- There is always an exception, but I have always thought that the next big transportation breakthrough will not be an "electric car" but either a hydrogen car or an anti-grav/anti-magnetic device.
Already invented:
Posted on 07/30/2002 8:22:27 AM PDT by Fitzcarraldo
Boeing, the world’s largest aircraft manufacturer, has admitted it is working on experimental anti-gravity projects that could overturn a century of conventional aerospace propulsion technology if the science underpinning them can be engineered into hardware.
As part of the effort, which is being run out of Boeing’s Phantom Works advanced research and development facility in Seattle, the company is trying to solicit the services of a Russian scientist who claims he has developed anti-gravity devices in Russia and Finland. The approach, however, has been thwarted by Russian officialdom.
The Boeing drive to develop a collaborative relationship with the scientist in question, Dr Evgeny Podkletnov, has its own internal project name: ‘GRASP’ — Gravity Research for Advanced Space Propulsion.
A GRASP briefing document obtained by JDW sets out what Boeing believes to be at stake. "If gravity modification is real," it says, "it will alter the entire aerospace business."
GRASP’s objective is to explore propellentless propulsion (the aerospace world’s more formal term for anti-gravity), determine the validity of Podkletnov’s work and "examine possible uses for such a technology". Applications, the company says, could include space launch systems, artificial gravity on spacecraft, aircraft propulsion and ‘fuelless’ electricity generation — so-called ‘free energy’.
Although he was vilified by traditionalists who claimed that gravity-shielding was impossible under the known laws of physics, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) attempted to replicate his work in the mid-1990s. Because NASA lacked Podkletnov’s unique formula for the work, the attempt failed. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama will shortly conduct a second set of experiments using apparatus built to Podkletnov’s specifications.
Boeing recently approached Podkletnov directly, but promptly fell foul of Russian technology transfer controls (Moscow wants to stem the exodus of Russian high technology to the West).
The GRASP briefing document reveals that BAE Systems and Lockheed Martin have also contacted Podkletnov "and have some activity in this area".
It is also possible, Boeing admits, that "classified activities in gravity modification may exist". The paper points out that Podkletnov is strongly anti-military and will only provide assistance if the research is carried out in the ‘white world’ of open development.
Actually, it was the photoelectric effect. Truth be told, that was probably the more significant paper, it being one of the cornerstones of quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics pervades modern technology; relativity does not.
If there's any pressure to fudge, it's in the direction of more grandiose claims and spectacular results. (That was Pons' and Fleischmann's tragic flaw.) Antigravity would (conservatively) be worth trillions of dollars and several Nobel Prizes.
Already invented:
No. There is no such theory, yet. The unification of gravity and quantum physics is the Holy Grail of physics. It's one of the largest single points of effort in modern physics. There are a couple of approaches being pursued, and it is hoped that one of them someday will bear fruit, but we aren't there, yet.
In any case, don't expect practical applications (such as antigravity) from it, once they find it. The energy scale for such a unification is gigantic (unless there are large extra dimensions we can't see, in which case it is merely huge), a fact called the "hierarchy problem". The interaction scale would be some 27 orders of magnitude greater than the typical scale of chemical interactions, a condition that could only have existed in nature in the first ten millionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second of the Big Bang.
Chump change. The economy of the world isn't a tick on the backside of what antigravity would mean. With antigravity we could rearrange the solar system however we wanted. Saying that the oil industry can suppress an antigravity device is like saying that an apprentice buggy-whip maker could have prevented the invention of the internal combustion engine. (Not that the oil industry would mind an antigravity device; these things are supposed to consume energy.)
A much more credible and likely conspiracy scenario would be that a mega-corporation would take Podkletnov's device and claim it for their own, just as RCA nabbed Farnsworth's invention of TV. The fact that this hasn't happened could more reasonably be counted as evidence that no such device exists, than evidence of the suppression of same.
So then anybody can make one. Hold your breath; it should happen any day now. Homebrew spindizzy clubs should be springing up everywhere.
(or was it, "OMmmm...........")
One day he left for the weekend. When he came back, one of his utility buildings had burned. The oil company called him again, told him they'd heard about the burnt building, asked again if he was sure he didn't want to sell. Again he said no.
Not long after, he left for a day trip, business this time. Came back that night, his barn with all his pigs had been burnt to the ground. Oil company called again, asked if he was SURE he didn't want to sell.
This time he said yes.
Illinois isn't exactly the oil producing bastion of the world. If they would do that for that one little find, what lengths would the go to to stop something like this.
When trillions are on the line, I guarantee you people will kill to keep the status quo.
Let's admit for a while that the theory behind this is concrete, and our tech level is enough to manage "antigravity beams". (I doubt this badly). Since old Einstein's and , tracing back ,Maxwell's, Poyinting's and other's equations are far from being put in the trashcan, my question is: where are you going to take the energy from? Hope you don't tell me you are going to extract it from other's gravitational fields, since it would be a true bull**it: all the antigravity programs are solidly founded in cool traditional electromagnetism physics (and it couldn't be differently, since this is the strongest theoric heritage we have). I'm an engineer,you have to explain me how to produce and transport the GW's of electricity necessary to let this stuff eventually work.
Not Bullwinkle!
Thinking about it further, you actually could get free energy out of such a device. Perhaps the oil companies are right to suppress it. <snort>
If it's actually reducing the weight of what's above it, you could lift objects in the reduced gravitational field, turn the thing off, and let them fall again. The energy it takes to lift the thing is less than the energy released by dropping it. The device itself takes energy to operate, but that energy (according to the claims) is not dependent on distance, or on the mass of the object being supported. (Think about it: if it were mass-dependent, none of the applications they propose for the device about would work.) Therefore, if you aren't getting enough free energy to run the device, all you have to do is lift a heavier object higher.
So the heavier the object, the more pronounced is the effect. Jupiter is heavy. Point such a beam at Jupiter and you can change its orbit. Its attraction to the sun is reduced, but its momentum remains the same, so it will swing outwards.
The number one law standing in the way of antigravity is TANSTAAFL.
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