elwoodblues

Does anyone here know anything about this? I've just started some informal research on the subject, and it looks pretty cool.

The basic idea seems to be, you take a capacitor, and under certain conditions, with one end charged positive and the other negative, it will LOSE WEIGHT and experience thrust in the positive charge direction. There was some research started in this area in the '50s, which was very successful, and then quickly classified.

Is this serious science? Or just a nut-job magnet? I seem to be finding evidence of both, which would indicate serious science that appeals to nut-jobs.

graden1

It's a serious magnet for science nut-jobs, and it's fun, too! The 'definitive' book on the subject is
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0964107007/qid=1016311558/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-0665870-6962406" target="_blank">Electrogravitics Systems</a>

Another handy 'reference' for electrogravitics and related weird anti-gravity science is <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0932813208/qid=1016311764/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/002-0665870-6962406" target="_blank">The Anti-Gravity Handbook</a>

While I've found both of these very useful for various rpg's, they're definitely not to be taken seriously.

Enjoy.

Grady

jpbrooks

Don't gravitational forces affect charged particles like electrons and protons as well as uncharged particles? If so, it seems strange to try to use electrical or electromagnetic forces to counteract gravity.

[ March 16, 2002: Message edited by: jpbrooks ]</p>

RealityCheck

Originally posted by elwoodblues:

Sounds crankish to me.
1. Of course the government covered it up and since it is very useful, they won't use it.
2. It only works under certain vague conditions.
3. From the back cover of Electrogravitics Systems: Reports on a New Propulsion Methodology,
Unless the B-2 is launched into orbit, it must be a perpetual motion machine. Even nuclear fuel gets consumed.
4. The government apparently classified capacitor research. Did anyone tell the electronics industry?

Just from the information given so far,I can declare this to be crank. This is definitely a megagauss nutjob magnet. However, I am interested enough to get the book and see what the faulty basis of this stuff is.

RC

Friar Bellows

Electrogravitics? If this refers to electrodynamics in curved spacetime, then it's something that physicists have known about for decades, ever since Einstein.

You see, in the special theory of relativity, the electric and magnetic fields are just components of the electromagnetic field tensor (called the Faraday tensor), while the charge and current densities are components of a four-vector (called the four-current). Maxwells equations then show the behaviour of these two quantities, especially how they relate to each other.

In the general theory of relativity, Maxwell's equations have the same form, except that the regular partial derivatives become covariant derivatives, as required by curved spacetime and the strong equivalence principle.

Theophage

Yeah, but can you make a flying car out of it?

ohwilleke

You can make a flying car with simple Newtonian mechanics (commonly called a Cessna), but it doesn't rely on damping or eliminating gravity.

Friar Bellows

They're just technical terms that refer to simple mathematical concepts that most people can be taught in an afternoon, assuming they have done freshman calculus. Of course, to really understand it (and the whole field of relativity) you need to spend years studying it. I'm trying to do that in my spare time, but I'm nowhere near understanding it.

Unfortunately, cranks that spew out horse manure like "electrogravitics" have neither the patience nor the intelligence to actually learn some physics. They do have a lot of ego, though.

Ewwww! Engineering details! *shudder*

RealityCheck

I bought the book Electrogravitics Systemsand read it. The report on the B-2 talks about the various systems and materials in the aircraft, and then discusses how these propulsion and stealth technologies supposedly have a dual role in supporting electrogravitic propulsion. It goes a little further and claims on page 94, The paper claims a combined electrical equivalent output of 25 megawatts for the jet engines, then claims a 100 megawatt equivalent output with airflow through the scoops exceeding jet exhaust flow by many times. And this is with the jet engines nearly shut down. When steady state work output exceeds steady state energy input, you have the classic perpetual motion machine.

The author's explanation of the lack of vapor trail in high altitude flight is that the engines are shut off, and the electrogravitic drive is in operation. This was inferred from the military's silence on the matter, not from any technical details.

Now if the B-2 really has all this wonderful technology, why not make all our aircraft do this? The benefits are obvious and irresistible.

One article in the book gives details on how to make small prototype device which supposedly produces the electrogravitic effect, so if this is classified, it is not a tightly held secret.

RC

[ March 30, 2002: Message edited by: RealityCheck ]</p>

Bill

From <a href="http://www.science.uwaterloo.ca/physics/p13news/number_4/superst.html" target="_blank">THIS PAGE</a> comes this quote on this subject: The above is the basic foundation of Superstring Theory. It is attractive to modern physicists precisely because it can unite Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, gravity, electromagnetism (including light), and everything else that is important to modern physics.

But Superstring Theory hasn't really been discovered yet (we only have approximations of equations that can be slightly perturbed in order to extract interesting findings). So, obviously, we don't have any really practical benefits from any of this, and that implies that there is no electromagnetic counter to a gravity well.

== Bill