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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.
Flying without moving parts! Why couldn't someone come up with this sooner?
blimps... hot air balloons...
I can see the media's interpretation already:
So, to lose weight, apply massive amounts of electrical current
check out americanantigravity.com
This is a site run by this guy I used to work with...pretty interesting stuff.
I think it messed with his head a little though.
You mean the ones that deal with facts, and actual forces of nature?
If you read to the end of the wired article, he talks about a controlled nasa experiment that showed that the effect doesn't work in vacuum.
Also, it's not high amounts of electrical current as stated in the headline, it's high voltage. A high voltage (~20kV) wire on top ionizes air molecules which are accelerated downward toward an oppositely charged wire. Action, reaction, upward force.
No anti gravity here. But maybe enough voltage to kill yourself. Maybe soon we will get a darwin award for an anti gravity attempt that never actually leaves the ground...
Muerte
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.
The concept of "defying gravity" by generating an upward force larger than the force of gravity pulling the object down is indeed very exciting.
May I interest you in a Boeing 747?
a grassroots movement of antigravity fans
Damn, man, just say geeks.
The coolest voice ever.
We can levitate almost a pound using an ion wind created by 120,000 volts. Strikes me that you could send a pound half-way around the earth using 120,000 volts and a rail gun.
:)
Anyone else think Wired authors get paid by the word, with no maximum?
Sorry for the lame reply, I was trying to think of something witty just so I'd get modded up and the right person would read my sig.
Kind thoughts do not change the world
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.
Why would you post this? You know how many
James Randi, the famous skeptic, has this to say about this subject (http://www.randi.org/jr/060702.html):
"Go take a look at http://www.americanantigravity.com/index.html and see very interesting videos of what the supporters seem to believe is a breakthrough in science. If this device is "antigravity," then a pogo stick and a crow are both antigravity items, as well.
I saw a similar demo at the University of Toronto back in 1946. That demo used a flat circular coil of wire; I believe this is the same thing, but a triangular form leads one away from the "induction" conclusion. It's a matter of high-voltage electrical fields generated by something that you don't see in the videos; there's always a source of high voltage present, a CRT (computer monitor or TV receiver) or a HV power supply, just out of camera view. What's also not obvious here is that the triangular frame -- which weighs only a few grams -- is tethered down by very fine invisible threads, a fact which when known, makes the apparent "maneuvering" appearance less mysterious by far."
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.
Actually it's more about AC vs DC than it is about voltage potential. I very seriously doubt any human would survive a hundred thousand volts DC at practically any current. AC gives you this wonderful thing called skin effect which means that the vast majority of the voltage is flowing through the dead skin covering your body.
It's true that "Volts Jolt, but mils (Amps) kill," but there's more to it than that.
No! /.ers that might actually believe you.
Well, if you want to Darwin yourself, go ahead, but this is for the benefit of other
120 VAC conducted through relatively dry skin and with no other bodily paths to ground for a short enough time might not be so bad. Even at 240 VAC too.
Now if you've just come out of the shower, and your feet are touching a nice wet grounded contact, or say one of your hands is touching the bathtub spigot, while you touch the hot lead of 120 VAC, say bye-bye. Actually, you won't be able to say it, your muscles will just quiver at 60 Hz (really at 120 Hz [I think] because you'll get two quivers for each cycle) until your heart fibrillates.
If that still sounds relatively tame, you can take two thumbtacks, press them deep into your thumbs, and connect them across the 120 VAC. You might get a nice scent of roasting meat for a few seconds too. To bad you'll be cooking and electrocuting yourself and unable to autocanabalise yourself instead.
I do not know the current, but I do know it won't kill you,
Ohm's Law. Well, sort of. The resistance of the human body is non-linear, and also non-homogeneous. As you lower the resistance through any means, you'll have more current flow. If that current flows through your heart, it can be more likely to give your heart fibrillations. Translation - 120 VAC can kill you.
make world, not war
The lack of control thing is really just because nobody bothers to try. It's like building a helicopter rotor and engine and just turning it on. It'll flip all the fuck over unless you tie it down or something. I'm guessing if you put little stablizer lifters on the sides of your big lifter you get lighting going in between them or other bad things, but if you did something like that, I can't see this being any more unstable than any other kind of propulsion.
BTW, if the Nebechunezzar runs on lifters, why does it need an EMP? Anything more conductive than a petrified Carrie-Anne Moss ought to be attracting ridiculous arcs by the time it gets within tense music distance, no?