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I'm genuinely curious as to why HN so regularly has articles about various "wouldn't it be great if this worked but obviously it never will" scams/inventions/me

I'm genuinely curious as to why HN so regularly has articles about various "wouldn't it be great if this worked but obviously it never will" scams/inventions/measurement errors on the front page. Is it because there is a contingent of HN voters who are true believers in this stuff? Is it "point at the silly people and laugh"? Is it some kind of attempt to make a meta point about credulity or discuss scams or something?

pjkundert 11y ago
I'm actually surprised at the "Hmph. Of course, it doesn't work" responses... I was quite intrigued by the Gamma signature from a device operating at bench-top temperatures/pressures, and with low energy inputs. I'm thinking that the mounting evidence for a set of previously undescribed low-energy nuclear pathways is quite interesting!
guscost 11y ago
Maybe all of those are a factor. Personally, while I try to maintain skepticism about big claims like this, I don't like to dismiss an idea offhand just because most other people have previously dismissed it. Others are probably willing to extend the same courtesy even if the particular claim is unlikely to hold. Just curious, would you put the EM drive[0] in the same category? [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RF_resonant_cavity_thruster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RF_resonant_cavity_thruster
- api 11y ago
  The EmDrive is actually less physically plausible than the E-Cat if you get into it, since reactionless propulsion is identical to perpetual motion and/or infinite energy. Someone had a nice explanation of this over on Reddit but I don't have a link handy. Basically if momentum is not conserved then you can build kinetic energy without bound on finite power or something like that. The only way the EmDrive could work is if either (a) we are really wrong about some fundamental stuff, or (b) it's not actually reactionless but is pushing against something "exotic" like dark matter or dark energy. E-Cat or anything like it (LENR) would mean new nuclear physics -- some way of bypassing the Coulomb barrier at low energies via some novel probably quantum mechanism. But fundamentally it's not violating anything as foundational as a conservation law. We know the energy is there via E=mc^2 and all. We just don't currently know of any way to get at that energy at sub-plasma temperatures and pressures (and for the proposed fusion reaction in the E-Cat, by no known physical means). LENR would require new physics but would not break existing physics. I do recall reading some interesting stuff about how some of the gas giant planets seem a bit warmer than they should be, and that if LENR were a thing it would provide a possible explanation for some anomalous heating observed in astronomical observations.
  - guscost 11y ago
    Awesome, thanks for the info. While I wouldn't be that surprised if the EmDrive works by undiscovered spooky action at a distance, if it works by violating conservation of momentum that would be bonkers.
    - aetherson 11y ago
      Undiscovered spooky action at a distance to what? Even assuming you can shuttle momentum around from particle A to particle C that is substantially distant, what exactly are particles C? Does the EM drive choose the distant particles to transfer momentum to on the basis of what would be the most convenient for the experimenter? What is the mechanism by which putting microwaves in a funny-shaped container creates a momentum-transfering bond from that container to unknown other masses? Does this totally unexplained effect have, you know, a range? If so, is that range remotely realistic? If so, we don't actually have a reaction-mass-less drive, do we? For bonus points, answer all these questions in ways that do not create a privileged frame of reference and thus break special relativity.
      - guscost 11y ago
        I think I'll wait for more conclusive results before starting work on these questions ;)
  - wcoenen 11y ago
    > Someone had a nice explanation of this over on Reddit but I don't have a link handy. Basically if momentum is not conserved then you can build kinetic energy without bound on finite power or something like that. Are you referring to this reddit comment by myself? https://reddit.com/r/spaceflight/comments/34ay1c/nasa_researchers_confirm_enigmatic_emdrive/cqt83lg https://reddit.com/r/spaceflight/comments/34ay1c/nasa_resear...
    - mrfusion 11y ago
      What you say is true but I don't see why people make assumption 1. Does anomalous thrust tell you it can accelerate linearly to power?
- extrapickles 11y ago
  The biggest problem I have with all of these claims is the rigor of the tests they conduct. They never seem to use standard equipment that is appropriate for the effect they are trying to measure. Always they have a device that needs 1kW that has a 50kW 3phase power meter hooked up to it, or other techniques that are odd and make you wonder what they are trying to hide (thermal camera measuring temp of 1 side, nothing for the other to ensure heating is uniform). If you can afford to point a thermal camera at it, you can afford the cheapest of thermocouples to help prove the other side isn't room temperature. For the EM drive, I would be surprised if they didn't report some trust after dumping large amounts of power into a box due to the million different things that can produce a misleading result (metallurgical defect in cavity causes heating to not match model, etc). If they can convince someone to try it in orbit, it would be a different story. Thanks to cube sats, this wouldn't be that expensive, <$500k to give it a go (launch 2 1U cube sats, one with drive and one without, see if separation changes). The bonus for the EM Drive folks is that several Nasa sites offered to independently test it when they can produce enough thrust for them to measure accurately, so if they do see something, its worth it to give it a go in orbit. They have yet to deliver such a device though.
  - guscost 11y ago
    OK that makes sense. Probably this reaction is common among people who know a lot about the domain and have criticized research with less serious problems before? But to be fair, I see a lot of far-out claims about the capabilities of computers, the NSA, and so on. While I'm not going to encourage unfounded speculation about the stuff I'm more familiar with, it isn't unexpected and I guess it can make for a lively discussion. I do want to see someone try the EmDrive in orbit.
- mikeash 11y ago
  At least the EmDrive is legitimately difficult to verify. It's claimed to produce tiny amounts of thrust. That requires extreme care to measure and makes it hard to see if it works as claimed. The e-cat, on the other hand, is claimed to be a megawatt nuclear reactor. Verifying it should be easy: let it run and see if it produces power. Let it run long enough to rule out trickery like hidden batteries. If it does what the creator says it does, it should pass this test easily. But for some reason they won't do this. They run all sorts of other weird tests but won't just demonstrate power production. To me, this makes it obvious that the "some reason" is because it doesn't work. If it worked there wouldn't be any question.
c3534l 11y ago
Well, for one I can't downvote threads. Seems what you need to get a page to stay on the front page is people willing to upvote it, not skeptics against the thing.
marshray 11y ago
> Is it because there is a contingent of HN voters who are true believers in this stuff? Why does the world have to be divided between "skeptics" and "true believers"? I think a lot of us are in the "open minded but very cautious" category.
brudgers 11y ago
In 1982, I read Herman Kahn's The Next 200 Years and got pumped about power from nuclear fusion. The tokamak was hot and the wisdom at the time was that it was 20 years away. I talked with my Dad, he said fusion power had been 20 years away since he was also 17. It's still looks like it's 20 years away. My point isn't that practical fusion power is a scam. But to me it doesn't look appreciably closer to practicality than cold fusion and a whole lot more money has been spent on it [which as a metric of grift is probably among the better ones]. Which is to say that my point is that what constitutes a scam is in the eye of the beholder. We celebrate Charles Babbage.
- drjesusphd 11y ago
  > But to me it doesn't look appreciably closer to practicality than cold fusion The figure of merit is Q, the fusion gain per input energy. For cold fusion, this figure is infintessimal; for lasers I think it's about 0.001; Tokamaks have reached Q=0.7. Not to mention, theoretical break-even ("effective Q">1) was achieved in Japan, but they do not have access to Tritium, which is the only reason it wasn't "real" breakeven. Since your dad was a teenager, fusion efficiency has outpaced Moore's law for microelectronics. Real progress is being made.
  - brudgers 11y ago
    Dad is pushing 80. Entire scientific careers have come and gone funded by many billions in public money. My definition of success is fusion powering my toaster. That's the one that was putched all those years ago and when he and then I were kids. Not getting funded or a paper accepted. Moore's law lives behind a touch screen in my pocket doing useful work...or less useful work such as this comment.

pjkundert 11y ago

I'm actually surprised at the "Hmph. Of course, it doesn't work" responses... I was quite intrigued by the Gamma signature from a device operating at bench-top temperatures/pressures, and with low energy inputs. I'm thinking that the mounting evidence for a set of previously undescribed low-energy nuclear pathways is quite interesting!

guscost 11y ago

Maybe all of those are a factor. Personally, while I try to maintain skepticism about big claims like this, I don't like to dismiss an idea offhand just because most other people have previously dismissed it. Others are probably willing to extend the same courtesy even if the particular claim is unlikely to hold. Just curious, would you put the EM drive[0] in the same category? [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RF_resonant_cavity_thruster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RF_resonant_cavity_thruster

api 11y ago
The EmDrive is actually less physically plausible than the E-Cat if you get into it, since reactionless propulsion is identical to perpetual motion and/or infinite energy. Someone had a nice explanation of this over on Reddit but I don't have a link handy. Basically if momentum is not conserved then you can build kinetic energy without bound on finite power or something like that. The only way the EmDrive could work is if either (a) we are really wrong about some fundamental stuff, or (b) it's not actually reactionless but is pushing against something "exotic" like dark matter or dark energy. E-Cat or anything like it (LENR) would mean new nuclear physics -- some way of bypassing the Coulomb barrier at low energies via some novel probably quantum mechanism. But fundamentally it's not violating anything as foundational as a conservation law. We know the energy is there via E=mc^2 and all. We just don't currently know of any way to get at that energy at sub-plasma temperatures and pressures (and for the proposed fusion reaction in the E-Cat, by no known physical means). LENR would require new physics but would not break existing physics. I do recall reading some interesting stuff about how some of the gas giant planets seem a bit warmer than they should be, and that if LENR were a thing it would provide a possible explanation for some anomalous heating observed in astronomical observations.
- guscost 11y ago
  Awesome, thanks for the info. While I wouldn't be that surprised if the EmDrive works by undiscovered spooky action at a distance, if it works by violating conservation of momentum that would be bonkers.
  - aetherson 11y ago
    Undiscovered spooky action at a distance to what? Even assuming you can shuttle momentum around from particle A to particle C that is substantially distant, what exactly are particles C? Does the EM drive choose the distant particles to transfer momentum to on the basis of what would be the most convenient for the experimenter? What is the mechanism by which putting microwaves in a funny-shaped container creates a momentum-transfering bond from that container to unknown other masses? Does this totally unexplained effect have, you know, a range? If so, is that range remotely realistic? If so, we don't actually have a reaction-mass-less drive, do we? For bonus points, answer all these questions in ways that do not create a privileged frame of reference and thus break special relativity.
    - guscost 11y ago
      I think I'll wait for more conclusive results before starting work on these questions ;)
- wcoenen 11y ago
  > Someone had a nice explanation of this over on Reddit but I don't have a link handy. Basically if momentum is not conserved then you can build kinetic energy without bound on finite power or something like that. Are you referring to this reddit comment by myself? https://reddit.com/r/spaceflight/comments/34ay1c/nasa_researchers_confirm_enigmatic_emdrive/cqt83lg https://reddit.com/r/spaceflight/comments/34ay1c/nasa_resear...
  - mrfusion 11y ago
    What you say is true but I don't see why people make assumption 1. Does anomalous thrust tell you it can accelerate linearly to power?
extrapickles 11y ago
The biggest problem I have with all of these claims is the rigor of the tests they conduct. They never seem to use standard equipment that is appropriate for the effect they are trying to measure. Always they have a device that needs 1kW that has a 50kW 3phase power meter hooked up to it, or other techniques that are odd and make you wonder what they are trying to hide (thermal camera measuring temp of 1 side, nothing for the other to ensure heating is uniform). If you can afford to point a thermal camera at it, you can afford the cheapest of thermocouples to help prove the other side isn't room temperature. For the EM drive, I would be surprised if they didn't report some trust after dumping large amounts of power into a box due to the million different things that can produce a misleading result (metallurgical defect in cavity causes heating to not match model, etc). If they can convince someone to try it in orbit, it would be a different story. Thanks to cube sats, this wouldn't be that expensive, <$500k to give it a go (launch 2 1U cube sats, one with drive and one without, see if separation changes). The bonus for the EM Drive folks is that several Nasa sites offered to independently test it when they can produce enough thrust for them to measure accurately, so if they do see something, its worth it to give it a go in orbit. They have yet to deliver such a device though.
- guscost 11y ago
  OK that makes sense. Probably this reaction is common among people who know a lot about the domain and have criticized research with less serious problems before? But to be fair, I see a lot of far-out claims about the capabilities of computers, the NSA, and so on. While I'm not going to encourage unfounded speculation about the stuff I'm more familiar with, it isn't unexpected and I guess it can make for a lively discussion. I do want to see someone try the EmDrive in orbit.
mikeash 11y ago
At least the EmDrive is legitimately difficult to verify. It's claimed to produce tiny amounts of thrust. That requires extreme care to measure and makes it hard to see if it works as claimed. The e-cat, on the other hand, is claimed to be a megawatt nuclear reactor. Verifying it should be easy: let it run and see if it produces power. Let it run long enough to rule out trickery like hidden batteries. If it does what the creator says it does, it should pass this test easily. But for some reason they won't do this. They run all sorts of other weird tests but won't just demonstrate power production. To me, this makes it obvious that the "some reason" is because it doesn't work. If it worked there wouldn't be any question.

c3534l 11y ago

Well, for one I can't downvote threads. Seems what you need to get a page to stay on the front page is people willing to upvote it, not skeptics against the thing.

marshray 11y ago

> Is it because there is a contingent of HN voters who are true believers in this stuff? Why does the world have to be divided between "skeptics" and "true believers"? I think a lot of us are in the "open minded but very cautious" category.

brudgers 11y ago

In 1982, I read Herman Kahn's The Next 200 Years and got pumped about power from nuclear fusion. The tokamak was hot and the wisdom at the time was that it was 20 years away. I talked with my Dad, he said fusion power had been 20 years away since he was also 17. It's still looks like it's 20 years away. My point isn't that practical fusion power is a scam. But to me it doesn't look appreciably closer to practicality than cold fusion and a whole lot more money has been spent on it [which as a metric of grift is probably among the better ones]. Which is to say that my point is that what constitutes a scam is in the eye of the beholder. We celebrate Charles Babbage.

drjesusphd 11y ago
> But to me it doesn't look appreciably closer to practicality than cold fusion The figure of merit is Q, the fusion gain per input energy. For cold fusion, this figure is infintessimal; for lasers I think it's about 0.001; Tokamaks have reached Q=0.7. Not to mention, theoretical break-even ("effective Q">1) was achieved in Japan, but they do not have access to Tritium, which is the only reason it wasn't "real" breakeven. Since your dad was a teenager, fusion efficiency has outpaced Moore's law for microelectronics. Real progress is being made.
- brudgers 11y ago
  Dad is pushing 80. Entire scientific careers have come and gone funded by many billions in public money. My definition of success is fusion powering my toaster. That's the one that was putched all those years ago and when he and then I were kids. Not getting funded or a paper accepted. Moore's law lives behind a touch screen in my pocket doing useful work...or less useful work such as this comment.