Plasmas are not generated out of thin air. What is the energy source for this ion-drive engine?

Some may recall "Cold Fusion," which turned out to be a scam. It violated the laws of thermodynamics, just as this "device" violates Newton's law of conservation of Momentum. Hide and watch. This too will pass.

[phys.org]

One the research out of Wuhan University is not original and was done in the US, UK, and CIS before China was able to replicate it. Next may I ask were you are going to get the electricity from? As China has ADDED dozens of COAL fired power plants in the last ten years.

Fossil fuels, one of the greatest misnamed resources in history. The Source for crude oil is below the level of any part of the earth that was ever on the surface. The Hydrocarbon structure requires extremely high pressure to be formed in the first place. The material tends to seep to the surface from deep locations and seems to be a product of activity deep within the earths mantle. That means we need to understand it better but not be foolish in our actions. There are break through technology that would allow a greatly reduced dependence on power plants and better creations of localized energy sources. Only there is little incentive for these technologies to move forward and there are large business that are doing their best to insure that they are not brought to use in the public arena.

Folks need to start thinking and doing and less being comfortably numb and let others think for them.

This dependence is due to the influence of big oil etc on the us govt, the internal combustion engine is only viable because of the energy density of the fuel

Global mortality rates have dropped profoundly in tandem with widespread use of fossil fuels. The earth has proven to be safer and more inhabitable due to the utilization of fossil fuels. Man made global warming is unproven and global warming is marginal.