Is This a Good Idea? Antigravity Devices?

July 10, 2009

In the tsunami of media hype triggered by Michael Jackson’s demise, one significant achievement in the Gloved One’s career has been largely overlooked (except, thankfully, by blogger Stephanie at Mediabistro.com where I saw it). In addition to winning 13 Grammy awards and selling 750 million records worldwide during his career, the late Jacko apparently also was an inventor. As Stephanie reports, he’s listed as one of three inventors on a 1993 U.S. Patent for a "Method and means for creating anti-gravity illusion," which the document explains is

A system for allowing a shoe wearer to lean forwardly beyond his center of gravity by virtue of wearing a specially designed pair of shoes which will engage with a hitch member movably projectable through a stage surface. The shoes have a specially designed heel slot which can be detachably engaged with the hitch member by simply sliding the shoe wearer's foot forward, thereby engaging with the hitch member.

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The illusion created by the ingenious device definitely enhanced the trademark MJ “lean” dance move (in case you’re not familiar with it, here's a tutorial).

But what if we had a device that suspend the effects of gravity on a person, object or vehicle for real? Forget about dance moves. We’d be able to jump, hover, float or fly anywhere that we wanted to go—whether it’s down the street, or into outer space— without need for wings or propellers or jets. And when we travel, our luggage might carry itself. Buildings might not need foundations, because they could float above the ground—conceivably, in fact, we could build entire floating cities, high up in the clouds. And if you’re a fan of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and other Asian martial arts flicks, imagine the incredible moves the actors could perform without having to resort to Wire Fu.

Antigravity technology might have some drawbacks, too. People flying through the air and hovering in willy-nilly fashion could be a nightmare for air traffic controllers, and floating buildings or cities would require even more careful navigation by aircraft. And instead of helium-filled balloons of cartoon characters in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, what if they decided to use actual giant genetically-engineered animals and they broke free and went on a rampage? Things could get ugly in a hurry.

The idea of antigravity technology goes back at least as far as the late 17th Century, when the Swiss mathematician Nicolas Fatio de Duillier. When de Duillier’s pal, physicist Isaac Newton, confessed to him that he was unsure how gravity actually worked, de Duillier hypothesized that it was caused by bodies’ absorption of minute particles—which also meant that gravity could be blocked, by the right type of shielding. British sci-fi pioneer H.G. Wells riffed on that idea in his 1901 novel The First Men in the Moon, in which he describes the invention of a new material, Cavorite, which is capable of shielding a spaceship from gravity. Cavorite’s creator—named, not surprisingly, Dr. Cavor—uses it to journey to the Moon, where he meets a race of giant intelligent insects. Ultimately, they kill him to eliminate the possibility of warlike humans using his invention to invade en masse and wipe out their civilization. (More recently, however, they’ve apparently invaded our planet, as evidenced by this Orkin commercial.)

Five years after Wells’ novel, Albert Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity threw a damper on the idea of Cavor-style antigravity shielding. Einstein saw gravity not as tiny particles or as a force, but as a geometric property, the curvature of time-space by mass. In an Einsteinian universe, in order for antigravity to exist, you’d also need negative mass a type of substance whose existence has never been proven, though some physicists have speculated about its properties. (Here’s an interesting gravitons. To this day, they continue to look for evidence of gravitons’ existence (which is another way of saying that we still don’t understand exactly how gravity works).

In the meantime, the scientific contention about the nature of gravity didn’t stop people from trying to dream up antigravity technology. In the 1920s, a British inventor named Thomas Townsend Brown designed a device called the gravitator which he theorized would produce an anti-gravity effect by applying high voltages to nonconducting substances. According to British journalist Nick Cook’s 2001 book The Hunt for Zero Pointduring World War II Nazi scientists in an underground laboratory worked on a mysterious, radiation-spewing metal chamber called Die Glocke (German for “The Bell”), which Cook speculates may have been an antigravity device. After the war, he suggests, the Pentagon looked into antigravity as well. In the private sector, wealthy businessman and noted eccentric Roger Babson founded the Gravity Research Foundation, which offered prizes for anyone who could come up with suggestions for a workable antigravity technology. (Unfortunately, as a web page on the foundation’s history explains: “the scientific community responded with a resounding lack of enthusiasm.”)

In a 1955 article New York Herald Tribune aviation and military editor Ansel E. Talbert seemed convinced that the conquest of gravity was just around the corner:

The initial steps of an almost incredible program to solve the secret of gravity and universal gravitation are being taken today in many of America's top scientific laboratories and research centres. A number of major, long-established companies in the United States aircraft and electronics industries also are involved in gravity research. Scientists, in general, bracket gravity with life itself as the greatest unsolved mystery in the Universe. But there are increasing numbers who feel that there must be a physical mechanism for its propagation which can be discovered and controlled.

Talbert’s optimism seems to have been based upon a few scientists’ belief that then-recently discovered subatomic particles might turn out to be the elusive gravitons, which would then possibly lead to a method of preventing their transfer and blocking gravity. But that speculation turned out to be premature.

Cut to mid 1996. The Sunday Telegraph, a UK newspaper, reported that a Russian émigré scientist named Yevgeny Podkletnov and a team of researchers in Finland had stumbled upon a way to overcome gravity by using superconductivity, the ability of some materials to lose their electrical resistance at very low temperatures. Space.com reported in 2001 that NASA researchers had spent five years and $600,000 to build a device based upon Podkletnov’s work, but found in two trials that it couldn’t overcome gravity. Still, the quest for antigravity continues. In basements around the world, there seem to be a vast number of amateur researchers trying to duplicate Thomas Townsend Brown’s gravitator—and posting videos such as this one to YouTube.

So what do you think? Is antigravity a good idea, or should we avoid messing with what-goes-up-must-come-down? Post your thoughts below.

Comments

[Chris Crocker]

Leave Michael Jackson alone!

[Caffeine Driven Stress Magnet]

This whole antigravity topic is just an excuse for you to write about Michael Jackson.

[Futurist]

People are making fun of the idea, but antigravity has enormous potential to totally change our civilization. I say go for it.

[Mothra]

I used to dream about anti-gravity a lot as a kid because I wanted to be Peter Pan. But I don;t think it's very good for menopausal women. You want to do a lot of weight-bearing exercise and anti-gravity devices would interfere with that. So it wouldn't be very good for me.

[Sasha M]

I like the idea of a floating city.

[Patrick J. Kiger]

I think MJ wanted to be Peter Pan, too.

[Natural Man]

I don;t know, once we start messing with gravity, everything is going to come undone.

[Alex G]

If this is possible, somebody is going to develop it.

[Skeptic]

I think the potential for horrible aviation accidents makes this a bad idea.

[vicki]

I wouldn't mind floating on an air mattress 10 feet above the ocean waves.

[killjoy]

what if you fell off?

[Daniel Jones]

well, there are a lot of things that can go wrong, for example, if the idea that it is caused by bodies’ absorption of minute particles is true, and you made a shield, then the defected particles have to go some where, thereby increasing the gravity there.this could harm or kill organisms nearby, and if this is happening consistently all over the place, it would very likely send some organisms into extinction, making a ripple effect, killing us.
Also, we require gravity to keep our planet in orbit. mess with gravity to much, gust might freeze or melt. not good.

But I'm just 13 so what do I know?

[Patrick J. Kiger]

Daniel: actually, that's a really interesting point that you raise.Where would the blocked gravitons go, and what effect would they have?

[Kris Ringwood]

Interesting isn't it; that we have two major gravitic theories. One of which works in the Macro-Universe: Newton. The second of which - if I've read it correctly - creates Space around matter and then shapes it. But neither operate at the micro(quantum) level where there is no theory at all. It's not surprising that Anti-Gravity eludes us, since an all encompassing definition of the phenomena does likewise. However, recent evidence IS hinting at the possiblility of Magnetism and Gravity being related: something vehemently denied in the past...LHC the key?

[Daniel Jones]

well I'm glad you agree patrick, I'm very new here and that was my first post.