Warp Drive Symposium - London

If you can make it, this symposium at the British Interplanetary Society in November looks interesting. Not many confirmed speakers as yet, though. For those of you unable to make it, the following links to work by the known speakers may be of interest:

Remo Garattini:
Spacetime Foam and Vacuum Energy [PDF]
The Cosmological Constant as an Eigenvalue of a Sturm-Liouville problem and its renormalization [PPT]

Claudio Maccone:
Levi-Civita Effect in the polarizable vacuum (PV) representation of general relativity [PDF]

Unfortunately I couldn't find any references to the work of Jeremy Gardiner. If you know of any, let me know & I'll add it to the list!

Reversing the Casimir Effect

News on this development at St Andrews University, using metamaterials with negative refractive indices, first appeared last month, but there's now also a quite entertaining page explaining the principles for a general readership.

Useful Amounts of Photon Propulsion?

Just noticed this, apparently the first photon propulsion system to produce practical, useful amounts of force.

Hiddink's One Terminal Capacitor

Some time ago I was made aware of an overlooked invention from the 1970s, seemingly the result of a thought experiment, perhaps one of Faraday's himself, concerning the effects of turning a normal 2-terminal capacitor into a single terminal version. A description of the circumstances of the invention and its consequences in the words of the inventor (Joseph Hiddink) may be found here. It seems to have the potential (pun intended) for several applications - from the patent description:

Another object of the invention is to provide the means for producing high potentials which can be positive or negative in nature and which are adapted for use in the study of nuclear structure and nuclear reactions.

Still a further object of the invention is to provide a novel and improved means for constuction and operation of a high power particle generator.

Another object of the invention is to provide a novel and improved device for generating potentials of either positive or negative nature of such magnitudes so as to attract, bend or repulse radiation.

Still another object of the invention is to provide novel and improved construction of a device for generation of potentials of either positive or negative nature, to attract or repulse mass.

A further object of the present invention is to provide novel and improved means and its construction for making an inexpensive, yet effective Intense Neutron Generator with possibility for slow to fast neutron emission.

It now remains for someone with sufficiently deep pockets and well-shielded facilities to replicate it, as the inventor is now quite old and unable to fund further experiments himself.

Tau Zero - the last, best hope for BPP?

I noticed recently that following the lapse of funding for projects like NASA's Breakthrough Propulsion Physics programme and BAE Systems' Greenglow, the former NASA BPP head Marc Millis has begun the Tau Zero Foundation in his spare time. While it has yet to have its own independent web presence, I have high hopes for it as it encompasses a wide range of possible propulsion techniques, and like the prior NASA effort, aims to attempt a serious and sceptical (though this has unfortunate CSICOP-like kneejerk-debunking connotations these days; maybe zetetic would be a better term) approach.

Much Ado About Bismuth

Time and again, in the course of my researches on the interweb and elsewhere, the element bismuth crops up in connection with one aspect or another of antigravity. Bismuth is an unusual metal, being a poor conductor (verging on a semiconductor), the most diamagnetic, having the highest Hall effect and second-lowest thermal conductivity. In addition, its liquid phase is denser than its solid phase.

Significantly, it is also immediately above (and, we could reasonably infer, possesses similar properties to) Element 115 (a.k.a. Ununpentium, a.k.a. Eka-Bismuth) in the periodic table. Element 115 may have some very stable isotopes, being smack in the middle of the theoretical nucleonic "island of stability", and has of course also featured in the Area 51 tales of Bob Lazar, apparently playing a role in gravity control.

If bismuth is similar to element 115, then it could lend more credence to the gravity studies of Charles F. Brush and the patents of Henry Wallace, both of which involve the use of bismuth. It has even been investigated by respectable university departments (sponsored by Project Greenglow, as it happens).

In the case of the Wallace patents, bismuth is rotated in a magnetic field, in a manner reminiscent of Podkletnov's experiments with superconductors.

To quote from the excellent Electrogravitics Reference List of Robert Stirniman:

Dr. Charles Brush, in a series of reports in the PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY around 1922 found, in some well-thought-out experiments, that weight was not only proportional to mass, but was affected by the atomic structure of the substances. For example, he found that for a given unit of
mass and shape, BISMUTH falls faster than zinc or aluminum.

Bismuth is also a major constituent of "Art's Parts", mysterious fragments of unknown origin presented to radio host Art Bell in 1996. Some reports suggested that they levitated under high voltages (though many materials would!). It appears, however, that they are most likely interestingly-shaped bits of industrial waste.

All this talk of unusual effects resulting from spinning strongly diamagnetic or superconducting material may indicate a connection to torsion physics, but it's difficult to reach any firm conclusions because of the controversy in the torsion physics field and the difficulty in defining exactly what torsion is.

Whatever Happened To...Marcus Hollingshead?

In late 2002, Marcus Hollingshead seemed to be promising a great new device, derived apparently from his efforts to create a mechanical model of the Earth's magnetic field. This device appeared to accidentally generate antigravitational effects. Some more background can be found here.

Initially those who communicated with him had a good feeling about it - he seemed a genuine person in emails and on the phone, produced pages of detailed technical specs, and promised (somewhat) public demonstrations. Personally I felt, as I think did he, a sort of bond through similar upbringings (both being half-Usanian and half-Ukanian) Alas, nothing came of all the fuss (unless the MIB know different, of course!) and Marcus himself variously claimed it was a hoax or had gone into secret development (solid state versions were mentioned). In any event, nothing has been heard from him, to my knowledge, since this 2004 interview.

The jury remains out as to whether he was genuine and has been "got at" by The Powers That Be, or if it was all just a hoax that went too far. Personally, my sympathies are for his wife, who seems to have borne the brunt of fielding an awful lot of phone calls.

If you know different...or even if you *are* Marcus and want a right of reply...please get in touch!

Initial Thoughts on Lifters

Like many people, I suspect, my first encounter with Thomas Townsend Brown was a rather breathless chapter of "The Philadelphia Experiment" by Charles Berlitz. As a result, this has led to much rubbish being spouted about the Biefeld-Brown effect and its supposed connection to gravity.

A number of experimenters, from the US Army to hobbyists, via NASA have attempted to bottom out the claims that it would operate in vacuum. None have yet shown any thrust in vacuum, strongly indicating that gravity plays no part in it. It appears to be an ion momentum effect, at least at the voltages commonly used today (typically <30kv).

This is not to say that it may not have its uses; it is inherently stealthy and doesn't require stored fuel, although its power-to-weight ratio is (currently) pretty poor. I think that it would probably be useful in low-Earth-orbit manoeuvring thrusters, and indeed NASA are already trying to sell the concept.

Podkletnov's paper *was* accepted, and here's the proof

I'm including a scan of the first page of the page proof of Evgeny Podkletnov's paper as it would have appeared in Journal of Physics D in 1996 had it not been withdrawn as a result of the infamous UK Sunday Telegraph article of Sept 1st, 1996, for the purposes of referencing for the Wikipedia article about him.

Here 'tis, as supplied by the Ministry of Defence, apparently: