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A wind-powered vehicle that can travel twice as fast as the wind itself

businessinsider.com

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Re: A wind-powered vehicle that can travel twice as fast as the wind itself

#2
The most surprising thing here is that someone on Twitter made a bet, lost the bet, and then actually paid said bet.

Playing devil's advocate here a little: The whole machine is very counter-intuitive, and I can see how I myself may disbelieve it if not for the irrefutable demonstration(s)[0].

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCsgoLc_fzI

Re: A wind-powered vehicle that can travel twice as fast as the wind itself

#5
This is slightly off topic but I have been using this trick lately to try to determine which part of a news article is likely to be BS: read the article in the movie announcer voice (you know the one: “in a world gone mad, one man…”). Whatever headlines or parts of the article sound boring are likely to be legit and whatever parts sound like they would fit in an action movie are likely overblown, underreseaeched, irrelevant, etc. Try it with this passage:

> They even brought in several of science's biggest names, including Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson, to help decide who was right.

This part just stands out like a sore thumb.

Re: A wind-powered vehicle that can travel twice as fast as the wind itself

#7

This is slightly off topic but I have been using this trick lately to try to determine which part of a news article is likely to be BS: read the article in the movie announcer voice (you know the one: “in a world gone mad, one man…”). Whatever headlines or parts of the article sound boring are likely to be legit and whatever parts sound like they would fit in an action movie are likely overblown, underreseaeched, irr…

Science's Biggest Names! It got a chuckle out of me while reading.

Re: A wind-powered vehicle that can travel twice as fast as the wind itself

#8

For those that hate the way news articles are written I found the Wikipedia article a much clearer read https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackbird_(wind-powered_vehi...

Like the professor in TFA I am also confused: how can the ground be imparting power to the propeller while moving downwind?

Re: A wind-powered vehicle that can travel twice as fast as the wind itself

#9

This is slightly off topic but I have been using this trick lately to try to determine which part of a news article is likely to be BS: read the article in the movie announcer voice (you know the one: “in a world gone mad, one man…”). Whatever headlines or parts of the article sound boring are likely to be legit and whatever parts sound like they would fit in an action movie are likely overblown, underreseaeched, irr…

In this case, your BS detector is giving you a false result: https://youtu.be/yCsgoLc_fzI?t=275

Re: A wind-powered vehicle that can travel twice as fast as the wind itself

#10

The most surprising thing here is that someone on Twitter made a bet, lost the bet, and then actually paid said bet. Playing devil's advocate here a little: The whole machine is very counter-intuitive, and I can see how I myself may disbelieve it if not for the irrefutable demonstration(s)[0]. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCsgoLc_fzI

The small demonstration that made it click for me is from that video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCsgoLc_fzI&t=812s

This is exactly what the blackbird does, only with a propeller pushing air in place of the big wheel, and it's a much clearer and simpler demonstration of the same idea, which you can trivially verify.

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