Anti-gravity

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Artistic depiction of a fictional anti-gravity vehicle BOXXX-3W.jpg
Artistic depiction of a fictional anti-gravity vehicle

Anti-gravity is the concept of a force that would exactly oppose the force of gravity. Under the laws of general relativity, anti-gravity is impossible except under contrived circumstances.

Contents

Anti-gravity does not refer to either the lack of weight under gravity experienced in free fall or orbit, or to balancing the force of gravity with some other force, such as electromagnetism, aerodynamic lift, or ion-propelled "lifters", which fly in the air by moving air with electromagnetic fields. [1] [2]

Anti-gravity is a recurring concept in science fiction.

Theoretical probability

Under the laws of general relativity, anti-gravity is impossible except under contrived circumstances. [3] [4] [5] Under that theory, and particle physics, gravity is mass-energy, a quantity believed to always be positive. It is always attractive and never repulsive. [6]

Generally attempts have been tried to "quantize gravity" by positing a particle, the graviton, that carried gravity in the same way that photons (light) carry electromagnetism. Simple attempts along this direction all failed, however, leading to more complex examples that attempted to account for these problems. Two of these, supersymmetry and the relativity related supergravity, both required the existence of an extremely weak "fifth force" carried by a graviphoton, which coupled together several "loose ends" in quantum field theory, in an organized manner. As a side effect, both theories also all but required that antimatter be affected by this fifth force in a way similar to anti-gravity, dictating repulsion away from mass. Several experiments were carried out in the 1990s to measure this effect, but none yielded positive results. [7] [ improper synthesis? ]

During the close of the twentieth century NASA provided funding for the Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Program (BPP) from 1996 through 2002. This program studied a number of "far out" designs for space propulsion that were not receiving funding through normal university or commercial channels. Anti-gravity-like concepts were listed under "approaches categorized as non-viable" since the study found found no evidence of a anti-gravity-like forces. [8]

In 2013 CERN looked for an antigravity effect in an experiment designed to study the energy levels within antihydrogen. The antigravity measurement was just an "interesting sideshow" and was inconclusive. [9]

Studies, empirical claims and commercial efforts

There have been a number of studies, attempts to build anti-gravity devices, and a small number of reports of anti-gravity-like effects in popular and scientific literature. None of the examples that follow are accepted as reproducible examples of anti-gravity.

Thomas Townsend Brown's gravitator

In 1921, while still in high school, Thomas Townsend Brown found that a high-voltage Coolidge tube seemed to change mass depending on its orientation on a balance scale. Through the 1920s Brown developed this into devices that combined high voltages with materials with high dielectric constants (essentially large capacitors); he called such a device a "gravitator". Brown made the claim to observers and in the media that his experiments were showing anti-gravity effects. Brown would continue his work and produced a series of high-voltage devices in the following years in attempts to sell his ideas to aircraft companies and the military. He coined the names Biefeld–Brown effect and electrogravitics in conjunction with his devices. Brown tested his asymmetrical capacitor devices in a vacuum, supposedly showing it was not a more down-to-earth electrohydrodynamic effect generated by high voltage ion flow in air.

Electrogravitics is a popular topic in ufology, anti-gravity, free energy, with government conspiracy theorists and related websites, in books and publications with claims that the technology became highly classified in the early 1960s and that it is used to power UFOs and the B-2 bomber. [10] There is also research and videos on the internet purported to show lifter-style capacitor devices working in a vacuum, therefore not receiving propulsion from ion drift or ion wind being generated in air. [10] [11]

Follow-up studies on Brown's work and other claims have been conducted by R. L. Talley in a 1990 US Air Force study, NASA scientist Jonathan Campbell in a 2003 experiment, [10] and Martin Tajmar in a 2004 paper. [12] [13] Talley attempted to measure the effect in high vacuum chamber with up to 19kV voltage differences but reported that no force was generated above the detection limit of 2 x 10-9 N. [14] Tajmar and colleagues made a comprehensive search but found no effects in vacuum with steady electric fields. [15] The conclusion from these experiments was that the effect observed by Brown was "ion wind"; no experiments found evidence that thrust could be observed in a vacuum. [16]

Gravity Research Foundation

A monument at Babson College dedicated to Roger Babson for research into anti-gravity and partial gravity insulators New boston babson monument.JPG
A monument at Babson College dedicated to Roger Babson for research into anti-gravity and partial gravity insulators

In 1948 businessman Roger Babson (founder of Babson College) formed the Gravity Research Foundation to study ways to reduce the effects of gravity. [17] Their efforts were initially somewhat "crankish", but they held occasional conferences that drew such people as Clarence Birdseye, known for his frozen-food products, and helicopter pioneer Igor Sikorsky.[ citation needed ] Over time the Foundation turned its attention away from trying to control gravity, to simply better understanding it. The Foundation nearly disappeared after Babson's death in 1967. However, it continues to run an essay award, offering prizes of up to $4,000. As of 2017, it is still administered out of Wellesley, Massachusetts, by George Rideout Jr., son of the foundation's original director. [18] Winners include California astrophysicist George F. Smoot (1993), who later won the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics, and Gerard 't Hooft (2015) who previously won the 1999 Nobel Prize in Physics. [19]

Gyroscopic devices

Gyroscopes produce a force when twisted that operates "out of plane" and can appear to lift themselves against gravity. Although this force is well understood to be illusory, even under Newtonian models, it has nevertheless generated numerous claims of anti-gravity devices and any number of patented devices. None of these devices has ever been demonstrated to work under controlled conditions, and they have often become the subject of conspiracy theories as a result.

Henry Wallace's 1968 "kinemassic field" generator which he claimed would created a "gravitomagnetic" field H W Wallace force field figure 4.png
Henry Wallace's 1968 "kinemassic field" generator which he claimed would created a "gravitomagnetic" field

Another "rotating device" example is shown in a series of patents granted to Henry Wallace between 1968 and 1974. His devices consist of rapidly spinning disks of brass, a material made up largely of elements with a total half-integer nuclear spin. He claimed that by rapidly rotating a disk of such material, the nuclear spin became aligned, and as a result created a "gravitomagnetic" field in a fashion similar to the magnetic field created by the Barnett effect. [20] [21] [22] No independent testing or public demonstration of these devices is known.[ non-primary source needed ]

In 1989, it was reported that a weight decreases along the axis of a right spinning gyroscope. [23] A test of this claim a year later yielded null results. [24] A recommendation was made to conduct further tests at a 1999 AIP conference. [25]

Gravitoelectric coupling

In 1992, the Russian researcher Eugene Podkletnov claimed to have discovered, while experimenting with superconductors, that a fast rotating superconductor reduces the gravitational effect. [26] Many studies have attempted to reproduce Podkletnov's experiment, always to negative results. [27] [28] [29] [30]

Douglas Torr, of the University of Alabama in Huntsville proposed how a time-dependent magnetic field could cause the spins of the lattice ions in a superconductor to generate detectable gravitomagnetic and gravitoelectric fields in a series of papers published between 1991 and 1993. [31] [32] [33] In 1999, a Miss Li appeared in Popular Mechanics , claiming to have constructed a working prototype to generate what she described as "AC Gravity." No further evidence of this prototype has been offered. [34] [35]

Douglas Torr and Timir Datta were involved in the development of a "gravity generator" at the University of South Carolina. [36] According to a leaked document from the Office of Technology Transfer at the University of South Carolina and confirmed to Wired reporter Charles Platt in 1998, the device would create a "force beam" in any desired direction and the university planned to patent and license this device. No further information about this university research project or the "Gravity Generator" device was ever made public. [37]

Göde Award

The Institute for Gravity Research of the Göde Scientific Foundation has tried to reproduce many of the different experiments which claim any "anti-gravity" effects. All attempts by this group to observe an anti-gravity effect by reproducing past experiments have been unsuccessful thus far. The foundation has offered a reward of one million euros for a reproducible anti-gravity experiment. [38]

In fiction

The existence of anti-gravity is a common theme in science fiction. [39] The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction lists Francis Godwin's posthumously-published 1638 novel The Man in the Moone , where a "semi-magical" stone has the power to make gravity stronger or weaker, as the earliest variation of the theme. [39] The first story to use anti-gravity for the purpose of space travel, as well as the first to treat the subject from a scientific rather than supernatural angle, was George Tucker's 1827 novel A Voyage to the Moon . [39] [40] [41]

Apergy

Apergy is a term for a fictitious form of anti-gravitational energy first used by Percy Greg in his 1880 sword and planet novel Across the Zodiac . [42] The term was later adopted by other fiction authors such as John Jacob Astor IV in his 1894 science fiction novel A Journey in Other Worlds , and it also appeared outside of explicit fiction writing. [39] [42]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Thompson, Clive (August 2003). "The Antigravity Underground". Wired . Archived from the original on 18 August 2010. Retrieved 23 July 2010.
  2. ↑ "On the Verge of Antigravity". About.com. Archived from the original on 23 February 2017. Retrieved 23 July 2010.
  3. ↑ Peskin, M and Schroeder, D.; An Introduction to Quantum Field Theory (Westview Press, 1995) ISBN   0-201-50397-2
  4. ↑ Wald, Robert M. (1984). General Relativity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN   978-0-226-87033-5.
  5. ↑ Polchinski, Joseph (1998). String Theory, Cambridge University Press. A modern textbook
  6. ↑ Nieto, Michael Martin; Goldman, T. (1 July 1991). "The arguments against "antigravity" and the gravitational acceleration of antimatter". Physics Reports. 205 (5): 221–281. Bibcode:1991PhR...205..221N. doi:10.1016/0370-1573(91)90138-C. ISSN   0370-1573.
  7. ↑ Supergravity and the Unification of the Laws of Physics, by Daniel Z. Freedman and Peter van Nieuwenhuizen, Scientific American, February 1978
  8. ↑ Millis, Mark G. (1 December 2005). "Assessing Potential Propulsion Breakthroughs" (PDF). Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. 1065: 441–461. Bibcode:2005NYASA1065..441M. doi:10.1196/annals.1370.023. hdl: 2060/20060000022 . PMID   16510425. S2CID   41358855 . Retrieved 8 February 2018.
  9. ↑ Jason Palmer, Antigravity gets first test at Cern's Alpha experiment, bbc.co.uk, 30 April 2013
  10. 1 2 3 Thompson, Clive (August 2003). "The Antigravity Underground". Wired Magazine.
  11. ↑ Thomas Valone, Electrogravitics II: Validating Reports on a New Propulsion Methodology, Integrity Research Institute, page 52-58
  12. ↑ Tajmar, M. (2004). "Biefeld-Brown Effect: Misinterpretation of Corona Wind Phenomena". AIAA Journal. 42 (2): 315–318. Bibcode:2004AIAAJ..42..315T. doi:10.2514/1.9095.
  13. ↑ Tajmar, M.; Kößling, M.; Neunzig, O. (21 August 2024). "In-depth experimental search for a coupling between gravity and electromagnetism with steady fields". Scientific Reports. 14 (1) 19427. arXiv: 2402.15640 . Bibcode:2024NatSR..1419427T. doi:10.1038/s41598-024-70286-w. ISSN   2045-2322. PMC   11339412 . PMID   39169102.
  14. ↑ Talley, Robert L. (7 July 1990). Twenty first century propulsion concept (Report). Vol. F06-9-1, PL/EDWARDS-TR-91-3009. Defense Technical Information Center. Retrieved 17 October 2025.
  15. ↑ Tajmar, M.; Kößling, M.; Neunzig, O. (21 August 2024). "In-depth experimental search for a coupling between gravity and electromagnetism with steady fields". Scientific Reports. 14 (1): 19427. arXiv: 2402.15640 . Bibcode:2024NatSR..1419427T. doi:10.1038/s41598-024-70286-w. ISSN   2045-2322. PMC   11339412 . PMID   39169102.
  16. ↑ Millis, M.G. (2004). Prospects for breakthrough propulsion from physics. Proceedings. 2004 NASA/DoD Conference on Evolvable Hardware, 2004., Seattle, WA, USA, 2004. IEEE. pp. 325–333. doi:10.1109/EH.2004.1310847. ISBN   978-0-7695-2145-9.
  17. ↑ Mooallem, J. (October 2007). "A curious attraction". Harper's Magazine. Vol. 315, no. 1889. pp. 84–91.
  18. ↑ List of winners Archived 28 December 2012 at the Wayback Machine
  19. ↑ "The Nobel Prize in Physics 1999".
  20. ↑ U.S. patent 3,626,606
  21. ↑ U.S. patent 3,626,605
  22. ↑ U.S. patent 3,823,570
  23. ↑ Hayasaka, H. & Takeuchi, S. (1989). "Anomalous weight reduction on a gyroscope's right rotations around the vertical axis on the Earth". Physical Review Letters . 63 (25): 2701–2704. Bibcode:1989PhRvL..63.2701H. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.63.2701. PMID   10040968.
  24. ↑ Nitschke, J. M. & Wilmath, P. A. (1990). "Null result for the weight change of a spinning gyroscope". Physical Review Letters . 64 (18): 2115–2116. Bibcode:1990PhRvL..64.2115N. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.64.2115. PMID   10041587.
  25. ↑ Iwanaga, N. (1999). "Reviews of some field propulsion methods from the general relativistic standpoint". AIP Conference Proceedings. Vol. 458. pp. 1015–1059. doi:10.1063/1.57497.
  26. ↑ Podkletnov, E; Nieminen, R (10 December 1992). "A possibility of gravitational force shielding by bulk YBa2Cu3O7−x superconductor". Physica C . 203 (3–4): 441–444. Bibcode:1992PhyC..203..441P. doi:10.1016/0921-4534(92)90055-H.
  27. ↑ N. Li; D. Noever; T. Robertson; R. Koczor; et al. (August 1997). "Static Test for a Gravitational Force Coupled to Type II YBCO Superconductors". Physica C . 281 (2–3): 260–267. Bibcode:1997PhyC..281..260L. doi:10.1016/S0921-4534(97)01462-7.
  28. ↑ Woods, C.; Helme, J.; Cooke, S.; Caldwell, C. (2001). "Gravity modification by high-temperature superconductors". 37th Joint Propulsion Conference and Exhibit. doi:10.2514/6.2001-3363.
  29. ↑ Hathaway, G.; Cleveland, B.; Bao, Y. (2003). "Gravity modification experiment using a rotating superconducting disk and radio frequency fields". Physica C: Superconductivity. 385 (4): 488–500. Bibcode:2003PhyC..385..488H. doi:10.1016/S0921-4534(02)02284-0.
  30. ↑ Tajmar, M.; De Matos, C.J. (2003). "Gravitomagnetic field of a rotating superconductor and of a rotating superfluid". Physica C: Superconductivity. 385 (4): 551–554. arXiv: gr-qc/0203033 . Bibcode:2003PhyC..385..551T. doi:10.1016/S0921-4534(02)02305-5.
  31. ↑ Li, Ning; Torr, DG (1 September 1992). "Gravitational effects on the magnetic attenuation of superconductors". Physical Review. B46 (9): 5489–5495. Bibcode:1992PhRvB..46.5489L. doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.46.5489. PMID   10004334.
  32. ↑ Li, Ning; Torr, DG (15 January 1991). "Effects of a gravitomagnetic field on pure superconductors". Physical Review. D43 (2): 457–459. Bibcode:1991PhRvD..43..457L. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.43.457. PMID   10013404.
  33. ↑ Li, Ning; Torr, DG (August 1993). "Gravitoelectric-electric coupling via superconductivity". Foundations of Physics Letters. 6 (4): 371–383. Bibcode:1993FoPhL...6..371T. doi:10.1007/BF00665654. S2CID   122075917.
  34. ↑ Wilson, Jim (1 October 2000). "Taming Gravity". Popular Mechanics. Archived from the original on 5 November 2012. Retrieved 5 January 2014.
  35. ↑ Cain, Jeanette. "Gravity Conquered?". light-science.com. Archived from the original on 6 July 2013. Retrieved 5 January 2014.
  36. ↑ "Patent and Copyright Committee List of Disclosures Reviewed Between July 1996 and June 1997 - USC ID". Archived from the original on 2 May 2014. Retrieved 2 May 2014.
  37. ↑ Platt, Charles (1 March 1998). "Breaking the Law of Gravity". Wired. Retrieved 10 May 2025.
  38. ↑ "The Göde award - One Million Euro to overcome gravity". Institute of Gravity Research. Archived from the original on 28 April 2015. Retrieved 2 January 2014.
  39. 1 2 3 4 Sudbery, Tony; Langford, David; Nicholls, Peter (2020). "Antigravity". In Clute, John; Langford, David; Sleight, Graham (eds.). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (4th ed.). Retrieved 20 December 2024.
  40. ↑ Bailey, James Osler (1972) [1947]. "Chapter Three: Down Alph the Sacred River: Scientific Fiction, 1817–1870—C. The Wonderful Journey—3. To Other Planets". Pilgrims Through Space and Time: Trends and Patterns in Scientific and Utopian Fiction. Greenwood Press. p. 45. ISBN   978-0-8371-6323-9.
  41. ↑ Roberts, Adam (2016). "SF 1850–1900: Mobility and Mobilisation". The History of Science Fiction. Palgrave Histories of Literature (2nd ed.). Palgrave Macmillan. p. 156. doi:10.1057/978-1-137-56957-8_7. ISBN   978-1-137-56957-8. OCLC   956382503.
  42. 1 2 Langford, David (2017). "Apergy". In Clute, John; Langford, David; Sleight, Graham (eds.). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (4th ed.). Retrieved 20 December 2024.

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