Damned / Rejected Science (Miscellaneous)

[almond13]

The Tesla turbine and cheaper electricity generation

I've known about the Tesla Bladeless Turbine for some years and always wondered why it was never utilised. About three years ago I happened to be working in a company that builds and repairs turbines for power generation etc. I was talking to one of the guys who does repairs and maintenance and asked him if they ever serviced any bladeless turbines. To my amazement he said yes and he also showed me drawings that they used for servicing. These things are apparently manufactured and are in service. The question presents itself; why, when these things are said to be more efficient and obviously cheaper to build than the Parsons type, do we generate our electricity with what amounts to jet engines. With all the propaganda about saving energy on TV and other media, why don't the power generation authorities look around for improvements?

These things are said (with modifications)to be able to run on any fuel fuel that you can throw at them. There is a minimum of moving parts (several disks on a rotating shaft) with minimal ware and little potential maintenance and they are quiet. They will run on steam or water under pressure and can be modified with a combustion chamber for petrol and other combustible fuels. The possibilities are almost endless.

Ten Horse Power to the Pound.
http://www.teslaengine.org/main.html#TE

http://www.teslaengine.org/images/teba22p4.pdf

Quoting Tesla:
“I have been working at this a long time. Many years
ago I invented a pump for pumping mercury. Just a plain
disk, like this, and it would work very well. ‘All right,’ I
said, ‘that is friction.’ But one day I thought it out, and
I thought, ‘No, that is not friction, it is something else.
The particles are not always sliding by the disks, but some
of them at least are carried along with it. Therefore it
cannot be friction. It must be adhesion.’ And that, you
see, was the real beginning.
“For if you can imagine a wheel rotating in a medium,
whether the fluid is receiving or imparting energy, and
moving at nearly the same velocity as the fluid, then you
have a minimum of friction, you get little or no ‘slip.’
Then you are getting something very different from friction;
you are making use of adhesion alone. It’s all so
simple, so very simple. This is the greatest of my inventions....”

http://www.teslaengine.org/images/teba15p17.pdf

Assembly drawing - http://www.teslaengine.org/images/tesla2.jpg

http://www.lindsaybks.com/arch/turbine/index.html

http://users.rcn.com/zap.dnai/turbine.txt

 

[Anonymous]

Don't worry, by the sounds of it the US empire wants technology to be the solution for all our energy and climate woes - and so they might invent something similar but better.

How about using the same principle but using a sheet of bucky balls instead of disks? Or nano wheels.

They love the theoretical possibilites of molocule manipulation these days. In 500 years we might actually see some of the benefits (sorry that's just me being cynical and impatient )

 

[almond13]

Don't worry, by the sounds of it the US empire wants technology to be the solution for all our energy and climate woes - and so they might invent something similar but better.

How about using the same principle but using a sheet of bucky balls instead of disks? Or nano wheels.

They love the theoretical possibilites of molocule manipulation these days. In 500 years we might actually see some of the benefits (sorry that's just me being cynical and impatient )

So, we only have to wait another 430 years for some results from the fusion reactor?

 

[eburacum]

Going back to Louis Frank, who (you may remember) was supposedly vindicated back in 1997 in his belief in small cometary influx;
here is an interesting paper and more recent paper by Mutel and Fix (2003) which basically demonstrates that Frank has been using some very bad science and bad statistics to 'prove' his thesis.

http://de.arxiv.org/ftp/astro-ph/papers ... 307035.pdf
abstract

we have carefully examined whether the three putative trails whose positions are available satisfy several necessary criteria for a candidate grouping of excess-count pixels to be caused by a celestial object. While we have not evaluated the formal statistical significance of faint detections, all three claimed detections fail one or more independent criteria required for a valid detection. In addition, both the level and shape of the claimed integral detection rate versus magnitude are in strong disagreement with the inte-gral number density of the small comets hypothesis. We conclude that unless the remaining claimed detections can prove otherwise, the lack of detections after "careful examination" of the 1,500 search images described in FS provides the most compelling evidence yet published against the small comet hypothesis.

Another analysis by Mozer et al shows that his detection technique was flawed; (this too dates from after the 1997 article referred to in the previous post)

The Iowa catalog data are consistent with instrument noise because neither the size distribution nor the event rate of dark pixel clusters depend on altitude. At altitudes outside of the radiation belts during the one day of available raw data, more than 75% of the dark pixel clusters result from the process that Frank and Sigwarth employ to remove bright pixels caused by energetic particles. This data processing also causes additional meaningless dark pixel clusters to occur in the dark sky or over the dark Earth.

Sometimes damned science really is just bad science.

 

[almond13]

As I understand this – and I have not gone to any great lengths to do so - all of the criticised criteria were satisfied and more; yet the data was still rejected. I will look at this when time allows, but it seems that this guy has fallen into an area where scientific taboo subjects abound and the fact that his work has allegedly been debunked is used as proof for further rejection ad nauseam. This is not unusual, see cold fusion and a history of such doings. I will check on this and if possible find some ref's.

 

[almond13]

The nine events identified as "small comets" are quite distinct from noise...The search method, which was designed by Frank and Sigwarth, helped to rule out spurious events. In order to separate the detection of small comets from random events due to fluctuation in the pixel responses in the images, a shutter was used during the exposure of each image. This shutter broke up the small comet trail in two or three depending on whether two or three exposures were taken during the single image. Subsequent analysis shows that in the two trail mode no events were seen with three trails, and in the three trail mode no events were seen with two trails. Further assurance that the trails were not due to noise was provided by the high signal to noise ratios in the small comet trails... The primary purpose of this search was to confirm the results of a previous optical search for the small comets more than a decade ago. The first optical detections of the small comets were acquired with the Spacewatch Telescope at Kitt Peak in Arizona in 1989. This search, conducted by Jet Propulsion Laboratory physicist Clayne Yeates, yielded positive results. Taking into account the fact that the primary mirror of the IRO is significantly smaller than the primary mirror of the Spacewatch Telescope used in the 1989 search, the average number densities of small comets detected with the IRO are similar to that observed previously by the Spacewatch search within a factor or two or three.
http://smallcomets.physics.uiowa.edu/iro/
http://smallcomets.physics.uiowa.edu/news.html
http://smallcomets.physics.uiowa.edu/newphoto3.html
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/19 ... 080737.htm

But many scientists think Frank's theory just doesn't hold water. First, they say, the solar system is very dry. Where would space snowballs form? And why haven't scientists detected the tiny comets pelting the Moon, or nearby planets like Mars and Venus?
In addition, Frank's snowball theory challenges conventional earth science, which holds that a fixed amount of water continually circulates between Earth and its atmosphere. By suggesting that water from space is filling the oceans, Frank would force scientists to rethink the water cycle.
But that's the way science goes, comments William Bottke, a planetary scientist at the California Institute of Technology. "Someone puts out an idea and the rest of the scientific community debates whether its valid." As for Louis Frank, he believes his theory is rock--uh, ice--solid.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m ... i_19986891

 

[eburacum]

This seems to be something of a feud, by the looks of it;
http://chronicle.com/errors.dir/noautho ... a01101.htm

The University of Iowa has reprimanded a longtime astronomy professor for violating the university's ethics policy after he criticized two of his colleagues in a local newspaper. In addition to a letter of reprimand, Louis A. Frank, an astronomy professor at Iowa since 1964, will lose a year's worth of the extra money he gets for holding an endowed chair -- about $13,500.

Mary Sue Coleman, president of the university, upheld the recommendation of the Faculty Judicial Commission, which found "clear and convincing evidence" that Mr. Frank had wrongly accused Robert L. Mutel and John D. Fix of scientific fraud.

Remember Frank is the comet man, and Mutel and Fix are the comet sceptics (just to keep the record straight here)...

 

[almond13]

This seems to be something of a feud, by the looks of it;
http://chronicle.com/errors.dir/noautho ... a01101.htm

The University of Iowa has reprimanded a longtime astronomy professor for violating the university's ethics policy after he criticized two of his colleagues in a local newspaper. In addition to a letter of reprimand, Louis A. Frank, an astronomy professor at Iowa since 1964, will lose a year's worth of the extra money he gets for holding an endowed chair -- about $13,500.

Mary Sue Coleman, president of the university, upheld the recommendation of the Faculty Judicial Commission, which found "clear and convincing evidence" that Mr. Frank had wrongly accused Robert L. Mutel and John D. Fix of scientific fraud.

Remember Frank is the comet man, and Mutel and Fix are the comet sceptics (just to keep the record straight here)...

Nice one eburacum, I love it, but with a name like Fix...
The debunking of verified research is not new and as luck would have it my library angel found this for me the other day:

One of the most interesting and Fortean example of taboo/”pathological”-science is that of the discovery of Professor Fred Allison and his dealings with Dr. Irvine Langmuir.
Faraday found that by shining a beam of polarised light through a liquid and surrounding the liquid with a magnetic field, the plane of the polarised light is rotated by the magnetism.

Allison found that the amount of rotation also depended on the composition of the liquid and that it could be determined what was desolved in a water solution by observing the rotational position of the polarised light. He went on to develop this into an analytical tool of high sensitivity. Stringent trials were carried out by other researchers which Allison passed with one hundred percent positive results.
Enter Langmuir, and his colleague Wendell Latimer, who went to Allison's lab to check out his results. What he and a number of other independent researchers found was that it did what it said on the tin. This was all recorded in the journals of the time and Latimer is said to have detected tritium for the first time using Allison's method with his own equipment, also publishing a paper in Physical Review in 1933 about his detection of hydrogen with atomic weight 3.
Shortly after this time Latimer found, to his surprise, that his equipment no longer worked. Langmuir was quick to announce that Allison's work was the result of “Pathological Science” and from this point on the rot set in and the discovery was consigned to the bin. A year later the discovery of tritium was accredited to Rutherford.

See - http://www.alternativescience.com/undergrowth.htm for more information and Richard Milton's book Alternative Science.

All of this is highly suspect and I wonder if the extravagant claim by Allison that his equipment could detect compounds in solution at 10 to the -8 molar solution, had anything to do with it – connection with homoeopathy?

 

[Anonymous]

Right - here's a couple for you physics folk out there.

I should probably ask this on yahoo answers or something but here goes.

There are lots of different types of molocules aren't there? Is each molocule made of the same atom or are there lots of different types of atom?

If every atom is the same and all are made of the same electrons, neutrons and protons - then can all molocules be said to be made of the same stuff in different amounts/combinations?

If the above is true, then do you need lots of energy to move electrons/protons/neutrons around to make different molocules so you can theoretically nudge them together lego style to make any kind of matter you like?

If the above is true, and you really feel it is unlikely you can get enough energy to do this - may I ask if it is possible to harness the energy that you get if you split an atom?

Because if you split an atom it releases a lot of energy doesn't it?

If you cannot harness the power from splitting an atom, because there is too much of it or it is too unstable - then why have the Diamond Magnatron donut thingy or the Hadron Collider not exploded Hiroshima style?

If they can contain the explosion from smashing atoms into little bits so they can look at the little bits - then why are we not using the power that has been released and contained to power our homes?

:?

 

[Timble2]

Coldelephant,
Nuclear power stations have been providing energy by controlled fission for getting on for 50 years.

 

[Anonymous]

That is very clearly not what I was talking about.

 

[eburacum]

There are lots of different types of atoms, Coldelephant; each different kind is called an element, and they each have a different number of protons and electrons in them. Hydrogen is the simplest and most common with one of each. Carbon has six of each, uranium has 92 protons and electrons. We'll ignore the neutrons for now...

There is energy to be obtained from splitting every atom; but most atoms are so tightly bound together that it takes more energy to split them- generally much more- than is produced by the splitting. Some elements like Uranium and Plutonium can be split in such a way that more energy is produced than it takes to do the splitting. Only in those cases can the atom be split to produce an excess of energy; that is what Timble was referring to, - this process is called fission.

 

[Anonymous]

Ah - so no Star Trek style replicators using atomic explosions as an energy source then.

Bugger.

Ok, sorry Timble, looks like the answer to my convoluted question is in fact no.

Damn.

 

[eburacum]

Ah, but there might be some mileage in your idea yet. You were trying to get energy from fission, splitting atoms to make smaller ones. However fusion, adding atoms together to get larger ones- is actually exothermic (produces more energy than it uses) right up to Iron. So any element with an atomic number smaller than iron- can in theory be made from smaller elements- and will give off energy in the process. The downside is that fusion is very very difficult to do- it requires very high temperatures and pressures; to produce iron requires the temperatures and pressures found in a supernova.

So if a way could be found to produce these conditions on a tiny scale, the sort of Lego-like atomic assembly you imagine might be possible, and it would produce a net surplus of energy too;
but we don't know how to do it, and all indications are that it is impossible.

 

[almond13]

If every atom is the same and all are made of the same electrons, neutrons and protons - then can all molecules be said to be made of the same stuff in different amounts/combinations?

I like your question Coldel, but it's the electrons, neutrons and protons that are alike, with the atoms as described by eburacum.

Coincidentally, I've been reading about Keely of late who came up with an atomic theory surprisingly similar to the modern one about 20 years before. Apparently he not only built motors, but invented a whole science/philosophy of his own and I've spent some time trying to get my head around it – very intriguing, but hard going.
One of the things that I do understand is that he understood the insubstantial nature of matter – that it's made of energy.
Where he deviates from today's science is that he sees the energy as vibrations in the ether. His vibrations start with the lowest frequency sound and rise through the electromagnetic spectrum to infinity – and they are all part and parcel of the same thing. A truly Fortean approach with all things connected.
Dale Pond, who wrote the book tells us that he has had access to one of Keely's motors and when he tried it - it worked, and as I suspected it worked on the cavitation/water hammer principal. Also there are drawings and part diagrams of the motor in the book, together with a description of how it works.
I'll post it if there is any interest. It's fascinating from an engineering view at the very least.

Much of this is for you Timble2. You seem to have imbibed the poisoned chalice and believed the rumours about Keely being a charlatan.

I find the energy/matter thing very interesting in as much as the so called ”materialists” among us have no material to be materialistic about; all energy. The sub-atomic particles in their orbits and resonances all consist of subtle energies that are undetectable by normal means – the weak and strong atomic etc. Our modern science tells us that there are no energies and rays that are unknown to them and yet we find a veritable spectrum in the atom waiting to be used and abused.

 

[eburacum]

For the record, it seems fairly obvious to me that Keely was almost ccertainly a charlatan, despite devising remarkably ingenious theories and devices. He managed to obtain energy from nowhere; this turns out to be impossible; and his laboratory/workshop. when examined. showed clear evidence of hidden devices with intent to decieve.

It may be true that people nowadays are able to replicate his results; but it is also entirely possible that they too are following the master down the road of duplicity. Which is also good Fortean stuff, when you think about it; a self-replicating deception which is set to run and run, like perpetual motion.

 

[Anonymous]

Hi folks

About the fission thing - so that is splitting atoms into their component parts is it? And this releases energy of various forms which may or may not (according to some) vibrate or pulsate in the air and so affect other things etc?

A bit like Tesla's sympathetic resonance that has since been proven true?

I think Keely was a man who got an idea for a split second, saw the tip of the iceberg, and made an imaginary igloo.

In other words, maybe energy does float or pulsate or fly and then affect other things around it, knocking aside things or whatever.

After all, an explosion knocks matter out of the way doesn't it? Certainly gets used to blow up things anyway.

Back to my point about the component parts of atoms then.

Atoms - so I have been told - are made of electrons, neutrons and protons.

No matter what type of atom the atom is - salt, water, plastic, gold...whatever you can think of - it is always going to be made up of a certain number of neutrons, electrons and protons.

Is that correct?

If so, then that is very interesting for me because I want a replicator machine like the one in Star Trek to bust open a salt cellar and use the resulting energy from the atomic explosion(s) to remodel the component parts of the atoms of the salt cellar into a steaming hot mug of Earl Grey (hot).

Also because of these articles which I found today in New Scientist

This one was from a link in an article by Marcus Chown, New Scientist consultant Source of link found

- 2 -

Cosmic Computer

Where does the complexity of the Universe come from? A simple computer program is generating it!...

His name is Stephen Wolfram and he claims to have stumbled on nature's "big" secret. The source of all its bewildering complexity - from spiral galaxies to rhododendrons to human beings - is the application of a few simple instructions, over and over again. "Our Universe is being generated by a simple computer program," says Wolfram.

Wolfram, a child prodigy from London, began publishing papers in professional physics journals at the age of 15. What led him to his extraordinary conclusion is a discovery he made around 1980. Contrary to all expectations, he found that simple computer programs have the ability to generate extraordinarily complex outputs....

Conventional science is synonymous with maths-based science. In the 17th century, Isaac Newton discovered that the laws which govern the motion of a cannon ball through the air and a planet round the Sun could be described by mathematical formulae, or "equations". Following Newton's lead, generations of physicists have found that mathematical equations exist that can perfectly describe everything from the character of the light given out by a hot furnace to the warping of space and time by the concentrated mass of a black hole[1].

But, despite the tremendous successes of equation-based science in penetrating nature's secrets, it has an Achilles' heel. It cannot do "complexity". It is utterly incapable of capturing the essence of what is going on in a whole range of complex phenomena, ranging from turbulence in fluids to biology itself....

Link to the sample idicated in the article from which the extract was obtained


So what this guy did was come up with the idea that the universe and everything in it etc is made up of four lines of code which get repeated over and over again for 13 billion years.

Then I saw this article in New Scientist;

New universes will be born from ours
08 February 2007
David Shiga

What gruesome fate awaits our universe? Some physicists have argued that it is doomed to be ripped apart by runaway dark energy, while others think it is bouncing through an endless series of big bangs and big crunches. Now these two ideas are being combined to create another option, in which our universe ultimately shatters into billions of pieces, with each shard growing into a whole new universe....

...In their model, dark energy becomes very dense and sets the universe expanding at such a rate that it approaches the big rip. The universe tears into small patches that rush away from each other faster than the speed of light. But the destruction is then halted, as the density of dark energy becomes equal to the density of the universe. At this point, each patch crunches in on itself. "All the patches, of which there are a huge number, will separately contract into disparate universes," says Frampton. Each patch will then bounce outwards again, creating a new universe.

Source


The way that that all relates IMO is this;

All the universe and everything is made up of lots of different types of things which are made up of all the same things which are made of smaller things which are all the same.

The small things which are all the same are endlessly repeated over and over again over billons of years in varying combinations, some of the things repeat themselves into exact copies of the combinations they were in.

Some change slightly - and some change a lot.

So we have complexity.

What will happen to the universe?

Imagine it is a ball of goo.

The goo will explode and spatter - this is the word - spatter about the external area.

The blobs of goo that have flown away will be new universes.

The blobs/universes will then grow bigger or smaller than the original universe depending on various circumstances including currents the goo is swimming in, neighbouring bits of goo, and sources of material for the goo to grow (which could be other bits of goo for example).

Now, how to make goo into a steaming hot mug of Earl Grey?

 

[almond13]

Eburacum wrote:
He (Keely) managed to obtain energy from nowhere; this turns out to be impossible; and his laboratory/workshop. when examined. showed clear evidence of hidden devices with intent to deceive.

eburacum.
Have I not told you where the energy came from, or is it a case of “there are non so blind”. Search cavitation – water hammer and you will see where the energy came from. This effect has been known to science for many years and is used in remote areas where running water is available. It's not impossible, it works and Keely refined it and used it to drive his motor. There is no intent to deceive, there is no need to deceive, it is out there working just as Tesla's turbine is out there working.

The reason that these people were so defamed is because it's easier to do so that to engage them in genuine academic argument. Just as it is today, the authority of science had the power to say yea or nay to anything it chose and knew that it would be supported by the media. The Wright brothers and a long list of others were treated in exactly this way if you take the trouble to check the facts. Most major innovations are made outside of science.

 

[almond13]

coldelephant
Where does the complexity of the Universe come from? A simple computer program is generating it!...

Hi coldel,
I seem to remember that someone once came up with a law that controls the ability of a program ( can't remember his name). It says that the program is only as good as the programmer and it seems that they are all limited by human intelligence. The question must present itself; who wrote the program?
Back in the early eighties, I had a 64K computer and was trying to learn Basic.
Some psychologist had written a prog, that mimicked the way a shrink questions his patients and I thought I would have a go myself along the lines that he suggested. The result was, to me quite astounding. My wife and daughter would spend hours talking to 16K of memory... I didn't agonise with it for years, it was simple and I knocked it up in a couple of hours. Which brings us onto AI and computer complexity, or not.

 

[wembley8]

I seem to remember that someone once came up with a law that controls the ability of a program ( can't remember his name). It says that the program is only as good as the programmer and it seems that they are all limited by human intelligence.

You're about 40 years out of date on this one

There are a lot of neural nets, genetic algorithms and other AI-type systems that don't need a human to program them.

The early conversational program you mention was called Eliza.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA

 

[wembley8]

. The Wright brothers and a long list of others were treated in exactly this way if you take the trouble to check the facts. .

I suggest you do check the facts on this.

On May 23, they invited reporters to their first flight attempt of the year on the condition that no photographs be taken. Engine troubles and slack winds prevented any flying, and they could manage only a very short hop a few days later with fewer reporters present. Some scholars of the Wrights speculate the brothers may have intentionally failed to fly in order to disinterest reporters in their experiments.[29] Whether that is true is not known, but after their poor showing local newspapers virtually ignored them for the next year and a half.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers

Most major innovations are made outside of science.

Yeah, right.

 

[almond13]

wembley8 wrote:
You're about 40 years out of date on this one

There are a lot of neural nets, genetic algorithms and other AI-type systems that don't need a human to program them.

Thanks for the ref' wembley8, these memories pop up when I'm writing – it's an age related problem I think.

Well there you go – so you're saying that they don't need us any more?

The early conversational program you mention was called Eliza.

Mine was called Sympathy and yes, I did realise that they were talking to themselves.

 

[Anonymous]

coldelephant
Where does the complexity of the Universe come from? A simple computer program is generating it!...

Hi coldel,
I seem to remember that someone once came up with a law that controls the ability of a program ( can't remember his name). It says that the program is only as good as the programmer and it seems that they are all limited by human intelligence. The question must present itself; who wrote the program?
Back in the early eighties, I had a 64K computer and was trying to learn Basic.
Some psychologist had written a prog, that mimicked the way a shrink questions his patients and I thought I would have a go myself along the lines that he suggested. The result was, to me quite astounding. My wife and daughter would spend hours talking to 16K of memory... I didn't agonise with it for years, it was simple and I knocked it up in a couple of hours. Which brings us onto AI and computer complexity, or not.

How complicated was that program?

It started off with two elements - black and white.

I say Alpha and Omega, Yin and Yang, male and female, equal and opposite.

For opposite is the opposite of equal, and equal is the opposite of opposite.

You cannot have one without the other to compare it with, without the other there is no comparison and no definition.

Therefore the program would be the following IMO:

Put male and female together, and run for 13.9 billion years.

Happy Valentines day!

 

[almond13]

. The Wright brothers and a long list of others were treated in exactly this way if you take the trouble to check the facts. .

I suggest you do check the facts on this.

On May 23, they invited reporters to their first flight attempt of the year on the condition that no photographs be taken. Engine troubles and slack winds prevented any flying, and they could manage only a very short hop a few days later with fewer reporters present. Some scholars of the Wrights speculate the brothers may have intentionally failed to fly in order to disinterest reporters in their experiments.[29] Whether that is true is not known, but after their poor showing local newspapers virtually ignored them for the next year and a half.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers

Most major innovations are made outside of science.

Yeah, right.

OK, I've checked the facts.
Scientific American says:
It took two more years for the Wrights to build and fly the world's first truly controllable airplane. Unfortunately, until they felt sure of the sale of their perfected machine, their secretiveness invited skepticism from Scientific American and other publications of the day and left them under appreciated by their peers and the general public. link
And then:
Scientific American Vol. XCIV No. 2 January 13, 1905 Page 40 [Article verbatim and in full]
“It seems that these alleged experiments were made at Dayton, Ohio, a fairly large town, and that the newspapers of the United States, alert as they are, allowed these sensational performances to escape their notice”. http://invention.psychology.msstate.edu ... SiAm1.html
First secrecy and then no secrecy


The Wright’s History
Although it is well documented, the Wrights’ history is not well known. Myths, misperceptions, jealousy, and revisionist history have obscured the facts. 3 Their achievement deeply embarrassed the establishment. Scientific American has been trying to rewrite its buffoonish role in the affair for years, most recently in a 1993 article! 4 The Smithsonian Institution denigrated the Wrights for years in a feud over Langley’s priority.
In 1900 a small band of scientists worked at the fringes of respectability, trying to learn to fly. Some were distinguished men like Alexander Graham Bell, Langley, Maxim, and Chanute. They were old, discouraged, and lonely. Little progress had been made since the death of Otto Lilienthal. Young scientists would not touch the field. That is true of cold fusion today: our champions are the old mavericks like Bockris and Fleischmann. In 1900 there was only one serious, properly funded aviation R&D program in the world. It was at the Smithsonian, where the director, Langley, was trying to scale up his steam driven small models that had flown successfully in 1895. To the vast majority of other scientists, and in all popular journals and newspapers, the issue was settled. A heavier-than-air flying machine was physically impossible. It was an absurdity, a gross violation of the laws of nature. This had been proved mathematically with “unassailable logic” by leading experts in physics, writing in distinguished journals and magazines.

We admire Chanute and Langley, but the fact is they were stuck, just as most cold fusion scientists are stuck today. The field was “moribund,” as one expert put it. 6 Langley’s experiments ended in a fiasco in December 1903. He was lambasted by the press and by Congress for wasting $50,000 of the taxpayer’s money. There was, at that moment, nothing left of aviation—not a single research project and seemingly no hope of success—until the Wrights flew two weeks later at Kitty Hawk, in one of history’s great ironies.
http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJthewrightb.pdf

It seems that putting all your eggs in the Wiki basket (pun intended) is not a good idea – see previous Keely posts. [/quote]



long link sorted - stu

 

[almond13]

http://highstrangeness.blogspot.com/2007/02/scientist-stitches-head-of-puppy-onto.html

 

[almond13]

The sheep and goats effect is something I've been meaning to look at for a while.
It seems that the psi experiments carried out in our academic institutions are getting smaller and smaller effects until they are hardly distinguishable from noise. Maybe this is a side-effect of the growing tendency towards scepticism in the population at large, that is itself encouraged by the academic minded and those with a low tolerance to change and disorder.
One of the many quotes attributed to Keely (above) is that he said that, if there was an extreme sceptic in his audience, the machines refused to operate. The same effect is recorded by Brian Inglis in his book Natural and Supernatural. I must admit that I have had something of the same experience myself, to maybe a lesser extent. We must all have experienced the malaise of the negative attitude of a bystander when we are trying to achieve something difficult.

Academia has found that it gets higher scores for extrasensory perception with certain personality types, the disbelievers of course, scoring lower.

My own slant on this is that extreme scepticism is a psi effect in it's own right. It has the ability to cancel the supernatural efforts of others and is used in a maybe, subconscious way to achieve just this goal, thereby supporting the sceptic with the very thing that he is sceptical about; a paradox?

I'm sure that this is testable, but I can't imagine any sceptics volunteering for it.

link


another long link sorted - stu

 

[almond13]

Time Magazine Gives Ed Conrad a Good Screwing
By OSCAR SHAGNASTY
Washington, D.C. (Rueters) -- Time Magazine halted the press run of its Person of the Year edition and changed the winner's identity in the wake of the storm created over its pre-publication announcement that this year's award winner is Ed Conrad.
"Holy shift! Did we get the criticism!" said Preston Duquesne, a Times
spokesman. "Scientists worldwide protested and the evolutionists went bananas."
"See, we've got to protect our vested interests -- and our anal passage -- so we made this unprecedented decision. We had to throw out some 625,000 copies."

Time had announced Conrad as its Person of the Year for his courage and perseverance in proving beyond doubt that evolution is a joke and
having the balls to personally identify members of the Pseudoscientific
Establishment for the phonies that they are.
"Ed has backed it up with a display of petrified bones, teeth and even soft
organs discovered between coal veins -- dated at 280 million years -- that prove Darwin's theory ain't worth crap," said Duquesne, insisting this remark be kept "off the record." In any event, Time decided to rid itself of the controversy by awarding its annual "Person of the Year" title to the Man on the Street..........

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yet another long link sorted - stu

 

[almond13]

Ed Conrad has received more abuse on the Internet than any other person in it's history.
For those not familiar with his name, this abuse is directly connected to his discovery of human fossils in coal. In retaliation he has pointed to the many weak areas in science, but to my limited knowledge has not descended to the ad hominem and sheer character assassination of his detractors.
He was apparently chosen as Time Magazines Person of the Year for his seer dogged determination. There followed an out-cry from the science community that culminated in the withdrawal of his nomination and replacement... Shades of Velikovsky.

The science community finds itself in the happy position of being ahead of the game and one wonders what one man could possibly do that is so aberrant. This Band Wagon censorship is cowardly and distasteful, as censorship so often is and one wonders what it is that so frightens usually reasonable people.

Although I tend not to agree with some of his ideas, he surely has the right to voice them. To deny this is to condone censorship which is wrong in every shape and form.
http://www.edconrad.com/

 

[eburacum]

I don't follow your chain of thought here. If the guy had any real fossils he would cause a sensation; but all he has is amusingly shaped lumps of haematite. That really is not good enough. Are you saying that we should accept every crank's delusions?

 

[almond13]

I don't follow your chain of thought here. If the guy had any real fossils he would cause a sensation; but all he has is amusingly shaped lumps of haematite. That really is not good enough. Are you saying that we should accept every crank's delusions?

No, just that he has every right to his delusions and that character assassination is not a cure for delusions.
I suggest that you have a look at what is being said.