An idea can change the world even if it sounds absurd in the first hearing.

In the recent past, scientists have come up with several incredible inventions that were beyond the imagination of humanity a few decades ago. Everything in this world has its pros and cons and technology is no different. Whether his work will bring prosperity to the world or will it cause destruction depends upon the intentions of the scientist. Recently, a lot of sci-fi movies have shown ‘Mad’ scientists and almost all of them have a poor reputation as they were assigned the negative role. Contrary to that, the Head of Mad Science at the Moonshot Factory, Rich Devaul, proposes a positive side of these scientists as they can pursue extremely challenging theories to create exceeding useful technologies.

He is leading a technical group of engineers, designers, and inventors who have suggested some of the most advanced embodiments of the technology. This division of Google was founded in 2010 under the name ‘X’. Nowadays, it is acting as a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. which is the parent company of Google. The proposition of a Space Cannon did circulate in the scientific community for a significant amount of time before fizzling out. Similarly, they also proposed Project Loon, a balloon-powered internet initiative, but it contradicted with the cannon in terms of its popularity as quite a lot of researchers found it an interesting and feasible solution.

The goal of this amazing technology was to provide internet services to the people of rural areas and in the regions that are affected by a natural disaster. The working mechanism of this revolutionary technology revolves around a group of balloons that would travel into the stratosphere and form a conveying network to offer high-speed internet to the users on the ground. An interesting feature of Project Loon was the size of these balloons as each of them will be nearly as big as a tennis court. They were tested at Puerto Rico in 2017 when a Hurricane Mania destroyed the infrastructure of the region. According to a report of the IEEE Spectrum, more than 200,000 people made use of the internet services they provided.

Devaul mentioned that a significant amount of working is needed before bringing an idea into the production phase. At the Science and Pop Culture Convention Future Con, he acknowledged that they do get a handful of exciting ideas at the X but some of them are just too expensive or impractical to pursue. He specifically quoted the examples of an Artificially Engineered Tornado Farm, which was to be used for weather engineering, and a Ground-based Cannon, which was expected to send equipment payloads into space. Despite these failures, he encouraged the audience to keep imagining all the ridiculous possibilities as it proves to be the first step towards an extraordinary solution. He also mentioned that it was one of their top priorities to envision radical solutions without being afraid of a failure. He concluded it by saying,

“Because failure is actually the process by which we learn how to do something new.”

An interesting event took place at Future Con when one of the audience members proposed that the energy crisis of our world can be solved if we travel to Mercury and bring ‘something’ with us. The funny part was that he himself didn’t know what that something will be but Devaul appreciated him by saying that the absurdity of such proposals is our inspiration. He referred that the discovery of Solar Panels would never have been possible without the idea of space travel so we shouldn’t neglect this idea completely as the journey to Mercury might prove beneficial in our quest of clean energy. He said,

“So, never dismiss even a ‘crazy’ statement! Follow that, and see where it leads you — and sometimes, it leads you in really amazing directions.”

Devaul advised all the wannabe, mad scientists, to stick with their ideas and come up with a prototype of their scheme, if possible. He praised the role of Crowdsource Funding Forums, like Kickstarter, and Venture Capitalists and encouraged students to make use of these opportunities in the following words:

“If there’s a problem that you really care passionately about and you’re willing to try things that may not work, almost anybody can do this — although it requires tremendous work. You build a team, you find the resources, and then eventually, your small, dedicated group can change the world.”