The US Department of Defense has issued a contract to physicists, involving the creation of a prototype of an analogue of EmDrive, which, according to scientists, violates the laws of physics.
The EmDrive engine could be one of the greatest breakthroughs in the history of the Earth, or, conversely, one of the greatest scams of our time. Its concept can be described by the phrase "everything ingenious is simple" (of course, assuming that it works at all).
The propulsion system consists of a magnetron and a resonator: outwardly, it resembles an inverted bucket. For the first time this concept was proposed by Briton Roger Scheuer in 1999. According to it, the magnetron generates microwaves, the energy of their oscillations is accumulated in a high-quality resonator, and, according to the creator of EmDrive, a standing wave of electromagnetic oscillations in a closed resonator of a special shape acts as a source of thrust.
Scientists have pointed out that due to the absence of a consumable working medium, EmDrive apparently violates the law of conservation of momentum. At the same time, the insignificant thrust obtained during the tests was often attributed to errors in the calculations.
Nevertheless, now the American defense research agency DARPA has allocated British physicist Michael McCullough and his colleague from Spain $ 1.3 million for computer simulations, as well as the creation of a prototype of an analogue of the "impossible" engine. As the scientist himself says, the movement of the spacecraft in space will become possible even if it has only a current source. In this case, humanity will be able to discover interstellar travel. Scientists expect to receive early results in a year and a half.
Earlier, Michael McCulloch presented his explanation of how EmDrive works, which, however, did not meet with widespread support. It is based on the Unruh effect put forward in the framework of quantum field theory. This is the effect of observing thermal radiation in an accelerating frame of reference in the absence of this radiation in an inertial frame. In other words, if there is only vacuum around a stationary observer, then the accelerating observer sees around himself a lot of particles that are in thermodynamic equilibrium - that is, a warm gas.
It is worth noting that recently another group of scientists proposed a much simpler (albeit no less vague) explanation of the "impossible" engine. The insignificant thrust appearing inside the EmDrive was associated with the interaction between the magnetic field of the cables and amplifier and the magnetic field of the Earth.