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Can Superconductors Block Gravitational Fields?
jswitte writes "Raymond Chiao, of the University of California at Berkel, believes that superconductors can convert electromagnetic radiation into gravitational radiation. His full paper can be found here. His theory is based on the idea that superconductors might be able to block the so-called 'gravitomagnetic' field just as they block the electomagnetic field in the famous Meissner effect allowing superconductors to levitate in magnetic fields. He claims that when he 'adds the gravitomagnetic field to the standard quantum equations for superconductivity, he confirms not only the gravitational Meissner-like effect but also a coupling between the two breeds of magnetic field. An ordinary magnetic field sets electrons in motion near the surface of a superconductor. Those electrons carry mass, and so their motion generates a gravitomagnetic field.'"
If this works you won't be able to create antigravity fields. Antigravity would require canceling out the very powerful static gravitoelctric field and superconductors have no effect on these fields.
Then there are the people who don't consider gravity as a 'wave'. If true, it would mean he wasted someone's money.
But best of luck to the guy/gal, we also must remember that anything heavier than air WILL NOT fly, and men who go into space won't be able to swallow.
Man, i wish i were smarter
--sig fault--
If it doesn't happen then that's also fine, it means that a hypothesis was shown to be not an accurate model of how the universe works.
The method described is science in action, the way it is supposed to work.
Of course if this does work then they are going to have some surprises when they enable those underground superconductive power cables in, IIRC, downtown Chicago. (Detroit? Somebody help me out here, please?)
-C
Maybe they'll go back and rename the school correctly. Berkel. It is to laugh!
As for the theory, it doesn't seem plausible, but physics is full of implausible concepts that work out in real life. Since gravity is a manifestation of a warpage of space-time, does this also mean that he is claiming superconductors are equivalent to gravity wells?
No doubt that the symmetry between Maxwell's equations and Einstein's equations is stark, but does this also mean that they are equivalent in meaning and applicability? Though the article puts a dig into superstring theory at the end, isn't it exactly this type of theory that is needed to unify such disparate theories as gravity and electromagnetism? If there is a symmetry there, wouldn't it make sense that the two equations would derive from a common principle?
My elementary physics is no match for the mathematics in the paper.
I have been pwned because my
All he is exccluding are gravity-waves. These are different then the basic curvature of space that generates gravity itself. Basically they are little ripples that float on top of the curvature. So blocking them won't levitate us.
University of California at Berkel
Methinks the author means Berkeley.
-Matt
Isn't this just a new take on the Podkletnov effect?
Superconductors have to be extremely cold to work. I have seen them demonstrated with liquid nitrogen. Until they can work at more reasonable temperatures, their practical use will be limited. They are still really neat, though.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
It sounds just like something I saw on the show last week! Now when can we get the teleporters?
Firstly, Fuel cells ARE 8th grade chem, they are just 2H + O = H2O. Secondly, astrophysicists have been theorizing antigravitation as a solution to the "dark matter" problem for quite sometime. Don't get me wrong, I am all for a healthy dose of cynicism, but in order to progress we need to take an open mind. This is not that far out of the realm of possibility. Point to the error in the theory if you feel this person is wrong. Then your point will stand on it's own.
An ordinary magnetic field sets electrons in motion near the surface of a superconductor. Those electrons carry mass, and so their motion generates a gravitomagnetic field.
Moving Electrons?
Electricity is simply electrons moving along a path. While I'm sure the quantity of electricty that this creates is insignificant, it does spark an idea.
What if a superconductor could be built large enough that gravity alone could be used to generate electricity? That seems like the cleanest, limitless energy you could have.
(I know, I am ignoring the huge energy required to make todays superconductors work.)
It seems to me that if this were refined properly, the devices that defy gravity could even be used to power themselves.
At least according to the article:
"It is fair to say that if Ray observes something with this experiment, he will win the Nobel Prize," says superconductivity expert John M. Goodkind of the University of California at San Diego. "It is probably also fair to say that the chances of his observing something may be close to zero."
This paper is certainly good stuff, but it's not a revolution. This is related to an idea that has been floating around for a while, he just generalized it a little bit more, so now it's not a huge pain in the ass to experimentally try and measure this, just a regular sized pain in the ass.
As far as antigravity goes, if gravity fits in with particle physics, then if there is a way to block gravitons or gravity waves, whatever you want to call them, then you block the force (easier said than done).
Note that the Scientific American article is very cautious: they state the implications if it's true. While, if true, this is a breakthrough on the level of relativity or quantum mechanics, one should take this with a large grain of salt. Plenty of other "revolutionary" theories haven't managed to pan out.
That's it. I'm no longer part of Team Sanity.
This was also in wired about 5 years ago, you can find it here.
If a superconductor will float in a static magnetic field, why won't it weigh less in a static gravitational field? If it did, they wouldn't have to go throug elaborate tests to verify the theory.
Give a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day, but set him on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
In any case, I'm not sure I believe any of this, but I think it's good that there are people thinking outside the mainstream.
I might add after perusing the comments a little about superconductors. First off, liquid nitrogen is not a magic and impossible to find substance. it is cheap and easy to acquire as far as gasses go. Secondly, the city of Chicago has been using superconductors in their power grid for around 2 years. Supposedly the main line carries something on the order of 10s of thousands of amps (I belive 16,000 but I am not sure). Just for scale, you be hard pressed to find a house with any plugs rated above 20 amps, the nuclear structure lab I work at has some lines with 50 amps, but none higher.
...somebody claims this. IIRC, someone in the early 80s had claimed to have done this (with "Radio Shack" parts) - I wish I remember where I read this - and of course there's Podkletnov, though the jury's still out on whether it was a hoax or not. Mind you, NASA has its own programme researching this...I'd be curious to hear their take on the issue.
Reminder: find a new sig
What if any, potential would anti-gravity have on human life. I know that constant lack of gravity is seriously harsh on a human body but what about people that have serious illness like respiratory problems where breathing is very difficult, or where broken bones need time to mend. Would exposing them to treatments in an anti-gravity field have any positive benefits? I'd like to see.
Where do we donate to erect a statute of him in Montana?
BTW, I've noticed a disturbing trend of really smart people != me ...
Karma? Karma? I don't need no stinkin' karma.
He claims that when he 'adds the gravitomagnetic field to the standard quantum equations for superconductivity, he confirms not only the gravitational Meissner-like effect but also a coupling between the two breeds of magnetic field. An ordinary magnetic field sets electrons in motion near the surface of a superconductor. Those electrons carry mass, and so their motion generates a gravitomagnetic field.'
Ugh?, Yeah sure. That does that mean I can have my hoverboard now?
Mc Fly
Nobel prize material if it works. Footnote in Physical Review Letters if it doesn't.
this observation was made years back by a scientist named podkletnov in Europe (hey, I said it was a while ago ;-). He used a super-cooled YBCO (yttrium boron carbon oxygen I believe) superconductor and was able to "reduce the mass of" (ie affect the gravitational effect on) objects. They actually ran an article in wired on him way back when (96-98 sometime). The "gravity society" had a website at www.gravity.org, but currently I cant reach it.
There was the report in 1996 about the crating of antigravity using spinning superconducting disks, also reported in SciAm (a followup report can be found here. It basically debunks the original claim, saying that the original paper has been withdrawn by it's authors, and oter physicists are very skeptical. But I wonder if this might have something to do with it (probably not).
If what he claims is true then first of all he has invented a great new way to emit and detect gravitational waves. It would be awesome for astronomy, useful for submarine communication (and maybe detection), and probably many other things. However, it's not immediately obvious that we're talking "antigravity" here, so don't get too excited.
Also keep in mind that 99+ times out of 100 these sorts of claims are completely bogus and a waste of time. Just sit tight and wait for rebuttals or confirmation to appear on the LLNL server.
Chiao: And who do you love now?
Geeks: Hoverbikes!
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PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
Time to start getting my skills up so I can enter the F-Zero or Wipeout leagues. This innovation will bring about nothing but high speed, heavily armed hover craft racing.
Looks can be deceiving. Or CAN they?
Not that this wouldn't prevent the usual research into military applications. I wonder how much force is generated, how much enhancement of force is created per megawatt?
Insert visions of UFOs with terrawat gravity generators, using this as a weapon to nuetralize gravity at an area of the surface below them. Enemy troops go drifting off into vaccuum or fall from a substantial height back to the ground.
NB the weather effects as well, of all of that atmosphere going up an anti gravity shaft, creating a storm.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
If Dr. Chiao is worried about his reputation, or getting published, or arguing with critics, I have some free advice: discover first, publicise second.
The article claims "By the time the theory is vetted, though, Chiao will probably have conducted his experiment and settled the question." Wonderful! Wait a few months to actually do the experiment, then publicise it. His reputation will be safe, everyone will want to publish it, and critics can try the experiment themselves. He will probably be able to complete it faster because he won't have all these clueless reporters asking him questions.
But you have to discover it first.
I had a friend who was working on this for a while. He kept building larger and larger metal units, cooling them down more and more, trying to get a rotating disk to speed up in a very, very, strong (par. magnetic field). If it sped up, then this was a reduction in the moment of inertia, and a decreased effective mass.
After two years of working on it, he gave up. He did get a measurable increase, but it was too little to be more than measurement error.
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I am an expert in electricity. My father held the chair of applied electricity at the state prision.
I'm still learning some of this stuff, but as far as I know, neutrons do exist on their own, just not very long. That is, a "free" neutron has a lifetime of something like 15 minutes, which is MORE than enough time to perform measurements on it. After 15 minutes, they break down into a proton and an electron. Experiments like neutron scattering, which have been verified and validated, rely on this lifetime. If these were actually protons or electrons, we could see them bend with the application of an electric field. On top of that, there is an overwhelming amount of data supporting the fact that neutrons are made up of three charged particles with integer-1/3rd values of charge (quarks). Can you give us a link to this theory anywahere, I'm really curious about it.
JoeRobe
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
Que? ;)
Joao "my hovercraft is full of eels" de souza
Can this work in reverse to create a gravity field? Artificial gravity on the space station, for example. Or doubled/tripled/quad gravity in a lab on earth to test equipment intended for planetary exploration. I'm sure somebody could use that, if it's possible.
That said, I think somebody needs a girlfriend... Or the "The Simpsons" Season 1 Box Set and a DVD player.
== Paul Rickard, Editor of The Microsoft Boycott Campaign ====
Assuming you're not just trolling/joking, here's the thing:
...).
You don't add velocities linearly in special relativity, they add in such a way that they can never exceed c in any reference frame. In order to move faster than light, you need either a discontinuity or an effect in a domain not covered by SR (GR, quantum,
Special Relativity is a really cool system, but it doesn't act intuitively - it all falls out of the simple assumption that everybody always sees light as moving at c relative to their own reference frame (no matter how fast they are moving).
There's a nice intro to a bunch of the concepts involved here (sorry, requires flash).
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
Note: I'm not especially expecting this to be true, just wondering what it would mean if it WERE true. I'm also just a computer science student, and am acting more as a philosopher than a scientist proper.
If it were true that gravity can be "generated" from matter by setting it up in a special super-conductive state, then sending energy at it, then we could learn several things.
First, we could learn if gravity is faster than the speed of light. This also means that faster-than-light communication would be possible, and eventually a form of faster-than-light information-conversion-based travel.
In addition, a new form of travel may be possible by just sending a small gravity generator where you expect to go, and have the smaller object pull you towards your destination at a cheaper net fuel cost. There's a LOT of assumptions here though, and the very idea itself seems to go against many principles of energy conservation.
It would also mean that humanity would have an interesting opportunity to attract matter, and eventually counter the effects of universal expansion.
Through learning about the speed of gravity, if we find that it is "instant", it may be possible to learn the time scale of the universe.
We may also learn of the nature of the range and shape of gravity over distance. Things such as if it travels as waves that may miss particles, and if there are "weak" spots in it's eminations relative to the polls of an atom, and how often these waves may be emitted if they exist as such.
Of course, nothing says that even if this were true, that it would be in any way efficient to use energy to generate gravity. Perhaps there is no way we could even generate gravity fast enough through energy conversion to match the effects of a marshmellow. Or much worse, perhaps it would be ironically simple to make a device that would slam a distant asteroid, planet, or star into our world within a few decades of the first exeriment!
So, what else might this mean, either if it is true or false?
:^)
Ryan Fenton
You mean like getting energy from the tides?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
..to even pretend to understand this. But this much I know: I'll be keeping those old technology wheels on my car for a while longer. I wonder how long it will be before I can't get any one to work on my car, while they sniff and look down their nose, complaining (whining) "That's OLD technology. Upgrade to anti-grav!"
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
If I understand the Scientific American article correctly, what we're talking about here is NOT blocking gravitational fields in the standard sense. The normal, static gravitational effect we associate with massive objects is really a manifestation of the gravitoelectric field. Superconductors, however, are believed to block the gravitomagnetic field, which occurs when a massive object is in motion or rotating. This is also referred to as the Meissner effect, or "frame-dragging". Note the effect of earth's gravitomagnetic field is very small; physicists have only barely been able to prove its existence based on minor course corrections needed for satellites in earth orbit, where the earth is the massive rotating object. So no, the effect of superconductors on gravity (if true at all), will not directly lead to hover technology. What it might lead to is a better method of detecting and generating gravitational waves; in theory, such waves could someday be used for communication the way EM waves are today.
If I recall correctly the current theory on gravity is that it moves instantaneously, or at some incredible speed of about 2 galaxy's worth of space in under a second. Well, if we can create gravitational waves that, in theory, can traverse vast expanses of space, couldn't it be used as a form of long range communication?
For all we know aliens may have been using this kind of communication all along, only we never had a gravitational antenna to pick it up.
This innovation will bring about nothing but high speed, heavily armed hover craft racing.
Oh, I don't know. The porn industry always figures out how to utilize some new invention before anybody else. I think you'll see some kind of floating blow-up dolls at PornDEX before your precious pod racers come along...
- Make an ice chest out of single-crystal high-temperature superconductor. (Can't be done in practice yet, but nothing theoretically impossible about it.) The chest is a single crystal, the lid is another single crystal machined to very close tolerance. No gaps when you put it on.
- Cool the ice chest down to liquid-nitrogen temp and run a current through it. It is now superconducting, and it is now non-conductive of heat. Put in this ice chest a solid piece of frozen oxygen or whatever you like that's cold cold cold.
- Lid on, current now running through lid too.
You are now keeping a piece of oxygen frozen solid at little more than the energy expenditure to keep some nitrogen liquid. Sounds like it doesn't compute, but a cryo guy told me it would work. (Shoulda patented it...)Just because a theory sounds nice and fits well with other known theories (electro magnetism) does not mean it is true.
There is plenty of moving mass in the universe. Has anyone measured a gravitomagnetic effect?
i havent heard of it.
If I were a discerning alien, and I knew how to make and detect coherent gravity waves, interstellar electromagnetic communication would be awfully silly. It's certainly more likely that some sort of faster-than-light communication really exists than that we are the only intelligent life in the universe.
Just because it works, doesn't mean it isn't broken.
Finally a second use for those oversized warp coils...
No, he is hypothesizing. (I don't know if I spelled that right.) Most scientists seem to think it won't work, but he'll probably get a Nobel Prize if it does.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
this is a _hypothesis_. don't expect back in the future III - type cars even if this hypothesis proves true. the gravitational radiation here is on a tiny scale (even the existance of such a radiation isn't confirmed).
:) )
even if it works, the possible applications within the next decade would be extremely limited - nanotech, etc.
(i am semi-speaking out of a certain part of my body here, though i've read some stuff after this was mentioned in sci american this month. please correct me if i'm wrong
You'll forgive my honest ignorance - but I'm having a bit of a hard time finding more than indirect evidence pointing to the expectation that gravity should act like other recognized massless particle just because it travels like it has 0 mass - since that's just assuming it can't be different in any way in order to stick with one form of relativity.
The closest thing to direct evidence I've found for gravity travelling at light speed is in observation of the changing orbits of binary pulsars, and the like - but this is not really a satisfying set of evidence for me. It assumes so many aspects of gravitational ratiation escaping and the like, that it really doesn't seem a clear picture so much as a loose interpretation based on existing assumptions.
Also, in another part of this thread, I posted this link:
http://www.ldolphin.org/vanFlandern/gravityspeed.
, which seems to be a frequently-posted link in discussions like these. I find that the path of discussion in that link has at least a few points valid enough for me to realistically doubt that gravity must act like a conventional form of radiation. I'd definetly be interested in any evidence, and I'm not at all attached to the notion that gravity acts in one way or another - so, if there's some argument or logic I'm missing, lay it on me!
:^)
Ryan Fenton
You know the effects that gravity currently has?
Well, the effects of antigravity would be the opposite of those.
...I'm just glad I could help out...
That was by Eugene (Jevgeni?) Podkletnov, at Tampere University of Technology, Finland. What I find funny is that nobody really wanted to verify the claims, they debunked it immediately. OTOH Podkletnov wasn't AFAIK too helpful in aiding in manufacturing the specially made ceramic discs (which were supercooled and spinning over a magnet).
Dr. Podkletnov was discounted as a hoax by many sources (cited that rising gases from the coolant, air flow from spinning or magnetism influenced his results), his university ejected him and now he has retreated to a hermetic existence.
Here is a story on Wired for your reading pleasure.
Much more to look if you search Google.
pronoblem
Isn't this the same type of thing that NASA funded some guy several million to develop? It was on slashdot last year sometime. Apparently, they want him to build a giant rotating superconductor that would sit below the shuttle launchpad. Even if it reduced the effective mass by only a fraction of a percent, it would save huge amounts of fuel.
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I've just finished my own version of the experiment.
I took a tin pie tray and stuck it in the freezer for a couple of hours.
Then I rummaged through the attic and found that old turntable that used to scratch all my Barry Manilow LPs back in the '70s.
After running an extension lead from the socket on the kitchen bench over to the freezer, I stuck the plate on the turntable, set it to 78RPMs and let her rip.
The inital results were somewhat disappointing. Several spiders and a rodent that was either a very large mouse or a small rat ran out the back of the turntable and disappeared into a bag of frozen mince -- but the pie tray didn't lift up an inch.
Not to be discouraged, I figured that perhaps the reduced gravitational field only appeared above the pie tray -- so I grabbed the cat (which just happened to be passing by at the time) and pressed its warm little bottom onto the frozen pie tray.
I guess it was a little cold for him because he didn't half get excited -- or maybe I should have taken that spindle out of the center of the turntable first -- oh well.
Anyway, after a bit of hissing, growling and some bleeding (my blood not his), the cat eventually settled down enough for me to release him.
He sat their with a glazed look in his eyes and once again I flicked the switch to 78 RPMs.
Horray -- Success!
The cat lept several feet into the air, schrieking, hissing, wailing and spinning wildly at what I figured was probably 78RPMs.
But alas, the effect was short lived.
No sooner had this levitated feline lifted into the air than he crashed back down onto the rotating pie tray.
Ah, what the hell -- I slammed down the freezer lid and sat down in front of the TV with a beer.
I'll go back later and see whether he's settled down. Maybe tomorrow.
Anyway -- it looks as if there is some effect there but measuring it requires the use of protective garments and probably a more cooperative cat.
Now there's some guy called Schrodinger at the door asking whether the cat in my freezer is dead but telling me not to open the lid.
What the hell's going on there I wonder?
Witches have been using gravitomagic for years ... to power their broomsticks ... which is old (witches) hat.
:-)
How does space know which way to get bent by mass?
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
No, nothing at all. This is just a theory. The usual gravity/superconductivity things we hear about are with possibly flawed experiments which cannot be adequately explained - even if we assume them to work.
As far as I am concerned, Chiao's theory is as credible as any other unproven/untested theory, such as superstring theory.
I miss my rubber keyboard.(Homepage)
In the abstract, he references no less than six effects with other physists last names. So name dropping probably works better than saying things like "Einstein and his cronies are fools! I am the one true world genius!"
If you check the sidebar, it mentions Dr. Podkletnov. This is different.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
There is plenty of moving mass in the universe. Has anyone measured a gravitomagnetic effect?
The problem is that there is either big mass moving slowly or small mass moving fast. You need a big mass to move fast to get a measurable effect. A supernova in our galaxy should generate a gravitomagnetic field big enough to measure with current sensors. On average, they happens once every few hundred years. We just need to wait...
IIRC, the gravitomagnetic field has been measured indirectly by observing the slowdown of a rapidly rotating binary star. The rate of deceleration not accounted for by other effects matched the predicted amount of energy it was supposed to lose by radiating gravitation waves with very good accuracy.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
It appears that science is much more human-interest oriented and (perhaps) less objective than we would like to believe. I counted no less than 30 different names mentioned explicitely (not used as units) in this paper. Thats almost two a page, and I didnt even count the formal acknowledgements!
Starring, in order of Apperance
Raymond Chiao
Meissner
Lense
Thirring
Ginzburg
Landau
Hertz
DeWitt
Lagrange
Hamilton
Papini
Josephson
Anandan
Cooper
Minkowski
Aharonov
Bohm
Sagnac
London
Newton
Cart
Avagadro
Gauss
Ohm
Maxwell
Ampere
Einsten
Faraday
Coulomb
Shroedinger
Fresnel
Fitelson
Perhaps that's a bit too harsh, but Scientific American has come down in the world quite a bit since the late eighties or early nineties. As I recall, they got a new editor many years ago and he was hell bent on dumbing the magazine down, fluffing it up with low-attention-theshold filler, and generally reducing it to a level of depth, insight, and relevance typical of USA Today or Omni Magazine. He suceeded, and many of the science professionals I knew cancelled their subscriptions shortly thereafter.
This subject strikes me as the researcher noting to himself "oh, hey...if I make some interesting assumptions, I get this cool effect popping out. And I might as well test it since it's so easy to test." Or an April Fools joke*. Which falls short of us dismissing the idea out of hand, but does suggest it doesn't deserve much media coverage -- at least until any positive results are verified. In other words, it was just sensationalist enough to get Scientific American's attention (they dig this kind of stuff), but not so far to the side of quackery that it has (yet) been featured in the Fortean Times.
* By the way, the paper missed April Fools day by four days; the date is stamped April 5, 2002. There's also a second date stamp of April 11, 2002. (A slightly earlier date stamp would have cleared things up pretty quickly!)
At least two years ago, there was a report about a scientist (I think) from former USSR who claimed that a fast-rotating superconductor will reduce the gravitational effect of anything "above" it when electricity flows through it. They measured the weight of a 2cent-coin before and while using the superconducter, and the weight actually fell by approx. 2 percent.
However, the guys who build the thing didn't have a theoretical explanation at the time, and it was presented as "wierd but interesting, let's see what becomes of this".
The TV-show is the same that featured a report about tunneling light through massive objects (blocks of lead) at speeds faster than "c", the speed of light in vacuum. Let's see when we hear more from that...
Cheers,
Frank
Yes, academic credentialism is driven by publishing. So? How does that translate into your assumption that all the 'recent theorizing' is bunk? Publishing is hard work. You don't just make up crap and watch is magically traverse the gauntlet of peer review.
Oh, right, because there's no such thing as fusion. That's why we know it's a boondoggle. Oh wait. It seems fusion is actually a common physical process! Maybe we should look into it. If, you know, that's all right with you. Work up the math, develop a consistent theory with provable axioms, then we'll talk. This isn't consultancy, s390, this is science. Golf, blowjobs, and 'intuition' won't cut it. Oh, and physics on LSD went out 20 years ago.Have you actually *read* the General Theory of Relativity? Go get Wheeler's "Gravitation". It deals with your confused theory, and much more besides, all coherently.
There are things to be said in favor of conformity. Science was created in a time of mystics and frauds. Actually having to prove what you claim was a big jump, and conformity is a natural side-effect of that. On the other hand, there is too much conformity in the university environment these days, but for that the blame can be laid at the doors of the administration. Nationwide, administration staff has doubled relative to student&faculty populations. All the bone-headed management theories that the private sector spent the last decade or two working through have trickled into the Uni, and all the 'free thinkers' fear for their jobs. Tenure, the great bulwark of high-performance original thinkers, is on the way out. Work through the math, get back to us. Perhaps if your 'scientific intuition' was better grounded in, say, math and science, then you wouldn't troll with this garbage. Oh, we broke the Standard Model 3 years ago. Better update your notes.Imagine a discreet electron moving through a positive lattice. The positive lattice will be attracted towards the negative electron. If the electron was still, the lattice would move towards it locally, and screen its charge. Because the electron is moving, and the lattice has intertia, the positive induced charge will lag behind the electron. This will slow down the electron, and also might attract any following electron if it is traveling at roughly the same speed. This is often described as electron-phononon coupling, and is rather more complicated than that simple explanation would suggest, but there is a weak force that does tend to cause electrons to match their velocities provided they maintain a respectful distance.
If electron-phonon coupling was all there was, then metals would only superconduct at a few milliKelvin. However the electrons are moving so slowly, and their wavelengths are so long, that each electron wavefunction may overlap with many thousands of others. If some of the electrons go into some ordered state, then it becomes energetically more likely for the neighbours to fit in too, and all of a sudden you get an energy gap between the ordered (superelectron) state and the disordered eletron states. This energy gap is much larger than the individual pairing energies.
If you are going to get the same sort of coupling and condensation using gravitiational waves, then you are going to need to balance the gravitational force with some sort of other repulsive force with the right sort of range. You might find this sort of balance in a neutron star, but I don't see it happening in the lab. But maybe I'm missing something...
No.
The thing that attracts us to the ground is a static field; this is only an effect of dynamic fields. Just like AC + DC. What you feel now is a more or less static field. A dynamic gravitational field at, well, any noticeable frequency would feel, I imagine, incredibly weird, like an fast rollercoaster.
The enemies of Democracy are
That's kind of a weird statement in my opinion. The paper essentially contains no new physics. The theory is tested, in the sense that we know that semiclassical approximation to quantum mechanics work very well in all kinds of systems. Superstring theory however is really new physics and in not only untested, but at the moment untestable.
-- Please put this in your sig if you think
Why did Santa Claus buy 5000 shares of VA software stock?
He wanted to leave naughty children something worth less then coal
This one isn't funny, because it would be obvious that a piece of coal is worth more than a share of VA stock. A stock certificat is a piece of paper, a form of carbon which, when viewed as a source of fuel, is vastly less efficient than coal.
Just thought I'd point that out.
Hehe. I like the vA profile on yahoo... "net revenues fell 89% to $10.6 million. Net loss decreased 49% to $64.5 million.". Ah, well, at least the -losses- went down.
The enemies of Democracy are
If he only gets a Nobel Prize out of this, if it is successful, he can consider himself well and truly gypped. This has far-reaching implications comparable to things like the wheel and the internal-combustion engine. He deserves to become massively wealthy if it pans out, to serve as an example to all of the other budding geeks.
How can you use my intestines as a gift? -Actual Hong Kong subtitle.
The one simple rule for spotting pseudo-science is to look for terms such as gravito-xxxxx force. Anything that links gravity to something else is at best plying the fringe of science or at worst is hokum. The reason is that established science cannot reconcile gravity with any of the other forces or with quantum mechanics. Therefore there is no gravitomagnetic or gravitoelectric force in mainstream science.
Doesn't mean any of it is wrong, it should just raise a flag that this person is way out there.
Karma police, I've given all I can, it's not enough, I've given all I can, but we're still on the payroll.
Yes, academic credentialism is driven by publishing. So? How does that translate into your assumption that all the 'recent theorizing' is bunk? Publishing is hard work. You don't just make up crap and watch is magically traverse the gauntlet of peer review.
:)
Well, from a certain point of view though....
At some level some publishing is, "I've noticed this quirk. It that light at the end of the tunnel illumination, or sunlight shining in my sphincter?" Sometimes in Physical Review Letters I would come across what would appear to be fairly formal flames. And other times the multitude of arguments leading to contradictory conclusions would individually be so compelling I wouldn't know what to think.
At some level all theorizing starts out as bunk, and the successful ideas percolate to the top. But I'm hardly an expert.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
It might not be new as far as its main assumptions are concerned (i.e. about assuming 4 dimensions, or about not predicting any new kinds of forces/fields)... however it is new in the types of effects it predicts.
i.e. it is similar in scope and style to the unification of electricity and magnetism as performed by maxwell - However the author here has a lot more preceeding theory to build upon.
In the end, we are looking for the simplest possible model that works. This is a nice model, it builds upon old, proven theory, it establishes new interactions between elementary fields and it makes new predictions that should be testable.
In the sense (as you rightly say), it is not quite the same as superstring theory, which is currently more of a collection of models proposed by many different authors, rather than a single, well-defined, comprehensive theory. (I admit to not having kept up with the literature, but browsing through arxiv.org tends to give one that view).
Beurgh
I miss my rubber keyboard.(Homepage)
A clear, cogent explanation for how Magneto has been able to float around for all those comics.
Now if they could only explain how The Flash manages to run so quickly without eating the entire national surplus...
And so it goes.
But if he open sources his design, how shall he make any money?
If he patents it, how can budding geeks look up to him?
I have been pwned because my
Not to mention the skin effect Skin effect for dummies It would seem that what works for one electromagnetic phenomenon should have analogs in other similar situations.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
preorder my X-34 Landspeeder
IAAL
Just for reference...Chemistry is generally taken in the 9th to 10th grades, with some exceptions to the 11th. Very few, if any, middle schools will offer Chemistry in their years.
pronoblem
If the superconductor also resists changes in the direction of the gravitational field, a rotating superconductor will be affected by a static field somehow.
A caveman dreams of being us, the incalculable power and riches. We dream of being Q, then what?
Just remembered reading a FAQ(Warp Drive, When?) on the Glenn Research Center homepage the other day.
Talks briefly about Gravity Shielding...
my sig
Conversely, electromagnetic fields (i.e. photons) do not generate further EM fields, so the equations are linear.
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If you moderate this, then your children will be next.
Superconductors seem to be the material of choice for antigravity claims nowadays. But if these effects are real, why don't we see them with normal conductors?
Even at relatively low frequencies, the reactance of, say, copper or aluminum by far dominates its resistance. This is how things like transformers and motors work. Most of the effects claimed do not seem to require perfectly resistance-free current flow, so why, in a century or more of electrical experimentation, weren't they found long ago, and why are none of these experimenters claiming results with ordinary conducting materials?
I'll not pretend to grok the paper entirely, but a casual read remids me of a classic Far Side cartoon where a bunch of scientists are standing around a chalkboard. On the board is one of the scientist's Grand Unifid Theory. Smack dab in the middle of the equation is the phrase "And then a miracle happens".
This paper reads the same way... "When A is time-independent, this equation has the same form as the time independent Schrodinger equation for a particle (i.e., a Cooper pair) with mass m2eff and a charge e2 with an energy eigenvalue except that there is an extra nonlinear term whose coefcient is given by the coefcient x, which arises at a microscopic level from the Coulomb interactions between Cooper pairs [16]. The values of these two phenomenological parameters must be determined by experiment."
But then again, what do I know?
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
If this works you won't be able to create antigravity fields.
... just keep your superconductor in the shade and gravity will simply point 'down.' It could also be used for propulsion in space ... generate a gravitational field and let your ship 'fall' into it. Repeat as necessary until desired vector is achieved, then reverse when needed.
Correct. But it may still have some potentially very useful applications. Artificial gravity, for one, which could make the health risks due to microgravity of a long trip to Mars, or an extended stay in orbit, a thing of the past. No need for big spinning metal canisters (which have their own navigational and structural challenges)
No, it won't get you off the surface of the earth, but once in space it could be very useful.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
What is claimed here is not a reduction in mass but an interference with gravity. The object sontinues to have the same inertial mass, but the gravity between the object and the earth is claimed to be blocked by the superconductor. Neat if it can be shown to work.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
is some understanding of gravity. How backwards is it that so much time and effort is spent trying to manipulate something that we have only the most base theoretical knowledge of? Try to understand gravity, once we've gotten that far then perhaps we can start to control it.
Science may someday discover what faith has always known.
While the interactions between the buttered toast and the cat seem feasible to yield a perpetual motion antigravity machine, in practice the effect is useless. It can be shown mathematically that the force required to attach a piece of buttered toast to the back of a cat can only be acheived by tossing cat and toast into a black hole.
My own experimentation supports the hypothesis that building a Buttered Cat Antigrav Engine is impossible. I plan to publish the results as soon as the lacerations have healed.
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
I am not a physicist.. but I am reasonably certain that, on our way to a grand unified theory.. we have unified the Electric & Weak forces, yielding what we now call the Electroweak force...
(And by 'unified' I mean we have proven them to be the same thing. The universe unified them already, we just found it)
But as far as I know, and granted, I don't know everything.. we sure haven't unified Gravity & Magnetism. Yes, we see many similarities.... but we haven't unified them. I'm not saying we won't; in fact, I believe we will, it seems logical.
But the article seems to talk about this "Gravitomagnetic" force as if it is something commonly accepted by science as real.
Not quite.
The idea is to get energy from the spinning of the earth, not the orbital path. You are decidedly NOT simply getting back the energy you used to put it up there; you are sapping energy from the earth spinning.
the experiments where they have a big-ass super conductor donut - then put the frog and feather and other things in the center of the "field" (please, i don't know anything about any of this, which is why i'm asking) just float, as if gravity was cancelled out...
is this at all related to this article?
And if not - what the hell does a superconductor have to do with levitating a frog? Does the frog have metal in him? Or is what i'm refering to the Dr. Podkletnov effect?
thanks.
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
Expert: One who learns more and more about less and less until they finally know everything about nothing.
This is the way it's done! Black Holes were nothing more than a theory with mathematical arguments that "seem(ed) to be correct", until CHANDRA started supplying experimental evidence. General Relativity was a theory with mathermatical aruments that "seem(ed) to be correct", until we managed to observe light bending around the mass of the sun.
Not completely true. While many additional predictions of both SR and GR were tested after the theories were proposed, part of the argument for them was that they also explained a lot of existing observations known to disagree with Newtonian mechanics.
Precession of the orbit of Mercury was one of these. Lack of the Ether Wind was another (C appeared constant independent of motion).
A model which explains previously-confusing existing results in addition to making predictions is a lot more promising than one which just proposes new results outside the domain we've already looked at (though both are of course potentially useful).
An ordinary claim: My car stopped running because it ran out of gas.
An extraordinary claim: My car stopped running because last night it flew out the asteroid belt and ate three aliens, which gave it indigestion.
Why can't *all* claims be held to an equally high standard?
You go ahead and spend your life either believing that cars fly into space and eat aliens or requiring piles of solid corroborating evidence every time someone claims that cars won't run on an empty tank. The rest of us will continue to consider consistency with previous findings when evaluating new claims.
Why be the world's first trillionaire when you can let other people earn all the money because you have an anachronistic secular variant of discredited religious sentiments based on want caused by poor world design by an uncaring deity?
"Has [being a kidnapped teenage girl, raped repeatedly for months] changed you?" - Katie Couric to Elizabeth Smart
He's not going to make antigravity with this theory, no. But he might make Cavorite.
Cavorite is a fictional material that blocks gravity, and it has appeared in science fiction for decades. No, it's not as useful as antigravity...but imagine what you could do with a launch vehicle that was weightless sitting on the ground.
Cavorite is also what Podkletnov was claiming, so the crackpot alarms should be ringing about now. But if it works, this is bigger than the invention of the automobile or airplane.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
Have we ruled out charlatanism because, hey, they float things with superconductors already, and that is a kind of antigravity and some suckers, most likely state legislatures, will think we're 90% there?
"Has [being a kidnapped teenage girl, raped repeatedly for months] changed you?" - Katie Couric to Elizabeth Smart
Gravity is an effect of mass, but a lack of gravity does _not_ equal a lack of mass. It equals a lack of downward force. Therefore, as long as the spinning disk was tethered to something, he wouldn't have found anything even if he had decreased gravity.
- Sig
But then why doesn't all gravitation collapse to infinity? (Silly question, I know almost no QM)
I was under the impression the link between gravity and EM was proven, and you don't need superconductivity. Have a look at the "Lifter" project on the JNL Lab http://members.aol.com/jnaudin509/ or if you don't want to build it yourself, order your lifter at http://www.americanantigravity.com/
I skimmed through the actual paper from arXiv.org, and noted what seems to me to be -- even if you accept his proposed Hamiltonian -- a significant flaw in his analysis.
He shows the Hamiltonian with both a magnetic and gravitomagnetic vector potential, and then claims that by analogy with the Meissner effect which excludes the magnetic field, the gravitomagnetic field will also be excluded. This is because, he claims, the phase integral of A must vanish, and so the phase integral of h must also vanish, due to the requirement that the wave function of the Cooper Pairs is single valued.
But there is only one wave function, and only one phase: it cannot impose two constraints! So if his equations are correct, it means that there will be a small gravitomagnetic correction to the Meissner effect, but no separate effect for gravitomagnetism.
Once again, if his Hamiltonian is correct, (which I suspect it isn't quite), the place to look would be in superfluids or gaseous Bose-Einstein condensates, which are made up of neutral objects than won't have a magnetic effect that swamps the gravitational one...
[P.S. It's been a few years, but I was a theoretical physicist in a former life, so I might not be speaking complete nonsense...]
There's a discussion of this here on Superstringtheory.com I would put this as an update to the original story, but I don't know how to update.. Original poster, Jim
"Nobel prize material if it works. Footnote in Physical Review Letters if it doesn't."
;)
I expect abuse on Slashdot regardless of the outcome.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
If the experiment is really as easy as a crystal radio, why doesn't he wait the two days and publish the theory together with the experimental results?
I can imagine some reasons:
- Publishing the theory first and the experiment later, leads to twice as many publications.
- People will be less surprised with the findings of the experiment, because they already know the theory. This might support the acceptence of the experiment by the scientific community.
-
I've misunderstood the thing with the "not much more complicated than a crystal radio."
I suppose 3 is the most probable reason.This sig is a true statement, but I cannot prove it.
i think we need a ranking higher than +5... like +5 GOLD. this is an absolutely stellar spurr-of-the-moment piece of work! it must be elevated to the high level of recognition it deserves.
This, he claims, would lead to a measurable effect. (I find that astonishing, since the effect comes from electrons which have a really tiny mass).
If you look at the experimental setup at the end of the paper, the trick of the experiment is to reverse the same procedure for a detector as is used to produce the gravity wave in the first place. Yes, moving electrons might not produce a very big gravity wave, but by the same token, it doesn't take a very big wave to move electrons.
Now, this experiment, if successful, would techinically only show that something which gets through Faraday cages is traveling between the two superconductors, and producing microwaves at the second one. I don't know how they could independenly confirm that it was gravity, though there's nothing else obvious that it could be.
From someone who knows:
Is the difference between gravito-magnetic and gravito-electric the same as the difference between AC and DC, or between voltage and current? Which? Either? I've got very few QM qualifications, and I can't see this clearly explained anywhere, so could someone please enlighten me?
Reality is the ultimate Rorschach.
There is solid evidence for gravity waves. Google for "binary pulsar gravity" if you want to find more about this piece of evidence.
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes ,
>I don't have any spare transducers just lying around
>my garage... do you??
I'll bet you do. Have any old stereo speakers? How about a microphone? Hmm, a thermometer? All of these devices convert one form of energy to another. Do you have a boat with a depth finder? If so you have a transducer that converts electricity to sound and also does the reverse. If you look in the parts list or catalog, you will even find it listed as such: "Optional high performance transom mounted transducer $39.95"
Cheers.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
Well of course- nobody needs "anti-gravity".
Simply focus your gravity *away* from the earth and gee, you can fly.
I browse at +5 Flamebait- moderation for all or moderation for none.
I think you've over-emphasized the effect that neutrinos having non-zero mass has on the Standard Model.
As defined in a review paper, neutrino masses are zero only in the "minimal" Standard Model. There is probably still interesting physics in understanding the masses of the various particles, but it seems to me that most physicists don't think that we need to throw away the Standard Model to incorporate neutrino mass so much as "upgrade" it to a slightly more ornate version.
From my point of view as a physicist outside the high-energy field, the reason people say they would be "glad to see the Standard Model go" seems to be that the field of QFT has been pretty boring for a long while now, and they hope that concrete experimental results will start clearing out the dead wood from the forest of possible alternatives that have grown up in the last 30 years. On the other hand, none of those existing alternatives would excite me enough to start caring about high-energy physics again. That says to me that the theorists in QFT have pretty much exhausted their imagination without any earth-shaking possibilities.
I have a nagging feeling that we are going to have about 20 or 30 more years of high-energy physicists hoping for new physics, without getting it. Maybe the string theorists will finally connect to experimental reality, and things might get interesting again. I have a similar nagging feeling that string theorists will keep talking about the thermodynamics of black holes without having much impact on the realm of experimental physics.
...is where the superconductor trial was.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
"Okay, IF this works then we're looking at a reactionless space drive. No more need to haul huge canisters of highly explosive chemicals around (once you're in orbit). Just throw together a gravity drive and a sufficiently powerful generator (yeah... 'just'), and away you go. It'd make the ion drive in DS-1 obsolete in a Big Hurry."
Yes, and No. Yes, it MIGHT make a very nice propulsion system depending on system characteristics that obviously have not been determined yet. No, it almost certainly would NOT be reactionless. And it is not just a "sufficiently powerful" generator that is needed; you also need it to be efficient, and probably accurate. It may make the ion drive obsolete, but I don't think it will do so in a "Big Hurry" as the power, efficiency, and pointing problems are going to take time to solve.
If anyone is interested in this, and will be in Indianapolis for the AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference this July, I'll be giving a talk on this very topic at 10:30am in session#86. Or, you can just buy a copy of the paper.
Well, at least it could before it died. It was also quite expert on the waterskis.
Lasers Controlled Games!
Actually, they're discovering higher-temp superconductors. I'm pretty sure there are some that superconduct above the temperature of liquid nitrogen, and I think I heard something about a potential room-temp superconductor.
Matt
Gallileo correctly determined that the acceleration of an object when acted on by a gravitational field is independent of its mass (air resistance not withstanding).
Okay, I'll feed the troll! :)
Sorry to burst your bubble, but Galileo didn't determine this at all. He determined that falling objects are accelerated downward by the Earth's gravity at a constant rate, unrelated to their mass. Or did he?
What Galileo actually showed is that the mass of the Earth has a vastly greater part in the acceleration than the falling objects do. Objects of greater mass really do fall a bit faster. The ratio of the mass of one object to another is insignficant compared to the ratio of either object's mass to that of the Earth.
Clear?
"Slow down, Cowboy! It has been 3 years, 7 months and 26 days since you last successfully posted a comment."
Well, perhaps the term 'positive feedback' is wrong. The field cannot amplify itself because there's field only outside the mass/energy source. And from the complicated nature of General Relativity, the effect is not simply positive or negative.
[In Newton's gravity, only one number (mass density) causes gravitation. But in GR the source of gravity is a 4x4 matrix involving velocities as well, so there's more than simple increase or decrease.]
There's a rather similar effect in the strong nuclear force. The gluons that mediate forces between quarks, can interact with other gluons as well. But electromagnetism is simpler (linear) because photons don't interact with other photons.
--
If you moderate this, then your children will be next.
I guess this is better than no acknowledgement at all, but where I come from the person who provides the fundamental insight that is the basis for a new piece of work usually gets co-authorship.
--Tom
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
In the past I've seen Discovery Channel documentaries about how subs have to surface to communicate by radio.. This could make that possible.
Eat at Joe's.
Oddly, the theory that an electron (or other "s-a-p") is a sub-atomic particle seems to still be held prevalent even though the thought to be more accurate theory is that an electron is actually an energy value measurable in what we define as negative, that in reality exhibits itself as a field and not a particle. The process of attempting to detect it makes a manifestation that appears to be a particle - somewhat like (scientifically a shitty anaology) how a stron enough magnet in front of a monitor will attract the electron stream to it instead of it being the electron "field" the gun is actually projecting.
Point being, the speed of light is just that. The mass of an object has nothing to do with its mass at it is approaching (or exceeding) the speed of light. The list of "particles" we are aware of that exceed the speed of light is growing. If scientists take what they already know (that "particles" are actually - or at least more likely - energy wave fields and not particles at all) the scientific community will progress a lot farther, a lot faster. Much more difficult to calculate wave field interaction especially with frequency variances attributable to different energy wave phenomena (a simple for instance... "photons" manifest and/or travel on various wavelengths, generating different field effects - and that's just "photons").
One day we may get it right... until then, everything is just guesswork and finding equations that seem to work within the limited circumstances we apply them to.
-Robert
WebMaster:
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This looks to me like the gravitational waves won't quite be what's needed for levitational goodness. So, the superconducting slab reflects EM waves as gravity waves. the problem being, that they are waves, and rather high frequency ones at that. so.. no push without a pull, no net force over long time intervals. oh well. the possiblity ofcommunication through solid matter is absurdly useful in itself.. or perhaps they could make a long distance vibrator..
-Invalid Indirection? What are you? a compiler or a lawyer?!-
even though electromagnetic fields can do some strang stuff,such as levitating,the princibles that they work by are different. I always understood gravity as simply a distortion of true space(a nonexistant idea where reality is not distorteted by reletivity,ie light travels in a perfectly straight line in true space but not in reality due to gravity distortion).This distortion has the side effect of pulling things towards it(that old billard ball example crops up again). so how can cooling a substance to a level where ist's electrons behave differnently effect by far teh most fundamental force in the universe(nothing to date has been discovered which can override it,they all just compensate for it). although superconducting might effect things which depend on elctrons and amgnetic fields ,I don't understand how they can effect the entirely seperate force of gravity.
However if this idea does prove to be correct it would be very usefull,although some of the more outlandish UFO guys might use it to explain their"theories"