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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.
All great discoveries can be summed up with three simple letters... WTF
Lets test your hypothesis by creating a slashdot poll.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
If only there was a giant source of light in the galaxy constantly releasing more energy then we ever could hope to use that we could harness...
Look, if I can't be pedantic on /., where am I supposed to go?
Having read the article, they've already ruled material vaporization out.
Well, CRT face is (weakly) grounded, so e- kinetic energy can excite atom for subsequent photon emission, but its charge will happily leak into the ground.
There is no "ground" anywhere next to flying spacecraft!
Actually, on reading the preprint, yes, electrons come from under the Fermi level, get lost in the process and graphene foam (or, spacecraft carrying it) *will* become charged -- it was pointed out in the article as well, but I did miss it on quick read.
AC below actually paints a rather dramatic picture of what can happen next! :)
Paul B.
A quick search on converting photons to electrons turned this up:
http://cleantechnica.com/2013/...
A new discovery by researchers at the ICFO has revealed that graphene is even more efficient at converting light into electricity than previously known. Graphene is capable of converting a single photon of light into multiple electrons able to drive electric current.
So that could be where the extra electrons are coming from.
Better known as 318230.
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.
Not any ordinary Xenon, but 136Xe.
In the various Ion Engines designed, built, and occasionally functioning, 136 Xe is the propulsive gas of choice, and pretty much all of the (Unclassified) Literature on the Subject refer only to it.
Under Plasma conditions, Xenon is anything but inert, and there is at least one (Relatively) stable 136xe-3He compound that is only chemically stable when Ionized.
This is also true with certain Helium Hydrides, but for Propulsion purposes, one needs as much Nuclear Mass that is easily Ionized to High Charge States as possible.
They wouldn't let us play with Radon.
Furthermore, their ability to second-guess the credentialed experts is improved exponentially by posting AC.
Do you ever get the paranoid feeling that someone is occasionally modifying the laws of physics in order to advance the plot?
"Oh look, they're going to be stuck on Earth for an excruciatingly long time due to the exponential-propellent-scaling problem. Let's add a new capability to graphene that will give them a work-around for that."
I claim that two years ago the exact same graphene experiment would have shown no unexpected results; but now in 2015 we see this suspiciously useful behavior appear. I'm not sure how to test my hypothesis though :)
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
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
Welp, I've got a laser pointer and a table, you find us some graphene sponge and a vacuum chamber, and we'll test it. Which is the whole point of this. Its literally:
"Hey scientists of the world, we pointed a laser at some graphene, and something weird happened. Here's what we did, will you give it a go and see if we're tripping balls, or have discovered something awesome?"
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
I'm no physicist, but I'm pretty darn sure a spaceship's gotta move a whole lot further tan 40 cm to get anywhere.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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.