New Scientist and the Relativity Drive

It's hard to get my head around how a pressure on the inside of the resonator could become a force outside the resonator. The article vaguely mentions relativity but doesn't really explain. Do you know the effect that they are talking about. Is it analogous to the pressure on the sail of a sailboat or is it something else. I'm confused.

So he got 250,000 pounds for that?

It is pure BS. He found a government sucker and he embellished his grant application with a thicket of pseudo science that the beurocrats bought hook, line and sinker.

I have a plan, I will teach mice to fly. That should be worth 250,000 pounds.

Once I get the money I will send them a pair of bats(which I will get from their own belfry) to test and ask for more if I have succeeded. If they were dumb enough to fund the emdrive, they have never heard of bats.

Roger, no, I do not know of such an effect. All I know is that resonance or no resonance, you do not get out more than what you put in - actually, you normally get quite a bit less! I think this is just one more of those 'over unity' or 'free energy' scams.

FYI-Regarding coupling of energy from with a resonator to the outside. Optical resonators does this with a beam-splitter which allows say 10% to transmit through the beam and 90% to reflect. Surely there are analagous counterparts like EM tank circuits coupled by inductors.

After reading the linked article, I wouldn't be too hasty in discounting Mr. Shawyer's claim. Apparently he is willing to back up his discovery. Most "snake oil salesmen" would not be so willing to provide the proof. He does have prototypes and he also has the interest of a couple of major governments. I see no reference to "free energy" in his design. Just a more efficient use of energy.

Not hasty at all, I took a full 1/4 second to make my decision.

This is a typical "technical scam" It is like the advance fee scams.

They pait a scenarion and say they have what looks good and ask for $250,000 to research it. After they spend the $250,000 they will find they need to spend another $250,000 to advance on the truth, and so on. All they want is the research fees. An audit will show little done but pay his wages

This is impossible in the framework of Newtonian mechanics, sure. But when dealing with photons traveling at or near light speed... hmm? Who really knows what happens at "relativistic" conditions? It is all theory.

That is how they trick people into giving them funds. Look at the hydrogen fusion scam a few years back.

There are some aspects where all they have are competing theories, but they have a huge body of work on this at very close to lightspeed that says it is a dea end.

In addition, if it were possible, where are the tourists? In stealth mode?

A few years ago no-one realised black holes could explode. Let's sort this one out by letting the scientific method run its course.

These so called research programs are not the scientific method at work. They are the direct analog of crooked door to door roof repairmen selling pensioners work they do not need.

The arbiter of the validity of the work is not capable of climbing up on the roof to see what is good/bad.

In the same manner administrators are gulled into giving grants of 250,000 pounds( the amount varies) for something that any competent researcher could tell him is a total waste of money.

Why is this? The crooks know their craft and write research applications that have a veneer of validity and unless the granting body has some capable research peers to assess the application it can get granted, and many are.

What's the harm? Money is diverted from valid research to feed and cloth charlatans.

That is certainly not the scientific method I know.

here is some scam stuff.

http://www.levity.com/alchemy/nelson2_2.html

Actually, I am working on a couple of drives myself. Perhaps I could get funding for them...

The Darwin Drive.
This one is based on the theory of Evolution. It operates much like a Newman Machine. This drive will constantly evolve itself through natural selection until it has become the ultimate Drive. The power it will generate through its natural selection process (the inital thrust engine is called the Ego Boost) will give it enough thrust to clear Earths gravity. Because it is constantly evolving it will have an endless supply of energy.

Big Bang Drive
This nifty little engine starts off very compressed. It suddenly releases so much energy from an unfathomable source it can power you to the ends of the universe as we know it.

Creation Drive

Based on Creation Theory, we just have to wait until The Supreme Being gets around to creating it. It may take awhile, but it will be one hell of an engine!

I'm also working on a Pavlov Drive. Anyone got any ideas for that?

In his analysis Roger Shawyer neglected the force on the tapered walls of the resonant cavity. However this does not necessarily mean his invention cannot work. After all the Mexican Jumping bean works perfectly well.

I have read the Costella's paper. The mistakes he found in the Roger's theory unfortunately do not explain why it is a fraud and how it is working then. Moreover, Ms. Costella does not address the fundamental controversy (with COM): a number of scalable electromagnetic cavity (resonators) can always be designed for any frequency in such a way that both Surface Currents and Normal Electric + Tangential Magnetic fields are explicitly dominant on one of the walls only. Any professional microwave engineer can easily design a dozen of such high-Q asymmetric cavities for just an hour as I did. That makes the discussion about the force on the side conical walls completely meaningless. I found in the Shawyer's theory a lot of other mistakes (e.g.,related to various Q-factors he introduced) but it does not change the fundamental asymmetry above and resulting non-zero net force integrated rigorously over the cavity forces (using, e.g., any of numerical EM-software or rigorous analytics). Also the concept of group velocity is not required to get the net non-zero force: currents induced in the current-dominant wall interact with the magnetic field and create the ponderomotive force. To the critics saying that since the cavity is closed and so the system is closed and hence violates the COM, I have to remind that one can always make a evanescent hole in the cavity that will not change performance (cavity eigen-frequency can always be tuned back).