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This story from a Wired article: NASA is a major player in space science, so when a team from the agency this week presents evidence that "impossible" microwave thrusters seem to work, something strange is definitely going on. Either the results are completely wrong, or Nasa has confirmed a major breakthrough in space propulsion.
British scientist Roger Shawyer has been trying to interest people in his EmDrive for some years through his company SPR Ltd. Shawyer claims the EmDrive converts electric power into thrust, without the need for any propellant by bouncing microwaves around in a closed container. He has built a number of demonstration systems, but critics reject his relativity-based theory and insist that, according to the law of conservation of momentum, it cannot work.
NASA states... "Test results indicate that the RF resonant cavity thruster design, which is unique as an electric propulsion device, is producing a force that is not attributable to any classical electromagnetic phenomenon and therefore is potentially demonstrating an interaction with the quantum vacuum virtual plasma"
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DrMag on Saturday August 02 2014, @02:57PM
Speaking as a genuine physicist, my biggest pet peeve of the science world is that while non-scientists misunderstand what is meant by "theory", scientists mis-understand (or at least mis-construe) the meaning of "law". Laws in science are not like laws in government, though sometimes they can be as arbitrary. A scientific law is simply a mathematical equation that describes some process--nothing more, nothing less. There is nothing that requires a scientific law to be correct, or have any bearing in reality. As a result, the laws of the game of science can be as meticulous as chess, or as crazy as Calvin ball. Though often I feel like they are now so convoluted that, along with the degree of obsession people have over them, it feels more like D&D.
There are three things I wish everyone understood better: statistics, compassion, and the fallibility of all fields. We'd all be much better off if our response to statements like this were, 'Huh, that's interesting... How can we test this?' rather than turning up our nose at and ignoring any idea that doesn't fit perfectly into our particular mindset.