know what went on.
And if you think I'm an idiot. Up to you. I was half a dozen times present when we did it. So I saw it with my o
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Both Pons and Fleischman are working for the US Navy.
Given that Fleishman died 12 years ago, that's quite impressive. Almost as impressive as continuing to wok age 97, but not quite.
Pons relinquished his US citizenship in the late 90s and is now 80. He ain't working for the US Navy that's for sure.
Though it does not surprise me that having latched onto this crank drive after the crank EM drive, you're also a proponent of cold fusion. Any other fringe theories?
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I think a lot of people don't really understand the difference between incomplete and wrong, or that right and wrong is not binary but a continuum, see for example Asimov's "relativity of wrong".
That because physics is "wrong" you might be able to do anything, whereas the errors are actually going to be at the margins far away from what you can easily measure. Astronomical scales, vast energies, that kind of thing. Not human scale things at human scale energies.
I think people imagine that every time somethi
Re: too good to be true? (Score:2)
No brakes means they believe in stopping. No, that alien civilization is out there on their transports, just waiting for the juice to run dry, and declaring whatever asteroid or comet that they chance upon as their new ship/home
AI (Score:2)
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Nah, you just reverse the polarity to stop/reverse. Its a tractor beam too!
April 1st (Score:5, Funny)
They missed the posting date on this story
I guess they figure (Score:4, Funny)
Given there are people who buy into cryptocurrency, there are people who will believe in anything.
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Apparently only about 10-15% of the population are able to fact-check themselves ("independent thinkers") and apparently overall only 20% can be convinced by rational argument (the independent thinkers included). Hence you have 80% that cannot fact-check at all. These people just select opinions presented to them based on non-rational criteria or sometimes come up with their own. Then they hallucinate that they have actual facts and often aggressively defend against any and all attempts to explain to them t
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Well crypto is real in that you can pay an excessive amount of money for the ability to prove you paid an excessive amount of money for an ugly picture of an ape. And you can prove forever more g that you wasted that money.
So crypto is useful in the sense that it allows idiots to prove they are idiots mathematically.
Buhler (Score:4, Funny)
Smells like static equilibrium to me (Score:5, Insightful)
This part of the article jumped out at me (without propellant!)
That really doesn't make sense...unless the device is interacting with its test chamber. Then it's in a simple static (electric) equilibrium, [wikipedia.org] an electric field pulling it toward part of the test chamber.
Violating conservation of energy should be an indication that something is wrong. Unfortunately, I think this is something all emissionless drives do, if you point two opposite each other and tie them together. If they don't emit anything, the energy going into them is vanishing.
Why exactly... (Score:5, Insightful)
... are we putting blatant pseudoscience on Slashdot? Are we becoming Natural News? Ir InfoWars maybe?
Re: Why exactly... (Score:2)
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Why does mainstream science rely on defensive emotional attacks when its assumptions are questioned?
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Probably because the credulous cranks won't listen no matter what so we may as well have a laugh at your expense.
Out of interest what non mainstream science are you also behind?
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The same reason it has always been done, and also the same reason that it has increased since the last sale of the site. Anything we will argue about creates more pages on Slashdot and gives it more currency which means more search hits which means more ad impressions.
Hmmm (Score:2)
The conservation laws are statistical, at least to a degree. Local apparent violations can be OK, provided the system as a whole absolutely complies.
There's no question that if the claim was as appears that the conservation laws would be violated system-wide, which is a big no-no.
So we need to look for alternative explanations.
The most obvious one is that the results aren't being honestly presented, that there's so much wishful thinking that the researchers are forcing the facts to fit their theory. (A tend
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Indeed. Especially
The most obvious one is that the results aren't being honestly presented, that there's so much wishful thinking that the researchers are forcing the facts to fit their theory. (A tendency so well known, that it's even been used as the basis for fictional detectives.)
is a hot candidate. Remember the "EM Drive" and cold fusion, for example.
One thing is missing from your list: Direct fraud. See, for example, the Rossie "E-Cat".
Great, if true (Score:2)
This would be great news, if true. But you can prove this without going to space. Hang it on a cable, like a pendulum. Turn it on. If the cable is no longer vertical, you have thrust.
Can't do that? Then it doesn't work. Simple and cheap to test.
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Not quite. You can verify it does not work that way, but if it works, it may well be something else than actual thrust.
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actually it's a kid's science experiment to do just that by hanging a properly shaped spike from a metal wire and applying EMF, ionized air provides thrust with these kind of "lifters", also can be done as a ion wind rotor. No unknown physics are at work, been done since 18th century 8D
And another propulsion scam (Score:2)
Lets see how long this one lasts. "Defies the laws of Physics" is just an alternate formulation for "scam" (unless extraordinary evidence is presented). Unfortunately, too many people do not understand basic Physics and are willing to believe any and all crap, so this one will run a while, I expect.
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It is not. Next dumb suggestion?
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Tell you what.
I offer to make a bet with you. I bet that in 5 years time they will not have demonstrated thrust in a way which would actually work for space travel.
Odds are 1000 to 1. If I win you pay me $1000, if you win I pay you a million.
Would you take that bet?
So can I (Score:2)
I rubbed a balloon on my head and it sticks to the ceiling... I counteracted Earth's gravity with the electric field!
Send me money please
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Not until you can do it with AI. Then I'll join your series A for at least a hundred million.
Bullshit. (Score:3)
EmDrive 2.0! Now with solar freakin roadways! (Score:2)
EMDrive quackery (Score:2)
Anyone remember the EMDrive?
https://www.reddit.com/r/EmDri... [reddit.com]
This Buhler guy is even worse than the EMDrive guy, because he doesnâ(TM)t even attempt to offer an explanation about the theory or apparatus.
They're very close (Score:2)
They've almost achieved it. They've made propulsion-less propellant .. so now all they have got to do is figure out how to swap the propellant for propulsion and vice versa and they're in business.
Anyone find his bio or CV? (Score:2)
It's confusing because of non-unique names, but I haven't been able to find a CV, bio, or publication list... nothing to confirm that he is at NASA, was at NASA, or that he's the top electrostatics expert at NASA.
Unlikely and Likely Dubious (Score:2)
Scientists usually seek grants, not investors during early research (if ever).
It sounds inexpensive enough to pay for and for others to replicate out of pocket.
Put it on a scale and point it up to see if its weight decreases then flip it over and see if its weight increases (use non-magnetic scale).
Obviously, we would really love to have such a technology.
If it's a potential new force then physicists by the hundreds will be looking into it.
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>If it's a potential new force then physicists by the hundreds will be looking into it.
It's not, they won't, and whoever gave a doctorate to this guy should consider revoking it.
There's a difference between "hey, that's odd, I can't explain that (yet)" and "I see something that's counter to all known physics and almost certainly due to experimental error, so I assume physics is wrong!". If your reaction falls into the latter group, you are a crank and a pseudo-scientist, regardless of any prior achievem
Step right up! (Score:2)
"It's fundamental! You can't deny this! There's not a lot to this. You're just charging up Teflon(R), copper tape, and foam, and you have this thrust." So amazing, it's amazing. It's fundamentally funda-undamental.
Now off to space using old-school anti-gravity in search of perpetuum! It's the only thing remaining that I need to RU-U-ULE THE WO-O-O-ORLD! Is my tie straight?
I actually watched the video (Score:3)
So demo it on earth. (Score:3)
All you have to do is show me that you can have something pop up of its own accord and Get tugged out of a power Jack because it's thrust is so powerfully that it loses its power once the plug is pulled.
Do that in front of a bunch of reporters and VCR will be begging you to accept their money.
This sounds fishy because he won't even do a half-cooked demo that shows thrust in a lab environment.
Re: (Score:2)
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Same for a paper airplane. You give it some kinetic energy and gravitational potential energy and it'll keep footing until those run out.
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You mean the updrafts created by the energy from sunlight?
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I've not only watched it, I've done it personally. The birds aren't counteracting gravity, the hot air is. The birds are falling, slowly, with respect to the air.
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You're correct. Gs are a measure of acceleration, not of thrust.
I took the statement to be that the device could lift itself.
I also took the statement to be bullshit, ofc.
I could imagine a way for the thing to work if I believed in gravitons. If it took in electricity and somehow emitted them then it could be conserving energy and still not emitting anything detectable.
I don't think that's happening. I'd love to be wrong but so far it's all just unsubstantiated claims.
Even if it is happening, the unverifiab