NASA Tests 'Impossible' Engine, Finds Out It's Really Fast

it took the Curiosity rover more than eight months to reach Mars and land on a little red planet but what if we could shave that down to matter weeks meet Guido feta the inventor of the candy drive a space engine that traditional physics said it wasn't supposed to work as because the candy drive doesn't use any liquid or nuclear fuel to produce propulsion just microwaves feta was able to convince NASA to test his engine out and surprisingly enough it worked though they weren't sure how without getting too much into the technical jargon the papers abstracts says the candy drive was able to produce 30 to 50 micro newtons of thrust on two test engines without using classical electromagnetic phenomenon and thus potentially used quantum vacuum virtual plasma they plan to do more testing in the future a writer at extreme tech provides a somewhat more layman's explanation the central insight here assuming this isn't all a big mistake is that something called quantum vacuum fluctuations will occasionally spontaneously create particles all throughout the vacuum of space the thruster essentially turns these virtual particles into a plasma and expels them out of the back of the ship and the verge notes that if produced on a larger scale this sort of engine could result in an ultra lightweight ultra-fast spacecraft that could carry humans to Mars in weeks instead of months and the near star system in just about 30 years so quantum particles get turned into fuel by the engine and that creates thrust got it but we might not want to jump on the next ship to Proxima Centauri just yet popular science spoke with a former NASA engineer who cautioned folks not to get too excited whenever you get results that have extraordinary implications you have to be cautious and somewhat skeptical that they can be repeated before you can accept them as a new theory feta is not the first venture into this microwave quantum ish thrust engine type the whole concept of the cannae Drive is similar to a prototype engine wired reported on last year called the emdrive developed by a British scientist and successfully tested for the first time in China something they know the West didn't seem too interested in while we're on the topic of getting around in space we might as well look at some of the other ideas out there that aren't quite in use yet first up is a sail in space called a light sail this eliminates the need for fuel like the candy drive it uses the power of light beams to move about space it would also need a very large sail though to go anywhere outside the solar system another theory is to use what is called a warp drive which would use negative energy to move space instead of the ship itself it could allow for faster than light travel but this would require massive amounts of energy that we can't currently produce it neither those pan out there's always wormholes which essentially serve as shortcuts through space that ideas on NASA's what we'd like to achieve list for newsy I'm Matt Moreno

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Keywords: cannae drive, nasa tests impossible engine, nasa tests cannae drive, impossible engine works, faster space travel, nasa news, space news, tech news, science news, warp drive, lightsail, wormholes, emdrive

Id: FxRdNj0_8JU

Length: 3min 2sec (182 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 03 2014