Would it be at all feasible to cover the top of this thing with thin and semi-flexible solar panels? If Solar Impulse can make it around the planet using just the solar energy hitting its thin little lifting surfaces then surely the surface area of this magnificent flying backside should be able to gather enough energy to shove it across the sky, right?
I'm a sucker for empirical data. If dowsing rods are getting the job done, then hooray for dowsing rods. If they're not, then boo for dowsing rods. It would be even poorer science than, oh, say, 'belief in dowsing rods' to draw conclusions without objective data. Either those things are working, or they're not. But in either case, the answer ought to be clear from the numbers, so there's no reason to get belief involved.
_If_ they seem to be getting the job done, then maybe the thingies are acting as placebos for the people using them. Sort of like people who are natural lie-detectors just thought they were responding to gut feelings until micro expressions were discovered. Maybe what's being detected isn't the explosives, but that the owner of the suspect item is acting like someone with a bomb, which starts the dowser's brain working on likely hiding places for the packet of suck, which in turn triggers an ideomotor effect in the 'dowser'. How much of this would be conscious, and how much subconscious would vary widely from person to person, with those not aware of the process thinking, "Holy Shit! This thing is amazing!"
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Would it be at all feasible to cover the top of this thing with thin and semi-flexible solar panels? If Solar Impulse can make it around the planet using just the solar energy hitting its thin little lifting surfaces then surely the surface area of this magnificent flying backside should be able to gather enough energy to shove it across the sky, right?
I'm a sucker for empirical data. If dowsing rods are getting the job done, then hooray for dowsing rods. If they're not, then boo for dowsing rods. It would be even poorer science than, oh, say, 'belief in dowsing rods' to draw conclusions without objective data. Either those things are working, or they're not. But in either case, the answer ought to be clear from the numbers, so there's no reason to get belief involved. _If_ they seem to be getting the job done, then maybe the thingies are acting as placebos for the people using them. Sort of like people who are natural lie-detectors just thought they were responding to gut feelings until micro expressions were discovered. Maybe what's being detected isn't the explosives, but that the owner of the suspect item is acting like someone with a bomb, which starts the dowser's brain working on likely hiding places for the packet of suck, which in turn triggers an ideomotor effect in the 'dowser'. How much of this would be conscious, and how much subconscious would vary widely from person to person, with those not aware of the process thinking, "Holy Shit! This thing is amazing!"