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USAF Studies Teleportation
ArchAngel21x writes "Star Trek fans may be happy to hear that the Air Force has paid to study psychic teleportation.
But scientists aren't so thrilled. The Air Force Research Lab's August 'Teleportation Physics Report', posted earlier this week on the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) Web site, struck a raw nerve with physicists and critics of wasteful military spending."
Initially I thought this may have some relevance to encryption as there is a phenomenon of quantum teleportation that appears to have some scientific validity and would have significance in military and strategic planning and communication. However, when I actually started reading the article, at first I could not stop laughing until I reached this part:
.pdf :An experimental program similar in fashion to the Remote Viewing program should be funded at $900,000 - 1,000,000 per year in parallel with a theoretical program funded at $500,000 per year for an initial five-year duration.
From the linked
What!!!!!???? I am thunderstruck that this recommendation could be made. 1.5 Million dollars for essentially a program that the CIA back in the 1970's decided was full of crap and decided to abandon. By the way, the CIA's program was ill conceived and full of it back then too amounting to a huge waste of taxpayer dollars.
Other conclusions in the document are: "We will need a physics theory of consciousness and psychotronics, along with more experimental data, in order to test the hypothesis in Section 5.1.1 and discover the physical mechanisms that lay behind the psychotronic manipulation of matter." What can I say? The status of basic science education among those who make funding decisions within certain areas of government are pitiful.
Even worse is this statement: "This phenomenon could generate a dramatic revolution in technology, which would result from a dramatic paradigm shift in science. Anomalies are the key to all paradigm shifts! " which has got to be the work of someone with a marketing background and absolutely no self respect in the scientific community. A document like this would be laughed out of the NIH or any other respectable scientific funding agency, but the scary thing is funding like this has always been able to go forward under the guise of military funding in crisis situations where fear abounds. Combine that with no understanding of science and this is what you get. If any of my students came up with something like this, I think I would cry.
Hey, if the Air Force wants out of the box thinkers, I can come up with all sorts of biomemetic and bioencryption stuff for 1.5 Million that would be based in scientific fact with reliable peer review science behind it.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Heh. I guess that's like during the good old Cold War. If you just got some sort of an idea of how to beat the enemy, you've got a blank check.
The owls are not what they seem
In a country in which a substantially larger portion of the population believes in the Virgin Birth than in evolution through natural selection, and which has just this week demonstrated that majority, why should anyone be surprised?
While highly implausible, the whole idea of science is to discover things that one wouldn't expect. If soundly gathered evidence suggests psychic powers or teleportation is real, then we should investigate it. If the facts fit, then no matter how much someone might not desire to accept an explanation (whether it be for or against any phenomena), it is most likely the truth.
I'd say this is a fast one they are trying to pull to funnel the money to some black project....hell it could just be for the AF general staff coffee and doughnut fund!
1. When the pin is pulled, Mr. Grenade is no longer your friend.
2. Do not eat iPod shuffle.
classically, the random slashdot quote at the bottom of this article was "You cannot achieve the impossible without attempting the absurd."
Dan Tedrick
It's probably money procured for something they don't want to tell us they are using it for.
With the current, rather theocratic US administration, I'm surprised they don't try training field medics in faith healing...
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
If someone gave me money to study "psychic teleportation", I'd be like "Thank you, Allah!" and immediately begin researching liquor and hookers.
"Guys, you're not gonna believe this! Last night, I as at this strip club, I closed my eyes and when I opened them, I was face down in the gutter a few blocks away!"
[o]_O
Stephen King wrote a nice short story about teleportation called The Jaunt. I'm not much of a King fan, but the story is very good. In The Jaunt people can teleport between different locations, but they have to be put to sleep first, otherwise something very bad happens. Most of the story is from the perspective of a father telling his family, all of whom are about to go "Jaunting", about the history of how it was invented and its side effects. Very interesting read.
Just pay me a few million, and I'll do whatever research into fantasy physics that they want. I'll even throw in a few Powerpoint presentations for good measure.
If the choice is between spending billions on reserching quackery in the military, or spending the same money on bringing US education up to decent levels, I think the education would be money better spent. We might even end up with politicians who know the difference between Sweden and Switzerland.
But if they're determined to throw money away on absurdity, then the least they can do is throw some of it in my direction. I think I could find better uses for it than anyone the USAF could hire from the Psychic Hotline.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Star Trek fans may be happy to hear that the Air Force has paid to study psychic teleportation [...]
Please, this is an insult to Star Trek fans everywhere. The Star Trek vision, if anything, was about using science and technology to enhance people's lives. It was and is in no way about this pseudo-scientific nonsense. (BTW, "pseudo" in this context means "false, but masquerading as", NOT, "kinda" or "quasi".)
If anything, Star Trek fans would (and should) be appalled by this.
End of rant.
This is just the cover story. The money is really being funneled into the Stargate program.
What proof do I have? Just look at Sam Cassel.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Maj. Ed Dames' astral body may come kick you in the nuts.
The Air Force did NOT pay to study this. They commissioned a study and one of the recommendations was this, and they have already stated it will not be funded. Hurray for illiteracy!
Has to be a joke. Read the PDF. The name of the sub-contractor is "Warp Drive" and the end of the document contains discussions of "negative energy" and all kinds of totally bogus junk that looks like it was culled from a Star Trek script.
Seriously, this is some fan-boy trying to rile up the millitary conspiracy theorists (and apparently doing quite well).
Until the DoD comes out and says, "yes, this is ours and we published it in all seriousness," please stop believing everything you read on the Internet.
No, I am not suggesting some kind of bizarre conspiracy, just some 'front project' to cover up something that may involve new laser assault/defense systems, sonic weaponry, or new methods of fighter control mechanisms or something that might be really cool, really plausible or equally 'cool' yet disturbingly vile that they would rather not explain to the American public or Congress.
So, seeing that most of the nation, albiet only by a small fraction in the larger scheme of things, would fall for such crap, they decided to trot out that story. One, to be able to push it past such science-blind people as the majority of this nation and secondly to thumb their noses at the rest of us that would know and understand such a thing is bollox, yet are unfortunately unable to do anything significant about it...
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
I think some of the justification behind this research may be based on the fact that some researchers are starting to believe the brain is a quantum device. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mind
Quantum theory (at least mathematically) does allow for teleportation, and so capabilities such as "remote viewing" and so forth *might* be there. But who knows.
Given the choice, 8 million that MIGHT have a radical payoff is a bargain. Billions spent on a specific application of physics is pointless. Even if the system works, the only application for a missile defense system is knocking out high-speed projectiles.
It won't help with knocking out asteroids (too much kinetic energy involved) nor will it help defend against more mondane forms of attack.
Considering that the Pentagon spend $600 million on air travel, this is cake, Cake.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
That is to say, there is not such thing as a "spirit realm" or "magic" or any way of controling the universe without a clear cause and effect. This is a compleatly logical assumption to make. If you don't make it, science becomes a guess work filled with "maybes." It is nessiary for the scientific method.
It is not nessisarly true. For all practical purposes it seems to be true. However, ask anyone who belives in a god, or who practices magik, and they will tell you it is falce.
You can not say a study is worthless based on an axiom. For instance, I give that all Jews are gready, therefore all people trying to deny anti-seminism are wasting time, because it's true. Likewise, I give that magical mater interactions are inpossible, therefore all people studying them are wasting time, because they don't exist.
Anyway, it probibly is a waste of time; people just need a valid argument for it being a waste. :-o
You have to remember though, that the government _does_ tax us. Significant wasteful spending, while temporarily boosting the money of a few, will eventually be distributed into the taxes of the many. In situations like this the pros and cons need to be evaluated... Anyone thinking with their head on straight would see that wasteful science is bad science.
Maybe you can push a string after all.
But only if it's a really tiny string and there's enough grant money.
Now I'm the grandest Tiger in the Jungle!
I'm quite frankly tired of the hypocrisy I see on ./. On the one hand you accuse the christian right of being bigoted or closed minded while in the same breath demonstrate how close minded and bigoted you are.
Want to see who you are complaining about? Look in the mirror.
Science is supposed to be a tool for discovery, not a religion like some of you make it out to be.
Is aids research a waste of money because no cure has been found yet? Are all studies that reach a dead end a waste of money or do they provide us with valuable insight?
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Read the Fine Yahoo Article:
"The views expressed in the report are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy of the Air Force, the Department of Defense (news - web sites) or the U.S. Government," says an Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) statement sent to USA TODAY. "There are no plans by the AFRL Propulsion Directorate for additional funding on this contract."
Maybe he meant Star Trek the Next Generation, you know the series where a couple of hours in paranormal training by native Americans allows Commander Riker to do weird shit like stopping time that 500 years of space age science hasn't achieved.
(Or maybe the idea simply hasn't gotten by peer-reviewed publications?)
(Sure... Isn't that what they all say?)
I guess it might be worthwhile in a very preliminary report to give all of the options equal consideration, but to suggest that they all deserve funding for further research makes the study kind of pointless. I wonder if they people who commissioned this report can actually take it seriously?
back during the Cold War, there were a lot of Soviet programs in this sort of thing, and other pseudo-science fields.
you can find a lot by yahoo searching for Scalar Weapons which is a system suposedly developed in the 60s and 50s which the USSR can use to control the weather, and used to shoot down the Challenger space shuttle.
remote viewing in the CIA is something that's on the Discovery channel on cable all the time -- also shows about crop circles, UFOS, and "psychic profilers" solving murder mysteries
similar quackery was investigated by the Nazi scientists who were deeply into the occult and other "black arts" including the flat earth society and the hollow earthers (how do you reconcile those two groups? flat and hollow??)
In fact, a squad of Nazi troops took a super large cannon/gun out to an island in the middle of the ocean and tried shooting STRAIGHT UP trying to shoot across the "hollow earth" center to rain shells down on London. It didn't work.
If telekinesis, ESP, etc. were biologically possible, it would have been evolved by some creatures already. Imagine the incredible advantage a predator would have if it could read the mind of the prey and know that the prey was hiding behind a tree or that the prey was about to jog to the right or left. Or what if a predator (or prey) could telekinetically cause a stick to trip its opponent. Yet, no animal (or plant) seems to have such powers.
It is unlikely that humanity is unique in have some never-before evolved power. The more scientists study animals, the more they find that humans are not qualitatively different from other creatures, only quantitatively different. Other creatures can count, create tools, have emotions, participate in social structures, practice deception, be aware of what others might think or do, etc. We exhibit these properties to a greater degree than do animals, but we are not unique. (In fact if humans did have psychic power, they would have little need for social systems, tools, etc. because psychic power would let them snare prey/beings with lesser powers.)
Finally, we find no "physical" basis for psychic power. The four forces of gravity, eletromagnetism, the weak force, and the strong force do not provide a basis for psychic power. It is unlikely that some magic biologically created material could manifest and manipulate some unknown fifth force without either biologists, chemists, or physicists becoming aware of it..
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
In the report, author Eric Davis says psychic teleportation, moving yourself from location to location through mind powers, is "quite real and can be controlled."
Yeah. It's called 'walking.' Or am I looking at it totally wrong?
Hope be with ye,
Cyan
Let's play video games with mailmanZERO
Frank B. Mead, Jr.
(661) 275-5929
Having worked at AFRL, I can tell you that this is probably a real report. However, it is a study done by a small business, probably what is commonly called an SBIR. The study itself cost somewhere around $100k, and the results will be used to determine if further study is justified.
These contracts produce wildly varied output quality. Some is amazing, some is crap, but the program is part pork (funding small startups) and part science, so you get what you pay for. The amounts presented in the paper are recommendations by the contractor based on their opinions. It is not necessarily what AFRL is going to put their money into. Actually, AFRL has not nearly enough money to pay for further research into this risky a field at those dollars. Groups like AFOSR, DARPA, perhaps. But AFRL funded $1M programs are reserved for stuff that is closer to reality and the warfighter.
AFRL _is_ a reputable funding agency, but this document is not representative of their work. And the marketing speak is an inherent part of this kind of paper, since it is a pitch by the contractor to continue funding them for further investigation.
Some would say that there really is not such thing is chaos in the universe. But rather, the notion of chaos is nothing more then order beyond comprehension. That said, maybe consciousness has some form of predictable order to it and thus we really don't have free will. If this is the case, the being psychic is nothing more then a higher level of thought for the sub-conscious process more of the chaos around us.
;)
Just a thought
Life is not for the lazy.
The date on this report says august 2004, but on page 31 it says "The largest commercially available computers can store 40 gigabytes on a single hard drive."
Well, the section on wormholes is 90% kosher. He even goes so far as to calculate the amount of exotic matter needed to create such a wormhole, and seems to have read most of Visser's (excellent) book on the physics of them.
It might have helped had the authors of this report read the rest of Visser, however. Such as the calculations showing that exotic matter is intrinsically quantum-mechanically unstable, to the extent that such a wormhole will collapse within a time strictly less than the time it takes for a light signal to get through said wormhole.
Which is good, because teleportation by wormhole lets information travel faster than light and is therefore equivalent to building a time machine.
I really hope that we don't have our government funding research into time machines. Because then this is going to start sounding like a very bad movie plot.
Oh please. It's not like this was a Guardian editorial. Charlie Brooker, the author of said column, is a humorist and comedian, for fuck's sake. And one who enjoys winding up the easily offended, at that. Occasionally he goes right to the edge - such as when he got an issue of PC Zone magazine pulled from the shelves of the UK's largest chains of newsagents for a comic strip called 'Cruelty Zoo' - but while his stuff is often twisted, it's still very funny.
Check out TV Go Home to see what else he does for a living.
You must think in Russian.
The people who coughed up the money for
/. poster is correct --
these dubious "projects" should be put up
against a wall and shot. (That is one tax-
payer expense I would be happy to cover.)
But the previous
really, really assinine projects are often
a cover to fund other "black" projects.
The "Iran Hostage/Exchanged For/Military
Spare Parts" quickly morphed into covert
funding for the Contras. Once a big chunk
of money is "off the books", it becomes much
easier to hide from the US Congress and the
taxpayer. In the past, our "government-
within-a-government" has used such methods
to fund the assassination of Latin American
leaders, the overthrow of governments, and
even an invasion or two (Bay of Pigs?).
Considering how money earmarked for the war
against terror in Afghanistan was siphoned
off for the run-up to the war in Iraq, one might
ask exactly where has the huge sum of money
earmarked for the reconstruction of Iraq gone?
It sure hasn't gone to where the US Congress
earmarked it. Consider all the internet
"background chatter" from neo-cons regarding
Venezuela, the "oil worker revolt" there, and
the recall election that Chavez won. The over-
throw of a left-of-center regime that has had
the temerity to support Castro's Cuba with
cheap oil sounds like a bonafide Bush/Cheney
operation.
Between the veil of secrecy (post 9-11) and the
USA Patriot Act (I), not much info slips into
the press to cause public blowback. If you
try to begome a "whistleblower" on some of these
shennanigans, you are likely to disappear into
Gitmo Bay (not unlike the "vanished" in
Argentina).
Actually, as I understand it, spiders have fast nerve signaling - fast enough that their reactions are faster than your perception, so they look prescient.
;) I see most of my movies on the airplane. But I do find that reality is often much stranger than fiction, that scientists discover stuff that is more outrageous that anything Hollywood can dream up.
Very good point, many creatures do have "super-human" senses. The spider nerves are a great quantitative tweak on neuronal engineering - bigger diameter axons carry signals faster and the small size of spiders means the latencies are extremely low.
Other creatures have abilities that seem near-psychic but are not when you study the creature further. Cockroaches have sensitive hairs on their tails that pick up the air pressure wave that precedes any subsonic moving object. Because the pressure wave travels at about 700 miles per hour (the speed of sound), the cockroach feels the swatter approaching long before it reaches the roach. As a double advantage the hairs are wired directly to the legs so the roach flees the instant something starts moving its way without "thinking."
Flies have a 3-stage pipelined visual system that operates a 400 Hz (compared to human's 60 Hz system). They see the swatter and react more quickly than the human eye.
Electric fish use an active electric field to map their surroundings in muddy water. Dolphins and bats use ultrasound. Mantis shrimp see 6 color bands and 4 polarizations. Pit vipers see far IR. Etc. All of these amazing examples rely on well know physics to let the animal sense what a human cannot.
Geez, don't you ever get out to the movies?
Unfortunately no!
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
It looks like Warp Drive Metrics has succeeded in teleporting $25,000 into their bank account from the taxpayers wallets; we shall see if future expirements are as successful.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
On the Art Bell Show, Major Ed Dames, a reknowed remote viewer, (you can spend a few $100 and take his class) used remote viewing to determine that the world will end in 2 years when a massive solar flare scorches everything. So don't worry about the wasted money. it doesn't matter anyway.
I don't get it, if they manage to discover how teleportation works, they will lose their jobs, as G. W. B. wont need airplanes anymore to bomb whoever he wants...
(And I say this as an Electrical Engineer). Established, respected experts in a field are among the most reluctant to consider radically new ideas. Major shifts in science have occurred when some young oddball found a new way to look at an old problem, or an outsider to the field found a new link that was never considered before. Consider the significant (albeit slow) revolution in medicine that is increasingly acknowledging the mind/body connection. Placebo treatments that actually have physiological healing effects; patients that exert conscious control over the failing processes in their bodies.
Now I'm not saying that necessarily this teleportation stuff has any merit. I just want to point out that if you're quick to say "what crap" then you might have fallen into the trap that leads minds to stagnate; that is, to believe that existing human knowledge is complete.
If there's one thing we can bet on, it's that human knowledge is far from complete and we are far from understanding the true nature of things. We are naive creatures with limited understandings of things. Perhaps the military is more willing to gamble funding in new directions, because unlike academics their main goal isn't to protect their researching asses for the rest of their lives. Their goal is to develop new tools that the enemy doesn't have.
His proposal to amend the constitution to make sure no state allows gay people to marry is purely driven by his warped reading of the bible. Never mind that Jesus never mentions homosexuality one way or the other.
If that's not theocratic I don't know what is.
I have tried to keep this a secret for as long as I have been able, but I guess the cat is out of the bag now. Just a few minutes ago, I was standing on the other side of the room from where I am now typing. With my mind, I told my body to move over to the other side of the room and immediately it happened! My body does whatever I tell it to! It is completely under my psychic control!
For a while it was cool being the only one with this power, but now everyone is going to start doing it. Suxx azz.
ga
Eighty-three percent of American adults believe in the Virgin birth of Jesus Christ
I resent the fact that you imply my beliefs are backwards and illogical. I think it makes perfect sense to believe that Jesus Christ was a virgin when he was born.
STOP MOCKING ME!
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
The first part of the article deals with all the legitimate ways to move particles from point A to point B without going through the intervening space. These methods (while very, VERY far off in the future) are scientifically plausible even if they sound like they were lifted from a bad Star Trek script. The second part, of course, is full of the worst kind of pseudo-science, like telekenisis and psychic abilities. But, really, the first half of the proposal is only a waste of money because the technology involved is too far off to be useful in any reasonably timeframe.
For example, negative energy is a real phenomenon in quantum physics. It is most commonly discussed in the context of the Casimir effect. Here's an article that discusses the Casimir effect. Basically, the negative energy arises because empty space itself has a certain amount of vacuum energy, and the Casimir effect reduces these fluctuations inside two metal plates (which have to be spaced absurdly closely together and manufactured to extremely exact precision for the effect to be measureable). Because we generally say that empty space has zero energy and the space between the plates has less energy than that, the Casimir effect is regarded as a source of "negative energy". This could actually be useful (one day in the far FAR future) for opening up space-time wormholes. And, no, I'm not joking either.
Also, while "warp drive" may be an overused Trek term, it's also a (semi) legitimate topic of discussion in physics. In 1994, Dr. Miguel Alcubierre found a solution to General Relativity that seemed to allow for faster than light travel while obeying special and general relativity. What followed was a lively debate on the plausibility of the "Alcubierre Warp Drive". One of the most recent objections argued that Alcubierre's warp drive would never be able to cross lightspeed but might allow for non-Newtonion sublight travel.
With a country that is going back to the middle
ages, this seems only like the tip of the
iceberg.
With Bush in office, I expect the next couple of
years to be packed with amusement from your witch
hunts to your basic alchemy courses taught in
schools and maybe some sacrifices made to the
gods if the stock market goes up.
miguel.
I am an EE as well, and I don't consider any falsifiable hypothesis "quackery", just very improbable until tested by an experiment. I find it very amusing that more scientists have a very closed mind .. isn't the whole idea to question everything?
Anyway, the above book covers a lot of studies headed up real scientists, and there is a lot of interesting data out there; the effects they find are not huge, but they are statistically signifigant and worthy of investigation.
If someone has an odd idea, fine - ask them for a repeatable experiment anyone can do to replicate said hypothesis. That's what science is about, and that's why we don't automatically assume the world is flat and we are the center of the universe anymore.
..don't panic
As a successful businessman who has handled many ticklish employee issues, let me explain how you should actually deal with this.
First, you fire them using the normal politically correct "here are your final paychecks, and the Human Resources department's collective foot in your collective asses" procedure.
But you inform them that if they can teleport back in, they can have their jobs back.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
That's totally wrong. For quantum teleportation to work you STILL need to be able to pass information from A to B say via a wire or other classical information route. What teleportation does that say a fax does not is it is supposed to make a *perfect* (well theoretically anyway) copy of the information. What is teleported is NOT the photon or the atom but information on the quantum state of the atom or photon which is reproduced in an atom or photon at the other end. I've heard quantum teleportation described as a "perfect fax machine". Regardless, the atom/photon does NOT suddenly disappear from A and appear at B.
Flies have a 3-stage pipelined visual system that operates a 400 Hz (compared to human's 60 Hz system). They see the swatter and react more quickly than the human eye.
Why do Americans always assume the rest of the world goes by their standards?
The human visual system, as we Europeans all know very well, runs on 50 Hz here. But this is more than well compensated for by our higher count of rods and staffs.
I totally agree with you that the market isn't truly free.
A company or industry that's doing well can try to extract concessions from politicians (DMCA, antitrust wrist-slaps, telcom regulation, etc) and a company that's not doing well can generate political pressure to save jobs. And the former annoys me greatly, as I can tell it annoys you.
But I find it hard to dismiss the sense that there is a "mostly free" market out there, having watched closely billion-dollar companies fall (SGI), and from a distance seen others just get lost (Kodak) or shift their core activity to avoid a lingering death (IBM). The market may not be truly free, but it is a harsh mistress.
I can't find a full list of companies kicked off the Dow Jones (just 1999, 2004, 1895), but big companies even with their vast political influence cannot succeed when the market says "no thanks" to paying the hoped-for-nicely-profitable amount for their products.
--LP