First Steps Toward Artificial Gravity

CompaniaHill writes "Have scientists been able to artificially generate a gravitational field? Researchers at the European Space Agency believe so. "Small acceleration sensors placed at different locations close to the spinning superconductor, which has to be accelerated for the effect to be noticeable, recorded an acceleration field outside the superconductor that appears to be produced by gravitomagnetism. This experiment is the gravitational analogue of Faraday's electromagnetic induction experiment in 1831." The effect is very small, so don't expect to see it used in spacecraft any time soon. But the effect is still many times larger than the predictions of Einstein's theories. "If confirmed, this would be a major breakthrough," says [Austrian researcher Martin] Tajmar. "It opens up a new means of investigating general relativity and it consequences in the quantum world.""

Comments

Yevgeny Podkletnov

[volts]

This sounds like the work of Yevgeny Podkletnov He claimed to have countered the effects of gravity in an experiment at the Tampere University of Technology in Finland in 1992 using a spinning super conducting ceramic ring.

Re:Yevgeny Podkletnov

[quanminoan]

Podkletnov spun a levitated superconducting YBCO disk at high RPMs. As the story goes he walked into the room smoking a pipe and saw the smoke from the pipe rising in a column above the superconductor. Measurements showed a slight decrease in gravitational attraction above the superconductor. Of course, the science involved wasn't exactly careful (who would smoke a pipe next to equipment like that?), and he was dismissed as a crank.

If you've read The Hunt for Zero Point by Nick Cook, Cook actually talks with Podkletnov about his "discovery". He then admits it wasn't a random experiment, but based off some Russian papers around WWII with some Nazi connections or something.

So really it's pseudoscience, and i'm sure the scientists mentioned in the article were both aware of Podkletnov's work and at the same time careful not to associate themselves with him. Just because it's pseudoscience doesn't mean nothing will come of it - it just means it's really unlikely. If you're interested in this sort of thing I recommend reading Cook's book, he worked for a military journal before deciding to explore the world of pseudoscience (the book almost has a mystery thriller aspect to it).

Podkletnov's Device: http://www.mufor.org/antigrav.html

Re:Forgot spaceships

[Rude Turnip]

I'm not positive, but I think this can be accomplished readily today using a cat, a large rubber band and some buttered toast.

Re:Awesome

[bev_tech_rob]

You haven't been keeping up on your Trek manuals, have you? The Inertial Dampening System predicts the adjustments it has to make when the command to jump to warp is issued. With weapons impacts, those are not predicted. The system can only REACT, therefore you get the shaking and jolting...

Slashdot misses the point again

[dildo]

Artificial gravity is not the real exitement around this experiment. The really important part is, you know, experimental evidence that may provide insight into the unification of relativity and quantum mechanics.

I wonder what the editors were thinking:

"Well, we can talk about the really exciting implications of this experiment that will be relevant to respectable physics ... or we could talk about some artificial gravity field thingy that will make crackpots and sci-fi fans excited. Well, it looks pretty obvious. Defer to the crackpots."

How long before some crackpot on the threads says: "Well, if you just spin the disk backward, logically it should follow that the artificial gravity will turn into anti-gravity! I have made the greatest scientific discovery since Einstein! Wait... I better be quiet about this before the oil companies and government agencies try to sabotage me, just like they did with my zero-point energy machine and my perpetual engine (I'm still working on getting the lubricant working correctly...)"

Nice job, guys.

Orginal Paper Here

[spiro_killglance]

Hi, i found the paper at the Los Almos pre-print archive.

http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0603033

Actually, i think i believe the experiment, but i don't
think i believe the interpretion, as the article and
the above paper state, this effect is 10^30 times stronger
than the gravitation force you'd expect from too small
chunks of matter. I think they've discovered a new force
all together.

Re:Orginal Paper Here

[SiliconEntity]

Thanks, that is a good reference and does answer some of the questions that have been posed here.

They measured accelerations with commercially available accelerometers. These were placed into steel boxes to act as Faraday cages and block EM radiation. They ran the experiment many times with non-superconductors and with the superconductors too warm to super-conduct, and found no effects.

There were no effects with high temperature superconductors, which their theory (a non-standard theory) predicted. There were also no effects when high-temp superconductors were lowered to liquid helium temperatures, which they also predicted.

The only effects they saw were with low-temp superconductors, niobium and lead. There were no effects above their superconducting temperatures.

They basically saw two effects. When accelerating a spinning superconducting ring, accelerometers located near a ring segment recorded an acceleration opposite to that experienced by the ring segment. So for example if this piece of the ring was spinning north, when they sped it up the accelerometers showed a southward force, and when they slowed it down the accelerometers showed a northward force.

The strongest reading was by an accelerometer inside the ring, but one located just above the ring was almost as strong. This was actually contrary to their (non-standard) theory, which predicted that the force should be mostly localized to the ring plane. But since their theory is completely blue-sky and non-standard, that perhaps doesn't mean too much.

The other effect they saw was with a constant spinning speed, lowering the temperature from non-superconducting to superconducting. As they passed through the critical temperature, the accelerometers again felt a force. It was noted that this force was in the opposite direction from the acceleration force, which I believe was also contrary to their (non-standard) theory.

They also briefly mentioned Podkletnov, but only to say their results were "very different" from his. They also said that they did not see any signs of the effects he reported, to the limits of their measurement. I would note that I think Podkletnov used a spinning disk while these guys used a spinning ring.

Overall it looks like a very careful experiment that did eliminate most sources of error. However the measured values were close to the noise limits of the accelerometers, which is always a little suspicious in science. The experiment definitely looks ready for replication. If it works it will turn gravitational theory on its head. There is no theory in existence that can account for these results. Not general relativity, not quantum gravity, and not even these guys' non-standard theory will work. Something completely new will be needed.

Re:Forgot spaceships

[markana]

This method has never worked out in practice - it's only good for producing spinning, suspended cats.

If you try to attach a shaft to the cat to transfer the rotational energy, the cat will stop trying to land on it's feet, and cling to the shaft. Thus no work is produced.

Attempts have been made to glue magnets to the cat, which is then suspended in a coil. However, it appears that the natural static charge produced by the cat seems to cancel out the expected induced current.

Experiments are continuing with *shaved* cats. I'm thinking about publishing some preliminary results, in hopes of winning an IgNoble.

Re:Forgot spaceships

[ktulu1115]

Exactly.

Cold is defined as the absence of heat. There is no such thing as measuring how "cold" something is - heat is the intrinsic property, cold is just a lack of it.
Same thing with light.

A lack of gravity does not imply anti-gravity. It just means that spacetime is flat in that particular region (and of course we know it's never truly flat, there's always some deviation). Anti-gravity would be akin to emitting gravitons with a "negative gravitational charge" - it's possible in theory and that's about it as far as we've discovered.

Re:Forgot spaceships

[pegr]

Experiments are continuing with *shaved* cats.
 
Step one: Shave Shrodinger's cat with Occam's razor...

Who Invented the E-man?

[TiggertheMad]

If true, this would be pretty much the biggest breakthrough since Einstein.

And what a breakthrough he was! I don't recall who invented him, but man, they don't build jews like that anymore...