Too soon to call 'proved' on warp drive space travel

Travel to the moon in just four hours; make it to Mars in 70 days; complete the 7.5 billion km journey to Pluto in 18 months.

It sounds incredible, doesn't it? Maybe a little too incredible.

Yet these were the tantalising scenarios being rolled out in headlines across the world this morning after a piece of technology – long written off as impossible by the scientific community and the laws of physics – was claimed by German scientists to actually work.

At the heart of the story was the EM Drive – a revolutionary propulsion engine which could allow mankind to travel incredible distances at sci-fi movie speeds. The EM Drive, an almost mythical holy grail of space travel, is likened by physicists to warp drive on Captain Kirk's USS Enterprise.

In theory the EM Drive works by using solar power to bounce microwaves around in a metal cavity to produce thrust. In layman's thinking, imagine a rocket engine that does not use fuel. Suddenly, a major obstacle of space travel is overcome.

On Monday, German scientist Martin Tajmar from the Dresden University of Technology presented his findings on the EM Drive at a scientific conference at the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Prof Tajmar claimed his team had detected and recorded measurements of thrust in their prototype. The media loved it.

But, as Wired journalist Katie Palmer notes, although the German team had indeed shown tiny traces of thrust they had not – despite the claims of many eager media outlets - proved the EM Drive actually worked.

For starters, the work of Prof Tajmar had not been peer-reviewed.

And, crucially, there was the not-so-small matter of the laws of physics to overcome.

For years, scientists, including research teams at NASA, had worked on the EM Drive knowing that the law of conservation of momentum meant the propulsion system could never work.

The law states if something moves forward it must also push something back. The EM Drive has no propellant – which is why it has been the subject of such ridicule within the scientific community.

However, in recent years NASA has confirmed that they believe the EM Drive can and does work – but they can't explain why or prove it (yet). Wired have covered NASA's research into the solar powered propulsion system here.

Meanwhile, the British inventor of the EM Drive, Roger Shawyer, says he has finished conducting new tests on the engine and can prove it works. Not only that, Shawyer says his work is just months away from being published in a peer reviewed journal.

When (and if) that happens we can start pulling out our calculators and maps of the galaxy.