h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2157975.stm

?

will we all be floating around on anti-gravity disks in a few years, or is this another Cold Fusion like report?

CH

One unverified accidental result without reproducable conditions created by a scientist with sketchy qualifications?

I'd say cold fusion, honestly.

-Eagle1

Gravity is not something that happens to objects, it is part of what they are. You can't shield it. That's according to the current theories, which are extremely good ones. So I wouldn't invest much of my fortune in this guy's discoveries if I were you.

...but if I had a spare superconducting disk I would give it a shot Until later....
BCNU - Crescent

Even if this 2% is true, it does not have to be a reduction in gravity. There is also the possibility that the contraption somehow creates a electromagnetic repulsion. The effect on the weight would be the same.

I doubt the guy's a crank, I don't see what he has to gain from being so. If some scientists can't "reproduce" the guy's results then that doesn't mean it didn't happen.

I'm pretty sure that anti-gravity will one day be possible. Whatever happened to gyroscopes, though?

I think the crucial factor here is how much energy you have to put in. The whole point of Boeing exploring this idea is to save money on jet fuel, but if, like fusion research at its present state, you have to put more energy in than you get out, there's not much point really.

"you have to put more energy in than you get out, there's not much point really"

if the system is workable, then it is still far from perfect. Boeing probably hope that it is the seed from which a great tree will grow. Whatever, I hope the system works. Anti-gravity would be a huge boost.

Back to gyroscopes - I saw a programme about a scientist who demonstrated that a spinning, gyroscopic force could reduce weight on anyone holding it. He demonstrated this to the scientific community and unfortunately said "this may challenge some of Newton's Laws". He has since been ostracised (a group of people who have done their phDs based on the assumption that Newton's Laws are correct are not going to stand for this, scientific or not). Let's hope this guy doesn't say anything similarly "foolish" and proper research might be done into this.

Would that be the late (and in my opinion, great) Eric Laithwaite you're talking about? I saw him do this once on the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures for Children. He had a bicycle wheel on the end of a longish axle, and he set wheel spinning with the aid of an electric drill I think. He then proceeded to swing this object around his head as if it weighed nothing, and stood on a pair of scales I think, to show that he weighed less. This was a long, long time ago (black and white tv sort of long time), and I don't recall too much more than that, but it might have been that he only weighed less when he was swinging the wheel either up or down, which would really work on a plane because it would have to keep going up and down - a bit like the vomit Comet I suppose

Sounds like him. I agree that it would make a pretty bad plane mechanism, but I think he was trying to create the basis for something. As I said, he's now been ostracised for suggesting this might challenge Newton's laws. I was shocked when I found this out because, at the time, I naively assumed the scientific community were only interested in advancement. It didn't occur that anything challenging scientific tradition (and therefore their own qualifications and positions) would be treated like this. I'm a little wiser, and more sceptical, now.

I think you might find this a very interesting read

http://www.alternativescience.com/eric-laithwaite.htm

Very interesting and very sad. The man was obviously a genuine scientist who was persecuted by a conservative establishment only interested in their own positions and scientific absolutism (ironically, contrary to the princiles of science)

Eric Laithwaite was ostracised because the phenomenon he was demonstrating was easily explainable using Newton's Laws and was well known to the scientists. He kept insisting that it was something new and amazing and that people should give him loads of money to research it.

I'm not suggesting that the man was involved in a scam. It was obvious listening to him that he genuinely believed he had discovered something new.

"Eric Laithwaite was ostracised because the phenomenon he was demonstrating was easily explainable using Newton's Laws and was well known to the scientists."

Funny, they didn't say that at the time. They said it was a hoax and ignored him. Where did you obtain this information?

Read the link above (thanks by the way, it was a great read). He later found that it was all explainable within Newton's laws and violated nothing.



Ste

I read the link, and he did eventually discover that. The point is, the scientific establsihment treated him terribly and seemed uninterested in explaining how his device worked to him (if, as they claim, they knew all along). At best this is snobbery, at worst cruelty.

Yeah, it's unfortunate that science is full of egos.

If they knew all along, then why didn't they tell the poor fellow? I think they just did a "la-la-laa, can't hear you" whilst sticking their fingers in their ears. Something you'd expect a creationist to do, not the Royal Institute/Royal Society.

So, the reactionless engine is a reality is it? I'd never heard of it before I read that article. Fascinating stuff

Ste (now awaiting spaceships driven by fancy gyroscopic things)

As far as Evgeny Podkletnov is concerned, he has one thing over and above cold fusion. His results have been published in a peer reviewed scientific journal, Physical Review, I think, whereas cold fusion was announced at a press conference. Podkletnov is *very* secretive about the precise setup required for his experiments (unlike the cold fusion people, who were quite open about the fairly cheap kit you needed - which meant that failures to replicate started happening within hours...), which to an extent is understandable if he is in fact sitting on what he thinks he's sitting on...

Oh, and Gnomon - the fundamental forces (strong and weak nuclear forces, gravity and such) are modelled as exchanges of particles - intermediate guage bosons and the like.

The theory is that gravity is an interaction mediated by something called a graviton - although nobody has ever detected a graviton. But the theories say it's there, and say it's hard to detect... It's not beyond the bounds of possibility that Podkletnov's equipment is either blocking or generating gravitons.

It's interesting to compare the diagram of Podkletnov's equipment with the diagram and description on page 144 of the Star Trek:Next Generation Technical Manual. There you can see the gravity generators as used on the Enterprise. These are described thus:

"Power... is channeled into a hollow chamber... a sealed cylinder 50cm in diameter by 25 cm high. Suspended in the centre of the cylinder, in pressurised chrylon gas, is a superconducting stator... The stator, once set to a rotational rate above 125,540rpm, generates a graviton field..."

Leaving aside that they probably meant to say "rotor" rather than "stator", this is either
(a) an eerily similar description to Podkletnov's equipment, considering that the book was published in 1991, OR
(b) evidence Podkletnov is a Trekker having a particularly successful giggle.

H.