Stats for nerds
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5mentions
3people
2016–2023years
20% recommend60% neutral20% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- For anyone interested, a book was written on this about 15 years ago by a reporter from "Janes Defense Weekly". "The Hunt for Zero Point: Inside the Classified World of Antigravity Technology". Not as tin-hat as you might think, mostly a story of a lot of dead ends while trying to research some DARPA dark projects.
- The Hunt for Zero Point: Inside the Classified World of Antigravity Technology - Nick Cook.
- Nick Cook wrote a book in 2001 entitled The Hunt for Zero Point: Inside the Classified World of Antigravity. It's notable because Cook was an editor for Jane's Defense Weekly, a legendary and reputable defense publication of the utmost credibility.
A few years ago in a thread similar to this I discussed[0] and dissected[1] the book. My conclusion was that Cook is mistaken, but given incidents like this, and the fact he later uncovered a black UAV program, I always wonder.
- Per your link:
>"Although no evidence of the veracity of Witkowski’s statements has been produced, they reached a wider audience when they were retold by British author Nick Cook, who added his own views to Witkowski’s statements in The Hunt for Zero Point.[4]"
The WW2 "Bell" experiment narrative was actually my largest complaint with Cook's book. While it makes for a fantastic story that's pretty much screenplay material, it's very unlikely to be true.
- >I realize I'm going to sound absolutely bonkers, ...
At the risk of sounding even more bonkers, The Hunt for Zero Point[0] claims that most UFOs are attributable to an exotic man-made propulsion technology first developed in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
While I don't particularly believe the book's claims, it's worth mentioning because Nick Cook wrote it. Cook was the former aviation editor for Jane's Defence Weekly, which was quite a prestigious position during his tenure.
Though I read the book over a decade ago, I'm still puzzled.
The book basically claims the U.S. launched an anti-gravity program based on technology it extracted from Nazi Germany in the later stages of WW2, and that the subsequent rash of UFO sightings in the U.S. were related. Supposedly the technology then started to make its way into the mainstream[1], and was abruptly quashed.
It also advanced a couple of theories suggesting the B-2 bomber is more than the public was led to believe—ranging from having hypersonic propulsion capability at altitude (unlikely), to a more benign theory of an electrified leading edge for both aerodynamic and stealth purposes. If I recall, the latter theory required the use of a highly toxic substance, and I could see that given the Air Force's troubled history[2] with stealth coating toxicity.
The book also made claims of seemingly impossible transmutations being conducted by a fringe experimenter in his apartment, using high-voltage electricity. I'm sure there was more crazy stuff I failed to mention.
The reason the book continues to puzzle me is that, while it's easy to just say "Nick Cook went off the deep end", that isn't necessarily true. Despite the book being published in 2003, Cook remained as a consultant to Jane's from 2002 until 2008. In 2006 he uncovered a classified high-altitude UCAV program[3] by digging through budget requests. Now he runs his own consultancy[4]. Not exactly crazy.
My opinion is that while the majority of the book is probably not true, Cook may have been on to something. What exactly I'm unsure, other than that when you apply ridiculous amounts of electricity to objects in novel state or material configurations, you get interesting results. Whether that means there's some long-running government conspiracy to conceal such things is another question.
[0] http://www.amazon.com/The-Hunt-Zero-Point-Antigravity/dp/076...
[1] http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showpost.php?p=18892220&postc...
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/area-51-secre...
[3] http://defensetech.org/2006/04/23/air-forces-secret-drone-pr...
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