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Anti-Gravity Research Confirmed
Anotherone was among a large number of people over the last few days who've written in about research that BAe seems to be funding on Project Greenglow, an anti-gravity project.
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I guess there go our sock options and profit sharing (we have an EXCELLENT plan)!
Enjoy and have good laugh!
...since the 60s, and we haven't ONCE tested anti-gravity research until now, sheesh. ;)
Heh, I bet he knew you were going to say that. :)
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
hehe, wazza ullage of my oxidizer? thanks
Brian Greene - The Elegant Universe?
I've had that book on my "to read" list for quite some time, I'll have to get around to it soon(even though I don't understand a lot of that complex physics stuff)
As far as your wishes go I do not see yet why can not you levitate around (like astronauts do using acceleration or using some kind of force compensation like magnetic suspension.) You really do not need Warp Drive to get to distant stars in reasonable period of time. You just have to go fast enough. Take a look at Special Relativity Theory formulae and you will see that if you move with the speed of light you reach any destination point instantly by you clocks.
Well.....sort of. I mean, you could, if you didn't care that when you got back to Earth your family and friends would all be dead. The great thing about a warp drive is that you wouldn't have to have such a large gap in time between you and the rest of humanity.
I don't like all his stuff, but that book was hysterical.
It sounds to me that Bob Park is trying to say that "wishful thinking" is not a very solid foundation for changing laws of physics.
When you fund research with particular applications in mind, these application better lay within the current laws of physics. If you are doing pure research, challenging the laws of physics, the applications are unpredictable.
Here we go again. A bunch of engineers who take measurements of some phenomena, but lack an understanding of the basic physics, make revolutionary extrapolations. This stuff is nonsense.
If you can turn off gravity, you could raise a weight expending no energy, turn off the anti-gravity and let the falling weight turn a generator. Repeat this in an endless cycle and you have all the energy you want for free.
Too bad that it violates the law of conservation of energy.
There is, however, no law of conservation of the number of fools.
rm -rf microsoft*
I wouldn't quite go that far. However I would go as far as to say that all theories are tentative.
To use the standard example, you may have a scientific theory that says that all swans are white. This is impossible to prove since you would have to examine an infinite number of swans. However it is possible to disprove it, all you need to find is a single swan that isn't white.
Remember - scientists used to believe in phlostigon. This belief led to all sorts of anomalies, including the idea of negative mass. An unthinking belief in scientific "laws" shows a very poor understanding of the basis of science.
Angular momemntum is just a convienent way to represent the constantly-changing linear momentum of all the particles in the top. If the forces holding the top together were to suddenly fail so that it turned into particles, they would all travel in straight lines outward in their current linear momentum, none of the particles would have any "memory" of some angular momentum.
A clockwise spinning top will precess in exactly the same way (except mirrored) as a counter-clockwise spinning top. There is nothing different. If we used a "left hand rule math" we would get the *SAME* precession (no, it would NOT go in the opposite direction unless the top was also going in the opposite direction).
Psueudo-science is often based on taking some technical shortcut term and pretending it is literal.
>> - gravity is a very weak force, the only reason its so 'strong' here is that big ball of mud below our feet. Achieving an effect as large as 2% of the weight of that disc is quite a feat if done by 'gravitation effects' it's by far more probable to stem from electromagnetic effects, especially in an experiment with rotating superconductors.
- --------
You did not read right. The claim was that anything ABOVE the disk lost 2% weight, not the disk itself.
Furthermore: the idea is not so crazy. If there is a unified grand theory, and gravity, electroweak, weak and strong nuclear forces can be traced back to any fundamental force, that means there is some connection between gravity and electromagnetism. If there isn't such a connection, there cannot be a GUT.
So, looking into more exotic an less understood stuff like effects of superconductivity might bring surprises like Podkletnovs experiments.
Now it would be wonderful if using some setup with superconductors, spinning or otherwise, could supress inertia, or mass, or gravity or whatever.
Since the reason there IS gravity, and mass, is not understood (it just IS) and why objects are in one place and not suddenly somewhere else. And nobody really knows what exactly IS movement, and kinetic energy, and what really happens with matter if it moves and its kinetic energy is transformed in another kind of energy. Is a particle of matter really some kind of knot in the topology of time and space? Since particle have mass, do they have a Schwarzschild radius, and do they have some kind of quantum black hole inside? Are they constantly tunneling through their own quantum black hole maybe: a topological entity of some kind?
I work at a theoretical physics dept. not as a physicist but as a sysadmin and astronomy student, but I never, with all the math and physics have learned, heard a single answer to those questions, not even to the one of WHY THINGS CAN MOVE...
It really is mind-boggling if you start thinking about it.
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UNIX isn't dead, it just smells funny...
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UNIX isn't dead, it just sme
"However, most scientists believe that such anti-gravity research is fundamentally flawed. It goes against what we know about the physical Universe and is therefore impossible, they say."
These would probably be the spiritual descendants of the "scientists" who claimed that traveling at greater than 60 MPH would cause the blood to boil and was therefore impossible. It's also incredibly arrogant to claim that something that would contradict existing science is impossible; it's tantamount to claiming that we already know all that can be known, in which case science can just pack it in, we don't need you guys any more, don't forget your hat.
Sagan has noted several times that the "old guard" often hampers progress in science. It threatens the importance of their own discoveries. Nobody wants his carefully-researched theory noted in textbooks as "a useful first approximation" or to carry, even if only in his own head, the stigma of your life's work being derived from "second-class" measurements.
One great example is chaos theory. Nobody wanted to admit that a perfectly spherical world with constant illumination and rotation could generate weather. It totally went against what we knew of physics. When it was found that the divergences resulted from rounding effects of the computer simulation a lot of scientists wanted to just dismiss the whole thing right there as "experimental error", instead of admitting that microscopic errors having macro-scale results represented a new fundamental truth about the world.
See also the Henrietta Lacks debacle, where a concerted effort was made by researchers and the journals they published in to save face by trying to cover up the fact that their results were contaminated.
And see also Velikovsky. In the 60s and 70s, his Worlds in Collision was hotly debated and a lot of scientists, rather than actually refute his conclusions, preferred to take the lazy route of trying to suppress publication of his ideas. Slashdotters know how futile that can be.
-- Old Man Kensey
Not Found
The requested URL / was not found on this server.
Apache/1.3.9 Server at www.greenglow.co.uk Port 80
Perhaps a joke about "them" blocking access to information about esoteric technology was a bit obvious, but with the site unavailable, I don't think it was totally uncalled for.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Like computers? Computers depend on a quantum effects... :)
But they can't break the law of the slashdot effect!
The site is down.
That experiment lead to the discovery of a new subatomic particle, the scratchon.
It exerts a powerful attractive force between the experimentor and the subject.
But who cares about anti gravity...when all we really need is a warp engine.
I would be willing to bet that the first step to FTL travel will be FTL communications. Imagine how that will affect things such as talking to the Mars probes, or probes on the other side of the solar system. We will be able to do real-time interactive "stuff" with object very very far away. It will be cool.
--fatboy
The theory that they are using is that the
influence of gravity cannot penetrate a
super-conducting object. The "only" thing
that can completely block a magnetic field
is a superconductor. So someone theorized
that maybe a superconductor can block
gravitons (if light can be either/both
a particle and a wave, so can gravity).
Also did you realize that the influence of
gravity only travels at the speed of light?
So if the rotating superconductor negates
(or lessens) the influence of gravity *above*
it, there will be a pressure differential between
upper and lower surfaces, with net force being
upwards (ie greater affect within an atmosphere)
will be a pressure differential
Hell, we can do that today. All we need is a big enough electromagnet to repel against the magnetism of the earth. Nevermind it would need to be about 20 square city blocks long and require nuclear power plants on top to power it.. and weigh only a few pounds. Sure, we could do it. Now, where's my $450 million research grant?
I'd like to remind you that until people do, there's no reason to believe him either. A certain cold-fusion experiment comes to mind.
If you happen to have a cite for this, I'm interested in seeing how this was demonstrated.
These supposed gravitons are, i believe, like photons and therefore "massless particles" with wavelike properties.
Fair enough. I'm pretty comfortable with the wave/particle duality of photons.
the point is that these "Wavicles" cannot be shielded
Aha! Now this is what I'd really like to see a demonstration of. "Wavicles" like photons are easily blocked with common items (see your standard camera). Other particles like neutrinos are much harder to block, but it is possible. What is special about gravitons that make them so they "cannot be shielded". That is the reason that I prefer the warpage of space-time over the particle theory (until I see evidence to the contrary).
While this is what I was taught, my discussions with various physics folks has led me to understand that the current model has graviton particles carry the force of gravity. They are simply undiscovered as yet.
The reason that was explained to me that the models would use a particle for a carrier is that otherwise when I destroy mass, I would create an instantenous change that could be measured elsewhere. I.e. a faster-than-light signal. Since the speed of light is still considered the maximal speed possible, there must be a particle that carries gravity.
Now I personally think that if it is a particle, then if you can somehow shield their passage, you could create an anti-gravity effect. If it isn't a particle, then it might be possible to have FTL signals.
I didn't say failure to re-create. Then again, I just wasn't specific at all... my bad. What I was referring to is the habit of many to pass judgement before it was even tried.
Writing in the journal Physica C, Dr Yevgeny Podkletnov claimed that a spinning, superconducting disc lost some of its weight. And, in an unpublished paper on the weak gravitation shielding properties of a superconductor, he argued that such a disc lost as much as 2% of its weight.
This is the actual reference I wanted in my earlier post. The man claimed something Einstein said was impossible and was instantly branded an idiot and/or a crackpot. "He must have miscalculated!" and "He must have measured something else!" were two of the kindest responses. His employer (a University, I believe) fired him. Now you know why he never published that paper: he lost the support he needed, including the lab where the experiment took place (if my memory serves). He knew that he was claiming fantastic and he was willing to bet his reputation on being right. He lost big and this article indicates that we can't be sure he wasn't.
I'm not claiming either one was right, what I am claiming is that when you have your heads buried so far under the sand, you're bound to miss out on something important. Dismissing the fantastic as trickery or mistakes is one hole I wish the greater "scientific community" would avoid.
You need to bone up on Newton's laws of motion. If those are wrong, then you need to explain how we can drop kick a space probe all the way to Saturn. The fact that those laws work pretty well for that sort of thing is pretty good evidence that they can't be too far off the mark. If you understood that, then you'd see why producing a force using inertia is a silly statement. You're not going to net any magical unaccounted force.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
I caution *you*: strange analogies can lead you astray. I have no idea what a correlation with the justice system has to do with anything.
I assume nothing. If you claim something and show me no evidence, I am a fool to believe it.
If I know for a fact that NASA has been trying to replicate the experiment for a year and has failed, then I am well justified to consider that as support for my position that anti-gravity is a sick joke, and those that are still willing to consider the possibility that a superconducting rotating disk has anti-grav powers are completely ignorant.
I do agree with you about keeping theologians out of science.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
1) I'm not assuming anything. It is a *fact* that the claims would violate well established observation. It is a *fact* that NASA cannot replicate the results. That's hardly an assumption. It's a statement with a hell of a lot of support.
2) I'm not a fool if I discount the possibility and I am wrong. That's just called being wrong, not being a fool.
3) You have no idea what an open mind is. An open mind isn't like an apartment where any old idea can come in, use the toilet, make a sandwich, and sit in front of the TV in it's jockey shorts. An open mind a) criticizes and scrutinizes everything idea presented. It assumes nothing, and demands evidence for everything. b) accepts sufficient evidence when it is presented. c) changes opinion based on evidence.
I have a perfectly open mind. Show me the evidence and I will admit that anti-grav works. No problem.
A closed mind would be one that insists that anti-grav is bogus, even as he is riding in a flying saucer on his way to the grocery store.
Damn, I've got to write an article about this and put it someplace prominent. It seems that hardly anyone knows what an open mind is these days. Everyone seems to think that an open mind should welcome trash ideas without questioning them. Sheesh!
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
You ask a really good question, so I'm going to give you a really good answer:
If *you* make an extreme claim then *I* demand evidence until *I* am satisfied. The person making the claim has the burden of proof which means that they have to keep providing evidence until the critics are satisfied.
Hopefully your critics are open minded. Open minded does not mean that a person will accept any old thing that comes along. Open minded does not mean that a person has to say that "anything's possible, so don't shoot the idea down yet."
Open minded people shoot down ideas just like closed minded people. Open minded people criticise ideas too. Open minded people demand a lot of evidence. The difference is that an open minded person will change their opinion once sufficient evidence is given.
Hey! What a bargain! You got two definitions when you only asked for one. Sorry about that...
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Ad hominem, straw man, non-sequitur, improper burden of proof: bzzzzzt! You fail, try again.
You make the claim, you provide the proof.
If you provide proof, I will believe. Until then, anti-grav is BOGUS and those who suggest it are CRANKS.
I'm not being harsh, this is just how science works. My demands are reasonable, and just a simple demonstration is all it would take and I would change my mind completely, without hesitation.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Actually, that's stretching the definition of Pascal's Wager and making it sound really mundane.
Pascal was a smart guy and his Wager is one of the most interesting questions in the philosophy of religion.
See what the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has to say about it.
Anyway, if you believe that theory, you have the fun picture of a vacuum being full of particles that travel in a circular path in time, with each 'annilation' or 'creation' really just being a collision that reverses their direction in time.
-David T. C.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
He's not saying the gyroscope loses weight...he's saying things above it do. This isn't the old 'vibration gyroscope' con.
-David T. C.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I don't think the article said this, I've just been reading up on it.
Anyway, while it may be a hoax, or just opimistic people, it isn't what's described in 8.8. The gryoscope stays the same weight...in fact, some people think it's getting heavier, while anything it's blocking the gravity well of is getting lighter.
And I don't see where everyone's getting this 'violates laws of physics'. Relativity says acceration and gravity are the same thing, basically, so all we have to do is give something negative acceration. :)
-David T. C.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I don't pretend to understand it, but I think any way we can reduce the number of particles is a good idea...whether or not this is a valid way remains to be seen. :)
-David T. C.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
It is also possible to 'feel' a gyroscope pull up, but you have to actually push a side of it down. It can't pull up against the pull of gravity, because gravity works on the whole thing at once...and, a gyroscope acts normal, at a macroscopic level...it's only when you start trying to do things to certain parts of it, or turn it, that it acts weird. Otherwise, it acts just like a rock.
Note this is not what this article is talking about...they aren't weighing the gryoscope, they're weighing something suspended above the gyroscope.
-David T. C.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I'd like to introduce the execs of BAe to someone.. a Brit in fact... A fellow by the name of ISAAC NEWTON!!!! ;-)
:)
(Granted, he's a bit old now, but still..)
Ben
Thanks for the link, I remember reading this long time ago.
The idea here is that gravity (like all matter/energy) can be though of as waves, disrupt the wave and you have a gravity shield. To pop-culture this is 'anti-gravity'.
I hate knee jerk reactionary types who already 'know' without regard to the scientific method.
I don't believe it in the least. I think that people have a choice. Either become a cripple and raise the infant mortality rate or have a few minor cases of problems. The greater good is in effect.
(This is off-topic, but I'm sick of this crap.)
My daughter is dead because of this idea that bureaucrats should mandate vaccines for the "greater good". She was 9 weeks old after being born two months early; she weighed 6 pounds and received 6 vaccines at her 2-month "well-baby" visit. One of those vaccines (Rotavirus) was not tested on premature infants, approved by the CDC despite that fact (and before FDA approval) and mandated as yet another wonderful vaccine to save our children from the nuisance of ever getting sick. It was later removed from the vaccine schedule and then removed from the market entirely due to unforeseen reactions that were acknowledged (for once) by the CDC and the manufacturer.
My daughter was perfectly healthy when she went to the doctor's office, and she was dead 14 hours later. How did this server the greater good? We, the parents, didn't feel it was safe for her to receive these vaccines, but the doctor insisted he/she knew better than we did. (If we had known that Rotavirus was primarily a risk for bottle-fed children in daycare, that it was new and little tested, and that it was a genetically-engineered vaccine made from monkey tissue, we never would have allowed it; my wife was staying home and breastfeeding anyhow.)
What's the opinion of all these "experts" now? Oh, it was SIDS and couldn't be prevented. Bullshit! She was fine until her immature immune system was bombarded by half a dozen pathogens at once. Since the medical community and the pharmaceutical industry have a vested interest in the status quo, we shouldn't be so surprised that so many "unexplainable" SIDS cases peak from 2-6 months of age when routine vaccinations occur at 2, 4 and 6 months of age...
Don't believe everything you hear. Everyone paints such a rosy picture of how vaccines are a triumph of the modern age and our saviors from the ravages of disease, but little serious research goes into the possible dangers of the vaccines themselves. Is it really worth the risk of unknown vaccine reactions to avoid the known mild effects of a disease such as Chicken Pox? (Of course, they relabel familiar diseases to make them sound scary and unfamiliar -- you'll just be told that your child "could die" if they don't get the "Varicella" vaccine. They don't mention that your child could also die from the vaccine itself, that it could weaken their immune system, etc.)
ObTopical: I agree that anti-gravity research may be useful, if only for serendipitous discoveries that may result. On the other hand, funding such speculative research may be an unwise investment if it's with the expectation of a marketable invention rather than basic research...
Deven
"Simple things should be simple, and complex things should be possible." - Alan Kay
Could someone moderate-up the previous reply to my original article, the one titled "Better copy of Eudine Podkletnov's Paper..."? I feel that people should be able to see his diagrams as well, and be able to read a better-formatted PostScript or PDF copy as well. Thanks.
---
Epitaph
I succeeded once with this experiment, at least halfway. The trick is to tape buttered toast onto the back of Shrodinger's cat. Then the cat only half falls.
Here's a webpage (from one of the three websites recommended by Greenglow) that seems to give sufficient details for one of us to try to confirm or deny (one of) the results by Monday.
I bet the materials are gathering dust in countless university labs around the country. It's simple stuff -- not quite Home Depot, but not so terribly far from it, either
http://members.aol.com/jnaudin509/systemg/html/
__________
If you can go to bed, knowing you did a valuable thing today, you're very lucky. If you can't... it's not bedtime
The article says: "... he argued that such a disc lost as much as 2% of its weight."
Just because the reporter phrased it as "weight", which is the layman's way of explaining it, doesn't mean that the researcher actually said "weight" instead of "mass".
This isn't very useful. You can float some cats this way, but why bother? You can't float a spaceship with this. Put anything heavy on top of the cat and you'll crush it to the ground. Neither cat nor toast work when crushed by the spaceship.
I do not recommend this experiment. Cats do *not* like floating, particularly when they have to struggle continously to not fall on the back. They will usually destroy the toast if able. Or you'll get a lot of screaming and then the animal rights activists show up. That's when it gets ugly.
I used to belong to the Omicron project. The guy running it (James Tracy) was kinda weird though. He would dump the mailing list every so often and make people re-join. Once he even required us all to sign some secrecy waiver in order to get back on the list. He even dropped out of the project once because his wife threatened divorce. Over time I came to realize that James Tracy wasn't really interested in a community sort of project, what he really wanted was for us to work for him for free. (James if you're reading this, I have all of the old e-mail's to prove the above statements). It was too difficult to follow the project so I just lost track.
--
Quantum Linux Laboratories - Accelerating Business with Linux
* Education
* Integration
* Support
*Condense fact from the vapor of nuance*
...a physicist who gave the Royal Institution lectures years ago, messing around with linear-motor crossbows and the like, but was more recently dismissed as a crank for believing in gyroscopic propulsion systems (i.e. reactionless drives).
It would seem that we are saying the same thing, you however are saying it much better than I.
My real point is that just because some people feel this is impossible due to their current understand of physics does not mean that it is really impossible.
-- I need more coffee. It's Monday. There is no such thing as enough coffee on a Monday.
Are the theoretical underpinnings of the BAe spinning superconductor experiments mentioned in the news article is the same as that provided by the gyro anti-grav folks? If that's the case, skepticism is indeed called for. however, I didn't pick up on any necessary connection between the gyro claims and the BAe stuff.
The bare statement "anti-grav would violate the laws of physics" bothers me. It presumes that some involate principle of physics is incompatible with anti-grav. (The sci.skeptic FAQ does not elaborate such a principle. To be fair, they didn't make that assertion.) IMHO blanket statements that something/anything is impossible risk crossing the line from healthy skepticism into unhealthy dogmatism.
If anyone can state a basic principle of physics that makes anti-grav a theoretical impossiblity, please state it.
I'd love to write a SF story using anti-grav...
That's Special Relativity, not General Relativity. General Relativity has its own weirdness: "sit at the bottom of a gravity well and time goes slower." Counter-intuitive as heck, but I seem to recall that it's been verified with atomic clocks at sea level and a mile high.
The centripetal force of a spinning object is perfectly balanced. The coriolis force due to the fact that the spinning object is moving around the earth's axis is also balanced.
main(O){10<putchar((O--,102-((O&4)*16| (31&60>>5*(O&3)))))&&main(2+O);}
main(O){10<putchar((O--,102-((O&4)*16| (31&60>>5*(O&3)))))&&main(2+ O);}
LN2 is cool!
I'm a mathematician, not a physicist. Or at least one of my degrees said I can play at being one...
Ok, We have a sphere of mass, lets call it "Urth"
We have a small object, which is several orders of magnitude smaller than "Urth".
Some guy claims he can make a disc which will reduce gravity by 2%.
In High School physics I remember being told that even though we can think of gravity as being a large vector, its really a summation of vectors between the interraction of "Urth" and "a small object" of each atom...
If it was a gravity shield, it may block only the vectors it "splits twain", thus, at a low altitude, you would be eliminating approximately a tube/long cone of "Urth" mass from the equation.
In one of the articles, I recall a mention that it was a tube the size of the disk vertically that was the area of "sheilding", but it seems to me that the following may occur:
1) If it were a tube and efficency were increased above 2%, "Urth" would gradually lose its atmosphere due to the fact we keep it only via gravity.
2) If my proposed view of whats happening were to occur, then I think I am explaining both "Why 2%" and a means at raising the value (bigger disk, higher altitude).
I also recall one of the "challenges" was the manufacture of larger disks....
I don't know, my math may be wrong, but this is interesting....
e to the i pi equals negative one
Actually, the frog thing was an experiment at the Nijmegen High Field Magnet Laboratory in the Netherlands. They have a video on their webpage, http://www.sci.kun.nl/hfml/froglev.html , and a very interesting letter they got concerning their experiment.
However, I am afraid access to the page currently is very slow.
God, root, what is difference? - Pitr
Could someone please explain why seemingly impossible things that are the domain of Captain Picard and the boys are getting attention from science when we can barely launch probes properly to Mars.
Could someone please explain why why we are launching probes to Mars while we can barely understand what's going on inside our bodies, still build houses of wood and bricks and use hundred-years-old-design internal combustion engines?
I think your argument is seriously flawed.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
...at the higher levels of these organisations there are people who don't have a very sound grounding in fundamental physics.
If we're willing to assume that there really is such a thing as "fundamental physics" then I would really like to meet someone who's not grounded in it. That would be something to see!
Seriously, I've never met or read from anyone who had even a feeble understanding of the fundamentals of our existence. Anyone who claims otherwise is suffering from the most arrogant form of ignorance. There are some brilliant people out there who can idly discuss things that I don't begin to compremend. We've learned a lot of really cool stuff, but we aren't even on track for the real basics.
My dollar would go to the "crackpots" every time. Even when they're wrong they do more to advance knowledge than the "smart money" people.
And, finally, we don't know the laws of physics. Maybe there's one that says anti-gravity has to exist, and we just haven't found it yet. If we did know the laws then people would just break them.
You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
When something like that comes out, it's really hard to get the scientists on your side. It's like Einstein's general relativity theorem. If it goes against the current physics laws, scientists are more willing to question the new (possible) evidence than the existing theory. So, as long as they don't physically prove it; they might not be able to get their concept accepted by the scientific community.
Consider the implications for global commerce and travel. If antigrav can be achieved at a feasible cost it would revolutionize the entire transit industry. I have no idea of the actual ratio but the effort to get anything to typical flight altitude is huge, even when compared to just keeping it there.
My office has been taken over by iPod people.
Go get a supercooled magnet, set it on another one, and gaze in wild wonder as it "just floats there". This is the same concept, he's just trying to apply it to any material, not just "magnetic" ones.
Of course that's just the joy of being a philosopher over a scientist, you get to be more optimistic. And you get more chicks. Which is my theory on why there are more philosophers than scientists...
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+&x
hmm, I'm not sure how much you've looked into exactly how he's trying to do it. Violating the laws of physics is one thing, bending them to your will is quite another. After reading up on this quite a bit last time it was discussed (NASA also has some folks working on it), I realized the guy is not working on anti-gravity, but more of a gravity deflector. Kind of like how a mirror deflects light. Then you put the object in the "shadow", and it is "lighter" (weight not luminosity). Yes, it pushes the laws of physics as we understand them, but so have a lot of things we now take for granted. Anyone up for a plane ride?
--
+&x
hmm, good idea. Try to attack the problem obliquely, for no other reason than you don't think a species that is mapping it's own genetic code, sending interplanetary probes, and building quantum computers, can't figure out a simple thing like gravity?
Not sure what your point was, other than to say it is more likely to discover how to do anti-gravity by NOT researching it. ?!?!
--
+&x
A POSSIBILITY OF GRAVITATIONAL FORCE SHIELDING BY BULK YBA2CU3O7-X SUPERCONDUCTOR
PODKLETNOV_E, NIEMINEN_R
PHYSICA C, 1992, Vol.203, No.3-4, pp.441-444
Shielding properties of single-phase dense bulk superconducting ceramics of YBa2Cu3O7-x against the gravitational force were studied at temperatures below 77 K. A small non-conducting and non-magnetic sample weighing 5.48 g was placed over a levitating superconducting disk and the loss of weight was measured with high precision using an electro-optical balance system. The sample was found to lose from 0.05 to 0.3% of its weight, depending on the rotation speed of the superconducting disk. Partial loss of weight might be the result of a certain state of energy which exists inside the crystal structure of the superconductor at low temperatures. The unusual state of energy might have changed a regular interaction between electromagnetic, nuclear and gravitational forces inside a solid body and is responsible for the gravity shielding effect.
Note that that the loss of weight is _not_ in the superconductor it'self, but in another piece of material held above it. Further, this sample is specifically stated to be non-conductin and non magnetic. In other words, all the theories I've just read on here about magnetic effects have been excluded (Unless you want to claim that the diamagnetic effect lead to this 0.3% reduction in weight. If so, he shouldn't bother with the gravity shielding, cos that's one helluva magnet).
Also note that it is explicetly _not_ antigravity. It is a gravity shilding effect. This, whilst I don't believe that it is predicted by relaticity theroy (that's not my field), does not lead to the contradictions inherent in true anti-gravity.
--
I should mention that there is a fifth postulated force of nature, the repulive force.
Which can be observed any time Rosanne Barr enters a club.
So you're basically ignoring the fact that we don't fully understand the "why" of gravity as well as we understood the quantum effects behind a transistor. The fact that we don't have a good solid understanding of gravity's origin shows that there is room for new discoveries.
There is irony in your statements that any scientist would demand a lot of reproducability followed immediately by the assertion, "Doing anything other than maybe trying to reproduce it once is not a 'good investment.'" Progress cannot be had without experimentation. Did the Michelson-Morley experiment not merit more than one repetition because it flew in the face of the wisdom of the time? By your logic, the Tesla coil was a waste of money since numberous scientists didn't have the theory down before it was first invented like the transistor.
Experiments into "anti-gravity" and levitation were the source of early ion drives and mag-lev propulsion. The research is not without merit just because a "negative" gravity force probably does not exist.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
The point I was trying to make is that many useful tools have come to be discovered/invented and used without knowledge of the fundamental truths behind how they work. (See my earlier examples.) The only way to find out if something useful can come from this field is to spend money to research it. As said earlier, maybe we'll find proof that it is nothing but nonsense. That too was worth the investment.
Another thing is that I haven't seen anything that says they are only interested in "anti-gravity", but are looking into propellantless propulsion. They might find something else useful. This is all about finding proof and, for the purposes of creating a machine, finding reproducability. You can't build anything useful if you can't reproduce your results. Attempting to cut off funding and deride all such related research because it isn't in vogue right now is tantamount to calling Gallileo before the Inquisition.
Besides, I've seen enough articles on areas of pure theory that seem far more crackpot and unprovable than the bumbling experimentation of the free energy guys. At least they're more geared towards trying to produce a result rather than intellectual self-gratification and modern mysticism. Even so, the theory guys are still working towards the advancement of our understanding of the universe, and I support their funding as well.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
You seem real attached to this perpetual motion machine argument.
Perhaps you should take a look at the Wired article others have been posting links to before being so closed-minded about this area of research. Perpetual motion has been proven impossible (unless some of the free energy guys are right, but I just don't see it as happening). However, our understanding of gravity is as primitive as our understanding of electromagnetism was 100 years ago. Is gravity caused by a heretofore undiscovered particle? Is it a fundamental property of space? Is it a truly instantaneous effect, or does it take time to travel between affected objects? We don't truly know. We can't honestly know yet if gravity can be manipulated unlike perpetual motion because we don't know what it is and what generates it.
I suppose, however, that you will ignore these arguments like the others about side discoveries and tools used before we understood them and respond with another perpetual motion line, or not at all.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
We didn't really understand how the Tesla coil worked for ages after it was invented. Consider that we just figured out why cold pizza tastes good yesterday.
Sometimes you observe an effect and figure out how to exploit it before you understand what causes it. Many basic tools such as magnets and batteries were used long before we understood the fundamentals of how they worked. Quantum mechanics showed us over 50 years ago just how little we had understood about electro-magnetic and nuclear science beforehand, yet we had been using electrical devices like the radio before then.
To this day, we don't truly understand what makes gravity and space-time work the way they do. I've seen a good number of theories for the fundamental basis of gravity, and I'm sure I'll see more before we finally figure it out. While true "anti-gravity" may never come out of the work that these people are doing, we may actually develop new propulsion systems that use unconventional methods. That's what this is about, after all.
Many are the theories that the staunchly conservative among science have defended against inquiry into their fundamental truth. The ether, the indivisibility of the atom, the animistic difference between organic and inorganic matter, Newtonian physics, and others are all examples of where the scientists of the day were CERTAIN was right and shouldn't be challenged. Persecution of those who challenge the current view of the world is not limited to the Church or the unscientific.
On the other hand, the are many examples of crackpot failed science that much money was wasted on. Let's hope something useful comes out of these guys. Even if nothing material does, their research can be valuable in proving these fields to be futile. That too is worth the funding.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Your commentary is interesting, albeit heavily laden with the "value judgments" you poopoo so readily. Permit me, if you will, to do a point-by-point of some of the more interesting comments:
/. posts in this thread, I am convinced that it is indeed an important point even if you are not.
....
...serve no purpose except to convince the public that scientists are all arrogant jerks.
/. that they have as little right to state their opinions as I do.
I don't presume to know what the original poster meant, but this statement strikes me as being just as value laden.
I never claimed we needed to know the underlying laws, but merely that some underlying order exists in the universe. I think you should reread what I wrote; you will find that my position is far less extreme than the original poster's.
This is an emotional value judgement and therefore irrelevent. The state of your digestive system....
Look who's being snide and sanctimonious now. *smile* I would hope the debate can focus on something more substantial than critiquing my vernacular.
I don't believe you read my post very carefully, depsite your quoting liberally from it. I was hedging, saying in effect "If I were to play the odds, I'd bet against this, but I will reserve final judgment until I hear more of the facts." I even said as much in a following paragraph. To make any stronger claims would be foolish since I haven't seen the data. I never claimed "wrong" or "right," but rather gave a professional opinion with the appropriate qualifying restrictions.
Incidentally, "value-judgments" do have a place in science. If you review the scientific method you will find that step one is "formulate hypothesis," step two is "test said hypothesis." Here's a dirty little secret: A hidden step 1.5 is here, namely choose which hypothesis to test. I can formulate hypotheses until the cows come home. I can do it from my armchair at night drinking brewskies, and I can do it as I walk to work in the morning. I have only limited resources to test hypotheses, however, so I must have some manner of distilling out only the "good" ones to test and ignore the rest. This is the hidden step here, and it requires value judgments on the part of the scientist. You will never separate these value judgments from the process of doing science, but the method itself, if done right, is independent of these values. Physicists I know instinctively perform this distillation process when they hear new ideas. There simply is no other practical way to do science--too much time would be spent chasing chimeras. (More on this in the following paragraph).
Extraordinary claims have a heavier burden of proof than do mundane claims
Once again - an emotional value judgement. The point of importance is...
Piffle. If I walked up to you and announced that gasoline is just saltwater, then you would hold me to a stricter burden of proof than if I walked up and said "It'll rain tomorrow"--even if I went to a gas pump, poured out a glass of the liquid, drank it, and said, "Boy, that was sure salty water". You would still want independent review before you started a company to mine the oceans for gasoline. My comment stands, and after reading some of the other
The more radical the claim, the more it shakes up your worldview, the more it opposes most everything you've come to understand about the world, then the more proof you require. This is simple pragmatism; emotions do not enter into it. For a physicist to tear apart his understanding of gravitation and relativity is as big a shock as your discovering that gasoline is well-marketed saltwater.
The solution to this is public education.
Dr. Park has written a book for this very purpose. Its release date is in May if I am not mistaken.
The down turn in science funding is essentially nothing more than an indication of the fact
"Value-laden" statements are allowed now? I'll venture one of my own in saying that the problem is considerably more complex than your explanation suggests.
Oh, I think they are already well aware of that. *smile* (Frankly, I feel the same way about IT people, particularly Open Source zealots). A recent article in Science describes the problem most eloquently, and I recomend it to you.
Kindly stick to the facts and leave the preaching to the lunatic fringe.
By all means, just as soon as you convince the rest of
Despite the sometimes caustic tone of your comments, I have enjoyed this give-and-take very much. Perhaps we can do it again sometime.
There are no fundamental laws of physics.
A curious proposition indeed. If there are no fundamental laws of physics, then discussing the scientific method is a pointless exercise since without some underlying order to the cosmos no science can be done. Perhaps you would like to change your stance to the more moderate "We do not know how many (if any) fundamental laws of physics we know at this time." I don't have to think of you as a loon then.
Does he honsestly think that we know all of physics and that there is nothing left to learn?
I sincerely doubt Dr. Park believes that. Since I can't morph into him, I'll have to speak from my own experience as a physicist. I, like many other physicists I'm sure, have a gut feeling that this will turn out to be an erroneous measurement in the end when independent research is done to validate of the results. That being said, if said validation does occur then I will happily do an about-face and dance the proverbial dance of joy at the introduction of new and interesting physics into my worldview.
Extraordinary claims have a heavier burden of proof than do mundane claims, and they demand a higher degree of skepticism. Incidentally, Dr. Park's comment appeared to me to be directed along the lines of questioning the wisdom of funding entity, throwing good money so publicly after a project that does not appear to be good science, rather than a pronouncement on the science itself. Please understand that when this project fails (I'll play the odds here), then corporate management will be less apt to fund a legitimate R&D project, and science as a whole will suffer as a consequence.
A too-open mind is a dangerous thing--you never know what will fall in. Healthy skepticism is a much safer mindset.
Okay, just looked it up, here's what I was trying to remember earlier. Basically, these were some of his key claims:
The itty bitty visible things were "bions", and they either were fueled by or radiated the orgone energy.
He met with Einstein and tried to get him to back his theories, but no dice. However, the experiment he showed Einstein in which "positive" orgone energy slightly raised the temperature in an orgone accumulator has been reproduced (according to the book I'm getting this from, 20 times since 1950), taking into account Einstein's counter theories. Maybe he had something, or maybe there is another explanation.
The "negative" orgone energy bions seemed to promote cancer in mice. When he tried to find the negative bions in healthy people, he found them less likely to be present than in seriously ill people (like cancer patients). There was a series of experiements which he claimed supported this.
When radium was placed in one of the accumulators, it apparently amplified the radiation from the radium. He then invented his cloud machine, which was apparently something like a lightning rod for radiation that had been amplified by the orgone. The device was mounted on the back of a truck, and from the descriptions I've seen, it sounds like it didn't seed the clouds with any sort of particles or anything.
So that's all interesting stuff, and I'll agree, most of his theories are a bit far fetched. Still, without verifying them one way or the other, can they really be pitched out the window? The whole point of the scientific method is to not let the true explanation get discarded or dismissed without reason, and to keep the BS from getting accepted as fact just because it looks good. Besides, there is something just so appealing about the notion of illness being the result of not having enough sex. All you'd need to do to feel better...
itachi, with perversions on his mind
But he wasn't using microscopes, from what I remember. There was some sort of orgone-focusing device that was essential. I hardly think that we can pass judgement on him one way or the other without being able to see his research. Any info we have on Reich and his research at this point is going to be tainted by the actions of the FDA and the counterclaims of people who were calling him a crackpot. I think you're probably right, but it is possible that some of his stuff (he came up with a lot) was somewhat valid. IIRC, the cloud seeding was in fact tied to his orgone theories.
itachi
This is an old story. NASA have been trying to reproduce this (with some success, I believe) for at least a year or so now.
What they're trying to do (based on an amateur scientists original research) is to BLOCK a gravititional field thereby shielding objects from a mass that would otherwise attract them.
This is no wierder than being able to block an electromagnetic field. If fact it's a lot more intuitive if gravity is really based on gravitons as predicted by superstring theory.
Calling it "anti-gravity" makes it sound like pseudo-science.
I meant superconductor.
Anti-gravity devices are not practal or proven because we can't even create a practal fusion reastor and we can't even get a decent explanation of various forces in quantum mechanics that's why.
We can make very practical (assuming this is what you meant) fusion reactors, we just can't make efficient enough magnetic bottles to contain the plasma with a low enough energy ratio that they outperform other energy sources. this is, however, an engineering problem (defeating inefficiency in electromagnets) not a fundamental misunderstanding of fusion reactions. As for quantum mechanics, we've been able to do an amazing amount with the limited understand we currently have. And, despite the great deal of knee-jerk 'it's all SF!' to the words 'anti-gravity', this project is more about validating the graviton concept than building the Enterprise. If an object can be shielded from gravitons, it means there are gravitons there to be shielded. Since we have no idea how else to look for the things, it seems as good a way as any to me. Just look at neutrino research. We can't detect them as they are, so we have to watch them blow through a giant volume of water and (maybe) slam into a detector.
As for douglas adams, he's quoted because he's funny as heck, and most people find comedic exaggeration to be a good way of ridiculing pretty much anything.. and this isn't really a logical argument. You haven't presented any facts or chains of logical reasoning, just poorly worded opinions and unrelated analogies.
Dreamweaver
"If a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live" -- MLK, Jr.
*sigh*
You're right. There are alot of cranks and not alot of breakthrough discoveries, and the fact that there are any does tend to make people want to root for the underdog (that and all of human history really), but when it comes to research i think it highly stupid to just come out and say "Bah, it's impossible. Give it up already". If someone wants to research something, be it anti-gravity or reducing cancer rates in cigarette smokers, i say let 'em go for it. If they fail, they fail. At the worst we have one more way to show anti-gravity Doesn't work and one more drug regime that doesn't cure cancer. On the other hand, maybe they come up with something. It may not be what they're going for, but the space program didn't set out to invent velcro either. On the far other hand, maybe they actually stumble across something revolutionary, but don't bash someone as wasting time if they want to expand the sphere of human knowledge.
Skepticism is all well and good and a useful standpoint for good science, but if you want extreme evidence, or even un-extreme evidence, you have to let people give it a shot, and telling anyone who even thinks about it they're idiots and wasting time isn't the way to do it.
Dreamweaver
"If a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live" -- MLK, Jr.
I said...
Serendipity. Even if anti-gravity is impossible the research will lead to other, unintended discoveries.
Notice the if. I do believe anti-gravity will be a reality someday.
If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.
resolves to 127.0.0.1...interesting....
From what i know of theoretical physics, in order to create antigravity devices, scientists must discover how gravity works by fitting it into a unified field theory equation. From the amount of progress they have made so far, it appears that they will have to discover a "graviton" before they can do this.
They can also make antigravity if they discover a substance that scientists call "exotic matter" this is a theoretical substance that supposedly has many strange and useful properties.
Unfortunately, this will result in antigravity, but they will still not know anything about gravity.
Opportunities multiply as they are seized. --Sun-Tzu
Yes, this does violate Newton's 3rd Law, and they know that, they just aren't sure why. It isn't explained by any kind of electrostatics or other laws (again, I'm not on this project so I don't know the other effects that it isn't). They think it might be electro-gravity.
I couldn't find any info about it on the web (in the 5 minutes that I looked), but I may be researching on it this summer with them if you want more information. You can email me: boarder@NOSPAMpurdue.edu
IANAL, but I play one on
The article said something about them doing projects similar to NASA's future propulsion projects. That is on what I was basing the parent post. If this isn't what they are doing and it really is only antigravity, consider me wrong :)
IANAL, but I play one on
No, because you still need to carry the apparatus with you, and need some sort of fuel to power it.
-Chris
Unfortunately, the law of conservation of energy would pose a serious problem. If you tried to use this as a propulsion system by making an object lighter, it would require at least a much energy input as the energy that you would save. In fact, probably even more, due to inefficiency.
Now, some people may say "Look, it's a whole new paradigm," or "What if the laws of physics are wrong?" Granted, it's possible, but the laws of thermodynamics are pretty specific, and conservation of energy can be derived many different ways mathematically. And mathematics is wrong even less often than physics is.
-Chris Elion
elion@its.caltech.edu
The article has an error in it that has caused considerable bias to build up in this discussion.
The article states that what was reported was a 2% reduction in the magnets weight. This is completely FALSE!
The effect that was reported was that things were measured to weigh 2% less when measured in the column directly above the spinning superconductor. The magnets weight was never reported to change. This doesn't mean it doesn't change only that it wasn't the issue.
According to the original experiment, the researchers were looking into non-gravity related phenomenon associated with superconducting magnets. What they noticed was that smoke, which usually drifted down in normal air, was drifting up in the column above the apparatus. The description I read went into some length on the lengths they went to to isolate other factors like air temperature or air currents and the like.
NASA has a group that is trying to duplicate the experiment but have trouble fabricating the large ceramic disks used.
There have been other Doctoral level researchers that have published papers that attempt to come up with a theory to explain the results.
To say that it is "obviously" bogus is to admit to having a closed mind. I would suggest the alternative mindset: "I'll believe it when I see it" When you start to say "What a waste of money" and the like, you are saying that it isn't worth proving that it can't be done, which can only happen if you attempt it.
Leave it to the financial backers to decide if an experiment is "worth it".
Plenty of people told the Wright brothers that they were attempting the impossible. If they had believed their critics, where would we be?
We the Sheeple...
Where did you get that idea from? Psi phenomena are far more well-evidenced than evolution.
No, I'm not joking.
Female Prison Rape in NY
While I disagree that an "anti-gravity" device will ever live up to anyone's expectations, it isn't entirely out of the question. Let me first write a bit about what gravity is... There are four forces to speak of: the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, electromagnetism (really 2 forces that follow the same rules, so they're combined into one), and gravity. The strong nuclear force is the strongest, but it has the smallest reach, whereas gravity is the weakest but works at the greatest distance. All the forces, except gravity, have been proven to exhibit particle/wave duality. So, there is reason to believe that gravity is both a wave and a particle (gravitons). Neither have yet been proven, but it makes sense.
As for anti-gravity, all that can be offered (at least until "gravitons" are discovered...) is false-anti-gravity. Think of a gyroscope. Same basic principle. The mag-lev trains are a similar idea as well. No amount of research can produce anti-gravity until we know what gravity is. The television, telephone, or computer could not have been invented without a basic understanding of the electron -- and we don't yet have the same understanding of gravity. So I apologize, but for now, if we want to fly, we'll need an airplane...
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -Douglas Adams, THHGTTG
The most popular theory out right now is as such - that mass warps space (and time). But think of it this way -- when we speak, our vocal chords cause a fluctuation in pressure, which creates sound waves. Isn't that similar (in the loosest sense) to what gravity would then do, if it was causing fluctuation in the fabric of space and time? And while we're on that wavelength (LMAO), it isn't unusual for one action to cause another seemingly dissimilar action. e.g., when one passes a magnetic charge around a wire, electrical current is created in that wire. Who knows what gravity will produce...
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -Douglas Adams, THHGTTG
I recall that in Britan a while back someone actually got a frog to float by using a powerful magnetic field.
My respect for the Brits has just skyrocketed. What a wonderfully "wierd science" thing to do... float a frog!
Any URLs? "Float + Frog" is probably a bad set of search terms for the engines.
("Usually you just throw'em in water, they'll float all by themselves...")
Gravitons are my choice for the most plausible. Everytime I hear the "bending space" theory, it just seems too cheesy.
I don't remember the name of it, but I read a book a couple years ago that made some awesome points. Basically, it just likened gravitons to magnetons. They work the same way.. the more mass an object has, the more gravitons are attracted to it and are flowing through it. But this also has something to do with string physics.
Maybe someone else can clarify?
Well the article implies that BAe is wasting money because they don't know what they are doing... well, maybe they know what they are doing, as well as something we don't know. After all if you had exclusive discovery or theory in anti-grav, you wouldn't share it with everyone (unless you get a patent, but in the military field patents are void, so you just work stealthly)
I think you mean superconductor.
Yeah, but animal activists killed that project.
P.S. imagine a beowulf cluster of those...
There are 4 forces in the current universe that we know about:
;-). Even with these obstacles there was a very interesting article in Science a few months ago about gravitational harmonics in the plaentary orbits.
1. ElectroMagnetic
2. Gravitational
3. Nuclear-weak
4. Nuclear-strong
So far the weak nuclear and Electromagnetic can be mathematically united and the strong nuclear force appears possible with a lot more work. Gravity is still the lone man out.
I think part of the reason is that we don't have any extreme fields to work with to see how the force behaves. The suns field is the best we have to work with now. Unfortunately where it gets really interesting in its space time warping the radiation fields get really intense
And could we put linux on them, make a beowulf cluster, and then show pictures of Natalie Portman eating hot grits?
He said, "grit"
huh huh huh
huh huh huh huh huh huh huh
I'll admit I was being somewhat facetious in my use of the term "impossible". However, many advancements of the previous century were made by trying random things. And nearly every signifigant breakthrough of this century had a long and respectable list of scientists who considered it a waste of time.
The progress of technology lies in finding practical applications of our current understanding of science.
I take strong exception to this statement.
Focusing on practical applications means ignoring those deemed "impractical", which means you drop into niches of "practical" science - semiconductors, microbiology, genetics, some materials science areas, expensive high-energy physics, and a few other fields. Countless other areas aren't practical (i.e. profitable ) enough to devote signifigant resources to.
No offense, but your statement perfectly sums up my problem with modern science - it means little fundamental research is done outside of profitable niche areas, and it means that the scientist becomes more and more of a narrow specialist, unable to recognize important anomolies outside of their area of expertise. This is exactly what has happened over the last few decades.
I agree. Comments like so many I see here are to me the most signifigant reason why progress in fundamental research has slowed to a crawl outside of a few niche or applied areas.
The scientific method says you develop a hypothesis, then develop experiments to prove or disprove said hypothesis. The theory being tested could range from "frogs legs grow faster when raised in the presence of Barry Manilow music" to "argon plasma fields in a tomahawk subjected to containment field weakly modulated at 2.34567 kHz in the presence of Barry Manilow music causes an electron spin configuration which appears to distort the local space time continuoum and produce a thrust without the ejection of a working fluid."
It doesn't matter how "stupid" or "patently impossible" the theory is. The WHOLE POINT of the scientific method is to allow you to find out if something _is_ possible in a framework designed to minimize error in making the determination, and to maximize the possibility that another scientist (and eventually engineer) can reproduce it and support the discovery.
To proclaim based on what we know today that something _must_ be "impossible" and therefore a waste of time to pursue is arrogant, ignorant, and the reason so many basic technologies in our world have been stalled for 50+ years.
The list of fundamental and "impossible" advances in the last century is staggering. A favorite quote regarding the progress of science: "Old scientists never change their mind. But they do die."
Note how using normal Karma whore techniques he replys to the First Post with something vaguely relevent. Therefore he's the first post that moderators see without automatically going for their offtopic flamebait cannons.
Non gratis rodentus anus
--
This is not my sandwich.
It is not the point though. If you agree that search for the Unified Theory makes sence you are accepting statement that there is some connection between different forces of Nature. Then how you can decline that in certain circumstances different manifestations of the Unified Force can have some influence on each other.
As far as your wishes go I do not see yet why can not you levitate around (like astronauts do using acceleration or using some kind of force compensation like magnetic suspension.) You really do not need Warp Drive to get to distant stars in reasonable period of time. You just have to go fast enough. Take a look at Special Relativity Theory formulae and you will see that if you move with the speed of light you reach any destination point instantly by you clocks.
Please, try to get one thing. Before you make statements you have made try to understand what people are trying to tell you, you may learn something new. Thanks.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is not distinguishable from magic.
However, most scientists believe that such anti-gravity research is fundamentally flawed. It goes against what we know about the physical Universe and is therefore impossible, they say.
Now, that, is one very WRONG saying. Just because we don't know something, means it's impossible? I DON'T THINK SO!!!
(Oh, and on a side note: The DNS maintainers of Greenglow need to change their DNS settings. Sure, Greenglow may be on the local machine, but everybody else on the Internet doesn't see it on 127.0.0.1, the local loopback IP
My 3 bits.
Not necessarily. The world could be local, but it might not be independant of our existence.
Of course, my good buddy William of Ockham tells me that I should agree with you...
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
First thanks for the info.
Second, I wasn't wrong in saying that magnets are produced from spinning electrons. You were assuming I exclusively meant extra-atomic circulations. Your saying that these are orbital-scale loops still requires that the electrons are "looping". And it is that circular motion that causes [ through the cross product ] the magnetic field. I wasn't completely sure that the electrons were confined to orbitals, but I remembered a diagram showing naturally occuring loops within the material itself. I presume that the molten metal is slowly solidifying, and the material is orienting itself in the direction of earths magnetic field.
Cool stuff
-Michael
-Michael
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
If gravity did propagate faster than light, you could send a signal faster than light (I move a heavy object, and another object across the galaxy feels a change in gravitational pull -- a weak but undeniable signal).
That's it? Are you serious? This entire fuss because he didn't realize that a spinning magnet would create air currents?
-Ariel
Photons have no quantum numbers - that why you can create them at will. This also means that you can't have the inverse of their quantum number (eg. one such number is charge - you would then have the opposite charge - there are lots more).
Since they have to quantum numbers, a particle with the opposite quantum numbers is identical to the first. That's why a photon is it's own anti-particle.
-Ariel
Of course "Since they have to quantum numbers" should be "Since they have no quantum numbers"
-Ariel
Sorry two mistakes, first it's increased when you move fast, not decreased. Second it was never proved - that's why it's called the Theory of relativity.
-Ariel
And BTW yes I (my father actually) did do a lot of research - over a years worth full time. And that's the results - he even invited people who claimed success to see if they could suggest any improvments - none could.
He published a paper on it, but I forget the name of the journal.
-Ariel
Couple of notes. First, the speed of light isn't exactly considered the maximum speed possible. It is considered the maximum possible speed for a massive particle (universal speed limit), but the violation of Bell's inequality tells us that locality doesn't hold. A little explanation.
:)
Bell's inequality, which has nothing to do with quantum physics, gives an upper limit to the correlation two distant events can have. For example, if I have a 20% chance of eating ice cream today at 1:00 pm, and you have a 40% chance of eating ice cream at the exact same time, then we will both eat ice cream at 1:00 about 8% of the time. However, the Aspect experiment (as well as others) have showed that, essentially, in the quantum world, you will eat ice cream every single time I do, giving a 100% correlation. This is called the violation of the Bell inequality.
The Bell inequality is based on two premises:
1) There is a real world independant of our existence
2) Locality (the assumption that instantaneous action at a distance is impossible)
Since the inequality does not hold, one of the two has to go. The Aspect experiment therefore told us that ANY theory explaining quantum physics HAS to have non-locality (that somehow there is either superluminal (faster than light) signaling or instantaneous action) built right into it. There have been several theories to get around the faster than light signaling (including my own paper outlining spacetime as nothing more than a property of matter, and therefore the correlated events are either seperated by zero effective space or zero effective time).
Anyway, gravity has been shown to propogate from a body at the speed of light. These supposed gravitons are, i believe, like photons and therefore "massless particles" with wavelike properties. If you want to know more about why we can only measure one or the other, email me and i'll point you to a good book or explain it to you myself. However, the point is that these "Wavicles" cannot be shielded, and that is not what Greenglow is trying to do. Greenglow doesn't know what the hell they're trying to do.
And BTW, the existence of gravitons has a fairly large amount of convincing evidence and the vast majority of theoretical physicists have accepted their existence.
One more thing - if gravitons had mass, and all massive bodies had gravity, and had these gravitons propogating in all directions all the time, why wouldnt the mass of the object be constantly decreasing? Don't tell me they're just exchanging gravitons, I have a nice story about planetary shielding and why that can't work
-Jon
Check out the new article on the anti-gravity stuff..there's a guy who goes through the particle physics pretty well. As for gravity propogating at the speed of light, there are a few articles I remember reading and discussing in a Philosophical Problems of Space and Time class that show a couple logical inconsistencies if they were instantaneous (obviously). And somewhere else, I believe in an article called "Our Elastic Spacetime: Black Holes and Gravitational Waves" by Smarr and Press they demonstrate it mathematically (I think) and give some strong evidence - some binary neutron star system. Apparently, they're losing mass rapidly, and the gravitational forces between them correspond to speed of light gravity propogation.
And note that the warpage of space time as a result of mass is totally compatible with the "particle" theory. Check out Don Howard's essay entitled "Holism, Separability, and the Metaphysical Implications of the Bell Experiments." If nowehere else, it can be found in Cushing's collection dealing with reflections on the Bell experiments (can't think of the title).
That is true, and that is the problem with it. In that case, we're looking at the two-dimensional surface of the matress (or rubber sheet as is commonly used) as space. The bowling ball distorts the flat sheet in a 3rd dimension. You need the 3-dimensional case to visualize the curvature of spacetime in 2 dimensions. This is why there are no examples in 3 dimensions - we'd need a fourth dimension (commonly time) to see our three dimensions bend in.
Could someone please explain why why we are launching probes to Mars while we can barely understand what's going on inside our bodies, still build houses of wood and bricks and use hundred-years-old-design internal combustion
engines?
Actually if you look at the large body of knowledge we know about the human body you might just reconsider that statement.
I think your argument is seriously flawed.
That's like a group of biologists studying exobiology or interstelar diplomacy we just don't have what it takes as of yet.
Next you are going to be telling me that there is "serious research" on designs for the next group of soverign class starships, quantum slipstream engines, transwarp coils, tachion emiters, and subspace tunneling right?
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
Speak for yourself when you say "our lifetimes." Given the rapid advances in biotech and medicine, the Human Genome Project, nanotech, etc., some of us alive today may very well be living for over 100 years.
Unfortunately my family has a history of heart disease and of dieing before 70 so I don't think any of that can help me now. Plus do you really want to be alive but have the mental capacity of a 10 year old kid for 20+ years that you get to live.
As for gravity shielding, more power to 'em. Skeptics can eat my shorts. Scientific skepticism is often based on logical fallacies, like discrediting scientists (if Adolf Hitler authored the laws of thermodynamics, would they be any less
valid?), or claiming the "null hypothesis" - which is a sham! There is no null, relative to hypotheses. If I claim "XYZ" without experimentation or evidence, anyone who claims "not XYZ" without experimentation or evidence is
equally unscientific. To those of you who argue there's no evidence gravity shielding is possible: go ahead and prove that it's impossible! I would argue that Podkletnov's experiments ARE evidence in favor of it, until such time as
they are debunked.
Ok then what about magical powers? There are many poeple who believe that they can in fact cast spells on people, there are people who beleve in aliens, Bigfoot, The Lochness Monster, The Tooth Fairy, Leprechauns, The Great Pumpkin, Santa, and all sorts of other things.
Making something up out of your head and making that something hard to disprove dosn't mean you have a bulletproof theory or explanation. What if I were to tell you that in fact Bill Gates is secretly funding a group of people in washington to extract the thoughts of people through computers and add them to his own. Kind of hard to disprove that one without a lot of digging and a hell of a lot of proof.
A prime example of the null hypothesis gone bad: There are a number of people in the US who believe that giving young children the massive multiple innoculations that most of them get these days can lead to autism. There are
many cases of autism manifesting shortly after such innoculations. Congress held hearings into this subject, and the Surgeon General and a bunch of medical "experts" sat there and claimed there was no link. Why did they claim this?
Simply because NO ONE HAD BOTHERED TO DO ANY SERIOUS RESEARCH ON IT. In other words, to the scientific establishment, not researching something is proof that it doesn't exist.
I don't believe it in the least. I think that people have a choice. Either become a cripple and raise the infant mortality rate or have a few minor cases of problems. The greater good is in effect.
Anti-gravity devices are not practal or proven because we can't even create a practal fusion reastor and we can't even get a decent explanation of various forces in quantum mechanics that's why.
You can't learn to run linux without first figuring out how to type/use a mouse/ turn on a computer, and even further it is impossible to say install linux without knowing these things.
That kind of "science" reminds me of Douglas Adams' Hideous Bugblatter Beast of Traal, a man-eating carnivore which will not attack you if you have a towel over your head, because if you can't see it, it thinks it can't see you.
Why is this guy so often quoted? I really don't use or find satire to be of any use in a logical argument.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
From what I know of such things they are usually in the relm of scifi. I seriously doubt that any such device will be avaible within our lifetimes.
Could someone please explain why seemingly impossible things that are the domain of Captain Picard and the boys are getting attention from science when we can barely launch probes properly to Mars.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
The article reference by others in this thread was not actually published, it was submitted to the Journal of Physics, reportedly accepted for publication, but withdrawn before publication by Podkletnov. I will not speculate as to the reasons, but again in numerous attempts, including some by NASA researchers working on novel propulsion systems, no one has successfully duplicated any of his results.
Torr and Li may have been delighted to see their
- theoretical
work appear to be vaildated, but this was not duplication of any earlier experiments.Care to support any of your "cold fusion" claims with published articles, or did you read about that in "Popular Science" too.
Cheers
Okay, well then ARRGH right back at you. "Popular Science" is hardly a respected, peer-reviewed, scientific journal. Just because you read something in "Popular Science" does not mean that the rest of the scientific community does not think that the authors are crackpots.
Not that crackpots are always wrong, but that's where the smart betting money is. For every supposed crackpot like Gallileo (actually not just a crackpot, but borderline heretical for asserting that the Sun was the center of the solar system) there have been thousands of no-name, genuine, dyed-in-the-wool crackpots. A corporate press release and funding by venture capitalists and government agencies do not mean that "something was demonstrated to someone somewhere" or that if something was demonstrated that these folks were the proper observers to pass judgement on the results.
The USDoD spent a good deal of time and money in the last couple of years studying the "invention" of a couple of Bozo's who claimed to have developed a people detector. This device they said, picked up the electro-magnetic field generated by nerve impulses. They "demonstrated" the ability of their device to detect people through walls. Responsible scientists immediately dismissed this idea because the magnitude of the electro-magenetic field created by human nerve impulses is so small that a device that could actually detect them would either either be so large as to have to be carried in several trucks (their device was the size of a water pistol) or held so close to the target as to be touching it (as an EKG or EEG machine does). As it turns out, what these "researchers" had developed was a divining rod. The IC chip inside their device had no power source and was not even attached to the antena on the front of the device.
Strange results do occur frequently during scientific experiments. What separates the crackpots from the scientists is publishing of the results in sufficient detail so that others may point out errors in the experimental methods (such as has been done numerous times with these "cold fusion" experiments that have duplicated the errors of Drs. Fleischmann and Pons) or attempt to replicate the results using the same or similar methods.
Podkletnov's experiments can be dismissed because no one else has been able to duplicate the results, and they have tried. This does not mean that he should stop his research, or that he should receive no funding. He may yet learn something interesting, but I wouldn't put my money on it.
acutally, we've understood quantum effects for a while now. see all those ICs in your computer? not doable without knowing quantum effects. nor was the LCD in your digital watch. both of those have been around for a while. Anything that is really small, and has electricity bouncing around in it is a harbor for quantum effects.
Gryphin
http://www.science.sp-agency.ca/Spacebound97/Mater ials-Science/Song/song.htm
"They" covered it up, the "scientific community" refused to listen (as opposed to refused to believe), no actual evidence for the phenomenon in question, failure to re-create Reich's experiments is taken as proof that he was right.
Classic crank stuff.
--
Ahh but that is the scientific method. In a field with limited funding and incredible competition for brains and dough the scientific method is all about convincing people with cash that your research is valid and their research is crack-pot (oh yeah and if one of their grad students decides to come over the wall and bring some data and info with what's the problem). The life of a research scientist requires sharp and quick knives. gid-foo
Check out what these guys have "supposably done"... http://members.aol.com/jnaudin509/systemg/html/gra vcraft.htm
This reminds me of an early Dilbert strip in which Dilbert constructed an anti-gravity device. As out hero was putting the final touches to the device (presumably applying power) it shot off the planet and was lost forever.
Dogbert snickered.
Charles Platt wrote this fascinating article 2 years ago for Wired Magazine. He actually interviewed Eugene Podkletnov, the scientist mentioned on the BBC article and has a lot of information on his experiments and troubles with the press and the scientific community. Platt also talked to people at NASA's Marshall Spaceflight Center that are/were doing some anti-gravity experiments too. It's a rather long article but it is a very interesting read. Does anyone have an update on Podkletnov and NASA's work on this??
"All the things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams". Elias Canetti
My info is about a year out of date (I left grad school), but last time I checked here was the story:
1) Podletnikov (sp?) would *not* share the design details of his experiment with anyone. This makes reproducing his results almost impossible, and made a lot of folks *very skeptical of his initial results. (Why's he hiding the apparatus?)
2) A few folks tried to piece todether experimental apparatus from what details they could glean from the paper, but none of them ever got any anti-grav results.
3) Nasa's folks said that they were talking to Podletnikov, but that they hadn't gotten any design specs from him yet.
Again, this may be out of date, but it's not very flattering to the research field.
No, No. That was a typo. He mean't Satan... don't worry Santa's real.
Using magnets is just balancing forces: it's nothing to do with gravity as I see it.
Surely anti-gravity is a repelling force exerted by any body with mass on any other body with mass. Or, put another way, something the stretches the old "rubber sheet" of spacetime in the opposite "direction" to the way gravity stetches it.
Quite how you can research anti-gravity when no one understands how gravity works is beyond me.
A keen eye (and sensible mind) probably spotted a few subconscious suggestions that I neglected to put in.
An example: the above comment directly relates to religion and the belief in a supernatural force. The universe is a thin string that could easily collapse under its own weight, but God/Allah/Zeus/etc. is holding it up. This is a self-reference situation also -- any views that we have regarding the existence or nonexistence of a supreme deity is assuming that the 'laws' which govern the reality we think we inhabit are valid, and they are not, so we can deduce nothing beyond all reasonable doubt. Contradition intended.
Another -- this was glaring you in the face. Unix! Separation of kernel and user space! Protected memory! I meant in the last sentence, "... but process 42 Insightfulize segfaulted".
There are others -- in fact there are infinitely many interpretations of the above (of course the interpretation that I am insane is among them). Why? Because this is my universe, and I said so! Seriously, from my point of view, I own this 'reality' process, and that you have any voice is like saying that the little voices in my head have a significant impact on my life. Not to insult you or anything, but from my point of view, all of you could very well be just figments of my imagination. But then again, I could just be a figment of yours :-).
What the !@$# -- wait a second -- there is another Slashdot article on this sort of stuff! I didn't even get to reading that! This is a weird world.
Oops -- I forgot one very important thing:
This sentence is false.
We are incomplete and inconsistant. See below:
substitute your name in before interpreting:
(your name) cannot consistantly assert this sentence.
Curiosity killed the cat (reference to other comments in this discussion :-). Self-ref killed the universe and with it, all logical thought.
Interesting. This goes along the same lines as some stuff I had read about a year ago (admittedly some conspiracy theory website I came across while doing leisure reading on the Philadelphia experiment) on propulsion techniques being tested on a modified B2. Something to do with packing electrons on the fore part of the wing and their effects on the airflow...
Not to say its true... just interesting to read. I had initially lumped the ion drive (Nasa DS1) in the same catagory of likelihood though. So we'll just have to wait and see what the G-men decide to let out of the bag.
I ate my sig.
Aside from the specifics of this case, the glib statement "Extreme claims require extreme evidence" begs the question: Who decides what shall be considered extreme, and under what criteria? Recent obstructionism over the conventional theory that people arrived in the Americas before 11,500 years ago, or the resistance in this century to the radical notion that women are the intellectual peers of men are just a couple of examples of the danger of accepting authoritative pronouncements uncritically.
This sounds a lot like what Irving Langmuir described as "pathological science". It's well worth reading the transcript of his original lecture on the subject:
Langmuir, I (transcribed by Hall, R), Physics Today, October 1989, p36-48.
I'm not aware of an online version of Langmuir's lecture, but Nick Turro has a nice article on the subject here, which has a sidebar listing Langmuir's key points.
(AP)-Kitty Hawk, NC :-)
Wright Brothers invent vehicle capable of overcoming earth's gravitational attraction to objects on and near it.
Scientists have confirmed that indeed, this vehicle has mysteriously levitated for the length of 100 yards on a North Carolina beach.
Be thankful you are not my student. You would not get a high grade for such a design
The Crackpot Index (http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html)
A simple method for rating potentially revolutionary contributions to physics.
But it is still important to allow people to examine the claims without scorn. A new maglev program is possibly valuable. A superconductor excludes magnetic field lines. A spinning SC assembly probably interacts with more of the earth's field than a still one. A small effect (one post quoted 2%) could plausibly come from interacting with the earth's field.
2% ain't a hovercraft engine, but (if true) it is still interesting. Even if the guy got the theory wrong.
In some alternate universe, your friend Schroedinger ate the toast, complaining about the cat hair in the butter. The cat survived to barf green grass into unnoticed corners of the carpet where the green had enough time to settle in. As Niven pointed out in one of his early stories, in a Schroedinger multiverse, no actions really have consequences. You can ignore the cat's screams. They really didn't happen.
ROTFLOL!!!! Man, this one deserves a +5 funny. I'm getting cramps from trying not to laugh out loud and wake my housemates up!! :-))
mikre he sophia he tou Mikrosophou.
Yeah, and as the movies and TV prove (it's on TV, so it must be true), alien babes are hot!
Most physicists haved scoffed at the idea because according to known physics, gravity cannot be shielded or amplified. That sort of ridicule strikes me as being terribly close-minded though--any physicist who believes with 100% certainly that everything we think we know about physics is true is a fool. I remember back in university, our final-year physics professor spent an entire class telling us how something that he and his colleagues were teaching us is fundamentally wrong because general relativity and quantum mechanics, both of which work beautifully within their own scope of the universe, simply do not mesh together.
Anyway, see here for all the info you could want on the subject of Podkletnov's experiments as well as papers written by other physicists to explain his results.
Looking for political forums? Check out "The World Forum".
I would guess that Podkletnov started trying to reproduce and amplify the results from the experiment of the Japanese guys. He hoped that the "superconductivity" will magnify the effect, and this is what he measured. What the heck, rocket science around.
The Japanese guys used a disk as a rotor of a motor in vacuum and under some very precisely controlled conditions. They measured the weight of that rotor. If the rotor is not spinning, or if it spinning in one direction, the weight is the same. If it spins in the other direction, the weight slightly decreases. Take a trip to the library. If you are interested by the subject, it will be worth the time.
well, perpetual motion anyway. get enough of these babies, attach coils and megnets and shit and you`ve got enough energy for whatever...
...So you`re saying `dont try and reproduce them until someone else has reproduced them`?
How productive.
er, a bowling ball on top of a matress IS in 3 dimensions. Unless you`re talking about my mates futon.
Let me first say that we don't know enough about gravity yet to even consider creating gravity shielding.
:) )
With that in mind I thought I would mention 'exotic matter' which is the term coined for hypothetical matter with negative energy density. This term has been bandied about a lot in regards to wormholes, where it is postulated that exotic matter could be used to keep the mouth of a wormhole open for a significant time (seconds even).
One property of exotic matter would then (AFAIK) be that it also has negative mass, and hence negative gravity (raising a lump on the rubber sheet
En Taro Adun, Executor.
Lasers have been around for 40 years or so. They are certainly quantum devices.
IANAPhysicist. However, I do believe that almost nothing is "impossible", we just haven't figured out how to do it YET. I believe that it is possible to create gravity-shielding. I just don't know if the human race will be able to figure out how before we go extinct. And since the physicists seem to be so bound by the World As They Know It, it will probably be a non-physicist who figures it out.
;-) And if Einstein's Theory of Relativity is still true, and Energy remains constant, the only thing left is that the speed of light must increase! So if we can't travel faster than the speed of light, we'll just raise the speed limit! Don't waste your time and mine explaining why this can't be done. Either ignore me, or assume it can be done and help figure out how!
The possibility of gravity shielding would seem to bring up many new problems. For example:
Most of the reason for having an International Space Station, and many other space-related projects, would go away. Since a lot of current space science has to do with Microgravity, there would be no need to go to space if we could create gravity-shielded platforms on terra firma.
Applying gravity-shielding to automobiles and other ground-contact transportation would not seem to work, since they all rely on friction with the ground for steering and braking. If you apply gravity-shielding, you have less friction with the ground, and therefor less steering and braking control. And it will still take the same amount of energy to accelerate the mass, and you haven't affected aerodynamic drag at all. So a totally new form of non-contact propulsion (and steering and braking) would seem to be in order.
Now, what would be REALLY cool would be the ability to "shield" mass. This would allow true anti-gravity, and also allow acceleration and deceleration with minimal energy; like 90 degree turns at 500 MPH! Kinda like all those UFOs do!
What is it with the tabloid headlines? Antigravity research confirmed?!! Indeed. While technicly true (they have confirmed that the research is being performed). It has a double meaning (one might also infer that the existance of an antigravity phenomenon has been confirmed).
A better headline would be: BAE Funds Anti Gravity Research.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
go here to get a basic idea of gravitons. They are excepted by most physists. the Einstien model of the unvierse leads to quanta which leads to strings which leads to graviton. Einstien did not like quantum, but acknowledge it probably existed. He called the quantum effects "Spooky".
If you want to find out more about the graviton visit your local library, or college physist, or MIT, or cal tech.
heres a question...If the moon was to disappear, how long would the effects take to reach earth?and why?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
by definition you can't contain anti-gravity objects.
we are moving at about the speed of light to a single point of space. that means if you had an object that was uneffected by gravity, we would go hurdling past it at near light speeds.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
People keep on about superconducting magnets. As I remember it, a superconductor tries to exclude all magnetic fields from it's interior, hence they levitate above a magnet. They cannot be a magnet themselves.
Jeff
stty erase ^H
>if you induce a current in a bar made of a
>special material, it will shoot in an axial
>direction from some unknown force (no, not the
>simple right-hand rule of electricity and
>magnetism).
>I can't explain it, but he said the military is
>already using it as a massless thruster on their
>spy satellites to move through orbits very
>quickly and efficiently.
Eh? What about the law of conservation of momentum? How can you exert a force on a spy satellite and ignore Newton's Third Law?
--Sam L-L
Yes you do. You assume that your existing model is entirely correct. Need I say more?
If you claim something and show me no evidence, I am a fool to believe it.
But you are also a fool if you completely discount the possibility that it might be true.
Besides, so what if NASA hasn't been able to replicate it - that doesn't make the original experiments invalid, all that it proves is that they haven't been able to replicate it. The original experimenter (AFAIK) had access to better ceramics manufacturing tech than the boys at NASA, so it would take a while to get up to speed.
Does the fact that NASA actually *tried* to replicate it not lend it any validity anyway? They aren't exactly known for their credulosity. But I digress.
those that are still willing to consider the possibility that a superconducting rotating disk has anti-grav powers are completely ignorant.No, they're not. They are just open-minded, possessing a quality which seems to be sadly lacking in certain cases round here. If they blindly believed it, in the face of directly contradictory evidence, *then* they would be ignorant. Just being willing to consider a possibility does not make one a fool.
Reality is the ultimate Rorschach.
French scientists in Grenoble managed to get a mouse to levitate,
And how did they get the ball to roll then?Any URLs?
Here you are.
One quote:
The airborne amphibian reportedly "looked comfortable" while under the influence of the magnetic field, and seems to have emerged from the experiment fully intact. "It went back to its fellow frogs looking perfectly happy,"
"You need to bone up on Newton's laws of motion."
Umm... Newton was wrong. Sure he came very close, but his equations look very little like what reality (as far as we know it) really is. Along came Einstein that proved if you do certain things to an object (such as accelerate it to high speeds), Newton's laws break. Einstein's laws helped us understand things much better, and build machines that "violate the laws of physics".
So is Einstein the last word in his department of physics? Or will someone replace him eventually.
We can say for SURE that we don't know everything yet, so I'm putting my bets on someone correcting Einstein, as he corrected Newton. When this person comes along, their proof will probably be convincing in itself, and won't need discussion pages like Slashdot to give it more credibility.
That this guy doesn't publish exhaustive proof of his machine working, or doesn't fly by my window in a Starwars style speederbike, I don't think I want to hear another word about this.
Moyi dvi kopiyke.
I doubt an anti gravity device will be available within our times...but I think something that will reduce the pull of gravity (and I don't mean jet thrusters) will be available within the next 30-50 years. But who cares about anti gravity...when all we really need is a warp engine. But then we come to the question off...if we send people to other planets....what are we gonna do about the fact that they need gravity in the spaceship? Another interesting question is it possible to mimick gravity like they do in oh... Star Trek and the like
Why win9x really sucks
My senior year of high school (98) I was doing research on superconductors for a physics project and I came across a number of things online about Podkletnov and his experiments. If you feel like looking there are a number of attempts at reproducing his results. I don't feel like looking again but I know is you do a search for Podkletnov then you'll find plenty of things about him and his experiment and its reproductions.
My point: Don't just stupidly assume that nobody has tried to reproduce the experiment.
and when i press my face against the frosted shower stall
"You can invest a little money in far-out projects
;)
if they have some chance of success - it's called
Pascal's Wager. In this case, most scientists
would say there is zero chance of success."
seems like this guy (Bob Park) is pissed since
BAe forgot to invite him to join this research
Anyway, I think it's shortsighted to say something
like this has zero chance of success, think just
about anything new technology we have today.
(yeah yeah, perhaps its off topic, so go wave your nazi baton at someone else mr moderator!)
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Hackers found their way into greenglow's systems and found this Top Secret Document which contains the results of their anti-gravity simulations.
(cue up 1950's science reel music)
;-)
./ explain exactly what kind of a process would have to go on here for this to work? Just curious.
I'm sure all of this is only taking place because mankind entered the year 2000 without personal jetpaks.
But seriously, I'm not a Physics person, so could someone here on
Just think, now I don't have to throw my clothes on the floor, I could just have them floatin about! =D
-bugbbq
Reich first and foremost was an authority-challenger, loving the kick the shins of those he thought were using the then-current political structure to maintain the then-status quo. It didn't matter to him if his theory of orgone energy challenged authority, or something else.
In many ways, he was a true cotemporary of other social revolutionists of his day, such as Havelock Ellis, Sartre, Margaet Sanger, etc. His standing was equal or nearly so up until the 50's, when the wave of social hysteria that was evidenced by McCartyism engulfed his work.
Just like research into anti-gravity devices or localized power sources based on a chemical lasing model or anything similar which would disrupt the current myths of thought, all it took for Reich to lose his credibility was the one loose or two misguided theory, like his theory that one has basically 3-4,000 potential orgasms in you as a biological entity and that's all. All it will take will be for someone to create a working anti-grav device, then proviso it that while it works we really should be cautious with its use because it might mutate plant growth in the rain forest, a theorem which will seem plausible but then be proven stupid a few years later and by then anti-grav stuff will have enough corporate hooks in them to where everyday use won't be cache', just like when the AMA used the climate of the time to destroy Reich.
Why must there be a quanta of gravity. While I freely and fully admit that there must be a "flat" surface for space to be relitively curved to there is still no reason for a quantum of gravity. Yes, there are quantums of light and even matter but gravity doesn't "need" them. Now there does have to be a quantum of space which is best explained (currently) by string theory. While string theory is the best current explanation that we can come up with it has largly been debunked. Not because of any internal inconsistancy but because there is not any observable evidence. Also it seems to hit or miss on it's predictions. Sometimes it predicts and sometimes it don't. Now I am not a quantum physicist to be able to make a completly educated call on this but i do try to keep up as much as I can. String theory is HIGHLY controversial right now. Not all quantum theorists hold it to be true. Furthermore, from what I can get at a library, it seems that the string theorists can't even agree in all places. Until there are observations to back up the mathamatical theory it cannot be trusted as a model of our universe. Wish I had my books on this with me so I could do some quotes. Ah well. back to the library. ;)
Pithy, yet ultimately meaningless, phrase expressed with gusto!
Gravitrons do not exist in a Einstienian model of the universe. One of the proofs of reletivity completely explained gravity without the need of ANY PARTICLES. Gravity is explained by the bending of space. Light curves in a gravity well (from our perspective) because it is taking the shortest possible route from point A to Point B. Conceptually it is like a great circle on the globe. An airplane flying from New York to San Francisco flys in a straight line from it's own point of view. Seeing the path drawn from space we will see that the planes course actually takes it around canada in a great arc. Relitivity means that both view points are right from thier frame of referance. This was the main beauty of Einstienian physics. There is no need for a "force" of gravity. Space is merely curved.
Pithy, yet ultimately meaningless, phrase expressed with gusto!
From reading articles in the past, the current research isn't about anti-gravity, but rather, gravity blocking. The article uses the term "Gravitation Shielding" as well as "anti-gravity", but anti-gravity would be a graviton (force carrying particle) which repelled matter, rather than attracted it. At this time, no such-anti particle is known to exist. However, gravity blocking is still pretty damn kool.
It was Newt Gingrinch... I read somewhere his idea of the future was honeymoons in space (outer). You'll find a good critcism of this idea in Al Frankin's "Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat ID10T..."
Could antigravity exist? Maybe. There are a few theories, both old and new, that allow for it in some form or another. Could it be a practical effect used in technology? Unlikely. Allow me to explain in terms of Occam's razor:
We know of four fundamental forces.
Electromagnetic force has two points of influence on matter, which cancel each other out. These points of influence seem to be duplicated for magnetic effects (motion dependant inversion of the same thing as electrical), though magnetic monopoles are still an unanswered question. If they exist, they are damned uncommon...
Strong nuclear force keeps the atomic and molecular structures of the universe together, and depends on a rather odd set of range dependant rules.
Weak nuclear forces are only practically relevant in decay related behaviors.
Gravity is the big inconsistant in terms of partical physics... if a graviton exists, it is less certain and measurable than any of the others. There is no solid unifying theory linking gravitational force with the other three. This could be the crack into which antigravity could slip...
But if antigravity is possible, it is so difficult to obtain that it has no measurable impact on the behavior of the observable universe, and it would take a major breakthrough in our understanding of how things work to control it enough to harness it in a controlled fashion...
Gravity is a product of an objects mass, both rest and relativistic. An object in motion relative to you does have greater gravity... and there are allowances for "imaginary rest mass" in some theories - tachyons - but the theoretical effect of this is more than simply bending space the other way. They would never move slower than light, and would move (relative to us) backward in time... and according to all the models I've seen, there would be no interactions with any currently measurable aspect of the (slower than light) universe.
There are other things that play funny games with the universe. Neurtrinos may change their type (and therefore mass) according to a mixing ratio - in other words, they aren't 100% one type of neutrino, but are instead a wave composed of 95% electron neutrinos, 4.5% mu neutrinos, 0.5% tau neutrinos (off the top of my head), and depending on where you measure them, are more likely to come up one or another of the above.
That one has been measured experimentally, in a huge water tank that catches neutrinos from the sun, in Japan, called the Super Kamiokande (SuperK) detector. Given things like this, and the holes in the theories that take them into account, anything might be possible. General relativity is only an approximation... it doesn't account for some of the measurable quantum effects, because the scale is wrong... and if there were things in this world, Horatio, that Newton's theory was not meant to describe... perhaps the same is true of Einstein's.
--
-- Still waiting for the Nike endorsement
> www.greenglow.co.uk. Server: indy.legend.co.uk Address: 194.164.0.3 Name: www.greenglow.co.uk Address: 127.0.0.1 They are pointing the web server back at yourself! The ultimate postmodern self reference.
Your very much write about being able to produce energy. We can do that well. The bikini islands prove it. H-bombs works wonders at producing energy. However, you are kinda wrong about it not being used because the energy ratio isn't as good as other sources. It isn't as good, but it's not just low, it's not positive. Most people don't like having to put more energy in than they take out. They don't out perform other sources, but it also doesn't out perform a hampster running on a wheel turning an alternator.
Actually it's Tuesday. thank you.
just think what this could mean for the future of open faced peanut butter and jelly sandwhiches, if they can't land face down predictedly, life as we know it would come to a screeching halt!, speaking of pb&j, I'm getting kinda tired, TAG OUT!.
Cogito Eggo Sum, I think therefore I'm a waffle
I cant believe this... I read this story. Then I look at the thread and you guys are knocking it?? what a bunch of shut-ins you are. First of all, "Breaking laws set by Newton" ?? I'll break my foot up in your ass for saying that anti-grav is not the coolest thing EVER!!! And for even implying that Newton "created" the laws of gravity, he simply was the first person not too stupid to notice. Just shut up and take a ride in my fuel, sound, gravity free vehicle and tell me how cool that is...
The ip address of this link is 127.0.0.1
I'm an idiot, i just posted that myself. guess I should scan all the messages before posting.
Have you tried this experiment with a slice of toast buttered on both sides? I believe that would be a slightly more balanced system, and the ASPCA can com watch, too.
Chris...
This message has been ROT-13 encrypted twice for higher security.
* Yes, I am perfectly aware that this falls apart for value=1. the probablility is more likely e**-v.
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
I'm of the opinion that Gravity and Magnetism are related.
Gravity, in my understanding, is the attraction of one mass for another.
Magnetism is the concentrated lines of electron force that either attracts or repels like forces based on orientation of charge.
Gravity and Magnetism have like qualities:
North and South poles or orientation of charges.
Lines of force that interact with other lines of force.
Conclusion:
Gravity and Magnetism are related.
I've heard more than one scientist say that the two are completely different things... I'm not so sure they are.
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
(ap) Sherwin-Winniams has announced a new paint that when electrified resists gravity.
So said cheif researcher, who prefered to go by bluGill. He went on to remark how similear this appeared at to quantum mechancis at first.
Going back to the drawing board they decided to try something too obvious to start with: instead of a single static charge they applied a continious charge. Since the paint was always being activated it could not shut off without warning.
This paint would have been released years ago, but the first large test failed. They intended to levitate a sphere with humans in 100 feet off the gound (not exactly but they figgured they could get close), but the switching mechanism jamed when the stresses changed between grav and anti-grav areas.
Fortunatly with anti-grave so cheap we had put an entire hydrophonic garden onboard. Those onboard claim that they went as far as Mars, but our estimates of the speed they obtained suggest they only rose to the moon.
This paint is sure to bring out a new ear of space travel. Since mass is not an issue and the paint is cheep a backyard builder can build an inter-planity explorer in their backyard. The possibilities are endless.
Was I the only one who thought of Danny Dunn when I saw this story?
You know, those Cold-War-era telepathy experiments you and a couple of other folks have lampooned weren't entirely off the wall. It was serious research done for serious purposes.
And the fact that nobody was ever able to get it to work served an important purpose - it demonstrated that "telepathy" as the psudo-scientists know it, is bunk.
A negative result is often just as important as a positive one. I think it's unlikely that BAe will have much success, but I think that it's good that they try, and that they document their failures.
Far, far better that they try and fail, than never try at all.
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Try as I might, I am unable to reproduce the result. Cats are quite flexable, and both of mine like bread. They keep eating the apparatus.
The best way to discover how to do anti-gravity is by handing all your money over to me. At least, that is as good a way as any other.
Instead of reasearching cool gadgets that violates the basic laws of physics, reasearch the basic laws of physics, and be happy with whatever cool gadgets the new understanding of physics may make possible.
Einstein was a genius, not God, and came up with theories of relativity. NOT FACTS.
Theories are NOT facts until proven so in rigorous experimentation. He was brilliant-but not perfect, and it may be a long time before we prove just how brilliant, or perfect, he was. Please don't discount others' theories just because they don't go along with Einstein's theories. He didn't invent or create the rules of the universe--just theorized about them.
I take this back if you can prove Einstein's Godlike powers. :^)
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
With some great 'Try at Home at Your Own Risk' experiments! Click here.
**>>BELCH
All work has been abandoned since the 1948 on the amazing endochronic properties of resublimated thiotimoline. Why? Why does the DoD repeatedly kill any attempt to figure how resublimated Thiotimoline seems to dissolve BEFORE it is actually put in a solvant? Are the risks too high? Do they have something to hide?
Not sure about the frog thing, but I know French scientists in Grenoble managed to get a mouse to levitate, through an intense magnetic field.
I recall that in Britan a while back someone actually got a frog to float by using a powerful magnetic field. What I think all this research amounts to is something along the lines of "If we use enough power and a big enough magnetic field, gravity won't like us anymore." I just hope that warp drive hurries up, I'm tired of earth.
The very scientists who made all of the advances you are calling "impossible" would be the last to advocate going out and testing random ideas they consider "stupid" or "patently impossible".
The progress of science depends upon torture-testing our best current theories, and then attempting to figure out WTF went wrong when the theory starts to break down. You cannot effectively torture test the theory if you don't understand it!
The progress of technology lies in finding practical applications of our current understanding of science.
Regards,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
There is an amusing book called "Indistinguishable from Magic" by Robert Forward that you should read.
He sticks to current science for his wonders, but manages to design things that are unbelievable but could potentially happen given our current knowledge of science. One of them is an immobile device that creates a stationary region of low gravity.
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
The other important thing to remember is that a lot of electromagnetism discoveries we take for granted were made by people chasing "crackpot" ideas and finding something real. Who knows what kind of neat phenomena one might find by spinning a superconductor?
To say ahead of time that there's nothing to find is the same flavor of hubris that led late 19th century physicists to declare that there was nothing left to discover. ("Now if only that poxy git Michelson would shut up about his interferometer...")
I can see the fnords!
Hey ! Your sig has a minor inaccuracy. I think if you review the tape you'll find Avon /actually/ says : "That's right. I'm not stupid, I'm not expendable, and I'm not going." :) PS how /did/ he use Orac to ssh into Zen in 'Aftermath' ?
--
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
Here is an ignorant and off the cuff question...we can "create" antimatter...does antimatter imply antigravity?
...
Alas, no.
Antimatter has positive mass, and is gravitationally attractive the same way normal matter is. For example, while a positron and electron have opposite charges and will annihilate one another upon contact, they both exhibit positive gratitational attraction to one another, proportional to their mass.
Still, this doesn't mean antigravity is dead. Who knows what we'll be able to do in 50 or 100 years, if we should learn how to strum superstrings in 11 dimensions
I was going to suggest an excellent book on the subject of superstring theory and how it relates to quantum physics and relativity, but alas, the book is at home and for some reason I can't recall the exact title. It is an outstanding, non-mathematical explaination of these theories, what they imply, and what questions they do (and do not) answer. Email me if you're interested and I'll try and dig it up.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Brian Greene - The Elegant Universe?
:-))
Yes, it is. An excellent book - I just finished reading it last night (and made a note of the title and author to post this morning, but you beat me to it.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
IF you went back 100 years and told the leading physicists (sp?) of the day that 100 years from now, we would have the ability to hide things by using a cloaking device, they would have been highly skeptical, might have even said it was impossible.
Just because it's an idea that seems thinkable doesn't make it possible. No matter how much time mankind is allowed to gather knowledge.
I hope that sheds a little light on how things work in the real world. Any other questions?
Bad Mojo
Bad Mojo
"If you can't win by reason, go for volume." -- Calvin
You mean like fire? Um, no, I guess not.
Actually, there are lots of advances that were effectively engineering advances first ("This happens when we do that. We don't know why yet, but we can certainly use the effect if we include a fudge factor to compensate for our ignorance of the details.") And then the physics eventually gets worked out.
I don't know whether this idea is silly or not. I don't understand gravity theory well enough to have a meaningful guess (and admitting that puts me ahead of most of you wags who think you do).
It sounds like -- from what little reaction has been quoted, FWIW -- at least some physicists think it's very very unlikely. Their guesses about this are better than mine by several orders of magnitude, but they could still be wrong. From the sounds of it, it seems like a lot of physicists would have to be wrong about a lot of things, which is not impossible, though it is unlikely.
The real question, I think, is how does one properly judge what resources (money, attention, &etc) should be allocated (and by whom) to what lines of inquiry? How does one do that in a way that achieves the most useful balance between safe, plodding lines of exploration and unlikely but potentially literally revolutionary lines of exploration? (And those things are not the simple dichotomy that they are often presented as.)
[shrug] It's still a counter-example to your rather odd claim that "new technology almost invariably comes only after the underlying physics has been well worked out." I mean, I thought you were joking at first.
Engineering innovations like fire were not elusive. They provided a glaring gaping hole in the current understanding of the world. More importantly, they were readily reproducible.
For obvious reasons, any "holes" that still exist are probably smaller, and it logically follows that it may be harder to tell whether a "hole" exists or not, whether something is reproducible or not.
There's a big difference between "we have an effect that violates our notion of the universe, so let's revise our notion" and "we want to find an effect that, while it violates our notion of the universe and while it hasn't yet been discovered, it would be really neat if we could find it".
That's true. And they think they may have the former.
It goes against what we know about the physical Universe and is therefore impossible...
Beware the scientist who refuses to accept the possibility of something based on the fact that it is not known. Such people have lost their soul. They have lost their sense of wonder at the miracles of the Universe. They have lost their drive to discover new things.
All great advances come from people who challenge, question and subvert "what we know about the physical Universe". If it wasn't for them we'd still be living in the 'fertile crescent', eating berries and rodents. We would have never gone to the moon, gone to the air, gone to the Western Hemisphere, made tools or intentionally lit a fire.
"Here there be Dragons!" "The world is flat!" "Heavier-than-air craft will never fly!"
Such thinking makes me question the existence of intelligent life on Earth... 'It goes against what we believe to be true, therefore it's impossible'. What a depressing and embarassing attitude for a 'scientist' to have... Pity.
Anti-gravity may not pan out. It seems pretty far fetched. But wouldn't it be wonderous if it worked?? Same with super-luminar velocity travel. Yeah, it's impossible given what we know. Maybe we just need to learn a little more, that's all.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
I'd share what it said... namely very little.
Welcome to Project Greenglow
[Logo] [ydot]What is Project GREENGLOW?
[ydot]Future plans for the Greenglow web site
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Last Modified 5th July 1999
__________
If you can go to bed, knowing you did a valuable thing today, you're very lucky. If you can't... it's not bedtime
Just because your only knowledge of me is bits on a screen does not quantifiably prove that I do not exist. I may, I may not, but you can not prove that I do not exist because of a lack of evidence or perception.
Uhrm, didn't anyone ever tell you that the burden of proof lies upon the one who makes the positive claim? As far as I'm concerned, your existence isn't established a priori; the only evidence do I have of it is these pixels on the screen. And I may very well decide that it's not evidence enough; as far as I know, you might as well be a postbot, or the byproduct of a Slashdot bug, or just an all-out hallucination. But I don't do that; I accept your objective existence, because it's the rational decision.
And while we're at it, it's impossible to prove an existential negative; I may spend my entire life looking for pink elephants and find none, and yet I will not have proved that pink elephants don't exist. Same with you. Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence.
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
Just because we have a currently 'accepted' model does not mean that it is the truth. It only means it is accepted.
I was under the impression that gravity was a product of an object having mass. Is the theory that massive objects bend space the accepted one? It was explained to me as a bowling ball sitting on top of a matress, but in 3 dimensions. Anyway, the only two ways I can think of to create anti-gravity are to make the Earth have less mass (probably not the best idea), or to "unbend" the space around it. Does anyone have more technical details on what BAe is trying to do? Is there even a theoretical way to unbend space? Physics folks, help me out here.
-B
Yes. Lots is known about his "collectors" however, even though he refused to tell anyone exactly how they worked (that, at least, can't be blamed on the FDA). What we do know is pretty darn silly. Cloud seeding may have been tied to orgone in his mind, but the reason it works has nothing at all to do with anything other than the chemical properties of clouds and silver idodide (I THINK that's the chemical- i forget- someone help me on this one?)
Sorry, bt Orgone energy DOES deserve to be in that lineup. Wilhelm Reich should never have been attacked by the FDA, who accused him of claiming his orgone machines could cure cancer (he never claimed that), and that they burnt all his books was draconian. But Reich's major claim with orgone was that you could see "orgone" (and a bunch of other weird thingies) energy (actually he described them almost as being little particles, not just energy) everywhere, and no one has ever found it, even with better microscopes than Reich had. He was almost certianly, without any doubt, insane. That doesn't mean he was a total crackpot- his rain making cloud seeding machines DID work, but unlike orgone, everyone today knows how and why (seeding clouds to make them rain is actually really easy).
So, oh wise master of the universe, you would like to explain to me *exactly* how the force we call gravity works, and why this guy's attempts to use superconducting, supercoold materials to deflect that force will ultimately prove fruitless.
Next, I'll bet you'll tell me that there's no such thing as "left-handed material".
PHYSICS NEWS UPDATE
The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Physics News
Number 476 March 24, 2000 by Phillip F. Schewe and Ben Stein
TOPSY TURVY: THE FIRST TRUE "LEFT HANDED" MATERIAL
has been devised by scientists at the University of California at San Diego.
In this medium, light waves are expected to exhibit a reverse Doppler
effect. That is, the light from a source coming toward you would be
reddened and the light from a receding source would be blue shifted. The
UCSD composite material, consisting of an assembly of copper rings and
wires (see figure at www.aip.org/physnews/graphics), should eventually
have important optics and telecommunications applications.
More details here.
Finally all us southpaws have a material we can call our own.
--
+&x
Wired did a feature on antigrav and this russian scientist 2 years ago. It's available online here.
I strongly believe that trying to be clever is detrimental to your health. -- Linus Torvalds
I read a book by Reich, if I recall correctly. In it he stated the Orgone energy theory, which involved some invisible energy emitted from human beings' eyes and fingers, and that energy could be used (among other things) to dissipate clouds. The author went on to claim that there were invisible, ephemeral beings that looked like gigantic jellyfish living high in earth's atmosphere, feeding on clouds and the orgone energy within them.
:-) Having ones books and papers seized does not mean one is correct (especially back in 1957, which is about the time that McCarthy gave the first amendment a serious beating.)
I'm sorry, but these claims not only trip the crackpot alarm, they peg the meter.
If I've misrepresented Orgone Energy or Reich's claims, then I apologize. If it's the research I remember, however, then it's several steps more ridiculous than antigravity or Tesla's tricks, and well deserves its reputation as a crank theory.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
Engineering innovations like fire didn't violate the current understandings of physics. They occurred in the absence of any theories of physics.
Engineering innovations like fire were not elusive. They provided a glaring gaping hole in the current understanding of the world. More importantly, they were readily reproducible.
There's a big difference between "we have an effect that violates our notion of the universe, so let's revise our notion" and "we want to find an effect that, while it violates our notion of the universe and while it hasn't yet been discovered, it would be really neat if we could find it".
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
This includes antigravity thrusters but also a lot more things (most of which are phenomena we don't currently understand very well, yet).
Some of the things this involves are warp drives, magnetic levitation (MagLev at Boeing, which is propellentless, but not massless), and a lot of other really weird concepts I can't explain well.
My friend was a research assistant on one of these projects, and the best he could explain one of these weird phenomena was that if you induce a current in a bar made of a special material, it will shoot in an axial direction from some unknown force (no, not the simple right-hand rule of electricity and magnetism).
I can't explain it, but he said the military is already using it as a massless thruster on their spy satellites to move through orbits very quickly and efficiently.
IANAL, but I play one on
Okay, well then ARRGH right back at you. "Popular Science" is hardly a respected, peer-reviewed, scientific journal. Just because you read something in "Popular Science" does not mean that the rest of the scientific community does not think that the authors are crackpots.
If you had read what I wrote, you'd see that the "peer reviewed, respected article" was listed as a reference in the article, and it's a hell of a lot easier to find on the Popular Science article. Why are you attacking me instead of reading my point? Are you bitter at the world? Do you dismiss everything so quickly? If it's in a "Popular" magazine, it must be wrong! *sarcasm*
Perhaps you should actually read the article which another gracious author has listed, and is the one I alluded to, and you so obviously missed in your quick, witty response:
"in 1990, a senior scientist at the University of Alabama named Douglas Torr started writing papers with a Chinese woman physicist named Ning Li, predicting that superconductors could affect the force of gravity. This was before Eugene Podkletnov made his observations in Tampere, so naturally Li and Torr were delighted when they heard that Podkletnov had accidentally validated their predictions."
The results in the cold fusion experiments were not just the lackluster 1% numbers, either. There aren't too many people here that have extensively researched this topic, because I would have expected someone to note that when working with palladium and hydrogen + power, it is possible to get a nice, old-fashioned BANGO - and this may have been what happened.
You are a sterling example of what I am trying to fight against; You didn't look at any of the points I made; You attacked me personally, without looking at the material that was referenced; And you brought in claims for another device, and attempted to lump anyone who was interested in (NOTE: not convienced, just INTERESTED in) with the people that were dupes in a scam.
Please. You didn't even ask me what I thought! I'll believe these claims when I see something. Until then, nobody, nobody here on /. knows enough about the story to make any kind of informed opinion.
Kudos!
..don't panic
Here is an ignorant and off the cuff question...we can "create" antimatter...does antimatter imply antigravity?
Yes I know we can't use antigravity for anything useful because it takes just as much energy to create as it is useful, but wouldn't the existence of antimatter lay ground for the existence of antigravity? Or is what we think of as "antimatter" and "antigravity" just results of mathematical formulas, instead of actual physical phenomena (i.e., we call it "antimatter" simply because it is "the thing that annihilates matter").
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Argh!
Can Rob or CmdrTaco or someone check into the moderation on this guy?! I know the moderators' tastes are not this consistently bad. It seems like every post slashdot-terminal makes is moderated up to 3 or more, and most are obvious and/or crap.
There must be something hinky going on with his moderation.
I have my threshhold set to +2 for a reason!
Hmm. I can't get to the website (too many /.ters I suspect :+) but I can't see how throwing a little money into this sort of thing can be bad.
Assuming that there IS a particle or wave that transmits gravity, then it is possible there is a way to focus or deflect those particles/waves that costs less than the cost of opposing them. Given this is a possibility (even a remote one) than an industry focussed massively on opposing gravity (as airplanes do, I would say) would be better off throwing away a little research money than risking being on the outside if it *is* discovered, and undercut by competitors that made the gamble. If the research proves that antigravity isn't possible with the technology of today (or that it costs more than just letting it take effect and opposing it with a motor) then that too is valuable data - that there won't pop up "antigrav airways" able to work out of a car lot and undercut your fares to the point you would be making a loss.......
--
-=DaveHowe=-
But that is the reason why science successful: doubt. Few physicists going to believe in antigravity until the experiments are repeated in other laboratories all over the world and carefully dissected to understand that the effect is not from a different source.
It's easy to make an error if you don't do a carefully controled experiment, maybe the superconducting disc was repelled by the magnetic field of a motor when it was switched on to start the disc spinning, voila the whole phenomenon is traced to a well known effect.
Probably most people still remember 'cold fusion'. Staying sceptical now will probably spare much embarassement later. And most physicists have good reasons for dismissing the idea of antigravity:
- gravity is a very weak force, the only reason its so 'strong' here is that big ball of mud below our feet. Achieving an effect as large as 2% of the weight of that disc is quite a feat if done by 'gravitation effects' it's by far more probable to stem from electromagnetic effects, especially in an experiment with rotating superconductors.
- it seems reasonable that someone could think up some kind of perpetuum mobile using antigravity, this is normaly considered a strong indicator that something is fishy
- gravity is not 'just' a force, it's intimately connected to spacetime, anyone who heard about black holes will know that much. Antigravity would probably upset some well established (by experiments) concepts here, maybe there's a theoretical way to get around the light barrier using it, which would mean time machines.
As much as i like science fiction i think perpetuum mobiles or time machines just won't happen in the real world.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
To me the small effect this guy found (~2%) is a real good indication that it doesn't mean much. Sounds to me like the guy isn't properly paying attention to errors in his data.
The cake is a pie
I haven't found the actual paper on this topic ( just the referenced news article ), but this seems to be related to a very well understood property of physics.. Maybe I'm missing something here,but this seems to be centripetal force, and the right hand rule.
In eletro-magnetism, motion of an electric charge produces a magnetic field in the perpendicular direction according the the right hand rule ( make the index finger of your right hand follow the direction of the positive charge and your thumb points into the direction of positive magnetic force ). If you have circular electric motion, then you'll have a circular magnetic field ( and that's how you get permanent magnets ).
Likewise with angular momentum.. Moving an object in a circle produces a perpendicular force ( again following the right hand rule ). They demonstrate it in physics class when they take a bike wheel and balance it on a string after spinning it. The bicycle effect is where the angular momentum produces a sort of virtual mass that fights changes in momentum. It's inertial frame cxauses it to tend to be stationary in space. That is why the bike doesn't fall down at high speeds; leaning to either side would require fighting the inertial frame. This is how gyroscopes work as well. Additionally, they demonstrate the right-hand-rule when they show which direction the balanced tire rotates about the balancing string.
Back in the early 90's I saw a guy build a gyroscopic contraption that spun very rapidly. He balanced it on a string with a counter weight and scale. He weighted the contraption while it was stationary, and then again while it was rotating. The rotation caused it to seem lighter. What is happening is that the perpendicular force was oriented in such a way that it was against gravity. What I believe is not that the device was levitating, but that it was resisting motion against it's angular momentum; e.g. In order to weight the object, it would had to sink.
In this particular experiment only a tiny distinction in weight was measured. Potentially, higher rotational velocities would measure greater distinctions.
Now we're looking at hovering superconductors.. Little or no resistence in the rotation, perfectly balanced. There is little reason to believe that the measurable "weight" of the object would not also seem to be less when rotating. I suspect that if they follow the simple diagrams that we learned in physics that show various shapes and their associated angular momentum, then they'll find ways of making the object weigh even less. For example, an infinitely thin cylinder with a large diameter will have the greatest possible angular momentum ( since all of it's mass will be rotating maximally ). Thus if they took a dense hollow cylinder and managed to make it spin on it's axis ( by virtue of super-conducting properties ), they'll find a great reduction in measurable 'weight'.
Note: I use weight instead of mass even though they are really the same thing just to further my point that they aren't messing with mass, but a measurable net force.
In the general theory of relativity, Einstein says that there is no real gravity, but merely a referential frame of acceleration. He goes on about the curvature of space being the real driving force, but the important concept is that all that we can perceive is the relative net force between two systems. There is no difference between saying that a space ship is defying gravity than if the space ship is imposing a larger, opposing force, than gravity. Observably, the net force is upward. Likewise centripetal force may oppose or simply resist gravitational force and thereby reduce it's effects.. It is not violating any known laws.
Since I believe we are dealing with a resistence to gravitation, and not a pure force that can oppose gravitation, we could never achieve a negative gravitational affect ( just like breaks on a car can never directly cause you to go backwards ). Thus if you want to make your air-plane or space ship lighter for better fuel efficiency, then you're going to have to have the cargo bay spin around very quickly, which might not be a generally desirable thing. An additional problem would occur if you went crazy and spun the device around at a speed approaching c. At this point, you'll have temporal deviations, and additionally, the object will gain mass ( as the energy of the system increases ( kinetic in this case ), so does it's relative mass ). In Practical terms, you'll wind up expending more energy accelerating the object angularly, than you will lifting it.
Now I didn't pay too much attention in class when we initially talked about angular momentum, so I might be wrong.. There may very well be an actual force, and we might be able to harness it like those UFO's we see depicted with spinning discs. But since the crew and cargo are very unlikely to want to endure 50Gs of angular force, your ship's spnning disk is going to have to produce a whole hell of a lot of force to lift not only it's own mass, but that of the entire ship.
In short, I have seen nothing here that suggests anti-gravity. Merely some experimentations that play with weaker forces that are less intuative to our everyday life style.
-Michael
-Michael
There are many seemingly ridiculous things that are accepted by fact in modern physics. For example, a vacuum is actually a continually fluctuating mass of particles and anti-particles that travel backwards in time and annhilate themselves before they were created. What???
General relativity ("go fast, get heavy") is pretty ridiculous on the surface.
These things are accepted by the general scientific community. Why is it too ridiculous that a spinning super conducter might have some affect on the gravititonal force. As I understand it gravity is actually the least understood of all the four fundamental forces, for example has anyone detected a gravity particle or a gravity wave yet?
When you come down to it, there is no substitute for knowing the standard model.
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
All of these secrets were pried out of nature by people willing to study the knowledge of the day until they knew it forwards, backwards and sideways, and then push it where it was either suspected or proven to be breakable. The goofball intent on proving that UFO's are real and that vibrating machines can move themselves through space without propellant (the Dean Drive) can beat their heads against their walls for a lifetime; their chances of actually uncovering something new (as opposed to experimental error) are comparable to a fart in a hurricane.
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Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Main Entry: ullage
: the amount that a container (as a tank or cask) lacks of being full
Pronunciation: '&-lij
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English ulage, from Middle French eullage act of filling a cask, from eullier to fill a cask, from Old French ouil eye, bunghole, from Latin oculus eye -- more at EYE
Date: 15th century
This isn't terribly informative. In rocket-speak, an "ullage burn" is what you do to get all your propellants down to the BOTTOM of the tank, where the outlet is. Trying to run a turbopump on oxygen gas doesn't work very well. If you can put the liquid where you want it using a magnet, you may save some complexity.
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Has anybody mentioned whether or not they are using cats and buttered bread as part of the system??
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." -- Ken Olson, 1977
This is a layman's view of an agreeably complicated thing. According to some theories all forces have to have transmitting particles. Gravity is a force there as any other but insofar there are disputes whether gravitons (particles transmitting [the effect of] gravity) even exist - not to mention actually someone having discovered them.
We know from experience and several tests that basic particles have their anti-equivalents. If this indeed is a universal fact and gravitons actually exist, why wouldn't there be anti-gravitons as well?
When particle and anti-particle collide, they annihilate each other - so it would be theoretically possible to destroy gravitons with their counterparts and hence deprive an object from the effect of gravity. And YES, I know I will get flamed for this kind of herecy. Even if this was ever actually possible, it would require unbelievable advances in nuclear and particle physics, and that in areas who are not far from fantasy or imagination. Not to mention the shielding required to withstand the enormous energies that are unleashed with particle annihilation.
While personally I don't believe Project Greenglow has any chance of success, at least they're doing some valuable research on gravity, and possibly even on Einstein's gravity waves. And IIRC, even those are yet to discover.
There is no such thing as good luck. There is only misfortune and its occasional absence.
I didn't realize that the time difference between here and the UK was so great. It must be April 1st there already!
Replacing the cat with a penguin would work if it wasnt for the sad fact that penguins don't fly. (as they suffer from the extra weight of FUDium)
An alternate explanation is that the cat (being subject to such an experiment) was also toast.
All opinions are my own - until criticized
I haven't even read the article, but I can immediately tell you that EVERYTHING YOU SAID IS TOTALLY WRONG!
Before you moderate this simultaneously Idiodic and ROTFL, I desire to back up my claim (though as you'll see, my PROOF IS WRONG ALSO! WHAT A TOUGH WORLD THIS IS!):
Consider this situation: you are talking about reality. (If you need help understanding this concept, simply reread the last sentence.) (Contradiction -- think about it after reading the below.) You so happen to have the intuition that this -- we'll call it meta-reality -- is really the same thing as reality. You have some sort of a logical mind, which for some extremely strange reason attempts to prove that meta-reality == reality. But to do this, it is necessary to use both meta-reality (contradiction -- think about it) when considering reality, and meta-meta-reality to consider meta-reality. Say that you, using meta-reality and meta-meta-reality, manage to prove that meta-reality == reality (contradiction!). So you have 'meta-reality == reality'. But that previous sentence was in meta-meta-reality, and so was your proof, so it would really be nice if you could prove that meta-meta-reality was really the same stuff as reality, because then you could get rid of all those 'meta's and start making sense again. But to do that you'd need meta-meta-meta-reality, and then meta-meta-meta-meta-reality, and then you'd need
Segmentation fault (core dumped).
Segmentation fault (core dumped).
Segmentation fault (core dumped).
The above beyond any reasonable doubt proves that everything is a figment of our imagination. We just have a meta-imagination guiding the rules of our imagination. Oh no -- here we go again! But at the very lowest level, anything is possible (though I doubt that you'd be there to experience it, considering how everything is segfaulting). Think of it being at the kernel level.
And at the kernel level, nobody cares. Problem solved, but, uh... who's there to be satisfied?
(moderation hints -- this was meant to be insightful, but process 36 Insightfulize segfaulted)
Real anti-gravity research (if such a thing existed) would try to eliminate the downward force of gravity, not provide one of many possible upward forces.
The subject was treated in '92 by some Japanese scientists, and a very interesting paper was published in Physical Review Letters.
No superconductivity, but a very well documented paper, with lots of details. Unfortunately I do not have the exact reference, and '92 is a guess. It was for sure published between '91-93.
Why don't they pay someone who knows what she is talkink about when treating a technical issue? The same question as about the computer-related topics... Probably they hoped that misused keywords as antigravity, hacker, superconductor, and Russian mad scientist will sell their story enough...
Naaah..you`re doing it wrong mate. You want :
a ses_rhd/article.html
http://www.wallydug.demon.co.uk/wallydug/hard_c
Remember "Cities in Flight" by James Blish? Every time I hear of Scranton, PA, I think of the second section of the book, where it's taking off. In the book, the spindizzy came about because of a Nasa Breakthrough - type project. The thought of spinning superconducting disks is kind of reminiscant of that. I wonder if the Dirac-Blackett equations apply? As someone else says, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. But quantum mechanics and relativity didn't turn up until we looked under small enough or fast enough stones. Perhaps we need to just be looking under the right rocks for antigravity, and realize that it has to be a new realm, because existing theories do just too good a job explaining the current one.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Well, here I am, another computer geek who doesn't really grok Physics, and I'm going to post. "MrScience" if that's your name, the distinction between "anti-gravity" and "gravitation shielding" is a moot point. In each case, you run up against Einstein and General Relativity. If I understand the gist of GR, it tells us in very strong terms that you cannot shield gravity.
Or to be more precise, you cannot, in a particular region of space, create a local nullification or diminishing of a the gravitational field created by a nearby massive object. To do so would be to interfere with the space's basic ability to sustain matter. In other words, Einstein's definition of gravity in terms of curvature of four-dimensional spacetime does not allow for a nullification effect.
MrScience, if you are proposing that Podkletnov's work implies the necessity for a correction to GR, could you please give us some idea of what that correction might look like?
Before flaming me or calling me clueless, let's get some basic facts straight:
It's strange, that something as simple as why an apple falls to the ground when you let go of it cuts to the heart of the deepest mysteries of the universe. But it does. Deal with it.
Bottom line: We'd all like to defy Gravity and levitate around. We want to solve the strong AI problem and get computers so smart that we can talk to them and they'd understand what we want. We want things like Warp Drive so we can get around Special Relativity and travel to distant stars in reasonable periods of time, and see if they have life-sustaining planets orbiting them. These things are not going to happen soon, and they may never happen at all. If any one of the three things I've mentioned in this paragraph happen in my lifetime I'll be very happy, but I'm not holding my breath.
Hard problems are hard, and Einstein was more of a genius than 99.99% of people understand. Please try to get that. Thanks.
"I'd like an antigrav bedroom!"? Be honest...
I don't like fish. Reverse the fish to e-mail.
You're also betraying a lack of grounding in the scientific method. Not to be harsh here, but the anti-gravity bogosity doesn't go against just the theories that are accepted in the year 2000, it also goes against the FACT that gravity works on objects with mass.
:-)
Only someone with a really poor understanding of physics would believe the old canard that a gyroscope (even a supercold superconduction gyroscope) would lose weight.
1) mass is important, weight is not. When I am jumping, I also lose ALL of my weight momentarily, but none of my mass. Too bad for the jumping diet program...
2) since the guy is measuring weight, then only a dork would accept the claim and start funding an anti-grav program. Why not fund a maglev program instead? It's a much more likely explanation of what's happening.
3) I don't know if this particular thing is fact right now but Einstein's theories predict that a gyroscope actually gets MORE massive and therefore heavier when it spins really fast. Where's the theoretical work that tries to explain this in light of the dubious experiment?
Methinks you're a bit too credulous. The proper attitude to take is to first be skeptical, giving no benefits of doubt. That's a hell of a fish story the guy is telling, and I want to see that fish for myself.
I am completely justfied in proclaiming at this point that the experiments are CRAP and they should be completely IGNORED. Of course, real evidence would change the situation quite a bit!
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
The same goes for vice versa.
The whole point is to eschew assumptions, to identify our assumptions and challenge them. The process shares this feature with the practice of debugging your own code. Without the ability to challenge our assumptions and beliefs, we might as well let theologans and politicians do our science.
I can see the fnords!
Nothing is truly impossible. The farther we get into Quantum physics the more we discover that we really don't know how it all works. Physics _as we know it_ may not allow for such things, but we are not really sure how things fit together.
I really love Bob Park - "One can only conclude that at the higher levels of these organisations there are people who don't have a very sound grounding in fundamental physics."
I know that he feels it's a long shot, but how many things have been discovered in the last 100 years that were solidly felt to be impossible. Progress is made by stepping away from your blinders and trying new things, looking in directions that you didn't even comprehend existed.
Just because your only knowledge of me is bits on a screen does not quantifiably prove that I do not exist. I may, I may not, but you can not prove that I do not exist because of a lack of evidence or perception.
chris
-- I need more coffee. It's Monday. There is no such thing as enough coffee on a Monday.
This story reminds me of an occassion when Richard Feynman was giving an informal talk at the Esalen Institute, a new-agey institute on the California coast between Los Angeles and San Francisco that he was known to frequent.
He was explaining the properties of matter (comparing atoms vibrating in a lattice to band members marching in step), when a guy from the audience interrupted and starting asking about antigravity devices.
Feynman, in his typical blunt manner, said something to the effect of, "Fella, what you are talking about is impossible. It violates fundamental principles of physics. What _is_ a great antigravity device is that seat under your butt."
Science, like Nature, must also be tamed, with a view turned towards its preservation.
Then, of course, you get a bunch of money types whose eyes are glittering with the thought of all those dollars they'll get "if it works" and are thus blind to the fact that this is almost certainly a crock of shit. Reminds me of all that telepathy research both the US and USSR engaged in during the cold war.
These guys need to look at history. I can't recall a single new technology that appeared like this. New technology almost invariably comes only after the underlying physics has been well worked out. For example, we are only now starting to create technologies using quantum effects, which have been part of standard physics for over half a century.
The cake is a pie
Speak for yourself when you say "our lifetimes." Given the rapid advances in biotech and medicine, the Human Genome Project, nanotech, etc., some of us alive today may very well be living for over 100 years.
As for gravity shielding, more power to 'em. Skeptics can eat my shorts. Scientific skepticism is often based on logical fallacies, like discrediting scientists (if Adolf Hitler authored the laws of thermodynamics, would they be any less valid?), or claiming the "null hypothesis" - which is a sham! There is no null, relative to hypotheses. If I claim "XYZ" without experimentation or evidence, anyone who claims "not XYZ" without experimentation or evidence is equally unscientific. To those of you who argue there's no evidence gravity shielding is possible: go ahead and prove that it's impossible! I would argue that Podkletnov's experiments ARE evidence in favor of it, until such time as they are debunked.
A prime example of the null hypothesis gone bad: There are a number of people in the US who believe that giving young children the massive multiple innoculations that most of them get these days can lead to autism. There are many cases of autism manifesting shortly after such innoculations. Congress held hearings into this subject, and the Surgeon General and a bunch of medical "experts" sat there and claimed there was no link. Why did they claim this? Simply because NO ONE HAD BOTHERED TO DO ANY SERIOUS RESEARCH ON IT. In other words, to the scientific establishment, not researching something is proof that it doesn't exist.
That kind of "science" reminds me of Douglas Adams' Hideous Bugblatter Beast of Traal, a man-eating carnivore which will not attack you if you have a towel over your head, because if you can't see it, it thinks it can't see you.
In the article Bob Park says about Bae "One can only conclude..there are people who don't have a very solid grounding in fundamental physics".
Well sounds like he doesn't have a very good grounding in fundamentals of the scientific method. Repeat after me "the map is not the territory". There are no fundamental laws of physics. The laws of physics are just best fit theorems that happen to fit the available data. As soon as someone demonstrates a reliably reproducible experiment that goes against those laws then those laws have to be revised. Does he honsestly think that we know all of physics and that there is nothing left to learn?
Now I nothing about Dr Yevgeny Podkletnov's experiments, maybe he is a loon, but if no other scientists has tried to reproduce the experiments then you can't just ignore them.
You actually described Special Relativity (which also includes "things going fast look slow"); General Relativity is about funny stuff like non-Euclidean space and unaccelerated objects following geodesics in a warped space-time. It's highly counter-intuitive, mostly because our intuition is shaped by experience with a world where velocities are 0.00001% of c, the radius of curvature of space-time is on the order of a light-year, and other conditions where the deviations from a Newtonian model are so small as to be extremely difficult to measure. If we lived on a neutron star (read Dragon's Egg), our physics would have been more sophisticated from the outset.
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
For those with the knee-jerk reaction: "This is garbage. Anybody knows that 99% of crackpot theories are crackpot theories whether suits like them or not." Please look at the other outcomes than a total revolutionary change to how we see physics (although I suppose there is a decent chance that we are due).
The thing to actually look for in this sort of research is what might actually come out of it. Ideally from the funders' point of view, they will get a working antigravity system. Other, more probable outcomes are greatly enhanced knowledge about existing gravity repulsion techniques. Research like this often leads to side applications that affect people's everyday lives in vastly different ways than was ever thought of in the research. I can't remember what plastic was originally intended to be used for, but I don't think they intended to use it for darn near everything like it is used today. Similarly, how many experiments for space technology are better known for their applications on Earth? Let's wait and see what actually comes out of this research before we declare it useless or make plans for designing our new hovercars.
Note: Since it is military research, there is always a probability of a long delay before it hits the private sector, whatever the results are.
B. Elgin
B. Elgin
"Read at your own risk; feel free to ignore."
You're confusing science and engineering, I think. "Science" is basically a method of discovering (or "uncovering") information about the universe; "engineering" is the application of that information for human use. And don't forget that part of NASA's mission is to do the research and low-level work which will enable private industry to apply new technologies too expensive for them to develop from scratch (although NASA sometimes forgets this themselves, it would appear!).
As far as "barely launch[ing] probes properly to Mars," the problem with the last two spacecraft would seem to have been more in the management of the missions, not in the hardware -- even the Polar Lander would have worked if the testing was done properly. This isn't a failure of science, or even of engineering... it's a failure of oversight.
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Politics is about making compromises. Religion isn't. --Michael Horton
Well, I tried it and it just didn't work.
The first time, the cat noticably hovered (at least to my biased eyes) for at least a few microseconds, but then the buttered toast slid around to the top of the cat and the cat landed as normal.
I tightened the strap, which lengthed the amount of time the cat hovered but also deepened (if that's a word) the depth of my scratches. However, the effect of the tightening quickly approached an asymtoptic maximum that had to be at least 3 or 4 milliseconds of "hover time" (again, to my biased eyes).
Unfortunately, I think the Universe tries to prevent this violation of its laws in much the same way the Universe prevents FTL travel via wormholes as described by Hawking (who proposes that vacuum fluctuations will shut down any wormhole that might violate causality)... further tightening of the strap... well... we gave the cat a nice burial, thank goodness the ASPCA wasn't there. The universe was brutal to that poor little cat... I can still hear his screams in my dreams at night...
At the time, there were things they didn't know about the universe. Knowing those things makes all the difference.
When I was in highschool, they took us to the University physics labs, and a professor took a petri dish with a checker-sized magnet in it, then placed a small cylindrical semi-conductor on top of the magnet. Then, she poured liquid nitrogen into the petri dish, and the semi-conductor levitated, and floated where it was.
After seeing that, I don't think I'll ever be able to say something is impossible again. I hope they have fun trying.
ARRRGH!!!
There, now that's out of my system. The experiments done on superconductors are not being done by people that are white-haired mad scientists. There are even a number of _published_ theories from respected scientists as to how a gravity shielding effect might be demonstrated - and they were even done before the superconducting magnet experiment.
I'm not at home, so I can't get the references offhand, but I know several of them appeared in an issue of Popular Science in 1998 or 1999. This research is ongoing.
People that pronounce "that's wrong because" REALLY piss me off. That's not the scientific method. You make a theory to explain some effect - then design an experiment to prove or disprove this theory. You don't just proclaim all people that are researching said theory are crackpots. IMHO, that makes _you_ sound like an ignorant fool. It would make much more sense to question their theory and wait for an intellligent answer!
It is safe to assume that for any major company to make any kind of announcement like this, and get lots of funding, something was demonstrated to someone somewhere. But, NOBODY HERE KNOWS, so why assume that people who have spent their lives researching topics you're to lazy to properly even get definitions for correct are crazy?
And for the cold fusion people, FOR THE RECORD, there have been many reproductions of the experiment, and something does seem to happen. Unfortunately, it's not prediictable or sustainable. The unfortunate attitudes of the public at large and misinformed and ignorant media have effectively killed research into these areas - because you must be crazy to question the status quo.
Think before you speak, people. The scientific method is not about passing judgement, and there just isn't enough infomation here to go one way or the other.
Kudos!
..don't panic
... the theory that if you tape buttered toast onto the back of a cat and drop the resultant combination, you will get antigravity?
;)
http://harridanic.com
I like the one on quantum vacuum energy. That's a prediction of standard quantum electrodynamics, and historically, QED is always right, even when it makes wierd predictions. Every time standard quantum theory predicted something wierd, experimental work found the theory correct, and things like quantum cryptography and quantum computing emerged.
Also, remember that we still don't understand gravity at the quantum level. Some of the NASA work involves experiments which might provide some added insight in that area. One clear, reproducible non-Newtonian result in the quantum gravity area would provide direction for the gravity theorists, who currently are mostly using what vague data can be gleaned from cosmology.
It might be that true anti-gravity one day may be possible, although nothing currently indicate it, but if so it will be because of breakthrough in basic science, not because of any project with an anti-gravity gadget as its goal.
Your point is good and you deserve your positive moderation, but...
/. Now, I'm not an expert on the subject but I do know that the others are either outright scams or were heard out. Wilhelm Reich never really had his day. In fact, the U.S. Government seized his books and papers and burned them back in 1957. Clearly a First Amendment issue, which is a favorite topic around here.
failures and cranks: phrenology, mediums as masters of the fourth dimension, any number of numerological schemes, orgone energy
Ouch. Orgone energy does not, IMHO, deserve to be put in that lineup. Especially here on
Granted, this is a poor argument for orgone energy, but it is my understanding that very few have recreated Reich's experiments before declaring him a crank or a failure. Peer review wasn't possible because nobody would take the time to hear him out. The same thing has happened in gravity research in the past (the exact reference eludes me) and we have adequate reason be concerned that the scientific community may be too ready to cry 'crank'.
For more information (including an interesting discussion about arguments), read this excerpt from Wilhelm Reich in Hell by Robert Anton Wilson
Here's a link to Eugine's paper that created quite a ruckuss in 1996.
Also, here's a 1998 Wired article that gives a good deal of background about Podkletnov, and why his paper was so badly recieved. It does meander a bit. I'd recommend skipping the boring parts where the writer recounts his visit with some other nut who thought he could duplicate Podkletnov's experiment. It is funny though, and it does show a lot about how a bad scientific method can produce erroneous results.
Enjoy!
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Epitaph
I found a better copy of Podkletnov's paper on the Los Alamos National Laboratory's e-print archive server. It's available in a bunch of formats, including PostScript, PDF, ASCII, and DVI. The previous link I posted didn't have the diagrams included with his paper.
It's better to actually read the paper and draw your own conclusions than to simply listen to what other people think about it and accept their views.
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Epitaph
- Someone providing some money to tinker at the margins, making sure that the "fringe" stuff is experimental error. (This is likely if the people at the top have a clue.)
- Someone convinced that the "fringe" stuff is real, and throwing money at studies to prove as much. (This is likely if the people at the top watch "X Files".)
It'll probably take time for the news media to sort out exactly who's behind this and why, assuming they're interested in actually going in-depth as opposed to a "gosh-wow" news item to play to the UFO cultists. What would be really interesting would be some studies of electron-beam repulsion of incoming supersonic airstreams; anything which can propagate a pressure wave faster than sound (as an electron beam could do) could reduce shockwaves and their consequent drag. I saw something about this once, with a note that the research had been suppressed. Well, it's time to unwrap it.--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
I know there is a fondness for the underdog, bringing down the close-minded orthodoxy and opening up a brave new dawn, etc, etc, but I would remind everybody that the reason the scientific community is sceptical of far out claims is because most of the time they're right to be. We remember the triumphs of paradigm busting: Gallileo, Mandlebrot, Einstein. For very good reasons we forget the failures and cranks: phrenology, mediums as masters of the fourth dimension, any number of numerological schemes, orgone energy, etc, etc, etc, etc.
Just because part of the military-industrial complex is funding it is no seal of authority either; remember all the reports of the Cold War intelligence services - on both sides - funding psychic distance viewing?
All greenglow has are some unpeer-reviewed reports and some highly criticised publications. Measuring weight reduction of a superconducting spinning disk, especially with the magnitudes of loss suggested, is not a difficult experiment. The fact that theses results have not been duplicated, despite the fact that superconductors are common materials these days in most university physics departments should raise the flag of sceptisism for everybody: Extreme claims require extreme evidence
"Just once, I'd like to meet an alien menace that wasn't immune to bullets." -- The Brigadier, Dr. Who
I suggest you read this article at Wired.
What was proposed is not anti-gravity (though astrophysicists are now thinking that this may be a common occurrence). It is gravity shielding. When a correspondent at British Sunday Telegraph received the already-accepted page proofs for the article submitted to the respected Journal of Physics-D, he wrote an article for his newspaper using the word anti-gravity, rather than gravity-shielding.
There was an instant firestorm of ridicule about how anti-gravity was impossible, etc, etc. Podkletnov was let go from his university, his paper was dropped from the journal before it was printed, and he retreated out of the country.
What many people forget is that, "in 1990, a senior scientist at the University of Alabama named Douglas Torr started writing papers with a Chinese woman physicist named Ning Li, predicting that superconductors could affect the force of gravity. This was before Eugene Podkletnov made his observations in Tampere, so naturally Li and Torr were delighted when they heard that Podkletnov had accidentally validated their predictions."
The trick is that Podkletnov was using a very odd combination of materials in his ceramics. This creates an extremely brittle disc that is difficult to spin at high speeds. This guy is an expert in his field, and few have been able to create super-conducting ceramic magnets in this ratio that don't break up at the necessary RPM.
A quick excerpt from the link: True, Podkletnov wasn't a physicist - but he did have a doctorate (in materials science) and he knew how to do careful lab work. When he wrote up his results, his papers were accepted for publication in some sober physics journals, and at least one theoretical physicist - an Italian named Giovanni Modanese - became intrigued. Modanese didn't dismiss the whole idea of gravity shielding, because on the subatomic level, we simply don't know how gravity functions. "What we are lacking today," according to Modanese, "is a knowledge of the microscopic or 'quantum' aspects of gravity, comparable to the good microscopic knowledge we have of electromagnetic or nuclear forces. In this sense, the microscopic origin of the gravitational force is still unknown." At the Max Planck Institute in Munich, he developed a theory to explain the shielding phenomenon.
Oh, and before you go equating this to cold fusion, and saying that it is/was totally bogus, read this article. Read it through to the end, and you will find the interesting results of the experiment, regarding cold fusion.
You should never, never doubt what nobody is sure about.
You quitting proves that the karma kap worked. The most annoying of the whores shut up. --CmdrTaco