Vernon's Ultimate Mad Science Theory #1:
If God exists as an Immortal Being, then it must be possible to build
a First Class
Perpetual
Motion Machine.
(Every ordinary scientist who believes in God now has a nice problem
to solve. I wish them "Good Luck!", while
happily remaining semi-agnostic.)
P.S. That link was created to be a source of information about
itself. I'm not interested in the dude's gadget.
Here's a more recent outfit, that seems to be making news.
http://www.steorn.com
They've invited a number of techical people to study their unorthodox
gadget, and the reports are due in the
near future. Stay tuned...
Here is a Mad Science notion regarding Cold Nuclear Fusion: Hypothesis regarding how Cold Fusion might
be possible. The controversy over that subject makes it an
ideal place to practice unorthodox thinking.
Speculations Concerning How to Make General Relativity and
Quantum Mechanics More Compatible With Each Other.
Here are some genuine Mad Science ideas of mine. I independently
studied Science Fact and Speculative Fact (and even
Science Fiction) by constant reading for what seemed like a lifetime
(starting at age 6). One of the neat things about Science
Fiction is that the good stuff is excellent at EXPLAINING the hard
stuff as part of overall entertainment. Anyway, it is my
experience to seemingly have a talent for combining wild ideas together
(see God and Perpetual Motion, above). So it was
only natural that after absorbing enough ideas from the field of
Physics,
some of those notions began (it seemed to me) to fit
together. I started writing the first version of this overall
thing, this group of Speculations, in 1980. It was more
than
a hundred
pages long, and was titled "Anti Gravity and Other Matters" (pun
intended).
One of the people who received a copy was Dr.
Robert L .Forward. He may have liked some of what I wrote,
because he went on to do serious speculating of his own about
"other matters" (mostly "negative mass"). I don't regard any
plagiarism to have taken place, since I was first introduced to that
type of matter in an essay by Isaac Asimov, "I'm Looking Over a
Four-Leaf
Clover" (from his book Science, Numbers, and I).
Anyway, some of the usual publication problems followed, that every
budding Mad Scientist has to face. "Rewrite! And
Simplify!", they said. (In my favor, it was actually called "a
good group of speculations".) Well, some of it was already
simple;
I wanted readers who knew a little less than I to be able to follow
it, and I wanted readers who knew lots more than I to be able
to say, "AHA! Here is the critical fact/concept you got
wrong!"
If it really was wrong, of course. Please note that I have
always called these ideas "speculations", unlike what many other Mad
Scientists say about their own ideas. Nevertheless,
I experienced one thing that nobody, Mad Scientist or otherwise,
deserves to go through. In snail-mail correspondence with
Dr. Forward, he sent me a letter that refuted something I wrote --
not in and of itself a bad thing to do, but in this case he did
it by claiming (in essence) that -1 plus -1 equals zero. He was
wrong (the actual sum is -2, even in grade-school arithmetic
books), and yet this "top" physicist refused to admit it. I have
his signed letter as proof; perhaps I'll auction it on EBAY....
In 1995 I rewrote it as four "outline format" essays, the first
three
of which were mostly independent of each other, while the
fourth relied on the background the others prepared. Still no
luck publishing them, until the Internet beckoned....
Posted in .PDF format, these essays will probably make the most sense
if read in the following order:
The Stubbed T.O.E. (concerning how 4
fundamental
forces need a common definition of Potential Energy)
The Ghostly T.O.E. (a new "interpretation"
of Q.M., after "Copenhagen", "many worlds", "Bohm's", etc)
The Balanced T.O.E. (concerning fundamental
Symmetry, and a possible resolution to several problems) -- updated
5-2002.
The Imaginary T.O.E. (a form of quantized
gravitation that might explain Newton's Equivalence of Mass)
Momenton Equations (if there was such a
thing as a "quantum of momentum", how might it behave?)
That last item is a .HTM file, and most of the equations are linked
images. The overall goal of the essays is to describe various
aspects of some future Theory of Everything -- to exist, such a Theory
should have this feature, and that one, and maybe even
the occasional one from left field, too....
There are so many mad ideas out there that at least
one
Web site is devoted to identifying them. Naturally, when I
first
found
a place to post those essays in mid-2000, they got listed as "Cranky"
(which is actually a pretty good rating, in comparison to
what many others get!) Regardless, with the essays posted I could
enter a Physics
discussion group and ask that they be
examined for flaws. As the discussion progressed, some of the
people I messaged seemed upset that I wasn't trying to
completely overthrow Physics (I suppose they greatly enjoyed saying
"AHA!", but were frustrated by "a good group of
speculations"). However, one really significant flaw was
uncovered
in the first essay, and so it had to be rewritten.
Time passed, the dot-coms crashed, and along with them went the
place
where my essays had been posted. Finally I not only
finished a major rewrite of the first essay, I actually acquired
a better place to post them -- right here.
I'm not sure I'll ever be able to surpass the above mad
ideas.
For example, how about a microprocessor description?
It was pretty fancy stuff, when I wrote that collection of mad
ideas down, in 1991. It's not even outdated yet, as of 2002!
However, it's not really Mad Science. As it happens, there is
a whole Web site: http://www.madsci.org
where
ordinary scientists volunteer to answer all kinds of mad
questions.
I'm one of those volunteers, so if you go to
this page: http://www.madsci.org/MS_search.html
and enter Vernon Nemitz into the
search
field, you will
find a list of Answers that I'm guilty of writing (including typos,
alas).
And there is another Web site that is devoted to half-baked ideas,
so
I've posted stuff there, too.
http://www.halfbakery.com/user/Vernon
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Here is a piece of somebody else's Mad Science that is starting to
make
news!
Apparently NASA has just patented
a device
that exhibits propulsion but uses no propellant. Working models
are being built
around the globe, cheaply.
The two thin wires at left and bottom-left are simply
supplying/maintaining
a high-voltage-DC field to the triangular device.
The thin wire at top of triangle holds one electric charge, and the
foil beneath it holds the opposite charge. The sticks are
all balsa wood, and the device is claimed to be hovering with no
visible
support (or was imaged while rising against gravity).
----UPDATE: This is a real device that does work. It is
not, however, either an anti-gravity device or a reactionless drive.
Its high voltage interacts with the air at the upper wire, creates
and accelerates ions towards the lower foil, and as a result
action-and-reaction causes the device to lift. It does not work
in a perfect vacuum. It MAY be able to work in interplanetary
Space, since that is not a perfect vacuum. But don't count on
it being as useful there as it may eventually be on Earth.
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I have a few other things that belong here, and so they will
eventually
be put here, sometime after they get fed into the
computer (some were written before I owned one).
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Vernon
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Copyright (C) 2002, by Vernon Nemitz
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