"Beam Me Up Scotty" Anti-gravity: Fact or Fiction?

Dearborn Highschool press release ^ | Russ Gibb

[ASA Vet]

"Beam Me Up Scotty" Anti-gravity: Fact or Fiction?

Dearborn High video/computer students are the first high school
students in the world to build an "antigravity???" machine for
2002-2003 Metro-Detroit Science Fair.

Yes, you can say impossible. Yes, you can say it defies Newton's
3rd law of gravity. Yes, you can say it's done with smoke and
mirrors. Nevertheless three teenage Dearborn High students,
Luke Duncan, 16, Ethan Rein, 17, and Jim Bergren, 16, built and flew
an "antigravity???" aircraft last Sunday in the school video/computer studio.

It has no fans, no jets, and no engines. It makes no sound, and
yet it flies. In fact the first time that the students flew the
craft it went up so fast and high that in future flights the
craft had to be tethered or it just kept going up and up.
The only power that is supplied to the beam ship is a thin electrical
conducting wire that connects to the fuselage of the
balsa wood and aluminum foil craft.

At first the students thought that it was working on a theory
called the ion wind, whereby electrons fly through the air
displacing air molecules thereby creating a small wind effect.
Yet recently a similar craft was built at Purdue University and
put in a vacuum chamber but it still flew. Oops, there goes
another theory.

The students have been working via phone and internet with
physicists and inventors all over the world to help them with
their project including the Russian physicist Dr. Podkletnov who
now lives in Finnland, The French Inventor Jean-Louis Naudin,
American inventor Russell Anderson, President of Applied Electrogravitics,
American Antigravity's Tim Ventura, their teacher Mr. Russ Gibb,
Michigan Technology Teacher of the Year 2000,
as well as many other people who have been building and working on lifters for years.
Please note, that many respected investigators of the antigravity phenomenon dispute that
beamship/lifter technology is an antigravity phenomen and say outright that it is not antigravity.
Students Luke, Jim, and Ethan say
"We don't know for sure what causes the craft to fly
and are simply investigated the different theories."

Interestingly, this year is the 100-year anniversary of the
Wright brothers first flight and also in the early 1900s, Nikola
Tesla, the electrical genius, and physicist George S. Piggot
were doing experiments on anti-gravity.

If you would like to see the craft take off and fly visit www.wdhsvideo.org

[Gary Boldwater]

This may show that gravity is merely a residual electrical force (due to spatial arrangement of charge, even if the net charge totals to zero), it is not a fundamental force associated with mass. The electric field of the device may simply reverse the polarization induced in the device by the earth's net field. Think of dielectrics and magnets - free to move, they always rearrange themselves to attract to the same. If you reverse the polarity of one of the magnets or dielectrics and forcefully hold it there, it will repel. This device could be doing that. //::: On the other hand maybe this device may create new virtual photons - anti gravitons that when viewed relativistically in the quantum manifold, create a new dimension in the spatio-temporal Minkowski space. When these two membranes collide...

[RANGERAIRBORNE]

Yes, but what about the quantum foam?

By the way, I am assuming that your post was satire...

[IronJack]

Newton developed three laws of MOTION, and one so-called Universal Law of Gravitation. There is no such thing as Newton's Third Law of Gravitation.

[Gary Boldwater]

The satire was the second part. The first part deserves serious consideration by scientists that don't cling to dogma.

[Mr170IQ]

From the description in the article, it sounds like the device is functioning as a magnetohydrodynamic thruster.

It seems likely that in a "soft" vacuum, it propels the fewer ions at a higher velocity. In a "hard" vacuum, it seems likely that the "ionizer" part of the device would actually be slowly sublimating its own mass into plasma ions.

Doesn't sound like anything inexplicable is going on here.

[RANGERAIRBORNE]

I am a LITTLE suspicious of the "one thin wire" here.

But, hey, I have seen a Penn and Teller show where Teller catches a REAL BULLET in his teeth. Surely they wouldn't try to trick us, would they?????

I really should try to be more gullible- it seems like you gullible folks have lots of fun. (When you are not sending your life savings to someone who emails you from Nigeria with the pronmise of fabulous riches, anyway).

[gitmo]

The kid on our right has pointed ears. I claim foul!

[ASA Vet]

Newton called it his Theory of gravitation. He did not call it a law.

[ASA Vet]

emails you from Nigeria with the pronmise of fabulous riches

What?? You mean that's a scam? Sure glad you told me in time,
I was about to send one of them all my money. (Both dollars.)

[The Sons of Liberty]

Two questions:

Have these students been put in touch with the Advanced Research Projects Group at Wright-Patterson AFB ? and

What was their grade for the Science Fair?

[ASA Vet]

Their teachers e-mail is in the press release.
Must be he wants questions.

[PatrickHenry]

I am NOT going to deploy my ping list for this thread. Seems too goofy to bother with.

[GreenHornet]

"Yes, you can say it defies Newton's 3rd law of gravity."

Kids today have no respect for the law.

[ASA Vet]

It was their teacher who wrote the "Newtons 3rd law" thing.
Maybe he should have had one of the kids proof read his news release.

[aruanan]

At first the students thought that it was working on a theory called the ion wind, whereby electrons fly through the air displacing air molecules thereby creating a small wind effect. Yet recently a similar craft was built at Purdue University and put in a vacuum chamber but it still flew.

Sounds as though the writer would be surprised that rocket ships could work in the vacuum of space if the rocket didn't have any "air" for the rocket's jet to react against.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

At first the students thought that it was working on a theory called the ion wind, whereby electrons fly through the air displacing air molecules thereby creating a small wind effect. Yet recently a similar craft was built at Purdue University and put in a vacuum chamber but it still flew. Oops, there goes another theory.

I strikes me that if these students don't know why it works or know the physics behind it...then it isn't much of a Science Fair project. The whole idea behind these projects isn't just to build neat geeky gadgets. The idea is to learn the scientific process and show how you came to your conclusions through that process.

Nevertheless, kudos to these kids. Neat stuff.

[aruanan]

This may show that gravity is merely a residual electrical force (due to spatial arrangement of charge, even if the net charge totals to zero), it is not a fundamental force associated with mass.

But could something which is a residual electrical force act at superluminal speeds as gravity does?

[Physicist]

There's a simple test to see whether the device is producing a downward thrust or not. If it were my device, I'd perform it within the hour.

Put the thing on a broad (and sensitive) scale. Start the device. If it's being supported by a downward thrust of some* kind, the force on the scale will be the same before and after the lifter rises. If it's some kind of antigravity effect, the reading on the scale will change.

[*Geek alert: in principle, there are methods of downward thrust that will not register on the scale, a neutrino beam, for example. In practice, anything that couples to the device--for example, an "ionic breeze" effect--will couple in the same way to the scale.]

Second test: have the lifter rest on a sheet of metal a few inches above the broad scale, and repeat the test. A downward thrust will be blocked by the metal and not register on the scale, whereas a change in the gravitational field will affect the tare weight of the scale.

These tests wouldn't necessarily rule out all conventional explanations (a device could in principle "climb up" the magnetic field of the Earth, for example), but they would be a start.

[ASA Vet]

I don't understand the 2nd test.
If the metal plate is attached to the scale,
it becomes part of the scale and so the downward trust would still be measured.
If the plate is not attached to the scale how would a different tare weight be felt by the scale since
it wasn't measuing the beginning tare which was supported
on the unattached plate.

What am I missing?

[Chewbacca]

They probably got the idea from the following site:

http://www.americanantigravity.com/

Good reading and extra links there also.