It appears this charlatan with his impossible device may cause us to redefine what is possible.
Yes, if it works. A small group of people saying "it looks like it works, but we don't know how" is not exactly overwhelming evidence of this fact.
I don't see that it would be that expensive or time consuming for a few independent Universities to test this properly.
The U.S. Navy has been researching ways to achieve LENR using nickel for many years now. Do you think the Navy is crazy?
In the 1960s, the CIA experimented with telepathy and thought control. Lots of things are worth investigating, that doesn't mean they're possible.
The independent reviewers may not be that independent. It is basically the same group that reviewed it back in 2013, and they produced a paper that was promptly ripped apart. I also seem to recall at least one of them is a friend of the inventor...
Ha, I just read this comment after I'd posted that the most likely explanation was collusion...
I remember reading someone saying that the most likely explanation of a "true life ghost story" is simply that the person telling it is lying.
Occam's razor sometimes shows that the seemingly improbable is actually the most likely explanation.
No, Occam's razor would suggest to me that the simplest explanation is (a) errors in measurement, then (b) collusion by the reviewers, followed by (c) some sort of sleight of hand/magic trick by the inventor, and finally (d) that it is actually cold fusion with no current scientific explanation.
Of course populating the mission with the wing suit contingent might have other unexpected effects...
I've always thought that anyone who would choose to go on a one way trip to live in a Portakabin, eating algae and breathing other people's recycled farts should be locked up for their own safety. But here on Earth, where it wouldn't cost so much.
And most challenging of all, how are you going to convince people they should abandon their pleasant life to take up farming in Antarctic bunkers? There's no frontier there worth colonizing, no new horizons, no grand dream to inspire them to commit to a lifetime of hardships - you're just asking them to do a bunch of farming in the least-hospitable place on the planet in order to satisfy your curiosity.
I really do not get the "frontier" thing at all. Going to Mars would condemn you to a life in a roofed prison with a view of dull red rock.
At least in Antarctica you can breathe the air and see some wildlife and spectacular scenery. Plus you can fly home in a day or so if something horrible happens.
Not that I'm a fan of going to Mars anyway; it's expensive enough getting out of Earth's gravity well so why waste all that effort just to dive back down into another (especially if you are going to end up living in a tin can anyway)?
Exactly. What is the point of living on a planet when you can't breathe its atmosphere or survive outside without a space suit anyway?
It all comes back to energy. How much energy does it take to first supply and then sustain the colony.
Or, to put it another way, money.
We don't have unlimited energy, or money. If we could start up a colony with one rocket's worth of people, a month's food supply and some shovels, fair enough.
It's the cost of continual supply that's troublesome, especially if all we end up with is the knowledge on how to sustain a small colony at vast expense.
Mars should have loads of water
Probably a good idea to find out before we dispatch the first brave colonists.
I know you're trolling
The definition of a troll is not "someone who says something I don't like, and in a slightly facetious way".
I find "Space Nutters" to be a reasonable description for people who simply will not accept scientific and technical reality, and especially for those people who would apparently condemn themselves to a one way ticket to Mars.
It's so loaded with fake, unbelievable nonsense it's not even watchable. In episode one, they were racing a ferrari or a lambo or something underneath a jumbo jet, so that they jumbo jet could drop an ethernet cable down to a waiting hot chick who inserted it into a laptop. 2 seconds later they had magically retrieve a backup of the communication software for the fucking air traffic control towers. Which they then uploaded to every air traffic control tower in the country so they can FINALLY land all those planes.
I bet you loved McGyver...
Antenna's are great for breaking news, particularly when it is breaking world news happening in your back yard. My personal example is when a space shuttle happens to break up above where you live and is raining down around you.
If I was being bombarded with burning chunks of metal raining from the sky, I don't think my first reaction would be "ooh, better turn on the TV to see what's happening".
Thus, you have crazy stuff like the Battleship movie; I'm pretty sure they literally started with the brand name, and ginned up a movie project to put on it. I submit to you that Battleship isn't an example of scraping the barrel for ideas, but rather an example of jump-starting the marketing for a movie by building off a well-known pre-existing brand.
I always assumed that someone realised Rihanna would look good running around in uniform and firing a machine gun, and fit the movie round that.
Air pollution is really making us pay through the nose.
