Spacely Space Sprockets..and other tricks

NASA finds unusual effect.

If you read the article it strikes me as odd that the writer claims that "a microwave thruster system that requires no propellant does indeed generate a small amount of thrust" and then goes on to state that "solar power can be used to produce the microwaves"(which ostensibly provide propulsion). Solar energy is the initiating propellant. At any rate, it all seems very odd indeed as all things involving quantum mechanics are.

A truly geeky quote:

"Test results indicate that the RF [radio frequency] resonant cavity thruster design, which is unique as an electric propulsion device, is producing a force that is not attributable to any classical electromagnetic phenomenon and, therefore, is potentially demonstrating an interaction with the quantum vacuum virtual plasma..."

Those darned virtual particles, now you can measure something about them, now you cannot. I need a multiverse expert to chime in and expain to me just where that virtual stuff comes from and where it goes. I suspect that it is another dimension or universe that we cannot hope to enter save for mathematically.

The measured effects are still really small. Two separate teams are off by a factor of ten. But, as proof of concept, it seems to pass muster. One has to wonder just how to scale things up to power spacecraft. Will it be simple scaling? Will it be process refinement? Will it be some of both? I would wager that the answer--if it is going to be forthcoming--will involve both scale and process.

It never ceases to amaze me that applications of quantum mechanics are thought impossible when the various predictions of quantum mechanics have been experimentally confirmed to the absolute limit of our current means to test those predictions.

I would be really impressed if we could actually warp space-time or open up wormholes on a scale large enough to be useful for something. Only really massive objects can appreciably warp space-time..might some form of virtual gravity also be able to illicit such an effect? Wormholes--at least as I am familiar with the concept--potentially take far too much energy in this universe to be technologically feasible. Might some variation of quantum mechanics be able to exploit the virtual particle/energy(vacuum fluctuation) or multiverse theory overcome what might not be a true law of nature, and more of a local ordinance?

I do not profess to even know enough about such matters as to venture a guess. The universe we all claim to know is weirder than we know. Other universes are almost certainly going to seem weirder still to those that do not inhabit them. Of course the last sentence is pure speculation. The sentence preceding that one is proving a much tougher nut to crack. This is why I live for science. We live in a wonderfully weird place. A place where out simian brains are not especially well equipped to handle problems very far above that of surviving on the savannah.

I am still fascinated that Newton's work preceded that of Darwin's and Wallace's by a couple of hundred years. Humanity must have had blinders on. I fear that we do still.