Slashback: Boeing, Fraud, Fundage

Slashback tonight with a larger passel than usual of updates, corrections, clarifications, etc. -- among them, Boeing's reaction to anti-gravity hype, the sad truth about one man's powerline data-delivery claims, and the steady climb of the Blender Fund's money meter.

Next they'll tell us they're not involved with Areas 51-63! Louis_Wu writes: "Space.com says that Boeing isn't really working on Anti-Gravity, regardless of previous news from the the BBC or Jane's Defence. It seems that the rumors spread because some people in Boeing were thinking of developing a relationship with the Russian scientist who did anti-grav research a few years ago, Dr. Evgeny Podkletnov.

Boeing spokesman:

'The recent report that we are [involved in anti-grav research] is based on a misinterpretation of information. For instance, GRASP is not a codename for a current project but rather an acronym for a presentation entitled "Gravity Research for Advanced Space Propulsion," in which a Boeing engineer explains Podkletnov's theory and proposes that we should continue to monitor this work and perhaps even conduct some low-cost experiments to further assess its plausibility. No steps have been taken beyond this point by Boeing.'

Jane's also mentions theorized weapons 'capable of producing a beam of "gravity-like" energy that can exert an instantaneous force of 1,000g [1000 Gravities, not grams] on any object -- enough, in principle, to vaporise it, especially if the object is moving at high speed.'

Don't tell Einstein. :)"

And here's the part where I skip town. Planetes writes "The Florida Times Union (Jacksonville, FL) has an interesting article about a lab testing company that has discounted his claims about some technology previously discussed on /.

Personal favorite paragraph:

'Lawyers for the company, Intertek Testing Services, discounted almost every aspect of a three-page letter that appears to validate an invention that sends high-speed data over electrical power lines. The letter is addressed to Madison Priest, a St. Augustine man whose disputed communications technologies were the subject of a sweeping Times-Union investigation this year.'"

Not at all what he said. knorthern knight writes: "Crow tastes icky, but here goes. Since I submitted the original citing about the story in The Register, ISPAI have sent a polite note to me. Here it is ...

Subject: ISPAI Reaction on HT News Item dated 27th July '02

Dear Sir,

This is in reference to the front page news article by the Hindustan Times dtd: 27/07/02. Mr Amitabh Singhal, Secretary, ISPAI has denied having made any statements favoring blocking of sites by Indian ISPs.

In reply to Mr. Singhal's letter to Hindustan Times,(copy enclosed) the HT has released the following news clipping at today's news paper http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/printedition/01 0802/detECO07.shtml

This is for your informaton and necessary action please.

With regards,

Puneet Tiwari Sr. Executive -ISPAI"

Behind every horde of enemy attackers are the people who thought them up. Anonymous Coward writes "I've finally posted the game binaries and source code to the Indie Game Jam games. The Indie Game Jam is a yearly game design and programming event designed to encourage experimentation and innovation in the game industry. 14 professional game developers created 12 experimental and innovative games in 4 days! The source to the engine and all the game code is GPLed on SourceForge, so enjoy. Remember, they're experimental and a bit rough, not commercial quality games."

One Blender you can buy for forever. kabir writes "The Blender Fund is up around 65K Euro right now... so close, yet still so far! This would be a great time for anyone who was on the fence about donating (wondering if the fund would make it, etc.) to pitch in and help put us over the top." Here's our previous story about this effort to liberate the Blender source. Does anyone have a business which might see a donation here as a good long-term investment?

Comments

Re:Smoking Crack at Jane's

[QuantumFTL]

It was good of you to notice this rather important issue, however you are only partially correct... Imagine a situation where this gravity-like force is not evenly distributed, in fact the force vectors are such that they have a high magnitude, but are pointing in different directions in different places so that when summed up together, they add to zero (or near zero). This is a very common occurance in situations where forces between two objects are applied via waves (and different areas of the object may be at different phases of the wave, and thus have different vectors).

Don't be so quick to assume that this weapon is simply a pushing or pulling effect... it could be a symmetrical sheering force (part of the target is, say, pulled up, and part is pulled down, ripping it apart) or something similar.

How the hell they generate a gravity-like force, however, is completely beyond me. No problem with Newton though. Perhaps it's electromagnetic yet affects nonconductors?

(Also, if you did have a "poking" type weapon, it may be possible to couple the gravitational force to a plasma inside the weapon that will be accellerated out of the back, absorbing whatever momentum the attack generated).

DISCLAIMER: I am not a physicist (yet) but I'm studying to become one.

Re:1000 g? Say 'bye bye earth as we know it'.

[phriedom]

Drop a PDA or cellphone onto concrete from shoulder-height and you will subject it to over 2000 g's , yet the earth and moon are not knocked out of orbit.

The important point you are overlooking is that this fictional weapon generates a gravity RAY not a gravity FIELD. Much the way a 60w laser would cut through most anything that the small focused beam hit, even a long way off but not effecting stuff right next to it, while a 60w lightbulb would warm up everything very close to it.

Re:Acceleration, etc.

[GigsVT]

Yes, but the next derivitive is the one that vaporizes things, jerk.

No, I don't mean you are a jerk, well you might be, but anyway, the measure of acceleration of acceleration is called "jerk".

Basically it is a measure of the rate of change of acceleration.

Position->Velocity->Acceleration->Jerk

Velocity is the measure of the rate of change of position.

Acceleration is a measure of the rate of change of velocity.

Jerk is the measure of the rate of change of acceleration.

Anyway, the jerk is what would be doing the destroying, so something that has a high velocity would probably be easier to destroy in theory, especially if it is moving away from you at the high velocity.

I think the idea is that you don't want to suddenly accelerate things toward you, that would sort of suck, but if they are already moving away from you, you can bring them to a rest destructively without shelling your gravity ray gun with pieces of the target.

As someone else said, this thing would be pretty likely to destroy itself anyway, but I think if it had enough mass in relation to the target, it could happen.

And all this is assuming you could even build this gravity ray, which is likely junk science at this point in time.