As The Talented-One quipped – it’s sort of how bumble-bees fly because they don’t know they aren’t supposed to. (I’m sure that is a Terry Pratchet reference, but I could be wrong)

Yes, indeed – pushing from the inside should violate Newtons’s third law of motion. But stranger things have been known.

Maybe this reminds you of a little anomaly called the EMDrive?

An engine intended to be used for inter-planetary (or even inter-stellar) travel.
It’s a sort-of fat-cylinder that is wider at the bottom than the top with a microwave emitter at one end.

The microwave just somehow … pushes it from the inside.

A very small effect, true, but because it doesn’t expend fuel (no ionising mass needed) it can just run on solar or nuclear power – like forever.

Now, no-one thought this was possible. Physicists up in arms and everything.
But the evidence just continued to mount up until it couldn’t be ignored.

So, NASA said, we’ll build one and test it.
And they found … it works!

Brilliant

PS – some have dubbed the engine – in Scotty’s honour – as the “Cannae Drive”!

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