NASA Developing Antigravity Device

Cosmiverse ^ | March 26, 2002 08:20 CST

[Texaggie79]

NASA Developing Antigravity Device
March 26, 2002 08:20 CST

NASA has revealed plans to test a machine to determine if defying the bonds of gravity is a dream or if it is real science. After an almost two-year wait, NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, is poised to take delivery of a machine that its supporters hope will defy the laws of gravity.

According to the LA Times, the heart of the device is an effect so radical that it could change the way we interact with one of nature's most fundamental forces. Gravity!

This new step is being dubbed a revolution of sorts. Spaceships would be just one spin-off of this particular revolution. While, on Earth, the internal combustion engine could become an endangered species, only to be replaced by gravity-powered cars, planes and elevators.

The dream of defying gravity has a long history. Since the days of Icarus, history is littered with failed attempts free ourselves from gravity. The team behind the NASA project told the LA Times that they are basing their efforts on real science.

NASA has paid almost $600,000 to have the machine custom-built by Ohio-based Superconductive Components, Inc. (SCI), a company that specializes in high-tech ceramics and superconducting materials. SCI Vice President James R. Gaines Jr. told the LA Times, "If it works, what a hoot!"

Revolutions are often quite bloody this one is no exception. According to the LA Times, physicists believe the whole project is a waste of time based on unsubstantiated research of dubious origin. Gravity, they contend, is in no danger of diminution; the only thing they see at stake is NASA's credibility.

The story begins in the pages of the respected science journal Physica C. In 1992, Russian physicist Evgeny Podkletnov (right) published the results of an experiment in which he claimed to have discovered a "gravity-shielding" effect.

According to the article, Podkletnov had managed to reduce the force of gravity on a small object by up to 2%, in effect; he had reduced its weight. Now 2% may not sound like much, but to the physics community, it was like a bomb blast. The law of gravity is one of science's most sacrosanct principles; any breaching of its walls would represent a major threat to the current theoretical framework.

If verified, such a finding would bag its discoverer a Nobel Prize. But Podkletnov's paper was hazy on the details. He was worried that others would take his ideas, that he would not be given proper credit, so therefore he refused to allow anyone into his lab to see his apparatus.

The incomplete disclosure, coupled with the outlandish nature of the claim itself, left most physicists scoffing at claims. As a result, Podkletnov was thrown out of his job at the Tampere University of Technology in Finland. Since his paper appeared a decade ago, Podkletnov told the LA Times that many people have successfully replicated his results. But they all have yet to report them in a peer-reviewed journal.

All those who have published have failed to detect any clear results. One of them is Marshall Space Flight Center researcher Ron Koczor, who spent two years investigating various aspects of Podkletnov's experiments, and eventually gave up. Podkletnov insists the gravity-shielding effect only occurs when all the experimental conditions are precisely right. Koczor decided it was a job for the professionals, and in 1999 he persuaded NASA to commission SCI to build a facsimile of Podkletnov's original apparatus.

The Times says that while the details may have been sketchy, the basic idea behind the device is fairly simple. It begins with a disc, about six inches in diameter and a quarter of an inch thick, made out of a superconducting material whose recipe Podkletnov has carefully kept secret. The disc is cooled to below -233 degrees centigrade and levitated using a magnetic field. Then an electric field is applied to make the disc spin.

So far, all we have is a variation on an electric motor, but Podkletnov claims that when the disc rotates at more than 5,000 revolutions per minute, an object placed above it begins to lose weight. Somehow, he says, the force of gravity is being counteracted, the trick is, you have to get the setup exactly right, the LA Times reports.

"I wish it was as simple as baking a cake," SCI's Gaines told the LA Times. Even with the company's expertise it has not been easy. The project is a year behind schedule. Gaines added that his team is almost there, and they should be handing over the device to NASA soon.

Gaines' technicians are not gravity experts; their field is materials science. They have simply built the machine to agreed specifications. But, of course, they would be thrilled if it did work; success would ensure an enormous boost to superconducting research. Testing of the device will be NASA's responsibility, and he awaits their results with great expectation, Gaines continued.

Personally, I am thrilled to hear my tax dollars are hard at work subverting the laws of nature, or attempting to, at any rate. Who knows what conceptual mountains we might demolish if our imaginations aim high enough?

Johannes Kepler, the founding father of modern astrophysics, told the LA Times. Kepler saw science as a form of play, empirical data set an irrevocable boundary to this play, but within its arena the imagination must be free to roam.

According to the LA Times, this is not NASA's first attempt to look for the Podkletnov effect. Last year, Marshall Space Flight Center funded a different experiment in which a very sensitive Cavendish balance was used to try and detect a change of weight in a superconducting apparatus. Results of that study were "inconclusive."

Randall Peters, a physicist at Mercer University in Macon, Ga., was a consultant to that project. He helped to customize the balance for this unorthodox use. "My own position," Peters told the LA Times, "is that I'd be greatly surprised if the effect being sought was actually found." Like most physicists, he feels confident that gravity will withstand the Podkletnov test. Nonetheless, he added "physics is full of surprises," and he believes that scientists need to maintain an open mind.

Gaines agreed, defending NASA's willingness to go out on such a speculative limb: "The upside potential is so huge, they really couldn't afford to miss out if it is true." NASA's interest in circumventing gravity is not theoretical. The agency is literally reaching for the stars. Even in the zero gravity environment of outer space, one will still need to accelerate a ship to extremely high speeds to get to the stars in any viable framework, something that cannot be done with conventional rocket technology.

The Podkletnov effect suggests it may be possible to effectively reduce the mass of the ship, thereby reducing the overall energy needed for acceleration, the Times reports. The authors of the July paper introduced their experimental analysis discussion on the limitations of rocket propulsion.

"Using current rocket technology," the LA Times cite the paper as reading, "a trip to the next star would easily consume the mass-energy equivalent of a planet in order to arrive within a reasonable lifetime." Technologies like nuclear fission and fusion offer some hope, "but still will not support the 'Star Trek' vision of space exploration."

The report explains that if we are serious about space travel, we need a large leap forward in propulsive power. Investigating potential options is the task of NASA's Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project, which funded last year's Cavendish balance experiment. Then headed by aerospace engineer Marc G. Millis, the BPP group has license to boldly go where no man has gone before, to the outermost limits of current scientific understanding.

Speaking by phone from his office at the John H. Glenn Research Center in Ohio, Millis told the LA Times "we're not asking anyone to develop a warp drive." NASA understands, he added, that this is going to take time, he stressed that they are "interested in developments of short increments."

Giant spikes of speculation are to be sheathed in favor of careful step-by-step progress. Specifically, the BPP is seeking projects that can be feasibly achieved in two to three years. Already, the office has funded five projects that investigate anomalous physical effects. Most do not deal with gravity per se; as Millis noted, "modifying gravity" is just one possible direction from which to approach the propulsion problem.

Additionally, the group has also funded work on reducing the effect of inertial mass, on quantum tunneling and on the relationship between electromagnetism and space-time. Well aware of the threat to NASA's reputation, Millis is determined to encourage only the most clean-cut suitors, people with university affiliations and the like.

When the BPP's next casting call goes out in the fall, Millis added the agency would keep an open mind. The message of history, he continued, is that new insights can come from the most seemingly unlikely directions. By definition, no one can predict from whence the next revolution will arise. Gentleman, start your engines.

Source: NASA; L.A. Times

[Goldi-Lox]

link to posted article in comment above:

http://www.cosmiverse.com/space05160104.html

[techcor]

I remember as a kid, I thought that NASA had anti-gravity rooms that astronauts trained in.

I remember that room! I think it was on "I Dream of Jeannie". Seriously though, scientists have levitated a really small frog using magnets but it doesn't cancel gravity it offsets it. Takes an enormous amount of power (like 7 megawatts or so for a frog). I think that if you could reverse it so that you could create an earth-like gravity on the moon, then you would have something that would really let mankind colonize the solor system. Hey, put me on your ping list. Actually, I think there should be a seperate forum for science. There seems to be enough interest.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

I missed seeing this originally.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Forget the access link.

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