Quote:
Various hypotheses and theories have been proposed explaining the underlying physics for how the EmDrive and related designs might be producing thrust.
Shawyer claims that thrust is caused by a radiation pressure imbalance between the two faces of the cavity caused by the action of group velocity in different frames of reference within the framework of special relativity.[37]
Yang from NWPU calculated the net force/thrust using classical electromagnetism.[13] Harold G. "Sonny" White, who investigates field propulsion at Eagleworks, NASA's Advanced Propulsion Physics Laboratory, speculated that such resonant cavities
may operate by creating a virtual plasma toroid that could realize net thrust using magnetohydrodynamic forces acting upon quantum vacuum fluctuations.[38] Likewise, the paper describing the Eagleworks test of the Cannae drive referred to a possible interaction with a so-called "quantum vacuum virtual plasma".[14]
This reference has been criticized by mathematical physicists John Baez and Sean M. Carroll because in the standard description of vacuum fluctuations, virtual particles do not behave as a plasma.[39][40]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EmDrive
Okay, the inventor says that "...thrust is caused by
a radiation pressure imbalance between the two faces of the cavity caused by the action of group velocity in different frames of reference within the framework of special relativity."
Sounds like the Lorentz acceleration theory to me.
Others claim, the thrust is caused by
quantum vacuum virtual plasma.
Yet, the mathematical physicists John Baez and Sean M. Carroll sys, "..in the standard description of vacuum fluctuations,
virtual particles do not behave as a plasma."
So this is still controversial and until it is tested in a vacuum we won't know if there is real thrust is being generated.
And apparently we don't really know the true theory behind this device.
In a patent application filed by another firm, Gravitec, they state the thrust for their device is caused by the "Lorentz acceleration."