This is just purely insane: .Air Force report calls for $7.5M..........

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2004-11-05-teleportation_x.htm

Air Force report calls for $7.5M to study psychic teleportation

(OK, to interupt here for a second, the article is about a year old,
but
it's amazing that they were able to allocate funds for this wacked out
bullshit, yet they are somehow very tight on money when it comes to
social services. I wonder what other projects like these are being paid
for with
tax dollars? %-S BTW: That must be some really good stuff the people
involved
are on.)


By Dan Vergano, USA TODAY
Star Trek fans may be happy to hear that the Air Force has paid to
study psychic teleportation.

But scientists aren't so thrilled.

The Air Force Research Lab's August "Teleportation Physics Report,"
posted earlier this week on the Federation of American Scientists (FAS)
Web site, struck a raw nerve with physicists and critics of wasteful
military spending.

In the report, author Eric Davis says psychic teleportation, moving
yourself from location to location through mind powers, is "quite real
and can be controlled." The 88-page report also reviews a range of
teleportation concepts and experiments:

· Quantum teleportation, a technique demonstrated in the last decade
that shifts the characteristics, but not the location, of sub-atomic
particles at great distances.

· Wormholes, a highly theoretical possibility whereby the intense
gravitational field near black holes could rip open entrances to
distant locales.

· Psychokinesis, or psychic teleportation. In support of the idea,
the report cites UFO reports, Soviet and Chinese studies of psychics
and U.S. military studies of spoon-bending phenomena.

"It is in large part crackpot physics," says physicist Lawrence Krauss
of Case Western Reserve University, author of The Physics of Star Trek,
a book detailing the physical limits that prevent teleportation. He
describes the Air Force report as "some things adapted from reasonable
theoretical studies, and other things from nonsensical ones."

Some experts have long criticized what they see as a military sweet
tooth for junk science. A "remote viewing" project, for example,
undertaken by defense intelligence services and declassified in 1994,
sought to see whether psychic powers could be employed to spy on the
Soviet Union. The teleportation report "raises questions of scientific
quality control at the Air Force," the FAS' Steven Aftergood says.

Davis, a physicist with Warp Drive Metrics of Las Vegas, couldn't be
reached for comment. The Air Force paid $25,000 for the report, part of
a $20.5 million advanced rocket and missile design contract. The report
calls for $7.5 million to conduct psychic teleportation experiments.

"The views expressed in the report are those of the author and do not
necessarily reflect the official policy of the Air Force, the
Department of Defense or the U.S. Government," says an Air Force
Research Lab (AFRL) statement sent to USA TODAY. "There are no plans by
the AFRL Propulsion Directorate for additional funding on this
contract."

Explaining why the lab sponsored the study, AFRL spokesman Ranney Adams
said, "If we don't turn over stones, we don't know if we have missed
something."

.

Relevant Pages