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Fuel Free Spacecrafts Using Graphene
William Robinson writes: While using a laser to cut a sponge made of crumpled sheets of Graphene oxide, researchers accidentally discovered that it can turn light into motion. As the laser cut into the material, it mysteriously propelled forward. Baffled, researchers investigated further. The Graphene material was put in a vacuum and again shot with a laser. Incredibly, the laser still pushed the sponge forward, and by as much as 40 centimeters. Researchers even got the Graphene to move by focusing ordinary sunlight on it with a lens. Though scientists are not sure why this happens, they are excited with new possibilities such as light propelled spacecraft that does not need fuel.
Where the heck those extra electrons came from? Absorbing photon momentum (more efficient solar sail) sounds feasible, but "accumulating electrons" from nowhere and then emitting them in one direction (where light came from) ... less so.
Paul B.
You don't really have to have much knowledge about anything to second guess experts in any field. Just hold to the rule that "all amazing results are caused by inaccurate measurement, poor sampling, cognitive leaps or coincidence" and you'll be right 70% of the time.
The actual breakthroughs will be so old hat by the time they have been tested properly that nobody will talk about them and you'll never eat crow.
Remember, cynicism and wisdom lead to the same result most of the time, only wisdom is so much harder to learn.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
No, it's not pseudoscience.
If a researcher perfoms an experiment and gets a very strange, unexpected result, what should he do? Say "that result is clearly impossible, so I shall just disregard it"?
No, he will try to repeat the experiment, gather data, and try to figure out what's going on. Maybe (most likely) there's a perfectly valid explanation within existing scientific frameworks, maybe it's a setup or measurement error, or maybe, just maybe, this is a new effect that hadn't been discovered yet. So the scientist tries to figure that out, and tells others about the experiments so they can try the same thing and see if they get similar results.
That's how science works.
I'm sure you would have called the theory of relativity "pseudoscience" back in the day of Newtonian physics. New things do get discovered sometimes. As long as it's being researched using scientific methods, that's science and not pseudoscience. Yes, they probably will be wrong. That doesn't mean it's not science.