Did This NASA Scientist Just Break the Laws of Physics?

A new startup co-founded by former NASA engineer Charles Buhler believes that it is on the verge of developing a new type of engine that can produce forward motion without releasing propellant – a discovery which, if true, would rewrite physics textbooks and change the world overnight.

Buhler’s company, Exodus Propulsion Technologies, says it has created a drive powered by a “New Force” which exists outside the established laws of physics. Specifically, Buhler says, the New Force proves “that electric fields alone can generate a sustainable force onto an object and allow center-of-mass translation of said object without expelling mass.” Using this discovery, Exodus says it can overcome earth’s gravity without any traditional propellants.

Translation? Exodus claims it can shoot a spaceship into orbit without any sort of fuel or combustion just by harnessing and directing the energy from electric fields.

On the company’s website, they liken a traditional spacecraft engine to a fire extinguisher. They explain that a spacecraft moves through space by using a chemical reaction “to force mass at high velocity out through a nozzle, making the rocket move in the opposite direction.”

But rocket engines and fire extinguishers both have a major limitation – a finite amount of propellant.

Exodus’s new drive is described as a rocket motor that works “more like a light bulb than a fire extinguisher.” Using electrical charges and microwaves, the drive would take in energy and create forward momentum without any discernible exhaust.

If this were possible, the application would be far greater than just space travel. If it could create a virtually limitless amount of propulsion without traditional fuel, then this would be equivalent to pulling energy “out of empty space itself.” Everything from cars to entire cities could be powered by the invisible electric fields that exist all around us.

All of this might sound like something straight out of a science fiction movie – and there remains good reason to be skeptical. Scientists and engineers have for decades claimed to have discovered the same type of “impossible” drive system as the one Exodus now also says it has produced, only to be disproven.

British Electrical Engineer Roger Shawyer pioneered the concept of a propellant-free drive system in 2001, dubbing it the “EmDrive.” His team also claimed to have created a working prototype much like the one Buhler now describes. But after two decades of scientific scrutiny, Shawyer’s EmDrive was exposed as bunk in 2021.

The major reason many scientists don’t believe a propellant-free drive system is possible is that it appears to violate long-established laws of physics.

Specifically, Newton’s Third Law asserts that “for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction” – the basic idea which underpins all existing propulsion technology. From this law, Newton also derived the Law of Conservation of Momentum, which states that momentum in a closed system can neither be created nor destroyed.

That law is fundamental to how all engines work. As NASA explains, “a jet engine produces thrust and hot exhaust gases flow out the back of the engine, and a thrusting force is produced in the opposite direction.” These laws are considered immutable and critical to our understanding of the universe.

Importantly, Newton’s Third Law is the only of his three famous principles that still holds up with no exceptions following Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and the revolution in quantum mechanics.

If Buhler’s team really has created a drive that is truly reactionless yet produces momentum, it means that Newton, Einstein, Maxwell Planck, and every other great physicist throughout history were all fundamentally wrong about physics and the nature of the universe.

Both Newtonian physics and Einstein’s Theory of Relativity rest on the principle of translational symmetry, or the idea that the laws of physics are the same no matter where you are in space. But a successful EmDrive would mean that a closed system’s momentum and overall energy can change – and change by different amounts depending on where that system exists in space.

As astrophysicist Ethan Siegel explained in a piece for Forbes, “The most sacred law of particle physics – one that has been observed to apply to every system and every interaction set in history – would be busted.”

Siegel and other experts in the field remain doubtful that Buhler’s “New Force” is what he claims it to be. The momentum which Shawyer’s team supposedly created in their EmDrive tests was ultimately shown to be from poor experiment design and faulty measuring devices.

However, it should not be forgotten that Einstein’s breakthroughs once represented a similar earthquake in physics, and that he too faced intense skepticism from the scientific establishment. It may well be that mankind is on the precipice of a new breakthrough that changes our understanding of the universe and could reshape our lives forever.

Andrew Shirley is a veteran speechwriter and AMAC Newsline columnist. His commentary can be found on X at @AA_Shirley.