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This scientist says he's built a jet engine that turns electricity directly into thrust:
This past autumn, a professor at Wuhan University named Jau Tang was hard at work piecing together a thruster prototype that, at first, sounds too good to be true.
The basic idea, he said in an interview, is that his device turns electricity directly into thrust — no fossil fuels required — by using microwaves to energize compressed air into a plasma state and shooting it out like a jet. Tang suggested, without a hint of self-aggrandizement, that it could likely be scaled up enough to fly large commercial passenger planes. Eventually, he says, it might even power spaceships.
Needless to say, these are grandiose claims. A thruster that doesn't require tanks of fuel sounds suspiciously like science fiction — like the jets on Iron Man's suit in the Marvel movies, for instance, or the thrusters that allow Doc Brown's DeLorean to fly in "Back to the Future."
But in Tang's telling, his invention — let's just call it a Tang Jet, which he worked on with Wuhan University collaborators Dan Ye and Jun Li — could have civilization-shifting potential here in the non-fictional world.
"Essentially, the goal of this technology is to try and use electricity and air to replace gasoline," he said. "Global warming is a major threat to human civilization. Fossil fuel-free technology using microwave air plasma could be a solution."
He anticipates this happening fast. In two years, he says, he thinks Tang Jets could power drones. In a decade, he'd like to see them fly a whole airplane.
That would all be awesome, obviously. But it's difficult to evaluate whether Tang's invention could ever scale up enough to become practical. And even if it did, there would be substantial energy requirements that could doom aerospace applications.
One thing's for sure: If the tech works the way he hopes, the world will never be the same.
Journal Reference:
Dan Ye, Jun Li, Jau Tang. Jet propulsion by microwave air plasma in the atmosphere [open], AIP Advances (DOI: 5.0005814)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Subsentient on Saturday July 04 2020, @07:01AM (6 children)
This research is from mainland China, which has a long history of scientists making grandiose claims and getting everyone's hopes up, just to find out they're a fraud.
Science, just like everything else, is tainted and corrupted in the PRC.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 3, Informative) by PiMuNu on Saturday July 04 2020, @07:20AM (5 children)
> a long history of scientists making grandiose claims
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientific_misconduct_incidents [wikipedia.org]
As do many other nations. Ad hominem (or in this case, Ad patriam)...
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 04 2020, @12:30PM (3 children)
Your link actually confirms the GP's position. That list contains mostly names, which is to say, each bulleted line concerns one or two perpetrators.
Except for these:
And this sorry excuse for a human being deserves a special mention:
(Score: 2) by Subsentient on Sunday July 05 2020, @04:04AM
Thank you. I noticed that, but was too tired to bother replying at the time.
Also regarding the 486 in the Wikipedia article:
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Pav on Sunday July 05 2020, @09:53PM
I'm certainly not minimising Chinese scientific fraud... that deserves calling out... but, I wonder why I can't find anything in that list on tobacco, climate change, asbestos etc... subjects that have spawned whole fraud industries in the west, not just in science.
In a related topic : its interesting that its not the uneducated that primarily believe in corporate conspiracy theories... it's precisely the same people that make up the professional managerial class. One wonders if there's a reason for that.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday July 06 2020, @11:07AM
> 486 Chinese cancer researchers
I saw that - however I note that they were caught by *Chinese* authorities and called out.
> Chinese
> Thailand
> Iran
Also, GGP referred to Chinese, which you appear to have broadened to "anyone outside of Western Europe and USA". How are Iran, Thailand and China related?
(Score: 1) by Frosty Piss on Saturday July 04 2020, @09:18PM
Tolle quod tuum est et inserere in Latinam culi.