A woman named Aisha Mustafa has invented a propulsion device that could result in cheaper means of energy consumption for spacecrafts. Oh yeah, and she's a 19-year-old college student.

The Egyptian university student at Sohag University invented a propulsion device that eschews the radioactive-based jet and rocket engine set-up for quantum physics and chemical reactions. You know, like most teenagers.

The device generates energy from electric energy by using the Casimir-polder force, the energy that occurs between separate surfaces and objects in a vacuum. This could be a huge improvement over rocket-fuel based models that, obviously, rely on solid and liquid fuels.

This could lead to cheaper and greener space travel. Mustafa said the next step is testing it at with a major scientific research organization and one day hopefully bringing it practically into space missions

Not bad for a 19-year-old.

Via humanipo