In a comprehensive new test, EmDrive fails to generate any driving force

The EmDrive is a hypothetical rocket that proponents say could generate thrust without exhaust fumes. This would violate all known physics. In 2016, a team at NASA’s Eagleworks lab claimed they were measuring the thrust of an EmDrive device, the news of which caused quite a stir. The latest attempt to replicate the shocking results resulted in a simple answer: the measurement of Eagleworks was the heating of the engine power, not any new physics.

The EmDrive is a relatively simple device: it is an empty cavity that is not perfectly symmetrical. According to proponents of the EmDrive, if the electromagnetic radiation is reflected inside the cavity, the decrease in the cavity results in a net push of the engine, although nothing leaks from the drive. In 2016, a team at NASA’s Eagelworks laboratory allegedly measured a net thrust from their EmDrive experiment, which they said was a revolution in our understanding of physics and the future of space travel.

Physicists were … skeptical. Maintaining momentum determines that a stationary object cannot move without a net force acting on it, which was violated according to the Eagleworks experiment. But conserving momentum has been tested countless times over the centuries – in fact, it forms the basis of almost every physical theory. In essence, maintaining momentum is virtually every time physics is tested.

The results of the Eagleworks experiment were not very strong. While the team claims to have measured a stretch, it was not statistically significant, and it appears to be a result of ‘cherry-picking’ – the authors watched random fluctuations and waited for the right time to get their results report.

But in the spirit of scientific replication, a team at Dresden University of Technology led by prof. Martin Tajmar rebuilt the experimental essay of Eagleworks.

And they got squatting.

Prof. Speaking about their results in the Proceedings of Space Propulsion Conference 2020, Tajmar said: “We found that the cause of the ‘congestion’ was a thermal effect. For our tests, we use NASA’s EmDrive configuration from White et al. ( What was used in the Eagleworks laboratories, because it can be best documented and the results in the Journal of Propulsion and Power.)

Using a new measuring scale structure and different suspension points of the same engine, we were able to reproduce apparent thrust similar to those measured by the NASA team, but also to make them disappear by means of a point suspension. ‘

In essence, the apparent thrust of Eagleworks stems from the heating of the scale they used to measure the thrust, not by any movement of the actuator itself.

“As power flows into the EmDrive, the engine warms up. It also causes the fasteners on the scale to curve, causing the scale to move to a new zero. We were able to prevent this in an improved structure,” said prof. Timeline continued.

His conclusion puts the last nail in the coffin for EmDrive dreams: “Our measurements refute all claims of EmDrive by at least three orders of magnitude.”

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