To determine what’s going on with the EmDrive, though, the group needs to enclose the device in a shield made of something called mu metals, which will insulate it against the planet’s magnetism. “In the EmDrive case, interactions with the Earth's magnetic field seems to be the leading candidate explanation of the small thrusts seen,” says Jim Woodward of California State University, Fullerton.Woodward has theorized a propulsive device of his own called the Mach Effect Thruster, which the Dresden group also tested. The researchers have tentatively concluded that the effect they measured is the result of Earth’s magnetic field interacting with power cables in the chamber, a result that other experts agree with. When they turned on the system but dampened the power going to the actual drive so essentially no microwaves were bouncing around, the EmDrive still managed to produce thrust-something it should not have done if it works the way the NASA team claims. Researchers could control for vibrations, thermal fluctuations, resonances, and other potential sources of thrust, but they weren’t quite able to shield the device against the effects of Earth’s own magnetic field. The group, led by Martin Tajmar of the Technische Universität Dresden, tested the drive in a vacuum chamber with a variety of sensors and automated gizmos attached. “The ‘thrust’ is not coming from the EmDrive, but from some electromagnetic interaction,” the team reports in a proceeding for a recent conference on space propulsion.
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