Dean's World

A friend of mine sent me an interesting news story that appeared in a Canadian paper in January. It's about a guy who claims to have an amazing invention. He calls it the "Angel Light" and claims that it can see through practically any material, and also instantly disables practically any electronic device it's pointed toward, and also seems to kill fish. Supposedly the French and Saudi governments are interested in it. Click here to read the incredible story.

I use the word "incredible" advisedly: in my view, it usually means "not credible."

Note all the things wrong with it: this guy's not a professional engineer, just an inventor working in his garage. That doesn't prove anything, some technological innovations have indeed been created by such people: just look at the careers of Les Paul or Steve Wozniak for example. But rarely is it something more than a refinement of earlier technologies. More often such garage inventors are just cranks working on perpetual motion machines, force fields that don't work, flying cars that don't fly, and so on.

Second strike: read the entire story carefully. Go over it and tell me if I'm wrong about this, but, it appears that absolutely no one claims to have seen this doohickey work except the inventor. There are allusions to people at MIT but no names. One former MIT professor is quoted, and he says stuff like "there's a Nobel Prize" for Hurtubise if the Angel Light works, and "There are laws of physics waiting to be written for what he's talking about." Yeah no lie. If I claim I've built a teleportation machine in my basement, I'd expect my Nobel prize and some rewrites on elementary physics too. But I don't have any teleportation machine, do I?

(Well, not so far as any of you know... mwahahaha!)

Third strike: It all came to him in a dream. He has no blueprints.

Fourth strike: he shut it down because it's too dangerous. So dangerous he didn't even give a short demonstration to the photographer who took these photos?

Fifth strike: here's a story some amazing kevlar protective cushions that he's planning on outfitting the Canadian military with for free. It sounds amazing, but is it? Look at how they describe the tests: shooting directly at the cushions or attaching explosives directly onto the cushions. So basically he's got a dense kevlar shield that may absorb some blasts. Is there anything truly awe-inspiring here?

The one thing he's done that actually looks interesting is what he calls his "fire paste." That's been demonstrated to work for television cameras at Discovery. However, there are a lot of fireproof materials; the tiles on the space shuttle act much like that, and that's 30 year old technology. The only thing really interesting is that he claims he can make his stuff with common household chemicals, that it's extremely cheap, biodegradable, and non-toxic. If all that's the case, why hasn't he patented it and started selling it yet? He should make a fortune.

We of course cannot know that this guy's delusional. But someone needs to be asking him for rigorous proof, not camera stunts and allusions to nameless people he says he's talked to.