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Holy crapoli
This story is either the biggest thing since the discovery of nuclear fission or the dumbest thing since cold fusion.
From Maynard’s diary at Daily Kos:
Strange Gravitational Effect Observed with Spinning Superconductors
by maynard [Subscribe]
Thu Mar 23, 2006 at 12:46:32 PM PDT
Scientists at the European Space Agency have announced a surprising gravitational finding that’s not predicted by Einstein’s theory of General Relativity. It appears that upon rotating a ring of superconducting material a gravitomagnetic field is generated that is “[…]a surprising one hundred million trillion times larger than Einstein’s General Relativity predicts.”
I’m a chemist by undergrad training, and my wife’s a chemical physicist. Neither one of us have the neurons to parse this one out. But mbkennel might (from the comments):
I am a trained physicist, but not one in gravitation or superconductivity or anything like that.
My opinion.
If confirmed and explained, this discovery will undoubtably receive a Nobel Prize.
There is a chance, small, but nonzero, furthermore that this could be the most important physical discovery since nuclear fission in 1938.
Nuclear fission was discovered sort of by accident by some odd chemical signatures appearing in experiments. Â Less than decade later, Hiroshima was vaporized.
Let’s pray that this leads to warp drive spacecraft and not quantum gravity bombs.
. . . and that’s what brought on this evening’s Holy crapoli! moment for yours truly. If verified, such a finding shakes everything up. We may not see warp drives or quantum gravity bombs, but how about artificial gravity?
Anyway, I’m with Joe Buck:
These guys claim to be generating an artificial acceleration field of 10^-4 g with an angular rotation no faster than you see in some disk drives (6500 RPM). Â To me, that seems like a huge effect if it’s real. Â Am I reading it right?Needless to say, I’m skeptical.
D.
Maybe it can be used to propel very heavy ships out of earth’s gravitational pull?
I wrote a sci-fi book where the spaceship used a blend of fuel and magnetic repulsion to lift off (and it’s Early in the morning and I’m mangling my English here, lol)
Off to get some coffee.
Magnetic repulsion.
Jeez Louise.
Two things:
1. If this pans out, it is way beyond cool. It would be, as mbkennel says, a hugely important discovery.
2. I’m not enough of a physics geek to understand the implications of this wrt General Relativity. I suspect that, should this be true, it will no more invalidate Einstein than Einstein invalidated Newton, but I don’t know that for sure.
Sam: re Magnetic repulsion. Sounds like an interesting gimmick for a paranormal romance 😉
Dean, my hunch is that this would demonstrate GR to be a special case of something grander, much as Einstein demonstrated that classical physics was a special low-velocity case of something grander. In any case, I hope this is verified. I love it when the world of physics gets shaken up, even if the potential results are a little scary.
No idea what this means, but I’ve passed on the news to my super freak super geek. He’ll probably be agog by all this.
Thanks for the heads up, Doug.
X
My brother sent it to me–he’s the one who’s spent years working on cold fusion.
Really? What does your bro say about this one?
Hello,
Probably my releasd paper about the schematic design of a practical spacewarp can be considered
as one of your favorites. That’s placed on: http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0511086
The aim of this email to you is providing the possibility of introducing it to
more numbers of people which I believe that’s in favor of improving the science and a service to
the mankind. However, your personal opinion on my work is important to me too.
I guess you might be able and/or interested to help me at least via making a link of the above address within your
page(s) or presenting it to more media. So, please give a clear answer to my request.
Best Regards
M. Mansouryar
http://www.mansouryar.com
P.S.: A simplified description of my work is viewable on:
http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=561
http://www.americanantigravity.com/articles/455/1/Iranian-Einstein%3F
http://extremetechnology.blogspot.com/2006/03/macroscopic-tranversable-spacewarp.html