Boeing Joins In Anti-Gravity Search

SimcoFrappe writes: "BBC News reports that Boeing is trying to extend the research of Russian scientist Dr. Yevgeny Podkletnov to develop a device to shield against gravity. The military branch of the British BAe Systems announced a similar program in 2000. One step closer to cheap space travel or just more sci-fi jive?"

Comments

It's about time.

[Rhombus]

Where are all the flying cars???

I was promised flying cars.

Re:It's about time.

[nizo]

Not to mention this whole antigravity deal will revive the sex industry (zero-g sex rooms anyone???) And don't forget bras, there are millions of women around the world who would appreciate the "load reducing" capabilities of an anti-gravity bra.

I'll take the latter.

[casio282]

A variant on this story comes up every year or so, but there is never any evidence substantiating Dr. Podkletnov's claims...

First NASA, now Boeing. Rubbish, I'm inclined to believe.

Re:I'll take the latter.

[junkgrep]

What are you talking about? Boeing already produces an entire line of gravity defying products...

Since when do we need shielding against gravity?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a conspiracy against "overweight" people. If we're shielded from gravity, we'll all simply be known as fat.

Worth it

[drunkmonk]

So Boeing spends a few million, finds the guys research is bunk and discards the project? No problem, they're a multi-billion dollar company.

But... if on the off chance that it really works and could be used in commercial projects and could bring billions (trillions?) in sales and licensing royalties...

Seems like a worthwhile risk to me.

Looks simple

[Captain Pedantic]

The scientist says he found that objects above a superconducting ceramic disc rotating over powerful electromagnets lost weight.

The reduction in gravity was small, about 2%, but the implications - for example, in terms of cutting the energy needed for a plane to fly - were immense.

All Boeing have to do is strap a superconducting ceramic disc rotating over powerful electromagnets upside down into one of their planes!

Re:Looks simple

[sql*kitten]

All Boeing have to do is strap a superconducting ceramic disc rotating over powerful electromagnets upside down into one of their planes!

Powered, no doubt, by a slice of buttered toast strapped to the back of a cat!

But wait, how will cat-based purr-petual motion machine work if there's no gravity to pull the cat towards the floor? It's going to take all of Boeing's engineering talent to work that one out :-)

Re:Looks simple

[Bandman]

what you would have to do is put simple floor linoleum above and below the cat, thereby creating the desired effect.

In the words of Garth Algar, "It's almost /too/ easy."

Re:Looks simple

[ShavenYak]

Nope, that won't work. The cat can then land, feet 'down', on either the above surface or the below surface. There is no force trying to attract the cat's back to one of the surfaces, like in the traditional BT-FAGE (Buttered Toast - Feline AntiGravity Engine) design.

Unfortunately, much research remains to be done before the BT-FAGE becomes reality. We are dealing with forces far beyond our present understanding of the universe. All experimenters who have attempted to harness these forces have ended up with multiple flesh wounds, covered in butter, or both.

Its not THAT Unbelievable

[hooded1]

I'm sure alot of you will first respond by saying thats impossible. But you're wrong. There are no laws of physics that say its is impossible to block gravity. At this point we no so litle about gravity that it is difficult to make any conclusions about it.
Some elementary electromagnetism courses will teach you about faraday cages, which block electromagnetic radiation. Pretty much everyone has experienced this. Ever walk into a concrete building and lose cell phone reception? This is because the concrete is reinforced with steel bars which form a kind of metalic cage around you, this is a faraday cage.
Now like electromagnetism, gravity is one of the four fundamental forces. If we can create a shield to block one of them why not block gravity?

Re:Its not THAT Unbelievable

[AtomicBomb]

However, if his approach is correct, other guys should have already validated his claim. The experiment is so simple, only superconducting ceramic + strong magnet... Two percent in weight change is quite detecatable. Any university's physics dept can do that. If his experiment *still* works, it is his responisble for him to demostrate that to the commnunity. If it was due to experimental error, he should post a correction to say physics review letter. He has done neither; just after money.... As someone who is sort of belong to the science community, I suggest we should start questioning this guy's integrity.

People used to say that "extraordinary claim needs extraordinary proof". But, if you want to siphon money from the military-industry complex "extraordinary dubious claim makes you money".

Just what science didn't need...

[CaptainAlbert]

The real problem with "research" like this is that it brings out the very worst in the peer review system which usually serves scientists so well. As soon as a journal dares to publish something so dubious, there is a huge backlash by the establishment, to the extent that real, innovative research can be stifled.

The best-known example of this phenomenon was the cold-fusion debacle of the late '80s. A group of researchers claimed (essentially) to have initiated nuclear fusion in a beaker using heavy water and palladium electrodes. No-one else was able to reproduce the experimental results. The result, however, was not just to discredit the report's authors, but to cause a scepticism so immense that no electro-chemist could publish a paper which mentioned a similar experiment. I can see the same happening to unsuspecting scientists working on superconductors now.

I would link to an interesting editorial in this month's NewScientist, which describes the phenomenon in considerable detail, but it would appear that they only put it in the print version. Shame, that.

Artificial gravity?

[edgrale]

What about artificial (sp?) gravity? Anti Gravity is usefull to get stuff into orbit and to help disabled people not to mention commercial use in general.

But what about artificial gravity? Once we get into space zero-gravity is a problem. Do you just rotate it to the left instead of right or vice-versa?

The Gravity Stone

[kisrael]

My alma mater has a monument to this forthcoming breakthrough, placed by Roger W Babson (of Babson College). It's called the Gravity Stone and it's "to remind students of the blessings forthcoming when a semi-insulator is discovered in order to harness gravity as a free power and reduce airplane accidents" Kinda kooky stuff, check the link.

History Repeats, Don't Sell Nukes

[gerf]

erconductors today are like electricity was in the 1800s. Back then, we understood little about how magnatism and electricity worked. It had a mystique about it that led to gypsies and sayonces (sp?) trying to contact the dead. Commonly, they used this new 'electricity' to contact lost relatives, loved onces, ect. Of course, they were debunked.

Superconductivity is today's mystery phenomenon. We see things float in air, we see electricity move sans resistance, and other principal physics phenomena simply discarded. It's something new, and not as well known. With this mystique, people can claim to have done wonderous things, and have at least a portion of the general population go along with it. Or invest in it.

Also, have you seen the Russian economy? How the brilliant scientists are treated? There's no money for them, they live in near poverty. I don't blame a Russian scientist if he tries to make money this way, legitimate or not. Personally, i find it much preferrable than him selling old USSR equipment (uranium, nukes, hot material, ect) to the highest bidder, in order to feed his family. If you don't think so, that's your problem.

Results not reproduced so far

[mccalli]

I heard this on the BBC's Today programme this morning. They had a professor from my old university, Lancaster, on explaining his disbelief.

He pointed to the fact that an Irish university (sorry - don't remember which) had spent quite some time reproducing the experiment, and that this re-running of the experiment had failed to verify a single claim.

I'd love this to be true. Sadly however, at this moment I'd have to put myself in the non-believer camp.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:Results not reproduced so far

[WolfWithoutAClause]

He pointed to the fact that an Irish university (sorry - don't remember which) had spent quite some time reproducing the experiment, and that this re-running of the experiment had failed to verify a single claim.

However, it may be that they did something wrong- perhaps some detail was performed incorrectly, or something. It does happen sometimes. As a similar, but not exact example, I once heard about a chemistry experiment that was reproducible, but only when you used unreactive plastic antibumping granules in the mix. The granules should not have interacted at all with experiment. It turns out that the way that the granules moved stirred up the mixture in a particular way, triggering the reaction. If that detail hadn't been realised by the original experimenter; then the experiment would have been nigh on impossible to replicate.

Still, many things bother me here- the effect that is claimed is small, only 2%; it turns out that weight reductions are often difficult to measure (a lot of machines produce vibrations that make most balances read either high or low- and you can get air currents, thermal effects, magnetic forces, electrostatic forces- all of which are nothing to do with gravity, all of which make weight readings high or low.) And the fact that so many labs cannot reproduce this- that is not a good thing.

Remember Josephson junctions?

[ebcdic]

It's often said that IBM poured money into Josephson's work even though they didn't have any expectation of it succeeding because it would force their competitors to spend money on it - which they couldn't afford as well as IBM. Maybe Boeing are trying the same thing.

Or maybe BAe are trying it, and have succeeded with Boeing...

The way things are going...

[flacco]

I wouldn't be surprised if the block-and-tackle industry buys the patents and kills the technology.

Re:small

[squaretorus]

Hello World

As soon as you create a machine that allows you to put those two little words on the screen you can do all sorts of things - hey! You could display a whole encyclopedia!!!

As soon as you prove you can do something AT ALL you know its worth figuring out how to do more of it.

Creating a Zero G device is like making love to a beautiful woman. When your young you pull your first woman. Yeah - she might be a dog, but hey! she was willing to sleep with YOU! So you try again with some chick who's a bit nicer looking, or has bigger boobs, or washes a bit more often. Some of you will stay with her - glad not to be alone. But some of you with vision will keep climbing that mountain until you finally get to nail a pretty one! THEN my boy, THEN you'll be floating on air!

That first shag proves it is at least POSSIBLE. Same with the 2%.

( I dont think the observations hold up - but if they HAVE achieved a 2% effect then WOWOWOWOW!!! )

Re:Worth it: Pascal's Gamble

[debrain]

They call it "Pascal's Gamble" in one of the articles. It is a breakthrough technology; revolutionary. Revolutions require faith and gambles.

a simpler way

[shd99004]

Since we all know that

1. Cats always land on their feet, and
2. A buttered slice of bread will undoubtedly land on the carpet butter side down,

we could strap said buttered slice of bread onto the cats back, then drop the whole thing to the floor.

Re:a simpler way

[colmore]

This fails both under quantum physics and general relativity.

Under the quantum physics interperetation, since both the cat's feet and the buttered toast are equally likely to land on the floor, the cat-toast enters a superposition where both cat and toast are simultaneously on the floor until it is observed, at which point a radioactive particle decays, and the cat is skinned in a number simultaneous, equally likely, yet distinct ways.

Relativity predicts that the intense attraction to the floor will, in fact, bend space-time in such a way that the floor actually is in contact with both the cat and the toast. If the cat is of the black variety, then it will thus cross its own path, generate a singularity, and vanish in a puff of logic.

The debate continues, as attempts at experimental verification have thus far failed. Dr. Kibble at Princeton's IAS said "Look, have YOU ever tried to hold a cat still and strap some friggin' TOAST to its back?"

Or maybe it *is* that unbelievable

[alienmole]

Now like electromagnetism, gravity is one of the four fundamental forces. If we can create a shield to block one of them why not block gravity?

Hmm, although I agree it's difficult to say that shielding against gravity is impossible, the above is not exactly sound logic. You need to look at the origin of the forces in question to see why.

The general relativistic model of gravity as the effect of warped spacetime would seem to indicate that blocking gravity could be a fundamentally different problem than blocking electromagnetic radiation.

Electromagnetic radiation travels through spacetime, i.e. it follows the curvature of spacetime. Blocking it is simply a matter of constructing the right kind of interfering device, such as a faraday cage, to prevent electromagnetic photons/wave packets from penetrating.

OTOH, according to GR, gravity as we perceive it is essentially a secondary effect due to the curvature of spacetime. To "block" it, you would have to be able to uncurve spacetime in the vicinity you wish to block. This is a little different from blocking photons. The only thing we've ever discovered that's capable of warping spacetime is "mass". So sure, we can counter the effects of gravity, there's no mystery about it: simply use a mass as large as the mass of the object whose gravitational effects you want to counter.

Unfortunately, in the case of gravity, this doesn't really work the way we want. Let's say I create a black hole with a similar mass to that of the Earth (I have a fairly well-equipped basement). In the vicinity of the black hole, I would feel a force towards the hole (please no goatse jokes) of approximately 1G (adjust masses to achieve appropriate effect outside the Schwarzchild radius, etc.) So if I hang the black hole from my ceiling, I could create a micro-gravity environment in my basement, with the force upward cancelling the force downward.

Astute readers have by now noticed a slight problem with this scenario. Despite my well-equipped basement, I don't happen to possess a means for suspending an Earth-mass object a few feet above another Earth-mass object (i.e. the Earth itself). There's not going to be a heck of a lot I can do about the fact that my black hole is going to shoot down towards the earth under a combined force of 2G and a momentum that would require numbers with "E" in them to describe. (I had better not be standing beneath it, if I want to avoid rather nasty tidal effects as the black hole travels through my body - that killed a guy on Mars once.)

Because of the nature of gravity, "shielding" against its effects may not even be meaningful. Even if it is possible, it's highly doubtful that we will stumble across the solution by random experimentation with e.g. spinning disks. Spinning disks might confuse researchers, but they don't confuse the universe.

Re:Or maybe it *is* that unbelievable

[jtdubs]

Of course in Quantum Physics where gravity is explained as an exchange of gravitons (a type of particle) it could be possible to block them...

Justin Dubs

Re:Or maybe it *is* that unbelievable

[magi]

You had excellent comments. I'll just add a few notes.

The only thing we've ever discovered that's capable of warping spacetime is "mass".

IANAP, but I've heard that, according to some current theories, it's actually energy that curves the space. Matter just happens to have a lots of it. I would think this would have radical cosmological implications as the mass (with respect to gravity) of the universe would be a constant. Or maybe it's just an urban legend.

Let's say I create a black hole with a similar mass to that of the Earth (I have a fairly well-equipped basement). In the vicinity of the black hole, I would feel a force towards the hole ... of approximately 1G ...

Not quite, because the force is inverse square of distance. If the mass of the black hole is 1 earth, you'd have 1G at the distance of earth's radius, i.e., about 6300km. At one meter... have fuuunnnnnnnnn......!

There's not going to be a heck of a lot I can do about the fact that my black hole is going to shoot down towards the earth under a combined force of 2G

To be precise, the earth would pull the black hole towards it with 1G and the black hole would pull earth with 1G (on average). It would therefore accelerate just as much towards the earth as earth would accelerate towards it, if we look from somewhere else, say from Sun.

Even if it is possible, it's highly doubtful that we will stumble across the solution by random experimentation with e.g. spinning disks.

Assuming that it was random. I think I saw an argument a few years back that Einstein had mentioned about such a possibility.

Re:Or maybe it *is* that unbelievable

[thogard]

Nice math to back up thouse ideas. In fact thouse ideas are the math. The problem is reality is playing a slightly different game. This is why The Voyagers and Pioneer spacecrraft are slowing down as well as all the GPS sats. There is also that slight problem with pendulums and eclipses. But other than thouse things, GR gravity models work great.

Re:Or maybe it *is* that unbelievable

[colmore]

Gravitons are a nice way of satisfying a few equations, but they don't really fit in the standard model and have never been even indirectly observed.

I suspect that gravitons are the particle representation of quantum physicists' inability to think of things other than particles.

Hmmm... that probably sounded like more of a flame than it should have. It's really one of those "when you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail" things.

Military Uses

[CaffeineAddict2001]

I learned this in quake:
Step 1: Lower gravity to 0
Step 2: Wait for enemies to accelerate upwards.
Step 3: Increase gravity to 255, watch enemies splatter all over the ground.

Re:Worth it: Pascal's Gamble

[young-earth]

For those who are interested, Pascal's Wager actually involves something far more significant.

Been there, done that.

[Mulletproof]

Oh, come on. We all noticed this one, right? UFO With Fighter Escort Over DC! ...News at Eleven. On a side note, of course Boing and NASA are sinking money into this; Just like several well known companies sank money into the Internet via Powerlines scam. If it pans out, your looking at a real society changing event, not some auto-balacing scooter hype. If not, they'll try to sue the guy's butt, legs and arms off and walk away with their tail between their legs. Life goes on. Further, you won't see this in civilian applications anytime soon if it is the real anti-gravity McCoy. Ever see Evangelion? Notice how they were always (until the later eps) attatched to a giant extention cord? I suspect your power-hungery anti-gravity unit is either going to be teathered to one of these or have it's own mini S2 nuclear plant. At least until we develop Mr. Fission, that is.

Gravitons are different, silly

[lildogie]

A Graviton is a spinning cylinder, not a spinning disk. When you get inside, it starts to spin, and you slide across the floor and stick to the inside wall of the cylinder. Then they drop the floor and friction holds you to the wall. But it gets boring pretty quickly.

I once snuck a tennis ball inside and tried to throw it to my buddy on the far side of the cylinder, but it didn't travel in a straight line. Spooky.