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Researchers break Newton’s third law — with lasers
The link to the paper is at the end of the article.
A team of researchers has managed to (very technically) break Newton’s third law of motion — that every action has an equal and opposite reaction — by accelerating laser pulses around a loop seemingly without any corresponding push-back.
The principles behind this breakthrough are airy new-physics ideas like “negative mass,” but the results are simple enough, and speak for themselves. With this team’s device, it’s possible for two pulses of light to both accelerate each other in the same direction through an optical cable, potentially paving the way for advances in everything from communications to computing — with just a hint of starship engineering thrown in for fun.
The team refers to their device as an optical diametric drive, a very tenuous but still instructive comparison that refers to a hypothetical engine tech that could get humans to the stars. A diametric drive is basically an anti-gravity system that uses a block of material with negative mass to create a negative gravitational field that would endlessly repel an object with actual mass (a spaceship). If that sounds like utter fantasy, that’s because it is; the concept of negative gravity has no meaning in quantum physics, which works using mass-squared equations that make all negative mass parameters into positive ones. The idea of moving through space thanks to a block of material with a never-ending propulsive ability calls to mind the perpetual motion machines of days gone by.
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The link to the paper is at the end of the article.