 |
| A plane powered by supercharged air particles (AFP Photo/Simon MALFATTO) |
Paris (AFP)
- The blue glowing jets of science fiction spacecraft came a step closer to
reality on Wednesday as US physicists unveiled the world's first solid-state
aeroplane powered in flight by supercharged air molecules.
More than a
century on from the Wright brothers' first artificial flight, scientists hailed
the "historic" test of the new technology, which could eventually
slash greenhouse-gas emissions from aviation.
Ever since
Orville and Wilbur Wright's momentous glide in the winter of 1903, aircraft
have been driven by propellers or jets that must burn fuel to create the thrust
and lift needed for sustained flight.
A team of
experts from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology managed to unlock a
process known as electroaerodynamics, previously never seen as a plausible way
to power an aircraft.
They were
able to fly the new plane, with a wingspan of five metres (16 feet), a distance
of 55 metres at a speed of 4.8 metres-per-second.
That's
hardly supersonic, but the implications of this unprecedented mode of flight
could be stratospheric.
"The
future of flight shouldn't be things like propellers and turbines," said
Steven Barrett, who designed the prototype.
"It
should be more like what you see in Star Trek with a kind of blue glow and
something that silently glides through the air."
At first
glance, the plane itself doesn't look lightyears away from other renewable
aircraft, such as the Solar Impact II craft that in 2015-16 used energy from
the Sun to fly around the world.
Unlike
Solar Impact, Barrett's plane doesn't have any propellers or solar panels -- or
any moveable parts whatsoever.
Instead of
engines, it is powered by a system comprising two main sections.
At the
front of the plane sit a series of parallel electrodes made up of lightweight
wires that produce an enormous voltage -- +20,000v -- supercharging the air
around it and splitting away negatively charged nitrogen molecules known as
ions.
At the
plane's rear are rows of aerofoils set to -20,000v. The ions automatically move
from a positive to negative charge, dragging with them air particles that
create the so-called "ionic wind" to provide the aircraft with lift.
 |
The news
plane itself doesn't look lightyears away from other renewable aircraft, such
as the Solar Impact II craft that in 2015-16 used energy from the Sun to fly
around the world (AFP Photo/Bertrand Piccard)
|
'Something we never knew possible'
The
technology to create ionic wind has been around since the 1960s, but it was
previously thought nowhere near efficient enough to prove useful to
aeronautics.
The team
not only showed that it was possible for ion-driven craft to fly but also --
due to the relative lack of drag created by the electrodes -- predicted that
efficiency would increase in lockstep with speed, potentially opening the way
for bigger, faster planes in future.
"It's
clearly very early days: but the team at MIT have done something we never
previously knew was possible, in using accelerated ionised gas to propel an
aircraft," said Guy Gratton, aerospace engineer and visiting professor at
Cranfield University, who was not involved in the study.
Barrett
said he believed the current prototype could be scaled up "a significant
amount" but cautioned that their may be a limit to how much propulsion the
technique can produce.
"We
don't yet know if there is such a limit and we will certainly try to scale up
as much as possible," he said.
"I
don't yet know if you'll see our vehicle carrying people any time soon but
obviously I'd be very excited if that was the case."
 |
Ever since
Orville and Wilbur Wright's momentous glide in the winter of 1903, aircraft
have been driven by propellers or jets that must burn fuel to create the thrust
and lift
needed for sustained flight (AFP Photo/JEAN-FRANCOIS MONIER)
|
Commercial applications
He told AFP
that the technology could be used on the skin of commercial aircraft, reducing
drag and therefore the energy needed to power modern passenger jets.
"This
would be much more efficient than the current situation where you have
concentrated engines that generate thrust, which have to fight against a large
passive airframe that generates drag," he said.
In an
editorial, the journal Nature, which published the study, said its success
would encourage other sectors to re-visit technology that was long thought to
be confined to sci-fi films.
It listed
possible military applications including the development of silent drones and
aircraft, and engines with no infrared signal and thus impossible to detect.
The
prototype flight "will stimulate both awe and anxiety," it said.
A hundred
and fifteen years ago, Nature published a short news item on the Wright
brothers' "first successful achievement of artificial flight."
Barrett and
the team noted a pleasing parallel with their revolutionary test and the one
that sparked the aerial age: both flights lasted all of 12 seconds.
Related Article:
"Wild Cards of the Planet" (3) - Nov 19 - 20, 2016 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Carroll) - (Text version)
".... Wild Cards Examined
Wild card, as used in spiritual language, is a term that is difficult to define. Wild cards can be events, they can be inventions, they can involve one Human or a few. They can be one of many things or many of one thing, but they follow a timeline that you can look at. We want to talk about some of the wild cards that you’ve had in the past, and some attributes of their occurrence that you might not have thought of.
The basic attribute of any kind of wild card is that it’s a surprise event. It’s often shocking, sometimes revealing, but always a surprise. We’re also going to do some of the numerology as we go, and also take a look at the energies that help define what the energy is around specific wild cards.
Numerology is an ancient system that helps define an energy around something. For instance, an event may seem to be one thing, but the numerology will tell a story around it that may be more explanatory. When you see what we will call synchronized numerology – the same numbers repeated around a wild card – it’s very telling, for there are no accidents.
Dear Kryon, you might ask, “Does spirit create wild cards for the planet?” Answer: No, you do. Your consciousness at a certain point in time gives an allowance for a wild card. Sprit is ready to enhance some wild card scenarios and not others. But the energy and consciousness of humanity allows for their occurrence.
A wild card can be a person, an invention, a thing, an event, a new system or a new paradigm that changes the planet. It is unexpected, sometimes startling and often dramatic in its influence. If it’s an invention, it has to be outside of the purview of what would normally have occurred through the evolution of science or the timing of expected scientific evolution. It is often a paradigm shifter, and it’s usually from one person. When you see that, you will know there it’s a wild card. It isn’t always an individual invention, and sometimes it’s collective. But, dear one, you can tell because every single wild card takes everybody by surprise.
Wild Cards in History
You’ve had a number of them, and I’ll list a few so you get the idea. You’ll also get to see a system of singularity that comes to inventors. You’ll see this as I go.
Tesla was a wild card. His ideas were unexpected, controversial and advanced to a degree that even to this day those in electronic engineering shake their heads. They will take a look at what he invented and will comment, “How is it possible for any one person to have seen that? If you study alternating current, it’s a conundrum. Phase relationships of alternating current are brilliant beyond brilliant.” This was Tesla.
However, what you know about him is only what he brought to you. Now, a brilliant mind like that would have other things, don’t you think? Indeed, he did, so you might ask, “Well, where are those other things?” The answer is that those other things were stopped cold – all of them. He only was able to promote the one thing that you needed for the planet. The brilliance of his mind had many other profound ideas, but he was unable to proceed. He saw ways to alter mass in his workshops, but couldn’t. He was frustrated that he didn’t have the elaborate tools to be precise enough to make it work on a regular basis. That’s just one. Transmission of electricity without wires through the ground was the other. However, it would not have been correct at the time for those things to have been presented to humanity. You weren’t ready, but you were ready for alternating current, one of the most needed inventions for the time. Tesla died frustrated, poor, in a small room and alone. He came to do one thing, and was stopped from anything else, then he passed. If you have analyzed the people who were wild cards in your history, there is a pattern.
Other wild card inventors have come into the planet just because the earth was ready for a specific invention. Remember, Spirit does not give the information, but allows for it to be released, often all at once, all over the earth. Let me give you some examples.
Another wild card is the Wright brothers. Isn’t it odd to you that it wasn’t that long ago that you got powered flight? It was just yesterday! Some of your relatives were alive when flight was discovered! Dear ones, the Chinese have been flying kites for thousands of years. Don’t you think that they knew the dynamics of a bird? Do you think that century after century after century occurred and nobody figured out how to sustain flight with any kind of power source? Two bicycle makers figured it out!
That’s odd enough, but the fact that they only beat the French by two weeks is something worth looking at. That’s odd! It’s almost like this profound invention was ready to be given to the planet simultaneously, all over the earth, at the same time. Whoever got to it first would be the ones who got the credit. The real oddity is the timing. It’s not logical that it was so hidden, then suddenly so many were working on it all at once.
The Wright brothers were here to show it to you, then stop. All they did was what you saw at Kitty Hawk. They never went past basic wing warping, and did not have first intuitive thought about ailerons, or the basics of flight control today. For them, it stopped there. Dear ones, there was great frustration, and perhaps even health issues from it, from having others take the basics and develop flight so fast beyond them. Dysfunction and sorrow followed them both, and they died without ever being able to participate fully beyond the initial invention. One died far earlier than the other, creating sorrow for the one left behind. They came to do what they did and move on. This is more common than you know with wild cards, especially when it comes to inventions that change this planet.
Who invented the radio? Was is the Italian Guglielmo Marconi, or our frustrated wild card Tesla? Marconi got the credit, but the invention was everywhere, ready to be claimed. The earth was ripe and ready for it, and it was delivered to the consciousness of the planet at the right time. But both men got it at the same time, apart from each other. I’m giving you things to think about.
We have told you that there are wild card inventions coming in the future. One in particular is ready, but you will not receive it until the time is right. It’s almost like there’s a thinking ceiling on what you can do. We even gave you some of the attributes of the coming invention, but not the one who will bring it. We’re not even concerned that you’ll do it in advance, because we know the wild card is coming. An invention is coming. It is an invention that will rewrite physics as you know it. You’d see the patterns in quantum fields, and there would be the big aha! It would be like reinventing the wheel.
“Kryon, why can’t we have it now? What’s stopping it?” We told you, it’s too easy to weaponize. When you reach the point where you won’t weaponize it, it’s yours. All this is coming. It’s natural, and it will come when it’s time just like the Wright brothers, just like Tesla, just like Einstein.
Einstein was a genuine wild card. He was not a quantum thinker at all, but what he presented is still alive and well today and they’re still looking inside the atom for the concepts he gave you. So I will make this statement: Einstein isn’t finished yet, because the very concepts that continue to be received from his work are going to be applied to the invention of the century. So the Einsteinean principles, even though they are not quantum, will be very much involved in what is coming. You might say he was a wild card and continues to be one. The joke is that his concepts last and last, outside of time, yet his main ideas were with time. If you asked Einstein if he was happy with what he brought to the planet, he would tell you no. He was frustrated that he didn’t get to do what he really wanted. Like Tesla, he felt that something was just “out of reach” and he didn’t get to do it.
Then there was World War II. Dear ones, pretend you are an alien scientist. Disengage your emotion. You’ve come in from another planet to look at this.
World War II (WWII) was not a wild card, but the man who created and enhanced it was. This planet was teetering on the edge of ultimate dark energy and destruction. Nobody expected it. The most despicable old energy card played itself out exactly as it should have, with the consciousness of this planet going to where it had brought itself. You had just finished World War I (WWI), yet WWII ignited and continued. So WWII was simply an extension of WWI. You did it again, only this time the weapons were getting bigger and more able to destroy all of humanity. Remember the prophecy of your scripture? You were headed for mass destruction. WWII would become World War III, and by the year 2000, you would be almost gone.
As I mentioned, WWII wasn’t the wild card, rather it was the man who led the lowest consciousness in recent history who was. He was the wild card, and you know of whom I speak. This wild card killed millions of people who were not even participants in the military portion of the war. Genocide had begun, a race war had begun, and many were following his lead. It showed the darkest side of humanity – more than you had ever seen before, and it almost targeted the demise of civilization if he had won.
It was a horror wild card, and the planet had created it. However, when it was over, the entire world took a breath and for a moment, just for a moment, there was a glimmer of realization: “This cannot go on, for we will do it again.” Many things took place due to this realization. Without the wild card, you would not have the European Union, you would not have the United Nations or any attempt at unity on Earth. Disengage from your logic and emotion, dear ones. These things were not created from Spirit, but rather from the depth of lower humanity. This is the dark side at its worst, showing itself with almost free reign, but the world objected to it and started to climb out of it. It was the beginning over half a century ago of what you’re starting to see now in the shift.
The amazing shift that you’re in right now is something that goes slow. It didn’t happen all at once. The Cold War was a natural occurrence out of the consciousness that was part of the end of WWII. But, dear ones, you could never have the shift if that Cold War had continued the way it was. Enter another wild card: The Soviet system fell over.
The Cold War could not continue, and it was stopped in the form it was in. Dear ones, for those reading now, that was one of the biggest wild cards of all. The consciousness of earth said “no” and it ended. That was a huge wild card. It changed everything; it wasn’t expected; nobody saw it coming, and it changed everything. It may not have changed things immediately to the way you want it right away, but it created that which you needed at that time.
Then there was Steve Jobs. He was a wild card. What he did had little to do with technology, for that would have happened anyway soon enough. Instead, it had to do with the paradigm of the business of music on Earth. He freed it, and the paradigm of how music is obtained and heard will never be the same. However, Steve Jobs did basically one thing for all of you, and then he died. Do you see any kind of connecting of the dots to some of the inventors who come and give you the one thing, then leave? If he had lived, would there be more? Yes, but you’re not ready for it. Consciousness has to support what happens.
Yes, it would seem we have left some things out – the invention of DNA, the atomic bomb, etc. However, these were not wild cards. These are your civilization, within a normal evolution of science. Wild cards are very unexpected things, and there are more coming your way. ..."
Yes, it would seem we have left some things out – the invention of DNA, the atomic bomb, etc. However, these were not wild cards. These are your civilization, within a normal evolution of science. Wild cards are very unexpected things, and there are more coming your way. ..."
