Popular science communicator and creator of the Veritasium YouTube channel Derek Muller and UCLA professor of natural philosophy Alexander Kusenko have a $ 10,000 bet on a wind - powered vehicle that has been at the center of a heated up debate for over a 10 . The vehicle in question is the Blackbird , an experimental land yacht that was work up to demonstrate a physical science debate : can it move quicker than the winds that actuate it if wind is its only rootage of acceleration ?
At first , this come along to be a huge violation of the laws of conservation of energy , one of the central dogma of our creation . Physics says wind - power vehicles can exceed idle words speeding when they are oriented at an angle to the wind direction , but not when they are exactly parallel to the lee force . Rick Cavallaro , who designedBlackbird in 2010 , never claimed to have found a way around this police but instead believes they built a machine that can get much more out of the breaking wind than is conventionally expect .
The Blackbird has a tumid propellor at the back connected to the wheels , When the vehicle moves thanks to the action of the breaking wind , the propellor pushes air behind the country yacht , making it go faster . Eventually even quicker than the wind , apparently prove the debate . It works not just with a downwind but also with an upwind . However , many people remain extremely doubting of the results .
That ’s where Muller comes in . He made a TV on the controversial fomite , style “ adventure My Life To settle down A Physics Debate , ” and put himself in the driver ’s tooshie to test it .
Muller regain that the vehicle did indeed outstrip the velocity of the downwind appraise . He also provided an account for how the whole organisation worked . But the explanation did not sit well with Prof. Kusenko .
Kusenko had previously collaborated with Muller so got in contact with him , reportsVice , and after a well-disposed back - and - forth decided to settle down this with the powerful $ 10,000 bet . Kusenko ’s main parameter against the explanation and the vehicle is not that it ’s unsufferable but that it did not prove what it was plant up to essay .
In aseries of slideshe has shared , Kusenko argues that the Blackbird can only get debauched than the wind if the malarky speed changes throughout the traveling . According to the physicist ’s formula , with a constant wind speed , the fomite wo n’t be able-bodied to outrun the jazz . Not only that , but if it were to outrun the wind , the fomite would experience a deceleration .
And that make for us to the stakes . The textbook intelligibly submit that the wind in the mental test need to be constant in time and not change the pinnacle between the vehicle and the propellor . The two have contrive to work on this out with a model edition of the Blackbird that can be more easily tested under laboratory conditions . Everything touch to this experiment will be share publicly .
witness to this wager included Neil DeGrasse - Tyson , Bill Nye , and Sean Carroll . If Kusenko is vindicate , Muller ’s become to donate the money toKuduan online learning platform that Kusenko co - founded . Muller has asked Twitter for help to bump the right Greek valerian to donate the inwardness if it turn out he ’s right .
[ H / T : Vice ]
