The Chinese TV channel CCTV-2 announced the creation by Chinese scientists of a working model of the EmDrive engine, the operation of which has not yet been explained within the framework of conservation laws. The corresponding video is available on the Daily Mail website.
The video does not provide technical details. It is stated that the engine will soon be tested in space. The publication assessed the video as "propaganda", one of the Reddit users called the corresponding line of research "new Lysenkoism".
In December 2016, Chinese scientists announced that the EmDrive prototype had been tested aboard the Tiangong-2 space laboratory. Then the details were also not reported.
The EmDrive motor is a device consisting of a magnetron that generates microwaves and a resonator that stores the energy of their vibrations. Outwardly, the unit resembles a bucket laid on its side. This design allows, according to engineers, to convert radiation into thrust, which cannot be explained according to conservation laws. A propulsion system based on EmDrive would allow it to reach the edge of the solar system not in a few decades, but in a few months.
In November 2016, a group of NASA scientists published an article about EmDrive in a refereed scientific journal. It says that the EmDrive in a vacuum develops a thrust of 1.2 millinewtons per kilowatt. The reviewers could not find errors in the design of the test bench and the unit, and the authors of the work - the reverse force that responds to the jet thrust developed by EmDrive, which should be present in accordance with the law of conservation of momentum.
Conservation laws are a consequence of the symmetry properties of space-time. For example, the law of conservation of momentum is a reflection of the homogeneity of space - the equality of its properties regardless of the point chosen in it, and the law of conservation of energy is the homogeneity of time.