The Science of Conspiracy Theories

Technology Suppression Conspiracy

Technology Suppression Conspiracy

This covers several conspiracy theories: Big oil suppressed electric car development as well as ways to make cars more efficient; Cold Fusion was debunked as a power source; Power companies suppressed the idea that alternating current power can be made 'wattless'; The Phoebus cartel prevented efficient light bulbs; Vril Society conspiracy; Free energy devices based on perpetual motion were debunked; The government buried Green energy long life battery technology.

It's not hard to understand why big oil would want to stop the car manufacturers from producing electric cars. It would cut into their businesses. Electric cars promised a lot of great things, including slashing global warming; saving millions from respiratory illnesses; stoping us from seizing Middle East oil. This conspiracy theory originated in California where the automobile is worshiped, and the smog there has resulted in young people having chronic respiratory distress. General Motors had been working on making an electric car and then backed off from the project, a move that initiated conspiracy theories. California legislators jumped on the bandwagon of elation over the fact that fossil fuels were doomed to become a relic of the industrial age. They passed a law mandating that electric cars should become an ever-increasing percentage of car production. The car companies joined big oil in lobbying against the law. Basically, the car companies backed away with a slick add campaign that made electric cars out to be quaint contraptions more fitting to eccentric celebrities with gobs of money to spare. The end result was that the law was repealed and GM scrapped the electric car concept. As we have seen lately, the electric car has returned but has several problems: they're expensive; they require charging on the grid; they have limited range; and the batteries only last so long and are expensive to replace. As I stated before, they're not the solution to save the environment as the green enthusiasts think because they require charging from polluting power plants. Did big oil companies have anything to do with suppressing electric car development?  The answer is probably, but not in an overt manner. They did it by lobbying and subtle advertising.

Cold fusion is one of my all time fantasy science stories. The other one is poly-water. The idea was that fusion could be conducted at near room temperature. Fusion in the core of the sun takes place at millions of degrees and extremely high pressures. I remember when Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons reported this in 1989. They claimed that excess heat was produced consistent with fusion in a lab setup using heavy water on the surface of a palladium electrode. Many other scientists tried to duplicate this experiment and all of them failed. Subsequently, this so-called discovery became debunked. Well, the conspiracy enthusiasts jumped on this conspiracy theory and claimed it was an attempt by the government to suppress what they though would be an answer to the world's energy crisis. The science of this idea is that hydrogen is absorbed by palladium and there is a possibility that hydrogen could be fused to helium in an electrolytic cell with palladium electrodes. The Fleischmann and Pons experiment was based on the idea that deuterium (heavy water) is more mobile than hydrogen and would compress higher under electrolysis with a palladium electrode. Their experiment relied on carefully measuring the temperature rise due to the reaction, taking into consideration the input power. The rise in temperature that they discovered indicated energy production. After considerable efforts by many scientists, the temperature rise was attributed to tritium (a radioactive isotope of hydrogen) contamination in the deuterium. Radioactivity produces heat. So far no one has determined the validity of cold fusion. As far as I'm concerned the only thing that would make this a conspiracy on the part of the military is that they would want it kept secret because of the possibility of running ships, planes and other military vehicles.

The idea of power companies suppressing 'wattless' power generation sounds crazy. Wattless power by definition cannot do work. So what good is it? P=I x V x sin θ where P is in watts; I is in amperes; V is in volts; and sin θ is the sine of the angular phase difference between the current and the voltage. At a positive 90 degrees the sine is 1. When it reverses to negative 90 degrees the sine is -1. So, half of the cycle is a positive transfer of energy and the other half it goes the opposite direction, which transfers no net power to the load. This is also known as 'idle' power. Early power meters didn't take this into consideration, allowing theft of energy. This problem has been rectified. The real conspiracy is the one postulated by Nicolas Tesla in which he proposed that it was possible to build a perpetual motion machine, a machine that would not use energy once it was put in motion. This follows from the conservation of energy law but ignores entropy gain. No one has succeeded in building such a machine. People have been accusing power companies of cheating customers ever since the invention of power production. Yes, they do cheat us by increasing what they charge but they aren't using voodoo to cheat us. They're doing it openly.

Phoebus cartel was supposed to be a cartel of Osram, Phillips, and General Electric formed to control the manufacturing of light bulbs. Their main goal was to prevent technology that would increase the service life of bulbs. They standardized the life of bulbs at 1000 hours and raised prices because they had no other competition. This idea seems quaint by today's technology with energy efficient bulbs like LED's. It seems that World War II caused the eventual break up of this cartel. This was subsequently labeled the light bulb conspiracy. I could easily see this happening, and I suspect that it has happened with other industry groups.

The Vril Society sounds like science fiction to me. Supposedly it's a secret group founded by an Austrian woman by name of Maria Orsic. They believed in an alternate energy source called Vril energy that was a cosmic-life-force. This sounds like the Force in Star Wars. Maybe that's where George Lucas got the idea. The Vril energy was part magnetism, part gravity and part unknown. This society's goal was to make Germany a power that could take over the world. In addition they believed that they could communicate with alien races using this energy. In fact they claimed to have communicated with a race called the Vril-ya. The women of the society grew their hair long, twisting it into pony tails, believing that their hair acted as antenna, aiding in contacting extraterrestrials. They even came up with a flying saucer design that used anti-gravity effect to fly. There is a possibility that Hitler knew about this and may have authorized a prototype. Also, Rudolf Hess and Rudolf von Sebottendorf, founder of the Thule society, supposedly used Orsic's communication idea to contact the Sumi, a humanoid race that had colonized Earth 500 million years ago and were the ancestors of the modern day Aryan race. Also, the saucer spacecraft that the Vril society designed was test flown by World War I ace LotharWaiz, but it crashed after a short flight. He escaped unharmed. Subsequent newer designed were tested, including the Vril-2, which was vertical takeoff craft. Then, we find that the Vril society found that two habitable planets orbited Aldebaran (a star 68 light years away), and they planned a trip to that solar system using a wormhole. There is also a theory that the technology was hidden in Antarctica, and that the U.S. sent an expedition there after the war to battle the Nazi and recover their UFO technology. This would make a great science fiction movie. To me, it proves how crazy the Nazis were.

Did the government conceal green battery technology? I'm not sure about this because there are a lot of new ideas for batteries. One is from the University of Illinois that is working on a lithium-ion battery that will be 2,000 times more powerful and recharge 1,000 times faster. This advancement is based on a new cathode and anode structures. A standard lithium-ion battery employs solid two-dimensional graphite anodes and cathode made from a lithium salt. The new advancement uses porous three-dimensional anodes and cathodes that employ polystyrene on a glass substrate. Nickel is electrodeposited onto the polystyrene, and then nickel-tin is deposited on the anode and manganese dioxide is deposited on the cathode. The porous structure increases the surface area of the both the anode and the cathode resulting in a vast improvement in efficiency. This sounds cool to me. There are also many new ideas to make smaller batteries using nano-technology. So, if there was a plot to suppress new battery development, it sure doesn't appear to be working.

That's my take on these technology conspiracies. Some are valid and others are not. That's the way it goes.

Thanks for reading.