China takes the leap: Emdrive aka Infinite Improbability Drive now in development

While the rest of the world was in some kind of mass coma over the past year, China decided to have a hand at building the highly controversial Emdrive (electromagnetic drive) -- an engine that uses microwaves to transform electrical energy into thrust, all in a comparably light-weight, efficient package. The end result could mean 41 day journeys to Mars, not to mention terrestrial vehicle propulsion and satellite applications. Perpetual motion malarkey you say? British scientist and originator of the concept, Roger Shawyer of Satellite Propulsion Research Ltd. (SPR), assures you it's nothing of the kind, and Chinese Professor Yang Juan concurs. Research headed by Juan at Northwestern Polytechnical University (NPU) in Xi'an commenced in June 2007, and a thruster now being built based on Shawyer's theories is scheduled for completion by the end of this year. Meanwhile in the US: cue the sound of crickets.

[Via Wired]

[Alex Terry @ Sep 25th 2008 5:09AM]

Am I the only one thinking... mmm Landspeeder

[Bobby @ Sep 25th 2008 6:00AM]

the video of fully working version for $700 bln

[ArcticFox @ Sep 25th 2008 6:01AM]

Cant have a landspeeder without antigravity/repulsors lifting it up off the air. Youd just have a car without a combustion engine.

[Mike10010100 @ Sep 25th 2008 6:10AM]

Finally! It's 2008 and we STILL don't have ion drives. What have we been doing for the last quarter century?

[Bobby @ Sep 25th 2008 6:31AM]

That right ArcticFox and Meizu One will work as remote for this thing

[Unknown @ Sep 25th 2008 8:03AM]

Ion drives have been around for a little while; punch in Deep Space 1 on wikipedia.

[Martin @ Sep 25th 2008 8:57AM]

Amazing! With 1GW of power you can get a EM-Thrust of about 3 Newtons. That's almost enough to keep my iPhone hovering. And you only need a large nuclear power plant for that!

[Ignatius @ Sep 25th 2008 8:54AM]

Well, we know the US has been quite busy blowing up 3rd world countries.

[avester @ Sep 25th 2008 5:11AM]

Infinite Improbability Drive sounds way cooler than moonladder

[neofolklore @ Sep 25th 2008 4:34PM]

much like that RPG: "Infinite Undiscovery"
translation: not finding shit

[avester @ Sep 25th 2008 5:11AM]

And to continue with the puns, 42-day trips would suit better.

[Muhammad-Oli @ Sep 25th 2008 5:12AM]

Looks like something straight out of 1923.

[Nick @ Sep 25th 2008 6:38AM]

They've probably been playing Bioshock.

[fanman @ Sep 25th 2008 7:57AM]

That's roughly the period that Britain and China invented everything else.

[collegekid13 @ Sep 25th 2008 5:19AM]

wait, thats state-of-the-art. that looks like a museum peice

[shimmy shimmy yah @ Sep 25th 2008 5:20AM]

hmm maybe some Australian metals in there somewhere... go Australia!

[avester @ Sep 25th 2008 5:21AM]

http://emdrive.com/images/fig01.jpg

Oh wow, first diagram that I can understand.

[gad get @ Sep 25th 2008 5:34AM]

I see....

[joe23521 @ Sep 25th 2008 10:48AM]

OH...now I get it.

[rita hainsworth @ Sep 25th 2008 5:23AM]

Ipod killer

[avester @ Sep 25th 2008 5:25AM]

Genius song selecting algorythm is quite close to Infinite Improbability Drive...

[OneLove @ Sep 25th 2008 12:29PM]

baby killer

[Mark @ Sep 25th 2008 1:33PM]

Cribrobber.

[jatoac @ Sep 25th 2008 5:31AM]

plasma drives are not ready yet and they started to work on this... hopefully NASA will get the plasma drives ready in time for the planned Mars trip...

[aeth @ Sep 25th 2008 5:41AM]

Where's the source of brownian motion?

[brett @ Sep 25th 2008 6:34AM]

Miralax.

[juk @ Sep 25th 2008 6:56AM]

A good vindaloo gets the brownians in motion for me.

[happy_penguin @ Sep 25th 2008 10:20AM]

The constant drone of "America sucks" is all the rage on teh internets. It isn't enough that everyone else hates us, we have to hate ourselves. I'm completely fucking sick of it.

Yeah it's true that production is a source of wealth. Someone once told me about an article he read which said that the only two ways to create true new wealth is manufacturing and agriculture. I don't know who said this but I believe it. By exporting our manufacturing capabilities we are bankrupting our country. Bring it home.

[Imran @ Sep 25th 2008 5:47AM]

Well they're working on the iPhone in the US.... That's something, isn't it, Engadget?

[gad get @ Sep 25th 2008 6:03AM]

Let up a bit on America, Engadget. The U.S. has enough to deal with. It's been very busy for many years, melting down vast quantities of iron, and molding a giant wrench that would be big enough to throw into the gears of the world economy. I mean, how much more can you really expect from one nation?

[Sisyphus @ Sep 25th 2008 7:51AM]

Well gad get,

Since production is the source of prosperity, I'd say if we were indeed making that wrench we wouldn't be in this shit-hole.

[happy_penguin @ Sep 25th 2008 10:22AM]

Damn dim comments. Sorry about this repeat as I put it in the wrong place before.


The constant drone of "America sucks" is all the rage on teh internets. It isn't enough that everyone else hates us, we have to hate ourselves. I'm completely fucking sick of it.

Yeah it's true that production is a source of wealth. Someone once told me about an article he read which said that the only two ways to create true new wealth is manufacturing and agriculture. I don't know who said this but I believe it. By exporting our manufacturing capabilities we are bankrupting our country. Bring it home.

[loosely_coupled @ Sep 26th 2008 2:38AM]

No, People (including Americans) don't hate America, they hate the inept American government, particularly Bush and Cheney.
Bush has been a total disaster! The Iraq war was completely unnecessary, led to the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians, and people are now realizing just how costly it is going to be in financial terms -- in the range of $600-800 BILLION by the end of it. Bush destroyed American credibility and moral standing in the world, disrespected all of our friends and allies, and cost the nation hundreds of billions in tax cuts to corporations and the top 1%. Due to the apathy and laziness of most of America, they let him basically shred the constitution and the bill of rights, and throw out the basic principles and foundations of country. He led a vast expansion of the executive branch and domestic security agencies and continuously pushed to evade proper judicial and legislative oversight. There are many examples of this abuse of power, from the dragnet domestic surveillance to abusing executive privilege, abusing presidential signing statements, abusing national security letters, trying to revoke the rights afforded by the Geneva conventions, politicizing and corrupting the justice department, attempting to skirt executive oversight and keep material out of the national archives, secret meetings on energy and domestic policy, illegitimate editing and manipulation of foreign intelligence in the vice presidents office, the politicization and manipulation of the EPA, NASA, NIH and other national scientific and medical agencies in order to fit right-wing ideology, etc. And now you can add partial responsibility for the financial crisis, in addition to the rest of the "free market" republicans, for fifteen years of banking deregulation that got us into this mess..

[Klebbentor @ Sep 25th 2008 5:48AM]

It looks like a garbage disposal.

[rita hainsworth @ Sep 25th 2008 5:51AM]

It's been confirmed that this is the laptop version.

[Darwin @ Sep 25th 2008 5:52AM]

Also cue the arrogant technical-types who will blabber about how this whole thing is snake oil and doesn't stand the test of physics, using as evidence their own -relatively- deep understanding of the matter and conveniently discarding another scientist's significantly deeper understanding of it.
I say to those of you boosting your egos by trampling another's works, "Dude, cut that shit out and let them build it!"

[MaxPower @ Sep 25th 2008 7:22AM]

If you label everyone who tries to inform you about something arrogant you must believe alot of silly things.

Actually looking at the paper Shawyer published in newscience here:
http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/av/shawyertheory.pdf
and looking at figure 2.4 there is a problem immediately apparent here. This figure shows the path of a wave bouncing off the walls of the waveguide and what should be the force addition below. What is missing here is the force imparted on the side walls towards the right. This force will balance out the "thrust" force that is supposed to make this thing work. Instead of microwaves think of it in terms of particles; the addition of forces bouncing off the walls is what causes pressure. If you were to make a conical shaped pressure chamber and pressurize it would you expect it to suddenly start moving?

[MaxPower @ Sep 25th 2008 7:26AM]

If you label everyone who tries to inform you about something arrogant you must believe alot of silly things.

Actually looking at the paper Shawyer published in newscience here:
http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/av/shawyertheory.pdf

and looking at figure 2.4 there is a problem immediately apparent here. This figure shows the path of a wave bouncing off the walls of the waveguide and what should be the force addition below. What is missing here is the force imparted on the side walls towards the right. This force will balance out the "thrust" force that is supposed to make this thing work. Instead of microwaves think of it in terms of particles; the addition of forces bouncing off the walls is what causes pressure. If you were to make a conical shaped pressure chamber and pressurize it would you expect it to suddenly start moving?

[switchbitch @ Sep 25th 2008 8:49AM]

@MaxPower

It's not about particles hitting the walls, it's about the phase velocity of the EM radiation, and how it is altered by the shape of the cone to create a greater radiation pressure at one end which results in a thrust force. The maths is beyond me but working models have been demonstrated and this thing is genuine.

Try to think less in terms of particles and more in terms of waves and equations cos that's where the real interesting physics is.

[Feddu @ Sep 26th 2008 2:28AM]

I just want to blend it.

[nakedoldguy @ Sep 26th 2008 10:13PM]

@MaxPowers

Physicist chiming in here:
You are 100% correct! This EXACT idea has been proposed before and the math indeed does work out that there is no net force.

Think of it like this (for laymen); you have two triangles. One with the vertexes (0,0), (1,0), (0.5, 0.5) and the second with vertexes (0,0), (1,0), and (5,0.5). They look radically different - but have the same area! This is the same principal behind why this machine will not work - infinitesimally thin layers stacked on top of each other were shifted to the right to change the shape of those two triangles, but the area was the same. Just like that, look at two circles, flat on the table next to each other and the same diameter. If you were to cut one into three concentric rings and a circle within it, then lift those up to mimic a cone shape, they would still have the same area. Do that an infinite number of times and it is still the same. THAT is what is happening here, and is fundamentally incorrect!

The two acting surfaces are one big circle, and one small circle with a cone around it. The forces involved will always balance because by bouncing off of the cone, it imparts a force which numerically, mathematically, through calculus, through experiment, and through any other method; will ALWAYS EXACTLY counter that of the other circle.

China made shit up - yet again.

[tekdroid @ Sep 25th 2008 5:55AM]

Just the thing to go with my Steorn free-energy Walkman
http://www.steorn.com/

[Klebbenator @ Sep 25th 2008 6:04AM]

@ tekdroid
Nice link: 42 seconds on the website and one word comes to mind: BULLSHIT

[jtc @ Sep 25th 2008 6:03AM]

Worth reading... http://www.assassinationscience.com/johncostella/shawyerfraud.pdf

[Amz @ Sep 25th 2008 7:10AM]

that's beautiful

[switchbitch @ Sep 25th 2008 9:02AM]

That's actually painful to read, because the guy who wrote it (who seems like he has an axe to grind for some reason) completely misunderstands the principle of operation, yet he confidently and bellicosely slanders the inventor whilst not even touching on the physics that make this thing work.

He certainly knows the least, the loudest.

[Richard @ Sep 25th 2008 6:04AM]

But it violates conservation of momentum and Newton's third law of motion!

This is tending towards infinitely improbable indeed...

[James T @ Sep 25th 2008 6:05AM]

It's a clock you can tell by the gears and cogs. It's actually a water cooled clock. Talk about overclocking. Here it is in it's case... http://emdrive.com/images/engine.jpg

[drt @ Sep 25th 2008 6:10AM]

Oh yea, I'm going to jump on that spaceship right away. Any country that that breeds a philosophy that it's OK to poison your own children can be totally trusted to build this.

[neodorian @ Sep 25th 2008 7:14AM]

Yeah I know what you mean. Sacrificing public health in the name of business is disgusting.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/12/31/MNGCC4137N1.DTL