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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.
Actually, just what I was thinking (today nobody remembers Crookes (I named a cat after him)). Key bit of missing information in the article - how good a vacuum? Really matters. And just measuring a hard vacuum as made fools out of a lot of people.
There are other possibilities - our country paid people to publish false and misleading papers (no - they have not been retracted) . This doesn't even become news IMO until it is published and replicated.
The amount of technology that has been 'borrowed' by the Chinese is mind boggling - unprecedented. Yet it takes a particular kind of culture to understand the technology in a way that lets them synthesize further progress. A lot of the papers I see coming out of China are just 'cargo cult science' - looks like science - but it isn't. It takes a particular set of values - held dear and close to the heart - to do real science.
The grant proposal industry has diluted the quality of papers so that a very small minority represent real science. I would think of this as likely just bad science once again.