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Those Amazing Antigravity Machines?
surfimp writes "Wired is running an interesting article about 'lifters', hovering UFO-looking vehicles that have no moving parts, no onboard power supply, and are capable of levitating simply through the application of high amounts of electrical current. Enthusiasts claim their vehicles are examples of a nascent antigravity technology, while more traditional scientists - including some funded by NASA - view them as nothing more than contraptions harnessing ionic winds."
After reading the whole long thing do you finally find out that its not antigravity at all, but an ion engine. It requires an atmosphere to work and is fully directional. Cool stuff, but not antigravity.
A guide to building your own "lifter", sort of
Perhaps you should build your own? Antigravity?Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. A cool toy? You bet.
It's the current (amps) that kill, not volts...
At least that's what my freshman physics teacher always said.
Only requirement for good karma: be pedantic as much and as often as possible.
My physics teacher in high school had a high voltage generator called "sparky". He could crank out 100,000 volts with that thing. Then he passed electrodes around and allowed us to experience 100,000 volts firsthand :) The reason this didn't kill anyone is that volts are not necessarily dangerous; amps do. The amount of current flowing through your body determines whether electricity is harmful.
Case in point: in the US power mains run at 120 volts. Yet this is enough to kill you. The reason is that there are tens of amps available at the wall.
A good article, but there is a very good reason why most physicists tend to be extremely skeptical about claims like this. The voltages used by lifters may be large, but don't push the limits of modern technology in any way, shape or form. If strange anti-gravity phenomena happened for 10's of kV, we'd have seen the phenomena in a number of different places. Physical laws, as best we can tell, are universal, and they have many, MANY situations where they apply. It is extremely unlikely that these contraptions encounter high voltage antigrav phenomena, and no other high voltage machine we know of does. BTW, I know Rai Weiss, and he is certainly kinetic, but hyperkinetic might be a bit of a stretch. Definitely a world-class physicist, too, one whose calculations you should generally take seriously.
I remember reading about this technology in Popular Science oh - back in the late 60's or 70's? It was clearly pitched as Ionic at the time - and the problem at the time seemed to have been how to carry the power supply around.
Having said that, I thought it was interesting how they mentioned that the top wire of a lifter vibrated like a guitar string, arcing when it approached the tin foil part. With that vibration and arcing in sync with the vibration couldn't a lifter be considered a capacitor? If it is then would the mass of the vibrating top wire fluxuate because of the Woodward effect, possibly causing a net upward force? ( the wire's mass would increase as the 'capacitor' was being charged as the wire vibrated upward and would decrease once it arced. )
Just an idea. Prolly lifters ARE nothing but glorified ionic breezes...
Eat at Joe's.
RTFA! This is the guy who was featured in much of the article. Check out the site, nonetheless, but read the article first...
Since you brought up volts, amps and dying I thought this link would be appropriate.
Ronald said nothing. He flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse, and rode madly off in all directions.
The ionic thust that "Lifters" use to fly is little different from the ion Xenon Ion propulsion system NASA flew on the Deep Space 1 spacecraft. Details are very different, but the concept is the same.
.
1:Create Ions
2:Accelarate them with across a voltage differential
3:Get Thrust
And the obligatory . .
4: profit!
Never attribute to malice what can as easily be the result of incompetence...
That's probably a reference to the Grand Unified Field Theory, the Holy Grail of particle physics where all forces are reduced to various aspects of one force.
;-)
Once upon a time, electricity and magnetism were thought to be different forces. Now we know they are two aspects of the same thing. Later it was found at high energy states the nuclear weak force and electromagentism were also two aspects of the same "electroweak" force. I'm not a physicist but IIRC they've also shown how the nuclear strong force (holds atoms together) is the same.
The force that refuses to be unified is gravity. It still remains a seperate term in all theories. It is hoped that by pushing particle accelerators to higher and higher energy states, enough clues will be given to piece together the relationships once and for all.
However, the link will not be found at room temperature and mere thousands of volts; we're talking millions of degrees, you know, the kinds of temperatures where us mere mortals stop caring which scale it's being measured in, and densities that would make a neutron star green with envy. Basically, barring Extraordinary Evidence, the line that so intrigued you is indicative of the ignorance of the writer, not an interesting phenomenon.
However, if you find this interesting I would encourage you to go ahead and learn about real particle physics; it boggles my mind why people enjoy various tin-hat conspiracy-type theories about physics when the real thing is so much richer and more fascinating then any man-made fiction could ever be. Like I said, I'm not a physicist but I enjoy laymen-level particle physics and cosmology and would love to learn more about it sometime in a context where nobody was forcing me to turn in homework
By the way, on the topic of the GUT, go here and grab this sound file... it won't be much more informative overall then this post but it will be much more fun.
I made one of these things a while ago.
website here
My website has picture too! Even of my high tech power supply apparatus! And my super HV safety encolsure!
Even got some video (which unfortunatly isn't on my website yet, can't find the tape) of it's final crash. You can definitely feel the ionic wind underneath the thing. It was a lot of fun making it though. Only burned a couple hole in the carpet (the cement under the carpet is plenty conductive), a floormat (I repeat, the cement is conductive), and some paper (got in the way of the cement), and lots of grass from when I used it outside (ground is conductive too, duh). At least my lifter went out in a flaming ball of glory, when it proceded to fly into a metallic doorframe, causing huge arcs and fire (which happens to be what I got on video:) after I cut one of the teathers (Muahhaha!).
Some think it is forces cause by the electrical field lines going from plates that are perpendicular. This is interesting, but i don't think this is how it works. If you look at the design, there is no stable capacitor. Since you do not ground the foil, you are not making a plate that will stay at a substantial potential that is less than the wire, because of ionized air and sparks that tend to sometime fly to it. And, the capacitance would be sooo low, that 25kv most likely wouldn't be enough to lift it even if those forces did exist. Also, looking at the construction, I can't see and perpendicular plates.
I also saw an experiment, cant find it though, of someone who put one in a bag that was wrapped around it. It didn't fly...which proves it. And, someone told me that if you monitor the current (didn't have or make a HV current meter at the time) there is a HUGD power draw that would be plenty to lift the lifter.
But if it requires an atmosphere, then it's not "antigravity"... and that's what it's claimed to be. People like to toss around the term "antigravity" because it seems to discredit established research.
:)
Kinda like "alternative medicine" - First they say your regular doctor doesn't know as much as they do and conventional medicine is a failure. Then they claim their products are 'clinically tested' and 'scientifically proven' to work.
Besides, there are other problems with this device. The lift power they generate is relatively low for their size. They also use the same principle of operation as the ionic breeze(tm) air cleaner thingy (not an endorsement, just an example). Here's a link to the US patent for anyone that wants a better look at how it works. (Gee, does that mean this "invention" is already patented? If it was "invented" in the 1920's, is that prior art?)
I wonder if these "lifters" are prone to "fouling", since they do work on the same principle as those air filters
=Smidge=
It's the current (amps) that kill, not volts...
;) If you're lucky you'll just be really sore afterwards. Ever touched the EHT lead of a switched-off TV?
;) Or take my word for it and don't touch 20kV.
At 20kV it doesn't take much capacitance to give you a boot - a brief current pulse as you discharge the capacitance. And if the power supply is still switched on, then your flesh tends to burn where the hot spark touches you. Volts seldom occur without Amps so don't go around thinking you're not going to die when you touch a 20kV source
At least that's what my freshman physics teacher always said.
Well then by all means touch the TV lead with a fast ammeter (CRO and resistor) and you will find out he was right, it's the Amps that will kill you
Lets see if my old mental data banks are correct:
The killing level I think is around 50ma at cant remember the potential spect {IE voltage} but below its a tingle and above burns the contact area so it forms an insulation. It mostly affect the heart.
Usualy when you touch a 110 outlet it usualy makes the mussels contract pulling you away breaking the "circuit".
The defirbulator uses high voltage of around 100 to proabbly around 400 volts but just enough current to affect the heart.
You do get a surface effect at high frequency. Hum. Possiblity wrong but that occures starting around 100mhz or was it 400mhz? Too many years ago for me.
Regular AC is switching at 60 cycle per second.
The worse burn you can get electricaly is an RF burn! Those go to the bone! And hurt like heck!
"so, in any case - ion wind or not, this technology is still not quite suitable for space just yet."
It is already in use in satalites (with some success and some problems). Nasa is using it to make cheap satallites. How do they do it? They carry some gas (Xenon) with them to use to make the ion wind. No it isn't the same design, but it is the same concept (ionized propellant).
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
The amount of current is 50 mA. That is all it takes.
Open Source: Every now and then, you get what you don't pay for.
Ohm's Law is a very simple thing, it is:
Voltage = Current * Resistance
So unless you lower your resistance (say, by standing out in the rain or sweating a lot), you can't have high current without high voltage, and high voltage will almost always result in high current.
So yes, it is the current, but the voltage generates the current.
These lifters just ionize air and direct the ions downwards with an electric field, generating upwards thrust. There's no anti-gravity involved at all. It's the same technology used in The Sharper Image's Ionic Breeze air purifiers.
My friend and I did some measurements of this effect, and with 23,000 Volts, 700 microamps, and 36 centimeters of foil and wire, it's possible to generate 2.7 grams of force. With balsa wood, it's certainly possible to build a support weighing less than that, and, voila! You have flight. Nothing magic.
For more details on our measurements, check out http://peng.dyndns.org/~dan/writings/phy210.pdf .
Daniel J. Peng