Antigravity 'Lifters'
I ran into a blurb in Wired (the most recent issue, "The Impossible Gets Real") about these electromagnetic devices, called 'lifters', that levitate when a high-voltage electric current is sent through them. Evidently, they were invented in the 1920's by a man named Thomas Townsend Brown. I thought that antigravity was the stuff of science fiction, but as it turns out, its been around for more than 75 years. Sure, no one has flown to the moon in one yet, but one avid lifter hobbyist, Jean-Louis Naudin, has built a lifter that was "piloted" by his mouse, Orville, touted as the world's first electronaut. More info on Orville's flight can be found here.
Jean-Louis Naudin's site has a wealth of information on building lifters.
Personally, this is the coolest thing ever, and I think that this is the technology that will power our future transportation, from trains to spacecraft. Now I'll just have to persuade my parents to let me set up a 'lifter-lab' in our basement.
What do you think about lifters?
Jean-Louis Naudin's site has a wealth of information on building lifters.
Personally, this is the coolest thing ever, and I think that this is the technology that will power our future transportation, from trains to spacecraft. Now I'll just have to persuade my parents to let me set up a 'lifter-lab' in our basement.
What do you think about lifters?
Comments
Until there's a political will for it, it's pretty much going to be the domain of the military and science fiction.
Originally posted by chu_bakka
All I want is the Spinner from Bladerunner... is that to much to ask?!?!
That's too much now, but it might be possible in a decade.
Originally posted by Placebo
Sorry, but I always thought that the military was connected to the government somehow.
I don't equate "political will" with "being a part of the government". There has to be a push at the local, state and federal levels - a big one - for something like this to take hold. The jerkoffs in Detroit are trying to shoot down measures to produce 40mpg automobiles. What are they going to say about vehicles that levitate? What are all the concrete and asphalt companies going to say? Trade Unions?
It simply won't happen on a mass-transit scale, not for at least 30 years. About the only possibility I can think of are trains. Some of our commuter train systems may be replaced by something like this in the next 10 years or so, but you can forget about personal transportion (other than Sharper Image rich-boy-toy stuff).
More like "we stand to profit more from making 14 mpg SUVs and trucks, and we don't give a shit about yer tree-huggin' enviro-mental concerns, so fuk off!"
Goes to figure most of them are Red Wings fans too. Only a person with a skull thicker than Don King's afro could root for the Red Wings.
If 40mpg would put people out of work then antigravity would put everybody out of work. It would be the end of civilization and the gas guzzeling america that we know and love! Dogs and cats would be living together........
Originally posted by Placebo
I ran into a blurb in Wired (the most recent issue, "The Impossible Gets Real") about these electromagnetic devices, called 'lifters', that levitate when a high-voltage electric current is sent through them. Evidently, they were invented in the 1920's by a man named Thomas Townsend Brown. I thought that antigravity was the stuff of science fiction, but as it turns out, its been around for more than 75 years.
Electromagnetic effects are not "antigravity" any more than the Bernoulli principle that keeps an airplane aloft is antigravity.
My two semesters of French aren't a great deal of help here, but from what I can tell, the levitation effect only works with very light payloads, under very controlled circumstances, and most of the pictures make it look like some sort of base or platform on the ground below the "lifter" is needed to get the effect to work. I also see no evidence that horizontal motion is possible -- the effect may only function within such a narrow horizontal range such that any attempt at horizontal movement across a sequence of bases would fail.
If you had to look into the necessary requirements for creating nation-wide lifter infrastructures, the efficiency of the process, the practical problems of carrying useful payloads, etc. etc., you might well find that there's more than Big Oil and a lack of political will in the way. This technology might not have gone very far because it might basically suck for real-world use.
Originally posted by shetline
Electromagnetic effects are not "antigravity" any more than the Bernoulli principle that keeps an airplane aloft is antigravity.
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Yes ... thank you. I had to listen to my stupid ass cousin tell me that when a magnet is hanging upside down it's "defying gravity". What a moron.
Originally posted by Scott
Yes ... thank you. I had to listen to my stupid ass cousin tell me that when a magnet is hanging upside down it's "defying gravity". What a moron.
It's about time someone with some measure of intelligence posted on this topic. Thank you shetline and scott.
Originally posted by Moogs
I maintain that greed and politics will be the main barriers to using new technologies like this one successfully.
Only if you're a conspiracy theorist.
or something like that, I don't remember all the specifics.
it's not quite antigravity, but it's still really neat.
maglev stuff that is.
Does anyone remember the "Area 51" controversy involving bizarrely behaving "alien craft" seen and videotaped by numerous curiosity seekers and "UFO enthusiasts" in the Nellis AFB area (200 miles northwest of Las Vegas) for the last 15 years or so?
These "lights/craft/whatever which fly silently and perform "impossible" maneuvers were publicized most notoriously by one Bob Lazar who claims to be a physicist who worked at the A-51 site, and was involved with "reverse engineering" UFOs (!!!). Lazar's credibility has been questioned....
The Biefeld Brown effect, (perhaps employed to lift the mouse in Naudin's experiment?) has been known to the US military since prior to the 1950s, and given their enormous resources, combined with an annual "black budget" (outside of Congress' jurisdiction) of some $100 billion+, they could easily have the wherewithal to conduct "gravity control" projects on a far grander scale than what Townsend Brown or Naudin accomplished.
The "alien" hype surrounding Area 51 and the adjoining S-4 top-secret installation may well be a ploy to divert unwanted attention from the actual research programs going on at the base, by associating it with some fanciful (ridiculous) notion... rebuilding craft belonging to our galactic cousins (!). And..there's plenty of "new-agers" and quasi-spiritual fringe elements in the southwest eager to jump on such notions, thereby muddying the waters still further....
As far as the US Gov't is concerned, "Area 51" (Groom Lake) doesn't exist, despite the fact that Russian satellite pictures of it were published on the net years back. Area 51 is a huge complex in the middle of the most remote and inhospitable desert in the southwest, boasts the world's longest runway, employs over 5000 people (most are flown in and out daily from Las Vegas) and has an annual operating budget of $billions. In 1996, the US Air Force made an illegal land-grab of several 10s of thousands of acres of public land adjoining the base to prevent members of the public from looking at the distant buildings shimmering in the haze from over 10 miles away!! It is also immune to all environmental laws as well as scrutiny by Nevada state regulators..on grounds of "national security" (!). Don't get those aliens too pissed....
The military advantage of "gravity control" (if it exists) is obvious...such technology would revolutionize warfare as well as many aspects of civilian life. If there is anything to the Biefeld- Brown effect....then you can bet that the military would have not only been on it immediately, but would have also regarded such technology as much top secret as the Manhattan project...perhaps even more so. And military bases don't get more top secret than A-51. And yes, they *did* test the "Stealth" series of fighters and bombers at Groom Lake and Nellis...but I would bet there's stuff a hell of a lot more esoteric than that going on there...the videotapes speak for themselves.
Physicists? Military experts? New Agers? What y'all think?
OK...back to my coffee!
All of this hinges around extreme-induced diamagnetism property, no? ...or maybe it is dealing with Einstein's Unified Theory regarding 3 orthagonally-related physical phenomenons- electric current, magnetism, and gravity? I'm really vague on this at this point- just pulling stuff out of memory of stuff I've read in years past.
Originally posted by Randycat99
Just consider the extent of "high voltage, high current" resources needed to make this happen, and you'll realize that what is being suggested here is a rather large amount of power. Maybe on the order of MWatts or GWatts- just to levitate something on the order of a person or very light car-like structure? Given that, even a gas-hogging SUV may seem radically simpler and potentially more efficient wrt fuel economy and power generation. Remember, the power has to come from somewhere. It's not just a matter of how/how well it gets used.
All of this hinges around extreme-induced diamagnetism property, no?
No its actually just due to the fact that ions accelerating in an induced electric field produce a force on the object that is inducing the field, ie the forces must balance somewhere.