Much has been said about the EM Drive, a propulsion system that doesn’t use propellant (very simply put), and recently researchers in China have claimed to have a working model, despite the general consensus among experts about how such a device is theoretically impossible. As previously explored, the EM Drive breaks the principles of Newton’s third law of motion — because the electromagnetic thrusts it supposedly generates by bouncing microwaves inside a cavity doesn’t produce an equal and opposite action-reaction.
However, researchers from the Center for Philosophy of Sciences of the University of Lisbon, Portugal say that there might be an overlooked quantum physics concept that could make the EM Drive possible. In a study published in The Journal of Applied Physical Science International, researchers José Croca and Paulo Castro argued that the pilot wave theory could help to explain the EM Drive’s impossible behavior and even make it more powerful. The same idea was put forward in a NASA Eagleworks research paper published in 2016,
“We have found that applying a pilot wave theory to NASA’s EM drive frustum [or cone], we could explain its thrust without involving any external action applied to the system, as Newton’s third law would require,” Castro told Science Alert. According to the pilot wave theory, particles occupy an exact position at all times, which runs counter to the more widely accepted Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics that says particles don’t have precise locations unless otherwise observed — part of what’s called the particle-wave duality.
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