alt Hacker News> Just setting it up would cost millions of dollars and running it may cost millions more.
You're a couple orders of magnitude too high.
Polypropylene film isn't that expensive. A thousand feet per minute is only 10 miles per hour, which is not that fast at all. Humidity and heat aren't hard to generate in a closed space.
This is the kind of thing that's within the budget of some ambitious YouTubers, not millions of dollars.
It's a fun urban legend. The red flag for anyone who has studied anything related to electromagnetism is the way it's described as a wall, not a force that gradually grows stronger as you get closer. Forces don't work at distance like that.
You also have to suspend disbelief and imagine this force field didn't impact the equipment itself. We're supposed to believe that a grown man can't push up against the field at a distance away from the source, but the plastic film and machinery inside of the field are continuing to operate as usual?
It's a fun urban legend. Leave it be, but don't take it seriously.
Replies
> The red flag for anyone who has studied anything related to electromagnetism is the way it's described as a wall, not a force that gradually grows stronger as you get closer. Forces don't work at distance like that.
You might be taking “wall” too literally. I have no trouble believing that someone would call it a wall even if the force did gradually grow stronger over a significant distance.
The article mentions "50K ft. rolls 20ft wide". While you might not need the full 50K ft length (if you can even buy such a roll with less length), the 20 ft wide spec is probably fairly important. I wonder how much that'd cost, including transportation? Also, I have no idea how much it'd cost to buy or make machinery and supports to sufficiently handle such a sized roll. What are you estimating these costs would be?
> it's described as a wall, not a force that gradually grows stronger as you get closer. Forces don't work at distance like that.
It's described as a wall because it's not just running a straight line. The PP line creates an archway where the "wall" is located. That's where the field is most intense. It's noticeable elsewhere but that's the point where as indicated in the paper they can no longer push through it.
> You also have to suspend disbelief and imagine this force field didn't impact the equipment itself. We're supposed to believe that a grown man can't push up against the field at a distance away from the source, but the plastic film and machinery inside of the field are continuing to operate as usual?
This is also addressed in the paper. The lines can run 50-100% faster than it normally does but the faster they run it the more problematic the interference is. So during normal operation they limited it to 750-1000fpm.