The SPI, photography, lateness and Scramjets

Last night I found myself at a bit of a loose end, so I went to a meeting of the Strange Phenomena Investigations group which Camilla had told me about. I missed the start, due to visiting sbisson and marypcb to borrow a telephoto camera which which to photograph mr_flay abseiling down the side of BBC TV Centre in aid of Children in Need. However, when I got there, they'd done it ½hr early and buggered off, so that was a bit of a waste of effort. Still, got me out of the house.

At SPI, I listened to a somewhat soporific talk about a haunted house in Gloucestershire. The speaker was keen to wave his hands and talk about "proof" of the existence of life after death and other things until I could take it no more and stood up to explain about what scientific standards of "proof" and demonstration actually mean, as compared to anecdotal evidence.

This, naturally, got me heckled a lot and turned the quiet, orderly meeting into a shouting match, but two or three people (including the moderator) came up to me afterwards to shake my hand and thank me for my contribution, saying that "we really need more people like you"  ( whisper it, kiddies - skeptics!) "at these meetings! You did a good job!"

Hugely entertaining. I shall return.

This led me, later, to be quizzed about the new top-secret spaceships that can go at 5,000 times the speed of sound. Were these "scramjet" things real? What did they do? How did they work?

Someone's clearly seen the coverage of NASA's test flight of the X-43a - perhaps on CNN or Slashdot.

My answer went on a bit, so I've put it here for posterity...

This was all off-the-cuff and unresearched. Corrections welcome.

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