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CellBioGuy comments on Open Thread, Jul. 27 - Aug 02, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Apparently, NASA is testing an EM Drive, a reactionless drive which to work would have to falsify the law of conservation of momentum. As good Bayesians I know that we should have a strong prior belief that the law of conservation of momentum is correct so that even if EM Drive supporters get substantial evidence we should still think that they are almost certainly wrong, especially given how common errors and fraud are in science. But, my question is how confident should we be that the law of conservation of momentum is correct? Is it, say, closer to .9999 or 1-1/10^20?
If it breaks conservation of momentum and also produces a constant thrust, it breaks conservation of energy since kinetic energy goes up quadratically with time while input energy goes up linearly.
If it doesn't break conservation of energy there will be a priviliged reference frame in which it produces maximum thrust per joule, breaking the relativity of reference frames.
Adjust probability estimates accordingly.
There are other possibilities. Maybe it's pushing on dark matter, so it works from the reference frame of the dark matter.