Defying Laws of Physics: NASA's 'Impossible' Engine Could Work

NASA's Electromagnetic Drive (EM Drive), a physics-defying warp engine has recently passed peer review.

Details on how the engine will work were published online in the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA)'s Journal of Propulsion and Power with a title "Measurement of Impulsive Thrust from a Closed Radio-Frequency Cavity in Vacuum."

EM Drive is a controversial theoretical reactionless engine that promises to swiftly transport humanity to far away destinations. Scientists are calling it "reactionless" because it works without fuel and waste product.

Whereas Isaac Newton's Third Law of Motion states that "for every action, there is an equal opposite reaction," the EM Drive proves otherwise. This further ignites the notion that what we know about Physics is wrong or that a yet unknown phenomenon is taking place.

The propulsion-less EM Drive was conceptualized in 1999 by aerospace engineer Roger Shawyer. Inverse states that the engine is propelled by microwaves that bounce back and forth inside the engine's cone-shaped interior, and not by heavy propellants such as fuel. Shawyer claimed that EM Drive could send humans to Mars in just 70 days.

When scientists first heard about the invention, most are skeptical about it. According to Digital Trends, this is because it is inconsistent with Newton's conservation of momentum, which states that within a closed system, linear and angular momentum remains constant regardless of any changes that take place within said system.

NASA scientists at NASA's Eagleworks Laboratory put the EM Drive to test and believed that the "impossible" engine actually works.

Tech Times said the NASA scientists created a radio frequency resonant cavity thruster with a capacity to produce 1.2 millinewtons per kilowatt of thrust in vacuum. To create the microwaves, NASA used electricity. The engine was tested in a near vacuum, similar to what it would encounter in space.

Peer review doesn't guarantee the EM Drive is valid, but gurarantees that the methods used are reasonable.