The Mustafa Space Drive

[Ben]

Nineteen year old Egyptian giving NASA a run for their money:

http://www.fastcompany.com/1837966/mustafas-space-drive-an-egyptian-students-quantum-physics-invention

[AJ Dual]

Kick ass "free lunch" way to use the Casimir effect to get a tiny push for stationkeeping or small but cumulative course corrections.

Girl needs a job at JPL or something STAT.

[lee n. field]

That is cool.

[MicroBalrog]

I will be impressed when this is built and works.

[Ben]

I will be impressed when this is built and works.

That's what they told Zephram Cochrane.

[seeker_two]

Another success story for women's education under Sharia law.....oh, wait....

[S. Williamson]

That's what they told Zephram Cochrane.

 

Gotta love tech stories so innovative they have to use a picture of a completely different technology at the top of the page. 

[AJ Dual]

Gotta love tech stories so innovative they have to use a picture of a completely different technology at the top of the page. 

A pair of angled Casimir plates just wouldn't have the same visual appeal, even for scientist-like-types, much less 'reglar folk.

[Devonai]

Instead the universe's supposedly empty spaces are filled with a roiling sea of particles and anti-particles that pop into existence, then annihilate each other in such a short space of time that you can't readily detect them.

Anything related to dark matter or dark energy is met with my extreme skepticism... I'll believe it when we encounter it, and not before.

[AZRedhawk44]

Anything related to dark matter or dark energy is met with my extreme skepticism... I'll believe it when we encounter it, and not before.

It's been predicted since about 5000 BC, even by the pre-Buddhist Aryans of the Indus civilization of western India.  The sanskrit word "Tamas" means "dark inertia" and has significant metaphysical properties in a well defined primitive physics that predates our modern perspective with its advanced instrumentation.

[De Selby]

It's been predicted since about 5000 BC, even by the pre-Buddhist Aryans of the Indus civilization of western India.  The sanskrit word "Tamas" means "dark inertia" and has significant metaphysical properties in a well defined primitive physics that predates our modern perspective with its advanced instrumentation.

I'm not sure Hindu philosophy is in any way a form of physics

[RoadKingLarry]

Any technology sufficiently advanced from your own is indistinguishable from magic.

[HankB]

There are other patented - patented! - ways of propelling a spacecraft.

A small sampling:

US Patent 5,058,833  "A spaceship is provided with a freely spinning propeller mounted on the front end. The propeller significantly reduces resistance to flight and also deflects space particles which might otherwise slow the craft. The sides of the spacecraft have ridges which are coated on the front side with radiation reflecting material and on the back side with radiation absorbing material. The resultant force of radiations being absorbed from the rear and reflected from the front propels the spacecraft forward."

US Patent 6,960,975 "A space vehicle propelled by the pressure of inflationary vacuum state is provided comprising a hollow superconductive shield, an inner shield, a power source, a support structure, upper and lower means for generating an electromagnetic field, and a flux modulation controller. A cooled hollow superconductive shield is energized by an electromagnetic field resulting in the quantized vortices of lattice ions projecting a gravitomagnetic field that forms a spacetime curvature anomaly outside the space vehicle. The spacetime curvature imbalance, the spacetime curvature being the same as gravity, provides for the space vehicle's propulsion. The space vehicle, surrounded by the spacetime anomaly, may move at a speed approaching the light-speed characteristic for the modified locale."

Hopefully the inventors will find the financing to reduce their inventions to practice before their patent protection expires. Here's an opportunity for YOU if that old 401(k) just isn't giving you the return you'd like.

Any takers?

[AJ Dual]

Anything related to dark matter or dark energy is met with my extreme skepticism... I'll believe it when we encounter it, and not before.

Uh, the quantum foam has been observed. Many times.

Casimir plate assemblies are pushed together because there's always more of this virtual particle foam outside the plates, than between them, repeatable in labs all over the world.

Many other kinds of physics experiments have to account for the "static" they pick up from the quantum virtual particle pairs. It's very real.  The quantum foam might be related to dark energy accelerating the expansion of the universe, or not, that's not yet known. However, we know dark matter exists, because of it's gravitational influences on observed stellar and galactic movements. And it's not sufficient to shrug your shoulders and say "maybe what we think we know about how space works is wrong" etc. because all of the Relativity/Einstein experiments have been verified every time we try them, or observe for their effects on intergalactic scale.

[Devonai]

Well, you caught me speaking outside of my ken, so I'll take my lumps.  Perhaps I should have simply pointed out that there is still debate going on about the amount/dispersion of dark matter in the universe.

[Perd Hapley]

We haven't seen Middle Eastern aerospace tech like this since the flying carpet.

[AJ Dual]

Well, you caught me speaking outside of my ken, so I'll take my lumps.  Perhaps I should have simply pointed out that there is still debate going on about the amount/dispersion of dark matter in the universe.

Uh... sorry, 

...actually the ammounts and where it is is also pretty well known. (well, how to map it is well understood. Although it's time consuming) Measuring galactic rotations and stellar densities in the closer galaxies, they can do the math as to how much extra dark matter mass must be surrounding it for the galaxy to spin and hold the shape it does. Further out, measuring the gravitational lensing of light from even more distant galaxies being bent by mass between them and us provides more data.

http://astroprofspage.com/archives/598

Just what the hell dark matter actually is, is really the big mystery. 

Some sort of massive particle that adds gravitational attraction to a galaxy, but doesn't interact with anything else is just weird. As I typed it and you read it, trillions might have passed right through our bodies from different directions.

Finding neutrinos which have almost no mass, and takes a cave full of fluid miles underground, and tons of sensitive equipment to detect the microscopic flash when one out of trillions hits an atom is trivially easy by comparison. If these even are particles.

[Devonai]

Yes, I am familiar with neutrinos and some of their properties.  In fact, the main form of scanning technology in my sci-fi writing uses quantum entangled neutrino pairs, and expands upon them with graceful technobabble.

I tend to research astronomy and physics only as the subjects are relevant to my writing.  This is a terrible approach, I realize, but it also allows me to focus on that information that I can use to enhance the science side of my fiction.  So I can play with ideas like quantum entanglement, neutron diffraction, cold fusion, and the like, without ever achieving a firm grasp of, well, anything. 

As long as I don't posit a theoretical technology that is simply impossible by already established fact, I think I can get away with it.  No matter how close to plausible I might come, there will always be a suspension of disbelief required from the reader.  After all, FTL technology is still just a feverish dream at this point.

I have not researched dark matter because I haven't thought of a way it might be relevant to my writing.  If I decide that the protagonists run into a race of beings that use Casimir plate-related technology, for example, then I'll be compelled to learn about it instead of just making offhand comments online.

[Fitz]

PAGING BIRDMAN!

[AJ Dual]

Yes, I am familiar with neutrinos and some of their properties.  In fact, the main form of scanning technology in my sci-fi writing uses quantum entangled neutrino pairs, and expands upon them with graceful technobabble.

I tend to research astronomy and physics only as the subjects are relevant to my writing.  This is a terrible approach, I realize, but it also allows me to focus on that information that I can use to enhance the science side of my fiction.  So I can play with ideas like quantum entanglement, neutron diffraction, cold fusion, and the like, without ever achieving a firm grasp of, well, anything. 

As long as I don't posit a theoretical technology that is simply impossible by already established fact, I think I can get away with it.  No matter how close to plausible I might come, there will always be a suspension of disbelief required from the reader.  After all, FTL technology is still just a feverish dream at this point.

I have not researched dark matter because I haven't thought of a way it might be relevant to my writing.  If I decide that the protagonists run into a race of beings that use Casimir plate-related technology, for example, then I'll be compelled to learn about it instead of just making offhand comments online.

Umm... How about an ancient high technology relic that was coasting around the galaxy. Characters find evidence (dead planet around a pulsar/supernova remnant.. whatever that launched it, ) and then go looking for this relic. Then there's the issue of accounting for dark matter that adds mass to the galactic halo, then gravity, and being able to find the relic, or not find it because of that?