Anti-gravity is the idea of creating a place or object that is free from the force of gravity. Gravitation is a natural Phenomenon by which objects with Mass attract one another It does not refer to countering the gravitational force by an opposing force of a different nature, as a helium balloon does; instead, anti-gravity requires that the fundamental causes of the force of gravity be made either not present or not applicable to the place or object through some kind of technological intervention. A gas balloon is any Balloon that stays aloft due to being filled with a gas less dense than air or Lighter than air (such as Helium or Hydrogen Anti-gravity is a recurring theme in science fiction, particularly in the context of spacecraft propulsion. Spacecraft propulsion is any method used to change the velocity of Spacecraft and artificial Satellites There are many different methods The concept was first introduced formally as "Cavorite" in H. G. Wells' The First Men in the Moon, and has been a favorite deus ex machina since that day. A fictional element material isotope or atomic particle is a Chemical element, Material, Isotope or (subatomic particles that exist only in Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 &ndash 13 August 1946 He was an outspoken socialist and a pacifist, his later works becoming increasingly political See also A Trip to the Moon, The First Men in the Moon (1919 film, First Men in the Moon (1964 film The First Men in the Moon A deus ex machina ( lat. ˈdeːus eks ˈmaːkʰina literally "god from a/the machine" is an improbable

In the first mathematically accurate description of gravity, Newton's law of universal gravitation, gravity was an external force transmitted by unknown means. Newton 's law of universal Gravitation is a physical law describing the gravitational attraction between bodies with mass However in the early part of the 20th century Newton's model was replaced by the more general and complete description encoded in general relativity (GR). The twentieth century of the Common Era began on General relativity or the general theory of relativity is the geometric theory of Gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1916 In GR gravity is not a force in the traditional sense of the word, but the result of the geometry of space itself. These geometrical solutions always cause attractive "forces". Under GR, anti-gravity is highly unlikely, except under contrived circumstances that are regarded as unlikely or impossible. The term "anti-gravity" is also sometimes used to refer to hypothetical reactionless propulsion drives based on certain solutions to GR, although these do not oppose gravity as such. This article deals with debunked claims to have produced a reactionless drive

There are numerous newer theories that add onto GR or replace it outright, and some of these appear to allow anti-gravity-like solutions. However, according to the current widely accepted physical theories, verified in experiments, and according to the major directions of physical research, it is considered highly unlikely that anti-gravity is possible. ^[1][2][3]

Hypothetical solutions

Gravity shields

Some science fiction stories postulate the existence of a substance partially or completely opaque to gravity. Placing this substance underneath an object reduces or eliminates its weight, allowing it to float away from the Earth's surface with a relatively small expenditure of energy. Under Newtonian gravitation, where gravity is a force being transmitted from point to point, this approach made sense; the gravitational field would be blocked by an appropriate shield in the same way a magnetic field could be blocked by diamagnetic substances. Diamagnetism is the property of an object which causes it to create a magnetic field in opposition of an externally applied Magnetic field, thus causing a repulsive effect

There are strong reasons to believe that no such substance can exist. Consider the results of placing such a substance under one-half of a wheel on a shaft. The side of the wheel under the substance would have no weight, while the other side would. This would cause the wheel to continually "fall" toward the side under the plate. This motion could be harnessed to produce power for free, a clear violation of the first law of thermodynamics. In Thermodynamics, the first law of thermodynamics is an expression of the more universal physical law of the Conservation of energy. More generally, it follows from Gauss's law that static inverse-square fields (such as Earth's gravitational field) cannot be blocked (magnetism is static, but is inverse-cube). Under general relativity, the entire concept is something of a non-sequitur.

In 1948 successful businessman Roger Babson (founder of Babson College) formed the Gravity Research Foundation to study ways to reduce the effects of gravity. Roger Ward Babson ( July 6, 1875 – March 5, 1967) remembered today largely for founding Babson College in Massachusetts Babson College, located in Wellesley Massachusetts (zoned as "Babson Park" ZIP code 02457 is a private Business school that grants all undergraduates The Gravity Research Foundation, established in 1948 by businessman Roger Babson (founder of Babson College) was an organization designed to find ways to implement ^[4] Their efforts were initially somewhat "crankish", but they held occasional conferences that drew such people as Clarence Birdseye of frozen-food fame and Igor Sikorsky, inventor of the helicopter. Clarence Frank Birdseye II ( December 9, 1886 - October 7, 1956) was an American Inventor who is considered the founder Igor Sikorsky (25 May 1889 &ndash 26 October 1972 was born Igor Ivanovich Sikorsky (Игорь Иванович Сикорский Over time the Foundation turned its attention away from trying to control gravity, to simply better understanding it. The Foundation disappeared some time after Babson's death in 1967. However it continues to run an essay award, offering prizes of up to $5,000. As of 2007 it is still administered out of Wellesley, Massachusetts by George Rideout, Jr. Wellesley is a town in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States. , son of the foundation's original director. Recent winners include California astrophysicist George F. Smoot, who later won the 2006 Nobel Prize in physics. George Fitzgerald Smoot III (born February 20 1945) is an American astrophysicist, cosmologist and Nobel Prize in Physics The Nobel Prize in Physics (Nobelpriset i fysik is awarded once a year by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

GR research in the 1950s

Main article: United States gravity control propulsion initiative

General relativity was introduced in the 1910s, but development of the theory was greatly slowed by a lack of suitable mathematical tools. Some of these were introduced in the 1950s, and by the 1960s a flowering of GR was underway that later became known as the golden age of general relativity. The Golden Age of General Relativity is the period roughly from 1960 to 1975 during which the study of General relativity, which had previously been regarded as something of Although it appeared that anti-gravity was outlawed under GR, there were a number of efforts to study potential solutions that allowed anti-gravity-type effects.

It is claimed the US Air Force also ran a study effort throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s. ^[5] Former Lieutenant Colonel Ansel Talbert wrote two series of newspaper articles claiming that most of the major aviation firms had started gravity control propulsion research in the 1950s. Ansel Edward McLaurine Talbert (b--d Oct 7 1987 was an American aviation journalist However there is little outside confirmation of these stories, and they take place in the midst of the policy by press release era, it is not clear how much weight these stories should be given. Policy by press release refers to the act of attempting to influence Public policy through Press releases intended to alarm the public into demanding action from

It is known that there were serious efforts underway at the Glenn L. Martin Company, who formed the Research Institute for Advance Study. The Glenn L Martin Company was an early US Aircraft company founded by aviation pioneer Glenn Luther Martin. ^[6][7] Major newspapers announced the contract that had been made between Burkhard Heim and the Glenn L. Martin Company. Burkhard Heim ( February 9 1925 - January 14 2001) was a German theoretical physicist. The Glenn L Martin Company was an early US Aircraft company founded by aviation pioneer Glenn Luther Martin. Other private sector efforts to master the understanding of gravitation was the creation of the Institute for Field Physics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in 1956 by Gravity Research Foundation trustee, Agnew H. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill ( UNC, North Carolina, or simply Carolina) is a public, Coeducational Research Bahnson.

Military support for anti-gravity projects was terminated by the Mansfield Amendment of 1973, which restricted Department of Defense spending to only the areas of scientific research with explicit military applications. Michael Joseph Mansfield (March 16 1903 – October 5 2001 was an American Democratic politician and the longest-serving Majority Leader of the United States The United States Department of Defense ( DOD or DoD) is the federal department charged with coordinating and supervising all agencies and functions of the government The Mansfield Amendment was passed specifically to end long-running projects that had little to show for their efforts.

Negative mass

Under general relativity, gravity is the result of following a geometry caused by local mass-energy. Although the equations cannot produce a "negative geometry" normally, it is possible to do so using a "negative mass" (negative energy). Interestingly, the same equations do not, of themselves, rule out the existence of negative mass.

Both general relativity and Newtonian gravity appear to predict that negative mass would produce a repulsive gravitational field. In particular, Sir Hermann Bondi proposed in 1957 a form of negative gravitational mass that could comply with the strong equivalence principle of general relativity theory and the Newtonian laws of conservation of linear momentum and energy. Sir Hermann Bondi, KCB, FRS ( 1 November 1919 &ndash 10 September 2005) was an Anglo - Austrian The equivalence principle Bondi's proof yielded singularity free solutions for the relativity equations. ^[8] In July 1988, Robert L. Forward presented a paper at the AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE 24TH Joint Propulsion Conference that proposed a Bondi negative gravitational mass propulsion system. This is about the physicist and science fiction writer You may be looking for his son Robert D ^[9]

Every point mass attracts every other point mass by a force pointing along the line intersecting both points. Point mass is an Idealistic term used to describe either Matter which is infinitely small or an object which can be thought of as infinitely small In Physics, a force is whatever can cause an object with Mass to Accelerate. The force is proportional to the product of the two masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the point masses:

where:

• F₁₂ is the magnitude of the gravitational force between the two point masses,
• G is the gravitational constant,
• m₁ >0 is the (negative) mass of the first point mass,
• m₂ >0 is the mass of the second point mass,
• r is the distance between the two point masses. This article is about proportionality the mathematical relation In Mathematics, a product is the Result of multiplying, or an expression that identifies factors to be multiplied Mass is a fundamental concept in Physics, roughly corresponding to the Intuitive idea of how much Matter there is in an object In Algebra, the square of a number is that number multiplied by itself The gravitational constant, denoted G, is a Physical constant involved in the calculation of the gravitational attraction between objects with mass

Negative mass also seems to suffer from problems similar to the gravity shield. Forward pointed out that a negative mass will fall toward "normal" matter as normal, while normal mass will fall away from the negative matter. Forward noted that two similar masses, one positive and one negative, placed near each other will therefore accelerate in the direction of the line between them, away from the negative mass. Notice that because the negative mass acquires negative kinetic energy, the total energy of the accelerating masses remains at zero. The kinetic energy of an object is the extra Energy which it possesses due to its motion

The Standard Model of particle physics, which describes all presently known forms of matter, does not permit negative mass. The Standard Model of Particle physics is a theory that describes three of the four known Fundamental interactions together with the Elementary particles Cosmological dark matter (and possibly dark energy) may consist of particles outside the Standard Model whose nature is unknown; however their mass is ostensibly known - since they were postulated from their gravitational effects, which are positive. In Physics and cosmology, dark matter is hypothetical Matter that does not interact with the electromagnetic force but whose presence can be inferred from In Physical cosmology, dark energy is a hypothetical exotic form of Energy that permeates all of space and tends to increase the rate of expansion of the universe .

Fifth force

Under general relativity any form of energy couples with spacetime to create the geometries that cause gravity. A longstanding question was whether or not these same equations applied to antimatter. In Particle physics and Quantum chemistry, antimatter is the extension of the concept of the Antiparticle to Matter, where antimatter is composed The issue was considered solved in 1957 with the development of CPT symmetry, which demonstrated that antimatter follows the same laws of physics as "normal" matter, and therefore has positive energy content and also causes (and reacts to) gravity like normal matter. CPT symmetry is a fundamental symmetry of Physical laws under transformations that involve the inversions of charge, parity and

For much of the later quarter of the 20th century, the physics community has been involved in an attempt to produce a unified field theory, a single physical theory that explains the four fundamental forces: gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces. In Physics, a unified field theory is a type of Field theory that allows all of the Fundamental forces between Elementary particles to be written Scientists have made progress in unifying the three quantum forces, but gravity has remained "the problem" in every attempt. Grand Unification, grand unified theory, or GUT refers to any of several very similar unified field theories or models in Physics that This has not stopped any number of such attempts being made, however.

Generally these attempts tried to "quantize gravity" by positing a new particle, the graviton, that carried gravity in the same way that photons (light) carry electromagnetism. In Physics, the graviton is a hypothetical Elementary particle, a Boson to be exact that mediates the force of Gravity in the framework In Physics, the photon is the Elementary particle responsible for electromagnetic phenomena Simple attempts along this direction all failed, however, leading to more complex examples that attempted to account for these problems. Two of these, supergravity and supersymmetry, both required the existence of an extremely weak "fifth force" that coupled together several "loose ends" in quantum theory. In Theoretical physics, supergravity ( supergravity theory) is a field theory that combines the principles of Supersymmetry and General relativity In Particle physics, supersymmetry (often abbreviated SUSY) is a Symmetry that relates elementary particles of one spin to another particle that As a side-effect, both theories also posited that antimatter would be affected by this fifth force in a way similar to anti-gravity, being repelled from mass. Several experiments were carried out in the 1990s to measure this effect, but all failed. ^[10]

General-relativistic "warp drives"

There are solutions of the field equations of general relativity which describe "warp drives" (such as the famous Alcubierre metric) and stable, traversable wormholes. The Alcubierre metric, also known as the Alcubierre drive or Warp Drive, is a speculative mathematical model of a spacetime exhibiting features reminiscent of In Physics, a wormhole is a hypothetical topological feature of Spacetime that is fundamentally a 'shortcut' through Space and Time This by itself is not significant, since any spacetime geometry is a solution of the field equations for some configuration of the stress-energy tensor field (see exact solutions in general relativity). The stress-energy tensor (sometimes stress-energy-momentum tensor is a Tensor quantity in Physics that describes the Density and Flux In General relativity, an exact solution is a Lorentzian manifold equipped with certain tensor fields which are taken to model states of ordinary matter General relativity does not constrain the geometry of spacetime unless outside constraints are placed on the stress-energy tensor. Warp-drive and traversable-wormhole geometries are well-behaved in most areas, but require regions of exotic matter; thus they are excluded as solutions if the stress-energy tensor is limited to known forms of matter (including dark matter and dark energy). Exotic matter is a hypothetical concept of Particle physics. It covers any material which violates one or more classical conditions or is not made of known baryonic particles

Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Program

During the close of the twentieth century NASA provided funding for the Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Program from 1996 through 2002. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration ( NASA, ˈnæsə is an agency of the United States government, responsible for the nation's public space program The Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Program (BPP is a research program which was funded from 1996 through 2002 by NASA, in the hope of studying various 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 investigated under the name "diametric drive".

Empirical claims and commercial efforts

Anti-gravity devices are a common invention in the "alt" field, often requiring a completely new physics framework in order to work. Most of these devices rather obviously do not work, and are often parts of grander conspiracy theories. A conspiracy theory attributes the ultimate cause of an event or chain of events (usually Political, Social or Historical events or the concealment However there have also been a number of commercial attempts to build such devices as well, and a small number of reports of anti-gravity-like effects in the scientific literature. As of 2007 none of them are widely accepted by the physics community.

Gyroscopic devices

A "kinemassic field" generator from U.S. Patent 3,626,605 : Method and apparatus for generating a secondary gravitational force field.

Gyroscopes produce a force when twisted that operates "out of plane" and can appear to lift themselves against gravity. A gyroscope is a device for measuring or maintaining orientation, based on the principles of Angular momentum. 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 have ever been demonstrated to work under controlled conditions, and have often become the subject of conspiracy theories as a result. A conspiracy theory attributes the ultimate cause of an event or chain of events (usually Political, Social or Historical events or the concealment

Perhaps the best known example is a series of patents issued to Henry William Wallace, an engineer at GE Aerospace in Valley Forge PA, and GE Re-Entry Systems in Philadelphia. He constructed devices that rapidly spun disks of brass, a material made up largely of elements with a total half-integer nuclear spin. Brass is any Alloy of Copper and Zinc; the proportions of zinc and copper can be varied to create a range of brasses with varying properties ^[11] 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. In Quantum mechanics, spin is a fundamental property of atomic nuclei, Hadrons and Elementary particles For particles with non-zero spin The Barnett effect is the magnetization of a ferromagnetic body when spun on its axis The work appears to have been largely ignored. ^[12]

Hayasaka and Takeuchi had reported weight decreases along the axis of a right spinning gyroscope. ^[13] Tests of their claims by Nitschke and Wilmath yielded null results. ^[14] A few years later, recommendations were made to conduct further tests. ^[15]

Thomas Townsend Brown's gravitator

During the 1920s Thomas Townsend Brown, a high-voltage experimenter, produced a device he called the "gravitator" which he claimed used an unknown force to produce anti-gravity effects by applying high voltages to materials with high dielectric constants. Thomas Townsend Brown ( March 18, 1905 &ndash October 22, 1985) was an American Physicist. Although it was claimed that the device operated outside of working mass, Brown abandoned this work and moved on to produce a series of successful high-voltage devices in the following years. Working mass is a mass against which a system operates in order to produce Acceleration.

The Biefeld-Brown effect nevertheless lives on. The Biefeld–Brown effect is an effect that was discovered by Thomas Townsend Brown ( USA) and Dr A 1956 analysis by the Gravity Research Group and by a technical writer, under the pen name of Intel (1956), claimed the Biefeld-Brown effect was the primary theory tested by the aerospace firms in the 1950s. It has remained a constant theme in the UFO field, and has recently been a topic of some discussion in this field under the name "lifters". There appears to be a general understanding that the lifters require a working mass, air specifically (ion wind), and that they do not demonstrate new physics. Ion wind, ionic wind, or coronal wind is a stream of ionized fluid generated by a strong Electric field.

Gravitoelectric coupling

Experimental evidence. The Russian researcher Eugene Podkletnov claims to have discovered experimenting with superconductors in 1995, that a fast rotating superconductor reduces the gravitational effect. All attempts of different physicists were in vain to reproduce Podkletnovs results.

In 1989, Ning Li, of the University of Alabama in Huntsville theoretically demonstrated how a time dependent magnetic field could cause the spins of the lattice ions in a superconductor to generate detectable gravitomagnetic and gravitoelectric fields. The University of Alabama in Huntsville (also known as UAH or UAHuntsville) is a state-supported public, Coeducational University Gravitomagnetism (sometimes Gravitoelectromagnetism, abbreviated GEM) refers to a set of formal analogies between Maxwell's field In 1999, Li and her team appeared in Popular Mechanics, claiming to have constructed a working prototype to generate what she described as "AC Gravity. Popular Mechanics is an American magazine devoted to Science and Technology. A prototype is an original type form or instance of something serving as a typical example basis or standard for other things of the same category " No further evidence of this prototype has been offered. [1]

Recent progression

The Institute for Gravity Research of the Göde Scientific Foundation has tried to reproduce different experiments which allegedly show an antigravity effect. All attempts to observe an antigravity effect have been unsuccessful. The foundation has offered a reward of one million Euros [2] for a reproducible antigravity experiment.

Tajmar et al (2006 & 2007)

A paper by Martin Tajmar et al in 2006 claims detection of an artificial gravitational field around a rotating superconductor, proportional to the angular acceleration of the superconductor. Martin Tajmar is a research scientist and project manager in the Space Propulsion group at Austrian Research Center (ARC Seibersdorf. ^[16] A subsequent paper claims to explain the phenomenon in terms of the nonzero cosmological constant. ^[17] Neither the experimental results nor the theoretical explanation are widely accepted.

In July 2007, Graham et al of the Canterbury Ring Laser Group, New Zealand, reported results from an attempt to test the same effect with a larger rotating superconductor. They report no indication of any effect within the measurement accuracy of the experiment. Given the conditions of the experiment, the Canterbury group conclude that if any such 'Tajmar' effect exists, it is at least 22 times smaller than predicted by Tajmar in 2006. ^[18]

Conventional effects that mimic anti-gravity effects

• Magnetic levitation suspends an object against gravity by use of electromagnetic forces. Magnetic levitation, maglev, or magnetic suspension is a method by which an object is suspended with no support other than Magnetic fields The Electromagnetism is the Physics of the Electromagnetic field: a field which exerts a Force on particles that possess the property of While visually impressive, gravitation itself functions normally in such devices. Various alleged anti-gravity devices may in reality work by electromagnetism. Electromagnetism is the Physics of the Electromagnetic field: a field which exerts a Force on particles that possess the property of

The five Lagrangian points in a two-body system. At each point, the gravity of the two bodies cancel out each other.

• A tidal force causes objects to move along diverging paths near a massive body (such as a planet or star), producing effects that seem like repulsion or disruptive forces when observed locally. The tidal force is a secondary effect of the Force of Gravity and is responsible for the Tides It arises because the gravitational acceleration experienced A planet, as defined by the International Astronomical Union (IAU is a celestial body Orbiting a Star or stellar remnant that is A star is a massive luminous ball of plasma. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun, which is the source of most of the Energy on Earth This is not anti-gravity. In Newtonian mechanics, the tidal force is the effect of the larger object's gravitational force being different at the differing locations of the diverging bodies. Equivalently, in Einsteinian gravity, the tidal force is the effect of the diverging bodies following different paths in the negatively curved spacetime around the larger body. In Mathematics, curvature refers to any of a number of loosely related concepts in different areas of geometry

• Large amounts of normal matter can be used to produce a gravitational field that compensates for the effects of another gravitational field, though the entire assembly will still be attracted to the source of the larger field. Physicist Robert L. Forward proposed using lumps of degenerate matter to locally compensate for the tidal forces near a neutron star. This is about the physicist and science fiction writer You may be looking for his son Robert D Degenerate matter is matter which has sufficiently high Density that the dominant contribution to its Pressure rises from the Pauli Exclusion A neutron star is a type of remnant that can result from the Gravitational collapse of a massive Star during a Type II, Type Ib or Type

• Multiple nearby gravity sources generate separate gravity fields. Thus, if an object is placed at a certain location between two sources (the so-called Lagrangian point, see picture), their gravity cancel out each other's. In this state, the object still experiences gravity, but from opposite directions with the same strength, so the resulting force is null.

References

See also

• Gravitational interaction of antimatter
• Artificial gravity
• Burkhard Heim
• Exotic matter
• Heim Theory
• Hutchison effect
• Dean drive
• The spindizzy drive in the science fiction novels of James Blish
• Electrostatic levitation
• Magnetic levitation
• Apergy

External links

Mainstream links on gravity-related research

• Responding to Mechanical Antigravity, a NASA paper debunking a wide variety of gyroscopic (and related) devices
• History of Antigravity and many significant contributors, scientists, and resources. The gravitational interaction of antimatter with Matter or Antimatter has not been conclusively observed by physicists Artificial gravity is a simulation of gravity in Outer space or Free-fall. Burkhard Heim ( February 9 1925 - January 14 2001) was a German theoretical physicist. Exotic matter is a hypothetical concept of Particle physics. It covers any material which violates one or more classical conditions or is not made of known baryonic particles Heim theory is a collection of ideas about the fundamental laws of Physics proposed by Burkhard Heim[http //www John Hutchison is a Canadian inventor known for his claims of inventions and discoveries of a variety of extraordinary phenomena which other researchers - and often Hutchison himself The Dean drive is a device intended to be a reactionless thruster that was invented by Norman L The spindizzy is the nickname given to a fictional Anti-gravity device invented by James Blish for his series Cities in Flight. James Benjamin Blish ( East Orange, New Jersey, May 23, 1921 – Henley-on-Thames, July 30, 1975) was an Electrostatic levitation is the process of using an Electric field to lift a charged object and counteract the effects of Gravity. Magnetic levitation, maglev, or magnetic suspension is a method by which an object is suspended with no support other than Magnetic fields The

Other

• Official website for the Feature Film ANTIGRAVITY
• Official website for UFO/Antigravity expert and Author Bruce L. Cathie
• Göde Scientific Foundation