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Gravity Modification With Spinning High-Temp Superconductors

I apologise for my mistake in quoting Casimir and Antigravity in the same sentence - I was posessed at the time by a Mr. Jack Daniels, and I apologise sincerely (for further proof, see my posts on the Conspiracy board - Forteana and drink don't mix!)
However, I have been thinking about the topic at length, and actually got some inspiration from some pro-Creation literature (so it does have some use...). The piece I was reading renounced evolution, citing the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics - i.e. that entropy in a closed system increases. Of course, the argument against this is that the increase in complexity on Earth is countered by a superior decrease elsewhere in the Universe. I apologise to Xanatic for this one, because I am but a Pure Mathematician, and my Physics extends to modelling of Solitons, but it occured to me that it may be possible for an anti-gravity device to work if, in supplying more than 100% efficiency, there was a greater increase in entropy somewhere else in the Universe.
I may well be wrong, and probably still drunk, but it seems plausible to me - of course, I make no suggestion as to how this could happen :)
 
Hmm, I don't follow you. If you want to make an anti-G device you don't have to worry about entropy. It wouldn't be worse that other machines in that way. Sucking in energy and transforming it into work, but still increasing overall entropy. All you'd have to worry about was how you could defy gravity.

But try and have a look at Hawking Radiation. It combines entropy with ZPE, and seems to me to me to show we are really onto something with thermodynamics.
 
How many times have scientists said this is not possible, only to have to eat their words?
 
Hmm, this thread doesn't seem to have generated much interest (about 2% but worthy of further study...)
Anyone out there know about the reliability of this Russian bloke? The Beeb seemed to be out to sensationalise this story, speculating that Boeing know something about this research the rest of us don't. Also a nice reference to the anti-gravity paint idea in early literature....
Shades of the "BT are out to find the soul" story some time ago.
And what are BAe up to? Not sure I'd be the first aboard a British-built anti-grav machine.
 
This may be related, I'm not sure so I would appreciate some help on this. When my radio switched itself on this morning, the good folks on Radio 5 were discussing some amazing new development which could possibly result in travel times to Australia (from Britain) reduced to 2 hours.

Unfortunatly I was only just waking up and so all I caught was the bit about flying to Aus' in 2 hours.

Is this the same story, something different or was I dreaming?
 
It's OK I found it, I wasn't dreaming so I'll start a new thread as opposed to hyjacking this one.
 
Dark Detective said:
Hmm, this thread doesn't seem to have generated much interest (about 2% but worthy of further study...)
Anyone out there know about the reliability of this Russian bloke?

I was a bit skeptical about this guy. He appears to someone who claims much but reveals little.

The New Scientist article was less than convincing. The word "evasive" could have been invented to describe Podolenkov (sp?). Having had what appears to be ample opportunity to display his experiment, he has found reason after reason not to.

His gravity pulse generator also sounds somewhat suspicious. When he says that the reason that no one can see the generator is that it requires extreme voltages/currents and that the generator for these is inside a restricted area of the research site, it must surely be possible to test his claim that it can knock over a book over 1 km away. All you have to do is watch the book?
 
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Quantum Cavorite has interesting info on gravity research, and lots of links.

BTW, I have an antigravity device here in this room. I call it a table, and without using any energy it has successfully prevented my computer sinking to the centre of the Earth for several years! :D
 
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unicycle said:
I do remember that the problem with it was that negating gravity in even a small way allows perpetual motion and unlimited energy thereby.

The way to do it is to have a conveyor belt with with masses attached to it. Wrap the belt around two axles, one above the other. (Like a normal conveyor belt, but vertical.) If the masses are distributed uniformly along the length of the belt, then the belt is in equilibrium and won't spontaneously start turning.

Now comes the tricky bit. Take your gravity shielding material an plonk (technical term) it one side of the belts, so it is shielding the masses on one side of the belt. As these masses no longer experience the force of gravity, while the masses on the otherside do, then the belt is no longer in balance and the masses on one side fall. (In turn pulling the masses on the other side up.) When a mass reaches the bottom and passes over the "shield, it becomes weightless, while its opposite number now becomes heavy, hence the process continues. Note that this is a genuine "over-unity" engine, as it will continuously produce extractable energy, with no external energy input.

This kind of reasoning would thus tend to preclude a classical "gravity shield." (Or, if you are happy with the idea of "over-unity" generators, then this would be one way to build one. ;) )

This argument would not, however, rule out the possibility of negative gravitational mass. This type of mass would be repelled by normal mass. (If it existed, "like" masses would attract, which is the opposite that is seen with electrostatic charge.) The beauty of this is that the classical field equations that govern gravitational forces would still be "conservative", i.e. energy is conserved and hence they wouldn't lead to the same kind of horrors as the "gravity shield" case. What would be interesting is what would happen to General Relativity, where current formulations assume that gravitational mass and inertial mass are one and the same. :)
 
New Scientist article suggests gravity can be affected by magnetic fields and temperature, via 'hidden dimensions'.

Or not. Other people doubtful.



(NB: there are other Antigrav threads - I'll merge them later, unless another Mod beats me to it!)
 
I just read the Boeing article, and it struck me how similar (ie Identical) this experiment is to one performed in the 40's and 50's by a little known American Inventor, Thomas Townsend Brown. He too charged ceramic disks with millions of volts and noted a slight (0.5/0.75%) reduction in the mass of the crafts, leading to the objects lifting from the floor

Apocrypha abounds, but it is reported that he built larger versions of the disks (10-15' across) and these again lifted and flew, tethered by cables, around an aircraft hangar (or wherever the experiment was held). Unsuprisingly the USAF said thanks very much and proceeded to slap a security blackout on the whole thing, never to be heard of since.

Interestingly enough, a book that i have read about the Philadelphia experiment mentions that TT Brown was also the original owner and founder of Rand International (now Rand industries).

On a final tip, there is some debate over whether the B2 stealth bomber uses TT Brown's electrical-gravity overcoming thing by charging the leading edge of the craft's wing with millions of volts of electricity. Apparently this will create lift. These are the same people that also claim the B2 has an Ununpentium fueled propulsion system that (owing to the odd gravity wave nature of ununpentium's atomic structure) allows this mutil-billion dollar bird of destruction to fly vast distances without having to re-fuel in any covention sense.

Who the hell knows. TT brown is the kiddie tho, Russians - Pah :D

Just read thru this reply before posting, and as you can tell I ain't no physicist. Hope you all gest the jist tho'
 
Re Boeing article

How feasible would it be to feed the massive power drain of millions of volts that would be required, especially for long distance flights?

Also, there may well be health risks for passengers associated with exposure to high voltages over sustained periods.

Shielding will undoudtedly be provided as protection from the possible ill effects of EMF radiation on passengers, but you have to take into account that there is currenly much controversy regarding the effect EMFs have on human health.
 
Bump! Two anti-grav threads merged here.

Another, rather sceptical look at Podkletnov's Spinning Disc.

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Combine that with Podkletnov's cagey behavior and it's enough to make even sci-fi geeks like me lose hope. But like the core of any good conspiracy, antigravity research has the ring of plausibility.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Just thought I would pop this excerpt from Popular Mechanics in which gives a fairly understandable explanation? of this electrogravitic effect using Spinning superconducters ..Sort of like magnetism really..

"Taming Gravity", Popular Mechanics, written by Jim Wilson


AC Gravity

"The first thing to understand about Li's device is that it is neither an antigravity machine nor a gravitational shield," says Jonathan Campbell, a scientist at the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center who has worked with Li. "It does not modify gravity, rather it produces a gravity-like field that may be either attractive or repulsive." Li describes her device as a method of generating a never-before-seen force field that acts on matter in a way that is similar to gravity. Since it may be either repulsive or attractive she calls it "AC gravity." "It adds to, or counteracts, or re-directs gravity," explains Larry Smalley, the former chairman of the University of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH) physics department. "Basically, you are adding a couple of vectors to zero it [gravity] out or enhance it."

Although he didn't call it AC gravity, Einstein's theory of relativity predicts this effect. All objects produce gravito-magnetic energy, the amount of force proportional to its mass and acceleration. Li says that the main reason this energy has never been detected is that the Earth spins very slowly and the field's strength decreases rapidly as you move away from the center of the planet. The first measurements are expected to be made by NASA's Gravity Probe B experiment, which is planned for launch in 2002.

Beginning with the most basic law of physics--force = mass x acceleration--Li reasoned that it would be possible to perform the same experiment here on Earth, using ions locked in a lattice structure inside a superconductor. When an ion rotates around a magnetic field, the mass goes along for the ride. This, according to Einstein, should produce a gravito-magnetic field.

Unlike the planet, ions have a minuscule mass. But also unlike the Earth, they spin their little hearts out, rotating more than a quadrillion times a second, compared with the planet's once-a-day rotation. Li calculates this movement will compensate for the small mass of the ions.

Li explains that as the ions spin they also create a gravito-electric field perpendicular to their spin axis. In nature, this field is unobserved because the ions are randomly arranged, thus causing their tiny gravito-electric fields to cancel out one another. In a Bose-Einstein condensate, where all ions behave as one, something very different occurs.

Li says that if the ions in an HTSD are aligned by a magnetic field, the gravito-electric fields they create should also align. Build a large enough disc and the cumulative field should be measurable. Build a larger disc and the force field above it should be controllable. "It's a gravity-like force you can point in any direction," says Campbell. "It could be used in space to protect the international space station against impacts by small meteoroids and orbital debris."


PS Dr Ning Li is alive and well and working near Los Alamos. or was recently.
 
Feeling Antigravity's Pull

Can NASA stop the apple from falling on Newton's head?

By Adam Rogers
Posted Friday, Oct. 18, 2002, at 8:30 AM PT



"Don't call it antigravity research," Ron Koczor pleads. He's a physicist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., and he's talking about a project he's been working on for almost a decade. "Call it 'gravity modification.' 'Gravity anomalies.' Anything but antigravity. That's a red flag."

When people find out that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has researchers working on sci-fi stuff like antigravity—or rather, "gravity modification"—the red flags do indeed start waving. Reputable scientists like Koczor earn polite disdain from colleagues (or worse, from funders of research). But truth's truth: NASA has been studying the manipulation of gravity for at least 10 years, as have nongovernment researchers.

NASA began its work after a Russian physicist named Evgeny Podkletnov published an article in the peer-reviewed journal Physica C in 1992. Podkletnov claimed that a device built around a superconductor and a magnet could shield an object from gravity. The trick, he said, was to make a superconducting disc about a foot in diameter, chill it, levitate it over magnets—a nifty property of superconductors is that they repel magnetic fields—and set it revolving like a compact disc. Podkletnov said an object placed above that contraption lost 0.3 percent of its weight. The object itself didn't change. Rather, gravity's effect on it lessened.

If that effect could be harnessed and strengthened, the aerospace industry would be upended. Vessels bound for space wouldn't have to ride atop massive, barely controlled explosions. All the energy human beings expend moving things around, from cargo to cars, could be reduced or eliminated. And post-Einsteinian physics would have to be rewritten to explain what the hell was going on. Podkletnov called the effect "gravitational force shielding," and even in the absence of a good theory to explain the phenomenon, other researchers took notice. "Because his experiment and results were published in a peer-reviewed, scientific journal, that gave it a level of credibility," Koczor says.

After Podkletnov published his article, it took NASA until 1999 to figure out how to make a large, thin superconducting disc. Ceramic high-temperature superconductors are brittle as cheap china, and the discs kept shattering. Once they solved that problem, NASA paid Columbus, Ohio-based SCI Engineered Materials 0,000 to build the entire apparatus. But Podkletnov had called for a disc with two layers, one superconducting and one not, and SCI didn't solve that engineering challenge until last year. Then they hit another roadblock. The disc wouldn't spin. SCI engineers stuck a rotor through the disc's center to turn it mechanically, but Podkletnov specified 5,000 revolutions per minute. SCI's device barely pulls 30 rpm.

Why not just ask Podkletnov how to build the thing? SCI brought him over to consult a couple of years ago, to little avail. "His excuse basically was that he was a ceramics physicist, not an electrical or mechanical engineer, and other people built the device for him," Koczor says. "Draw your own conclusions. All I know is, if I were a principal investigator on something like this, I would know the size and thread-depth of every screw in the damn thing. But you know, the Europeans and the Russians, they're different. They're much more, 'this is your job and this is my job.' So it's plausible that he didn't know the details." It might not matter. SCI's contract is ending, and Koczor's budget to explore "way-out physics" is spent. He hasn't got the money to actually test the device even if it did meet Podkletnov's specs.

But researchers outside NASA are working on the problem, too. This summer Nick Cook, a writer for Jane's Defence Weekly, reported that aerospace giant Boeing was pursuing antigravity research. Boeing denied it. "We are aware of Podkletnov's work on 'anti-gravity' devices and would be interested in seeing further development work being done," said a company statement. "However, Boeing is not funding any activities in this area at this time." Note Boeing's use of the Clintonian present tense. They never contacted Jane's to ask for a correction, Cook says. Meanwhile, British aerospace company BAE Systems says it's keeping an eye on the research, and that it had once funded its own antigravity project, Greenglow.

Unfortunately, Cook strains his own credibility somewhat. A couple of weeks after his Jane's piece appeared, Cook's book on antigravity research, The Hunt for Zero Point, came out. In it, he claims that the Nazis built an antigravity device during World War II. Its absence from present-day science, Cook says, implies a vast "black" world of secret antigravity aircraft that might explain the UFOs people see over Area 51. He's a careful investigative reporter, but once you start talking about UFOs and Nazi antigravity you're not far from hidden tunnels under the White House full of lizard-men disguised as Freemasons.

Even without Nazis, there are plenty of reasons to doubt Podkletnov. My e-mails to the account listed on his recent articles (not peer-reviewed) went unanswered. Even more problematic, I can't find the institution he lists as his affiliation in Moscow. "Eugene always expressed his worries that others could copy his work, although as far as I know he never applied for a patent," Giovanni Modanese, a collaborator of Podkletnov's at the University of Bolzano in Italy, wrote in an e-mail (using a Western version of Podkletnov's first name). "Nonetheless, at the scientific level if one wants a confirmation by others and a successful replication, one must give all the necessary elements." Well, yeah. Modanese says that the current version of the device, now called an "impulse gravity generator," is simpler and could be built "by a big-science team of people expert in superconductivity." A Boeing spokesperson didn't respond to follow-up questions. So, either there's nothing going on here, or it's an X-File.

And the science? Ten years is a long time to go without replication. Combine that with Podkletnov's cagey behavior and it's enough to make even sci-fi geeks like me lose hope. But like the core of any good conspiracy, antigravity research has the ring of plausibility. One of the outstanding problems in physics and cosmology today involves the existence of so-called dark matter and dark energy. They're by far the main constituents of matter in the universe, and nobody knows what they're made of—researchers have only inferred their existence from gravitational effects. Coming up with a new theory of how gravity works might explain that, though it'd be a scientific revolution on a par with relativity. "Changing gravity is in the cards," says Paul Schechter, an astronomer at MIT. "But so far no one's been able to do better than Einstein." Still, Einstein worked in a lowly patent office. Ron Koczor works for NASA.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2072733/
 
This one dies a while back - NASA could not reproduce the results and the funding was cut. Ron Koczor seemed glad to be rid of it.

Podkletnov remains without credibility, but feel free to make up conspiracy theories if you like...
 
How to float like a stone

David Adam, science correspondent
Wednesday May 11, 2005
The Guardian

What goes up no longer has to come down. British scientists have developed an antigravity machine that can float heavy stones, coins and lumps of metal in mid-air. Based around a powerful magnet, the device levitates objects in a similar way to how a maglev train runs above its tracks.

Peter King, a physics professor at Nottingham University, said: "We can take an object and float it in mid-air because the magnetic forces on the object are enough to balance gravity."

The device exploits diamagnetism. Place non-magnetic objects inside a strong enough magnetic field and they are forced to act like weak magnets themselves. Generate a field that is stronger below and weaker above, and the resulting upward magnetic force cancels out gravity.

Scientists have used diamagnetism to make wood, strawberries and, famously, a living frog fly. "That force is strong enough to float things with a density similar to water, but not things with the density of rocks," Prof King said. To make their machine more powerful, the team added an oxygen and nitrogen mixture, a paramagnetic fluid. Inside the magnet, the mixture helps objects to float.

The researchers, who announce their results today in the New Journal of Physics, are working with Rio Tinto to develop the technique to sort precious stones from soil. The US space agency Nasa is also interested as it offers a cheaper way for zero gravity research.

www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1481009,00.html

Back to the saucers

Thursday May 12, 2005
The Guardian

In February 2004, a team of Russian and American physicists discovered two new elements, glimpsed for split seconds at the Joint Institute of Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.

Led by Russian Yuri Oganessian, the physicists made their announcement in the journal Physical Review C. While their findings have yet to be repeated, they are considered highly reliable. The two new "superheavy" elements, 113 and 115, provisionally named ununtrium and ununpentium, excite physicists who think they are generated by exploding stars, and could provide clues to the origins of the universe.

But this was not the first time Element 115 had made the headlines. According to another group of perhaps less reputable researchers, it might be the key that ultimately brings the stars to us.

In 1989, a Las Vegas TV station broadcast an interview with self-professed scientist Bob Lazar. He claimed to have worked at a top secret facility called S-4, just south of Nevada's infamous airbase Area 51, and caused a sensation when he described seeing nine extraterrestrial flying saucers stored at S-4.

Lazar, who claims to have studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory, states that his job at S-4 was to "back-engineer" the reactor of one of the flying discs and find out how it worked. While there, he was briefed on the history of ET interaction with humankind, and watched a short test flight of the single operational craft.

According to Lazar, the saucer flies using "gravity amplifiers" to create "an intense gravitational field" that could "distort space/time", "bringing the destination to the source and allowing you to cross many light years of space in little time". The power to do this is generated in the craft's reactor, which is fuelled by ... Element 115.

Whether or not he's telling the truth, Lazar has stood by his claims and left the UFO scene behind. As well as running a lab equipment repair company, he is currently developing a hydrogen fuel generator for home use and is involved in an ambitious plan to terraform a Martian environment in an underground nuclear missile silo.

And, if Element 115's existence is confirmed, perhaps one day it will be called lazarium.

Mark Pilkington

www.guardian.co.uk/life/farout/story/0, ... 42,00.html

See also:

area 51 conspiracy link to ununpentium:
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl ... id=8151919

Have Scientists Just Proven Bob Lazar Right on Alien Antigravity Systems?

Part 1:
www.raidersnewsupdate.com/lazar.htm

Part 2:
www.raidersnewsupdate.com/lazar2.htm

---------------
On element 115 see:
www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13190
 
Gawd, what an apalling amount of ignorance and wilful misintepreation there is out there. Magnetic levitation is nothing like antigravity, and the real element 115 clearly has nothing to do with Bob Lazar's tall tale...
..but hey. it sells newspapers...
 
More:

George Knapp, Investigative Reporter

Bob Lazar: The Man Behind Element 115

May 22, 2005, 12:31 AM

How does this sound -- a conversion kit that would allow your car to run on clean, plentiful hydrogen? It's in the works in New Mexico, and the name of the guy who is building it may ring a bell. He's Bob Lazar, and 16 years ago he told the I-Team's George Knapp about Area 51 and said scientists there were studying UFOs. He dropped out of sight, but George caught up with him.

As a teenager, Bob Lazar built a jet-powered bicycle, then a jet Honda, then a jet dragster. These day's he's focused on a different propulsion system. Bob Lazar, former government scientist, said, "Every vehicle we have here is powered by hydrogen."

At his new home in rural New Mexico, Lazar has been working on a conversion kit that will turn any car into a hydrogen hybrid. His two vehicles have already been converted and can travel up to 450 miles on hydrogen, then switch automatically back to gasoline. Lazar wants to take it a step further.

Lazar said, "Every major car company is working on a hydrogen system, but the only difference is, they want to sell you a new hydrogen car and sell you hydrogen gas at hydrogen gas stations. Basically, we're making a conversion kit you can use in your own car and instead of buying hydrogen from someone else, you make it."

He makes hydrogen using water and a solar powered generator. But again, with a Lazar twist. "It's the only particle accelerator on the block, I guarantee ya."

The small lab behind his home has a 30-foot long particle accelerator he built from scratch. He uses it to produce metal hydrides, which absorb hydrogen gas like a sponge and make it much safer to use as a fuel.

Lazar says, "You can do that with ordinary metal hydrides but we found a way to manipulate the atomic structure to change things. It's worked fantastically."

George Knapp teases, "It almost sounds like you're a real scientist."

Lazar replies, "That's what they tell me."

It's an inside joke based on the ridicule Lazar has faced ever since he went public in 1989 with his claims that he worked on flying saucers in the Nevada desert. The military refused to answer any questions about Lazar or his claims, nor could we verify much of anything about his life.

Lazar told us he previously worked at Los Alamos National Lab. The lab repeatedly denied it, even after we found Lazar's name in the lab phone book. His critics say that since he can't prove he ever earned a college degree, he can't be a real scientist, even if he can build jet engines, hydrogen systems and particle accelerators.

Is there a way to prove any part of his story? Maybe. In 1989, Lazar claimed the ET saucers he worked on could produce their own gravity. This propulsion was made possible by a superheavy substance Lazar called Element 115. What is the problem with this story? Element 115 did not exist in 1989. Now, however, it does.

Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore Lab created a miniscule amount of 115 last year. A profound development, but the material decayed almost instantly. So where did the government get 500 pounds of the stuff, which is what Lazar claimed long ago?

Lazar says, "It has to come from some place where it's natural, like from a super nova."

In other words, it comes from a solar system other than ours. Lazar's critics say the fact that 115 as created in a lab is unstable and fleeting proves Lazar is a liar. Lazar says the first batch was only a starting point and that he will be proven right in the long run.

"I'd like to see them continue to work and produce different isotopes of 115 because they're gonna come up with a handful of different varieties and they're gonna come up with a stable isotope, and that's what we're interested," he countered.

By no means does he dwell on being proven right. He and his wife have left the UFO crowd far behind and could care less, they say. Lazar stands by his original story, but says, "I can't say I would do it again. I would probably keep my mouth shut this time."

George Knapp inquired, "But you must get a twinge about the program."

Lazar said, "Oh sure. I mean, who wouldn't like to go back and see what they're doing now? But on the other hand, I'd rather be here."

Earlier this year, British scientists say they demonstrated an anti-gravity system that appears to be based on the theories revealed years ago by Lazar. Some scientists say it's proof that what Lazar said about Element 115 is true after all.

The I-Team will let you know how it comes out.

Source
 
Oddly enough, I don't think this story improves Lazar's credibility at all.
 
Science article: Podkletnov effect

This afternoon I wasted an hour at the Dutch Royal Library by searching for Fortean science articles in serious scientific magazines. I’ve spread these “pearls” – or maybe “turds” – over several sections of this forum.

Gravity modification experiment using a rotating superconducting disk and radio frequency fields
G. Hathaway *, B. Cleveland, Y. Bao
Physica C 385 (2003) 488–500

The article contains a very precise description of the experimental setup:

[...] In 1992 in an article in Physica C [1], Podkletnov and Nieminen claimed to demonstrate the existence of a gravity-like force from spinning bulk YBCO ceramic superconductors influenced by combined magnetic levitation forces and RF illumination. A small test mass suspended above the superconductor apparently showed a 0.05% weight loss under certain conditions.

A relatively large size (145 mm diameter, 6 mm thick) sintered singlelayer disk with specific grain size distribution of relatively small grains was required to be levitated by Meissner magnetic levitation up to 7 mm above a single ‘‘pancake’’ coil operated at frequencies of 50–106 Hz. In addition, the disk was spun to high speeds using edge-oriented pseudo-rotating magnetic fields provided by a magnetic stator positioned around the periphery of the disk and operated at similar frequencies. The experiment was performed below 60 K in the vapours of liquid helium.

In 1997, Podkletnov published an updated version of the experiment on the Los Alamos Physics web site [2]. This was essentially the same experiment as reported in 1992 and achieved up to 1–2% weight loss in test objects but with the following experimental differences.

A much larger superconducting disk in a ring configuration (27 cm outside diameter, 8 cm inside diameter, 1 cm thick) was used with a small–medium grain size distribution in a bi-layer structure. One layer was superconducting and the other was a normal conductor at the experimental operating temperatures.

The disk was levitated above either three or six individual solenoidal coils and two toroidal coils threaded through the center hole of the disk and operated in a 2-phase mode to drive the disk in rotation. Determination of weight loss (or gain) was by test masses of dimensions similar to those of the superconducting disk itself. [...]

But the authors have been unable to reproduce the results. But - as they admit - their apparatus was flawed as the bearings suffered in the fluid helium and they didn't have enough power to levitate the superconducting disks:

These initial tests have, thus far, proved inconclusive as to the actual existence of the Podkletnov ‘‘effect’’ which may still be indeed present at greater energy levels and higher disk rotation speeds than used herein. However, given that the sensitivity of the weight detection described herein was 50 times better than that that available to Podkletnov [1,2], one would have expected to see a definite weight change. [...]

Finally two references to Podkletnovs original articles:

[1] E. Podkletnov, R. Nieminen, Physica C 203 (1992) 441.
[2] E. Podkletnov, Weak Gravitational Shielding Properties of Composite Bulk YBa2Cu3O7-x Superconductor Below 70 K under an EM Field, MSU-chem-95-cond-mat/9701074 5 February, 1997.

Personally I don't believe in the effect, but the hype it caused is interesting.
 
Well it sort of could be, if a discovery of a new material that produced anti-gravity properties was named correctly then we could one day be travelling with the aid of a Bisto Warp Drive.
That'd be a good ship to be in.
A 'gravy boat' if you like.
Any company that comes out with such a thing is bound to be valuable.
I'd buy stock in such a company, that's for sure.
It would be a good sauce source of income.
 
I wouldn't relish the chance to be the first person to try it though.
I'd jus be happy to wait until it's proven to work, then I'd ketchup.
Cos I doubt if it would work properly straight out of the boxo.
 
Someone really should be investigating the gravitational anomalies associated with tequila. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence, and I've experienced it myself, so I'm surprised I haven't' heard about some research somewhere.
 
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