DustinTheWind

Well It was just a hypothesis really. But I was thinking if all the collisions happened primarily in the forward direction 1st there should be a constant forward momentum.

I thought I had already quite clearly but from what I can see it was not absorbed. A hint would be to consider what I said and look at the shape of the cone then draw lines of impact. Then measure the lines length from equal angle reflections and consider the differences in length off the walls. Then consider the difference in time between momentum exchange.

You ignored my suggestion earlier about considering the passage of time. There is a shorter time for momentum on one side and a longer time for momentum to cancel on the other side. Your ignoring time is convenient for your argument. Imagine balls bouncing around inside in which one bounce carries momentum forward. While it takes twice the distance to cancel the forward momentum then repeat the process repeatedly. However now consider them photons. There would be a delta T in which there would be forward momentum for a short period of time for each cycle of bounces.

I don't believe it would be Brownian motion.

What I just pointed out in the post just before you which you might have missed is that there may be a time delay in the time it takes to cancel out that momentum. It takes 2 or more reflections to cancel out the momentum on the back reflection than it does for the top plate (1 reflection for top plate). There for you might get a force for a short duration towards the large plate before the force cancels out. Now imagine if you increase the amount of reflections before the photons are converted to heat. This is what the author is doing by using superconductivity to increase the Q or reflectivity of the metal. Not only that it would also be proportional to the amount of photons bouncing around in the sealed chamber. The only problem with my hypothesis is that I don't know that this explains what is going on in the wave nature of light but from a particle perspective this seems like it might be a plausible explanation of what is going on. So yes if you don't consider time it would seem the forces would cancel out. However if you consider the passage of time then there is a chance this might work. If so the force might be at least 1/2 that of the force of light reflecting. Reflecting light provides 2 times its force since the particle is being caught and thrown back. But if you increase the % of photons in that state and increase the reflections you would take that force generated by the power output times the number of reflections. ... I think.

I didn't really buy the group wave velocity idea either. I thought about it some and this is what I think if any ideas how it might work. The tube works best off reflectivity. The Tube is shaped with a larger disk at one end and a smaller disk at the other with angled walls. The photons bouncing off the top plate impart all their momentum at once and in a shorter amount of time. It takes longer for the photons to impart their momentum through the side walls. There for you get a force in one direction for a short amount of time before it is canceled out. Now imagine this on a much larger scale and increase the scale by now allowing the reflections to continue more so as the Q of the cavity increases due to superconductivity. So basically the thrust may be due to a time delay in canceling out the momentum on the back reflection. Of course this is just an idea I had after having asked God how this thing might work. I believe that group velocity can not transfer momentum as stated in the paper and this also was what bothered me.