Noah Shachtman - December 16, 2008

Fear not, tinfoil hat brigade. Despite what you may have heard on the Internets, the rippling of spacetime cannot be used as some sort of weapon. So says JASON, the Pentagon’s premiere scientific advisory board.

For years, word has circulated among the fringe-science set that high-frequency gravitational waves, or HFGWs, could be harnessed for “tremendously lucrative commercial and military applications.” Not only could these perturbations in spacetime produce the “ultimate wireless system” that “could communicate directly through the Earth from New York in the United States to Beijing in China, without the need for fiber optic cables, microwave relays, or satellite transponders.” To promoters like Dr. Robert Baker (pictured), HFGWs could also be a source “for through-earth, or through-water ‘X-rays.’” And they could knocking off-course “the motion of objects such as missiles (anything from bullets to ICBMs), spacecraft, rogue comets or minor planets that are destined to impact Earth, land or water vehicles or craft – a totally new propulsion system!”

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