I’m not sure if the telegraph is a reputable newspaper, but it has an article about starlite, which claims to be a material with absolutely revolutionary thermal properties. It makes lots of claims about specific tests and quotes from specific people that support the notion.
But the whole story pegs my BS meter pretty hard. The idea that we’ve got a super advanced, revolutionary material that would have many uses, but no one wanted to bother to buy a license for it, is an extremely difficult claim to swallow. And the material itself sounds entirely too revolutionary and too good to be true. Combining these two bullshits make the plausibility of it roughly bullshit^2.
So what’s the story here, which parts are bullshit? Are the claims about having it given to the various agencies for tests lies? Is the whole thing made up? Is it real with the properties it claims yet no one finds it useful enough to bother to pay the licensing fee?
Edit: Here’s a youtube youtube video of the egg/blowtorch demonstration
Sounds like bullshit to me. First, he’d only have to give a matchstick sized sample to any major materials company to make them suddenly very interested. Second, things that need dozens of ingredients only get that way through experimentation that is very complicated and probably out of reach of a lone inventor. Third, the story is too complicated, and there is video involved, and things that supposedly mimic a nuclear blast - none of this would be reasonable.
I don’t have a piece of his material, and only skimmed the article, but I place my bet on “bullshit”.
From what I’ve read it’s not that no-one wanted to buy a licence, it’s that the inventor was fanatical about keeping control of his idea, and hence made demands considered unreasonable by potential commercial partners, about controlling the use of the idea and so on. Hence he keeps the formula in his head.
NBC video interview with him here. Apparently the UK’s Atomic Weapons Establishment at Foulness tested the material with a nuclear flash and the Royal Signals and RADAR establishment tested it with high-powered lasers (according to this).
The Telegraph is a reputable newspaper, but maybe this journalist has been taken for a ride. I agree with you. This story is absolutely riddled with implausibilities. Unfortunately, once a paper’s technology journalist has been conned there is probably no-one higher up on most papers’ editorial staff who knows enough about science and technology to catch it.
I do not think anyone these days is mixing up revolutionary new types of plastic in their kitchen food mixer.
Who is subjecting anything to nuclear blasts these days? Nuclear weapons are no longer being tested.
It sounds to me like he has actually invented something that might be useful, but is something of a paranoid eccentric who is difficult to deal with, and no one has determined the commercial value of his invention to be greater than the aggravation involved in dealing with him.
Furthermore, what he is claiming is not all that revolutionary - aerogel has been around for years, and has similar properties, although his invention does seem to have some advantages over it.
This crap about resisting a nuclear blast is just bullshit. Yeah, the material may be able to withstand relatively high temperatures, but if something gets close enough to a nuclear explosion, it will all turn to plasma no matter what it’s made of. Furthermore, this stuff is not going to stand up to the atmospheric shock wave from a nuclear blast, nor shield anyone from neutrons, x-rays, etc.
If this guy wanted to, he could just file a patent, and go on the road giving demonstrations to companies who might be interested in an exclusive license for their industry. A shame that someone with his apparent technical skill and knowledge does not know how to navigate the commercial world.
I’d seen the Starlite demo on US television back in the early '80’s, basically a copy of UK presentation. It’s hard to see what is really happening in the “egg under blowtorch” test, but lots of what the guy says, sounds like bunk. I did read some other opinions of it on the sci.chem newsgroup back in the day, and those discussions are archived, so you can browse them. It always looked to me like epoxy resin with asbestos mixed in.