Mon, Jul 14, 2003
Is Anti-Grav Possible?
Imagine flying silently through the sky, without wings, without
an engine, without any moving parts whatsoever. Sounds like the
stuff of science fiction? Well, there are those conspiracy
theorists who would have us believe the government is now and has
been working on anti-gravity platforms for decades.
The beginnings of anti-grav flight might be found in a homemade
device called "the lifter." It's not new, actually. It was invented
more than 70 years ago by Thomas Townsend Brown of Ohio. What he
figured out was, if you run enough voltage through a capacitor, it
would produce a small propelling force. Eventually, in 1952, Brown
was able to prove his concept for military officials by using the
method to spin metal disks. No moving parts. No gimmicks. Or, so
we're told.
But interest in Brown's work has fallen off since
then. The inventor didn't help himself much when he the National
Investigations Committee. It was a UFO-sniffing, conspiracy
theorizing operation that did absolutely no good for Brown's
credibility. Still, the findings of his experiment stand.
Or do they? Debunkers say there's a more rational explanation
for why high voltage can be used to levitate and move objects
through space. Ion winds. Rainer Weiss is an expert on gravity at
MIT. "There is nothing mysterious about this at all," he says in
the August edition of Wired Magazine.Might this form of
anti-gravity someday have a practical application? NASA seems to
think so. It's patented "lifter" technology in hopes the space
agency will be able to use the technology as a means of moving
satellites through space.
Editor's Note: Special thanks to contributor Dave
Bender
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