Nothing in that comment is news, but if we've reached a point where we're completely unwilling to accept that experiments could show us something new before theorists predict and explain it, then we should hang up our science hats and go home.

Skepticism is warranted, but the team behind this study seems to be proceeding with a healthy dose of it, and AFAIK they have not made any inappropriate claims. The results so far are interesting, the experiments do not seem terribly expensive, and I see no reason why they shouldn't be followed to their conclusion (which will probably be the discovery of a mundane explanation for the phenomenon that's been observed).

Are you actually worried that all of the world's scientists are completely unimaginative and incompetent? I don't understand why you'd escalate it this way just because this topic comes up. That certainly doesn't sound like a reliable frame of mind in which to be.

You seem to be looking at my comment through a radically different lens than I was when I wrote it. You know it was in reply to another comment, right?

> Nothing in that comment is news, but if we've reached a point where we're completely unwilling to accept that experiments could show us something new before theorists predict and explain it, then we should hang up our science hats and go home.

Yes, but nobody's ACTUALLY saying that -- that's just the typical narrative of people-selling-perpetual-motion-machines. (Who, you'll note, have a slightly different agenda.).

What's actually going on is that everybody's saying "this would require New Physics -- hold your horses!"... and the response seems to be "YEAH, BUT WHAT IF?!??!".

Pithy answer to the "what if" challenge: Not good enough.

But the question of how the scientific community should be reacting to this, and whether more time and money should be thrown at these experiments, seems wholly separate from the question of how the public should be reacting.

You asked "Or maybe it's just a waste of time/money?", which is a question for the scientific community, but most of the "WHAT IF?!??!" reactions seem to be coming from the public.

edit: I replied before you edited your post fairly heavily; I think what I said still applies, though.

Apologies for the ninja edit! I tend to leave fairly heavy markers around, but didn't this time[1] -- just didn't expect that someone would respond so quickly!

> You asked "Or maybe it's just a waste of time/money?", which is a question for the scientific community, but most of the "WHAT IF?!??!" reactions seem to be coming from the public.

I really don't understand this. Is this some sort of PoMo response to my original challenge, or...?

My contention is that the public interest may not necessarily have much to do with what the public is interested in. I don't think this a particularly controversial PoV...?

(Though I do have reservations about it, but -- personally -- I've just about given up on even basic scientific literacy. You may be less jaded.)

[1] Readability suffers, but DFW approves "from heaven". I must admit I'm quite DFW-like in that I cannot halt the loop before I write something, so here we are... with massive edits and such.

> Apologies for the edit!

No worries

> I really don't understand this. Is this some sort of PoMo response to my original challenge, or...?

What's PoMo?

My interpretation of your first comment was that you were questioning whether this research is worth more time and money based on skepticism rooted in scientific knowledge i.e. these "new physics" needed to explain the EmDrive would conflict with a lot of what we currently think of as scientific "fact". Occam's razor, and so on.

My interpretation of your second comment was that you think the "YEAH, BUT WHAT IF?!??!" reactions to this research (generally associated with internet comment sections) are inappropriate and rooted in ignorance of scientific principles (FWIW, I agree with you on that).

I see those as separate concerns. The public is wholly ignorant, and their reaction to the results of this research to date (filtered as they are through awful clickbait articles) should have no bearing either way on whether the research continues. That's the point I was trying to make in my second comment.

> My contention is that the public interest may not necessarily have much to do with what the public is interested in. I don't think this a particularly controversial PoV...?

I don't think so either (and I agree).

> What's PoMo?

PoMo refers to Post Modernism , which is afaiu , "Literary/whatever Theory" that, I think, seems to embrace reletavism

>Or maybe it's just a waste of time/money?

We are currently shooting missiles that cost $800,000 each at people in caves on the other side of the world from boats that cost $4.4 billion dollars each. If anyone can justify that expenditure, I think we can find a small fraction of that money to investigate this further.

http://news.nationalpost.com/news/world/at-800000-per-round-...

Well, for one thing, that srticle describes a future warship and ammunition that is not yet in service, so it is incorrect to suggest anyone is 'currently shooting [...] at people in caves' with it.

However, the justification (OK, a justification) for that action, as part of the war on terror (I believe this is your implication, based on the 'caves' reference) would be that the insured costs of 9/11 were around USD 40 billion [1] (ignoring the unknown intangible additional cost in human life) so spending USD 800000 to kill a terrorist who is planning to perform a similar event is something of a bargain.

But, this sort of logic is flawed to begin with: We spend X on Y, which I disapprove of, therefore we should spend epsilon on Z instead.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_effects_arising_from_...

It not a "future" warship. Its an existing warship that keeps breaking down, despite the fact that its new and cost $4.4 billion to make. It just broke down again in the Panama Canal. That's a picture of the actual, existing-in-the-present ship.

http://www.military.com/daily-news/2016/11/22/new-zumwalt-br...

>However, the justification (OK, a justification) for that action, as part of the war on terror (I believe this is your implication, based on the 'caves' reference) would be that the insured costs of 9/11 were around USD 40 billion [1] (ignoring the unknown intangible additional cost in human life) so spending USD 800000 to kill a terrorist who is planning to perform a similar event is something of a bargain.

Except for the fact that that justification is false. We've spent over $5 Trillion fighting the fictional "war on terror" in the 15 years since 9/11 and by every measurable metric there are more "terrorists" (people who would like to attack us) today then there were on 9/11.

http://www.military.com/daily-news/2016/09/13/report-nearly-...

This dwarfs by many orders of magnitudes the total science funding spent by the government since the government was formed. Its absurd to discuss "waste" or "inefficiency" in any context, let alone a tiny expenditure for investigating the EM drive, while ignoring the elephant in the room. The phrase "penny wise pound foolish" applies to that line of thought.

> It not a "future" warship. Its an existing warship that keeps breaking down, despite the fact that its new and cost $4.4 billion to make. It just broke down again in the Panama Canal. That's a picture of the actual, existing-in-the-present ship.

It's in the Panama Canal going from it shipyard to homeport. It isn't yet in service. Apparently the combat systems are not even installed yet. I believe that is what your parent poster means. [1]

[1] http://navaltoday.com/2016/11/22/uss-zumwalt-breaks-down-in-...

Speaking as a experimental physicist:

The research shown is relatively inexpensive, and can be pulled off with what many labs probably have lying around anyways.

I'm sure it's more a work of love anyways and the guys doing this are probably facing serious headwind for trying 'crazy stuff'.

This paper that investigates how the EM propulsion drives might generate thrust, and as a side effect, the theory explains certain phenomena that we attribute to dark matter and dark energy. i only have undergrad physics degree, but it sounds interesting. anyone with more experience have any thoughts about this?

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1604.03449v1.pdf >McCulloch (2007) has proposed a new model for inertia (MiHsC) that assumes that the inertia of an object is due to the Unruh radiation it sees when it accelerates, radiation which is also subject to a Hubble-scale Casimir effect. In this model only Unruh wavelengths that fit exactly into twice the Hubble diameter are allowed, so that a greater proportion of the waves are disallowed for low accelerations (which see longer Unruh waves) leading to a gradual new loss of inertia as accelerations become tiny. MiHsC modifies the standard inertial mass (m) to a modified one (m_i) as follows: m_i = m (1-(2c^2)/(|a|Θ)) = m (1 - λ/4Θ) (1) where c is the speed of light, Θ is twice the Hubble distance, ’|a|’ is the mag- nitude of the relative acceleration of the object relative to surrounding matter and λ is the peak wavelength of the Unruh radiation it sees. Eq. 1 predicts that for terrestrial accelerations (eg: 9.8m/s2) the second term in the bracket is tiny and standard inertia is recovered, but in low acceleration environments, for example at the edges of galaxies (when a is small and λ is large) the sec- ond term in the bracket becomes larger and the inertial mass decreases in a new way so that MiHsC can explain galaxy rotation without the need for dark matter (McCulloch, 2012) and cosmic acceleration without the need for dark energy (McCulloch, 2007, 2010).

McCulloch's papers have many, many problems[1]. No credible theory has been posited to date, and the experimental evidence fails to properly address systematic errors. If this device worked, one could use it to create an over-unity generator. It would also invalidate most of known physics. The chances of it working are nonzero, but that's the best that anyone can say about it. Most likely it will waste people's time and money for a few years before the public loses interest.

[1]https://www.reddit.com/r/EmDrive/comments/3hjmtv/my_conversa...

I mentioned this elsewhere in this thread. I'm really interested to hear some context around it from someone who knows what they're talking about; to me, it's a more appealing explanation than "conservation of momentum is wrong" or "we're using the quantum vacuum as a tractive medium which is supposed to be impossible but whatever".

IANAP, just someone with a lay understanding that's been following a lot of these topics for a while now.

As I understand it McCulloch's requirement that wavelengths fit within the cosmic horizon is an assumption, not a proven logical implication.

Additionally I think a lot of physicists are dismissive because they expect someone who desires to upend mainline theory to at least demonstrate fluency with the mathematics of mainline theory. McCulloch falls short of this.

All that said, I think he's genuine in his pursuit and I've really enjoyed reading his blog over the years.

McCulloch's papers aren't very well-regarded because he was originally a biologist, not a physicist, and his theories (accompanied by blog posts) are very unconventional. I'm not trying to slime him or anything, just explain why he isn't cited often - I'm not well-educated enough to understand his work.

Shouldn't crazy stuff be exactly why we fund tenured positions?

I would like to think tenure still produces crazy scientists

> Shouldn't crazy stuff be exactly why we fund tenured positions?

Crazy stuff becomes an option after one is granted tenure, it doesn't necessarily make one more likely to achieve tenure. On the other hand, theoretical physicists aren't very expensive -- they only need a blackboard and an eraser. Compare that to a philosopher -- much the same but without the eraser.

Badah dum tish!

Classic, textbook example of lifeisgood-oceanswave syndrome.

I think you misunderstand. Tenure is usually granted to people with a (sometimes minor) track record of their ideas working out. Essentially it amounts to a bet on things to come, or IOW of "is person X a crank or not?". This, of course, is also tied to the field in which they are working, etc.

(Sure, some good researchers turn into cranks later in life[1], but usually in a different -- often unrelated -- field.)

[1] Nobel prize winners often succumb to this, sadly.

Seems like having the preeminent researchers in a field be the ones to do the weirdest research while teaching students on the foundations and established research is a pretty solid decision.

I guess you're referring to Brian Josephson, who went from superconductors (Nobel prize) to things like telepathy etc. but I'm interested if there are other examples. A quick search turns up Kary Mullis as a possible other example, but I don't know too much about him, and it's a difficult topic to research.

Linus Pauling (two Nobel prizes!) jumps to mind with his Vitamin C work

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Pauling#Medical_research...

What similar research is the time and money better spent on?