Boeing tries to defy gravity

BBC News - Science and Technology ^ | Monday, 29 July, 2002, 03:23 GMT 04:23 UK | Editorial Staff

[stlrocket]

I heard that they are working on another "special" project there in St. Louis.

TOP SECRET NEW AIRSHIP

[onedoug]

This type of "levitation" in associaition with superconductivity has been around for quite awhile. Though it's electromagnetic, not gravitational.

[parsifal]

"As soon as someone can explain what "Gravity" is, in the first place!"

Gravity is a distortion in the ether which doesn't exist. parsy.

[SamAdams76]

Will this mean that I can finally slam dunk like Michael Jordan?

[Semper911]

Art Bell, please pick up a white courtesy phone.

[Orangedog]

Man, they really have done one heck of a job of putting that one back together, considering the condition that Khan left it in after the 2nd movie.

[Orangedog]

Maybe the wave is something completely seterate from the photons. What if the photons are riding on the wave? Ok, I need to stop now, my head is starting to hurt.

[lelio]

No tax dollars though. Your thinking black budget Pentagon stuff. Boeing is a civilian company.
I can't see Boeing, going through laying off tens of thousands in its commercial aircraft division, of paying for this themselves.

From the article:
The scientist says he found that objects above a superconducting ceramic disc rotating over powerful electromagnets lost weight.
That's a small object on the order of grams floating an inch above a magnet. Unless you turn the whole earth into one big magnet this is pointless. Hey wait ... the earth is one big magnet ...

[Consort]

So far, they've overcome gravitas but at least it's a start.

[techcor]

Even if this turns out to only be similar to the electro-magnetive levitating that people have been doing on frogs, it is still important because that could then be used on the moon to create an artificial gravity so people's bones don't get brittle. So I really don't think this will become propulsion for rockets but could eventually be worth millions anyway.

[Orangedog]

Gravity is a distortion in the ether which doesn't exist. parsy.

Which one doesn't exist? The distortion, the ether, or gravity?

[El Gato]

No tax dollars though. Your thinking black budget Pentagon stuff. Boeing is a civilian company

Yeah, kinda sorta. I suspect most of the stuff going on at the Phantom Works, like at its Lockheed equivalent the Skunk Works, is DoD funded. Some NASA too of course. Very little of Boeings own money, and even that is tax coded leveraged IR&D money.

[El Gato]

As soon as someone can explain what "Gravity" is, in the first place! I do not mean its actions, laws or symptoms, I mean the fundamental mechanism

So what is electromagnetics all about at the level of "fundamental mechanism? Exchange of photons, sure, but have you ever seen a photon? Well of course you have, but only in the millions and billions of them on the macro level. Einstein, of course thought that gravity is not a force at all in the conventional sense, like electromagnetics, the strong and weak nuclear forces, which are all particle exchanges, but rather a warping of space-time itself. Sort of hard to see how to shield a warp in space time, other than by creating a warp in another direction, that is use a bigger or closer mass to flatten out the original warp at least in the local vicinity.

[Future Snake Eater]

If light consists of particles (photons) AND they travel at the speed of light, wouldn't that mean that the photon's mass is infinite?

When you turn on a lamp, are you instantly crushed? No. Therefore, I think the proper theoretical assumption is that photons have zero mass.

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?

[El Gato]

If light consists of particles (photons) AND they travel at the speed of light, wouldn't that mean that the photon's mass is infinite

Not if a photons "rest mass" is zero, which it is. Zero times infinity can be pretty much anything. In this case it's the energy of the photon.

[lelio]

Why that's the tachyon. What I can't understand is that if tachyons can have information like spin in them (according to this article) then you should be able to transmit information faster than the speed of light. I didn't think that was allowed.

[yendu bwam]

As soon as someone can explain what "Gravity" is, in the first place!

Well, Einstein's general theory of relativity gives a pretty good explanation - as the curvature of spacetime caused by massive objects. Our travel through curved time (in particular), causes the effect we know as gravity. But of course, as with all things, there will be further underlying understandings.

[yendu bwam]

Milk of Magnesia of the brain

Hey, watch it. Or we'll distort your electromagnetic interstices (and that hurts!)!

[yendu bwam]

Sort of hard to see how to shield a warp in space time, other than by creating a warp in another direction, that is use a bigger or closer mass to flatten out the original warp at least in the local vicinity.

I agree.

[Junior]

More wasted tax dollars. :(

Beep. Circle takes the square. Boeing's a private company and is not doing this in conjunction with any government contract. Looks more like corporate R&D.