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First Ever Anti Gravity device???
Just been flicking through New Scientist (12th January issue) and there's a fascinating article about a Russian scientist, Evgeny Podkletnov, who's claimed to have build the worlds first operational anti-gravity device. Its been so controversail, according to the article that he was sacked form his job at Tampere University. Nasa have given him $600,000 to build a replica of his device....
Here are the basics:
make a superconductor disc 145 millimetres in diameter and 6 millimetres thick, according to a special recipe that Podkletnov did not make public. Cool the disc to below -233 c, then levitate it using a magnetic field. Finally apply an electric current alternating at around 100 kilohertz to coils surrounding the disc. The current makes the disc rotate in the constantly changing magnetic field, something like an electric motor. But Podkletnov claimed that when the disc was spinning at more than 5000 revolutions per minute, objects placed above it lost around 1% of their weight. Increasing the speed reduced their weight still further, claiming up to 2% in some cases. Podkletnov concluded that his apparatus somehow reduced the strength of the Earth's pull on any object placed above it and called it a gravity shielding device.
This was back in 1996 according to the article.
I could write more from the article but I haven't time. It does sound very very interesting. He reckons it would take nothing for space craft to take off into orbit. But I wonder once a ship left the Earths magnetic field, how then would it use the device?? Would the pull of other planets or the sun have an effect??
And I wonder what this device would be like in relation to the gravimetric drive employed by the Minbari....
Interesting. Well Nasa are funding his research and BAE are also researching here in the UK according to the article so some people seem to think there is something to be learned from it!
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'The future is all around us' G'kar
'I have no surviving enemies! None what so ever!' Galen
Visit my B5 site at: [url="http://www.nialb5.com"]B5 site[/url].
Here are the basics:
make a superconductor disc 145 millimetres in diameter and 6 millimetres thick, according to a special recipe that Podkletnov did not make public. Cool the disc to below -233 c, then levitate it using a magnetic field. Finally apply an electric current alternating at around 100 kilohertz to coils surrounding the disc. The current makes the disc rotate in the constantly changing magnetic field, something like an electric motor. But Podkletnov claimed that when the disc was spinning at more than 5000 revolutions per minute, objects placed above it lost around 1% of their weight. Increasing the speed reduced their weight still further, claiming up to 2% in some cases. Podkletnov concluded that his apparatus somehow reduced the strength of the Earth's pull on any object placed above it and called it a gravity shielding device.
This was back in 1996 according to the article.
I could write more from the article but I haven't time. It does sound very very interesting. He reckons it would take nothing for space craft to take off into orbit. But I wonder once a ship left the Earths magnetic field, how then would it use the device?? Would the pull of other planets or the sun have an effect??
And I wonder what this device would be like in relation to the gravimetric drive employed by the Minbari....
Interesting. Well Nasa are funding his research and BAE are also researching here in the UK according to the article so some people seem to think there is something to be learned from it!
------------------
'The future is all around us' G'kar
'I have no surviving enemies! None what so ever!' Galen
Visit my B5 site at: [url="http://www.nialb5.com"]B5 site[/url].
Comments
In my proverbial 'novel' I christened the antigrav launching pad after him after reading about his new toy in Wired magazine a year or two ago. I hope its a self fulfilling prophecy. ( tho I did not use his name precisely )
Getting large ammounts of material into space/orbit cheaply is the human races egg tooth out of this little blue egg we live in at the moment.
I'd be willing to bet that either Euvgeny or a combined vat or brains will work out how to downshift and block gravity.
The most important thing to say about this whole thing is that they are NOT attempting to make a genuine 'repulsor' type anti-gravity device, merely a device which 'turns off gravity'. All the other laws of physics involved still apply, intertia etc.
If this null-gravity pad were to make it to 'commercial size', capable of concelling the mass of say a loaded fourty foot shipping container, you would still need some sort of rocket or turbofan engine attached to achieve orbit.
Its like those guys who pull trains with thier teeth... you have to overcome intertia to get things to move, even if there is little gravity involved.
I'd bet that they would end up using these pads at about 80-90 % efficency, leaving a little gravity left so to speak... and I bet that like most things, getting close to that absolute of 'zero gravity' would require collossal ammounts of energy.
One other thing bothers me about it too... if these pads did become reality I can't see them being much more than assistance into orbit, the field of low gravity cant be that big... even if it was a perfect parallel colomn or elevator into space can you imagine trying to stay on it ? Falling outside its area or effect could be a little dangerous. [img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/biggrin.gif[/img]
In t he end I think this kind of pad will be stuck under the space shuttle... or its next generation kin, even if the pad only offers assistance for perhaps the first 5000 ft or less it would save massive ammounts of fuel.
Now all we need is cold fusion to power the sucker and life will be good... [img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/biggrin.gif[/img]
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As fas as gravatic drives are concerned... thats a long way off. Turning off gravity is one thing... making a magnetic field/device capable of 'bouncing you off the universe' in a direction of your choice is a much bigger leap.
I've heard about this device before. The problem with it at the moment is that there are huge magnetic fields and extreme temperatures involved, making it rather unsafe for anything other than a very neutral test object. I'm sure they'll work those problems out eventually though. The other thing is scaling: What happens when you want to make a bigger one? You would need bigger magnetiv fields.
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