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A comment on Curious Link Between the Fly-By Anomaly and the “Impossible” EmDrive Thruster. Parent comment

Re:Curious Link Between the Fly-By Anomaly and the “Impossib... by rosser on Wednesday April 20, 2016 @06:07PM (#11538111)
Measurement error is a fine, and even necessary hypothesis in attempting to explain the observed effect. Multiple, independent replications tend to cast doubt on the ultimate viability of that hypothesis, however. How likely is it that all of these people at all of these labs are making the same measurement error?

And then, on top of that, when the observed effect comports with a theory that also predicts another, well-established observed effect?

It's been said that the most important phrase you will ever hear a scientist utter isn't, "I've found it!", but rather, "Well, that's strange."

This is very much in the, "Well, that's strange" class of things. Either way, we're going to learn something about how the universe works, or about our ability to measure it, or both. This should be celebrated, not dismissed as mere "measurement error."

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Re:Curious Link Between the Fly-By Anomaly and the “Impossib... by roywiggins on Wednesday April 20, 2016 @10:59PM (#11539351)
People noticed an effect every time the Dean Drive was turned on... but it is just a stiction engine and obviously won't work in space. It could be this drive is actually generating magnetic forces or moving air around and thus "creating thrust" by pushing off its surroundings, which won't work in a vacuum.
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Re:Curious Link Between the Fly-By Anomaly and the “Impossib... by m_mueller on Wednesday April 20, 2016 @11:30PM (#11539484)
... which was already tested for. vacuum or not seems to make no difference on the effect.
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Re:Curious Link Between the Fly-By Anomaly and the “Impossib... by ajuc on Thursday April 21, 2016 @05:48AM (#11540691)
It could also push off the Earth magnetic field.
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Re:Curious Link Between the Fly-By Anomaly and the “Impossib... by m_mueller on Thursday April 21, 2016 @07:11AM (#11541056)
Then it should depend on the orientation (and altitude, geographical location). According to [1] this was tested for.

[1] http://emdrive.com/faq.html

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Re:Curious Link Between the Fly-By Anomaly and the “Impossib... by dogma1138 on Wednesday April 20, 2016 @08:12PM (#11538735)
The existence of the Unruh effect in it self is currently quite debatable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unruh_effect
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Re:Curious Link Between the Fly-By Anomaly and the “Impossib... by rosser on Wednesday April 20, 2016 @08:31PM (#11538808)
You'll note that I didn't actually assert the existence of the effect. I observed that a theory which predicts the effect the EmDrive appears to demonstrate, also predicts the fly-by anomaly, and offers a unified explanation for both.

Yes, it requires more confirmation. Much more. I'm not a scientist, but I think that, taken together, it's interesting enough — "Well, that's strange" enough — to warrant further investigation, instead of being all, "Meh. Measurement error."

Am I mistaken in that belief?

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Re:Curious Link Between the Fly-By Anomaly and the “Impossib... by dogma1138 on Wednesday April 20, 2016 @08:52PM (#11538889)
It's worth an investigation because it can be done cheaply and there might be something there. We've also investigated ESP and quite a few other weird things.

Unruh radiation is weird under some interpretations it can be used to reduce the inertial mass of objects, the thing I take from this is that I hope the EM drive could prove it rather than the other way around because then we might say we've discovered the "Mass Effect" ;)

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Re:Curious Link Between the Fly-By Anomaly and the “Impossib... by jcoffland on Thursday April 21, 2016 @02:06AM (#11539995)
It's also quite possible that the theory was derived to fit these observations. This theory has yet to predict anything new that has been proven. Until it does it only amounts to a possible way of connecting two unexplained and possibly flawed observations.
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Re:Curious Link Between the Fly-By Anomaly and the “Impossib... by gambiting on Thursday April 21, 2016 @04:28AM (#11540422)
Well I guess the ultimate test would be to put the whole contraption in space, turn it on and see if it moves. Then it would be undebatable, no?
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