Gravity Control Technologies

[Primordial Groove]

G.C.T.'s (http://www.gctspace.com/research/gcontrol.html) application for the X-prize (http://www.xprize.org/) 10 million dollar challenge was denied due to lack of evidence that they have a viable solution to space flight.

I'm wondering if this company's research has any basis in reality or, are they not getting funding because of the bs involved in their science.

[Elvithriel]

Not enough flying saucer pictures.

[Jesse]

Here's an article I found doing a keyword search on Sakharov, Haisch, Rueda, and Puthoff, who were mentioned on the page you linked to:

http://www.calphysics.org/haisch/science.html

It sounds like the theory isn't the work of crackpots but at the same time it may be considered a fringe possibility, a bit like steady-state cosmology or something. As for the practical applications suggested by "Gravity Control Technologies", they may be totally crackpot, I'm not sure--do you know if Haisch, Rueda or Puthoff have commented on this?

[NumberTenOx]

I don't know much about this theory, but after following these links I have a related question.

What kinetic energy do the virtual particles of the vacuum fluctuation have? Does their kinetic energy enter into the calculation of their energy being below the quantum limit? I can't see how it can, because how would the particles "know" what frame of reference is "at rest" - this would assume an absolute frame of reference.

But this would mean that virtual particles, on average, have extremely large velocities. Wouldn't it?

This question arises when thinking about how objects might interact with the ZPE. The theory says that an object in constant motion has no interaction, but an accelerating object has an interaction. Just imagining an object moving through space at different speeds raises the question about virtual particles.

[Shake]

But the flip-side of this uncertainty is that a particle and a matching antiparticle can spontaneously appear out of thin air, so long as they recombine and annihilate each other so fast no one would know. During their fleeting existence, these "virtual particles" make their presence felt in many ways, including slight shifts in the spectrum of hydrogen, the irreducible electronic noise in semiconductors and, Haisch and his colleagues now claim, inertia. It was my understanding that this also plays a part in the evaporation of black holes --- energy is lost when a particle/antiparticle pair is created near the event horizon. One is captured by the hole, and the other escapes. Thus it appears that the hole is 'emitting' energy.

GCT's site certainly is interesting and exciting. In Orson Scott Card's Ender series, humanity has perfected instantaneous communication (although not travel).

[Wounded King]

I seem to recall that Humanity actually appropriated the technology, or at least the fundamentals, from an alien race.

[Jesse]

Reading GCT's site a little more carefully I'm pretty certain they're crackpots, even if the ZPE theory of inertia they reference is respectable...my main reasons:

--on the site they say:

The ZPF itself has a history of well over a hundred years. It used to be called the Aether, which Einstein rejected based on negative results from the Michelson-Morley experiment (later in life he seemed to change his mind though).

The "Aether" was supposed to be the medium that electromagnetic radiation was vibrations in, I don't see what it has to do with the ZPF. The Aether was tied to the notion of "absolute rest" which was demolished by relativity, which says that there is no way to determine how fast something is "really" going, you can only measure its velocity relative to other objects, and that there is no such thing as a "preferred reference frame". I am fairly certain that Einstein never reconsidered this idea later in life. What's more, the article about the ideas of Puthoff, Haisch and Rueda I posted earlier did not suggest anything like an aether-like substance defining an absolute rest frame, it just said that acceleration might lead to a counter-force from the zero-point energy field. Reviving the Aether is quite popular among crackpots, though.

--They also say:

There is now sufficient evidence to believe that Shakarov and Puthoff, Haisch, Rueda are correct - and that gravity and inertia are in fact the result of interaction between atomic and subatomic particles and the ZPE Field.

"interaction between atomic and subatomic particles"? Er, no, the theory does not require making some distinction between "atomic" and "subatomic", it would apply to any moving particle or collection of particles. And "there is now sufficient evidence" the ZPE theory of inertia is correct? Apparently not according to real physicists--the article suggests that it is at present an entirely theoretical notion, although some experiments are being designed to test it:

It is a bit too early to be talking about building inertia-free starships, the researchers say, but they maintain that there may soon be hard evidence supporting their claim, from experiments that will search for changes in the mass of electrons when they are exposed to powerful laser beams. Certainly many of their colleagues are intrigued. Says Stanford University astrophysicist Peter Sturrock, "No one would say that it's the last word, but I think it may really be one of the first words in what could be a very interesting approach."

--Check out the description of "monatomic substances" on their superconductors (http://www.gctspace.com/research/superconductivity.html) page:

_ GCT's superconductivity work is loosely modeled on previous research carried out by David Hudson, an Arizona farmer who in the late 70s accidentally discovered monatomic elements while recovering gold from old mine tailings. Through the ensuing 15 years he slowly realized that the compounds he was dealing with were a new state of matter, a BEC, that was superconducting at all temperatures. Many reasons contribute to the superconducting properties of these elements, including one which make them extremely difficult to analyze using traditional analytical instrumentation.

...

Normally metal atoms do not exist individually in nature (not counting laboratory or particle accelerator conditions). Nature always seeks an equilibrium position, and in that position many atom, low energy systems are always preferred to single atom, taught to be unstable varieties.

But what if this common wisdom is in fact flawed?

What if it's possible to utilize a chemical process whereby many atom metal clusters are continuously disaggregated until an orbitally rearranged, monatomic system is formed which does not behave like traditional metals? A monatomic system that exhibits superconducting like properties at a wide range of temperatures, including that of room temperature.

Hmm...room-temperature superconductors discovered by "an Arizona farmer" which have not been validated by the "common wisdom" of the scientific community, because they're "extremely difficult to analyze using traditional analytic instrumentation"? Yeah, sure...

--Finally, if this stuff doesn't convince you these people are crackpots, maybe all those flying saucer pics in the site's background will!

[RED DAVE]

Puthoff has a reputation for being very naive about ESP and other "fringe" stuff

CSICOP (http://www.csicop.org/si/9911/lilienfeld.html)

RED DAVE

[The Helmetmaker]

There was some mention here a year ago or so about the work of Haisch and Rueda. See calphysics.org for information about their ideas. It's very interesting, to say the least. I'd like to read more about it. Does anyone know of any articles which critically review their work?

[DigitalChicken]

There are loads of great gravity control technologies all around!

We call them "chairs" and "tables" and "walls."

DC

[Dirty Adan]

Here's an article I found doing a keyword search on Sakharov, Haisch, Rueda, and Puthoff, who were mentioned on the page you linked to:

Hal Puthoff is a well known flying saucer crank. Calphysics is a haven for such crackpottery.

[Bobby B.]

I got a giggle from this on the "superconductivity" page:

"GCT's superconductivity work is loosely modeled on previous research carried out by David Hudson, an Arizona farmer who in the late 70's accidentally discovered monatomic elements while recovering gold from old mine tailings."

I'm from Arizona. I have a hard time believing Arizona farmers are that gifted when it comes to physics.

Bob

[TeknoMage]

I have read into this a bit and THOMAS E. BEARDEN has some interesting papers on it. It seems to be an offshoot of research in harnessing ZPE for practical applications.

He seems a little eccentric though.

[radagast]

There are loads of great gravity control technologies all around!

We call them "chairs" and "tables" and "walls."

DC

Yea, yea, yea, we've all heard the talk, but until there are papers describing them in juried peer-review publications, I'm content to float here, in my nice cozy, gravity well.