Gravitational Repulsion Effect Claimed

TekPolitik writes: "Eugene Podkletnov, the physicist who claimed to have discovered an anomalous gravitational "shielding" effect in the 90s, but withdrew his original paper prior to publication, has finally published a new paper on the topic. The paper describes a new experiment that is related to the original experiment, but the nature of the new experiment is more suggestive of an inverse gravitational effect (that is, the device creates a gravitational push away from it), or in Trekkie terms, a repulsor beam. Aside from claiming to have pushed things around at a distance, Podkletnov claims that the results directly contradict general relativity." Let's see if I can summarize: the author claims that with a certain very cold superconductor transmitting a large quantity of electricity in an intense magnetic field, he has observed a "new" force which repulses objects.

Comments

Background on Podkletnov (blatant kw)

[Will Sargent]

This is not the first time Podkletnov has done experiments on Anti-Gravity.

There's the original paper, written in 1992.

There's the Wired article by Charles Platt which goes into detail exactly what happened after he published the first paper.

And finally there's a web site on Gravity called Quantum Cavorite. It seems to be rational, although somewhat optimistic. The main lanl.gov site also has some great material on the two big approaches to G: spin foams & loops (general relativity guys) and noncommutative string geometry (particle physics guys).

What I find really strange about this paper is that after being ignored for years, not having anyone being able to repeat his results reliably and refusing to help out NASA in verifying his methods, the guy is not only back for more, but he's proposing a theory which he says invalidates General Relativity. This looks as suicidal as <obSlash>a startup company proposing to wipe out Microsoft</obSlash>...

The state of belief these days.

[Fixer]

I have to get to work soon, but I think I must say this.

Whether this guy is right or wrong, the vast majority of us won't be involved in that determination. Mostly, we're not scientists. And so we debate back and forth on the merits of this paper, but without reaching any conclusions.

If you feel SO strongly about this paper, for or against, then get yourself into a lab.
Because you aren't helping us and you aren't helping yourself with empty claims of insanity or genius on the part of this researcher.

Try to keep in mind a few points: First, that in nearly every case of claims of fundamental breakthroughs, it does not pan out.
Second, try to wrap your mind around the fact that our knowledge of the universe is woefully incomplete, will probably always be so, and that any totally new discovery MAY seem impossible in light of current understanding.. because current understanding is wrong.

There is no armchair way to determine the truth or falsehood of this guys claims, you HAVE to test.

I almost am of the opinion that anyone claiming a sufficiently strange new theory should build a device which demonstrates this new knowledge as an obvious effect. In other words, if you claim to have discovered a storage effect for "life-force" (whatever that is), then you had better go on and build a battery. Because no one will believe you. And usually, they'll be right. But not always.

Re:Magnetics?

[rgmoore]

My mistake for replying to a reply, rather than taking a quick glance at the article. Since this is being presented on xxx.lanl.gov, that means that he's basically putting out a preprint. I don't see it mentioned anywhere, but it may actually have been submitted for review somewhere.

I guess that the original poster (who made the remark about not submitting to peer review) is unfamiliar with the way that physicists do things these days. They now put articles that are still under review (or even very preliminary results that aren't ready for formal review yet) on preprint servers like xxx.lanl.gov so that people can read them ASAP with the understanding that they're still preliminary. The authors aren't avoiding review; they're just getting the news out quickly through normal channels.

So I read the article...

[muerte24]

There are two possibilities:

(a) He has fudged his data or left out some important part of his apparatus.

(b) He has discovered something important.

Not having been published in a peer reviewed journal, and having no physical collaboration from independent observers (his co-author never actually participated in the experiment), I would have to lean toward choice (a).

His experimental apparatus is also very home grown. What does he mean that he couldn't "get a good enough vacuum to prevent condensation on the superconductor" ??? His home brew method to manufacture his SC coating looks EZ Bake style to me also.

However, if his experiment and results are God's honest truth, there are some interesting implications.

He says that he measured the force on pendulums of ceramic, wood, rubber, etc hanging from cotton strings seperated from his spark discharge machine by distances of SIX and ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY meters, including walls and steel plates. One must not that he does not publish the results for the 150m experiment. His primary results are from a rubber sphere, and he doesn't explicitly publish any other data. However, he claims to have imparted about 2 milliJoules of energy into the ball about 20 feet away. That's a 1/2 ounce ball on a 30 inch string given enough kick to swing 6 inches. If this is correct, it really is truly amazing.

His writing style and lack of clarity also lead me to believe that his results do not speak for themselves.

Once we get some replication of his setup, then we can see for ourselves. Nobel Prize - or Cold Fusion.

/Muerte

Re:So I read the article...

[Compuser]

Well, it's more complicated than this. First of all the paper devotes most of its space to theoretical discussion which in the end shows no quantitative predictions. Being an experimentalist I do not care much for this kind of theory. YMMV.
Chucking theory, we are left with two experimental results: a rather plausible effect and an implausible one. The plausible result is his description of how the discharge evolves through T_c. Still, he gives no explanation of what T_c was and more importantly he never mentions transition width. His mention that in his first experiments the YBCO film degraded makes me think that his temprature control was highly questionable so he may have been still above T_c even with claims to the contrary. Still, he may be right when he says that his setup represents a new or at least unusual N-S junction.
The implausible result is his claims of a force beam and that his beam does not dissipate through walls, air and other things. He claims that his discharge has a side effect of producing a beam capable of significant mechanical effects. The sheer difference in scale between known gravitational effects and his measurements makes me wonder if the beam exists at all. The lack of dissipation combined with its strong effect on the balls leaves me wondering if conservation laws would be violated.
The paper is horridly written. Parts aren't proper English (which I am ready to excuse as he is not from an English speaking country), parts aren't proper physics (like when he claims that the electrons forming his discharge are coming from pair condensate without any justification to substantiate such an implausible scenario), parts aren't proper experimental procedure (e.g his vacuum quality, his lack of pictures to illustrate discharge dynamics, etc). His figures don't have captions and some have unlabeled axes. His theoretical discussion includes passages trying to say, in effect: people don't know where this comes from in high T_c so it may be related to our effect. Still, I would not judge a book by its cover. If only one of the effects he observed is real then he has made a contribution to science, though after reading his paper, I doubt there will be revolutionary advances coming from this.

paramagnetic?

[aozilla]

How does this differ from those paramagnetic fields, which can levitate frogs?

Re:paramagnetic?

[mattr]

That is an important question.

It was found that the force of the impact on pendulums made of different materials does not depend on the material but is only proportional to the mass of the sample. Pendulums of different mass demonstrated equal deflection at constant voltage. This was proved by a large number of measurements using spherical samples of different mass and diameter.

This seems to suggest either 1) antigravity etc or 2) paramagnetism. It would seem to rule out contamination with iron as someone else suggested. It would also be nice to know from some of the physicists around here whether or not there is a lot of experience with magnetic fields of this strength at this temperature.

Considering how deadly this kind of research must be to your career, you have to admire this scientist. It would seem obvious that if we began to understand it we would be able to control it in some way, that it would seem like a logical course of scientific inquiry.

theory

[Cephas Keken]

This violates everything we know...
at least at first look,
people have been talking about this
kind of thing for ever.

Basicly it leads to the idea that
gravity travels instantly
which violates relitivity
which in turn, up ends everything
all the way to string (super string) theory...

wasn't there some CEO who vanished after he started doing reasearch with some guy about this stuff?

I discovered repulsion many years ago!

[Anonymous Coward]

Many years ago I realized that women were repulsed by me.
The effect is inversely proportional to distance.
It also seems to be inversely proportional to the mass of the woman.

Re:translation?

[ka9dgx]

They crammed a large amount of energy into a small amount of space and time, and got an interesting effect, which they suspect might be some sort of gravitational pulse. The pulse seems to be quite capable of going through electromagnetic shielding, and even 6 meters of wall and free air, with some steel along the way.

They have theories as to why it is, but they're not sure, and they want other people to try it too, which is why they spend so much time explaining EXACTLY what they did.

I'm very interested in seeing someone get a positive result replicating this, don't care much about negative results becuase it's probably fairly touchy, like semicondutors, superconductors, cold fusion, etc.

--Mike--