Posted on 05/13/2002 8:13:00 AM PDT by Texaggie79
Edited on 06/29/2004 7:09:10 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Antigravitational devices developed by a computer geek could eventually change the world as we know it.
Or they may just blow a few holes into some barn roofs.
The devices are known as "lifters." When charged with a small amount of electrical power, they levitate, apparently able to resist Earth's gravitational forces.
(Excerpt) Read more at wired.com ...
We have someone who claims to have developed a device with unusual, if not extraordinary, properties. He won't let independent authorities test it to see if his claims are true or if it is a hoax. He hasn't, or can't, explain how it works, but hints darkly that it involves some sort of "anti-gravity" property.
What are we supposed to do? How are we to debunk something when no one can independently verify the claimed attributes, and no one is offering a detailed theoretical explanantion for the claimed properties?
IF and when the developer wants to make some SPECIFIC claims about what his gadget can, and can't do, when he makes it available for others to independently test and verify his claims, and when he can offer some explanation for the "how" his gadget works, we'll have something to discuss.
In the meantime, we might as well discuss the 2 foot invisible rabbit sitting on my shoulder, who can leap from here to the moon and back every five seconds, but only when no one or thing is watching him. I don't know how he does it, and he won't do it for anyone but me.
But you can't prove he can't do it.......
As the article says:
"All major scientific breakthroughs were scoffed at when they first debuted," Marc Millis, a researcher at the Breakthrough Propulsion Physics project, said. "To move forward, a scientist has to explore the seemingly impossible."The more you scoff, the more these guys think they're a bunch of Einsteins.
Woooo-EEEE-ooooo!
The logical fallacy of that way of thinking is most amusing:
The fact that most scientific breakthroughs were initially scoffed at no more implies that all scoffed-at theories are breakthroughs any more than "All dogs have tails" implies that "if it has a tail, it must be a dog."
The idea that anyone who would think this way is likely to make a scientific breakthrough is downright hilarious.
I wish I could write more, but I have to get back to tending my invisible two-foot rabbit who sits on my shoulder and leaps from here to the moon and back every five seconds, but only when no one or thing is watching. They scoff at me when I tell people about my invisible rabbit; ergo, I must have acheived a scientific breakthrough!
The derision, namecalling and acrimony, in the end, mean nothing...
because either it works or it doesn't.
No real discovery is ever "suppressed".
I can already hear the rumble of the stampeding hordes of tin-foil wearing conspiracy fanatics, stumbling over each other to dispute your assertion. "200 mile-per gallon carburetor!" and "The car that ran on water!" they will shout at you with glee, and demand that YOU prove THEM wrong.....
Karl Popper and science philosophy probably wasn't such a good idea here.
But I did say that in the end either the phenomena must work or not.
There was an article about it in, I believe, the old Mechanix Illustrated.
It works on the same principle as those ionic fans you see advertised.
I remember that de Seversky was using 30,000 volts at 30 mils (90 watts) as a power source.
He had a metal wire and balsa frame about 18 inches square that looked like a small bed springs. Arranged on top of the frame were a number of these little arrowhead looking wires. The arrowheads were negatively charged and the frame was positively charged. As the charges moved from negative to positive, they dragged air molecules along with them.
It is mentioned in the following text found at the following link:
Besides his role as a military prophet, de Seversky continued his activity as a technological inventor and innovator. In line with the emphasis on pollution, he invented a wet-type electrostatic precipitator for attaching air pollution. This added to the list of new developments he previously pioneered, which included the cantilever-skin stressed aircraft wing structure, flight refueling, trailing-edge wing-flaps, and the "Ionocraft", a heavier-than-air levitation device depending on ionic emission, which was built and demonstrated.
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