University scientist claims people can know the future

Professors at the University of Amsterdam are convinced that they have collected enough evidence to conclude that it is possible for humans to see the future. I wonder if they've heard of James Randi's Challenge

Frankly, I think this announcement lends far too much legitimacy to a field that is rife with scammers and charlatans. I would really have liked to see more depth in the story speaking to what the test conditions were and what criteria subjects were appraised with in order to arrive at the conclusions they did.

It almost seems like the reality we are shaping is the result of the fiction that we have created. I think in a lot of ways we are attempting to delude ourselves in the belief that we can define our own rules for the naturalistic world, rather than play by the rules of the reality that surrounds us.

We no longer dare to dream, we go far beyond that. We look at the universe through the lense of fiction rather than reason. I am seeing an alarming trend of bad science leading to even worse conclusions. People who claim scientific data must garner their data from a skeptical and hopefully peer-guided viewpoint. This is not to say that rebels or people who go against the grain are always wrong, quite the contrary it is usually these folks who make a difference. However. A hyperdrive will unlikely be a reality in the coming century, much less the coming decade. Free energy will only exist when wire is free, and Psychics are (probably) not real.

It's a Bird! It's a Plane! Er... It's an Asteroid?

Tracking the Sky for near-earth objects is a difficult task indeed. The resources required to scan, decipher and predict stellar activity that may result in catastrophic effects are more than you might imagine. At this point, the closest object that we know of that could take us out Armageddon style is Apophis. Its actual trajectory is unknown but it is possible that Apophis will collide with our planet in 2036, destroying most of us humans and making a general mess of things.

That would totally suck! What can we do? Well, that's exactly what the Planetary Society has decided to throw a competition for.

The prize is $50,000 for the winning idea. Not a bad pay day if you have a good imagination with a good science background.

Hype? Or Drive....

I "dugg up" an amazing article today on the New Scientist about a real live hypdrive

According to the paper, this hyperdrive motor would propel a craft through another dimension at enormous speeds. It could leave Earth at lunchtime and get to the moon in time for dinner.

The article has an excellent level of depth, without drowning you in tedium. It brings to light another spin on gravity and dimensional space, bringing with it a LOT of confusion and even more well-deserved trepidation. The paper itself won an award from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and is based on Heim Theory.

Anti-Gravity and gravity reduction schemes seem to be cornerstones of all the modern armchair physicists and wearing-aluminum-foil-on-the-head weirdos wandering the tubes. I guess they reckon if they can reduce, or eliminate, the mass of an object, it will no longer require an infinite amount of energy to propel the object past the speed of light, making interstellar space flight a possibility.

My only problem with this is that it seems to be a rehash of what all the "free energy" quacks have been claiming for years! You would think if there was anything to these crackpot theories that something would have come to fruition; an advance, an invention, something!

Where's the Beef, Steorn?

While Steorn desperately tries to legitimize itself with the world scientific community, we wait and wonder: Where's the beef?

I wouldn't sell your oil short just quite yet....