By Robert Matthews and Ian Sample
Is Anti-Gravity in Your Future?
Image: How the 'anti-gravity' device works
SCIENTISTS in Finland are about to reveal details of the world's
first anti-gravity device. Measuring about 12in across, the device is
said to reduce significantly the weight of anything suspended over it.
The claim - which has been rigorously examined by scientists, and is due
to appear in a physics journal next month - could spark a technological
revolution. By combating gravity, the most ubiquitous force in the
universe, everything from transport to power generation could be
transformed.
The Sunday Telegraph has learned that Nasa, the American space
agency, is taking the claims seriously, and is funding research into how
the anti-gravity effect could be turned into a means of flight. The
researchers at the Tampere University of Technology in Finland, who
discovered the effect, say it could form the heart of a new power
source, in which it is used to drive fluids past electricity-generating
turbines.
Other uses seem limited only by the imagination:
Lifts in buildings could be replaced by devices built into the
ground. People wanting to go up would simply activate the
anti-gravity device - making themselves weightless - and with a
gentle push ascend to the floor they want.
Space-travel would become routine, as all the expense and
danger of rocket technology is geared towards combating the
Earth's gravitation pull.
By using the devices to raise fluids against gravity, and then
conventional gravity to pull them back to earth against
electricity-generating turbines, the devices could also
revolutionise power generation.
According to Dr Eugene Podkletnov, who led the research, the
discovery was accidental. It emerged during routine work on
so-called "superconductivity", the ability of some materials to
lose their electrical resistance at very low temperatures. The
team was carrying out tests on a rapidly spinning disc of
superconducting ceramic suspended in the magnetic field of three
electric coils, all enclosed in a low-temperature vessel called a
cryostat.
"One of my friends came in and he was smoking his pipe," Dr
Podkletnov said. "He put some smoke over the cryostat and we
saw that the smoke was going to the ceiling all the time. It was
amazing - we couldn't explain it."
Tests showed a small drop in the weight of objects placed over
the device, as if it were shielding the object from the effects of
gravity - an effect deemed impossible by most scientists.
"We thought it might be a mistake," Dr Podkletnov said, "but we
have taken every precaution". Yet the bizarre effects persisted.
The team found that even the air pressure vertically above the
device dropped slightly, with the effect detectable directly above
the device on every floor of the laboratory.
In recent years, many so-called "anti-gravity" devices have been
put forward by both amateur and professional scientists, and all
have been scorned by the establishment. What makes this latest
claim different is that it has survived intense scrutiny by sceptical,
independent experts, and has been accepted for publication by the
Journal of Physics-D: Applied Physics, published by Britain's Institute
of Physics.
Even so, most scientists will not feel comfortable with the idea of
anti-gravity until other teams repeat the experiments. Some scientists
suspect the anti-gravity effect is a long-sought side-effect of
Einstein's general theory of relativity, by which spinning objects can
distort gravity. Until now it was thought the effect would be far too
small to measure in the laboratory. However, Dr Ning Li, a senior
research scientist at the University of Alabama, said that the atoms
inside superconductors may magnify the effect enormously. Her research
is funded by Nasa's Marshall Space Flight Centre at Huntsville, Alabama,
and Whitt Brantley, the chief of Advanced Concepts Office there, said:
"We're taking a look at it, because if we don't, we'll never know."
The Finnish team is already expanding its programme, to see if it
can amplify the anti-gravity effect. In its latest experiments, the team
has measured a two per cent drop in the weight of objects suspended over
the device - and double that if one device is suspended over another. If
the team can increase the effect substantially, the commercial
implications are enormous.
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