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."

Comments

I can't help feeling .....

[ajs318]

..... that this thing is just some kind of electromagnetic repulsion thing. Coils of wire? It looks like an electric motor flattened out. If you place a coil of good conducting material in a strong alternating field, the induced current will induce its own magnetic field, and the induced field will always repel the external magnetic field. If you have too much resistance in the coil, of course, the repulsion due to the induced field is likely to be weaker than the attraction due to gravity.

Talk of high voltage, high current and complex waveforms always impresses non-scientists. Even when it's a well-known phenomenon. Remember the "perpetual motion machine" {a lightly constructed wheel with elastic bands for spokes, set at an angle} that was actually a radiometer? It got its energy from the light bulb shining on it ..... but it fooled plenty of non-scientists.

BTW, the use of the word "inch" gives it straight away that this person is not a real scientist. Real scientists use SI units exclusively, even {especially?} when talking to non-scientists.