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Sad to see this nonsense pseudoscience constantly making HN's front page. Whenever it appears I debunk it using the same post[1] (in short, conservation of mome

Sad to see this nonsense pseudoscience constantly making HN's front page. Whenever it appears I debunk it using the same post[1] (in short, conservation of momentum cannot be violated) but it keeps coming back. Looks like even highly intelligent people like HNers are easily fooled by pseudoscience. [1] http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2015/05/26/warp-drives-and-scientific-reasoning/ http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2015/05/26/warp-dri...

outworlder 10y ago
> in short, conservation of momentum cannot be violated Why?
- piannucci 10y ago
  Speaking somewhat loosely, the relationship between the local state of spacetime and its energy, the Lagrangian density, does not seem to depend on where you are or when you are. Emmy Noether gave us a straightforward proof that each such "differentiable symmetry" (in this case, translation invariance) implies that the state of spacetime maintains a corresponding "conserved current" (in this case, momentum and energy density).
dbingham 10y ago
The moment we get overconfident in our understanding of the universe is the moment that understanding stops advancing.
FeepingCreature 10y ago
No law restrains nature but nature's own. Do not tell nature what it can and cannot do. (Evidence, of course, weighs very heavily against the EmDrive. But this sort of "it can't be doing that because that's against natural law" is just as unscientific.)
pklausler 10y ago
Thanks. I wish more people would help filter out the bad science (anything >= 1 nanoChopra).
tombone12 10y ago
Part of the world has entered the post-truth age, the spirit of the times likes a good story better than the facts, and if you speak facts you'll be damned by them. Just look at the article itself, doesn't actually say anything about the paper beyond confirming it's going to be publicated, the rest is just retelling the story up to now like there's much debate going on. As far as I know, there are some extremely questionable measurements showing there is something there, theory to explain it that is for sure completely wrong, and now this paper that might be alright that is not totally ruling it out. And based of this people go "why must momentum be conserved???!"; It ain't pretty, but that's the world we live in.
dokem 10y ago
You do realize Newton's laws had to be amended less than 100 years ago to make room for the newly discovered subtleties of nature, right?

outworlder 10y ago

> in short, conservation of momentum cannot be violated Why?

piannucci 10y ago
Speaking somewhat loosely, the relationship between the local state of spacetime and its energy, the Lagrangian density, does not seem to depend on where you are or when you are. Emmy Noether gave us a straightforward proof that each such "differentiable symmetry" (in this case, translation invariance) implies that the state of spacetime maintains a corresponding "conserved current" (in this case, momentum and energy density).

dbingham 10y ago

The moment we get overconfident in our understanding of the universe is the moment that understanding stops advancing.

FeepingCreature 10y ago

No law restrains nature but nature's own. Do not tell nature what it can and cannot do. (Evidence, of course, weighs very heavily against the EmDrive. But this sort of "it can't be doing that because that's against natural law" is just as unscientific.)

pklausler 10y ago

Thanks. I wish more people would help filter out the bad science (anything >= 1 nanoChopra).

tombone12 10y ago

Part of the world has entered the post-truth age, the spirit of the times likes a good story better than the facts, and if you speak facts you'll be damned by them. Just look at the article itself, doesn't actually say anything about the paper beyond confirming it's going to be publicated, the rest is just retelling the story up to now like there's much debate going on. As far as I know, there are some extremely questionable measurements showing there is something there, theory to explain it that is for sure completely wrong, and now this paper that might be alright that is not totally ruling it out. And based of this people go "why must momentum be conserved???!"; It ain't pretty, but that's the world we live in.

dokem 10y ago

You do realize Newton's laws had to be amended less than 100 years ago to make room for the newly discovered subtleties of nature, right?