Would it not be useful if, for every press release or other news tip that comes along, a site somewhere brought before the writer’s wondering and perhaps gullible eyes a good case for it being naught but pasture pie? Doubt is the best path toward truth. We all need the occasional reminder of skepticism’s merit.
As, for instance:
- Real Clear Science – Tom Hartsfield: NASA’s Impossible Space Engine Is Total BS.
The end of July and early August brought a news flurry welcoming a report that NASA’s Johnson Space Center published on a hypothetical system for going to the stars. While some test results seem positive, they were also delivered by the authors in a cloud of maybes and other qualifications. It is called the Cannae engine – a clever, self-effacing, and apt name. It is surely tribute to the frantic words of warning from the original Star Trek engineer Scotty to bold Captain Kirk as the engines or force fields or something else equally fictional approached failure : “Ye cannae change the laws o’ physics!” Hartsfield is a 4th year grad student at the University of Texas, Austin. That is not so far from the Johnson Space Center. One is unsure how Real Clear Science decides what to publish, but Hartsfield’s post might have – had it come out in time or reached them – changed minds at a few outlets that decided to go with this report as a reasonably plausible and newsy thing. Please keep aware that NASA’s news shop did not beat any drums for this report. It is simply posted on some kind of server for just about anything agency researchers have recently presented.
Along with the presumed career in physics that lies ahead for Hartsfield he may find himself useful as a public voice of reason. His Cannae engine missive points out not only the fundamental flaws in the underlying concept, but reveals that he knows something of the history of the research. (See the Wikipedia entry on EmDrive) and the team at JSC’s Advanced Propulsion Physics Laboratory that is paid to look into impossible-seeming concepts…. just in case.
Some of the Stories:
- Space.com – Mike Wall: “Impossible’ Space Engine May Actually Work, NASA Test Suggests ; Wall cites a Wired-UK report as a source, so we go there next.
- Wired UK – David Hambling: Nasa validates ‘impossible’ space drive; Both Wall’s and Hambling’s pieces are loaded with cautions to readers that the concept is, to say the least, controversial. Physicists tend to scoff at it. That hearty layer of caveat however is not a get-home-free card; it does not mean that it is so interesting anyway that writing it up is a good use of a reporter’s time – other than to drive upward the hit-count for the news site. You can bet that when I saw the headlines last week I read the stories without hesitation.
- The Independent – James Vincent: Nasa approves ‘impossible’ space engine design that apparently violates the laws of physics and could revolutionize space travel ; Says here that the “quiet announcement has sent shockwaves thorugh the sciewntific world” and that NASA has “cautiously given its seal of approval” to the concept. Whence the writer plucked that other from the non-existent ether I dunno.
- TechTimes – Lori Sandoval: NASA tests Cannae Drive, impossible engine that might make deep space exploration possible; Tech Times actually ran this news two times, a second version from Robin Burks: NASA acknowledges ‘impossible’ fuel-less drive may actually work.
Here is another one that does not buy the news at all, with a pretty good explanation why, and it is from a tech-savvy site that usually provide news to car buffs:
- Jalopnik – Jason Torchinsky: Why NASA’s “Impossible” Engine is Likely Just That ; And from which I cribbed the illus up top. Torchinsky (whose main outlet is actually a sibling of Jalopnik called Spacelopnik) apparently did so much reporting that he felt even a null result is worth sharing.
The lesson here is not that science journalism comprises mostly a pack of saps who leap at anything however flimsy. Mostly, including at major news outlets, this news went where it belongs: nowhere.
As for me, today is a good day to salute a piece of the blogosphere that recognizes BS when it sees it.
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