The plane has no propeller or turbines, but is powered by an electric field.

This idea has been around in the science fiction world for quite some time. But this is the first time such a plane has been launched, albeit a very small one.

A spinning propeller or turbine has been a crucial part of almost all aircraft to date. It creates the thrust that makes the plane move forward and can lift off. If the turbine and propeller are missing, something else must propel the plane forward.

In the technology that researchers at MIT in Boston have now used, electrically charged air particles do the work.

An electric field accelerates some of the particles in the air. There are only a few particles, but they become very fast and collide with the other air particles. This creates a wind and thus thrust. This means you get an engine without moving parts that is also very quiet. Anders Forslund is researching aircraft technology at Chalmers in Gothenburg.

– It's a really exciting article with really exciting results. It's not every day you see a completely new type of progress published.

To create the wind, a very strong field is required, and the big breakthrough is that the researchers have managed to create this field in the plane itself. Now, the plane in the experiment only had a wingspan of five meters and weighed around two and a half kilograms. So it is far from a passenger plane.

So far, it requires a lot of energy for such a small effect. The technology is not yet mature. But when you think about drones, for example, it still has potential, Anders Forslund believes.

– For unmanned planes, I certainly believe that prototypes could be built that could have real applications within a ten-year period, he says.

Reference:
Haofeng Xu et al.: Flight an airplane with solid-state propulsion. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0707-9

Source;sverigesradio.se