Potentially good news for those who want to zip around our solar system, and beyond, at speeds approaching that of light -- and maybe even faster.
NASA, according to NASASpaceFlight.com, is quietly claiming to have successfully tested a revolutionary new means of space travel that could one day allow for such insane speed, and to have done it in a hard vacuum like that of outer space for the first time.
The technology is based on the electromagnetic drive, or EM drive.
The science behind the EM drive is, well, complicated to say the least, but the basic idea is to convert electrical energy into thrust without propellant (the fuel in rockets), which should be impossible because it violates the law of conservation of momentum. That law states that momentum can only be changed by one of the forces described by Newton's laws of motion -- that's where propellant normally comes in with traditional rockets.
If you want to dive into the "hows" and "whys" of all this, they're discussed at length -- by amateur enthusiasts as well as Ph.Ds and one of the NASA engineers actually working on the EM drive -- on this NASASpaceFlight.com forum.
Scientists from the US, UK and China have demonstrated the EM drive over the past 15 years or so, but it's been controversial, since as mentioned above, the EM drive would seem to violate classical physics. NASA's tests in conditions that mimic outer space, however, bring a new sense of possibility to electromagnetic propulsion.
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