Boeing tries to defy gravity

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

[Eaker]

What did Bush know; and when did he know it??

;<)

[crypt2k]

They seem ready to put MONEY on the idea.

This may all turn out to be nothing but an attempt to churn up market speculation in YBa_2Cu_3O_{7-y} superconductors.

Impulse Gravity Generator Based on Charged YBa_2Cu_3O_{7-y} Superconductor with Composite Crystal Structure

[crypt2k]

Quote from March 8, 2002 Science.

This work is based on sound physics, pun intended.

Looks like good work, but never forget that the energy input vs. output ratio was likely very high.

No doubt there will be market speculation on cavitation devices and deuterated acetone.

Evidence for Nuclear Emissions During Acoustic Cavitation 
R. P. Taleyarkhan,1* C. D. West,1 J. S. Cho,2 R. T. Lahey Jr.,3 R. I. Nigmatulin,4 R. C. Block3 

In cavitation experiments with deuterated acetone, tritium decay activity above background levels was detected. In addition, evidence for neutron emission near 2.5 million electron volts was also observed, as would be expected for deuterium-deuterium fusion. Control experiments with normal acetone did not result in tritium activity or neutron emissions. Hydrodynamic shock code simulations supported the observed data and indicated highly compressed, hot (106 to 107 kelvin) bubble implosion conditions, as required for nuclear fusion reactions. 

1 Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN 37831, USA. 
2 Oak Ridge Associated Universities, Oak Ridge, TN 37830, USA. 
3 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY 12180, USA. 
4 Institute of Mechanics of Ufa-Bashkortostan Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 6 Karl Marx Street, Ufa, 450 000, Russia. 
*   To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: zrt@ornl.gov 

[_Jim]

I've seen reports of similar research

Then you NEED to cite a reference and cease generating hyperbolic hearsay ...

[parsifal]

mrs.parsifal hung a valence on our bedroom window and had a permanent wave, once. What confuses me though, is how the gravity distortion shell is supposed to move. Imagine a bowling ball on a bed sheet. There is a depression around the ball. Now move the ball around and the depression moves too, presumably faster in the direction that the ball is moving. Wouldn't an orbiting tennis ball tend to fly away if it was in the part of the depression away from the movement, especially if there was nothing to keep it attached? parsy whose brain is hurting thinking about it.

[Swordmaker]

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?

Tachyons would theoretically have negative mass.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Red Mercury, Cold Fusion, N-Rays, the hits just keep on coming.

[Robear]

Photons do not have rest mass

[Robear]

Negative, tesseract. Symmetry.

[Stultis]

Could someone explain what physics is supposed to be behind it?

Well, I could but the Venusians won't let me.

[Physicist]

Oh, my! Such a lot of errors for one thread!

It's a good thing I didn't find this last night, else I would have been up half the night typing instead of getting much-needed sleep.

I don't have time to address everything this morning, so I'll just throw out a few quick comments:

Photons don't have mass, let alone infinite mass.

Gravity is the curvature of spacetime. It is expected also to be describable in terms of a quantum field theory.

Gravitons would be massless.

The fact that gravity bends light does not mean that light has mass (kudos to Mr. K for getting this right).

Gravity shielding is in no way compatible with General Relativity, the currently accepted model of gravity.

Forces are not shielded by blocking their carrier particles. They are shielded by the creation of dipole fields. The dipole moment of a gravitational field is zero, because it is a tensor force, not a vector force.

Far from being a taboo subject, quantum gravity claims the attention of probably a third of all particle theorists.

Previous peer-reviewed efforts to reproduce Dr. Podkletnov's results have failed.

[anymouse]

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

Boeing is also the #2 NASA/DoD (read government) contractor and does very little R&D without government footing the bill in one way our another. It might be difficult to track the money, but you can bet that Boeing will be handing the bill for this to the taxpayer.

Still Boeing shareholders should be up in arms over this frivolous use of their money. Heck an enterprising class action attourney (read ambulance chaser) might jump on this as evidence of fuduciary recklessness by Boeing management.

[My2Cents]

cease generating hyperbolic hearsay ...

What in the hell are you talking about?...As an aside, from what I read, about 90% of the comments on FreeRepublic are hyperbolic hearsay.

[inquest]

Zero times infinity can be pretty much anything.

Anything times zero is zero.

Well, then let's look at it the other way. Assume that the photon has a positive, finite mass when traveling at c. What, then, is its mass at rest? IOW, what is a finite number divided by infinity?

[inquest]

Photons don't have mass, let alone infinite mass.

But they do have momentum when traveling at normal cruising speed, is that not true? Don't they also exhibit angular momentum?

[Junior]

IOW, what is a finite number divided by infinity?

To paraphrase Douglas Adams, it's as close to zero as to make no difference (hence, the population of the universe is zero ...).