Posted on 10/10/2001 12:45:11 PM PDT by RightWhale
NASA's Controversial Gravity Shield Experiment Fails to Produce
By Jack Lucentini
Special to SPACE.com posted: 11:50 am ET
10 October 2001
After a second round of tests, NASA researchers have failed to detect signs that a machine can weaken gravity’s pull.
But they plan to continue the research – shocking some mainstream physicists, who call it junk science.
The researchers say a device that loosens the clutch of gravity, sometimes called a gravity shield, may be the only way to enable human spacecraft to blast off to other star systems.
But the research lies on the fringe of accepted science. Some of its own proponents admit it flies against virtually every established law of physics.
Other scientists go further.
"Good heavens. This is incredible," said Robert L. Park, director of the Washington, D.C. office of the American Physical Society, upon learning that the NASA researchers haven’t given up. "I mean, every physicist I know – and they must have some on the staff there – has told me how absurd this research was."
The space agency has spent about five years and at least $600,000 on the project.
In a paper presented at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ Joint Propulsion Research Conference in Salt Lake City in July, the researchers called their latest tests "inconclusive."
The experiments utilized a device made from a superconductor, a ceramic in which, at certain temperatures, electric current can flow utterly freely.
The study was inspired by the work in the early 1990s of a Russian scientist, Eugene Podkletnov. He claimed to have measured a weakening of Earth’s gravity by 2 percent near a specialized superconductor spinning in a magnetic field.
"Our objective was to design, construct and implement a discriminating experiment which would put these observations on a more firm footing," said the NASA paper. "No conclusion at this time can be made."
The researchers said several factors had hampered the experiment. One was that the balance, for measuring mass, didn’t work at very low temperatures.
It’s worth trying again with an improved setup, said the NASA paper, whose lead author was Glen A. Robertson, research scientist at the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. It was at least the second time the agency has tried but failed to replicate Podkletnov’s results.
The researchers didn’t return phone calls early this week. But Randall Peters, a consultant to the project and a physics professor with Mercer University, Macon, Ga., said in an interview that the effort is "worthwhile," despite the difficulties.
David Drachlis, a spokesman for the NASA center, added that the project continues.
What has dogged the research, experts say, is that Podkletnov failed to adequately document his findings. Podkletnov declined to comment for this article.
"Antigravity" research has provoked debate for years.
The idea violates a bedrock principle of physics – conservation of energy – that says you can’t create energy from nothing. It defies this edict because it implies you could lift something without spending the necessary "price" in energy normally required. Then, by dropping it, you could give it an energy boost equaling the full "regular" price.
Yet several considerations make the concept intriguing to some.
First is a rather striking apparent coincidence: Podkletnov’s findings appeared to match phenomena earlier predicted independently by a University of Alabama at Huntsville scientist, Ning Li.
Second, many renowned physicists believe nature has an underlying unity, by which all its forces are fundamentally connected.
This means electromagnetism and gravity are somehow linked. The "gravity shield" could conceivably operate at the bridge between the two forces, interacting with both.
The NASA group suggested the link is a recently discovered, exotic form of energy, "zero-point fluctuations." This consists of minute particles that flicker in and out of existence in what we normally think of as empty space.
My guess is over the last 30 years we've been distributing it in the form of:
They don't pay and only get recognized when something blows up or crashes. God Bless Them!
That gives me an idea. If NASA gives Rosie O a king size spoon and equips the spacecraft with enough ice cream and cake, maybe the force of gravity can be weakened enough that grvity forgets about the spaceship after becoming overwhemed by Rosie.
Yeah. A class-action lawsuit on behalf of the "weight-challenged" (aka "caloric over-achievers") against the Gov't. for allowing a "discriminatory" law to to be enforced..... After all, they'll argue, it violates the EQUAL protection clause of the Constitution!
That's okay. I replicated the experiment in the pantry off the kitchen last year. I didn't have $600,000, so I had to make do with a limited budget of $6. My results were also negative, which is to say everything just sat there and did nothing.
You have to be careful with this. Remember when they first exposed the Cavorite and it sucked the atmosphere out into space. It's nothing to toy with.
To date none of the work you've listed has been corroborated."
Your first statement is correct.
Your second statement is untrue,
and reveals you made no effort at all.
Your attack on US scientists and researchers is noted.
I made no effort? I told you there's been no corroboration of any of that work. If you think there has been, then post it. Perhaps, since you understand cold fusion so well, why is it that none of the experiments reporting excess heat from calorimetry give concurrent electrical energy measurements for the experiment? Hint to the significance of this question: w/o concurrent electrical measurements the calorimetry data is meaningless. The same sort of experimental ambiguity arose in the experiments reporting neutron fluxes, or isotope findings, there was poor control in the experiments.
Because I'm looking for a specific paper, namely, one that shows more heat/energy production than Pons-Fleishman.
I can show you that many studies that supposedly prove the danger of fluoride in the water, but that doesn't make it so.
Uh oh, looks like you're going to be getting a call from the "cold fusion" police.
Democrats perfected that years ago with taxes. Nothing can hold them down.
Wasn't that am old "Six Million Dollar Man" episode? LOL!!
Like what? I have heard of Lysenko, but everything I have heard about him is that he was a quack. I am curious to know what scientific advances resulted from his work.
Great, just two further questions for you.
How and why do two concentrations of mass-energy separated by space attract each other?
Great, just two further questions for you.
How and why do two concentrations of mass-energy separated by space attract each other?
"Why" is a metaphysical question that is beyond the scope of physics. "How" is an enormous question, but there are several very good answers. I can't give you a complete answer, because that would require several graduate-level courses in physics, but I can give you a sketch.
The simplest way to think of it is with the Newtonian concept of the gravitational field. Everything with mass has a field associated with it, that extends to the furthest reaches of space. Masses that find themselves in the field will, in the absence of other forces, move so as to minimize their potential energy with respect to the field, which means that the masses move closer together.
Einstein showed that the gravitational field can be conceptualized as a curvature of space and time. The attraction then becomes an extension of Newton's first law of motion: objects at rest will remain at rest unless acted upon by a force. Objects that are in freefall are simply remaining at local rest in their inertial frames; the attraction results from the fact that (thanks to the curvature of spacetime) the local inertial frame is accelerating towards the attractive mass. This concept implies several experimentally testable consequences, and these have been verified exhaustively.
But that's not the end of the story. It is fully expected that it will someday be shown that the gravitational field is quantized, i.e., that it can be decomposed into carrier particles known as "gravitons", much the same way that the electromagnetic field can be decomposed into photons. No workable, testable quantum theory of gravitation has been devised, but there is reason to believe that we will have such a theory within the lifetimes of most of the people alive today. I think we're close.
The Rebellion of the Gravitons. Tell us more.
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