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A nice and very promising alternative to ion drives.
Brilliant. I am eager to see it in action.

Dugg.

Other than violating the law of momentum conservation it is wonderful. :/

Finnaly! I've been bitching about wheels for years and no one listens.

hey, they've built a smaller and a bigger prototype (see the pdf link) that both behave just like their calculations - can't argue with that

What we really need is an infinite improbability drive.

sounds incredible, just hope it's not another gizmo we saw on Tomorrows World as kids that was never seen again.

Bring on the landspeeders!

Or even better, that wicked crescent-shaped hover bike that Darth Maul had.

Not that facts matter on this site but everyone should read this "A Plea to Save “New Scientist”" http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2006/09/a_plea_to_save_new_scientist.html#more

"However, I really was gobsmacked by the level of scientific illiteracy
in the article “Fly by Light” in the 9 September 2006 issue,
concerning the supposed “electromagnetic drive” of Roger Shawyer. If
Shawyer’s claims have been accurately reported, they violate
conservation of momentum. This is not a contested matter; in its
modern, relativistic form it is accepted by every educated physicist
on the planet. The writer of this article, Justin Mullins, seems
aware that conservation of momentum is violated, but then churns out a
lot of meaningless double-talk about “reference frames” which he seems
to think demonstrates that relativity somehow comes to the rescue:"

More at above URL

Please think back to the old tyme cartoons wherein someone on a boat turns on a fan and points it at the sail to then make the boat start to move.

Same junk science here.

Who needs this when we have a flux capacitor combined with a mr juicer??

Shades of Battlefield Earth (the book, not the terrible movie)!

It was explained that the vehicles used by the Psychlos had engines that moved space through themselves rather than using fuel to cause thrust-- or something like that, it's been a while since I read it.

~Philly

I'll believe it when I can buy it.

Then I'll make sure my delorean can get a hover conversion

now where can I get mr. fusion?

This is snake oil.

Marked inaccurate (for lack of the '*****' option).

I willingly choose content ignorance in the plausibility of this engine. Dreaming of its success if worth the cost of sticking my head in the sand. :)

He had me up until the part about how because the microwave particles were travelling at relatvistic speeds, and relativity had to come into account, they have to be dealt with in their own frame of reference as if they were separate from the container.

That's where the kookery starts.

If this were to work it would only generate a small force. For the force to create forward motion it would need a GIGANTIC ammount of time at a constant acceleration to get to a decent speed. This is the way that Ion thrusters work.

This will not replace wheels or create super hover vehicles. The thrust that it would provide is nowhere near enough. This will only work for interplanetary spacecraft where the time required for the acceleration is not a luxury.

Okay my two cents:

1.) Use superconducting metals for the tubes....
2.) Have the tubes spaced relatively close with all areas between tubes sealed and cooled with liquid nitrogen.....
3.) Increase power input from 1KW to 100,000 KW using a fusion or fission reactor

End result is an engine the size of a buick (counting the fusion reactor and micro-drive engine) and you can mount this in a space ship (Like the NASA's space shuttles) and be able to travel near C (after a lengthy acceleration)......Such a modified engine like I described above could allow for round trip voyages to Mars in 3-4 days. Round trips to Jupiter in 1 week. Round Trips to Pluto in 2-3 months. Round Trips to Alpha Centauri in under 10 years.

Yeah I got a new power source too - squirrels. Thats right 100's of squirrels on a treadmill baby.

I call it the Squirrel Drive.

This is just like that perpetual motion scam that kept surfacing on Digg last month. Whatever happened to that?

Look at the .pdf that NewScientist links to! It is beyond ignorant! Here's two gems from it that I lifted:

The *first* graph in the paper shows the forces he is considering. Notice anything missing? Perhaps the forces on the two side walls?! It's no wonder that he left them out, if he had included them, he would have found the uninteresting result that an object cannot exert a net force on itself.

The *first* equation in his paper is the Lorentz force equation, "F = q(E + v B)", and even though this equation is incredibly basic, he succeeds in misusing it. In this equation, "v" represents the velocity of the matter that the light is hitting, *not* the velocity of the light itself! But the author states, "If v is replaced with the group velocity vg of the electromagnetic wave..." You can't just replace variables with whatever you want, in order to get results that you want!

And these are only the first two things in the paper! This paper is beyond inaccurate. I believe it is willingly inaccurate, with the goal of seducing investment money.

Finally, and most importantly, I want diggers to NOT take my word on this. That's no better than taking the author's word that his engine works, and is the main problem here. Please do your own independent research, and make a good educated, logical judgment.

I'm not going to comment on the rest of it, but just a thought:
http://www.newscientisttech.com/data/images/archive/2568/25681402.jpg

Wouldn't it make more sense to just have wings and not waste energy on downward thrust? The reason we use wings is because they save energy... imagine in planes had 1 engine for forward thrust and an engine for downward thrust? How wasteful is that?

If the small plate was reduced to a point, then by Shawyers reasoning there would be no force in its direction. This helps us realize that we need to concider the sides of the structure.
But, even if we neglect the sides, if we imagine one microwave photon, of one wavelength,
the time it spends interacting with the large plate, where it strikes at a more perpendicular angle, is brief.
Now, the time it spends interacting with the small plate, where it reflects at a more shallow angle, giving a weaker force, is longer, so if we calculate the impulses of these two different forces acting for different times, then they will almost certainly be equal.

Why do I have to see such a ***** on fark, slashdot and digg.com?

Violates the laws of momentum conservation and energy conservation.

Think about it like this, the photons are counterweights spinning, seems easy to see that this is not workable after putting it into perspective. Kinda like many, many, older perpetual motion or reaction-less drive systems.

According to all we know and can test about physics it is NOT possible to create momentum without some sort of reaction, this is utter Science Fiction.

Another way to see it is that the photons have to be emitted from somewhere, they have an effect on the emission source, kinda like a momentum kick-back from a bullet being fired from a gun, this cancels out any effect from the photons striking, resonating or anything else you make them do at the other end of a tube.

This is as silly as Wylie Coyote chasing the Roadrunner on a skateboard with a sail pushing it with a fan from the back of the same skateboard, which, BTW, only works in cartoons.

I find it disturbing that the British government or any other organization (US Armed Forces ?) would invest any time or money into such a cartoonish invention, the AOL thing is laughable too.

Its from NewScientist so its probably *****.

his weight anomalies are probably coming from the powerful elecric currents (which are used to create the microwaves) interacting with the earths magnetic field.

looks simple why has'nt a test model been built?

For those who still believe this thing could work, why doesn't the "drive" fly off into space when it's filled with high-pressure air? After all, it's filled with molecules exerting force on every square inch of the upper and lower disks of the cavity, so by the original logic the thing should fly if the pressure differential is high enough, no microwaves needed.

Long story short, New Scientist = pwn3d.

Exactly, even air molecules have a wavelength, microwaves not needed.

I indeed did read the article.
Apparently you do not realize that there has been NO new discovery here.
This is simply a matter of a backyard physicist making simple miscalculations, the problem is that science magazines and governments are taking it seriously without examining the underlying principles.
I do have an open mind, if an issue has any basis in reality, this does NOT.

BTW, forming opinions about people without actually knowing them shows a lack of intelligence.

Whether Shawyers idea really works, i do genuinely believe there is a way
I truly believe that, and obviously he does too, it is inspiring that experienced engineers and scientists are trying, often against overwhelming disapproval.

Whether entirely accurate or not, the article was quite interesting. Really gets you thinking about possibilities (whether plausible or not).

If you read my comment about impulse, above, i actually sent a brief report to Shawyer about his neglect of the impulses of the forces for each microwave photon quanta, a couple of weeks ago and recieved no reply.

This is wahat i sent him.

It is correct, as can be seen from your calculations, that the forces acting on each plate are different.
However, there is something you have overlooked.
Suppose one wavelength of a microwave is reflecting in the 'asymetric' waveguide.
As the wave begins reflecting, it begins to exert a force on the electrons in the reflector. The changing electric and magnetic fields of the microwave, parallel to the plate, exert a thrust on the electrons in the plate, perpendicular to the plate. Hence, photon pressure.
This force varies during the phase of the wave. It is a maximum when the rate of change of the wave is also a maximum. This is at the beginning of the wave, the middle of the wave and the end of the wave.

As the force varies during the time of the wave, we will need to calculate the impulse of this force for the time the force is acting.
Impulse can be calculated by integrating the force with respect to time, over the period the force acts.
Look carefully at fig 2.4 of your paper. The force F1 acts for a brief period compared to force F2 on the smaller plate, which acts for a longer period.
The impulse of force F1 will almost certainly be EXACTLY the same as the impulse of F2. (You will need to consider the sloping parts of the waveguide too)
It is likely that the small force anomalies you are experiencing in your experimental setup, are coming from your experiments powerfull electric current interacting with the earths magnetic field.

Reminds me of the futurama episode where they discover the delivery spaceship has never moved from its starting position, it simply moves everything around it.

F=MA^2 => F= 0 x A^2 => F=0. Without ejecting mass, you get nuttin, honey.

marked as inaccurate, rubbish physics even a gcse science student would know this wouldnt work properly

I don't know why this is flagged as inaccurate.

The article, which is well written and posted on a reputable website, CLEARLY states that this work has yet to be verified by a third party, which any scientist knows is a vital part of the scientific method.

most of you would'nt know how to change a flat tire , but act as if they know all about science and cut people that talk about it off. digg users are full of crap.

I will bet anyone $5000 that this never gets off the ground. Like many people have said, you can't get a net force on your little cavity by just making one side bigger then the other. The photons will also hit the slanted part of the wall and that will make up for the difference in force between the two flat walls.

And sorry, of all the things that Einstein changed, conservation of momentum wasn't one of them.

Basically, if this guy submitted this in a freshman physics class he would get this.

"F - see me after class"

Counter measurements initiated:
http://digg.com/general_sciences/relativity_drive_breaks_the_laws_of_physics
for science!

Playing the Devil's Advocate for a moment, the concept is the container and the microwaves do not behave as if they are together, otherwise nothing would move i.e. for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

The whole point of the theory is the spooky way the microwaves can push the container yet not hold it back. They both have different frames of reference to what is moving, but one acts on the other...OK I lost it there.

It's friggin weird.

This will fly when they make fuel out of ocean water which means it will never happen. http://www.discountpartcenter.com/wheels/allwheels ...