NASA's New Rocket Engine that Breaks a Law of Physics

Physics Blog 3

Recently, astrophysicists at NASA wrote a paper on the testing of an electromagnetic propulsion system, an "EM drive", that generates a small amount of thrust by bouncing microwaves around a cone-shaped copper chamber. No object or substance is needed to fuel this, no exhaust comes out, yet the engine can make objects move. This development has contradicted Newton's third law of motion, being that it goes against what Newton concluded.

Newton's third law of motion states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. This principle explains how jet engines work; as hot gasses are expelled out the back of the plane, they produce a thrusting force that moves the plane forward. The Em drive differs in a sense that its trust seems to come from the impact of photons on the walls of the copper cavity. The bouncing of microwaves in the copper chamber propel the object forward to the propulsion qualities that the cone shape has.

According to the Eagleworks scientists at NASA, their machine generated 1.2 millinewtons of thrust per kilowatt of electricity pumped into the engine. Although that is a fraction of the thrust produced by the lightweight ion drives that are used in many of NASA's spacecrafts, it is a lot more than the few micronewtons per kilowatt produced by light sails (another force of thrust used).

The basis of this process was founded by a British engineer named Roger Shawyer. He claimed that microwaves inside the cavity create an imbalance of radiation that pushes against the walls and generates thrust. There is no theoretical explanation for how this type of engine works, and not all sources of experimental error have been removed.

This contradicts Newtons third law of motion because there is a reaction, yet no initial action causing the engine to have thrust. As the Washington Post writes, "Its thrust seems to come from the impact of photons on the walls of the copper cavity. That would be like moving a car forward by just banging against the windshield." As banging the windshield would only cause slight damage to the car, it would simply not move it forward. Yet the EM drive takes the same idea, however the effects are much different, where radiation coming from the cone shaped copper has an outward force.

This EM drive would eventually allow NASA to thrust spacecrafts over a distance without expelling any gasses. There isn't a need for gas or fuel as other rockets work, therefore the rocket holding the EM drive could allow NASA to reach new feats and stay in space longer.

Video on the EM Drive and Newtons third law of motion

Baylor Wallace

November 22, 2016

Molecular Imaging

Becca Reilly
November 20, 2016

Molecular Imaging Hack Makes Cameras Faster

             A Rice University technique is able to grab images of chemical processes faster than most laboratory cameras are able to capture them. Super temporal resolution microscopy, (STREM) is the technique that allows researchers to view and gather information about fluorescing molecules at a frame rate that is 20 times faster than the typical lab cameras.
            The Rice researchers, including chemist Christy Landes and electrical engineer Kevin Kelly, started with a microscopy technique that views molecules that are smaller than most microscopes can see at "super resolution". Landes says, "Super-resolution microscopy lets us image things smaller than about half of visible light's wavelength - around 250 nanometers... but she noted a barrier: "You couldn't take pictures of anything faster than your frame rate". The Rice lab's new technology uses a rotating phase mask to encode fast dynamics in each camera frame, which will help researchers understand processes that occur at interfaces as they move along two-dimensional surfaces.
              The maximum charge-coupled device cameras have a maximum 10 to 100 milliseconds maximum frame rate. Other techniques like electron microscopy can see materials at the super-resolution microscopy and does not destroy the fragile samples in the process. The technique manipulates the phase of light to give the image a more complicated shape. By manipulating the phase over time, it is possible to encode faster time resolutions within a slow image frame. This being said, the Rice researchers designed and built a spinning phase mask. With the spinning phase mask, the resulting images capture dynamic events happening faster than the camera's frame rate. The shape of each image within a frame gives it a distinct time stamp. 


                The technique uses a quality of microscopy that is familiar to a blurry picture that was taken. Point spread functions are a measure of the shape of images in and out of focus. Shifting in and out of focus happens easily when the subjects are as small as molecules. The size and shape of the blur that comes from the shifting in and out can tell researchers how far from the focal plane the subject is. Phase-mask engineering makes it possible to make focus-dependent blur easier to detect by having a distinct point spread functions. STREM also uses the point spread function that changes from the spinning mask to collect temporary information. With the new technique discovered by Rice researchers, it changes the lobes angels to reveal the time an event has occurred within a time frame.

The Universe doesn't follow the rules.

According to Newton's law, and object in motion remains in motion at the same speed and direction until acted upon by an outside force. We know on Earth, when you through a ball, it will slow down and fall due to friction and gravity. Even in our solar system, planets' rotation and spin are affected by gravity and different objects that could affect them. But the Universe doesn't follow the rules...

The Big Bang was a giant cosmic explosion that sent debris (planets, stars, dust) flying in all directions. Because this debris weighs so much, you would think that it would eventually start to slow down as it is affected by gravity and outside forces right? Wrong.

As a matter of fact, its the exact opposite, the expansion of our universe is actually speeding up. This is due to Dark Energy. Dark Energy is a widely accepted theory that describes a force that repels the effects of gravity. Predictions show that about 73% of the universe is made up of this substance. This was discovered by studying the light from distant supernovae, astronomers saw
that the supernovae's host galaxies are flying away from each other at increasing speed. This discovery disproved the popular belief that the universe was slowing down.

A New Form of Light

A New Form of Light

Paige Giffault

Light is everywhere and we have been studying light and ways to measure and identify it for centuries. There are many different forms of light that have been identified, consisting of radio waves, microwaves, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet light, x rays, and gamma rays. All these forms of light follow specific rules relating to angular and linear momentum.

However, recently, Irish scientists claimed to have discovered a new form a light that does not confine to these rules. For all known forms of light listed above, the angular momentum, which is how much light rotates. Until now, this measurement has always been an integer multiple of Planck's constant, which is "a physical constant that sets the scale of quantum effects". For this new form of light, this scientists have discovered that its angular momentum is not a whole number.

In an attempt to look for way to improve optical communication and transmit light, these scientists passed light through crystals. This resulted in beams of light with a twisted structure; the beams had an angular momentum of a half number. To further test the shocking results, a device was created that measured the angular momentum of the beam. Again, the measurement was discovered to be one half of Planck's constant, defying the fixed rules of physics for light.

This is a huge breakthrough in science and physics and broadens our understanding of light. Hopefully, this could lead to improvements and advancements in security and internet connections. Like any new discovery, research still needs to be done and many more experiments must be conducted to further validate and verify the accuracy of these results.

The physics behind a hockey shot 🏒

Hockey shots can hit speeds of over 100 miles an hour. The reason why they are able to go so quick is thanks to the flex technologie behind the hockey stick. These sticks are made of carbon fibre which have the capability to flex itself. The way you use it is by flexing the stick by putting a certain weight on it and when you release that weight, the stick comes back to its original form with an incredibly fast speed. That movement by the stick lets the puck fly at such a speed. 

They make hockey sticks with a different ability to flex to be able to fit people of all ages and strengths. The stiffer the stick is, the more it has an ability to come back to it's original form faster. In consequence, the stronger you are, the faster your shot is. (Shea Weber, the player with the fastest shot, is Canadien and play for Montreal. He has a shot of 108 mph!)

Gravitational Waves

Gravitational Waves

Through an experiment called Advanced Ligo, scientists have recently discovered gravitational wave signals- ripples in the fabric of spacetime. This phenomenon was first predicted a century ago by Albert Einstein. For 75 years, physicists have been working on discovering and proving the existence of gravitational waves. The kinds of instruments they had to use were so precise that they could detect a distortion in space a thousandth the diameter of “one atomic nucleus across a 4km strip of laser beam and mirror”.

The source of gravitational waves come from the collision of two black holes. Scientist used very sensitive detectors and listened for 20 thousandths of a seconds as two black holes, one 35 times the mass of the sun, circled around each other. Through this they learned how starts perish: “the two objects had begun by circling each other 30 times a second. My the end of the 20 millisecond period the two black holes had accelerated to 250 times a second before the final collision and a violent merger took place.

A gravitational wave is the rippling out from a massive collisions- like that between two black holes- that can be detected through the stretching and contracting of space and time.

Professor Alberto Vecchio of the University of Birmingham, pointed out that gravitational waves carry completely different information so they have opened a new way of listening to a broadcast channel .This allows them to discover phenomena they have never seen before. He also stated that this observation marked three milestones in physics: “the direct detection of gravitational waves, the first detection of a binary black hole, and the most convincing evidence to date that nature’s black holes are the objects predicted by Einstein’s theory.”

It only too 20 milliseconds, using the upgraded instrument, to catch the merger of two black holes, at a distance of 1.3 billion light years away. But it took months to check the signal and make sure the evidence matched the theoretical template.  This discovery is a major milestone in both science and history.

How the Ligo system works:

1. A single layer laser beam is split and directed down two identical tubes, 4km long
2. Mirrors reflect the twin beams back to a detector
3. Back inside the detector, the laser beams arrive perfectly aligned
4. Recombines, they cancel each other out
   
   
   
   
   

Detecting Gravity Waves:

1. When spacetime is distorted by a gravity wave, the two tubes change length. One tube stretched as the other contracts over and over until the wave has passed.
2. As the distance fluctuates the peaks and troughs of the two returning laser beams moves in and out of alignment
3. The recombined waves no longer cancel each other out. Light reaches the detector and the gravity wave can be measured
   

Climate Change

 Temperature rises have affected every living thing on Earth because nature is struggling to adapt. 

"Genes and ecosystems are changing in order to adapt to the temperature rises" according to a study from the Wildlife Conservation Society. They say 80 percent of the 94 ecological processes that form the fundamental basis of optimal ecosystems on Earth are showing signs of distress due to the change.

Some of the outcomes to climate change are an increase in disease outbreaks, yields in agriculture decreasing and productivity of fisheries declining.

“There is now clear evidence that, with only a ~1oC of warming globally, very major impacts are already being felt. Genes are changing, species’ physiology and physical features such as body size are changing, species are rapidly moving to keep track of suitable climate space, and there are now signs of entire ecosystems under stress,” stated lead author of the study, and a conservation ecologist at the University of Florida, Brett Scheffers.

The positive outcome from this study is the ability to actually observe how nature is trying to adapt and hopefully be able to create ways in which these changes can be taken and used to fight the process of distress