Engineer believes in Plasma-powered Vehicle

post from Ubergizmo on 09 May 2008 08:10:23 AM. © Ubergizmo

Never mind that we're running out of gas soon - a patent application from University of Florida aerospace engineer Subrata Roy lays claim that a micro air vehicle in the future could be propelled by plasma. So far, passing a current or magnetic field through a conducting fluid generates a force, but attempts at exploiting this for use in a moving aircraft has yielded nothing but failure after failure. Mr. Roy is working hard to ensure that the magnetohydrodynamics phenomenon will be able to work on an aircraft, albeit the fact that his invention has a wingspan of less than 15cm and looks more like a flying saucer than your typical jumbo jet. Would be cool if he could extrapolate his findings to accommodate cars, lorries, trucks and planes, then the whole world need not go to war for oil.

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