Suggestion: The EM Drive Is Getting The Appropriate Level Of Attention From The Science Community

There have been many news stories saying that the EM Drive will solve almost all problems in interplanetary travel, permit low cost flying cars and who knows what else. Other stories say that it is flat out impossible and we shouldn't spend a single publicly funded research dollar on it. But I haven't seen a single article with the rather boring suggestion that perhaps in this case the research community has got it exactly right. That it's not a perpetual motion machine, doesn't deserve to be dismissed out of hand. But it's far too soon to justify huge research programs into it, even if it is a real effect. We just have to be patient and see how the experiment develops. So, here is a news story to say - that. In detail:

There has been a lot of publicity for the original news stories. Headlines such as 'Impossible' rocket drive works and could get to Moon in four hours. And a lot stories debunking it, headlines such as  How to fool the world with bad science — Starts With A Bang!

But after the news stories with sometimes well known scientists debunking the experiments, you get a final wave of news stories debunking the debunkers . I think it is worth looking at these also, they deserve more publicity than they got. 

The early debunkers of the original stories made several quite serious errors of understanding of what the claims were and how the experiments were conducted, in their eagerness to debunk them. And these errors have been repeated over and over in the social media by people who share the news stories and quote the opinions of the debunking scientists.

First, the scientists who are doing the research are not responsible for all this media hype. 

Some of the original inventors make very bold claims. According to Robert Shawyer, inventor of the EM Drive, it will solve many of the world's problems even.

Other experimenters though are just exploring it in an open ended way as an anomaly that needs to be investigated via the scientific method.

The critics often go the other way, going overboard by debunking things that the experimenters don't claim, or misunderstanding the methods of the experiments. 

I'd like to highlight a couple of these misunderstandings that have been repeated over and over - such as the misunderstanding about what they meant by a "null" experiment - and also some of the common objections.  such as the idea that it has to violate conservation of energy or momentum and the objections based on delayed response.

This was one of the most publicized "mistakes" highlighted in articles like: How to fool the world with bad science — Starts With A Bang! and Page on discovermagazine.com which are shared over and over in social media discussions on this story.

Quoting from the abstract:

"Thrust was observed on both test articles, even though one of the test articles was designed with the expectation that it would not produce thrust. Specifically, one test article contained internal physical modifications that were designed to produce thrust, while the other did not (with the latter being referred to as the "null" test article)."

On a first read you might think - well - why read any further - they have already said that it doesn't work? What is all the fuss about?

However, if you read the abstract and the paper carefully, it is clear that the  Null version wasn't a null test for the EM drive itself. It was a null test for a version without grooves, to test one of the inventors' claims that certain grooves put into the chamber were necessary. 

The experiment showed that not only were these grooves not necessary, they didn't make any difference to the amount of the effect. 

So it was a "null version" for the grooves claim, not for the basic drive hypothesis that RF waves bouncing inside an asymmetrical cavity can generate thrust. Both versions generated roughly the same measurable effect in the experiment, of apparently a very small amount of thrust.

The true "null" version was when they tried an RF load with no apparatus - and this, they report, generated no apparent thrust. 

All this is reported in the paper they link to. If you read the abstract only NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS) then you might come to the same conclusion as many of the debunkers, but read it and then read the article, and then you will find that the null experiment was just for the grooves claim, and the asymmetrical chamber hypothesis was tested separately and the asymmetrical chamber is what the experimenters say did have an effect in their experiments.

 - so the authors were just rather sloppy in the way they read the abstract and the paper. This tends to dent ones confidence in the debunkers, rather than in the original experimenters. If the debunkers could misunderstand such a basic point, that is made clear in the paper in a way that is hard to see how it could be read any other way - how much else have they misunderstood?

The authors of the paper also could have worded their abstract more carefully perhaps. But if  you've ever tried to write an abstract, you may know how hard it is to summarize your work in just a few sentences.

This also is often quoted and shared:

"CalTech physicist Sean Carroll, who we've spoken to previously about the feasibility of an EMDrive, echoes Davis' sentiments.

"My insight is that the EMDrive is complete crap and a waste of time," Carroll tells io9. "Right there in the abstract this paper says, 'Our test campaign can not confirm or refute the claims of the EMDrive', so I'm not sure what the news is. I'm going to spend my time thinking about ideas that don't violate conservation of momentum."

No, German Scientists Have Not Confirmed the "Impossible" EMDrive

However, if you read the conference paper carefully, it says clearly that it hasn't confirmed the drive, even in the abstract, just as he says.

Direct Thrust Measurements of an EMDrive and Evaluation of Possible Side-Effects

That shows that the authors of a lot of the newspaper reports didn't read the paper carefully. It's not the fault of its authors though that they were reported as confirming the EM drive when the abstract says nothing of the sort.

They make it clear that it is work in progress. 

The paper says that according to their measurements it behaved as expected in a vacuum - but they still have things to check by way of alternative explanations.  

On the other hand though, it doesn't say that they have found an alternative explanation yet. 

No way can this paper be taken as disproving the drive. It neither confirms nor disproves it. It's work in progress reporting some interesting interim results for other experimenters, and themselves, to follow up further to find out what the significance is, if anything. That's how science normally works.

Much also was made of the delayed onset of the effect and that it continued after the power was switched off. This seems to suggest it was caused by heat.

But - if you read the paper carefully again - you'll see that the experimenters looked carefully at the possibility of a thermal explanation. Doing things such as insulating the chamber so the external temperature increase was reduced to only 4C (had no effect on the amount of horizontal thrust). And they did spot thermal effects. But these operated vertically, which is what they expected, and so could be disentangled from the thrust effect which was horizontal.

And a delayed effect might be exactly what you'd expect if, for instance, the chamber was being "charged up" - like an increase in electric charge, or a pressure differential, or whatever it was. That's just an analogy there. If the thrust had turne d on and off instantly, I think we might well have got sceptics saying that this instant turn on / off was a clear sign that, for instance, it was some issue in the electrical wiring and magnetism rather than a real effect.

So I don't think we should conclude that because of delayed onset, that it is not a real effect.

Also many say it is impossible because of conservation of energy or momentum. But new unexplained physics is very likely to appear to violate these laws. For instance if you didn't know about gravity, hadn't taken account of it in your physics, then whenever you drop something - that violates both conservation of energy and conservation of momentum. The object accelerates to the ground and then hits it, releasing energy. And does that without either apparently any energy supplied to it, or any momentum exchange.

Now we explain that in our physics by saying that there is a potential field and that it originally has potential energy. I.e. we add in a number that tells us how much energy it has. And when it drops, this number is reduced and converted to kinetic energy. (Let's stick to the simpler Newtonian mechanics approximation here rather than bring in the complexities of General Relativity, it's just for purposes of illustration).

And as for the momentum exchange, we say tha t when it accelerates towards the Earth, that the entire Earth also accelerates by a small amount towards the falling object - though there is no practical possibility of ever measuring this momentum change of the Earth itself. We just assume that it has to do this, by extrapolation from smaller scale experiments.

And - sometimes physicists do observe apparent violations of these laws. For instance in the process of beta decay, then there is an apparent violation of both these laws. This was explained by the hypothesis of a neutrino. Pauli proposed this in a letter in 1930 (though here he calls it a "neutron" - the particle now called a neutron wasn't discovered until a few years later):

Dear radioactive ladies and gentlemen,

As the bearer of these lines [...] will explain more exactly, considering the 'false' statistics of N-14and Li-6 nuclei, as well as the continuous β-spectrum, I have hit upon a desperate remedy to save the "exchange theorem" of statistics and the energy theorem. Namely [there is] the possibility that there could exist in the nuclei electrically neutral particles that I wish to call neutrons,[nb 2] which have spin 1/2 and obey the exclusion principle, and additionally differ from light quanta in that they do not travel with the velocity of light: The mass of the neutron must be of the same order of magnitude as the electron mass and, in any case, not larger than 0.01 proton mass. The continuous β-spectrum would then become understandable by the assumption that in β decay a neutron is emitted together with the electron, in such a way that the sum of the energies of neutron and electron is constant.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Electron_neutrino#Pauli.27s_letter

The neutrino itself was not discovered until much later, in the form of the antineutrino in the 1950s, and it was a long time before the lower energy neutrinos from the sun were discovered (in the 1960s).

Though it is easy to create neutrinos, they interact only weakly with matter and a single neutrino can easily pass through the entire Earth without interacting with any matter. So they can only be detected in very large numbers. And they can carry away momentum, and they can lead to apparent violations of conservation of energy.

Which doesn't mean that the EM drive has to create neutrinos. But there could be many other particles that are even more weakly interacting than neutrinos. Or other effects that we don't understand yet that can carry away momentum and balance up the energy equations.A

The one thing that is impossible is a perpetual motion machine. If you find a system that returns to its original state precisely, with a net output of energy - then there is no way to make that consistent with conservation of energy or momentum. That's because any numbers you attach to assign "potential energy" to the system will be the same at the beginning and the end of the experiment, so you there is no way to do that to make the numbers add up.

But that's not the situation here. There's a net input of power leading to the thrust, so you don't have the same state at the beginning and end of the experiment, so it is not a perpetual motion machine.

Irrespective of any arguments about conservation of energy or momentum you need to start with the data first. Whatever you see, you need to describe it and understand it. You can't dismiss data just because it doesn't fit your scientific pre-conceptions.

Isaac Asimov has a fun story about that, a physicist who wakes up one day to find that he can levitate. And he can't find any explanation of what is happening, and has a lot of problems trying to get anyone to investigate it because he is the only person able to levitate. 

Why is it that this never happens in real life? Could it? If not, why not? Physics can't answer questions like that.

Which doesn't mean this EM drive is a violation of these laws. It may conserve mometum by new particles - or by turning the ideas of a "virtual plasma" in some way into something acceptable as new physics. Or in some other way not thought of yet.

But - what if we did find something that seemed to violate these laws? Well - you st ill have to investigate that also, as good scientists. It's not scientific to be like the characters in Asimov's story and refuse to look at the experimental data because it doesn't fit your views about how science "should" work. Experimental data always comes first in science.

In a normal spacecraft - most of the energy goes into the exhaust, not into moving the spacecraft, if it has high velocity exhaust. 

For instance, an artificial scenario, to use as a thought experiment - suppose you have a friend who keeps pace with you in another spacecraft who will hand over whatever exhaust mass you need whenever you need it, but won't supply you with extra energy to fire it?

Then it would make much more sense to fire 1 kg at 1 meter per second than 1 mg at 1000 meters per second. Both give your spacecraft the same delta v, but the 1 mg requires a thousand times as much energy to fire it for the same delta v. (Energy required is half the mass times the velocity squared).

It would make even more sense to fire one ton at a thousandth of a meter per second, which would require a thousandth of the amount of energy needed for one kilogram at one meter per second. 

So in this artificial situation, with limited energy, and with unlimited exhaust mas s available from a friend like that, you'd take on board as much fuel as they can supply you, and fire it at the lowest exhaust velocities you can to achieve the desired thrust, and the energy requirements would then be very small.

So an ion thruster would make no sense at all if the exhaust mass was unlimited. 

But because you have potentially huge amounts of energy via e = mc^2, and because of the impossibility of carrying enough fuel to fire it at low exhaust velocity, it makes sense for an ion thruster to fire small amounts at high velocity even though it is a much more inefficient way of propelling a spacecraft.

 So the big question would seem to be, where does the mass come from for the momentum change?  If it comes from conversion of energy to mass, then - it's really not that much different from an ion thruster in how it works. 

You have your RTG, it supplies energy to your "reactionless drive" by converting mass to energy, and your thruster then converts some of that energy back to mass, and the rest it uses to accelerate that mass. And so you would be using mass, but indirectly, using some of the mass of the RTG as it decays. 

If you use solar power then similarly, you are using the incoming solar photons as energy (which were originally the result of a mass to energy conversion in the sun), then converting some of them back to mass, and then using that mass for propulsion. In that case it isn't depleting any mass from your spacecraft - and it would work better than a photon thruster so long as the particles created by this energy to mass conversion are propelled at relatively low exhaust velocities.

Both of these might be an efficient way of exploring the solar s ystem, It's not violating any laws of physics. It seems a kind of roundabout way of doing things, why not just accelerate fuel that you take with you like the ion thruster does? It might not have quite the savings they expect when you take that into account, but still might be worth doing.

It might be more efficient than solar sailing, when using energy from the sun, because the energy to mass conversion lets you fire the reaction mass away at a much lower relative velocity.

On the other hand if you are picking up the mass somehow from your surroundings as you travel - well - that's like the friend supplying you with mass as the travel alongside you - there would need to be a lot more explanation, and more gaps to fill, to explain how you manage to get mass supplied to you that's traveling at the same speed as you. 

The easiest way to understand this - without bringing in problematical ideas of a virtual plasma - might be that the mass actually isn't moving at the same speed as your spacecraft.

There might then be some energy loss needed to bring this mass up to the speed of your spacecraft before you fire it out as exhaust - nevertheless it might be worth doing, just as for a Bussard ram jet 

So - maybe the "vacuum state" actually has an inertia, and it is actually some kind of a plasma which is,say, at rest relative to the Big Bang for instance. That doesn't violate any laws of physics because we already have a "preferred rest frame" lo cally which you can determine by finding out whether or not you are accelerating relative to the three degree background. If the "vacuum state" in some way gets locked into a particular structure in the big bang and then just spreads out, it might have a preferred rest frame in that sense perhaps. Of course very much hand waving here, it's going to be new physics after all.

So then the efficiency of the motor would depend on how fast you are traveling relative to the three degree background radiation. That would be sort of like using the three degree background radiation itself as fuel. 

Or might be that it is using some other component that is distributed in space that we don't know about. Maybe picking up and accelerating WIMP like particles from what seems to be a vacuum for instance. 

It might be stationary relative to our galaxy for instance - or orbiting the center of the galaxy at the same speed of the sun - or stationary relative to the sun  or even orbi ting the sun at the same speed as the planets, could be many possibilities there.

So with either of those ideas, you'd expect then that there would be some penalty there as you travel faster and faster relative to the source "material" whatever it is. And if you happen to be at rest relative to it, then you could pick up and accelerate as much mass as you like with almost no penalty.

You might notice that experimentally, perhaps, if the drive works just a bit better depending on your velocity relative to the three degree background, or any of these other potential sources - which might vary depending on the time of year, and time of day also for that matter.Here I'm not at all attempting to give an alternative theory for the drive. It is just to show by way of examples that it doesn't immediately and obviously have to violate conservation of energy and momentum. 

The idea that it might involve some kind of weakly interacting unknown new particle is not my own idea . It is one of the suggestions made in the Eagleworks talk, which also surveyed and touched on some other more outlandish ideas for how it might work without violating the conservation laws, such as that it might involve a low level of warping of space time (which would result in propulsion without any momentum exchange at all, like the Alcuberre drive).

In all of this, I think the chance that the drive actually does work is low, and expect that ,like the faster than light neutrinos, that they will find an alternative explanation eventually.

But it's been my experience so far that the writings of the debunkers of this experiment are often of a low quality scientifically as I just outlined above. 

This is not too surprising as these are scientists who are not at all expert in this topic area  and scientists are only human and often make embarrassing mistakes when they make statements outside their main areas of expertise. 

And the mistakes were subtle ones. Such as the misunderstanding about the nature of the "null" device. I'm not at all sure I'd have spotted them myself, I found them as a result of reading some of the spate of less publicized news stories debunking the debunkers that were published immediately after the debunking stories.

So - I sympathize with the ex perimenters. They don't deserve to be debunked in this harsh way by people who haven't taken the time to properly familiarize themselves with what they are doing.

Though it is also natural for the debunkers to want to debunk something that seems to violate the basic laws of physics. It's not often you encounter something that seems to violate conservation of momentum as a physicist, and when you do it is usually an error - and it's only rare that observations of apparent violations lead to new physics.

Which doesn't mean I think that the EM drive is real. I've no idea.

But I think it is intriguing enough to follow up until we either find that explanation - or in the more surprising and interesting case - confirm it.

And - as so often happens with things like this, I expect that they will find that it is experimental error. For no other reason than because that's what usually happens with these things. But every now and again out of all these tests and experim ents, then you get one or two that end up revolutionizing science. And you wouldn't get those revolutions in science if it weren't for the tenacious experimenters that keep working at their experiments even when everyone else tells them to stop. 

If they do find that it is experimental error - well - that's a forward step in science also, to find a source of an error that is at present so baffling that nobody has yet been able to explain it.

Even if it turns out to be a real effect, then without knowing how it works, then it's impossible for anyone to say for sure what the implications will be. Robert Shawyer has said he will soon create new versions of the device able to generate thrusts of order of newtons, not just micronewtons and has made many optimistic predictions. If he succeeds then it would have many benefits probably.

But - just based on the history of dramatic scientific breakthrough announcements by inventors, and dramatic new science results - with no disprespect intended to him - it could as easily turn out to be results of experimental error like the faster than light neutrinos. Or it could be a small scale effect, perhaps based on known physics, that never gets turned into a useful device. Or it may be in between the two, and result in a device that is sometimes useful in particular circumstances, like an ion thruster. Or in the more interesting case where it involves new physics, or new princip les, it could be indirect evidence for something interesting, but still not result in a new space drive or hover cars.

So, yes, I do think that the experiments are being unfairly downplayed by a few scientists and journalists. Also unfairly overplayed by others :).

I wouldn't go so far as to say they are being downplayed by the scientific community as a whole however. Scientists are investigating it carefully as the recent German experiments show. I think they are giving it an appropriate level of attention.

At the same time both the experiments and the debunkers are being way overhyped by the media. And in a situation like this, emotions run high, and some of the scientists who get involved, who are usually not experts in this topic area and not the same scientists who are tasked with doing the experiments or reviewing them - being only human, are liable to make many mistakes in their eagerness to either support or debunk the experiments.

But it's not going to be settled in this way through internet discussions in various forums, and social media or through dramatic news stories . We will only find the answer by continuing this process of careful experimentation. And unlike the examples of the likes of Spock in movies - in the real world scientific progress is often a gradual and slow process. The rest of us will just have to be patient and see what happens. 

This article originates in my answer to a quora question: Is the significance and/or creditability of the Eagleworks EM Drive hard vacuum tests being unfairly downplayed by the scientific community?

See also the earlier quora question: How does the EmDrive warp space?

And this Reddit discussion from last year which gives good background data on the two drive ideas (there are actually two different suggested drives, the EM drive and the Cannae Drive, that are similar in design): The FACTS as we currently know them about the EmDrive and Cannae Drive • /r/Futurology

Source: Suggestion: The EM Drive Is Getting The Appropriate Level Of Attention From The Science Community

Flying Cars Will Be Here In A Few Years

Flying Cars Will Be Here In A Few Years GeneralIndustry 15 hours ago by Ahmed Bilal Tweet   Pros Cons Presentation  Performance  Usability  Features  Value 

In the past century humans conquered the art of space flight but one thing that still remains beyond comprehension is a flying car. Many have tried and tested failure met them at one point or the other one company still seems adamant to build us a magnificent car that can fly around. Many people have been patiently waiting for flying cars for many years now but due to certain complications it seemed before that many of us would not be alive to see these flying cars. All is about to change because an American company Terrafugia has launched a new design of its heli-car hybrid TF-X model which is just terrific.

Flying cars will be accessible to everyone in the near future

The company released a new exterior design for the TF-X which has been around since 2013 but we are yet to see it around. This flying car does not need any kind of a runway to takeoff and land, it has a cruising speed of approximately 322km/h (200 mph) with an 805 kms (500 miles) flight range. The TF-X can recharge its battery either from its engine or from recharging stations, and has a capacity to carry four passengers. The car is a hybrid as announced in 2013 and it is yet to get off the ground, but it seems that all will change as the company announced that a one-tenth scale test model of the car will soon undergo testing in the MIT Wright Brothers wind tunnel.

They exclaimed "The wind tunnel test model will be used to measure drag, lift and thrust forces while simulating hovering flight, transitioning to forward flight and full forward flight,"

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The TF-X model looks like a small helicopter; it has two wings with twin motor pods which can be unfolded in case you are in a flying mood, the car will be lifted up using 1 megawatt of power. The wings look like twin propellers which can be folded and unfolded at will (folded wings will make the car easily storable in a normal sized garage). It is explained on the website of Terrafugia that before driving one can select the actual landing zone and then another two backup landing zones in the event of an emergency where sufficient energy is not available. The driver doesn't need to worry about getting lost while in the air because everything will be computer operated with hi tech systems.

"Operating a TF-X vehicle should be statistically safer than driving a modern automobile," they claim.

If everything goes according to plan and all tests are cleared then Terrafugia believes that the TF-X will take 8 to 12 years for development. I know it is a long time but it is worth the wait, this is the dream toy of many grownups just like me. So be patient!

Image source 1 and 2

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Source: Flying Cars Will Be Here In A Few Years

Flying car to be sold in UK within six years - but it will cost you £200,000

The prospect of Jetsons-style flying cars in our skies moved a step closer with the announcement by Terrafugia that its new TF-X four-seater, unveiled in 2013, could go on sale by as early as 2021.

Terrafugia's earlier Transition car-plane made a successful maiden flight in 2012. Powered by a 99bhp Rotax aircraft engine, it had a cruising speed of 100mph and a claimed 35mpg on the road.

By contrast, the TF-X features a plug-in hybrid powertrain which powers the wheels in car mode and two electrically-driven rotors in flight. No runway is needed as it can take off and land vertically. Claimed air range is 500 miles, 90 more than that of the Transition.

The makers also say that the TF-X can autonomously avoid other air traffic, bad weather and restricted air space and find its own way to a pre-specified landing zone, although the driver must approve the final landing. There are manual controls and overrides and a full-vehicle parachute system.

Terrafugia quotes five hours for learning to drive the TF-X, which fits into a standard single-car garage, and says that its final design "should be statistically safer than driving a modern automobile".

Pricing will be set to compete against luxury cars. The Transition currently costs $279,000 (about £180,000), so expect a starting price of over £200,000 for the TF-X.

Source: Flying car to be sold in UK within six years - but it will cost you £200,000

8 FUNDAMENTAL WAYS DRIVERLESS CARS MIGHT CHANGE OUR SOCIETY

Until relatively recently, the idea of society abandoning cars that people have to control themselves in favor of driverless vehicles seemed like something out of a science fiction movie. Sure, we've been promised Jetson-style flying cars since at least the 1950s, and that hasn't happened yet, but the idea of hopping into a vehicle and just relaxing with a book (Just kidding! "Books" will probably also be phased out in favor of electronic reading devices) while the car drives itself to our destination didn't seem likely either.

The technology is being developed and tested in real world applications though, and it seems reasonable to expect widespread use of driverless vehicles to become the norm over the next few decades. What kind of effects on our society might that transition create? Let's take a look at a few possibilities.

8. Fewer People Will Choose To Own Cars.Many projections on how driverless cars will effect our habits seem to indicate that fewer people will actually buy one, and will instead use them in similar ways to how we currently use taxi services. Its likely that driverless cars will be expensive, especially at first, before they completely replace manually driven vehicles. What is probable in such a scenario is that people will use them on an "as needed" basis, perhaps using the Internet to order one to pick them up wherever they are, and being charged by the mile. There may be services that provide driverless transportation in such a manner, allowing for charges dependent on a person's needs - charging less if a person chooses to share their lift with another customer, for instance. It's not out of the question that such services will be preferred over ownership by many, providing a less expensive way to get around without many of the disadvantages of currently available mass transit options. Far fewer young people are choosing to learn how to drive now, anyway, and it's possible that the idea of car ownership could dramatically change with the introduction of driverless technology. This would also dramatically effect mass transit and taxi services, probably killing the latter entirely.

7. Traffic Accidents Will Largely Disappear.Traveling by automobile is one of the most dangerous things most of us do routinely. Auto accidents are currently one of the leading causes of injury and death in this country, and in most cases the causes of an accident are a distracted or impaired driver. While the current driverless technology being tested still requires someone who can pilot the vehicle in case of certain problems arising, eventually that may not be the case, and future vehicles may offer an entirely driverless experience. Had too many drinks? Calling up a driverless car will eliminate the danger of drunk driving, and will also allow people to text away without being irresponsible creeps. Will such a system ever be so perfect that auto accidents are completely eliminated? Probably not, but they will be dramatically reduced, especially those caused by drunk driving, distracted drivers, road rage, or other dangerous driver behaviors. Because of this, one effect of driv erless cars will be...

6. Owning An Old Fashioned Car Will Become A Lot More Expensive.Driving conventional cars will probably eventually be phased out almost entirely, and become an expensive hobby reserved for parades. Why?

Insurance costs will soar for those who want to keep driving older vehicles.

When traffic accidents are decreased by widespread use of driverless cars, all communicating with each other and adjusting to changing traffic conditions faster than a human can, cars driven by people are going to become the obvious dangerous variable on public roads. Insurance companies will respond to that by dramatically raising insurance premiums on cars that are driven by people. Eventually, those rising costs will lead many people to abandon driving old fashioned cars. The government may make the choice more compelling by imposing stricter (and more expensive) safety restrictions for allowing conventional vehicles to share the road with driverless ones. It might be decades before this happens, but it is probably just a matter of time. It will also lead to...

5. Car Culture Will Either Dramatically Change Or Be Destroyed.I love cool old cars. I own a 1967 GTO, a 1976 Chevy Van, and a 1974 Cadillac Hearse. I understand car culture, and why so many of us like our cars. Houston is a city largely built on America's post World War II love affair with the automobile, sprawling for miles and miles in every direction, without a truly great mass transit system. It's hard to get by without a car here, and lots of people identify closely with their vehicles. A lot of us grow up liking cars and the things they can do, and there's definitely a romance with performance and speed, especially among young people. Or there used to be. As noted previously, a lot of kids are choosing not to even get a driver's license anymore. Still, enough people like cars and the culture that goes along with them. And that will probably change when driverless cars become the norm, and even owning your own vehicle isn't seen as necessary anymore. All of the older desirab le vehicles will either become way too expensive for the average person to drive, or will end up in private collections and museums. How much fun will it be to fantasize about hot-rodding a car you don't even drive, much less own? I'm guessing people will mostly find other interests to replace their love affair with cool cars.

4. Many More People Will Opt To Ride Bicycles And Motorcycles.This is just a guess of mine, but I'm going to predict that a lot more people will begin to commute via bike or motorcycle. Why? Well, riding a bike in Houston can be a dangerous activity, mostly due to terrible and aggressive drivers. Almost any conversation on the topic will inspire angry responses like "Roads are for cars, not bicycles," which is patently untrue, and also illustrates the mindset of a lot of drivers. Motorcyclists have long known that the biggest threat to their continued safety on the road are people that drive their cars like creeps. However, after most automobiles are driverless, riding on two wheels may become a lot less risky, making it safer for people who choose to do so. As car ownership becomes more expensive, the same things that are attractive about car culture may shift to bike or motorcycle owners. They may become some of the few affordable modes of transportation that most people can own and customize. Who knows?

3. People Will Have More Time For Other Activities.

Many of us spend hours out of every week stuck driving along in traffic. I'm sure it would be depressing for many of us to tally up the amount of time we're wasting commuting from place to place, when we'd rather be coasting along the Internet instead of I-10. With driverless commutes, more of us will be able to do just that, or any number of other activities that would be incredibly dangerous to engage in while driving. Being shuttled along without having to drive would allow people the opportunity to enjoy writing their novel or perusing Facebook without being a potentially deadly threat to themselves and all the other cars around them. In short, a driverless car trip could actually be relaxing instead of a chore most of us tolerate but don't enjoy.

2. Older People Will Be Able To Maintain Freedom Longer.

One of the eventualities that most people face as they get older is a dreaded lack of freedom brought on by the process of aging. Anyone who has had to take away an elderly parent's car knows exactly what I mean. This is not something many people look forward to, even when safety is the issue. However, driverless cars will nullify most of the reasons that older people have to quit driving. Failing eyesight or other senses aren't a factor when you don't have to pilot your own vehicle. And it's not just older people this would affect. Kids who are old enough to leave the house without direct adult supervision, but who are too young to legally drive would also be able to travel from place to place in a driverless car, as would people suffering from many conditions that make driving their own cars impossible. Some people will complain that a shift towards driverless vehicles would remove certain freedoms, but for a whole lot of other people the opposite will be true.

1. Driverless Cars Will Change Certain Criminal Activities.We've all seen countless high speed police chases on television or perhaps even on the roads we are driving on. Cars are currently involved in all sorts of criminal activities, because they're under the control of an individual, and can be used as that person sees fit. If that person is the type of moron who likes to get drunk and then lead the police in a dangerous high speed chase, then that's entirely possible. Let's face it, the current technology cops have to stop another speeding car are problematic at best.

But that will change with driverless cars. First, they will be loaded with GPS and other technologies that log where they've been driven, so that will probably make certain kinds of police investigations more foolproof. Claiming that you were at church and not Eddie the speed freak's neighborhood meth lab probably won't fly very far if the cops want to check your cars tracking log. This poses questions about rights to privacy, but is a likely scenario.

People who have a lead foot and like to speed? They are probably out of luck, since the car will be making decisions like how fast it can safely navigate specific road conditions. Of course the flip side of not being able to speed will be that police won't be able to ticket people for driving too fast anymore. Combined with far fewer DUI arrests, that will greatly affect many levels of policing. Small towns and police agencies that depend on revenue from moving violations will be largely out of luck, which is good, if your town depends on speed traps to survive, it deserves to die.

But back to that high speed chase scenario. That'll be largely a thing of the past, because it's almost certain that driverless vehicles will have built in technology that allows law enforcement groups the ability to kill the engine remotely, or to have the vehicle simply pull itself over. Hard to rob a liquor store and speed off in a cloud of dust evading arrest, when the car won't speed and the all the cops have to do is type in a code to pull your ass over.

The widespread adoption of driverless cars will affect our society on many fundamental levels, and these are just a few of them. Some of these changes may be embraced and others resisted, but driverless vehicles seem to be on the horizon, and the future is coming whether we like it or not.

Source: 8 FUNDAMENTAL WAYS DRIVERLESS CARS MIGHT CHANGE OUR SOCIETY

Car Tech 101: Forget the flying car, the invisible car is almost here:

Car Tech 101: Forget the flying car, the invisible car is almost here

2:08 July 27, 2015

Brian Cooley takes a look at invisible car technologies that aim to make it easier for the driver to see out from the car -- no more...

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Source: Car Tech 101: Forget the flying car, the invisible car is almost here:

Flying car Mk 2 scheduled for take‑off next decade

CUSTOMERS may still be awaiting delivery of the Terrafugia Transition flying car, but that has not stopped the maker pushing ahead with its new model, the TF-X, the latest designs for which were revealed last week. It is set to go on sale some time next decade and will offer a top speed in the air of 200mph and a range of 500 miles. The four-seater has a plug-in hybrid engine and is likely to cost more than the $279,000 (£180,000) Transition.

Mirror, signal, hijack: hackers take remote control of Jeep

Jeep, the all-American maker of rough and tough SUVs, has hastened to reassure British drivers of its Cherokee that their car will not be vulnerable to hackers. Last week US hackers demonstrated how they could take control of the family SUV and bring it to a stop — on a motorway — from some distance away, using little more than a

Source: Flying car Mk 2 scheduled for take‑off next decade

Trends with Benefits: Gun drones, flying cars, fancy fishin’ and the fall of ESPN

On this week's podcast, we talk about ESPN's streaming woes, the advent of drones, flying cars, and an irrational hatred of paragliders and raspberry beer. We broadcast this discussion live on Periscope at 2:30 p.m. Pacific every Thursday, taking your questions, so tune in next week for more tech discussion and an excellent view of Caleb's neck.

ESPN has reportedly lost more than 3 million subscribers recently. Is it because of the network's lack of a standalone streaming app? Or has the network just stretched itself too thin?

By now, you've surely seen the video made by an 18-year-old in Connecticut recently posted a video of his drone firing a gun. The FAA is investigating, but is it really illegal on his private property? What does this mean for the future of home-modified drones, and how can you stop it?

Meanwhile, the AguaDrone is a lot less terrifying and a lot more lazy. It comes with a sonar fish finder, a camera and the ability to take your lure out over the water and drop it right where the fish are. If someone tries using this thing on a lake where you're fishing, you'll probably wish you had that gun drone.

A viewer on Periscope wants to know what's happening with Amazon drone deliveries. Sorry, no drone deliveries yet, but another company delivered a drone with another drone as a proof of concept. Seriously.

Finally, the future promised in the Jetsons may be on the horizon!  Terrafugia (sorry if we mispronounce it) is developing an actual hybrid flying car. Will flying cars lead to air rage?

Please subscribe and share Trends with Benefits, visit Digital Trends and send in your questions to podcast@digitaltrends.com.

Today's episode features Caleb Denison, Drew Prindle, Nick Mokey and host Greg Nibler.

Source: Trends with Benefits: Gun drones, flying cars, fancy fishin' and the fall of ESPN