Forbidden Science

How Yesterday’s Heresy Fuels Tomorrow’s Breakthroughs

Yesterday’s Myths, Today’s Realities

Human history is a catalog of impossibilities turned into realities. For centuries, humanity was bound by myths and dogmas, clinging to explanations that fit within its limited understanding. Take Galileo, for instance, who dared to defy the prevailing belief that the universe revolved around Earth. In 1632, his assertion that Earth orbited the sun earned him condemnation, imprisonment, and nearly execution. What we now teach children as basic science was once heresy punishable by death.

Barry Thompson’s 2014 “Forbidden Energy” pitch for XPRIZE echoes this historical struggle. He framed the rejection of ideas like cold fusion, zero-point energy, and matter-to-energy conversion as a modern Inquisition—not by the Church, but by scientific orthodoxy. As Thompson explained, the barriers aren’t physical but cultural. Innovators in these fields face not just skepticism but outright blacklisting. Universities won’t fund the research, boardrooms won’t entertain the discussions, and society dismisses such concepts as pseudoscience before evidence can even be explored.

This tribal nature—our inclination to disdain anything that challenges our worldview—is the same force that once branded Galileo as a heretic. Yet history reminds us that what seems “crazy” today often becomes the cornerstone of tomorrow’s breakthroughs. Ideas once dismissed as impossible—electricity, flight, even the internet—were brought to life by visionaries willing to defy convention. Thompson’s call to action was simple yet profound: What if, like those past pioneers, we dared to imagine what could be instead of clinging to what we already know?

The Horizon of the Unknown

Barry’s pitch wasn’t just about energy; it was a rallying cry for audacity in the face of uncertainty. His “Forbidden Energy” proposal set an ambitious goal: a $20 million prize for the first team to generate substantive energy from a novel source—twice in two weeks. Thompson acknowledged the difficulty of this challenge, even calling it “too audacious” and possibly unachievable. But that, he argued, was precisely the point. Great breakthroughs are born from audacity, not from playing it safe.

Thompson’s vision wasn’t just about discovering a new energy source—it was about shifting how we approach the unknown. He pointed out that success in this endeavor wouldn’t instantly solve global issues like hunger or climate change, but it could transform our ability to address these problems. A revolutionary energy source would be a game-changer, making the impossible seem achievable.

The pitch also revealed a deeper truth: fear of failure and ridicule often keeps us from exploring the unknown. Thompson highlighted how those who venture into unconventional science are often marginalized, their ideas dismissed before they’re properly tested. Yet, as he reminded his audience, the history of innovation is built on the willingness to ask “What if?” Just as Galileo’s heliocentric model seemed absurd to his contemporaries, so do concepts like vacuum energy or cold fusion seem improbable today. But what if these ideas aren’t impossible—just misunderstood?

Thompson’s audacious proposal challenges us to reconsider the limits of our understanding. It’s a reminder that standing at the horizon of the unknown, we have a choice: to turn away in fear or to step forward with curiosity. History favors the bold, and the “forbidden” ideas of today might just hold the keys to our future.

The Danger of Certainty in a World of Infinite Possibilities

Certainty has always been the nemesis of progress. When we believe we have all the answers, we stop asking questions. The line between science and fiction might seem clear to the educated mind, but history shows us it’s often blurred. This is where the outliers—the ones we call dreamers, misfits, or even wackos—play a critical role. They challenge what we believe to be true, and sometimes, they’re right.

Take Floyd Sweet’s Vacuum Triode Amplifier (VTA), a device claimed to harness zero-point energy—what some call the energy of “nothingness.” Sweet’s work was dismissed by mainstream science, branded as pseudoscience or outright fabrication. But what if it wasn’t entirely false? Sweet might not have succeeded in proving his claims to the scientific community, but his ideas weren’t without merit. Zero-point energy remains an active area of inquiry in quantum mechanics, and the potential of tapping into such an energy source could be transformative. Was Sweet a charlatan, or was he simply a visionary too far ahead of his time for the tools and validation methods available to him?

Now fast-forward to the present: an email from Matt Livelsberger to Sam Shoemate (I’ll let you Google that one up)—sent just days ago—captures a similar spirit of skepticism and curiosity. In this correspondence, the boundaries of plausibility are tested again. Is it a desperate grasp at impossible ideas, or could it contain the seeds of something revolutionary? While most would be quick to dismiss such communications as the ramblings of the overly imaginative, we’d be wise to remember how many times “impossible” has been proven wrong. After all, the pace of technological advancement today is astonishing; what seems like fiction one day can become fact the next.

Barry Thompson’s XPRIZE Visioneering pitch for “Forbidden Energy” ties all this together. While his proposal for a prize focused on groundbreaking energy sources has yet to materialize, his core idea remains powerful: the belief that radical innovation often comes from those outside the traditional mold. The XPRIZE organization understands that transformative breakthroughs rarely emerge from people entrenched in the status quo. Instead, they often arise from outsiders unshackled by what they’ve been told is impossible. These are the people who don’t know—or don’t care—where the line between science and fiction is supposed to be.

This is why I’ll always root for the underdog. The ones with the wacko ideas, the half-baked theories, and the unpolished pitches. They’re the ones who keep pushing when everyone else stops. Sure, they might not succeed, but isn’t it better to let them try than to vilify them for daring to dream? Their failures can still teach us something, even if only by revealing what doesn’t work. And if they do succeed? They change the world in ways no one thought possible.

Certainty is comfortable, but it’s also dangerous. It lulls us into thinking we’ve figured it all out, blinding us to new possibilities and leaving us trapped in ignorance. The world is moving faster than ever, and clinging to what we “know” risks stifling the very curiosity that drives progress. So let the dreamers and the daring keep going. Even if most of them don’t succeed, the few that do will remind us why the line between science and fiction was never meant to be a barrier—it was a line meant to be crossed.