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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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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
We don't have a theory here, remember. What we have is one wierd result that has not yet been replicated. Try and replicate it perhaps, but spend real money on it? That's idiocy.
There is a difference between understanding the side-effects of a technology ("Why does cold pizza taste good?") and understanding the basis for a technology ("how do you cook a pizza?"). If you wanted to use these results to explain some other odd results somewhere else, yeah, that might make sense. But to say "We're gonna build us an anti-gravity machine" at this stage is pure idiocy.
This isn't about scientific conservatism. This is about demanding proof, and reproducability. Unfortunately, with the press the way it is and with moneyed fools too eager to jump in, we seem to get fooled a lot lately. But I suppose it is more fun dreaming of instant free energy than worrying about boring theory.
The cake is a pie
... 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
I agree, this type of research, IMHO, is definitely not frivolous, but for another reason... Serendipity. Even if anti-gravity is impossible the research will lead to other, unintended discoveries. Part of the search for anti-gravity is the search for the graviton. No one has ever seen a graviton, measured the strength of a graviton, or observed the effect of a graviton's movement. By approaching the problem from a different angle you may uncover unknown properties of physics. During their experiments they may uncover certain properties of physics that could revolutionize the world. They may have to develop equipment that is completely new. These ideas may give somebody else an idea for a practical invention that benefits all of man kind.
These same ideas can be applied to the trip to the moon. What did we directly get from going to the moon? A couple of moon rocks! Was it worth while for just a couple of moon rocks? IMHO, NO! But what we did get was numerous advances in computers and software. We got such things as Teflon and tang and many other things that I cannot think of right now.
Anyway any type of valid research is always more valuable than anyone can measure. Who knows what will come of it or who the research will inspire that will give us concrete results? The value is more than we can afford not to invest in.
If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.
- 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