Talk:EmDrive

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the EmDrive article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Archives: Index, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9: 6 months

The subject of this article is controversial and content may be in dispute. When updating the article, be bold, but not reckless. Feel free to try to improve the article, but don't take it personally if your changes are reversed; instead, come here to the talk page to discuss them. Content must be written from a neutral point of view. Include citations when adding content and consider tagging or removing unsourced information.

This page is not a forum for general discussion about EmDrive. Any such comments may be removed or refactored. Please limit discussion to improvement of this article. You may wish to ask factual questions about EmDrive at the Reference desk.

This article was nominated for deletion on 13/9/2006. The result of the discussion was no consensus.

‹See TfM›

Physics Low‑importance

	Physics portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Physics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Physics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PhysicsWikipedia:WikiProject PhysicsTemplate:WikiProject Physicsphysics articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Spaceflight Low‑importance

	Spaceflight portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Spaceflight, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of spaceflight on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.SpaceflightWikipedia:WikiProject SpaceflightTemplate:WikiProject Spaceflightspaceflight articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Alternative views Low‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Alternative views, a collaborative effort to improve Wikipedia's coverage of significant alternative views in every field, from the sciences to the humanities. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion.Alternative viewsWikipedia:WikiProject Alternative viewsTemplate:WikiProject Alternative viewsAlternative views articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Skepticism Low‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Skepticism, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of science, pseudoscience, pseudohistory and skepticism related articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.SkepticismWikipedia:WikiProject SkepticismTemplate:WikiProject SkepticismSkepticism articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Clarifying vagueness and overwhelming negative results

Two essential points that were generally made but not summarized in the article:

There is no real design for such a device. There is rather a series of vague patent applications by Shawyer and Fetta, with enough detail to get approval from the patent office but not enough to build something.
There has been only one published report of a statistically significant force measurement larger than the margin of noise/error. That was by the White team, who have not repeated the experiment. There have been scores if not hundreds of other experiments, and all apparently positive results turned out (per the experimenters, later) to have error sources larger than the observed result. This is an overwhelmingly negative result - particularly when even the one positive result was simply a statistical observation without physical intuition or explanation for why that might have occurred.

I'm not sure how best to summarize these points, but made an attempt in the second para of the lede. – SJ + 05:35, 3 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I consider this a good observation. There is no actual design that had been patented. This point is certainly notable enough to be mentioned in the lead. I do not have further comments to the recent edits by Sj, and consider them to be an improvement of the article. Heptor (talk) 18:33, 3 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Just a note: the latest Tajmar results summarize this better than a narrative could; thanks to whoever synthesized that into the lede. – SJ + 21:29, 10 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Removal of content connected with Shawyer

I have removed content where "inventor" of this stuff called Roger Shawyer defend his inventions even if number of tests by the Dresden University of Technology shows different. It is undue weight, guy does not accept to his stuff does not work. Also some other his stuff are in this article what have to be checked are really notable (he making a new company, succesful tests claimed only by him etc). This EmDrive is one controversial topic, many physicists consider the idea as pseudoscience. So big attention should be given to some statements of inventors, investors, promises, eventual future success stories or so. Wikipedia is not a tool for promotion or advocacy of any kind. Eventual actual results, acceptance in the majority of sources or academic community is easy to be included when and if happen at all. 79.101.168.170 (talk) 17:44, 26 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This looks like a good removal to me. Inventor of pseudoscientific machine claims disproof doesn't count, film at 11. XOR'easter (talk) 19:24, 26 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Mentioned at Wikipedia:Fringe_theories/Noticeboard#EmDrive_again. I think the article is better without that paragraph. --mfb (talk) 02:46, 27 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It was suggested on the noticeboard that there is too much information on Dresden in the lead. I would like to remove part of it as suggested or reposition elsewhere in the article. Subuey (talk) 00:13, 1 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The amount of information about Dresden in the lede in this version looks in accord with the Manual of Style, in my opinion. I think it's the blockquote that's poor style; rather than cutting it, I'd paraphrase it to something about half that length that flows better with the surrounding text. XOR'easter (talk) 21:49, 5 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Comparison

Phil Mason gave a nice order-of-magnitude demonstration: if we feed the power that they fed into the device into an ordinary incandescent light bulb instead, and channel the convective current in the living room air generated by the heat of that lamp, it can lift about 5 times as much as the claimed force generated by the device. I think this is germane because it illustrates quite well at a lay level that the minute distorting effects noted by the Dresden team really do have to be taken into account and compensated for properly. 2A01:CB0C:CD:D800:7905:EA7:4BF6:7B0 (talk) 07:51, 3 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal for New Wikipedia Section

The Emdrive, the Dean Drive and similar entries should all be moved to a new section, perhaps with the title, 'Fraudulent Inventions', and linked to entries on perpetual-motion machines such as the Bessler Wheel. The physics community is adamant that these concepts are contrary to well-established laws of physics. It is thus a disservice to the general public not to make this perfectly clear. The fact that engineers at NASA and certain universities waste time on such concepts should not be taken as informed support, but rather as an indictment of their poor knowledge of physics. Complete deletion of the inventions, on the other hand, would remove a useful resource for the teaching of physics, with their being used as instructive examples of defective theory and poor experimental skills. 92.14.41.137 (talk) 03:01, 2 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]