Is the impossible drive possible?

Daniel and Jorge dissect the "EMDrive", explain how it's supposed to work and whether it ever might.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hey, Daniel, how do you feel about breaking the laws
of physics? Boy? That needs some context. It really depends
on whether you have a good physics lawyer to back
you up. It really depends on which law you're gonna break.
I mean, you might get a misdemeanor. In some cases,
you might even end up with a felon. Really there's
a range here, all right, So then what's the equivalent

(00:29):
of getting life in prison for physics too? I think
they put you in a room with a cartoonist and
they're the worst defenders. Really. But really, but when you
hear about an idea that breaks a law of physics,
even if it's a big one, are you hoping it's
true or you hoping it's wrong? Well, you know, anytime
somebody claims to disprove Einstein, I get pretty skeptical because

(00:53):
that's been tested a lot. But in my heart of hearts,
I'm really hoping that someone disproves a big law physics,
like relativity. I mean that that's how we learned something
new about the universe. That's a good spin. I think
I'll hire you as my physics lawyer. In that case,
you're going to go to physics jail. Because I am
not a good physics lawyer. Hi am r handa cartoonists

(01:28):
and the creator of PhD comics. Hi I'm Daniel. I'm
a particle physicist, and I once thought I wanted to
be a lawyer, and then I got argued out of it.
Oh yeah, wow, history almost went a different way for you. Yeah.
I was big into debate in high school and I
liked arguing, or I thought I liked arguing. I did
a lot of it, But then I discovered that, you know,
in debate there's sort of never really any truth. You

(01:51):
can just persuade people of anything. And in the end
I liked physics because it had a hard negative objectivity
at its core. Like I want certainty, just like in
quantum physics where everything's for sure and there's no funny names. Well,
I want objectivity. You know, the universe comes down on
one side or the other. You try the experiment and
it either works or it fails. You can't persuade somebody

(02:13):
some things, right if the experiments say no, at least
on a probabilistic kind of sense, Right, there's certainty. Yeah, alright, well,
we are certainly starting our podcast. Daniel and Jorge Explain
the Universe, a production of I Heart Radio in which
we talk about all the amazing things certain and uncertain
about the universe, the things that we know and the
things that we do not yet know, the things that work,

(02:36):
and the things that we are still working on. Our
goal in this podcast is to educate you about everything
that science understands, everything that science is still working on,
and everything that human beings wonder about. All the things
that are possible out there in this big, beautiful universe
of ours, and also maybe all of the things that
are impossible in this universe, things that cannot be or

(02:58):
that we maybe wish they could be. And history is
filled with examples of scientists saying something is impossible and
then somebody coming along and proving them wrong. So one
of the most fun experience in science is pushing that boundaries,
developing something new, is understanding the universe at a deeper
level and figuring out something that we thought was impossible,

(03:19):
and maybe even giving us a tool to explore the
universe right, because you know, sometimes some of the biggest
ideas in physics have been that they thought they were
they were impossible, you know, like when quantum physics first
came out, people thought it were like, that's a crazy
why would nature be like that? Right? Even Einstein thought
it was kind of impossible. That's right. Sometimes you have
to change your perspective and open your mind to something

(03:41):
totally new. On the other hand, sometimes the universe is
just hard and cold and it says no to your idea.
It's impossible to deal with this universe. But yeah, so dude,
on the podcast, we'll be talking about one such idea,
which today sounds kind of impossible. In fact, it has
impossible in its brand name. Are we talking about impossible burghers? Oh,

(04:04):
that sounds delicious, That sounds as possible to resist. That's right,
because one struggle plaguing humanity's desire to explore the universe
is just physically getting out there into the universe. The
universe is frustratingly, amazingly beautifying, le vast and enormous, which
makes it difficult to explore. And so to get out there,
to get to a neighboring star, to find those aliens,

(04:26):
to visit black holes and unravel the secrets of general
relativity and quantum mechanics, we need a device, a drive
that could actually get us there. Yeah, maybe we need
an impossible idea to solve a seemingly impossible problem. And
so today on the podcast, we'll be asking the question,

(04:47):
what is the impossible drive? And is it possible? Possibly
in a possible kind of way. This is a this
is a very certain podcast episode here today, Daniel, is
it possible the impossible drive may possibly be possible? While
eating an impossible burger and watching Mission Impossible with con Cruise.

(05:11):
That does sound like an impossible combination of things to
pull off all that one. But yeah, so this is
kind of a crazy idea. I have to say, I
had not heard of this before getting your notes this morning,
and so this is all sort of an idea to
solve the problem of how to get across base, like
how to get two distant stars without having to bring

(05:32):
a whole bunch of fuel with you. That's right, because
there's just a basic problem in getting to those stars,
Like you want to get to those stars, they're really
far away, all right. So to get really far away
you have to get going really really fast. And to
get going really fast, you need an engine, something that's
going to push you, and the current rockets that we

(05:52):
have you require a lot of fuel. So you can
do like a pretty simple calculation and ask like how
much raw good fuel would it take to accelerate a
very very small object, you know, something like a toothpick
up two, I don't know five of the speed of
light really the kind of the kind of speed that
would make it take like only a hundred years to
get to alpha centar. So my spacecraft was just a

(06:16):
toothpick zero point one, Grahams, how much fuel would it
take to get it to alpha centri within like a
hundred years? Yeah, And the problem is that your spaceship
is not just a toothpick. It's a toothpick plus all
the fuel, right, Your fuel has to push the fuel
you're going to need in the future. And so if
the payload is just a toothpick, then most of your

(06:37):
rocket ship is actually fuel, and that means you need
more fuel. And the more fuel you have, the more
fuel you need, and so it grows very very quickly.
You got to like fill up the tank and take
it with you, exactly. You have to do. You have
to bring an oil tanker, not just like a little
prious exactly, and then you've got to accelerate that oil tanker.
That oil tanker also needs a tank of gas, right,
And so it very quickly grows to a huge number.

(06:59):
And the number is actually ridiculous, Like, in order to
have enough fuel to get your toothpick up to five
of the speed of light takes more mass than exists
in the observable universe by a huge by huge number.
How much hen to the That's not a number, Daniel,
you made that up. It's impossible. I didn't make that up.

(07:22):
There's an impossible mathematics behind this. It's just it's frustratingly
difficult one with two thousand zeros in front of Yeah,
and it's not hard to imagine how the number gets
so big. I mean, say your spaceship is the size
of Jupiter. How much fuel you're gonna need. You're gonna
need as much fuel as like the Sun. All right, Well,
now your spaceship is Jupiter and the Sun. How much
fuel a you're gonna need to push that? Well, you're

(07:43):
gonna need like more suns. So it just grows just
to push this toothpick. So the lesson is chemical rockets
that require this kind of fuel are not going to
get us across the stars. You need a better way, right,
one where you don't have to bring your fuel with you.
That's right, when where you don't have to bring the
fuel with you, that's the idea, even if you use like,

(08:04):
you know, is this the current fuel technology, you know,
like you know, the current rocket fuel or is this
like imagining like what if we invent fusion drives or
you know, we managed to invent fission drives. Yeah, the
basic limitation is that you need something to push off of,
and so it's not so much limited by the technology
of that push as to just having to carry the
fuel along with you. I see, like how much mass

(08:25):
you have to expel in order to be pushed to
the speed of light? Yeah, precisely. So this this cool,
crazy new idea out there, This e M drive sometimes
called a impossible drive, that some people think may have
the possibility to overcome this problem. And that's why they
call it an impossible drive because it seems to violate

(08:46):
some laws of physics. But some experimenters out there claimed
to have built one and made it work. Wow. And
this came to us from a question from one of
our listeners, right Russell Alert. Yeah, he wrote to us
about a year ago and said, hey, you could you
guys explain this drive to me. Is it impossible? Doesn't work?
Could it actually get us to the stars? And it's
taken us a year to answer just to well, I

(09:10):
built one of these things. I welcome to a centauri
and I came back. I mean, I do some real
field research. Did you think I was just googling? You know,
we don't want to just give you an idea and
say it's impossible or not possible. We have to see
for ourselves. That's right. I'm an experimentalist. I backed my
answers up with real research. Man, this is not just
googling around. Okay, right, So we're actually recording this from
a toothpick as we're as we're making our way to

(09:34):
to pick podcast studios, inc well as usually what we
were wondering how many people out there had heard of
this impossible drive or e M drive? And so, as usual,
Daniel went out there into the wilds of the internet
to ask people what is an e M drive and
could it ever work? So think about it for a second,
if you had ever heard of it or not, and

(09:55):
if physicist ask you, what would you say. Here's what
people had to say, Honey, I'm trying if I haven't
heard of. I'm going to presume that e M stands
for electromagnetic and drive as some sort of propulsion systems.
So maybe some sort of rocket buster or engine that
doesn't require few but relies on electromagnetic waves to propel itself.
I think theoretically it could work, but it's on the

(10:18):
realm of theoretical really tbt. But nothing has been done,
but it there. Supposedly you need a lot of energy
to make it work. And E M drived I think, well,
first of all, it sounds really familiar, like I like
a lot of sci fi, so I it's a term
that has come up a lot, and I think it

(10:40):
doesn't exist yet. And I think it also has to
do with time travel, but I'm not sure. I'm so
excited to look at up later. And E M drive
is an electromagnetic drive that functions by putting a lot
of microwaves together. Currently Toshiba in general Electric have the
best ratings by consumer reports. Anyways, a bunch of these

(11:00):
together and shoot microwaves out one end to get the
ship to go in the opposite direction. It definitely doesn't
work and will kill the grass in your backyard if
you attempt to achieve launch. I have no idea what
an E M drive is. I'm assuming that means electromagnetic,
but I'm not sure, so I have no idea to work.
I don't know exactly what this is. Some kind of propulsion,

(11:25):
but I don't have any idea. I have never heard
of an e M drive, so I'm going to get
then E M stands for electromagnetic, and of course drive
means it's some sort of a of an engine um
with they can use electromagnetic pulses to create thrust. I

(11:46):
guess I don't know what an e M drive is,
but I do know another type of drive. It's called
the infinite probability drive. It was installed on the starship
part of Gold, and it was and it is still
in use today. I can explained it properly, but I
know it's more possible than a warp drive. Sorry, Daniel,

(12:06):
no idea. Maybe a device for driving around the universe.
I have not ideal EM drive. So the M drive
I've heard, Uh it's not the Canay drive where it's
uh slotted resonance space um. But the idea is that
momentum is quantized, and so if you have a smaller

(12:29):
space on one side and the larger space on the
other side. It can bounce back some kind of microwave frequency,
I think, and create propulsion lists thrust, but I don't
think it's anything that actually works. I don't know what
an e M drive is exactly. I think it would
be electromagnetic, where you're using some kind of electromagnetic reaction

(12:52):
to throw particles out of the back of a spaceship
to accelerate it. I suppose that would work, but it's
probably not what you mean, all right, not not a
lot of recognition, but some people seem to know what
it was, or maybe they just lashed onto the electromagnetic
cart it. He asked some good guesses there, and some
people had definitely heard about this, and this really made

(13:13):
some waves. Pun intended about ten years ago. So there's
a lot of splash in the media about this drive,
and then recently there's been some more news and so
I'm not surprised that a few a few of our
listeners have heard about this discussion. Oh nice, nice, I
guess my first question is is it vegetarian? Does it
come from plant based products like the Impossible Burger? No

(13:34):
meat was harmed in the creation of this impossible only
laws of physics were totally destroyed, and all life depends
on the laws of physics. So I don't really know
is it vegan to break the laws of physics or not.
I need of ruling on that. We need a better
physics lawyer or a physics judge. I guess we need
to go to the International Court of Physics cosmological Court

(13:59):
of Impossibility. I was let's step thraight here. Uh. First
of all, well what is it and where did this
idea come from? So the idea for the e M
drive is to try to build a drive where you
don't need to bring along with you something to push against.
You don't need something to have a propellant. And remember

(14:19):
that all rockets that we've ever invented so far have
two basic elements. One is some source of energy, you know,
like fuel or laser or something, and the other is
something to push against. And this comes from the conservation
of momentum. If you're gonna move left, the only way
to do that is to push something else right. That's

(14:39):
the only way really in the universe, the only way.
There's no magic in the universe, not that we're aware of,
and the law of conservation of momentum is very very
deeply ingrained in physics and has been tested a zillion
times that you know, the scales of galaxies and particles,
so we're pretty confident it's true. And it just basically

(15:00):
is that momentum is conserved, so momentum doesn't change. You
can take a brick and split it in half and
send one half to the left, but then you have
to send the other half to the right so that
their momentum balances. Like if your brick and initially has
zero momentum, in the final state, it also has to
have zero momentum. There can be motion, there can be
kinetic energy, but there has to be zero net momentum.

(15:23):
So it's almost like if you want to go to
alpha centari, you have to push yourself there. Almost it's
like you have to if you want to get your
toothpick to alpha centor you have to push the equivalent
of a toothpick and the opposite direction. Yeah, you have
to sit in your ship and throw stuff out the back. Right.
You know, some people out there wonder, like do rockets
work in empty space? Because they imagine that rockets work

(15:46):
by pushing on the air. They're not pushing on the air,
they're just throwing stuff out the back, right, because if
they want to move forward, something else has to move backwards.
So the whole system, the combination of all the original stuff,
has the same momentum is when it's starting. And this
is pretty familiar. Like if you fire a gun, right,
you're pushing a bullet and there's a recoil. So imagine,

(16:08):
you know, the rocket example is the bullet is the
stuff you're pushing at the back, and the gun is
your rocket. A one way to power a rocket ship
is to stand in the back of it and shoot
bullets out the back. Oh hey, that's an idea that
you guys thought about, that one. That is basically the idea.
I mean, that's what a chemical rocket is, right, You
start a big explosion and focus all the stuff and
shoot it out the back, and that's why it goes.

(16:30):
You take the energy, and that energy is used to
push stuff out the back. So that's what a rocket is.
But it needs those two elements, one energy and to
something to throw out the back. Because you can just
stand there and throw things off the bag, you would
get tired. You need you need some energy to do
it right. Well, it's like you can't push yourself up
by your bootstraps, right, You can't stand in your spaceship

(16:52):
and like get it going by pushing on the inside
of it. Okay, that's the basic idea of every rocket
we've ever had. You need energy, and you need something
to recoil against. You need propellant to throw at the back, right, right,
And then the problem is that you need to bring
that mess with you, the stuff you're gonna explode with
you in order to keep going. Yes, and then you
need to push that stuff. Right, So you need to

(17:15):
today push all the stuff you're gonna need tomorrow, and
the stuff you need in a week and in a year,
and that stuff adds up, which means today you need
even more stuff to push. And that's how you end
up with, you know, spaceship Jupiter, just to go to
Alpha Centauri, the paler of the size of the Sun. Yeah, exactly.
And so the idea for the impossible drive is like, well,
can we skip that step? Can we somehow have a

(17:37):
drive that doesn't need any recoil, that doesn't throw anything
out the back? Wow? Like um, something that somehow violates
the laws of conservation of momentum. Yes, exactly, And that's
why it's called the impossible drive because it would totally
violate the laws of conservation of momentum. Or you know,
maybe there's something else going on, like if you would

(17:58):
build a device that seems to the laws of conservation momentum,
that means that either one you screwed something up in
your experiments to momentum isn't actually conserved, you know, which
would be like a huge deal, or this momentum is conserved,
but there's something else in your system you weren't to
wear it. You've discovered some new force field or some
thing in the quantum foam or something. Right, so you've

(18:19):
learned something about the universe. And at that point, like
why would you want to go to a centaur. Just
stay here and monetize your amazing physics breaking idea. That's right,
your impossible foam or whatever it is you've discovered. Yeah,
and and you know, so this is a different class
of ideas. This e M drive is a different class
of ideas than ideas like a solar sales. Solar sales
of another really cool way to get to high speeds.

(18:42):
But the idea there is you sort of leave the
engine at home and you push the photons and they
get captured by your spaceship, which just gets pushed by
those photons, and so the whole engine. You can think
of it like as the laser that stays home, and
the sale is the part of the ship. Right. It's
like you you're that's that's different idea where you kind
of catch things that are out there and use them

(19:02):
to kind of hit your ride. Yeah, exactly, that's a
different idea, but that requires some like huge laser focused
on your ship from really, really really far away. This
would be a drive you could take anywhere. You could
use it to lift off the surface of the Earth
and zoom around the whole galaxy and get up to
really high speeds. I mean, it's sounds awesome. I want
the impossible drive to be impossible. I want a car

(19:23):
with the impossible drive. I do. Yeah, I want to
take it to you know, the Burger Joint and by
an impossible burger. All right, Well, it sounds too good
to be true, almost kind of like a Tom Cruise
movie almost. But let's get into how it actually works
and whether or not it's possible or possible and what
people have done about it. But first let's take a
quick break, all right, Daniel, we're talking about the impossible drive,

(19:58):
which is maybe a crazy easy idea that violates the
laws of physics, but which could potentially get us to
other star systems in other galaxies. Because it's a it's
a tough problem. It's a tough problem, and we should
keep an open mind. We should think, hey, some fresh
ideas out there could crack an age old problem or
reveal something new about physics and the universe. So we

(20:19):
should definitely not just scoff and dismiss. We should analyze it, right,
But then we also have to be skeptical. We can't
just take every crazy ideas, right. You gotta eat that
impossible burger just to see for yourself, because it maybe
it can't take it's just like real or maybe the
beyond burger is beyond the impossible burger. Who knows, right,
data is the only is there beyond engine? Also not

(20:41):
yet I'm working on I see. Oh sorry, sorry, that's
beyond the scope of today's podcast, beyond my nda agreement
I have with you. We'll have to edit that out,
all right, Well, maybe i'd step us through. How does
this impossible drive work, Like, what's the basic physics idea
or not physics idea behind. It's kind of a crazy idea,
and frankly, I don't really understand how it's even supposed

(21:01):
to work, but if you look around online you discover
some basic fact about it. So it's a copper cylinder, right,
It's made out of metal, and the cylinders have two
flat ends like a cylinder, but one side is bigger
than the other. And the idea is that this kind
of copper cylinder is a resonant chamber for microwaves. So

(21:21):
microwaves are just a kind of light, they're kind of photon.
You put them in there, and this chamber is the
right size for them to bounce around and sort of
add up and build on each other. So they can
hang out inside, reflect back and reinforce themselves. So you
put microwaves in there, they should just sort of bounce
around forever. It's like a bottle that can capture microware.
Really they don't get absorbed into the metal or anything.

(21:42):
That's the idea. I mean, they do a little bit,
but if it's the right shape and the right material,
then they mostly just reflect. It's like fiber optics. You know,
you have this reflection of light in the interior. If
you have the right angle and the right materials and
the right interface between the materials in the resident cavity
and the thing that makes up the cavity, you can
get almost told internal reflection all right. So it's kind
of like a resonant cavity right where microwaves bound in

(22:04):
side and somehow that gives you superpowers. Well, if you're
bitten by that cavity right, then you get that cavity
is proportionate starting that's right, you become the impossible man.
Know the idea, So you have a bottle with Marco
waves bouncing around inside of it. But then if you
make your bottle bigger on one side, so it's a
cylinder if one side is bigger on the other, and
then it sort of tapers. The idea is that the

(22:26):
radiation pressure on one side is bigger than on the
other side, just because you get more microwaves hitting one
wall of the cavity than the other. And so then
they think, well, if you're pushing on the left side
more than the right side, shouldn't that generate some thrust?
Shouldn't that push this thing because it's more forced the
left than there is on the right. That's the idea

(22:47):
behind the e M draw by radiation pressure. You mean
like the forest that the photons are making on the
cavity wall. That's right, because what happens when a photon
reflects off a wall is it pushes against it. Just
like if you bounce a ball off of the wall.
It's pushing on the wall, right. It applies a force
on the wall, and the wall applies a force on
the photon. And so the radiation pressure is just that

(23:09):
when a photon gets bounced, it gets pushed, and it's
also doing some pushing, right. And so we talked about
it in a previous podcast, like if I take a
flashlight and flash it at you, I'm actually kind of
pushing you a little bit, and I'm being pushed back
even though it's just a flashlight. And so imagine, you know,
you have a gymnasium filled with students and each one
has a bouncy ball and they're throwing the balls against
the wall. If one wall is bigger and it's getting

(23:30):
hit by more balls, the idea is there's more force
on it, and so is the whole gymnasium then gonna
like lift up off the ground and travel to Alpha Centauri.
That's my that's my idea for Wow. Okay, this is
sounding impossible already. But what's the history of this thing?
Like who came up with it? And why's it so
hard to find information about it on the internet. It

(23:51):
has a pretty sketchy history. Um, it comes from a
guy named Roger Shoyer in two thousand one. He designed
this thing. He had this idea and he designed did it,
and he built it, and he claimed that it worked.
He said, I built it and it worked. But he
didn't really share any evidence of it, just sort of
claimed this was true. Didn't publish or anything, didn't let
anyone see the device. No, he never published a paper.

(24:14):
He could just it was sort of a you know,
always promising something else. He's like, he's promising the next version,
he's promising the new results, he's promising the next round,
but never actually delivered. And this guy was just an inventor,
a physicist or a lawyer. What Tom Cruise's brother. Yeah,
you know, he's an inventor and so he has some
technical background and you know, he was shooting meg. He

(24:34):
was thinking, hey, could I solve a really big problem.
And he had this idea and he claimed that it worked.
But you know, in science, you can't just tell people
that your idea worked. You have to prove it. You
have to describe the details. People want to understand it.
Other people will want to build it and test it
for themselves. If this is something which is true and physical,
it should be true in other people's labs also. And

(24:56):
if we want to build the m jives, we can't
just rely on one guy in basement. We need to
actually understand the physical basic can actually be impossible. It
has to be possible. It can't be some magical fairy
dust that he sprinkled on it in his garage, right,
And some scientists looked at it, I think, right in
two thousand six. Yeah, well, in two thousand six there
was a lot of coverage because Robert Joyer's also you know,

(25:19):
he's good at the pr and so he managed to
convince the New Scientist magazine, which is a magazine with
very high readership in two thousand six, to write an
article suggesting that this thing might really be true. And
that article received a lot of criticism by science writers
because it's sort of glossed over the fact that there's
a basic problem with this drive, like it violates the

(25:42):
law of conservation momentum, that it shouldn't work. So the
fact that he claimed to have built it and made
it work, you know, need to be reported with a big,
big piece of So they didn't show enough skepticism. Yeah, exactly,
and so this is roundly ridiculed. But other people were interested.
And so then there was another guy, a guy named
Guido Feda. He's just a marketing executive, but he got

(26:05):
really interested in this and he built another version. He
calls it the Canady Drive, like I can't, like can't
Kennet like, like impossible was taken. So I'm gonna go
with can't because that sounds like impossible. Yeah, it sounds
to me like an Irish expression like you can they
do that? But I'm not sure the linguistic origins of it.

(26:29):
But he had some contacts at NASA, and he found
some folks at the NASA Eagle Work Labs to try
to test this. What yes, And he's like, all right,
I built this, Please test this. Tell me if this
thing can work. Oh wow, So they like big like
actually NASA gut involved. Now yeah, there's a question about
whether it's actually NASA or some people at NASA. Right.

(26:51):
You know, like if I if I do an experiment
in my lab and I say, oh my gosh, I've
overthrown the laws of physics, can you say the University
of California has a we're throwing the laws of physics? Right.
I can't speak for the whole university, and these folks
at NASA don't necessarily get to speak for NASA. Maybe
it was the custodian or the cafeteria worker NASA who

(27:12):
like pressed the button. And then it's like NASA did
it well. It got a lot of attention because these
folks that NASA Eagle Works labs, they tested it and
they saw a little bit of thrust, Like they claim
that it generates a very small amount of thrust. Now,
the amount you're talking about are really really really tiny.
Like we measure thrust, it's a force. We measured units

(27:32):
of Newton's so like a one k object on the
surface of the Earth feels ten Newton's right, So Newton
is not a small unit. But these guys when they
measured this thing, they measured like milan Newton's like one
thousands of a Newton or even smaller like micro Newton's.
So what they measured were really really small effects. Like

(27:53):
they built this thing, they put it on the table
and they felt a very small force when they turned it. Interesting,
but it's not nothing. It's not nothing. I mean exactly.
A Newton is like the weight of an apple almost.
So it's like, you know, it's like taina bite out
of an apple. It's like taking a very small bite
out of an apple. Yeah, exactly. And they put out
a paper in two thousand and sixteen saying, well, you know,

(28:15):
we tested this thing and it doesn't seem to be
impossible because we're getting a small amount of thrust. What. Yeah,
So that made a lot of explosions in minds and
physics all across the world. Yeah, it was. And then
it got a wider press coverage. Yes, it got a
lot of press, and a lot of that press, you know,
skimmed over some of the important details, you know, you know,

(28:37):
they were headlines and wired for example saying NASA validates
impossible space drive, which I'm sure people at NASA woke
up in his sweat over when they read that. Unless
unless it's true, then it's like, oh, we'll take the credit. Yeah, exactly,
And Popular Mechanics wrote an article with the title was
space engine breaks the laws of physics. You see clickbait?

(29:01):
Do you see clickbait? And so it was very exciting. Right,
people are like, maybe this is true, and maybe it
doesn't matter that this drive only gives you a tiny
little force because you can scale it up or we
can improve whatever we can, you know, pass it onto
the engineers and said, we've proved it possible. Make it work, right,
make it better, more make it more efficient. Yeah. Also,
I mean, if you're on a toothpick on your way
to Alpha Centauri, you know you've got time. So even

(29:23):
a little push with health, yeah, even a little push,
a little constant push without the need for propellant to
get you to very high speeds. That's the whole idea
of a solar sale. Solar sales do not provide a
lot of acceleration. It's just a long, constant acceleration without
the need for a really heavy rocket can get you
up to significant fractions of the speed of light. Right, yeah,
all right, well this sounds maybe like it's not impossible. Daniel,

(29:47):
Now I'm really intrigued here. I mean, are we going
to be on our way to alphastri pretty soon or
is that impossible? So let's get into whether it actually
can work and what's going on with these impossible physics.
But first let's take a quick break. All right, Daniel,

(30:15):
it seems as we left at NASA, or at least
some people who work at NASA validated this impossible space drive,
this crazy idea that somehow seems to violate the laws
of physics, but that could maybe get us to another
galaxy or another star. So what's going on here, Daniel?
Is this really possible or is there something here we're

(30:35):
not seeing? Well, you have to sort of hold your
your enthusiasm in check and apply your skeptical mind, like
we'd love for this to work, and we wanted to work.
In that sense, we have a bit of a conflict
of interest. It's just like when you listen to a
story about aliens. If you want it to be true,
then you're gonna be less skeptical and you're gonna like
gloss over problems in the story. So you gotta put
aside your plans for Alpha Centauri and just ask yourself,

(30:58):
like does this make sense? And the first thing to
think about is whether the experimental results are done carefully
enough right, because this is a very small effect. Like
what they measure is, you know, the equivalent of like
a fly landing on this thing. So you have to
remove all other possible sources of experimental area. And when
you dig into these experiments, they're not done with a

(31:20):
kind of care that you need in order to really
establish that this small thrust comes from radiation pressure inside
the drive and not something else like the air conditioner
maybe was hitting on your device and pushing it a
little bit. You know that you're not far from the truth.
Like when you turn this thing on, it heats up
because you're pounding microwaves inside of it. And if it

(31:42):
heats up, then it's going to cause air currents around it.
And so those thermal currents, if it's not in a
really really good vacuum, those thermal currents might be what
providing this this micro thrust. Well, I'm trying to trying
to get a picture here. So somebody actually built this.
This marketing executive built this device, this machine, and it
got tested by some people who work in nest, so

(32:05):
like you know, like this actually happened. It is actually happening.
There was a room with people from NASA there with
clipboards and I'm sure they were wearing white lab coats
and safety goggles and protective helmets, and like, I like,
this thing is humming, it's like it's running, and they
measured it a force, but you're saying, maybe it could
have been something else. Yeah, it doesn't have to be

(32:25):
a force from the drive. You have to remove all
other sources of experimental error to convince yourself the force
came from the drive. So the first test they did
weren't even in a vacuum. So who even knows if
those results are just due to the air getting warm
around it and differentially pushing on it, because one side
of it is all right, well, um, I mean it
sounds like you just kind of need to replicate the experiment.

(32:48):
Has anybody tried or nobody wants to touch this? Ye,
Other labs have tried, Like there's a lab in Germany
and a lab in China, and some of these labs
can't reproduce the results, like they just don't see any thrust.
Other labs have seen rust. But then they showed that
this thrust was actually just an interaction between the wires
that lead up to the e M drive and the
Earth's magnetic few What yeah, oh, I see the wires

(33:12):
that create the microwaves, not the wires like leading up
to the device. So no, the wires leading up to
the device, the ones that like, you know, power this stuff.
And so we're talking about really small effects here. You know,
it's like you breathe on this thing, and that's a
bigger effect than the thrust that they're measuring. And so
it's very easy to make a mistake. And you know,
you read these papers, they don't seem very carefully done.

(33:35):
And I said, they don't give you confidence in the
experimental setup. It's it's sort of like remember the cold
fusion thing, Like these guys measured some heat production, but
there are all sorts of uncertainties and errors and other
ways that could confuse the results that were potentially bigger
than the signal they measured. So the signal these people
are measuring is smaller than the noise in their system. Right,

(33:56):
you have to be super extra careful. Right like when
you guys built the I Go gravitational wave telescope, you know,
you had to bury it on the ground, You had
to put in the middle of nowhere. You had to
track any truck passing by just to make sure that
that wasn't causing the signal exactly. They can't just build
advice and then it shakes and they say, hey, gravitational waves. Right.

(34:16):
They need to show that they're not sensitive to all
the sources of noise that are nearby. And that's what
this these folks have not done. And there's some really
concerning things about the results, like sometimes they get thrust
even if the drive is backwards, and they get they
get thrust the same direction. Yeah, at the level sort
of experimental rigor that we're talking about, maybe it's mind control, Daniel.

(34:38):
It operates on wishes and unicorns, like if you wanted
to work, it works. Yeah, And so I would not
say that the results are conclusive, you know, I would
not say that this thing generates thrust. Well, I mean
press the actually flipped it around, you know, like that
shows a little bit of experimental worker. Yeah. I wonder
if that was on purpose or they just sort of like,

(35:00):
you know, put it in backwards. Oh man, we're throwing
all kinds of shade at these NASA scientists, and these
are not NASA scientists. These are people at NASA, right,
NASA did not stand behind this results done in their
spare time in their garage now with official white lap
coats from NASA. They bought it off the internet. And

(35:22):
you know, it's hard to imagine how this thing could
actually work. Right, just because you have photons bouncing around
inside a bottle doesn't mean that it's going to get pushed, right.
It violates the law of conservation momentum. You can't, right,
you can't put yourselves up from your bootstraps. Right. If
you stand inside a box in empty space, and you
throw a ball against one wall of the box, Yeah,

(35:43):
that ball applies a force to the wall, But to
throw the ball you apply to force the other direction
to the floor. Right, So you can't push a box
from the inside, right, as far as we know, As
far as we that's that's what we how, that's how
we think the univerous works. But as you say, we
kind of have to keep an open eye, which unfortunately

(36:05):
kind of leaves you open to these crazy ideas. Ye.
And so the guys who wrote this paper, they know this,
and they understand that this thing shouldn't work, but they
are really Yeah, but they are seeing a result. And
so in the paper they put this really sort of
amazing claim and I just have to read it to
you verbabion because it's I don't want to paraphrase. They

(36:25):
say that their drive quote is producing a force that
is not attributable to any classical electromagnetic phenomena, and therefore
is potentially demonstrating an interaction with the quantum vacuum virtual plasma. Well,
that makes sense now, I totally get it. I was

(36:47):
totally waiting for somebody to bring up the quantum vacuum
virtual plasma. Obviously everyone well, I mean, I guess the
typical person like me wouldn't be able to tell the
difference if that's something that's real or not. Well, you
know there is a thing which is the quantum vacuum. Right.
We know that empty space is not empty, that it
is filled with energy, right, And we talked about virtual

(37:07):
particles in a recent episode, right, Like virtual quantum particles exist. Yeah,
because this energy that's in empty space can turn into particles,
and these particles live for a very short amount of
time and then they turn back into energy or another
kind of particle or whatever. So there is this sort
of energy available This is like frothing foam. But this
is not a question of having a source of energy, right,

(37:29):
There's already energy in this drive. This is a question
of having something to push off, right, This is a
question of momentum. Right, But energy, I mean energy is mass?
Could I say that like energy is mass, like solar
sales work on photons which have no mass. Yes, but
this quantum vacuum doesn't have like a rest frame. You
can't push against it. You can't like change the net

(37:53):
momentum of the quantum vacuum. That doesn't make any sense.
What could I maybe capture those energy of empty I'm
rooting for these NASA scientists, so I'm playing devil's advocate.
Could you like somehow capture the energy of empty space
and like use it, you know, converted to mass and
push it one way? Is that possible? Well? You know, Orry,
I think you've thought about this more deeply than the

(38:15):
guy who wrote that paper. But think about what you're suggesting.
You say, capture the energy of empty space and then
converted into mass and throw it in one direction? Right,
That would mean it has now some sort of net momentum,
whereas it didn't have that before, and that's the problem
is that this quantum vacuum has no rest frame. It
has no like net momentum which you can capture unless

(38:36):
you're going to break the law of conservation of momentum.
Then there's no way to gain momentum for this device.
But I guess you know, is a law of conservation
of momentum related to the law of conservation of energy.
They're sort of related, right, They are sort of related.
In particle physics, we think of energy momentum together. We
put it together actually into like a four dimensional vector,

(38:57):
the way that you have like a four dimensional space
time three dimensions of space and one of time. We
think of four momentum three dimensions of momentum from one
of energy. And so these things are related certainly, so
that the whole vector has to be conserved, but they're
conserved independently, like momentum and x is conserved separately from
momentum and wise conserved separately from momentum and z, and

(39:19):
then energy conservation is also separate. So they can they're related,
but they're independent. Makes are very powerful constraint, right all right, Well,
their ideas and maybe it's tapping into this impossible drivers.
Maybe tapping into this quantum vacuum, virtual plasma or energy.
Is that possible or is that total bunk? I think
it's total bunk. And you know, I did some reading

(39:41):
about this, and Sean Carroll says, quote, there is no
such thing as a quantum vacuum virtual plasma. So that
should be a tip off right there. There is a
quantum vacuum, but is nothing like a plasma, you know.
So he's pointing out there the use of the word
plasma means that there may be not even really understanding
what they're talking about. And I think of the way
you're imagining it is like, can you push off against

(40:03):
this plasma? Can you like impart some momentum on it
the way you can like with a rowboat, Right, you're
like rowing against the water, and you're pushing against the water,
so the water gets momentum one way, you get momentum
the other way. I guess maybe it is a good analogy.
Like if you're on in the middle of the ocean,
you can't just like with a bucket pick up some water.
Well maybe you could. Yeah, So you can't treat the

(40:25):
quantum foam like you can the ocean. You can't row
your way through the quantum foam, because all the energy
there is virtual. It's like borrowed momentarily and it needs
to return. It's not real energy in that way, it's
a it's quantum fluctuations. There's a difference between these virtual
energy particles and the real particles, and so there's no

(40:45):
like the way you're imagining it, Like the ocean has
a rest frame, right, It's like there is an ocean.
It's a zero velocity in some frame. That's not true
for this quantum vacuum. Right, It's an inherent property of space.
It has no rest frame, the way that space itself
has no absolute zero. For you to be able to
row your way through space would mean that space had

(41:07):
like some rest frame that we've never discovered before and
would violate special relativity. All right, well worth a shot, Daniel,
Totally worth a shot. I mean, I only get to
do physics two hours a week, so I'm shooting for
the moon here with the impossible growing through space. That
they'll be the name of my engine. That would be
the name of your memoirs. Right, the space or space

(41:29):
or or maybe it's just nonsense, um, but it's totally
worth a shot. And it's worth these guys thinking about it,
and I love the ambition, you know. They say, all right,
we built this drive. We agree it shouldn't work, but
it kind of does. So maybe we discovered something new
and crazy about the units. Like that's cool, but it
has to also actually kind of make sense right well,

(41:50):
you know, but like you said, you have to be
skeptical but also keep an open mind, like maybe that
it is kind of you have to admit a little
bit possible for you know, our ID is about conservation
momentum and the vacuum to maybe be a little off
of maybe there is a little bit of a room
there to maybe do something that seems impossible certainly, And
we don't understand empty space, and we don't understand this

(42:12):
quantum vacuum, and there may be a way to interact
with it that allows you to capture momentum in a
way that we can't imagine right now. That's true. I
don't think this e M drive is doing that. I
think this AM drive is just a fun device in
a lab somewhere. I see. It seems unlikely that a
little copper cone will somehow here's the reality of the

(42:33):
laws of physics. Yeah, because they've made no connection between
how they've built this thing and this quantum vactual virtual plasma.
It's like saying, hey, who ate my chocolate chip cookies?
I don't know, maybe it was the quantum vacuum virtual plasma, right,
Like why not? You can't just That's what my kids
say all the time. It's not just an escape clause
for everything, right, It's not that some of your physics lawyer,
can you get you at of jail? No matter what

(42:55):
you need like an actual mechanism of real explanation for
how this plasma uh, which you know people think doesn't
even exist, how this virtual vacuum is somehow giving you momentum? Right?
Why was I late to this podcast recording because you know,
the quantum plasma was pushing against me and I lost
my space or and that's why. Also I had to

(43:16):
finish the Mission Impossible five on TV. So all right,
So I'd say, overall, this thing is most likely hype
and not going to lead to anything. But I encourage
people out there experiment in your garage trying to make
up a new drive, because you know, I want us
to get to Alpha Centauri. I don't want to go myself,
but I want humans to get to explore. You don't
want to ride that toothpick. You want somebody else, probably

(43:38):
smaller than you, not a lot of lakes. You know,
until we figure something out, it's gonna be it is
gonna be impossible to make it to Alpha Centauri within
a lifetime or a few lifetimes, right, I mean we
need we need an idea like this, like a crazy idea,
otherwise we'll never get there. Well, I'm banking on solar sales.
I think we build a big laser and a really

(43:59):
big sale and you can take a really light craft
and accelerated to a high speed. So if I was
investing money in interstellar transport, I think solar sales are
currently the best end. Okay, how about a quantum plasma sale?
That sounds impossible? All right, Well, we hope you enjoyed
this little trip down impossible lane. And two, it's it's
kind of amazing to think that maybe there could be

(44:21):
devices out there that break the laws of physics. This
one seems like a little bit impossible, but you know,
it is sort of still out there that we don't
understand the laws of physics enough to know whether these
things are really conclusive or not right. That's right. We
don't know, and we should always keep an open mind
to what might be out there. Sometimes people discover crazy
stuff when they're trying to do something else. There's lots

(44:42):
of times in the history physics when things have been
discovered by accident. And so while I don't think that
this drive has cracked open the secrets of the quantum
virtual plasma, keep experimenting, folks, keep thinking up ideas. You
may stumble across something amazing. It could be one of
our listeners who breaks the laws of and we get
one that's right, and then you can represent them in
the cosmological court of impossibility. That sounds great. My fees

(45:05):
one percent of your Nobel prize. Is that like a
nibble of an apple, that's just the core? Yeah, all right, Well,
we hope you enjoyed that, and keep thinking of the impossible.
See you next time. Thanks for listening, and remember that.

(45:26):
Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of
I Heart Radio. More podcast from my Heart Radio visit
the I Heart Radio Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows. Yeah,