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

Re:Magnetics?

[yaroslavvb]

Magnetism affects all matter, not only ferrous materials.

Besides ferromagnetism, the strongest type and only manifested in certain materials/temperatures there's paramagnetism -- a weak attractive force and diamagnetism -- a weak repelling force.

While those types of magnetism are quite weak, they become noticeable in strong magnetic fields, and may cause objects to repel or attract.

We can't eliminate the forces caused by diamagnetism or paramagnetism, so we have to rely on our knowledge of the material to estimate what they are in that particular case. Anything left over after substracting those estimates must be a new force IF the estimates are correct.

Re:And he came up with the idea...

[K8Fan]

Mod me back down! I was kidding for crying out loud! It was a joke about how every crackpot in the world appears to have chosen Tesla as their "patron saint", in spite of his actually being a very serious scientist who had an immeasurable impact on the world.

translation?

[jaredcat]

can someone post a translation of that article into a language that someone who only took high school physics can understand?

Re:translation?

[slashdoter]

he says he found the opposite of gravity, it most likly bull shit but hey, it's fun to think about

Great

[sllort]

Quick, someone mirror the PDF Version before the whole site dies under our collective weight.

If no one manages to do so, here's his Abstract:


Abstract
The detection of apparent anomalous forces in the vicinity of high-Tc supercon-
ductors under non equilibrium conditions has stimulated an experimental research in
which the operating parameters of the experiment have been pushed to values higher
than those employed in previous attempts. The results conrm the existence of an
unexpected physical interaction. An apparatus has been constructed and tested in
which the superconductor is subjected to peak currents in excess of 10 4 A, surface
potentials in excess of 1 MV, trapped magnetic eld up to 1 T, and temperature
down to 40 K. In order to produce the required currents a high voltage discharge
technique has been employed. Discharges originating from a superconducting ceramic
electrode are accompanied by the emission of radiation which propagates in a focused
beam without noticeable attenuation through dierent materials and exerts a short
repulsive force on small movable objects along the propagation axis. Within the
measurement error (5 to 7 %) the impulse is proportional to the mass of the objects
and independent on their composition. It therefore resembles a gravitational impulse.
The observed phenomenon appears to be absolutely new and unprecedented in the
literature. It cannot be understood in the framework of general relativity. A theory
is proposed which combines a quantum gravity approach with anomalous vacuum
uctuations.


I think that last sentence says it all. I don't buy it.

And he came up with the idea...

[K8Fan]

...while reading old notebooks of Nikolas Tesla.