6 ms·

The only thing scary about this is that apparently this "U.S. Naval Aviation Enterprise", whatever it is, is a den of crackpots. As a European physicist I'm not

The only thing scary about this is that apparently this "U.S. Naval Aviation Enterprise", whatever it is, is a den of crackpots. As a European physicist I'm not familiar enough with how research is managed in the U.S. military, so the fact that this kind of pseudo-science is tolerated is mind boggling to me. Anyone have any insight on what institutional factors might have led to this?

libertine 7y ago
> "U.S. Naval Aviation Enterprise", whatever it is, is a den of crackpots Isn't that a bit condescending way to address such organization? Of all the possible justifications, you point to the weakest one imo: that it is ran by ignorant people who are detached from reality when it comes to these matters, to the point of coming out to publicly state they did/are/aim/want to work on something. It's like the eat anything crazy it's thrown at them. I mean, you could say: "It's just propaganda - they either want to diverge attention so we don't focus on something else (like decrease the warmongering status), or get attention to try to get something (like support/resources)." - Which is believe is the most likely one. It's a odd behavior, but I doubt it's a byproduct of ignorance and belief in pseudo-science.
- keldaris 7y ago
  > Isn't that a bit condescending way to address such organization? It would be if their CTO hadn't personally endorsed the "scientific" content of this patent in his letter to the patent office. In light of that, it's hard for me to see a different explanation than either "incompetent scientists" or "incompetent propagandists" (because the patent is a blatant joke to anyone with a science education), hence my reaction. I'm open to a different explanation, hence my question to those better versed in the mysteries of the U.S. military-industrial-scientific complex.
  - libertine 7y ago
    I understand what you're saying. For sure there's a lot of things wrong with this: - the "scientific" content; - the approval/publishing of the patent based on such content; - the news reporting of such content without further research, just for the sake of being a patent and not questioning it's validity in the light of our current scientific knowledge; - The propagation of such information; If it's deliberate or fruit of a lot of layers of ignorance, we can't know for sure but there's a high probability of both.
sesteel 7y ago
You can't defend against what you don't know about. The US invests time and money into a wide range of research topics simply to know what is possible. Military research is a bubbling cauldron of activity.
- orbifold 7y ago
  Well something like this is so clearly bullshit (I have studied quantum field theory and string theory to a degree that I am fairly confident of this assessment) that you have to worry about the sanity of the whole organisation involved. Or in other words before such a publication by someone almost certainly not qualified in QFT, I would expect to see a series of papers published which outline in detail the mechanisms by which this is supposed to work. Even QFT in curved spacetime (without perturbations or gravitational waves) is an extremely hard and well developed subject and I happen to have interacted with some of the worlds expert on it.
  - sesteel 7y ago
    Well, I'm not saying it isn't totally BS; but I understand the motivation to overturn every stone when talking about defense. It isn't like the US didn't surprise a country with new physics during WWII.
    - krapp 7y ago
      It wasn't exactly 'new' physics, it was an application of a theory built on established physics. The surprise wasn't that it was possible, but that it was technically and economically feasible.
      - sesteel 7y ago
        Well, yeah. The surprise was actually finding a way to build it (to the Germans); I don't know what Japan knew or didn't know about the science.
        7y ago
empath75 7y ago
My guess is that if we were actually pursuing such a program, we would first hear about it when those craft devastated an opponent in a war, or was accidentally shot down. This is most likely pure indirection, IMO. They want the Chinese or Russia to think we are doing this for some reason. Maybe they want them to go down their own wild goose chase or they want them to think something of ours that they have seen recently is a result of this and not some more easily duplicable technology.
- sesteel 7y ago
  I tend to agree, but if the sightings are real and the activity is increasing. The US might want to inform the opponent that we know who is violating our airspace, we know it isn't alien technology, and we know how they are doing it.
  - pb82 7y ago
    Wouldn't you rather not give the opponent any information including the information that you know what they are doing?
    - sslayer 7y ago
      If your "opponents" are a threat you wouldn't reveal any information other than what you want them to know. If they are a non-threat, it might be like warning a child about crossing a road.
twic 7y ago
Ahem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_flying_saucer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_flying_saucer
- BuildTheRobots 7y ago
  > "A group of nuclear scientists examined the designs and declared them to be unworkable, expensive and very inefficient." Which hits _all_ the selling points for a public transport project in the UK.
plutonorm 7y ago
I've heard so many programmers tell me categorically that x way of doing things is the right and true way. I've always been skeptical of these viewpoints because they so often are wrong/baseless. It's human nature to put walls around what we know and do not know based not upon what is actually known or possible but upon how it makes us feel. Many people are naturally inclined to dismiss ideas because it makes them feel good, others to accept them and almost everyone is susceptible to group think. Negative knee jerk reactions are so frequently driven by psychology, by them vs us, that I find it very difficult to see any truth, or take anyone's opinion at face value. The older I get and the more I know about my specialities the more I see that so many people who profess expertise are merely wearing a mask and using it to score social points without any real commitment to truth and so often they are just... wrong. But on the other hand I have been involved with some utterly clueless organisations - where the group think is so profoundly wrong and backward that it's a wonder they can get anything done... So I would ask, can you point out a couple of things that I can fact check which are wrong with the patent? I'm no physicist, but have an msc in maths
- keldaris 7y ago
  A physics degree is helpful if you want to analyze the theoretical claims made in the patent (which range from trivial, through ludicrous all the way to "not even wrong"), but you don't need to do any of that to understand just how far from reality (or even "hard" sci-fi) this patent is. Instead, just read the patent, accept the contents at face value and consider the numbers the patent itself claims. Quoting the article: > The application was initially rejected by Patent Examiner Philip Bonzell on the grounds that "there is no such thing as a 'repulsive EM energy field,'" and that "when referring to the specifications as to ascertain about the microwave emitters needed in this system it is seen that for a high energy electromagnetic field to polarize a quantum vacuum as claimed it would take 10^9 [T]eslas and 10^18 V/m." That's roughly the equivalent to the magnetic strength generated by most magnetars and more electricity than what is produced by nuclear reactors. The field values come straight from the patent itself, you can check that. So, apart from all the silly theory, the patent simply assumes, as a matter of fact, that you can easily obtain magnetic fields that are only found in the most extreme conditions in the universe (and are many orders of magnitude away from anything we can conceivably create), use utterly ludicrous amounts of energy and achieve all of this in a portable craft of some sort. How much fact checking and experience do you really need to see that this is not merely beyond our engineering capabilities, but rather beyond even the bounds of sane science fiction?
liara_k 7y ago
One theory that seems plausible to me is that there's deliberate confusion and misinformation created to combat or discredit leaks. Imagine that there's an adversary who has access to "open source" accounts that make it to popular or tabloid press, but you want to prevent them from making reliable inferences from that information. One strategy would be to pollute that channel with misinformation, so that the adversary needs to go down a lot of different rabbit holes to have a chance of finding something real. Bonus: these could be really useful counter intel traps. You'd need just the right mix of plausible and outlandish, because you'll need to fool an adversary who (you should assume) can see through the strategy in general. But it's just speculation. And for all of us on the outside, it can be kind of a fun scifi thought experiment.
- flycaliguy 7y ago
  You could even work with Google and catch any keyword searches exclusive to the scheme.
ALittleLight 7y ago
I think it's possible crackpots have found a way to waste government money. The government (CIA and army) have previously worked on a psychic program, for example. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_Project https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_Project
- ncmncm 7y ago
  You appear to be operating under the assumption that reports about this do not constitute a PSYOPS operation against the American public. Just because it is written down does not mean it happened. Just because public money was spent on such a line item does not mean that is where it went.
plutonorm 7y ago
I've found this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnNKC82wUmY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnNKC82wUmY Which explains a mechanism that seems plausible by me. Described here by someone who appears to be a credible scientist. I even believe i have read a writeup of the theory in New Scientist. Skip to about 12 mins in, to see speculations about a propulsion system based on the ideas.

libertine 7y ago

> "U.S. Naval Aviation Enterprise", whatever it is, is a den of crackpots Isn't that a bit condescending way to address such organization? Of all the possible justifications, you point to the weakest one imo: that it is ran by ignorant people who are detached from reality when it comes to these matters, to the point of coming out to publicly state they did/are/aim/want to work on something. It's like the eat anything crazy it's thrown at them. I mean, you could say: "It's just propaganda - they either want to diverge attention so we don't focus on something else (like decrease the warmongering status), or get attention to try to get something (like support/resources)." - Which is believe is the most likely one. It's a odd behavior, but I doubt it's a byproduct of ignorance and belief in pseudo-science.

keldaris 7y ago
> Isn't that a bit condescending way to address such organization? It would be if their CTO hadn't personally endorsed the "scientific" content of this patent in his letter to the patent office. In light of that, it's hard for me to see a different explanation than either "incompetent scientists" or "incompetent propagandists" (because the patent is a blatant joke to anyone with a science education), hence my reaction. I'm open to a different explanation, hence my question to those better versed in the mysteries of the U.S. military-industrial-scientific complex.
- libertine 7y ago
  I understand what you're saying. For sure there's a lot of things wrong with this: - the "scientific" content; - the approval/publishing of the patent based on such content; - the news reporting of such content without further research, just for the sake of being a patent and not questioning it's validity in the light of our current scientific knowledge; - The propagation of such information; If it's deliberate or fruit of a lot of layers of ignorance, we can't know for sure but there's a high probability of both.

sesteel 7y ago

You can't defend against what you don't know about. The US invests time and money into a wide range of research topics simply to know what is possible. Military research is a bubbling cauldron of activity.

orbifold 7y ago
Well something like this is so clearly bullshit (I have studied quantum field theory and string theory to a degree that I am fairly confident of this assessment) that you have to worry about the sanity of the whole organisation involved. Or in other words before such a publication by someone almost certainly not qualified in QFT, I would expect to see a series of papers published which outline in detail the mechanisms by which this is supposed to work. Even QFT in curved spacetime (without perturbations or gravitational waves) is an extremely hard and well developed subject and I happen to have interacted with some of the worlds expert on it.
- sesteel 7y ago
  Well, I'm not saying it isn't totally BS; but I understand the motivation to overturn every stone when talking about defense. It isn't like the US didn't surprise a country with new physics during WWII.
  - krapp 7y ago
    It wasn't exactly 'new' physics, it was an application of a theory built on established physics. The surprise wasn't that it was possible, but that it was technically and economically feasible.
    - sesteel 7y ago
      Well, yeah. The surprise was actually finding a way to build it (to the Germans); I don't know what Japan knew or didn't know about the science.
      - 7y ago

empath75 7y ago

My guess is that if we were actually pursuing such a program, we would first hear about it when those craft devastated an opponent in a war, or was accidentally shot down. This is most likely pure indirection, IMO. They want the Chinese or Russia to think we are doing this for some reason. Maybe they want them to go down their own wild goose chase or they want them to think something of ours that they have seen recently is a result of this and not some more easily duplicable technology.

sesteel 7y ago
I tend to agree, but if the sightings are real and the activity is increasing. The US might want to inform the opponent that we know who is violating our airspace, we know it isn't alien technology, and we know how they are doing it.
- pb82 7y ago
  Wouldn't you rather not give the opponent any information including the information that you know what they are doing?
  - sslayer 7y ago
    If your "opponents" are a threat you wouldn't reveal any information other than what you want them to know. If they are a non-threat, it might be like warning a child about crossing a road.

twic 7y ago

Ahem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_flying_saucer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_flying_saucer

BuildTheRobots 7y ago
> "A group of nuclear scientists examined the designs and declared them to be unworkable, expensive and very inefficient." Which hits _all_ the selling points for a public transport project in the UK.

plutonorm 7y ago

I've heard so many programmers tell me categorically that x way of doing things is the right and true way. I've always been skeptical of these viewpoints because they so often are wrong/baseless. It's human nature to put walls around what we know and do not know based not upon what is actually known or possible but upon how it makes us feel. Many people are naturally inclined to dismiss ideas because it makes them feel good, others to accept them and almost everyone is susceptible to group think. Negative knee jerk reactions are so frequently driven by psychology, by them vs us, that I find it very difficult to see any truth, or take anyone's opinion at face value. The older I get and the more I know about my specialities the more I see that so many people who profess expertise are merely wearing a mask and using it to score social points without any real commitment to truth and so often they are just... wrong. But on the other hand I have been involved with some utterly clueless organisations - where the group think is so profoundly wrong and backward that it's a wonder they can get anything done... So I would ask, can you point out a couple of things that I can fact check which are wrong with the patent? I'm no physicist, but have an msc in maths

keldaris 7y ago
A physics degree is helpful if you want to analyze the theoretical claims made in the patent (which range from trivial, through ludicrous all the way to "not even wrong"), but you don't need to do any of that to understand just how far from reality (or even "hard" sci-fi) this patent is. Instead, just read the patent, accept the contents at face value and consider the numbers the patent itself claims. Quoting the article: > The application was initially rejected by Patent Examiner Philip Bonzell on the grounds that "there is no such thing as a 'repulsive EM energy field,'" and that "when referring to the specifications as to ascertain about the microwave emitters needed in this system it is seen that for a high energy electromagnetic field to polarize a quantum vacuum as claimed it would take 10^9 [T]eslas and 10^18 V/m." That's roughly the equivalent to the magnetic strength generated by most magnetars and more electricity than what is produced by nuclear reactors. The field values come straight from the patent itself, you can check that. So, apart from all the silly theory, the patent simply assumes, as a matter of fact, that you can easily obtain magnetic fields that are only found in the most extreme conditions in the universe (and are many orders of magnitude away from anything we can conceivably create), use utterly ludicrous amounts of energy and achieve all of this in a portable craft of some sort. How much fact checking and experience do you really need to see that this is not merely beyond our engineering capabilities, but rather beyond even the bounds of sane science fiction?

liara_k 7y ago

One theory that seems plausible to me is that there's deliberate confusion and misinformation created to combat or discredit leaks. Imagine that there's an adversary who has access to "open source" accounts that make it to popular or tabloid press, but you want to prevent them from making reliable inferences from that information. One strategy would be to pollute that channel with misinformation, so that the adversary needs to go down a lot of different rabbit holes to have a chance of finding something real. Bonus: these could be really useful counter intel traps. You'd need just the right mix of plausible and outlandish, because you'll need to fool an adversary who (you should assume) can see through the strategy in general. But it's just speculation. And for all of us on the outside, it can be kind of a fun scifi thought experiment.

flycaliguy 7y ago
You could even work with Google and catch any keyword searches exclusive to the scheme.

ALittleLight 7y ago

I think it's possible crackpots have found a way to waste government money. The government (CIA and army) have previously worked on a psychic program, for example. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_Project https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_Project

ncmncm 7y ago
You appear to be operating under the assumption that reports about this do not constitute a PSYOPS operation against the American public. Just because it is written down does not mean it happened. Just because public money was spent on such a line item does not mean that is where it went.

plutonorm 7y ago

I've found this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnNKC82wUmY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnNKC82wUmY Which explains a mechanism that seems plausible by me. Described here by someone who appears to be a credible scientist. I even believe i have read a writeup of the theory in New Scientist. Skip to about 12 mins in, to see speculations about a propulsion system based on the ideas.