Re: >H Fwd: Breakthrough as Scientists Beat Gravity

Chris Hind (bholat@earthlink.net)
Thu, 05 Sep 1996 06:45:58 -0700


>Date: Thu, 05 Sep 1996 13:46:04 -0500
>From: Dejan Vucinic <dejan@mit1.fnal.gov>
>Subject: Re: >H Fwd: Breakthrough as Scientists Beat Gravity
>To: transhuman@logrus.org
>Sender: owner-transhuman@logrus.org
>Reply-To: transhuman@logrus.org
>
>Transhuman Mailing List
>
>
>Anders:
>>According to what I read from Breakthrough!, it is Physics Rev. Letters
>>D. Doesn't it take *ages* to get published there?
>
>Actually, it's Journal of Physics D (D == Applied Physics), published
>by the British Institute of Physics.
>
>[Phys. Rev. Lett. D is particle physics, and it doesn't take ages if you
> have antigravity, there's a "rapid communication" section.]
>
>>From some brief websearch (as opposed to research) I'd say the London
>Daily Telegraph story is not a hoax, although it sounds like the ultimate
>psychic-abduction crap.
>
>The Podkletnov guy exists and has been around for a while. The first
>paper where they claimed such an effect was published in 1992. Naturally
>nobody paid any attention to it, so his group set up another experiment,
>and recorded a similar effect in excess of 2% of Earth's gravity. I
>tried to find the preprint on the JoP web site, but they are not at that
>level of automation yet. I suppose I'll have to wait for the paper
>to fly across the big water...
>
>>From what little I could deduce from the press coverage, it sounds like
>a ridiculously simple experiment. If you have a piece of high-Tc
>superconductor collecting dust in your garage, pour some liquid N2 on it
>and spin the bloody thing. "Look Ma, I can flaaaa*!" "Look out for
>that 747 kiddo!"
>
>Seriously, the interpretation has "systematic error" written in large
>red block letters all over it. Can you pronounce "cold fusion?" :)
>
>Regards,
>
>Dejan Vucinic
>dejan@mit.edu
>
>
>P.S. I seem to remember a similar story about ten years old. Some guys
> in Japan were spinning metal cylinders *very* fast, and they claimed
> that when spun in one direction they seemed to weigh less than when
> spun in the other direction....or some such. The devil's in details.
>
>
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