Arecibo Is No More

2020 has had no mercy, even when it comes to astronomy. Arecibo Observatory, the massive radio telescope located in Puerto Rico, will be decommissioned. The decision is not based on a lack of funding or scientific value, but because of safety concerns. In August a cable helping to hold the telescope up slipped out of place, which damaged the dish, but the situation was still stable. Earlier this month, however, a second cable snapped, and the National Science Foundation has deemed the situation beyond repair. Basically, there's no way to repair the damage to the dish without putting people at unnecessary risk. The thing could collapse entirely at any time, and even a controlled decommissioning may not be possible.

Obviously Arecibo is not the be-all and end-all of radio astronomy, but losing it will hurt a lot. Now, back to our regularly scheduled beer and golf stuff.

Propulsion From Nothing Probably Nothing

You may have heard recently about how researchers have found a way to move an object without exerting any actual force on it.  The experiment was simple.  Place a radio transmitter inside a specially designed container, play the radio, and the container moves, breaking some very important laws of nature.  Why is this such a big deal?  You might think it's because photons have no mass, but that's not it.  If that was the case, solar sails wouldn't work, but they do.  The problem is that the radio waves are not reacting against anything.  The transmitter is inside the container, and the waves are pushing against all sides.  There is no reaction.  Newton's third law is not being satisfied.  The container is moving forward, but nothing is moving backwards.

This all sounds like fantastic news.  But science, especially science at the cutting edge, can be thrown by the simplest things.  A couple years back, people were going crazy about neutrinos moving faster than the speed of light.  It was even discussed in one of my English classes back in college, and not the science fiction one either.  People were talking about how it changed everything, but I was never convinced.  I knew there was no way that research was correct, I knew that they had made some error in calculation, or their observation was off slightly, I knew that the physics just weren't there.  And guess what?  They weren't.  I don't remember what it was exactly that they did wrong, but a few months later the scientists retracted their claim, and everything was right with the world.

Obviously, I'm not a physicist, I'm not even a scientist.  But I will say this with certainty.  There is no way the experiment is correct.  Something went wrong somewhere.  Just like last time, I wish they would be true.  I wished neutrinos moved faster than light, I wish radio waves propelled in all directions inside a fancy can could move the can, but it just won't happen.  A claim like this requires some impressive evidence to back it up, and so far, it just isn't there.  It may take months, maybe even years, but there will be another explanation.  Just watch.