Boeing tries to defy gravity

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

[lelio]

It's written by some Nobel Prize winning physicist
I listened to a talk by that author, Leon Lederman, and it was just hilarious. When he was at Columbia an order came down from someone high up in the government, and it was to "send no one lower than a Dean" to this meeting. The response was "But we have no one lower than a Dean"

[general_re]

The ether doesn't exist per the Michael-Michelob experiments in late 1800's.

A strong argument against drinking and posting you've presented here, parsy ;)

[Scully]

Dr Podkletnov is viewed with suspicion by many conventional scientists.

Well so am I, but that hasn't stopped me yet from researching my kooky ideas. ;)

[El Gato]

Good point. Have you ever heard of a book called "The God Particle"?

Heard of it, but haven't read it... I think. I did take a short course, sort of a "nuclear particle physics for dummies" from SMU, in conjunction with the since cancelled Super Conducting Super Collider Project's outreach effort. Got a really neat poster on the families of particles in the "Standard Model", which (the model) is begining to show it's age and is getting a bit ragged around the edges, always a good thing for "Standard Models", in physics at least.

[RightWhale]

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.

There is nothing in physics about fundamental mechanisms. It's all imagination of what the universe is like and we will never know what the reality is.

[Doc On The Bay]

The Universe is SO LARGE,--& We are so Small!

Doc

[yendu bwam]

Thank you. Very, very interesting.

[parsifal]

I don't understand. I only had "one stein." It's not relative,is it? parsy the deep.

[crypt2k]

I didn't know Boeing was working on this. I've read about this before, and it is not a device that negates gravity. It is a device that sheilds gravity.

The device supposedly produces a repulsion beam that works against matter. According to reports, the Russian experimenter produced a beam that repelled objects hundreds of meters away.

Unfortunately, mainstream physics views these experiments, and their underlying theory as pure bunk.

[crypt2k]

see your email

[Prodigal Son]

What is needed is a substance or adevice that shields gravity, and if it does it, to hell with why it does it.

I've often thought that whoever invented a device to get around gravity or exploit it somehow would be a tinkerer not a scientist. It falls a little bit into the category of "If 6 Billion Monkeys play around with ceramics, dry ice, spinning objects and magnets long enough one of them will eventually invent an anti-gravity device." But it has some truth behind it. I hope it happens in my lifetime just to see the looks on the faces of the scientists.

[crypt2k]

Unfortunately, mainstream physics views these experiments, and their underlying theory as pure bunk.

That being said, did Boeing consult with top physics departments in the country to examine the reliability of Podkletnov's claims? I'd hate to think that the Boeing managers (whose physics level probably doesn't rise above Resnick and Halliday) are being taken in by charletans, speculators in high temperature superconductors, and their camp followers.

[another cricket]

I can't see Boeing, going through laying off tens of thousands in its commercial aircraft division, of paying for this themselves.

If you are smart R&D is the very last thing that you cut when you are in the high-end technology business. My former employers made that mistake and that is why they are my former employers. We solved our money problems but we had nothing new in the pipeline to bring to market.

a.cricket

[razorback-bert]

There is no gravity, the earth sucks and the moon is a balloon.

[stylin_geek]

Read it, liked it, bent my mind even more than the illicit drugs I was fond of doing in my mispent youth.

[Mr. K]

I dont think photons are 'bent' by the graviational mass but the PATH they follow is warped by the gravitational mass. The photon just thinks it is following a straight line.

[Gorzaloon]

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

Hahahaa..that's the most original answer yet!

What I had meant when I asked for fundamental mechanisms, is at least to the extent of understanding Quantum Mechanics. I have not "seen" a photon, or a wave. We have not seen valence shells, or electrons, or probability waves..but we can visualize their reality sufficient to engineer to them. Our explanations may be later proved incorrect, but nevertheless our understanding is sufficient to predict chemical reactions, grow CMOS computer chips, and design lenses and diffraction gratings with predicatble results and good confidence of success.

Some time ago, a few people suspected the existance of Gravity Waves, using masses of metal and strain gages; other observers reported the neutrino is deflected away from masses. These two "maybe" observations are not sufficient to engineer to.

[stylin_geek]

When Mendeleev came up with the Periodic Chart, there were gaps, because some of the elements had not been discovered yet. However, he left the blanks, reasoning that they would eventually be discovered.

As for Boeing spending a young fortune on R&D, anyone noticed how many patents have been granted to IBM over the last few years? And, I do know that IBM spends a fortune on R&D