Boeing tries to defy gravity
An anti-gravity device would revolutionise air travel
Posted on 07/29/2002 2:30:12 PM PDT by vannrox
Dr Podkletnov is viewed with suspicion by many conventional scientists. They have not been able to reproduce his results.
The project is being run by the top-secret Phantom Works in Seattle, the part of the company which handles Boeing's most sensitive programmes.
The head of the Phantom Works, George Muellner, told the security analysis journal Jane's Defence Weekly that the science appeared to be valid and plausible.
Dr Podkletnov claims to have countered the effects of gravity in an experiment at the Tampere University of Technology in Finland in 1992.
The scientist says he found that objects above a superconducting ceramic disc rotating over powerful electromagnets lost weight.
The reduction in gravity was small, about 2%, but the implications - for example, in terms of cutting the energy needed for a plane to fly - were immense.
Scientists who investigated Dr Podkletnov's work, however, said the experiment was fundamentally flawed and that negating gravity was impossible.
The hypothesis is being tested in a programme codenamed Project Grasp.
Boeing is the latest in a series of high-profile institutions trying to replicate Dr Podkletnov's experiment.
The military wing of the UK hi-tech group BAE Systems is working on an anti-gravity programme, dubbed Project Greenglow.
The US space agency, Nasa, is also attempting to reproduce Dr Podkletnov's findings, but a preliminary report indicates the effect does not exist.
Anything times zero is zero.
but you'd be wrong. They have mass, but only when they are moving! This has been demonstrated by observing the bending of light from stars as it passes nearby the sun. Also by "gravitational lensing" of light from a distant galaxcy passing by a nearer object, usually another galaxcy.
Another brainteaser: What kind of mass would a particle travelling faster than light have? For bonus points, what is the name of this theoretical particle?
Imaginary mass. (Square root of a a negative number). Such particles are called Tachyons, as opposed to normal particles, not includign photons, which are Tardyons.
When does light not move? I'm assuming you're talking about in a lab...Besides, if a particle has mass, then how can it reach c?
Thanks for that link.
I suppose since it has zero rest mass, it's instantly accellerated to "c" when it's created. i.e a=F/m, if m is zero then a (accelleration) would be infinite.
Remember at high speeds and small scales, the world doesn't work the same way as it does at everyday speeds and scales, so F=ma is only a low speed approximation anyway.
Good point. Have you ever heard of a book called "The God Particle"? It's written by some Nobel Prize winning physicist, and he gives you a crash course on particle physics and the different particles that modern physicists work with (both in theory and practice). I learned some wild stuff in that one (gluons, anyone?). You should check it out if you like particle physics.
Don't be too sure. People once said the same thing about perpetual motion machines.
Actually, the experiment did not disprove the existence of the æther -- rather it merely rendered the necessity for the substance moot.
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