19 Year Old Invents New Spacecraft Propulsion System

A nineteen year old college student has invented a new spacecraft engine - system that she says will make space flight much cheaper and ever so much faster. Aisha Mustafa, a student at Sohag University has developed her system to take advantage of the Casimir-polder force that I reported on last year at this time, in an article here  which, put simply,is the energy that occurs between separate surfaces and objects in a vacuum. The energy for all intents is a quantum force measured between two plates positioned quantum micrometers apart from each other, will generate virtual photons which constitute a field, and generate a net force - all this with no external electro-motive potential applied.

As mind bending as the casimir effect sounds, Mustafa feels that the potential (pun intended pac) is there to make space flight much simpler.

read the dvice article here

DARPA seeks Casimir forcefields

Dave Tackett over at the Quasar Dragons blog sends in an odd article from the Register. It seems of late DARPA has expressed interest in the Casimir effect. And no I don't mean they want to develop an insidiously itchy sweater. Darpa's interest is in the little understood "Casimir Force". The mysterious Casimir Force, is the tendency of nanoscopic, barely perceptible spacetime ripples - at the edges of the "quantum vacuum" in which all matter exists - to push things together. Some scientists have previously speculated that one might reverse the effect, fashioning a Casimir repelor platform causing objects to levitate on "literally, nothing".

As strange and far out as this seems, Darpa has gone so far as to issued a request for proposals (pdf), in which it is said:

• The goal of this program is to develop new methods to control and manipulate attractive and repulsive forces at surfaces based on engineering of the Casimir Force. One could leverage this ability to control phenomena such as adhesion in nanodevices, drag on vehicles and many other interactions of interest... Possible approaches ... could include the development of composite materials, engineered nanostructures, mixed-phase materials, or active elements.

Now the Register article is all a bit tongue in cheek, but there are some very interesting points raised, if a bit far fetched.

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