Dr. Robert (Bob) Novella

speaker

1,941 appearances 6 recordings 1 series first heard May 2026 last heard 19 Sep

Dr. Robert (Bob) Novella’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 6 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 3.

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The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe · The Skeptics Guide #827 - May 15 2021 podcast

I'm not sure how they did that because that's five times the speed of sound. matched

That's impressive. matched

So they have this amazing hypersonic air system. matched

that they then mix with a fuel like hydrogen. matched

So you've got this mixture, and they angle that mixture of air, supersonic air and the fuel, they angle it towards a ramp, and that ramp kind of goes up a certain degree, say 30 degrees. matched

And because that hypersonic flow of air hits that ramp, it kind of flows into itself and compresses itself, which creates a shockwave, which then heats and detonates the fuel-air mixture. matched

So you got that? matched

So then this blast, matched

This creates exhaust gases, and they blast out at very high speed, causing the massive thrust. matched

So that's what this oblique detonation wave engine is. matched

I guess oblique refers to the oblique angle that the air and fuel mixture hits, which causes the shockwave that ignites everything. matched

So in theory, the math tells us that if you can create a detonation using this type of engine, that you will be able to create an exhaust traveling at 13,000 miles per hour or 21,000 kilometers per hour. matched

That's 17 times the speed of sound. matched

This is far faster than anyone has ever traveled in the atmosphere. matched

The experimental setup by these researchers, they actually made this happen. matched

This actually happened. matched

What they did was they were tweaking it. matched

In the test, they were tweaking the hypersonic airflow and the air fuel mix. matched

So they would kind of change it up. matched

And by changing it up, they were able to come up with this magic mixture, this magic numbers that produced a stable detonation wave for three seconds. matched

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