High levels of skepticism are still warranted, as much as I would love for this to pan out. Every time this gets tested—presumably more and more carefully—the measured force gets smaller. The original test at Chinese Northwestern Polytechnical University measured 720 mN; this latest test in a vacuum chamber, only 20 μN. This is so tiny that a test anomaly would seem a much more plausible explanation than a violation of the conservation of momentum.
Of course the ultimate test would be to put one of these in space and try accelerating something with it, in the same way that the ultimate test of a perpetual motion machine would be to make one perform macro-scale net work.
http://arc.aiaa.org/doi/abs/10.2514/6.2015-4083
High levels of skepticism are still warranted, as much as I would love for this to pan out. Every time this gets tested—presumably more and more carefully—the measured force gets smaller. The original test at Chinese Northwestern Polytechnical University measured 720 mN; this latest test in a vacuum chamber, only 20 μN. This is so tiny that a test anomaly would seem a much more plausible explanation than a violation of the conservation of momentum.
Of course the ultimate test would be to put one of these in space and try accelerating something with it, in the same way that the ultimate test of a perpetual motion machine would be to make one perform macro-scale net work.