Anti-gravity propulsion comes ‘out of the closet’

The Hunt for Zero Point: Inside the Classified World of Anti-Gravity Technology , author: Nick Cook

Get thee to a library...

Cool. I see cites going back to 1983? Guess that is why I haven't taken it seriously. I have been hearing about it for a while without anything coming out of it.

Without getting too arcane, what are the theoretical bases for this in a nutshell?

Anybody remember the cold fusion breakthrough at Utah St or Univ of Utah back in the early 90s?

Not reproducible and later found to be fraudulant.

Commonly restated, this is simply not true. Pons and Fleischmann work was solidly grounded in theory, and they have published in several respectable journals. "Cold fusion" research continues in a number of venues today, and numerous respectable researchers report having confirmed its existence.

Without getting too arcane, what are the theoretical bases for this in a nutshell?

That's a tall order. You can find references and links (good, bad, and ugly) at Quantum Cavorite.

Where have you been? There have been several subsequent studies of "cold fusion," and they constantly find energy---not enough yet to do anything, but do a search, and I think you'll find that many scientists are taking a VERY serious look at this again.

Stand still. After I get done blasting you with my Hemulator, you won't be needing that crazy Upzidazium thang.

You kill moose and squirrel. I'll get the formula.

Newton's Laws, Upended - S. Adams, 08.12.02
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2002/0812/128.html

"The Nazis, General Electric and Sperry-Rand all sought to harness antigravity. Next up: Boeing?

Author Nick Cook has all the qualifications of a hard-nosed reporter. For more than a decade he has worked as aviation editor at Jane's Defence Weekly, the respected (if mind-numbingly technical) trade journal for the defense industry. So why has he penned a book on a topic usually confined to pulp sci-fi--antigravity? In The Hunt for Zero Point (Broadway, $26), due out this month, he chronicles his quest to show that Newton's laws have been annulled. It's a dramatic, entertaining tale, with a clear lesson: Corporations, universities and governments never tire of throwing good money at bad science.

His story starts in 1992, when a photocopy of a 1956 news clipping is left mysteriously on his desk at Jane's. "The G-Engines Are Coming!" shouts its headline. There's an illustration of a football-shaped craft hovering above the ground. The text predicts a future of "weightless airliners and spaceships." More intriguing are the enthusiastic predictions from such esteemed figures of the day as George S. Trimble of Martin Aircraft and Lawrence D. Bell, founder of Bell Aircraft, who proclaims, "We're already working on nuclear fuels and equipment to cancel out gravity." Using the Jane's library, Cook learns that big American companies, including Sperry-Rand and General Electric, seriously pursued "electrogravitics [a.k.a. antigravity] research."

He scours the Internet and public archives, phones contacts in the defense industry. He talks to Evgeny Podkletnov, a Russian physicist who claims to have achieved antigravity effects in his lab. Cook even delves into a mystery dating from the last days of World War II, when Allied pilots reported seeing UFOs over Germany.

The Nazi angle takes Cook to Austria, where he visits the family of the late Viktor Schauberger, a forestry engineer and inventor who experimented with a machine called a Repulsine. According to Schauberger's copious notes, the Nazi-funded device generated such a powerful levitational force that it shot upward and smashed into a hangar ceiling. Cook admits he doesn't completely grasp the physics, writing, "The primary levitating force was due to ... a reaction between the air molecules in their newly excited state and the body of the machine itself."

Huh? And why would the normally skeptical Cook believe the unverified notes of a forestry engineer transplanted far beyond his ken? Because, says Cook, "People don't throw money at programs unless they think they work"--blithely ignoring humankind's propensity for taking daft things seriously. Case in point: cold fusion, as well as other screwball free-energy schemes funded by corporations or governments. University of Maryland physicist Robert L. Park has documented such projects in Voodoo Science (Oxford University Press, $15). Park, who read a prepublication copy of Zero Point, chuckles at some of Cook's conclusions. "In my book I discuss something I call a 'belief gene.' This guy Cook's got it. He's simply prepared to believe anything."

What about Cook's reporting? He describes, for example, antigravity projects now under way at NASA and at BAE Systems in the U.K. FORBES' phone calls to these organizations verified Cook's facts, though folks were awfully careful with their language. Ronald Evans, the physicist in charge at BAE, says, "We don't use the word [antigravity]. It would make us look like lunatics." Funding is small--$3.25 million for BAE's and NASA's work combined, over seven years--but the fact that money gets spent at all is testimony to the prevalence of the belief gene. The U.S. Congress keeps dollars flowing. Since 2000 it has allocated an additional $4.8 million for antigravity research. In a July issue of Jane's, Cook reports Boeing conducted experiments involving antigravity as recently as 1999 and remains intensely interested in further research. (Boeing confirms this, but, like BAE, disdains to use the a-word.)

Cook is an engaging writer, and he peppers his high-tech detective story with digressions both rich and entertaining. His book is a fun read. But it lacks a certain ... gravity." ~ ~

Maybe "Cook" should be spelled, "KOOK". Or maybe he's just a KOOK baiter.

There is a story there anyway. How do quirky little projects with no hope of success get funded? Doesn't in itself make the reporter a kook, but sometimes such reporters get a little too caught up in their chosen topics and say some kooky things.

There may be an outside chance, that ALL the researchers are failing to take into account the Tesla effect.

In a telling interview, former Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) executive Tom Passell says that at least some of those involved in the campaign to debunk cold fusion intentionally misled congressional investigators and the public.

Yep, there's aaaaalways a conspiracy. Why, I spend so much time conspiring to suppress real physics that I don't have time to do my phony research.

an obvious shill for the GOV matchett

"This bears repeating (She then left for her native China, presumably to carry on her work for the communist government there.)"

Or maybe this is all a conspiracy to get the Chinese to waste billions of dollars, and years of their top scientists' time in a wild goose chase?

"You mean that Einstein and Oppenheimer
weren't leaders in their respective fields? "

Einstein wasn't, at least in 1905 when he published his papers on Special Relativity, photosynthesis, and one other who's topic I forget. He was a Swiss patent clerk, he couldn't find anyone else willing to hire him.

PS It's interesting to note that while he did eventually win a Nobel Prize for one of these papers, it wasn't the one on Relativity but rather the one on photosynthesis.

WooHoo I'm getting a mattel hover boards for Christmas I just know it...Joking aside, if its true then that is a pretty cool technology.

Who said there was a conspiracy?

According to your post, Tom Passell did.

How many dollars are at stake for the American Linear Collider?

Probably none. Right now it now looks like the linear collider will be built in near Hamburg, Germany. The brain drain has been flowing outwards from the United States for a number of years; now it appears the pace will accelerate a bit.