Given that it has so far been detected as working by two independent organisations that tried very hard to get the test right, some new science has clearly been done here. We don't yet have clear evidence that it's a new propulsion technology, as it's possible that what has been discovered is an entirely new mechanism for confounding measurement instruments, but that does not lessen the scientific value of this discovery.
There is new knowledge here. Perhaps new physics. I slightly wish I was a physicist so that I could go and find out.
The Chinese tests did not include testing in a VACUUM. Not a sealed chamber, but an actual, airless, gasless, box of some sort.
The power levels involved in these devices are 10-20 kW - that much power into anything is capable of heating air and producing currents from convection alone. A microwave cavity is exactly the sort of thing which would make a great make-shift reaction chamber for a very inefficient, very ordinary jet engine of some sort.
I note the Wired article here also makes no mention of whether they tested the device in a vacuum chamber. Its the only test which matters, and no one ever does it, meanwhile they're pumping enough wattage to flash boil water around things.
EDIT: From the NASA abstract as well - "Testing was performed on a low-thrust torsion pendulum that is capable of detecting force at a single-digit micronewton level, within a stainless steel vacuum chamber with the door closed but at ambient atmospheric pressure."
Given what this thing claims to do, and how you have to operate it (allegedly) and the scale of the forces involved (tiny), not testing in an actual, evacuated vacuum chamber is absurd.
That much current would also create a magnetic field radiating out from the wiring. Maybe the force is that of the interaction between the earth's magnetic field and the microwave.
Except that they also tested a dummy unit with the resonance chamber futzed, so any gross physical effects from coronal discharge, convection etc, should have shown up on that as well.
I don't believe this means much of anything, other than, "the working unit probably had coronal discharge, and the dummy didn't."
That's certainly a lot easier to believe than the result they got. If, on the other hand, they observed the same sized effect in a decent vacuum, I would be more inclined to believe it. The fact that this test didn't take place in a vacuum, despite already being in a vacuum chamber ought to make people wonder a bit.
Having fed microwaves into vacuum chambers my own self: if the torsion pendulum was already in there, there is absolutely no reason this experiment wasn't run in at least a rough vacuum. I can understand not going to UHV if the cavity things are dirty or have crap which outgasses, but there is no excuse for not running this experiment in a rough vacuum.
If the microwave chamber is sealed air tight, they might need to construct a special one before they can test it in vacuum. But yes, they should get on that!
Are you saying that no good science can be made in China purely because it's China? USSR sometimes lied about their results,but they had scientists just as good as the US did. I have little doubt that good science can be done in China too.
Here is a great paper that shows that more than 99% of Chinese clinical trials show a positive result. Either null results are being suppressed or data is being fabricated.
It should be noted that the paper (as I've read in the abstract) extrapolates from MEDICAL data. There's a huge prevalence of pseudomedicine and mysticism which receives incorrect confirmation (as evidenced by the aforementioned paper), but a poor publication record in medicine journals isn't necessarily a good predictor of physics journals.
Nope, I am saying that Chinese science is not reliable. I'm not saying that they lie about all their science, or that no good science is done in China.
But when you have to go with your gut, and there are only two sources and one of them is Chinese, I would never reach a conclusion such as: "some new science has clearly been done here"
From the Chinese graduate students and professors that I have talked to the problems seems to be that it is really is to commit fraud and get a way with it.
In particular in some fields you can get rich writing grants, getting a considerable amount of money and writing fake papers.
There is a heavy temptation for many to do the same when all of their colleges are able to buy multiple houses and live an extravagant life style. An example from ~5-9 years ago would be a Chinese professor flying to California and buying a multi million dollar vacation house in cash. This is an extreme example and was uncommon even at the time.
My understanding is that this is not the case in all fields, it is easier to get a way with fraud in the less hard sciences supposedly. I also have read about several efforts over the last several years to try and correct matters.
It is also the case that many papers written by non-native english speakers suffer from grammar and spelling errors. Unfortunately incorrect grammar and or spelling often has a negative halo effect for many on the scientific content of the paper.
There is plenty of good science that comes out of China, however it suffers from a negative halo effect from the above sources.
I know some phd's here in the states... it's not much better. Seriously.
Lots of back scratching that goes on behind closed doors and lots of bogus papers that re-use old results or "recombine" old data in order to get funding for an actual project... really a lot of hogwash and bad science.
Nothing directly to cause fraud where I am tho. Tho I'm sure some publications are better about that than others.
There's cultural incentive to report results that are favorable even if they are wrong.
This has the unfortunate side effect that research coming out of China needs to be taken with a grain of salt and extra doubly carefully verified.
It's nothing the scientific method can't handle (we're seeing the start of the verification steps here), but knowing that lots of research coming out of China is misrepresented it introduces another layer of healthy skepticism that it needs to be verified before being accepted as a thing.
Suppose University of Shanghai produces a result, and the University of Beijing confirms it. Rather than accept the result, it's likely that before it's declared "SCIENCE!" a NASA or MIT or whoever is going to want to have verification from someplace that doesn't have a long history of misrepresenting scientific claims.
This is going to be treated differently than if the original work was done at say...CERN and the confirmation was done by CalTech.
I don't think NASA has the same credibility as an MIT or Caltech. From their arsenic-based lifeforms [1] to their D-Wave "quantum computer," [2] NASA seems to work on a lot of fringe science.
"There's cultural incentive to report results that are favorable even if they are wrong."
Indeed, but unfortunately in western capitalism there is sometimes a financial incentive to report results that aren't favourable even if they are wrong. A bit like what happened with the banks, or with tobacco companies.
There is new knowledge here. Perhaps new physics. I slightly wish I was a physicist so that I could go and find out.