JASON Study Debunks Gravitational Wave “Threat”
The elite JASON defense science advisory panel dismissed claims that high frequency gravitational waves (HFGW) could pose any kind of national security threat.
In a study (pdf) prepared for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the JASONs concluded that “No foreign threat in HFGW is credible, including: communication by means of HFGW; object detection or imaging (by HFGW radar or tomography); vehicle propulsion by HFGW; or any other practical use of HFGW.”
Gravitational waves were predicted by Einstein’s general theory of relativity and their existence has been indirectly confirmed by experiment. But up to now they have never been directly measured.
“Unfortunately, relativity and gravitation theory have, over the last century, been the subject of a great deal of pseudo-science, in addition to real science. Therefore, in evaluating ambitious claims about gravitational applications, one must consider the possibility that the claims are misguided and wrong,” the JASONs advised. “There is no substitute for seeking expert scientific and technical opinion in such matters.”
A copy of the new JASON report was obtained by Secrecy News. See “High Frequency Gravitational Waves,” October 2008.
Update: Noah Shachtman has more here.
With targeted policy interventions, we can efficiently and effectively support the U.S. innovation economy through the translation of breakthrough scientific research from the lab to the market.
Crowd forecasting methods offer a systematic approach to quantifying the U.S. intelligence community’s uncertainty about the future and predicting the impact of interventions, allowing decision-makers to strategize effectively and allocate resources by outlining risks and tradeoffs in a legible format.
The energy transition underway in the United States continues to present a unique set of opportunities to put Americans back to work through the deployment of new technologies, infrastructure, energy efficiency, and expansion of the electricity system to meet our carbon goals.
The United States has the only proven and scalable tritium production supply chain, but it is largely reserved for nuclear weapons. Excess tritium production capacity should be leveraged to ensure the success of and U.S. leadership in fusion energy.