Saturday 3 June 2006

Caution : Reactionless Drive Ahead

From arXiv.org :
It is well known that a rotating superconductor produces a magnetic field proportional to its angular velocity. The authors conjectured earlier, that in addition to this so-called London moment, also a large gravitomagnetic field should appear to explain an apparent mass increase of Niobium Cooper-pairs. This phenomenon was indeed observed and induced acceleration fields outside the superconductor in the order of about 10^-4 g were found. The field appears to be directly proportional to the applied angular acceleration of the superconductor following our theoretical motivations. If confirmed, a gravitomagnetic field of measurable magnitude was produced for the first time in a laboratory environment. These results may open up a new experimental window on testing general relativity and its consequences using coherent matter.

In other words... spinning superconductors distort space. Fast spinning superconducting toroids (doughnut shapes) produce gravitational fields so things fall through the hole faster.
The faster the spin, the more the force. Spins of toroids going only 6000 RPM, the same speed as a fast-reving car motor, produce forces 1/10 of a milligee. And the effect is highly reproducible, any moderately equipped crogenics lab could do it.

It's possible that small superconducting toroids going very fast might produce enough to be useful in an engineering sense: put energy in, get a gravitational field out (plus waste heat etc).

We live in intresting times.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Does this mean the anti-grav skateboard is just around the corner?