NASA engineer claims major discovery of new power in physics, but many don’t believe it

A former NASA engineer who worked on a propellant-free propulsion drive claims that the device could provide enough thrust to achieve Earth’s gravitational lift, but based on our current understanding of physics, this effect should not occur.

Dr. Charles Buhler worked on a range of projects while at NASA and has since co-founded Exodus Propulsion Technologies, which in 2019 applied for a patent for a system they claim can use asymmetric electrostatic pressure to generate force. According to the patent, the system creates a voltage difference across a conductive surface.

“The applied voltage difference creates an electric field that causes electrostatic pressure to act on at least one surface of the object. The resulting asymmetry in the electrostatic pressure vector results in a net electrostatic pressure acting on the object,” the patent reads. . “The magnitude of the net electrostatic pressure generated is a function of the geometry of the conducting surface, the applied voltage, and the dielectric constant of any material present in the gap between the electrodes.”

^{Bühler presented the device to the Applied Power Electronics Conference.}

Buhler’s team has been looking for alternative explanations for the forces produced, and according to Buhler, they were able to generate a force large enough for (very small) objects to overcome Earth’s 1G gravity (i.e. enough push to push the object Move away from the ground) in the Earth’s gravity) using this method.

It sounds like a trivial thing, but in the near vacuum of space you don’t need a lot of thrust to accelerate (depending on the mass of your payload, of course). For example, if you could maintain a constant 1G acceleration, not only could you enjoy the equivalent of artificial gravity on Earth, but you could reach great distances within a human lifetime (or at least from a traveler’s perspective). But doing so would require unimaginable power, beyond what our existing propellants can provide.

Buehler’s claim would be huge if it turns out to be true and not the result of another force that the team hasn’t yet accounted for. During testing, the team claimed to have discovered even more puzzling results; the device was apparently able to sustain this thrust without constant electrical input at times.

Buehler told the Report that the most important message to convey to the public is that a significant discovery has occurred. The discovery of this new force is of fundamental importance because an electric field alone can produce a sustainable force on an object and allow the center of mass of said object to translate without displacing mass.

There are many reasons to be skeptical of this claim. Other devices, notably the EmDrive, are said to produce thrust without propellant. This is a highly controversial claim because it violates the law of conservation of momentum and that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Later teams tried to replicate the mysterious thrust produced by the EmDrive and found that it could all be explained by normal physics and thermal effects.

“With the new measurement scale structure and different suspension points of the same engine, we are able to reproduce thrusts similar to the apparent thrusts measured by the NASA team, but also make them disappear through point suspension,” Professor Martin Tajmar told German website GrenzWissenschaft-Aktuell explains.

“When power flows into the EmDrive, the engine heats up. This also causes the fastening elements on the scale to deform, causing the scale to move to a new zero point. We were able to prevent this from happening through an improved structure. Our measurements refute With this, all EmDrive claimed performance improvements are at least 3 orders of magnitude.

If the force behind Exodus Propulsion Technologies’ design turns out to be the result of asymmetric electrostatic pressure, rather than some other unexplained force, and it works on a larger scale, it could be revolutionary for spaceflight .

Buhler added that there are rules that include conservation of energy, but if done correctly, one can generate any force that humans have never done before. We’ll use this power to push things around for the next 1,000 years until the next thing comes along.

But as they say, this is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence. Buhler invited other scientists to study the results and try to understand the basic physics behind them. Buhler or someone else might discover that normal physics is behind the apparently propellant-free thrust.

For now, we caution you not to get your hopes too high.