I know there's been some talk about the drive pushing against some quantum vacuum, but maybe something like this is what's happening? Not sure if it's some separate phenomenon, or just a bigger version of the same thing, but it seems like something to add.



Quote from: Star-Drive

"My conclusion has been that, the temperature at which electron-positron pairs annihilate each other is in excess of 108 Kelvin."



Again you are making the assumption that the e/p pairs are fully fleshed out in our universe, which does require 0.511 MeV per particle and that would indeed melt the frustum if fully developed. What Dr. White's QV conjecture posits is that these virtual force carriers can be expressed in our reality with a variable effective mass/energy density that goes from just barely here to fully here at the Schwinger limit energy densities. Of course the only way to prove this QV conjecture is to test a given frustum design over a broad input power range of four orders of magnitude or greater to see if it generates the COMSOL/QV Plasma code's EW copper frustum's TM010 thrust predictions I posted at NSF.com earlier, or not.



Best, Paul M.



To put it clearly, this new cosmological observation shows a known consequence of electron-positron pair production, where those particles pop into existence from the quantum vacuum and become real for a very short instant (less then 3.2×10s).Dr White at Eagleworks thinks those ephemeral charged particles can be treated as a virtual plasma which can be pushed on with Lorentz E×B forces like a magnetohydrodynamic drive does with salt sea water or a ionized gas. The thruster then reacts forward against this "virtual wake". It is White's Quantum Vacuum Fluctuation (QVF) conjecture that supports his concept of quantum vacuum plasma thruster, or Q-thruster.Several remarks from Jim Woodward and Heidi Fearn criticizing White's QVF conjecture:1. The quantum vacuum would need to be degradable, but most scientists think the quantum vacuum is immutable.2. Momentum would be conserved as the drive reacts against an ep wake, but what happens to the conservation of momentum when the ep pairs pop out of existence once they have been pushed on?3. According to quantum theory and observations, in order for those electron-positron pairs to appear, tremendous magnetic or electric fields are needed at the Schwinger limit (the critical QED vacuum breakdown magnetic field strength is 10Tesla, and the critical QED vacuum breakdown electric field strength is about 10V/m) way beyond what occurs in an EmDrive, and still one or two orders of magnitude away from the most powerful laser available.4. Notwithstanding if the ep pairs could still be produced in the EmDrive, as pointed out by WarpTech , the temperature at which electron and positron annihilate each other is in excess of 10Kelvin. If ep pairs in the frustum had a density ~1×10kg/m, and a life time of ~10s, the frustum would be vaporized from the heat, faster than dropping it onto the surface of the sun.5. MHD interaction length is way too short with ep pairs lasting 3×10s, before they pop out of existence. Thanks to Eagleworks COMSOL data we know E = 3780 V/m and cavity Q = 7000. Starting from rest, the electron would reach a velocity of 2.1×10m/s during its lifetime. But let's be generous and assume the velocity of the charged particles is 1 m/s, and they travel at that velocity for their entire lifetime (instead of accelerating to this velocity from zero). Then, even with this very optimistic velocity, the longest distance they can travel before annihilation is 3×10m. Hydrodynamics is the appropriate effective theory for describing any fluid medium at sufficiently long length scales. Considering the diameter of an average atomic nucleus is 10m, hydrodynamics laws and by extension magnetohydrodynamics cannot apply to the quantum vacuum plasma.6. To account for the anomalous force observed with Eagleworks frustum, an enormous quantity of ep pairs generously accelerated up to 1 m/s is needed as a reaction mass: 1.5×10kg (the mass of the Sun is 2×10kg )! Even considering the extreme unlikely case where those charged particles could accelerate near the speed of light, the total required mass would be no less than 5.5×10kg, still disproportionate. Such wake if present would not stay unnoticed.7. Jim Woodward and Heidi Fearn set up a dedicated experiment last year at their LetsHopeItWorks lab to detect pair production in a vacuum and such "quantum wake" with a Q-thruster. Over 200 runs, no ep pair have been detected.Those issues have been detailed by Woodward and Fearn in their recent JBIS paperwhere they squarely concludePaul March has answered the critics of point (4) above in this post OK, but if such "densification" mechanism indeed occurs allowing the ep pairs to really become "barely here" at considerably lower energies (vs "completely here" at the Schwinger limit which is beyond our reach) aren't their variable mass/energy density also "barely here" in this case? Thus an even much greater amount of those "almost-real" ep pairs would be needed to account for the total reaction mass calculated in point (6) which would become really unphysical.* Fearn, H.; Woodward, J. F. (May 2016), JBIS(5).