If you read through their conclusions, they suggest that there may be a quantum vacuum capable of transmitting oscillations and this vacuum is what this this device pushes off of leaving a wake behind.

[Disclaimer: I think it's a measurement error.]

Just ignore the theoretical explanations. Just imagine that it's something they wrote to avoid the crackpot tag. That explanation doesn't make any sense. Also avoid all the other theoretical explanations, they are also very sloppy.

Just concentrate in the experiments, that is the less sloppy part of these reports.

If they discovered something new, then they can make a working prototype and improve it until it's clear that they are measuring something really new and it's not an experimental error or a misattributed force. They can make foolproof instructions so anyone can make a version in a good enough lab and reproduce the experiment, or sell an experimental setup in Ebay. Then it will "confirmed".

There has been a many famous experiments that were later debunked, like:

* cold fussion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion , they had also some kind of theoretical excuse, but it was wrong and it was impossible to reproduce the experiment.

* arsenic in DNA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GFAJ-1 , they had also some kind of theoretical excuse, but it was wrong and it was impossible to reproduce the experiment.

If you want success cases, my favorites are:

* the asymmetric disintegration of cobalt in a magnetic field https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_experiment , I guess they had some wrong explanation, but the correct explanation was discovered like 20 years later

* high temperature superconductivity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-temperature_superconducti... IIRC they have some explanation or practical rules, but the correct explanation was discovered like 20 years later

Just concentrate in the experiments, and wait 20 years for a good explanation.

> They can make foolproof instructions so anyone can make a version in a good enough lab and reproduce the experiment,

Is that not what this is? Roger Shawyer invented it, but NASA, NWPU and the Dresden University of Technology have all built and verified their own versions to work.

The TU Dresden people did not "verify" that the device works --- instead, they identified many spurious error sources, and recognized that the final results were essentially null on the level of measurement accuracy, and unable to say whether there's thrust or not.

http://arc.aiaa.org/doi/pdf/10.2514/6.2015-4083 https://tu-dresden.de/ing/maschinenwesen/ilr/rfs/ressourcen/...

Oops, you're right. Thanks for the correction!

AFAIK we still don't really have an explanation for high-temperature superconductivity. The state-of-the-art is several competing ones.

A few years ago I talked with someone that make and test high temperature superconductors in a lab (at very high pressure), and my impression was that the research community had a good understanding of what was happening, something related to flux pinning.

I just read the Wikipedia article about this, and it's clear that the explanation is still not clear :(, so you are right.

pilot wave theory, the force is able to push upon itself despite lack of medium to otherwise push upon.

Ya, I was wondering the same thing. It seems like uneven ablating on the outside surface is the most obvious reason for the thrust.

Why didn't they do a careful analysis of the cavity mass before and afterwards? Or electron microscope analyses of a few points of the outer surface before and afterwards to see if the microscopic topology changed?

Did they rule these out some other way?

* It exploits some kind of bug in our matrix-like simulation that is supposed to have conservation of energy and momentum by design

This is the most terrifying. If we're part of an experiment then being aware of the experiment might cause it to be shutdown, like patients discovering if they're taking the placebo or not.

Placebo "works" even if the patient knows it's a placebo :).

If it repels of Earth, then it can be used to keep orbit.

If there is an anisotropy in the ether, Sagnac interferometer should catch it.

I think regardless of if this ends up working or not, it makes some serious changes to how science perceives the universe.