We are sorry EmDrive fans, it looks like the boffins have confirmed that the “impossible” engine is indeed impossible, as it has failed all tests that were developed to evaluate whether or not the concept can actually produce any thrust. Three individual teams of university researchers at TU Dresden and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology can now confirm beyond any doubt that the EmDrive doesn’t work.
The EmDrive is a concept design that’s supposedly able to generate tiny amounts of thrust, of the level of 0.02 N, thanks to the reflection of microwaves inside a closed asymmetrical chamber. Theoretically, this would happen without the need for any fuel or any form of energy consumption, so it could be practically useful for very long and lengthy space voyages. Remember, that 0.02 N could accumulate and add up with time, so a spaceship using a large array of EmDrives would accelerate constantly.
Most importantly though, if the EmDrive worked, it would violate the law of conservation of momentum, among others. Based on the most recent and quite definitive test results, we won’t have to scrap our physics books just yet. The scientists have measured again and again, and the results of the three individual studies in March 2021 are the following:
- “all devices showed no net thrust within our resolution at the Nanonewton range”
- “our tests reveal the presence of mechanical artifacts but no thrust”
- “we found no thrust values within a wide frequency band including several resonance frequencies”
As it seems, the previous hopeful findings that “fooled” NASA and DARPA into spending more of their R&D budget on the EmDrive were nothing but false positives, and the new tests took diligent care of external factors that could interfere with the results. Our guess is that this concept will just vanish now and all of the associated test rigs will get scrapped. The EmDrive has been finally declared dead.
