Secret Science!

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How realistic is this idea of "secret science" tech or scientific ideas too dangerous for the public to become aware of?

For example some scientists have proposed that we exist in a higher universe. We occupy a membrane in a space consisting of many dimensions. Gravity or the graviton string is able to move between membranes however which means that string theorists believe that we may be able to communicate with other dimensions by using powerful graviton sources. What if for the sake of fantasising a small team of scientists actually pulled this off and decided not to reveal it to the public at large? In this example the community of scientists occupy a closed off section of the scientific world because no real research is being conducted in this field as far as I know. This means that there would be less cross fertilisation and back and forth idea sharing than usual.

So is it realistic to think of the government or scientists as keeping knowledge back from the public or is information of any magnitude impossible to conceal for any length of time?

If any scientific discovery can be weaponised, then there will likely be attempts to keep that discovery quiet if possible and to further develop that discovery behind closed doors in military establishments. It was too late / impossible to keep nuclear fission quiet but all developments regarding exploiting that to make nuclear weapons was kept secret.

That said, I think there are far more conspiracy theories about science and cover-ups than there is in reality.

In the US, we have the "Invention Secrecy Act" [source 1]. Patent applications can be classified based on "secrecy orders".

"Secrecy order bars the award of a patent, orders that the invention be kept secret, restricts the filing of foreign patents, and specifies procedures to prevent disclosure of ideas contained in the application. 5,002 secrecy orders were in effect at the end of fiscal year 2007, typically for high military significance, such as cryptography and weapons development".

They store these patent applications in a vault somewhere around DC.

sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invention_Secrecy_Act

But what about the science that makes the inventions possible

If you are a government employed scientist you likely had to sign documents stating that any and all discoveries you made while in the employ of the government are the property of the government and may not be disclosed to third parties without written permission. I had to sign the "official secrets act" when I worked for the UK government. My work wasn't particularly sensitive but some of my friends in other establishments worked on some top secret stuff associated with biological warfare. It was all hush-hush as you'd expect.

The reason we failed to keep a monopoly on nuclear fission has little to do with any failure to keep secrets. Its because you can't copyright the laws of nature. If one country can split atoms then another country can figure out how to split atoms (one nation's atoms, are the same as any other nations atoms). Secrecy delays the inevitable spread of, or independent invention, of an idea by a few years. But it cant stop it forever.

I agree; what governments try to do though is keep the details of the weaponisation secret. So for example, from my physics education I'm quite capable of building a crude nuclear fission bomb if I had the materials and a suitable workshop. Not that I ever would, I'm just saying from a know-how point of view. However, there are scientists who have developed very sophisticated mechanisms and ways of getting the biggest bang out of the material and those details are classified along with the guidance systems and other aspects of the rockets the nukes can be launched with.

Some conspiracy nuts.... I mean "conspiracy enthusiasts" ...believe in both the Philadelphia Experiment, AND that they faked the Moon landing. They believe we had the ability to get a thousand ton naval warship to time travel between Philadelphia harbor, and Norfolk Harbor back in 1942, but that we did NOT have the technology to travel to the Moon in 1969 (and thus had to fake the Moon Landing in the back lot of a Hollywood studio). We are both concealing how advanced we are, AND concealing how backward we are at the same time!

There's a difference in your analogy.

Philadelphia Experiment - TOP SECRET, and supposedly the experiment was to "cloak" a ship...not time travel. Unexpected outcome results in all research being squirreled away.

Moon Landing - Very public, and it is possible we were not able to make the landing as soon as we wanted to (I believe we most likely did land on the moon as history remembers), but that it was so public and failure would have been a national disgrace, IF we could not accomplish the mission, there would certainly be motivation to "fake it" for the sake of appearances.

If we faked the moon landing, that doesn't mean we didn't send a ship there and back. Watch the movie Capricorn One (about the same thing except the first manned mission to Mars). In the movie, NASA sent the rocket to Mars. It went into orbit and came back. The LANDING was faked in a studio, not the whole launch and flight. When the returning capsule has a heat shield failure, the astronauts become a liability and have to run for their lives because if anyone finds out they are alive, they will know the mission was faked to avoid looking bad to the world.

Regardless of what the Philadadelphia experiment was for the result was the the ship jumped back in forth in time between being where it was before in Norfolk, and where it was then in Philadelphia.

If we had the capability of doing that in 1942 then sending a man to the Moon would have been a piece of cake.

And both things are alleged to be "top secret": the only difference being one is an achievement (time travel AND cloaking), and the other a NON achievement (the non landing on the Moon being covered up).

False reasoning.

FTL travel might be so easy to do, but we've not stumbled across how to do it.

Going to the moon in a ship where every gram of weight has to be calculated for (as you can't carry a vast surplus of fuel) is a very tricky deal. More so, if ANYTHING goes wrong, you don't just miss the moon, you lose the crew, the ship, etc.

SENDING AN UNMANNED PROBE to the moon is much easier than sending a living being and getting him back alive. Arguably, we still don't fully understand what energies an organic being would be subjected to OUTSIDE Earth's magnetosphere. Some think space flight (even outside the star system) would be impossible without significant layers of shielding to protect the occupants of the ship from the energies which abound beyond the termination shock of our sun.

The Philadelphia Experiment was a chance happening. They shot for one goal and supposedly found something unexpected. Total chance happening...one that (as far as we know) has not been attempted again.

The moon missions were open and involved compensating for many unknowns as best as they could. It is possible we couldn't pull it off on the first landing and "faked it" to not look bad, but later missions could have figured out what was missing and get the job done.

"... they hired Stanley Kubrick to fake the moon landing... and Stanley Kubrick was an aspie... therefore... aspies are aliens... from the moon... "
^I think I have predicted the next big conspiracy theory; it will probably be promoted by Autism Speaks.

Although, admittedly, naturalplastic, I've heard that the latest rendition of the fake moon landing conspiracy says that we had the technology and went to the moon, but the footage they showed us was fake. I don't think there would be any motivation for going to the moon, filming, and then releasing fakes.