Qualitative and quantitative analysis suggests that unidentified objects use a unique propulsion system, unlike any known technology. This study of TR3B, a unique unidentified flying object or phenomenon, does not exist formally. According to Military.com (Military.com, 2013, November), the TR3B craft uses highly pressured mercury accelerated by nuclear energy. This nuclear energy produces a plasma that creates a field of anti-gravity around the ship. Around the ship, conventional thrusters located at ends of the triangular craft allow for rapid high-speed maneuvers along all three axes. Moreover, plasma generated reduces radar signature and is almost invisible on radar. The result of this technology is unprecedented capabilities to maneuver and remain undetected (Wikipedia, n.d.).
One commercial application of highly pressured mercury accelerated by electricity is lamps. Applied atomic collision physics has been around since the invention of the light bulb. Most people are familiar with incandescent light bulbs, fluorescent lighting, and Neon lighting. However, unless you have worked in the lighting industry, you may not know mercury lighting. These electrical discharge lamps have been around since the 1970s, lighting street lights know as low-pressure lamps (Waymouth, 1971). The author has an electrical engineering degree and worked in industry (e.g., GE, Osram, Thorn, CE, Mitsubishi) designing electronic ballasts or controllers. An arc voltage (670 to 800 volts) of electricity needs to travel from one end of the tube to the other to excite these gases. As a side note, not fun when the discharge path of electricity goes through you; although the current is not much, it still stings. In mercury lighting, the mercury is vaporized when started and reconstituted when cooled down (Bommel, 2014). Mercury road lighting is very efficient with a life span of 50 years and gives decent color rendering similar to a bright whitish light with a blue tint (Edison Tech Center, n.d.).
Recently, light-driven propulsion in the form of nano/micromotors has been growing attention because of their potential for applications in biomedical and environmental fields (Wu et al., 2017). Light-driven micro-/nanomotor-based photocatalytic reactions are attractive because of the speed control using light. The unique characteristics are remote control, speeding up and slowing down motion through variations of light intensity—the future work of finding materials used for high photocatalytic activity. Previous work of electric-magnetic means of propulsion is well known, such as Tesla Model S induction motor (Sieklucki, 2018, June).
Applications for light propulsion technologies not only for nano/micromotors but for space travel are viable. One of the advantages of using light as propulsion in space is economics. Light is highly efficient in space with the ability to accelerate particles. Currently, light is used in solar arrays to gather sunlight to power space stations to satellites. A spacecraft can harness natural astrophysical sources to achieve relative speeds for interstellar travel (Lingam & Loeb, 2020). Future work includes research on the terminal velocity of relativistic technologies using light sails, light power engines, and steller wind sails.
References
Edison Tech Center. (n.d.). Mercury Vapor Lamps. https://edisontechcenter.org/MercuryVaporLamps.html
Lingam, M., & Loeb, A. (2020). Propulsion of Spacecraft to Relativistic Speeds Using Natural Astrophysical Sources. The Astrophysical Journal, 894(1), 36.
Military.com. (2013, November). TR-3B Anti-Gravity Spacecrafts. https://www.military.com/video/aircraft/military-aircraft/tr-3b-aurora-anti-gravity-spacecrafts/2860314511001
Sieklucki, G. (2018, June). An investigation into the induction motor of tesla model s vehicle. In 2018 International Symposium on Electrical Machines (SME) (pp. 1-6). IEEE.
Van Bommel, W. (2014). Road lighting: Fundamentals, technology and application. Springer.
Waymouth, J. F. (1971). Electrical discharge lamps (Vol. 152). London: MIT press.
Wikipedia. (n.d.). Black Triangle (UFO). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_triangle_(UFO)#TR-3A_Black_Manta
Wu, Y., Dong, R., Zhang, Q., & Ren, B. (2017). Dye-enhanced self-electrophoretic propulsion of light-driven TiO 2–Au Janus micromotors. Nano-micro letters, 9(3), 30.