At 10:57 PM -0700 11/15/97, Steve Schear wrote:
I must have been sleeping, but it appears I missed the emergence of another Fleischman-Pons ("cold fusion") style episode, this time having to do with antigravity. Experiments in 1992 in Finland seemed to show that the Earth's gravity could be shielded with a superconductor. This experiment, by Eugene Podkletnov, at Finland's Tampere University of Technology, apparently displayed a reduction in the weight of objects placed above a levitating, rotating high Tc superconducting disk, exposed to high frequency magnetic fields.
http://www.virtualpet.com/rbbi/folders/tech/basic/gravity.htm
http://www.inetarena.com/~noetic/pls/gravity.html#pandb
There are at least three different theoretical models for the effect -- gravitomagnetism, local change to cosmological constant, and outright shielding. Detractors have pointed to possible experimental errors as the cause for the apparent levitation.
Don't feel bad about not hearing about it....I only heard about it from some friends this past summer. My first reaction was "say what?" After looking at a summary of news reports, I was less than enthusiastically interested any more. (My hunch: eddy current effects) An effect this important, requiring so little equipment, is confirmable in a matter of days or weeks. That this report has been floating around--pun intended--for more than several years, tells us somthing important. Wake me up if it's actually confirmed. But don't wake me up just to tell me the claims have been withdrawn. --Tim May The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^2,976,221 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."