[[1.4.x] Contract Pack: Anomaly Surveyor [v1.7.1] [2018-03-30]]

@nightingale hey, I was just curious if there is any plans to continue work on this pack? If not I was wondering if you would be ok with a revival? I was planning to see if I could get the Jool stuff working again and get it recompiled for current version.

[Cold Fusion, Q-Thrusters, Neutrinos, and Scientific Bias]

Science is a constructive discipline. We are entirely ok with looking for things that are wrong within it, but there must be a goal.

For example, there are teams at accelerator facilities looking for heavy photons. They almost certainly won't find them, because they almost certainly do not exist. Our theory says so. But it says so based on certain assumptions that don't absolutely have to be correct. And if heavy photons are found, we need to fix these assumptions and readjust our theory. It would be of great benefit, and we wouldn't have to scrap things we've learned. So all in all, it's worth wasting this effort just on the off chance. Because, occasionally, you do find that you're wrong. CP violations are a good example.

On the other hand, if Q-Thrusters or EMDrive are shown to work at thrust/power levels advertised, then physics is wrong. All of it. From very bottom to very top. There is not a shred of modern theory we can preserve against it. All of Quantum Mechanics and all of General Relativity ride on the concept of local symmetry groups, and these two devices violate these local symmetries. It is absolutely beyond salvage. And with these go all of classical mechanics, all of classical gravity, all of classical electrodynamics, all of classical thermodynamics... You get the point. There is absolutely nothing left that doesn't rest on these fundamental symmetries.

So we have a situation where two things are evident. First of all, if these devices work, we've made correct computations of everything from gyromagnetic ratios of elementary particles to signals we receive from distant neutron stars based on wrong physics. Lasers, semiconductors, superconductors, and even your GPS, all hinging on the assumption that symmetries hold, we got them by total chance in a world where these symmetries do not hold. Unlikely does not begin to describe it. I do not like to use the word "impossible", but I can think of nothing that's more appropriate.

And if, on this impossible chance, it does turn out to be true, what do we get? Complete collapse of all of physics with absolutely nothing to replace it. We'd have to go all the way back to Archimedes. It probably wouldn't require quite 2,000 years to catch up, but it'd be centuries for sure. And until then, what? We keep using these devices that produce thrust out of nothing? Who knows what else they produce out of nothing? If momentum isn't conserved, then why should energy be. And if you don't conserve energy, where is the guarantee that when you try to bring these up to full power they wouldn't start spewing black holes, or something.

It's absolutely destructive. If these things work, everything we know is wrong, and we should not continue using these things, because we cannot predict outcomes. At all. So not only are the odds of these devices working essentially zero, but so is their benefit. Why invest into something that is guaranteed to be a net loss no matter what?

On the note of the Q-thruster, you are of course implying that it works by violating known physics principles. The possibility of the design working due to some unknown principle that someone stumbled upon by accident does exist, the realm of possibility is vast though probability is a different matter. On another note, as I have read more into the concept it wouldn't technically violate what we know unless it did actually work as a truly reactionless drive but the concept is believed to function on a theoretical principle involving quantum vacuum virtual particles. However, the concept makes a lot of assumptions without proof they are real in the first place.

In the end it wouldn't be the first time someone discovered something other than what they thought they were making by pure accident.

[[WIP] [1.0.2+] [Kopernicus] KerbalGalaxy 2 | 0.7 - New star system!]

anyone here have any idea what causes my solar panels to register no energy flow before I hyperedit to a new star system or why they will occasionally drop to 0 ec and then back to normal (after changing star systems to get energy flowing correctly at all)