Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking,
Speaker 1: the podcast that looks at the future and says it's astounding.
Speaker 1: Time is fleeting. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 1: that's not the first time we've used that lyric on
Speaker 1: this show. Well anyway, but we warp around sometimes, warp around,
Speaker 1: warp warp yes, okay, sorry, Well, today we're gonna be
Speaker 1: talking about not just one listener request, but a topic
Speaker 1: we have gotten lots of requests about in the past
Speaker 1: few weeks, right, right, But generally we've been getting requests.
Speaker 1: I think this is sort of like some people are
Speaker 1: confusing a couple of topics and sort of putting them
Speaker 1: into the same category, but understandably. So let's let's back
Speaker 1: up and tell the story of the so called NASA
Speaker 1: M Drive. First of all, I'm just gonna have to
Speaker 1: say I don't think it is quite correct or appropriate
Speaker 1: to call it the NASA M Drive. From what I
Speaker 1: can tell, it is not in essence a NASA project.
Speaker 1: The M Drive is sort of a concept. Uh, there's
Speaker 1: there's one main model, but then others that are very similar.
Speaker 1: And then recently we've had some experiments by a subdivision
Speaker 1: of the Johnson Space Center at NASA who have tested
Speaker 1: versions of the M drive, and we'll talk more about
Speaker 1: that that division a little bit later in the episode. Right,
Speaker 1: But I don't think there, I don't think it's really
Speaker 1: correct to call it the NASA M Drive, so we'll
Speaker 1: just call it the M drive. So, simply put, the
Speaker 1: M drive is a proposed method for generating thrust in
Speaker 1: space without propellant. It's a propellantless drive, which is um
Speaker 1: or at least propellant in the way that we we
Speaker 1: generally understand propellant, because there are some weird, wacky, uh
Speaker 1: quasi explanations of what might be going on in which
Speaker 1: we could be talking about a quantum propellant. But we'll
Speaker 1: get to that too, sure, Okay, So let's look at
Speaker 1: how today's space vehicles work. So today's space propulsion is
Speaker 1: pretty much all based on Newton's third law, which is
Speaker 1: pretty good as a good law. Yeah, it's also known
Speaker 1: as the conservation of momentum. And that's where Newton said
Speaker 1: that you can't keep a witch in your basement unless
Speaker 1: you pay attacks to the local region. No, that was
Speaker 1: the fourth thought. Sorry, just holy grail. The conservation of momentum.
Speaker 1: So it's for every action there is an equal and
Speaker 1: opposite reaction. You've heard this one before. You could paraphrase.
Speaker 1: This is the sort of throw the medicine ball method,
Speaker 1: as I've called it. So imagine you're sitting in a
Speaker 1: rolling office chair on a very smooth surface, and you've
Speaker 1: got one of those big heavy medicine balls in your
Speaker 1: and your feet are not on the ground, you're not adding,
Speaker 1: you're not embracing against anything. And now you just take
Speaker 1: that ball in your hands and you throw it as
Speaker 1: hard as you can. What happens, well, the ball goes
Speaker 1: off in one direction and then you roll away in
Speaker 1: the opposite direction. And this is the basic principle behind
Speaker 1: a chemical rocket engine. So in a chemical rocket engine,
Speaker 1: you burn fuel to eject lots of mass or propellant.
Speaker 1: The goal of the burning in a rocket engine is
Speaker 1: the exhaust um. So you're going to be throwing all
Speaker 1: this hot gas out the back of the rocket. And then,
Speaker 1: of course, because of conservation and momentum, the rocket gets
Speaker 1: pushed forward with a proportional force, and there's actually a
Speaker 1: mathematical way to determine what that force is going to be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's incredibly simple. Actually it's too. To figure out momentum.
Speaker 1: You take the mass of the body that's going to
Speaker 1: be that's that's in motion, and you multiply that with
Speaker 1: its velocity. No Velocity is speed in a set direction,
Speaker 1: and that's really important with momentum when you're talking about
Speaker 1: conserving momentum. So, uh, the mass of the propellant in
Speaker 1: this case is very low, We're not it's especially compared
Speaker 1: to the rocket itself, right, it's much smaller, but velocity
Speaker 1: is incredible. So you multiply those two things together. Well, meanwhile,
Speaker 1: you've got the rocket which has got a certain mass.
Speaker 1: As long as the the the momentum is going to
Speaker 1: be greater than the rocket, then obviously you're going to
Speaker 1: have to uh, if you if both sides of that
Speaker 1: equation have to be equal, you have to have some
Speaker 1: velocity with the rocket going in the opposite direction. That's
Speaker 1: what's conserving the momentum. Uh, So the rocket will end
Speaker 1: up moving through space in the opposite way from the
Speaker 1: direction of the propellant um. And if you want to
Speaker 1: picture this relationship with just a concrete example. Imagine instead
Speaker 1: of the big medicine ball, you sit in the rolling
Speaker 1: office chair and you shoot a gun. Right, the weight
Speaker 1: of the bullet that's not much mass. It's a very
Speaker 1: low mass object, but it escapes with very high velocity,
Speaker 1: and it's probably gonna make you roll, maybe as much
Speaker 1: or more than the medicine ball. So that's your basic thing.
Speaker 1: That's just your basic rocket. Right, That's just the way
Speaker 1: that uh well, that's the way the universe works that
Speaker 1: our understanding of physics has. This is one of the
Speaker 1: fundamental laws, this conservation of momentum. You cannot create it,
Speaker 1: you cannot destroy it. You can only conserve it, right, right,
Speaker 1: you can move momentum around. Yeah, So it's not just
Speaker 1: chemical rockets though. This is all methods of space propulsion
Speaker 1: that we have that follow Newton's third law. So, for example,
Speaker 1: you have something like ion thrusters. Now this is this
Speaker 1: can be classified as a type of electric propulsion, but
Speaker 1: it's still accelerates by ejecting propellant. In this case, the
Speaker 1: propellant is ions or charged particles that are being sort
Speaker 1: of electrically gathered and flung out the back of the vehicle,
Speaker 1: and it's a relatively low amount of mass, but it
Speaker 1: can accelerate it at very high speed and you can
Speaker 1: have you know, you can have a constant acceleration where
Speaker 1: the acceleration itself might not be very drum attic, but
Speaker 1: over time, because you're accelerating, you're building onto that velocity,
Speaker 1: you get faster and faster and faster. It's just that
Speaker 1: that you know, uh, acceleration is very smooth and slow,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't mean the speed is slow. The speed
Speaker 1: will just get additively. It starts out not fast. Right now,
Speaker 1: you might be thinking, wait a minute, now, I can
Speaker 1: think of some methods of travel in space that aren't
Speaker 1: based on throwing mass out of the back, Like what
Speaker 1: about a solar sale or what about beamed propulsion. Well,
Speaker 1: in both of those cases, you're still conserving momentum. It's
Speaker 1: just that instead of throwing something out the back, you're
Speaker 1: letting something push you from the outside. Right because radiation,
Speaker 1: electromagnetic radiation has forced So a solar sale would like
Speaker 1: stretch out a big reflective sale and let the sunlight
Speaker 1: push it out away from the sun. Or you might
Speaker 1: have some kind of system where you could beam energy
Speaker 1: or something or beam ions at an object in space
Speaker 1: to push it forward, and that's I'll find that also
Speaker 1: is still obeying Newton's third law. Yeah, the interesting thing
Speaker 1: here is that we often think of electromagnetic radiation is
Speaker 1: not possessing any mass, right, like the idea that um
Speaker 1: a photon is. We often think of it as a
Speaker 1: massless particle that carries light. However, it's kind of massless. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it has a relativistic mass, so there's that. But but
Speaker 1: also the interesting thing about momentum with electromagnetic radiation is
Speaker 1: that we're really looking at the energy of the particle.
Speaker 1: And the way you determine the momentum of a of
Speaker 1: electro magnetic waves is that you take the energy and
Speaker 1: you divide it by the speed of light. Now, the
Speaker 1: speed allow is a huge number, so unless that energy
Speaker 1: is truly astronomical, it's also going to be a very
Speaker 1: very very small number when you're done with that division.
Speaker 1: But that's the momentum of that electromagnetic wave. So in
Speaker 1: other words, as you might imagine, it takes a lot
Speaker 1: of energy to create a little momentum using electromagnetic radiation. Right.
Speaker 1: But of course, even in these scenarios where we're talking
Speaker 1: about electromagnetic radiation or something having some kind of momentum
Speaker 1: like a force that can impart. The laws of physics
Speaker 1: tell us that you can't accelerate a closed system because
Speaker 1: what we're talking about there is an open system. So
Speaker 1: you might have a solar sale that even if you
Speaker 1: um discount say like like charged particles and and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, flying into things that do have mass. If
Speaker 1: you're just talking about radiation pressure pushing on a solar sale,
Speaker 1: that's an open system. It's being fed energy from the
Speaker 1: outside right now. According to the everything we understand about
Speaker 1: the laws of physics, you cannot accelerate a closed system,
Speaker 1: a system that doesn't have mass or energy coming in
Speaker 1: or going out. Right. So, Uh, one example I have
Speaker 1: seen that I read in an article somewhere was that
Speaker 1: imagine that you are sitting in the driver's seat of
Speaker 1: a car and the engine isn't on. Uh. This is
Speaker 1: John Byas is analogy. There we go, thank you, thank you,
Speaker 1: and that you push on the steering wheel in order
Speaker 1: to try and make the car go. That doesn't work. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know that as a closed system, and there's nothing
Speaker 1: going in there to make that. Plus as you're pushing
Speaker 1: here obviously pushing yourself backward. It's all being equalled out.
Speaker 1: Nothing's happening. Momentum is preserved within the system, but you
Speaker 1: don't get an external motion there. The car won't move
Speaker 1: right right, even the Flintstone's car. If you know, if
Speaker 1: you're moving your feet, that's a that's a fricative surface
Speaker 1: pushing against that that is an open system exactly. So
Speaker 1: so yeah, according to the laws of physics, we know
Speaker 1: of three ways to move something. You can eject mass
Speaker 1: like chemical rocket. You can push against something like we
Speaker 1: do with the Flintstone car, feet in the Flintstone car,
Speaker 1: the wheels of a car with an engine. Or you
Speaker 1: can be pushed by something like a sail in the
Speaker 1: ocean or a solar sail. That's conservation and momentum. We've,
Speaker 1: as far as we know, with one passe double exception
Speaker 1: now never ever seen this violated. So that brings us
Speaker 1: to the thing that may or may not be an exception.
Speaker 1: And before we get too much into m drive, which
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously we haven't gotten into it really at
Speaker 1: all yet. But before we really leap into this, we
Speaker 1: should also say you're gonna hear a lot of hypothesizing
Speaker 1: going on among the three of us. And that's because
Speaker 1: this is actually something where every single research organization that
Speaker 1: has taken a look at it has come up with
Speaker 1: a different means of explaining what the heck is going on. So,
Speaker 1: if you are listening to this hoping that we're going
Speaker 1: to give you the definitive answer as to does the
Speaker 1: M drive work, does it not work? If it does work,
Speaker 1: why does it work, I just want to go ahead
Speaker 1: and yeah, I got to warn you that's not happening,
Speaker 1: not yet anyway, certainly not definitely not us Right, Well,
Speaker 1: we'll offer plenty more cafaats as we go down the road,
Speaker 1: because this is getting into territory. I think that even
Speaker 1: weird for lots of physicists, as we are by no
Speaker 1: means physicists. So we're doing We're doing our best here, folks.
Speaker 1: But so let's talk about the M drive. The M
Speaker 1: drive is sort of you could also call it the
Speaker 1: RF resonant cavity thruster. That's what has been referred to
Speaker 1: in some of the literature RF, meaning radio frequency UM.
Speaker 1: It is one system, and not the only one ever
Speaker 1: proposed that attempts to challenge the absolute necessity of propellant
Speaker 1: for for space travel, like we're talking about. It wants
Speaker 1: to generate thrust like a traveling force without propellant. Okay,
Speaker 1: So the m drive was invented by the UK aerospace
Speaker 1: engineer Roger Shawyer. Uh sometime around the year two thousand
Speaker 1: and shaw You're created the company's Satellite Propulsion Research or
Speaker 1: spr Ltd in the early two thousands around the device
Speaker 1: and to sort of uh promote his research. But the
Speaker 1: basic idea is actually pretty simple. Like once you get
Speaker 1: into the physics, the math is incredibly complic hated, but
Speaker 1: the device itself is pretty simple. Yeah. The idea is
Speaker 1: you're bouncing microwaves around inside a very specifically designed cavity,
Speaker 1: right that will turn pure DC electricity just creating that yeah,
Speaker 1: electric energy into microwaves that generate thrust without ejecting any mass.
Speaker 1: So in other words, you've got a chamber. There's no
Speaker 1: opening in that chamber, so there's no way for the
Speaker 1: microwaves to escape because otherwise the microwaves will be acting
Speaker 1: like the propellant that we had talked about the previous ones.
Speaker 1: So and and as I said, that would be a
Speaker 1: very inefficient means of generating thrust because electromagnet magnetic radiation
Speaker 1: is very low momentum. But uh, imagine that you've got this.
Speaker 1: This is yeah, this is not even pushing from the outside. Right,
Speaker 1: You've got a closed off chamber. All the microwaves are in.
Speaker 1: Microwave radiation is inside that chamber. There's nowhere for it
Speaker 1: to go. But one end of the chamber is wider
Speaker 1: than the other end of the chamber. And that, according
Speaker 1: to the various tests and the various design documentation that
Speaker 1: we've come across, is the secret. Right, that's the that's
Speaker 1: the thing that that design is. Yes, and it's integrally
Speaker 1: important to creating that thrust. Yeah, let me try to
Speaker 1: explain it a little better. So I found a two
Speaker 1: thousand six paper where show your attempts to explain his
Speaker 1: theory and sort of diagram how the thing works. Again,
Speaker 1: it's lots of advanced math. I am not qualified to
Speaker 1: evaluate it or tell you whether whether his math is
Speaker 1: correct or incorrect, but I can at least look at
Speaker 1: what he's proposing. So the paper is called a Theory
Speaker 1: of Microwave Propulsion for Spacecraft. And here is how you
Speaker 1: claimed it would work. You have a magnetron it's like
Speaker 1: in a microwave oven. Your your microwave has one of these,
Speaker 1: and it's just it's like a vacuum tube that turns
Speaker 1: electricity into microwave radiation. And then you have a quote
Speaker 1: closed papered wave guide. A wave guide is usually just
Speaker 1: going to be it's some kind of like pipe or something.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a device that guides electromagnetic radiation or
Speaker 1: waves in some way for a machine to make use of.
Speaker 1: And in this case it has to be specifically like
Speaker 1: he says, closed and tapered, so it's not open, and
Speaker 1: it uh, it is like you said, it's bigger on
Speaker 1: one end than it is on the other. And the
Speaker 1: magnetron generates microwaves. The microwaves are fed through a tube
Speaker 1: into this specially designed wave guide. And then this is
Speaker 1: a quote from his paper. He says, the group velocity
Speaker 1: of the electromagnetic wave at the endplate of the larger
Speaker 1: section is higher than the group velocity at the endplate
Speaker 1: of the smaller section. Thus, the radiation pressure at the
Speaker 1: larger endplate is higher than at the smaller endplate. So
Speaker 1: he's saying there's going to be despite the fact that
Speaker 1: it's a closed system. There's going to be greater radiation
Speaker 1: pressure on one part of this system than on the other,
Speaker 1: which if you have a pressure your differential, this should
Speaker 1: result in the thrust in. Yeah, and that's an important thing,
Speaker 1: unidirectional thrust. Right, Like you can without bracing against anything,
Speaker 1: sit in a rolling chair and rock back and forth.
Speaker 1: You know what? What But what would you need to
Speaker 1: do to generate unidirectional thrust? That's the question. And even
Speaker 1: with this description it's still I mean, if you start
Speaker 1: thinking about the laws of momentum, it still sounds pretty
Speaker 1: confusing because you're talking about a closed system. Uh, think
Speaker 1: of it as if you were in um to to
Speaker 1: macro size this to get out of the electromagnetic world.
Speaker 1: Imagine that you've got a spacecraft and it has one
Speaker 1: wall that's larger. You know, it's shaped in almost a
Speaker 1: triangular way. Where you have one and that's very wide,
Speaker 1: and one and that's that's much more narrow. They both
Speaker 1: have flat walls. And you get three quarters of your
Speaker 1: crew to line up against the wide portion and the
Speaker 1: last quarter to wine to line up on the on
Speaker 1: the the smaller portion, And tell everyone put your hands
Speaker 1: on the on the wall and push as hard as
Speaker 1: you can, you would not expect the spacecraft to move
Speaker 1: through space. Because so though Sawyer has an answer for this, Okay,
Speaker 1: So he's got a theory about why this works. And
Speaker 1: what he claims is that his device um because of
Speaker 1: relativistic considerations. That again, we're not qualified to evaluate the
Speaker 1: physics of those. Some other people who are kind of
Speaker 1: qualified do seem rather dubious. Uh, because of relativistic considerations,
Speaker 1: it's not a closed system. It's actually an open system
Speaker 1: once you've take into account these quantum physics that he's
Speaker 1: talking about. Yeah, so if you just go and look
Speaker 1: at like the fact on his website, he tries to
Speaker 1: explain it. So he says, for example, the thrust is
Speaker 1: the result of the reaction between the end plates of
Speaker 1: the wave guide and the electromagnetic wave of propagated within it. Okay. Again,
Speaker 1: while that sounds like a closed system to me, but
Speaker 1: he says it not because at the propagation velocities and
Speaker 1: this is a quote, at the propagation velocities uh, parentheses
Speaker 1: greater than one tenth the speed of light closed parentheses,
Speaker 1: the effects of special relativity must be considered. Different reference
Speaker 1: planes have to be used for the E M wave
Speaker 1: and the wave guide itself. The thruster is therefore an
Speaker 1: open system and a net force can be produced. So
Speaker 1: he's invoking relativistic physics like a like a sort of
Speaker 1: like Lorenz transformation, essentially saying that that to your your
Speaker 1: point of reference is what determines whether the system is
Speaker 1: open or closed, and that from one point of reference,
Speaker 1: it appears to be a closed system, but if you
Speaker 1: change your point of reference, it's an open system. It's
Speaker 1: very similar whenever we get into discussions about about speed
Speaker 1: and time, about how your experience of time is going
Speaker 1: to remain the same no matter how fast you're traveling,
Speaker 1: but your speed of time compared to someone else's speed
Speaker 1: of time will change, well, will appear to be different
Speaker 1: based upon your both relative speeds relative to one another.
Speaker 1: Um So, so it's one of those things where like
Speaker 1: without a further deeper understanding on my part, my first,
Speaker 1: my my knee jerk reaction, I completely admit this is
Speaker 1: based off ignorance. But my knee jerk reaction is you're
Speaker 1: using special relativity like a get on a jail free card,
Speaker 1: like like well it's only or or obi wan Kenobi
Speaker 1: would be like, well, it's only a closed system from
Speaker 1: a certain point of view. I'm like, you're gonna make
Speaker 1: me watch a prequel trilogy where I learned that you're
Speaker 1: just a big liar, Mr Obi one. Okay, So well,
Speaker 1: let's get back to where all of this sort of
Speaker 1: hype in the media has come from. Yeah, because in
Speaker 1: the past month or so, there have been so many
Speaker 1: stories in the popular media that have been talking about
Speaker 1: and that's where all of our requests came from, too,
Speaker 1: is like in the last month. Yeah, but this is
Speaker 1: not the only time this has come up. In fact,
Speaker 1: you if you go back over the year, you will
Speaker 1: see sort of a cycle of like resurgence and then
Speaker 1: dying off of M drive related hype a theory you do, Yeah,
Speaker 1: at least of the dying off part. Well, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: So there have been times when there's some supposed new
Speaker 1: somebody comes out and says something about M drive and
Speaker 1: this may be shaw Your's M drive or any other
Speaker 1: similar form of sort of like closed microwave propulsion, right,
Speaker 1: because he's not the only person who's been working on this.
Speaker 1: They're they're very similar technologies. You might even call them parallel.
Speaker 1: That are, they're being considered and tested. But like so,
Speaker 1: let's say within the past year or so, you've seen
Speaker 1: a headline that says something like NASA confirms impossible space
Speaker 1: drive or something like that, right, Uh, that sounds exciting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: NASA confirmed it. Yeah, we like NASA. NASA does good work,
Speaker 1: I'm sure, and that is in reaction to, uh this
Speaker 1: presentation that came in July from a team out of
Speaker 1: the Johnson Space Center, which we mentioned before. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: their presentation was called, quote anomalous thrust production from an
Speaker 1: RF test device measured on a low thrust torsion pendulum
Speaker 1: rolls off the tongue and uh so the division we
Speaker 1: keep talking about this, this group within NASA has a
Speaker 1: name Eagle Works. Well that's that's a that's an unofficial name.
Speaker 1: They don't have. It's you know, based on skunk worksite,
Speaker 1: actually legal works. It's done by the folks from scrubs.
Speaker 1: I don't get that reference at all. Is NASA's Advanced
Speaker 1: Propulsion Research Group. Yeah, you could also say they're the
Speaker 1: ones who are given the amazing responsibility to investigate the
Speaker 1: least likely, most fringe, most far reaching possible hypotheses because
Speaker 1: the idea being that. Sure, a lot of these ideas
Speaker 1: that were coming up with and I'm not speaking just
Speaker 1: about the M drive. I'm talking about lots of stuff here,
Speaker 1: warp drive exactly, at warp drive and that kind of
Speaker 1: I'll mention warp drive with the M drive as well
Speaker 1: a little bit later too. But at any rate, Uh,
Speaker 1: they're they're in charge of looking at all these things
Speaker 1: because even though many of them may be extremely unlikely
Speaker 1: to ever work out, if one of them does, we
Speaker 1: definitely want to get in on that. So right, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, you can understand why people might be excited
Speaker 1: about this if there is a test that seems to indicate, oh,
Speaker 1: maybe you could generate thrust without ejecting mass. I mean,
Speaker 1: propellantless drive would revolutionize space dravel would be It would
Speaker 1: wreck physics departments across the world too. I mean you
Speaker 1: would you would have to rewrite the books on physics.
Speaker 1: You would have to at least sit there and say,
Speaker 1: all right, for your basic classical system this holds true.
Speaker 1: But in these cases addendum to classical physics and we'll
Speaker 1: actually talk about that at the end of this episode,
Speaker 1: Like what this means, Yeah, yeah, sure, okay, but but
Speaker 1: so in this July uh paper, I believe it was
Speaker 1: a conference presentation, conference presentation. Yes, yes, now that's totally correct. Um.
Speaker 1: The group leader of Eagle Works one Dr Harold Sonny White,
Speaker 1: proposed that the M drive should in fact be able
Speaker 1: to provide thrust because the quantum vacuum. They're giant quotation
Speaker 1: marks around that, y'all. The quantum vacuum should function the
Speaker 1: same way that propellant ions do in a magneto hydro
Speaker 1: dynamics drive. So let's unpack all of this just a
Speaker 1: little bit. No idea what hydro dynamics drive is, Well,
Speaker 1: it has something to do with the leader of the
Speaker 1: League of Evil Mutants, right, Welcome to Die, right, And
Speaker 1: then apparently one of the Spider Man villains is in
Speaker 1: there too, with Hydroman there, and so obviously the comic
Speaker 1: book villains are are are deep and NASA is what
Speaker 1: we're getting into. Lauren, can you explain this? Did you
Speaker 1: look this up? I can? I can explain this a
Speaker 1: little bit. Okay, So, so quantum vacuum. Quantum vacuum is
Speaker 1: the term for the concept that the vacuum of space
Speaker 1: is not empty, but rather is is filled with like
Speaker 1: Heisenberg uncertainty related virtual particles and photons that simultaneously exist
Speaker 1: and don't exist sporadically and or predictably the way that
Speaker 1: they do. So, Yeah, like the vacuum of space is
Speaker 1: full of quantum possibility, right, and and if there's a possibility,
Speaker 1: that means that at least some of the time there's
Speaker 1: a reality. So if you think of this like I
Speaker 1: think of it, I always go back to electron tunneling
Speaker 1: because that goes back to my my technology stuff. So
Speaker 1: electron tunneling the the electron doesn't necessarily tunnel through anything.
Speaker 1: This is a term that we use for things like
Speaker 1: when you're making a transistor and if they transistor gate
Speaker 1: is too narrow, sometimes an electron can appear to have
Speaker 1: tunneled straight through the gate, but it doesn't leave a
Speaker 1: hole or anything. What happens is you've got a field
Speaker 1: that somewhere within that field the electron exists. So there's
Speaker 1: a percentage of probability that the electron will exist at
Speaker 1: any given point in that field. If that field can
Speaker 1: overlap a gate, that means that there are there is
Speaker 1: a possibility the electron could exist on the other side
Speaker 1: of the gate and as long as there's a possibility.
Speaker 1: It means that sometimes there is an electron on the
Speaker 1: other side of that gate because nature finds a way. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: and an electronics This is what we call a bad
Speaker 1: thing because you don't want your electrons to be able
Speaker 1: to go through the gates of the gates are not open.
Speaker 1: That's the gates are designed to stop them exactly. You're
Speaker 1: supposed to have the control flow of electricity. Also in
Speaker 1: dinosaur amusement parks um, that is a very bad probability.
Speaker 1: I'm sure we'll find that out in the in the
Speaker 1: upcoming documentary World. Okay, so so we've got a quantum vacuum,
Speaker 1: but what about magneto hydrodynamics. Okay, that is the fancy
Speaker 1: term for a type of plasma physics, and quantum vacuum
Speaker 1: is not a thing that is really agreed upon solidly
Speaker 1: by the physics community, but magnetohydrodynamics totally are. It's basically,
Speaker 1: when a conductive field slashes around, and it's also in
Speaker 1: the presence of a magnetic field, it will generate electrical currents.
Speaker 1: Those currents will muck around to the magnetic field, producing
Speaker 1: mechanical forces that'll muck with the fluid and with anything
Speaker 1: else that happens to be nearby. Now see this makes
Speaker 1: perfect sense to me, and this is why we're talking
Speaker 1: about electro magnetism, the the the the relationship between electricity
Speaker 1: and magnetism. So if you have a magnetic field, uh,
Speaker 1: and you've got a conductor, then clearly you're going to
Speaker 1: have the ability to generate to induce electricity to flow.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the very basics of a lot of
Speaker 1: our electrical electricity power grids here. Okay, can you give
Speaker 1: me a concrete example and explain how it would work?
Speaker 1: All right, So let's say that you've got a an
Speaker 1: iron nail and you've got a copper wire that's wrapped
Speaker 1: around the iron nail, and then you introduce that to
Speaker 1: a fluctuating magnetic field. Now fluctuating is important in this case.
Speaker 1: But if it's a fluctuating magnetic field that will induce
Speaker 1: electrons to flow through that copper wire, so induced electricity
Speaker 1: to flow. It's the same thing we're talking about here,
Speaker 1: except we're talking about plasmas rather than you know, a
Speaker 1: like an actual magnet or an electro magnet. But it's
Speaker 1: it's the same basic principles it's the principles of electricity
Speaker 1: and magnetism working together and they kind of feed off
Speaker 1: of one another. Sure where does the mechanical force come in? Oh, well,
Speaker 1: that would just depend upon you having some sort of
Speaker 1: magnetic system that would have to be able to react to, uh,
Speaker 1: the actual magnetic forces. I mean, you would have to
Speaker 1: for for a mechanical thing, for a physical force to happen.
Speaker 1: I would imagine you have to have some sort of
Speaker 1: possibly ferro magnetic material to be attracted to it. Otherwise
Speaker 1: I can't. I don't know where you would get mechanical
Speaker 1: forces from that point. Otherwise, Um, it's it's a bit
Speaker 1: of physics that I do not understand. The caveat number
Speaker 1: like thousand of this podcast episode, scientists say that this
Speaker 1: is tot's a real thing, y'all. So I believe them.
Speaker 1: You could have it be a mechanical force, now that
Speaker 1: I think on it. If you've got a plasma, the
Speaker 1: mechanical force may just be the fluid I motion of
Speaker 1: the plasma. The fact that the magnetic forces are going
Speaker 1: to force the plasma to change different shapes, that could
Speaker 1: be it as well. So uh yeah, anyway, fascinating stuff.
Speaker 1: This parody actually made a vehicle out of this? Yes? Actually, um, okay,
Speaker 1: So magneto hydrodynamic drives are engines that capitalize on this
Speaker 1: weird trick of physics, maybe by using the mechanical force
Speaker 1: created by the system to push against matter that's nearby
Speaker 1: and propel a vehicle forward. I think that's what the
Speaker 1: m drive is talking about. But in practical, tested, reproducible systems, UM,
Speaker 1: you can use the mechanical force created by the system
Speaker 1: to funnel a liquid like like water or air through
Speaker 1: a series of ducks running the length of a vehicle.
Speaker 1: So the vehicle therefore moves forward from the force of
Speaker 1: the fluid that it's it's funneling being pushed out through
Speaker 1: the back end of the vehicle. Wait a minute, is
Speaker 1: this the Red October in then for Red October caterpillar drive?
Speaker 1: Is that what it was? No? No, that was that
Speaker 1: was nuclear stuff. But but this is this is similar, um,
Speaker 1: and they're actually no no, wait no, I think in
Speaker 1: the I think it is. It's a nuclear powered magneto
Speaker 1: hydrodynamic drive system. It's a it's a possibility. Obviously that
Speaker 1: was fiction. It's the caterpillar driven fiction. I'm sorry. I
Speaker 1: interrupted you. I'm sorry, please go ahead. No, no, Mitsubishi
Speaker 1: did make a real submarine back in the early nineties
Speaker 1: that contained this kind of drive. It was powered by
Speaker 1: superconductive coils containing liquid hydrogen um. Well, and it was
Speaker 1: also powered by seawater, because that's what it was pushing
Speaker 1: through the system, right, right, Yeah, So so this sub
Speaker 1: was called the Yamato one, and it was pretty badass
Speaker 1: but also really impractical because it had a top speed
Speaker 1: of like nine miles per hour a k a about
Speaker 1: fifteen kilometers PERU. That might be comparable to some objections
Speaker 1: people have raised about the m trun Right, but so,
Speaker 1: all right, what Dr White of Eagle Works is saying
Speaker 1: is that if you suppose that the quantum vacuum of
Speaker 1: space contains enough particles to push against or maybe through,
Speaker 1: uh magneto hydro dynamic type drive, then it could it
Speaker 1: could work. Okay, Well I don't know whether that's true
Speaker 1: or not, but that's interesting that he says. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's all I have to say. Yeah, It's
Speaker 1: it's one of those things where where at some point
Speaker 1: you have to say, well, this this is dealing with
Speaker 1: a level of understanding beyond my own and I can't
Speaker 1: really have an opinion about it beyond that. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: let's talk about actual tests. I mean there there have
Speaker 1: been tests, yeah, there, And this is why but er
Speaker 1: I think repeatedly getting excited because there have been multiple tests,
Speaker 1: some done I think in the United States in China
Speaker 1: where they're like, okay, well we're building one of these things,
Speaker 1: some kind of electromagnetic drive system, like an M drive
Speaker 1: or or a CANAI drive. You know, it's bouncing microwaves
Speaker 1: inside an apparently closed system and generating thrust one way
Speaker 1: or another. Like in China, They've been doing some right
Speaker 1: since twenty ten or so, this this team out of
Speaker 1: China has been publishing research concerning this sort of technology.
Speaker 1: As the last thing that I saw from them was
Speaker 1: that they were working on ways to monitor these devices
Speaker 1: from the inside with like embedded therma couples, because monitoring
Speaker 1: this kind of system is pretty important to make sure
Speaker 1: that it doesn't explode um. But but but they have
Speaker 1: not this team out of China has not yet provide
Speaker 1: an explanation for how an M drive would provide propulsion
Speaker 1: in a vacuum. And well, I mean not not one
Speaker 1: that's been widely accepted by the scientific community. And an
Speaker 1: important thing to call or or an important thing to
Speaker 1: point out rather is that none of the tests on
Speaker 1: M drive technology have been conducted in vacuums yet, which
Speaker 1: is a really important variable in this whole space travel equation. Right. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, so one of the things we need to
Speaker 1: look at is a lot of these tests do report results.
Speaker 1: They say, hey, hey, this we generated some number of
Speaker 1: micro Newton's of force or not force of thrust. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they register some tiny amount of apparently unidirectional thrust.
Speaker 1: They say, we we put it on a you know,
Speaker 1: a machine that will gauge if there's thrust, and they
Speaker 1: did register some tiny, tiny, tiny amount of thrust. Now,
Speaker 1: the question is why did they register that. Is that
Speaker 1: because the device is actually working as proposed, or because
Speaker 1: there's been some kind of error, or because uh, you know,
Speaker 1: there's something wrong with how the experiment is devised, right right,
Speaker 1: Maybe there's some kind of factor that they have not
Speaker 1: taken into account, a couple of which we will discuss
Speaker 1: later on um. But so all of this hype recently,
Speaker 1: uh you know, up until now, no one has tested
Speaker 1: this in a vacuum. Someone from Eagle works um. An
Speaker 1: engineered by the name of Paul March went on an
Speaker 1: enthusiast web forum called NASA space Flight dot Com and
Speaker 1: said that NASA has built, has has run a successful
Speaker 1: vacuum test of an M drive, And that is what
Speaker 1: I think all of these news sources are going bonkers about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because the the important thing we need to point out
Speaker 1: here with the vacuum versus non the know in atmosphere
Speaker 1: tests is that, uh, there are other variables that could
Speaker 1: affect measurement right where you could end up having a
Speaker 1: false positive on an outcome. For example, you might think
Speaker 1: that your M drive has produced thrust, but in fact
Speaker 1: a nigh undetectable breeze could have affected the um the measurement,
Speaker 1: And that was one of the things. That's why people
Speaker 1: are saying, you have to have a successful test within
Speaker 1: a vacuum environment to rule out some of these other variables.
Speaker 1: Plus that's the environment that this thing would be working
Speaker 1: in in the first place. Yeah, I mean, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of things that can happen if you don't
Speaker 1: actually have a vacuum. So so we've heard this report
Speaker 1: apparently on an internet forum that there finally has been
Speaker 1: a successful vacuum test. But that's a report on an
Speaker 1: internet forum. Yeah, and it's a really cool internet forum.
Speaker 1: Apparently some of the like a bunch of engineers from
Speaker 1: Eagle Works hang out there and kind of bounce ideas
Speaker 1: off of this community of like minded enthusiasts. So, you know,
Speaker 1: but internet forum. Yeahah, so, so if you just look
Speaker 1: at the ones that have been published with the not
Speaker 1: fully vacuumized, that'd be the term. The chambers that are
Speaker 1: that are not actually if a full vacuum um you
Speaker 1: could I I've seen it suggested by some critics that
Speaker 1: perhaps heating the air could cause convection currents that could
Speaker 1: move the device, and that and then you get the
Speaker 1: false positive. The device seems to move on its own,
Speaker 1: but it's actually because of convection currents. Obviously, that is
Speaker 1: something that you could eliminate by putting it through a
Speaker 1: vacuum chamber. Another criticism I've seen some critics make is
Speaker 1: simply that these are hyper sensitive test conditions. It's not
Speaker 1: registering huge amounts of force, very very small. Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: seen it compared to you know, it's orders of magnitude
Speaker 1: below the weight of a raisin. Yeah, I've I've also
Speaker 1: heard that it's significantly lower than what had been predicted.
Speaker 1: Although to be fair and at least one UH incarnation
Speaker 1: of this device, it was said that it would only
Speaker 1: work if the device were already in motion and not
Speaker 1: uh work. You couldn't use it to to start, you
Speaker 1: had to be moving already and then it would uh
Speaker 1: provide an acceleration. But um either way, you know, the
Speaker 1: measurements were talking about a very small and some would
Speaker 1: even argue well within a margin of error where you know,
Speaker 1: the the the amounts being measured are smaller than what
Speaker 1: you could UH safely expect is beyond error with the
Speaker 1: metric the measurement devices you're using. Yeah, and another thing
Speaker 1: that that multiple critics have pointed out is that it
Speaker 1: seems like the more accurate the test conditions are, the
Speaker 1: smaller the registered force appears to be. So like the
Speaker 1: better the test is, the less force they seem to detect.
Speaker 1: Another thing I've seen quite a few scientists and science
Speaker 1: writers do is sort of register mirthful skepticism at the
Speaker 1: suggestion that the action of the devices made possible by
Speaker 1: this quote quantum vacuum, virtual plasma. And the thing that
Speaker 1: is that they've never heard of such a thing and
Speaker 1: do not understand what it is, with the implication that
Speaker 1: it's just kind of made up, like it's not a
Speaker 1: real thing, like it might as well have come out
Speaker 1: from a Star Trek Next Generation episode ye be followed
Speaker 1: by reverse the polarity. Again, that's something that I think
Speaker 1: we can't really comment on, but I've seen actual physicists
Speaker 1: making that all. I've at least seen physicists say I
Speaker 1: have no idea what this is supposed to mean, like
Speaker 1: this is my field of study, and I do not
Speaker 1: know what that is supposed to mean, which maybe it
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that. It doesn't necessarily mean that the phrase
Speaker 1: is complete nonsense. It may be a weird way of
Speaker 1: explaining something that truly exists, but it's just a weird
Speaker 1: way of saying it. And that's why the physicist would say, like,
Speaker 1: I don't without further explanation, I don't know what this
Speaker 1: means literally. But there have been a lot of good
Speaker 1: criticisms basically of the hype around this device, and I
Speaker 1: think a lot of the criticism is not necessarily directed
Speaker 1: at the actual like the Eagle Works scientists who are
Speaker 1: testing it, but more at the more the media for
Speaker 1: sort of overplaying the results. Yeah, definitely, yeah, or not
Speaker 1: even the Chinese team or a shower, but the media,
Speaker 1: which is fair because a lot of right you know, sure, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, we work in this field. It's
Speaker 1: easy to get excited about something that seems to be
Speaker 1: new and revolutionary, especially if it's going to have us
Speaker 1: redefine the laws of physics, right, and that's that's a
Speaker 1: tall order. Think it's less exciting when the new and
Speaker 1: revolutionary thing has happened like four times in the past decade.
Speaker 1: But sorry, right, well, I was going to say that, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, I read a thing in Astronautes where there
Speaker 1: was a you know, the the The author was criticizing
Speaker 1: the media reaction mainly like like Lauren was saying, and
Speaker 1: less about you know, the actual people behind it, but
Speaker 1: went on to say things that we're really thought provoking
Speaker 1: to me. For one thing, it was in that post
Speaker 1: where I read about shaw Your's design supposedly only working
Speaker 1: once the engine was already in motion, that it would
Speaker 1: not be able to provide thrust until it was already moving, which,
Speaker 1: as as the author pointed out, makes it very difficult
Speaker 1: to measure you know you're yeah, yeah, you've complicated things
Speaker 1: significantly at that point. And also it all seems to
Speaker 1: contradict all the the miraculous findings that are happening, like
Speaker 1: well the guy who designed it said, oh, it shouldn't
Speaker 1: be working, and people are like, hey, look how well
Speaker 1: it's working, or you know, it appears something appears to
Speaker 1: be working. Now you could argue that perhaps UH, it
Speaker 1: would work better in the already in motion model that
Speaker 1: Shaw your head said was necessary in the first place. Um,
Speaker 1: there's definitely a ton of enthusiasm and criticism about this,
Speaker 1: and to be honest, it's so it's so early really,
Speaker 1: I mean, we we talked about it being discussed as
Speaker 1: far back as in that era, but still from an
Speaker 1: actual testing perspective, it's so early on that it's it's
Speaker 1: hard to draw any kind of conclusions about There are
Speaker 1: also other weird UH revelations about this. There were some
Speaker 1: there's some talk about possibly this could be a lead
Speaker 1: into a warp drive where it's actually warping spacetime. There
Speaker 1: was some talk about the using lasers to UH to
Speaker 1: see if any space time warping was taking place, and
Speaker 1: that it appeared to be so and then other people say, well,
Speaker 1: that's weird because in other devices that are using much
Speaker 1: more high powered microwave and other forms of transmissions, you
Speaker 1: don't see this. And it's you would figure that as
Speaker 1: you're adding more energy into the system, the effect would
Speaker 1: be greater and greater. So wouldn't we have already seen
Speaker 1: this by now? I mean the relative amount of power
Speaker 1: that's being used in these m drives is very very small.
Speaker 1: You look at something like the large Hadron collider and
Speaker 1: you think, why haven't we seen some of these same
Speaker 1: effects in this other and this other methodology. Even if
Speaker 1: that wasn't what we were looking for, it should be
Speaker 1: so pronounced that it it would be impossible to to not
Speaker 1: see it, right, So there are a lot of interesting
Speaker 1: questions along those lines. It's and it may be that
Speaker 1: there are totally legitimate answers that we just don't know
Speaker 1: the We don't know the right questions to ask or
Speaker 1: where to look. Yet It's possible, but it's you know.
Speaker 1: One thing to keep in mind is the more outlandishould
Speaker 1: we get, or at least the more the more we
Speaker 1: have to start really reconsidering our uh idea of how
Speaker 1: the universe works, the greater the proof needs to be
Speaker 1: to justify that decision, right, all right, Well, I think
Speaker 1: that should sort of lead us into the conclusion of
Speaker 1: this discussion, which is, like, what does this all mean? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean I look at this, Yeah, what
Speaker 1: what could it mean? Because obviously, we, like we've said
Speaker 1: many times, we don't know how to evaluate the scientific merits.
Speaker 1: We've read a lot of what seems like very rational
Speaker 1: and level headed criticism of it. I'm fine if people
Speaker 1: want to keep testing this and and and find out
Speaker 1: maybe there are some kind of results you can show
Speaker 1: in a much better controlled test environment that actually would
Speaker 1: satisfy a lot more scientific skepticism. But let's say you
Speaker 1: do find some really significant looking results here. It seems
Speaker 1: like there are three options. Either conservation of momentum is wrong,
Speaker 1: or this doesn't violate conservation of momentum but exploit some
Speaker 1: kind of loophole in physics we don't understand yet. Or
Speaker 1: there's just an error. There's just something we we did wrong.
Speaker 1: So and it's like, what is how do we choose
Speaker 1: between these different possibilities. Well, for following as Razor, we
Speaker 1: go with the the measurement error. Yeah, because that's the
Speaker 1: that's the if it doesn't require you to redefine the
Speaker 1: laws of physics, because obviously that would require the most
Speaker 1: amount of proof for that to be justified, or it
Speaker 1: doesn't require inventing or describing new laws of physics that
Speaker 1: complement the ones we already know. Uh, then you know,
Speaker 1: the most likely answer is that it comes down to
Speaker 1: either a measurement error human error. There's some problem in
Speaker 1: the math um that seems to be the most likely,
Speaker 1: and you usually you know, it doesn't necessarily always work
Speaker 1: out this way, but the reason why it's a it's
Speaker 1: a rule is that more often than not, the simplest explanation,
Speaker 1: the one that requires the least amount of energy for
Speaker 1: it to happen, is the right answer. Yeah, I've seen
Speaker 1: a lot of critics of these results. Uh. Compare it
Speaker 1: to the thing that happened a while back with the
Speaker 1: supposedly faster than light neutrinos. You know, so there was
Speaker 1: a test. I don't remember when that was. Was that,
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, I think it was one or two
Speaker 1: years ago, a few years ago. Um, but but yeah,
Speaker 1: there was supposedly a test result that had detected massive
Speaker 1: particles neutrinos moving faster than light yeah, Um, and everything
Speaker 1: we know about physics tells us that's not possible. You know,
Speaker 1: so if if you go by Einstein and and we
Speaker 1: all know that we probably should like he's given us
Speaker 1: a lot of reasons. We've seen the loss of relativity
Speaker 1: hold up so many times and fail I think zero times, Um,
Speaker 1: that it would be very strange to suddenly detect own annoy.
Speaker 1: We've been wrong about this for decades and decades. But
Speaker 1: and so when when people looked back into the experiment,
Speaker 1: they were like, oh, right it was. It was in
Speaker 1: fact an experimental error caused by malfunctioning equipment. Essentially, like
Speaker 1: the way it wart was this. You you had a
Speaker 1: time when the new trinos were admitted, in a time
Speaker 1: when they were detected, and that amount of time appeared
Speaker 1: to be less than what it would have taken light
Speaker 1: to go from those two points. But then essentially what
Speaker 1: was found out, and I'm oversimplifying, is a stopwatch was off.
Speaker 1: I think there was like a loose wire or something.
Speaker 1: So so it was a it was a false reading
Speaker 1: that gave the impression that the new trinos had arrived
Speaker 1: earlier than they should have, but in fact, upon uh
Speaker 1: further inquiry, it does not. It wasn't the case. So
Speaker 1: although it did lead to some great knot knock jokes,
Speaker 1: which was which was uh new Trino knock knock nice Yeah,
Speaker 1: the new Trino anti telephone. Yeah, so so things like that.
Speaker 1: But at any rate, I agree, I think it reminds
Speaker 1: me quite a bit of that now it I hope
Speaker 1: that it turns out there's something in this that ends
Speaker 1: up being, uh, you know, a viable me means of
Speaker 1: creating thrust, because well, yeah, that'd be amazing. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: it would be beyond phenomenal, it would be, so there's
Speaker 1: we have every reason to want it to work out.
Speaker 1: And also, like, I just really loved attending physics. That's
Speaker 1: my favorite day whenever we get to say, like, oh,
Speaker 1: everything that we knew about the universe was a little
Speaker 1: bit wonky. Where's my least favorite days when we have
Speaker 1: to change the dictionary so that literally literally means the
Speaker 1: opposite of literally. Well, you know, there is a certain
Speaker 1: mindset you can kind of get into when you're trying
Speaker 1: to properly practice scientific skepticism where you want to say, okay,
Speaker 1: hold on, now, let's let's you know, not get carried away.
Speaker 1: Let's look at all the possibilities, and that's a good
Speaker 1: thing to do, you know, I totally advocate that, But
Speaker 1: at the same time, we also do need to remember
Speaker 1: to be open minded. You know, people have been wrong
Speaker 1: about things before, even things they were really certain about.
Speaker 1: It seems really like we're probably not wrong about conservation
Speaker 1: of momentum. But but who knows. I mean, I I
Speaker 1: am all. I'm all for people doing these experiments, though
Speaker 1: I have seen people question whether tax money should be
Speaker 1: used to do experiments that seem to violate the laws
Speaker 1: of physics. You know that are pretty well understood. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if it were. If there were, I don't know what
Speaker 1: I think. If there were at least a very compelling
Speaker 1: argument that lots of physicists said, this makes sense that
Speaker 1: it was not uh, it was not defying the law
Speaker 1: of momentum, that it was actually working within that system.
Speaker 1: If there were, if there were a lot of there
Speaker 1: seemed to be a lot of agreement, Like if Shawyer
Speaker 1: came out and said no, no, no, here's how I
Speaker 1: think it's working, and everyone said that's really cool, then
Speaker 1: I would be like, let's go ahead, because the potential
Speaker 1: benefit is so huge that it would be worth the
Speaker 1: investment and if it didn't work out, then it didn't
Speaker 1: work out. Yeah, and again, to be totally fair to them,
Speaker 1: they do say it doesn't violate conservation of momentum. They
Speaker 1: fall into the loophole category. I say that they're something
Speaker 1: else about physics, that it's exploiting and it's not actually
Speaker 1: violating Newton I think, um, you know, I I am
Speaker 1: definitely on the side of you want to always add
Speaker 1: some skepticism and critical thinking to your science. It's absolutely necessary.
Speaker 1: But you don't want to fall into the trap of denialism.
Speaker 1: You're don't you're denying something even the potential of working. Uh.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's why most of the actual reports from
Speaker 1: scientists I've seen have said I don't know how this
Speaker 1: could work, as opposed to this doesn't work. Right there there.
Speaker 1: You might say it sounds like they're hedging their bets,
Speaker 1: but really what they're saying is they're being responsible. According
Speaker 1: to what we know about science, this should not work.
Speaker 1: But that's according to what we know. There could be
Speaker 1: stuff we don't know that explains why it would work
Speaker 1: if in fact it does. That's yours is responsible science. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: uh so, Yeah, so you're if you're out there and
Speaker 1: you're like, no, no, I swear I can show you
Speaker 1: how it works by all means, you know, please, we'd
Speaker 1: love to hear about that. Yeah, so we we look
Speaker 1: forward to following up on this story. Now. You know,
Speaker 1: we said that the story has had cycles. I think
Speaker 1: that the reason for the excitement dying down is that
Speaker 1: the the studies that where an effect was measured, the
Speaker 1: effects have always been so small and difficult to replicate.
Speaker 1: That that's why it kind of dies down. You don't
Speaker 1: tend to see a big hoop lah over uh you know, uh,
Speaker 1: promising technology fails to work. That doesn't tend to happen, right,
Speaker 1: But if if you if you say you're coming out
Speaker 1: with the technology that is meant to change the world
Speaker 1: that grabs headlines, if it doesn't work out, unless it's
Speaker 1: a truly spectacular failure, it just you know, people just
Speaker 1: don't notice anymore. But they but they try not to
Speaker 1: schedule the in science, right, yeah, you don't don't. Don't live,
Speaker 1: don't make a live television event of your test of
Speaker 1: the m drive. You might have egg on your face
Speaker 1: unless you're approaching it from a truly like objective scientific approach, thing.
Speaker 1: We're gonna do our best and see if there's a
Speaker 1: measurable effect here as opposed to wait, I got something
Speaker 1: to sell you. You know you don't want to do
Speaker 1: with that approach. That would be terrible. Well, this has
Speaker 1: been really fun, y'all. Yeah, this was one of those
Speaker 1: where we have actually had him Drive on our list
Speaker 1: for a while before people started asking about it. You know,
Speaker 1: one of these things about because it is from one
Speaker 1: of the older cycles, and also just because you know,
Speaker 1: it is a forward thinking kind of thing, like the
Speaker 1: idea of the warp drive or this space drive that
Speaker 1: would not require us to carry an enormous rocket filled
Speaker 1: with Yeah, you don't because obviously that makes it harder
Speaker 1: and it limits how far you can go. So this
Speaker 1: was one of those really important things that we definitely
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about and it was exciting. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: and thank you so much to everyone who wrote in
Speaker 1: and her just talk about it. Yes, I encourage you
Speaker 1: to keep writing in because we depend upon hearing from
Speaker 1: you to figure out what we're gonna talk about next.
Speaker 1: Otherwise it's us just kind of sitting around saying what's
Speaker 1: on TV? Spiders again, the future of Morse. But hey,
Speaker 1: did you see that scientists fed carbon nanotubes to spiders
Speaker 1: that then spun silk that were carbon infused spider silk
Speaker 1: with the strongest tensile strength of any fiber produced here too,
Speaker 1: for I am not it happened this week. Yeah, pretty exciting.
Speaker 1: There's another there's another episode right there, all right, But
Speaker 1: if you guys have any suggestions that are not spider related,
Speaker 1: you can disappoint Lauren, but inform the rest of us
Speaker 1: by writing to fw thinking at how Stuff Works dot com,
Speaker 1: or drop us a line on Facebook, Twitter or Google Plus.
Speaker 1: At Twitter and Google Plus, we are fw thinking. Just
Speaker 1: search fw thinking at Facebook. We will pop right up,
Speaker 1: leave us a message, and we will talk to you
Speaker 1: again really soon. For more on this topic and the
Speaker 1: future of technology, visit forward Thinking dot Com Problem brought
Speaker 1: to you by Toyota. Let's Go Places,