Propellantless propulsion by electromagnetic inertia manipulation: Theory and experiment

One of the challenges to create the Space Drive being to discover a self-contained means of propulsion that requires no propellant, it was already shown that a solution to the problem does exist, provided the system is endowed with tensor mass properties. It is found that under the assumption of Minkowski’s Energy-Momentum tensor being the right one (Abraham-Minkowski controversy), the electromagnetic field can modify the inertial properties of the generating device, given suitable charge and current distributions. An experiment to settle the question is then proposed which consists of mounting the device as a seismic mass atop a mechanical suspension. By supplying a periodic voltage to the coils at a frequency close to the fundamental frequency of the seismic suspension, the expected mechanical effect from inertia variation would cause the fixture to resonate, adding up to the microseismic noise induced vibration. Two series of tests were conducted during the period 1993–1997; in practically all cases, the results consistently point to a mechanical vibration induced by matter-electromagnetic field momentum exchange, as predicted by Minkowski’s formulation, after all other sources of vibration were taken into account, or removed when possible.