Podkletnov's gravity pulse experiment is not new
William J. Beaty
> Evgeny Podkletnov and Giovanni Modanese claim in a new paper to have
> discovered a new gravitational force that cannot be explained by GR.
>
> http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/physics/0108005
Some very similar experiments are well known to followers
of fringe science. The effect was discovered in 1966
by hobbyist C. Morton, there was a professional replication
in 1985 in Germany, and I have one article in my files from
1991 describing the same VandeGraaff setup. The same
mysterious gravity-like pulse is produced. The main
difference between Morton's experiment and Podkletnov's is
that Morton used no HTSC material, and ran his device in
open air. "Electric Spacecraft Journal," the hobbyist mag
for electric propulsion experiments, has several articles:
ESJ back issues (all issues on "Morton")
http://www.electricspacecraft.com/bissues.htm
SPACE WARP I by Charles Morton
http://www.amasci.com/freenrg/morton1.html
Did Podkletnov discover this effect independantly? I
hope so, since there is no attribution to Morton or to
the University of Karlsruhe work in that preprint paper.
Also, if the effect does not vanish when non-SC materials
are used, isn't the physics very different than described
in the preprint?
Does anyone have a tabletop VandeGraaff machine? Since
it's supposed to work without superconductors, replication
should be almost trivial.
In ESJ Issue 4 (1991), Morton describes a variation on
the device which uses a metal disk and a 1/4" metal rod,
with the rod on one side of the disk on axis, with the end
of the rod suspended near the center of the disk (sparks
jump between them.) The diameter of the disk in the diagram
appears to be about half that of the length of the rod,
but no measurements are given. This device was powered
by a 50KV AC transformer with a large capacitor wired
in parallel to the device.
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William J. Beaty SCIENCE HOBBYIST website
bi...@eskimo.com http://www.amasci.com
EE/programmer/sci-exhibits science projects, tesla, weird science
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Dirk Bruere
"William J. Beaty" <bi...@eskimo.com> wrote in message
news:2251b4e6.01080...@posting.google.com...
> Some very similar experiments are well known to followers
> of fringe science. The effect was discovered in 1966
> by hobbyist C. Morton, there was a professional replication
> in 1985 in Germany, and I have one article in my files from
> 1991 describing the same VandeGraaff setup. The same
> mysterious gravity-like pulse is produced. The main
> difference between Morton's experiment and Podkletnov's is
> that Morton used no HTSC material, and ran his device in
> open air. "Electric Spacecraft Journal," the hobbyist mag
> for electric propulsion experiments, has several articles:
>
> it's supposed to work without superconductors, replication
> should be almost trivial.
Surely someone who reads these NGs has a VDG generator they could play with.
This experiment would take less than an hour to set up.
Even a negative would go some way of laying this kind of rumour to rest.
Dirk
Gordon D. Pusch
No rumor or urban legend on the net can _ever_ be laid to rest, no matter
how many times it is carefully debunked. TBs are not rational, and new TBs
are always emerging as old crackpots infect new ones with their memes.
-- Gordon D. Pusch
perl -e '$_ = "gdpusch\@NO.xnet.SPAM.com\n"; s/NO\.//; s/SPAM\.//; print;'
Jim Jastrzebski
> Some very similar experiments are well known to followers
> of fringe science. The effect was discovered in 1966
> by hobbyist C. Morton, there was a professional replication
> in 1985 in Germany, and I have one article in my files from
> 1991 describing the same VandeGraaff setup. The same
> mysterious gravity-like pulse is produced.
What is the "mysterious" part? Why do you call it
"gravity-like pulse"? Do you call any force directed "up"
or "down" a "gravity-like force"? By this definition the
force of your muscles is a "gravity-like force" but most
people wouldn't call it so, especially wouldn't apply
relativity to explain it (just trying to make sense of your
terminology).
-- Jim
Dirk Bruere
"Jim Jastrzebski" <Jim...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:3B742B4A...@aol.com...
'Gravity like' in that it apparently affects mass over macroscopic distance
and doesn't show obvious electromagnetic properties.
Dirk
William J. Beaty
> What is the "mysterious" part?
It's claimed to pass through both solid metal and
thick plastic, while maintaining a narrow "beam"
geometry.
> Why do you call it "gravity-like pulse"?
That's the terminology Morton and Podkletnov use. If
their description is accurate, it's not RF or microwaves
(they say that it is not blocked by metal shielding,)
and is not acoustic ( they describe a parallel beam
which stays narrow over 150 meters, and can deflect a
pendulum inside a vacuum chamber.) What is left?
X-ray pulses? Strong enough to deflect a pendulum?
(Easy to verify, just use some zinc sulfide.) If
their description is accurate, the phenomenon sounds
like the infamous "electrogravity" that various
fringe-sci hobbyists have been messing with for years.
Here I am wasting my time on sci.physics. I should be
repairing my old VandeGraaff machine. And cleaning
the damn garage. Even if the VDG was working, I can't
even SEE the benches in there, they're piled deep with
all kinds of crap.
William J. Beaty
> > Does anyone have a tabletop VandeGraaff machine? Since
> > it's supposed to work without superconductors, replication
> > should be almost trivial.
>
> Surely someone who reads these NGs has a VDG generator they could play with.
> This experiment would take less than an hour to set up.
> Even a negative would go some way of laying this kind of rumour to rest.
Not "rumor". It's an e-print. To be an urban legend, you
have to hear it from someone who heard it from someone, etc.
If you know the name of the primary source, it's not a rumor
or legend. That doesn't mean it's not a mistake, of course.
Calling it "rumor" or "legend" looks like an attempt to
discredit and sow distrust. Better to say that it's probably
just a mistake, and all the people who saw the evidence and
took actual measurements are just deluding themselves
somehow. Wide replication is needed before we can confidently
say otherwise.
Podkletnov says it's real, Morton says it's real, someone
named Klaus Schlecht at the University of Karlsruhe in
Germany says its real. Each built a different sort of
device, but all had the high-volt discharge path and
all described a narrow "beam" of something that could move
bits of paper and pass through various shields.
The trouble with fringe experiments is, if you try to
replicate and you get zero results, you don't know if its
because you set something up wrong. To debunk it, you
have to achive something like the same phenomenon, then
see if it has an obvious explanation. That's what happened
with polywater. Other labs managed to make some, and
they found that it was full of crap from the supposedly
clean glass capillary surfaces. "Polywater" was mostly
sodium silicate solution, and in that case the anomaly
was killed dead. Even the fringe experimenters don't put
any stock in polywater. On the other hand, a very small
minority still voices suspicions that N-rays might have
been real! ;)
((((((((((((((((((( ( ( ( ( (O) ) ) ) ) )))))))))))))))))))
William J. Beaty SCIENCE HOBBYIST website
bi...@eskimo.com http://amasci.com
EE/programmer/sci-exhibits science projects, tesla, weird science
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William J. Beaty
> No rumor or urban legend on the net can _ever_ be laid to rest, no matter
> how many times it is carefully debunked. TBs are not rational, and new TBs
> are always emerging as old crackpots infect new ones with their memes.
Let's start a new one! We don' need no stinkin' superconductors.
Just put your hand on a VandeGraaff generator, and when you take
pictures of this, golden rays are seen shooting out of your
Third Eye! And you gain 50 lbs, and lose half your hair! It's
true! Look:
http://www.amasci.com/emotor/bill3.jpg
Which tabloid should I sell that to? Fortunately I don't have
the other photos, the ones where my head doesn't quite cover up
that light fixture on the ceiling in the background, so counter-
evidence can't stop me! ;)
((((((((((((((((((( ( ( ( ( (O) ) ) ) ) )))))))))))))))))))
William J. Beaty SCIENCE HOBBYIST website
bi...@eskimo.com http://amasci.com
EE/programmer/sci-exhibits science projects, tesla, weird science
Seattle, WA 206-789-0775 sciclub-list freenrg-L vortex-L webhead-L
Dirk Bruere
>
> Here I am wasting my time on sci.physics. I should be
> repairing my old VandeGraaff machine. And cleaning
> the damn garage. Even if the VDG was working, I can't
> even SEE the benches in there, they're piled deep with
> all kinds of crap.
If you can do it, do it.
If you report favourably I'll replicate it and I bet a good many here will
also.
Dirk
Dirk Bruere
> > > Does anyone have a tabletop VandeGraaff machine? Since
> > > it's supposed to work without superconductors, replication
> > > should be almost trivial.
> >
> > Surely someone who reads these NGs has a VDG generator they could play
with.
> > This experiment would take less than an hour to set up.
> > Even a negative would go some way of laying this kind of rumour to rest.
>
> Not "rumor". It's an e-print. To be an urban legend, you
> have to hear it from someone who heard it from someone, etc.
> If you know the name of the primary source, it's not a rumor
> or legend. That doesn't mean it's not a mistake, of course.
> Calling it "rumor" or "legend" looks like an attempt to
> discredit and sow distrust. Better to say that it's probably
> just a mistake, and all the people who saw the evidence and
> took actual measurements are just deluding themselves
> somehow. Wide replication is needed before we can confidently
> say otherwise.
All who?
I see a name attached. I don't see lists of witnesses, their qualifications,
reports etc
I don't even see claims of replication or details of any tests except vague
assertions that it goes through metal. What metal? Was it grounded? What was
the target mass, final velocity, displacement, energy? etc etc
> Podkletnov says it's real, Morton says it's real, someone
Hold on.
Let's leave Podkletnov out of this.
No hobbyist is going to duplicate in detail his work. Allegedly even NASA
can't (to podkletnovs satisfaction).
However, a VDG a bit of glass tubing and a spark is incredibly simple.
Someone here *must* have access to such.
I want someone with no previous fringe science connections and no axe to
grind have a go.
I suppose if nothing happens here I'll buy a VDG and try it.
I performed a variation of the Woodward device expt and detected nothing,
and that was far more complex (and plausible).
> named Klaus Schlecht at the University of Karlsruhe in
> Germany says its real. Each built a different sort of
> device, but all had the high-volt discharge path and
> all described a narrow "beam" of something that could move
> bits of paper and pass through various shields.
Can you point me to references please?
Preferably with full scientific reports rather than something written up in
anecdote form.
> The trouble with fringe experiments is, if you try to
> replicate and you get zero results, you don't know if its
> because you set something up wrong. To debunk it, you
> have to achive something like the same phenomenon, then
> see if it has an obvious explanation. That's what happened
Yet if the reported phenomenon was total bullshit by a publicity seeking
psycho, conman or the deluded nobody will ever replicate anything because
there's nothing to explain.
Dirk
William J. Beaty
OK, I repaired my VDG, then spent a couple of hours and
performed a crude test. I can't get the sparks to follow
a narrow tube, so I didn't reproduce Morton's setup. I
did see one interesting thing: a neon tube shielded by
a layer of aluminum foil would flash.
I used my old kit-built Science First VandeGraaff machine
having a 14" diameter spun aluminum oblate terminal.
In the past I measured the output current to be 5uA.
This size of sphere should produce several hundred KV,
but it's old and dinged up, so max voltage might be
less. In operation it doesn't make those characteristic
"spitting" noises, so the corona leakage isn't massive.
No large scraps of sheet metal in my collection, so I adhered
a 12" x 25" sheet of aluminum foil to a piece of cardboard.
When held within 4" of the VDG sphere, I obtain bright, fairly
loud, perfectly straight sparks which repeat about once per
1.5 seconds, so apparantly the sharp edges of the foil are far
enough away from the VDG that the system isn't loaded down by
corona leakage from foil edges. As I expected, a 1" neon display
tube (old face-reading nixie tube) flashes dimly during each spark
when held in any position within about a foot of the VDG sphere.
I hung the foil-coated cardboard from above with threads,
and connected it to the ground of a 3-wire extension cord
via a bunch of clip leads in series, attaching it to the
lower edge of the foil.
I had some 1/2" tygon tubing, also some 3/16" dia. glass in
my junk collection. This I cut to 3" lengths and crudely
affixed it between the VDG and the foil surface with pieces
of translucent paper tape.
I was unable to persuade a spark to travel inside either
type of tubing. Both kinds of tubing interfere with the bright
loud sparks. Instead I see very dim, branching, jagged sparks
which repeat about twice as fast as the bright straight ones.
These either travel along the *outside* of the tubing, or
travel through the air nearby. The branching indicates that
the sparks begin at the surface of the VDG sphere where the
tubing contacts the metal surface. Probably the tubing is
charged by surface leakage and this distorts the fields and
changes the spark geometry. If my tubing was a few cm diameter,
sparks MIGHT travel through it, but this smaller stuff causes
problems.
OK, so does just the spark alone do anything interesting?
Yes. I cut out a couple of styrofoam rods about 2.5" long
and placed them between the VDG sphere and the foil panel,
attached with tape and positioned so they keep the two
surfaces apart without interfering with the spark. Bright
line-like sparks are produced when the machine is on. When
I hold the nixie tube on the OTHER side of the foil,
held a couple of inches from the cardboard at approximately
the location of the sparks, the tube flashes. When placed
against the cardboard, the flash is brighter. The flash
seems slightly brighter than earlier when I held the tube
a few inches from the VDG sphere during similar sparks.
After moving the tube around for a while, I did not
detect any narrow "beam", but the tube does seem to flash
more brightly in an annular region surrounding the location
of the spark, when held against the cardboard. The tube
only flashes during some sparks. Does the output energy
vary that much? The location of each spark wanders over
a region 3" across, so I cannot place the tube
behind the foil reliably near the location of the sparks.
When I place my hand near the cardboard opposite the sparks,
I feel nothing. (Morton's article says that the pulse can
move paper bits, so I'd expect to feel something on my skin.)
A baggie of zinc sulfide held near the same spot gives no
flashes or afterglow, so no large amounts of X-rays are
being produced.
E-fields are getting through the foil. This is unexpected.
On the other hand, a few uA at a few hundred KV is in the
range of one watt of VDG output, and if the spark duration
is in the microsecond range and repeating about 1Hz, each
spark could possibly produce output with order of magnitude
around a megawatt. Would megawatt RF transients go through
household aluminum foil? Or diffract around the edges of a
foot-wide sheet of it? A cool demonstration all by itself!
I'll get some 1" dia. acrylic tubing and try again later.
Another thought: this flashing neon would be far more
impressive if possible diffraction at edges was excluded
by placing the whole experiment in a thick metal enclosure,
with the neon tube outside. Podkletnov describes his device
as being enclosed in plastic. Powerful EMP would be getting
out. Such RF pulses might APPARANTLY penetrate a small sheet
of metal by diffracting around its edges, so thick metal
enclosures must be used if we want to find out if these pulses
truely penetrate metal. (But how could such pulses deflect a
pendulum?!!)
((((((((((((((((((( ( ( ( ( (O) ) ) ) ) )))))))))))))))))))
William J. Beaty SCIENCE HOBBYIST website
bi...@eskimo.com http://amasci.com
EE/programmer/sci-exhibits science projects, tesla, weird science
Seattle, WA 206-789-0775 sciclub-list freenrg-L vortex-L webhead-L
Jos Bergervoet
> I was unable to persuade a spark to travel inside either
> type of tubing.
Yes, you usually have so little time to persuade them ... :-)
> Would megawatt RF transients go through
> household aluminum foil? Or diffract around the edges of a
> foot-wide sheet of it? A cool demonstration all by itself!
Diffraction around the edges. You will easily find 10 to 50
percent of the original fieldstrength even if you're fully in
the shadow behind the sheet. See the MoM calculation at:
ftp://iaehv.nl/pub/users/bergervo/wave/ (try the Readme file)
> ... Such RF pulses might APPARANTLY penetrate a small sheet
> of metal by diffracting around its edges, so thick metal
> enclosures must be used if we want to find out if these pulses
> truely penetrate metal.
The metal need not be thick. But there should not be any gaps or
seams between different parts of the enclosure. Even a seemingly
perfect construction with overlapping panels may in reality have
bad contact at the overlap (due to oxyde) which will make the
enclosure very leaky for EM waves. Obtaining more than a factor
10 shielding is not trivial.
-- Jos
Jan Panteltje
(William J. Beaty) wrote in <2251b4e6.01081...@posting.google.com>:
>Jim Jastrzebski <Jim...@aol.com> wrote in message news:<3B742B4A...@aol.com>...
>
>> What is the "mysterious" part?
>
>It's claimed to pass through both solid metal and
>thick plastic, while maintaining a narrow "beam"
>geometry.
>
>> Why do you call it "gravity-like pulse"?
>
>That's the terminology Morton and Podkletnov use. If
>their description is accurate, it's not RF or microwaves
>(they say that it is not blocked by metal shielding,)
>and is not acoustic ( they describe a parallel beam
>which stays narrow over 150 meters, and can deflect a
>pendulum inside a vacuum chamber.) What is left?
>X-ray pulses? Strong enough to deflect a pendulum?
>(Easy to verify, just use some zinc sulfide.) If
>their description is accurate, the phenomenon sounds
>like the infamous "electrogravity" that various
>fringe-sci hobbyists have been messing with for years.
I am still thinking about this.
If indeed the arc is essential, and not the superconductor....
maybe he created a focus field when beam passed through the
round magnet behind the superconductor without him realizing it.
Something else came to mind:
WHAT if the electrons have sufficient energy to either 'desintegrate'
or perhaps make loose some exotic particle.
This particle would then travel in the same direction perhaps, and this
would explain the narrow (non diverging) beam.
Also do you realize how difficult it is at 150 m to find a spot of say
10 cm diameter, behind a brick wall, without visual contact?
Normally you could use a laser to align, but even one degree off in any
direction would cause a miss.
So, how did he do that?
Jus try with a laser to hit something 10 cm diameter 150 meter away!
Now do it with an IR laser and a photo detector only!
Anyways, if it is particles, then yes, I will not speculate about there speed.
My particle physics is non existant at best.
I know the electron was split (well I did dread), but ....
Here is a nice area for the amateur, do not listen to the establishment here!
But on the other hand why was this not observed / reported in linear electron
accellerators?
More questions then answers, good!
Do you really have a vd Graaf? Cool.
Regards
Jan
Dirk Bruere
> performed a crude test. I can't get the sparks to follow
> a narrow tube, so I didn't reproduce Morton's setup. I
> did see one interesting thing: a neon tube shielded by
> a layer of aluminum foil would flash.
Just a thought.
How about supergluing a small metal rod <1cm to the surface of the VDG and
placing that inside the tubing - providing a preferential discharge path?
Or, probably neater, gluing the rod into the tube and placing it in contact
or close proximity to the VDG? I think that should work.
Dirk
Jan Panteltje
Could you try the following:
Hang a small ping pong ball on a 30 cm lead about 1 meter from the experiment.
Shield it with a large metal sheet, or the cardboard with alufoil.
Ground the sheet.
Flash to some metal (not the shielding sheet itself)
Tell me if the ball moves.
IF it moves, and there arer no air flow issues, and no static elctricity issues,
we have a particle.
Then the electron must have made loose some particle.
Regards
Jan
Dirk Bruere
"Jan Panteltje" <j...@panteltje.demon.nl> wrote in message
news:997552697.28032....@news.demon.nl...
*IF* we get any result from this expt then I think its a bad move to try and
speculate as to new physics. Even if we eliminate known physical causes I
suspect that a good result attached to a load of total crap speculation
(from the POV of the 'real' physics community) would be enough to get the
whole thing relegated to the pseudoscience fringes. That Morton page was
almost enough to put me off the whole thing. The only saving grace was the
apparent simplicity of the expt.
What needs to be done is for some watertight experiments to be reported in
sufficient detail for anyone to replicate, with *numbers* attached.
I've tracked down similar claims and its always... 'it worked yesterday'...
'it will work tomorrow'... 'but for now, here's my ten thousand pages of
ludicrous theory I want you to wade through in lieu of results'. DOA
Dirk
William J. Beaty
> Just a thought.
> How about supergluing a small metal rod <1cm to the surface of the VDG and
> placing that inside the tubing - providing a preferential discharge path?
Way ahead of ya! Sharp metal edges will produce corona that
shorts out the whole system, but ball bearings work. However,
they suppress the bright, straight, loud sparks from before,
and instead create long, dim, jagged sparks with multiple
branches, which make a "thump" sound rather than a "crack."
The dim sparks repeat quickly, so the voltage is far lower
than the slow, loud sparks.
I'm going to go look for some wider plexi tube, and also check
out the science giftshop over near the U. of Wash for larger
diameter glass tubing.
People interested in making their own VDG machine should
check out:
http://amasci.com/emotor/vdg.html
Science First sells their spun aluminum 14" globe for about
$90. There is also a source of polished stainless steel
"garden reflecting globes" for cheap, but they lack the
curved-edge hole.
Dirk Bruere
news:<EIbd7.29764$e%3.36...@news2-win.server.ntlworld.com>...
> > Just a thought.
> > How about supergluing a small metal rod <1cm to the surface of the VDG
and
> > placing that inside the tubing - providing a preferential discharge
path?
>
> Way ahead of ya! Sharp metal edges will produce corona that
> shorts out the whole system, but ball bearings work. However,
Then place the short rod inside the tube, so it becomes the preferential
discharge path.
No contact at all.
Dirk
Jan Panteltje
<art...@kbnet.co.uk> wrote in
<ALed7.30601$e%3.39...@news2-win.server.ntlworld.com>:
>
>"Jan Panteltje" <j...@panteltje.demon.nl> wrote in message
>news:997552697.28032....@news.demon.nl...
>> I have a request for you.
>> Could you try the following:
>> Hang a small ping pong ball on a 30 cm lead about 1 meter from the
>experiment.
>> Shield it with a large metal sheet, or the cardboard with alufoil.
>> Ground the sheet.
>> Flash to some metal (not the shielding sheet itself)
>> Tell me if the ball moves.
>> IF it moves, and there arer no air flow issues, and no static elctricity
>issues,
>> we have a particle.
>> Then the electron must have made loose some particle.
>
>*IF* we get any result from this expt then I think its a bad move to try and
>speculate as to new physics.
There is no speculation here Dirk.
It is EM or a particle (without charge perhaps).
Pod's cannot be EM likely as it also works with non conducting stuff.
So a ping pong ball is just fine.
No new physics involved.
Keep sane.
(I am taking or doing no bets if it moves though, but it must be tried.
Just like the 3 legged transistor).
Ye knever know, and with experiment at least you DO know.
Philosophy without experiment is as sex without a body.
mmm maybe you should not quote me on that, but I release it under the GPL hehe
Regards
Jan
>
>
>
Dirk Bruere
My bet is that if there is an effect it will likely be a directed shock wave
in air.
Such can pass through metal eg Newtons Cradle.
Still, we will find out eh?
Dirk
Tom Roberts
> OK, I repaired my VDG, then spent a couple of hours and
> performed a crude test.
Great! It's so rare to have any serious discussion of _REAL_ experiments
around here. Even as informal as yours is....
> I was unable to persuade a spark to travel inside either
> type of tubing.
Not terribly surprising. The outer surface is bigger than the inner one,
and contaminants on the surface will "seed" sparks. As you describe.
> If my tubing was a few cm diameter,
> sparks MIGHT travel through it, but this smaller stuff causes
> problems.
Try taping a thumbtack to the HV terminal and centering the tubing
around it. The sharp point may cause too much corona, which prevents
the HV terminal from achieving full voltage, so try blunter things,
perhaps a 1/4" ball bearing....
BTW experiments which rely on sparks travelling along surfaces or
inside tubing are likely to be HIGHLY IRREPRODUCIBLE because
incredibly-diffuse surface contaminants can make a HUGE difference in
the effective conductivity of the surface. At the 20 MeV Tandem
Van De Graaff accelerator at Purdue there was a ritual to cleaning the
(glass?) HV column -- seemingly-insignificant variations in procedure
could result in VASTLY different properties, and it was rather difficult
to achieve the 10,000,000 V terminal voltage required for 20 MeV
operation ("tandem" means the particles are accelerated to the HV
terminal where they are stripped of electrons and accelerated again
towards ground and the experiment). I was only an undergrad there and
was never permitted anywhere near the thing, because it was so delicate
and finicky. BTW the point was to use the particle beam, so the
problems of the HV terminal were irrelevant to the physics under study.
I also remember that during operation the terminal was enclosed in
high-pressure gas, which I vaguely remember as Sulfur-Hexafluoride
(but that could be wrong), so this is a more sophisticated instrument
than yours (no surprise, of course).
I am not an expert on this stuff, but have anecdotal knowledge.
> When
> I hold the nixie tube on the OTHER side of the foil,
> held a couple of inches from the cardboard at approximately
> the location of the sparks, the tube flashes.
Sure. You generate large-scale (~100 kV, many kilowatt) high-frequency
(>10 MHz) pulses, and also some very soft X-rays (the spark must be
in vacuum to get ~10 keV X-rays from ~100 keV "sparks", the air
drastically slows down the electrons in the spark -- I don't know how
fast they can go or how high of an energy their bremstrahlung radiation
really is).
> E-fields are getting through the foil.
Sure. Aluminum foil is only a few mils thick, and for such pulses the
skin depth must be larger than that. Note that something as thin as
16-gauge aluminum will be MUCH better at shielding. But the peak
currents of your spark must be impressive, and will generate pulsed
magnetic fields, and those will be MUCH more difficult to shield --
I cannot but wonder if they are the cause of Podkletnov's "effect"....
I don't really know the detailed characteristics of such sparks
at all.
> On the other hand, a few uA at a few hundred KV is in the
> range of one watt of VDG output, and if the spark duration
> is in the microsecond range and repeating about 1Hz, each
> spark could possibly produce output with order of magnitude
> around a megawatt. Would megawatt RF transients go through
> household aluminum foil? Or diffract around the edges of a
> foot-wide sheet of it?
Surely a significant fraction of the pulses can go right through a
single layer of household aluminum foil. Diffracting around it is
also possible for wavelengths larger or about the same size as your
foil square.
Tom Roberts tjro...@lucent.com
Jan Panteltje
<TomRo...@avenew.com> wrote in <3B75CBAF...@avenew.com>:
<snip interesting stuff>
>> E-fields are getting through the foil.
>
>Sure. Aluminum foil is only a few mils thick, and for such pulses the
>skin depth must be larger than that. Note that something as thin as
>16-gauge aluminum will be MUCH better at shielding. But the peak
>currents of your spark must be impressive, and will generate pulsed
>magnetic fields, and those will be MUCH more difficult to shield --
>I cannot but wonder if they are the cause of Podkletnov's "effect"....
Tom, I think at 150 meters and a non conducting / non magnetic ball as detector
this could be ruled out?
Regards
Jan
William J. Beaty
> performed a crude test. I can't get the sparks to follow
I finally managed to duplicate something vaguely similar to Morton's
VandeGraaff test. No significant "beams" were emitted from the ends.
Rats!
I dented the center of the aluminum-coated cardboard to produce a involute
curve about 1" in diameter, then cut a crude hole in the dented region
about 3/4" diameter. A quick test shows that the sharp edges don't
produce any corona (and the sparks don't tend to switch to dim/branching
mode, and don't tend to home in on the hole edges.)
I tested 2cm glass tubing, also 1" I.D. acrylic, both approx 3" long.
The glass is useless since its surface adsorbs humidity. Rather
than producing sparks, the surface of the glass glows very dim blue
in the dark and hisses. I suppose I could bake it out with a propane
torch, but first I'm playing with the acrylic.
The sparks ignore the acrylic, they only rarely go through the tube.
Therefore I affixed the tube in an acrylic plate approx 5"x7", sealed
flat to the end of the tube with plexi #3 cement, with a big hole poked
through the flat plastic. I taped this to the aluminum foil.
Sparks now follow the inside of the plastic tube surface. They repeat
at about 2Hz, and are slightly jagged, but are bright and make a "crack"
sound. They no longer have that line-like geometry which they exhibit
when in the free air between the VDG sphere and the flat foil. If that
"line like" effect is important, well, the presence of the tube is
definitely screwing it up.
Walking around the setup while holding a 6" flourescent tube and a 12"
flourescent tube does not reveal any hotspots (no apparent "beams".)
The flourescent tube flashes brightly when held against the cardboard
opposite the side receiving the sparks. However, this is handheld, and
when I instead attached the 6" flourescent tube to a long plexiglas rod,
the bright flashing no longer occurs. When the fluor. tube on the rod
is held in various positions against the cardboard, I see no flash.
When held in the region near the hole in the cardboard, no flash. As
long as I keep it within about 24" of the VDG sphere, there is a dim
flash if I hold the tube anywhere but behind the foil-covered cardboard.
Even if I approach the VDG sphere quite closely, the flash is dim. As
long as the flour. tube is suspended on plastic, the foil-covered
cardboard does create a "shadow" region behind itself. The flashing
I detected earlier is probably caused by changes in potential of the foil
with respect to my hand, rather than propagating changes in the e-field.
Using the suspended fluorescent tube to explore the region on the
opposite side of the sphere in line with the sparking does not
reveal any hotspots there either.
The collapsing e-fields surrounding the VDG sphere do affect the hair on
my arms, and as long as the machine is sparking, I feel like I'm being hit
by high-velocity feathers. The surface of my hands cannot feel this (no
hair to respond,) but the furry backs of my hands do feel it. I suspect
that my hair is intercepting the ion flow in the air around the VDG and
becoming charged, then being moved by e-fields. When I first present my
arm to the VDG sphere while sparks occur, I barely feel the pulses, but
after about 5 seconds the feeling grows strong. Probably the uncharged
hair barely responds, but once the hair becomes charged, it wiggles far
more when the e-fields change. This "feather impact" effect is not
present behind the grounded cardboard panel. Using my arm-hair as a
detector, no "beams" of hair-pulsing can be felt there, or in the
region greater than 3ft away from the VDG sphere.
To sum up: I see no major difference between this setup and a simple
100KV sphere-pair with sparks jumping between. There are various EM
and ion pulse effects, but these occur just as I'd predict: in a roughly
spherical region around the device, and there are no easily detected
"beams" extending outwards. The original Morton diagram doesn't work
as shown, since the sparks ignore the tube and leap through the air (I
had to partly cover the metal that faces the VDG sphere with plastic
to force sparks to go through the tube.)
The German replication in ESJ #6 talks about the "beams" and even
claims that moving the position of the grounding clip causes the
"beam" to propagate from the opposite side of their device. And
if Podkletnov's device is an independant discovery, his description
of narrow beams suggests that he has stumbled across a similar
phenomenon.
So, are their claims a network of delusions, or is my setup too
unlike the original to be a fair replication?
This brings up the "Experimenter's Regress" mentioned by Collins
and Pinch: when investigating totally unexplored regions of
physics, you cannot tell if your replication is flawed because
you don't have any solid theoretical predictions, and also you
can't start building a theory based on experimental results which
are suspicious. Feynman mentions this in regards to Kelvin's
error in measuring e, and the slow change in the accepted value
for e caused by researcher's unwillingness to question the
initial results.
If theories were only based on experiment, there'd be no
difficulty, but the need for replication and more importantly
the need for CONCENSUS AGREEMENT as to the trustworthyness of
experimental results can cause problems of circular reasoning.
Remember Jefferson's quote: "I'd sooner believe that two yankee
professors had lied, than to believe that rocks could fall from
the sky." The existance of meteors conflicted with the current
knowledge of the time, so for decades they rejected the evidence.
Morton's and Podkletnov's observations seem to conflict with
contemporary physics, so do we look for flaws in physics, or in
the experiment? People who say that theory is based on
experimental evidence have not encountered situations where
experimental evidence is resisted for long periods because it
conflicts with theory!
Jan Panteltje
(William J. Beaty) wrote in <2251b4e6.01081...@posting.google.com>:
>
>Using the suspended fluorescent tube to explore the region on the
>opposite side of the sphere in line with the sparking does not
>reveal any hotspots there either.
the direction to be in the direction (precisely) of the spark.
How high do yo uestimate your volatge (Pod's was 1 to 2 M Volt)
Did you try the ping pong ball?
>The German replication in ESJ #6 talks about the "beams" and even
>claims that moving the position of the grounding clip causes the
>"beam" to propagate from the opposite side of their device. And
>if Podkletnov's device is an independant discovery, his description
>of narrow beams suggests that he has stumbled across a similar
>phenomenon.
>
>So, are their claims a network of delusions, or is my setup too
>unlike the original to be a fair replication?
Voltage?
>
>This brings up the "Experimenter's Regress" mentioned by Collins
>and Pinch: when investigating totally unexplored regions of
>physics, you cannot tell if your replication is flawed because
>you don't have any solid theoretical predictions, and also you
Yes, true.
On the other hand what we see (measure) is true for this setup.
Maybe give it some more try?
If no go, no go.
Would be nice to have some propulsion method that does not require you
to bring reaction mass along.
Regards
Jan
Richard Herring
> "Jim Jastrzebski" <Jim...@aol.com> wrote in message
> news:3B742B4A...@aol.com...
> >
> > What is the "mysterious" part? Why do you call it
> > "gravity-like pulse"? Do you call any force directed "up"
> > or "down" a "gravity-like force"? By this definition the
> > force of your muscles is a "gravity-like force" but most
> > people wouldn't call it so, especially wouldn't apply
> > relativity to explain it (just trying to make sense of your
> > terminology).
> 'Gravity like' in that it apparently affects mass over macroscopic distance
> and doesn't show obvious electromagnetic properties.
And also that the acceleration is independent of the mass. That's a
sign of (a) the equivalence principle at work, or (b) a wobbly bench.
Take your pick.
--
Richard Herring | <richard...@baesystems.com>
ralph sansbury
> > OK, I repaired my VDG, then spent a couple of hours and
> > performed a crude test. I can't get the sparks to follow
>
> I finally managed to duplicate something vaguely similar to Morton's
> VandeGraaff test. No significant "beams" were emitted from the ends.
> Rats!
It may be that the vague difference between Morton's experiment involving
a spark moving in air and this experiment involving a spark moving in a
plastic tube and not in a less jagged line in air is as you say a crucial
difference.
Did you measure the pushing or pulling effect on a non magnetic material
at a
distance of the spark discharge current? Was the line of current in a north
south direction?
According to various other experiments and analysis, the magnetic force
is due
in some instances to charge polarization inside atomic nuclei transverse to
the motion
of the nuclei and so in the north south and radial direction of the
spinning earth etc..
In the case of current carrying wires or currents in air etc, the force
of the
voltage difference causing the movement of free electrons and influences on
the more stationary and heavier atomic nuclei, transverse dipoles are
produced
in these nuclei and free electrons transverse to the voltage difference. And
these
dipoles are in addition to those smaller ones associated with the motions of
the spinning
orbiting planet and common to all of the matter on the planet.
Hence one would expect a force between a large current that is properly
oriented
and non magnetic matter. The dipoles in the non magnetic matter are much
smaller than
those in the nuclei and free electrons of the large current. But if the
current is large enough
and such that the dipoles are attractively or repellingly oriented relative
to the non magnetic
matter being influenced, then the effect would be noticeable.
see http://www.bestweb.net/~sansbury/book01.pdf (this takes 2 min to
download with a 56kmodem)
William J. Beaty
> Dirk Bruere (art...@kbnet.co.uk) wrote:
> > 'Gravity like' in that it apparently affects mass over macroscopic distance
> > and doesn't show obvious electromagnetic properties.
>
> And also that the acceleration is independent of the mass. That's a
> sign of (a) the equivalence principle at work, or (b) a wobbly bench.
> Take your pick.
Read his paper carefully: the pendulum deflections are several
inches, and he says that the strength of the "beam" isn't
diminished 150 meters away. It's hard to see how that sort of
thing could be a mistake. The effects he reports seem so robust
that it excludes any "pathological science" situation. Either
its all a blatant lie, or he's got hold of the tail of the next
physics revolution.
As for my own crude tests, I saw no deflection in a piece of
plastic hanging by a thread. However, if the "effect" is
supposed to be a narrow beam which extends from the end of
the spark, then chances are that the beam never touched the
plastic, since the sparks never strike in the same spot twice.
Using metal objects to trigger the spark ends up vastly
decreasing the voltage (which is already pretty low, it being
humid here.)
Also, I heard that the ground connection is supposed to be
made at the edge of the hole in the metal plate. I had
mine connected at the far edge of the plate, so the metal
clip lead would be away from the high-field region.
More testing required... after I build up some ambition again!
Jan Panteltje
(William J. Beaty) wrote in <2251b4e6.01081...@posting.google.com>:
Beautiful, I wish you lots of success.
Yes the plastic on a thread, well, at least you seriously tried!
Somehow I find it hard to believe that he makes it all up too, what is there to
gain?
I have been thinking about 2 mega volt.
With 1 inch for 25 kV that would be 80 inch or 2 meters!!
Not an indoor thing perhaps :-)
And I was thinking about tesla coils..., well AC.
Maybe you could email Pod (epodk...@hotmail.com) and tell him you have a
vd Graaf..
Maybe he will want to say what it did without< the superconductor.
Because there are a few other things i do not understand.
If he kept the arc in a cooled gass, then the ignition voltage would IMO be
much lower then 2 MV (maybe some expert can fill me in here, what volatge
would be required to ignite liquid helium at 40 kelvin.
Also I have been looking but cannot find any 100kV 22nF caps.....
So it seems the vd Graaf is our only hope :-)
So, just thinking .....
It is facinating, if it worked it would be nice..., fanstastic even!
Richard Perry
My take is that the arc generates a short-lived very concentrated area
of charge on the plate and the source surface, creating a very intense
electric dipole configuration. The intensity of the electric field at
points distant will be higher in magnitude along the axis of the dipole.
The very brief duration of the inductive field generated will be
proportional to the mass of the object (No time allowed for electron
drift in the material).
Richard Perry
Richard Perry
Maybe I should clarify this brief reply a little.
For a given point mass (insulator), the force of electrostatic
induction by a remote point charge is proportional to the mass of the
insulator, (Consider that the only difference between two equal masses,
and one mass of twice the magnitude, is the degree of separation of the
halves) although the force will vary for equal masses of differing
materials.
In the case of a conductor, electrons will be displaced within the
material and the resultant force on the mass will become a function not
only of the electric field exerted by the source charge, but also of the
geometrical properties of the conductive mass. OTOH if the conductive
point mass is exposed to the inductive field for a brief enough time
period, then the electrons will undergo only a slight displacement
within the material, and for this brief period the conductor will behave
as an insulator WRT the field.
These ideas are drawn directly from my work in this area, and I have
been mulling over the possibility of effects just such as this for some
time now. However I believe that the theory being presented by these
researchers as the cause of this effect is nothing more than
gobbledygook.
--
Richard Perry
A Galilean Electromagnetic Synthesis
Http://www.cswnet.com/~rper
William J. Beaty
> Somehow I find it hard to believe that he makes it
> all up too, what is there to gain?
Exactly. My goal was to argue against this being a
misperception, such as N-rays. If he can knock a pendulum
horizontally several cm when at 150M distance from the device,
that's not down in the measurement noise as is typical
pathological science.
Could this be a nonlinear wave which depends upon air, like
the RF version of optical solitons?. Then the wave wouldn't
spread. And it might APPARANTLY penetrate metal plates by
diffracting around them.
To me the "150 meters" without diminished effect is his most
fascinating claim. It would be nice to see his plot of
his pendulum deflections versus distance.
> If he kept the arc in a cooled gass, then the ignition voltage
> would IMO be much lower then 2 MV (maybe some expert can fill
> me in here, what volatge would be required to ignite liquid
> helium at 40 kelvin.
I think the cryo liquid was inside the electrode. But
yes, if the best results were with helium in the chamber,
the breakdown voltage would be much lower than in air.
Pressurized dry nitrogen is pretty good for high volts.
While messing around with the VandeGraaff, I found that major
uA leakage was vertically along the support column, and this
vanishes when it is warmed with a hair dryer. I'm getting
much bigger sparks now without lowering the humidity. Also I
commonly see what Podkletnov describes in his paper: sparks
which have a bright line-like section about 3cm long, followed by
a section where several purple lines extend radially perpendicular
from the tip of the bright section, then curve around over a few
cm to follow the original direction before meeting the Al foil
sheet. Very weird. This is like 19th century experimentation,
with Faraday dark spaces and mysterious plasma striations.
William J. Beaty
> Richard Perry wrote:
> > My take is that the arc generates a short-lived very concentrated area
> > of charge on the plate and the source surface, creating a very intense
> > electric dipole configuration. The intensity of the electric field at
> > points distant will be higher in magnitude along the axis of the dipole.
> > The very brief duration of the inductive field generated will be
> > proportional to the mass of the object (No time allowed for electron
> > drift in the material).
Wouldn't your effect have an "antenna pattern" of a dipole?
An RF beam 150M long with a profile a few cm in diameter...
to me that implies sub-mm wavelengths. Hey, the growing tip
of a VandeGraaff spark might be able to launch a sub-mm microwave
pulse. But the pulse would then spread like that from a dipole
emitter. I think.
> These ideas are drawn directly from my work in this area, and I have
> been mulling over the possibility of effects just such as this for some
> time now.
I thought such things only happened above resonance, which
is up in the hard UV frequencies (at least it is for glass,
as I recall.)
> However I believe that the theory being presented by these
> researchers as the cause of this effect is nothing more than
> gobbledygook.
LOL! Ever it was thus:
Every cold empirick, when his heart is expanded by a successful
experiment, swells into a theorist.
-- Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
Preface to Shakespeare
Nemesis
bi...@eskimo.com (William J. Beaty) wrote:
>To me the "150 meters" without diminished effect is his most
>fascinating claim. It would be nice to see his plot of
>his pendulum deflections versus distance.
If Podkletnov can perform the experiment at 150 meters, how much
harder would it be to go for a distance of one or more kilometers? If
the effect is still detected a kilometer away, that would silence most
critics' objection that the effect is due to stray magnetic fields or
ferrous contaminants in the materials. Furthermore, I'd say we have a
major new phenomenon on our hands and many a sacred cow on the
sacrificial pyre.
Nemesis
Nasty Little Truth About Spacetime Physics:
http://home1.gte.net/res02khr/crackpots/notorious.htm
ralph sansbury
Sounds good and I hope you can get the same result that Podkletnov got.
When you do the test, I wish you would try to do it with the orientation of
the arc current in the north south direction perpendicular to the line to
the piece of plastic suspended on a thread. Then in the east west direction.
Maybe you will find the orientation of the arc current is not important
but maybe it makes all the difference. Anyway it is a simple enough thing to
test.
Ralph Sansbury
http://www.bestweb.net/~sansbury/book01.pdf
Richard Perry
"William J. Beaty" wrote:
>
> Richard Perry <rp...@nocswnetspam.com> wrote in message news:<3B7C7F9B...@nocswnetspam.com>...
> > Richard Perry wrote:
> > > My take is that the arc generates a short-lived very concentrated area
> > > of charge on the plate and the source surface, creating a very intense
> > > electric dipole configuration. The intensity of the electric field at
> > > points distant will be higher in magnitude along the axis of the dipole.
> > > The very brief duration of the inductive field generated will be
> > > proportional to the mass of the object (No time allowed for electron
> > > drift in the material).
>
> Wouldn't your effect have an "antenna pattern" of a dipole?
> An RF beam 150M long with a profile a few cm in diameter...
> to me that implies sub-mm wavelengths. Hey, the growing tip
> of a VandeGraaff spark might be able to launch a sub-mm microwave
> pulse. But the pulse would then spread like that from a dipole
> emitter. I think.
Yes it would. But given the nature of their paper, I'll venture a guess
that the facts were not reported correctly. In any case, a very
directional effect could be generated by the apparatus. The surfaces and
the distribution of charges and currents could align to form an
approximation of a parabolic antenna. We might be looking at an EMP
maser.
Now I'm going to branch out a little. For any dipole antenna there is
associated a surrounding capacitance, caused by objects in the path of
the emitted wave. Now if the wave propagates at c, and if information
can propagate at no greater than c, then it is impossible for the
antenna to have a previous knowledge of those objects in its radiating
field. How then does the transmitter know how much power to send to the
antenna initially? Although I've heard discussions on this, I would like
to present another possibility: The impedance of the antenna alone
determines the initial power, and the initial field is conveyed
"instantly" to the surrounding objects. Subsequent antenna oscillations
are then regulated by the return signal reflected off those objects.
I.e. the initial wave front is superluminal. As such it will "seem" to
pass right through any type of material unimpeded, as supposedly
observed in this experiment. Moreover the initial force on those objects
will be proportional to their mass, as stated, and as postulated by me.
As a supporting argument for this theory, I will refer you to Maxwell's
original conceptions of em wave generation, and to the relatively recent
advent of the pulsed laser scanner (not sure of its correct name).
A pulsed laser will pass through parts of the body without diffusion.
The theory used to explain this observation is that there isn't enough
time for reflections off of surrounding tissue to interfere with the
incoming beam. While this sounds good, I suppose they meant that there
was a delay in the "light pollution" caused by the diffusion that makes
its way to the same photographic plate.
In any event, it would seem that this effect strongly supports the
theory that I posited above, i.e. that the initial pulse is
superluminal. If this is so, then dampening caused by feedback is the
cause of the limiting velocity observed after the initial pulse.
William J. Beaty
> "William J. Beaty" wrote:
> > Wouldn't your effect have an "antenna pattern" of a dipole?
> > An RF beam 150M long with a profile a few cm in diameter...
> > to me that implies sub-mm wavelengths. Hey, the growing tip
> > of a VandeGraaff spark might be able to launch a sub-mm microwave
> > pulse. But the pulse would then spread like that from a dipole
> > emitter. I think.
>
> Yes it would. But given the nature of their paper, I'll venture a guess
> that the facts were not reported correctly. In any case, a very
> directional effect could be generated by the apparatus. The surfaces and
> the distribution of charges and currents could align to form an
> approximation of a parabolic antenna. We might be looking at an EMP
> maser.
This sounds like Les Hale's "polarization waves." (He's Emeritus
from Penn State). He's been saying that intense e-field waves can
penetrate deeply into good conductors in apparant violation of skin
depth. As I understand it, the sudden change in e-field intensity
perpendicular to a conductor causes surface electrons to respond,
which then cause deeper electrons to respond, etc., and a transient
continues inwards through the metal. If the e-field doing this was
part of a conventional far-field EM wave, it would obey the skin
depth equation, but since it's a nearfield field, maybe a quasi-
static e-field can do things that a normal EM wave cannot.
Imagine a capacitor made from a long rod of PZT or BaTi, with small
plates fastened to the ends. If a large voltage is suddenly applied
to the plate at one end of the rod, an intense "polarization wave"
should propagate along the ferroelectric rod. If I understand Hale
correctly, he's implying that, if this rod was placed against a metal
block, the polarization wave would continue right through the metal.
It's a longitudinal effect in matter, more like a sort of electrostatic
acoustic wave than an EM wave.
If he's right, then it should be possible to flash a neon tube while
it's buried within a thick block of copper. Now wouldn't THAT be
cool?
On the other hand, he has an article in the hobbyist pub. Electric
Spacecraft Journal where he says that something called an "FDTD"
EM simulator is wrong, and perhaps airliners and military
EMP-hardened equipment are very vulnerable to lightning strikes,
even though they would be well shielded against conventional
EM waves. We don't want lightning transients to end up doing bad
things in nuclear missle silo control rooms! Being deeply buried
and having lots of shielding wouldn't stop these electrostatic
waves.
Hey, as long as we're on a crackpot topic: ball lightning is
commonly reported as appearing inside airplanes after a lightning
strike. This isn't easy to explain, since the lightning currents
would stay on the outer metal skin. If metal acted as a dielectric
where fast-changing e-fields were concerned, then lightning strike
transients which pass right through an aircraft hull wouldn't
be forbidden.
> determines the initial power, and the initial field is conveyed
> "instantly" to the surrounding objects. Subsequent antenna oscillations
> are then regulated by the return signal reflected off those objects.
> I.e. the initial wave front is superluminal.
Why superluminal? If it moved at c, nearby objects would still be
unable to "report back" to the antenna during the initial transient.
> As such it will "seem" to
> pass right through any type of material unimpeded, as supposedly
> observed in this experiment. Moreover the initial force on those objects
> will be proportional to their mass, as stated, and as postulated by me.
So it'd be like the changing attraction force of a dielectric exposed
to a transient in a non-uniform field? But why would the force go as
the mass, rather than as the dielectric constant? A charged metal
sphere pulls much harder upon a block of barium titanate than upon a
block of polyethelene. Why would permittivity be ignored during
a transient?
> As a supporting argument for this theory, I will refer you to Maxwell's
> original conceptions of em wave generation, and to the relatively recent
> advent of the pulsed laser scanner (not sure of its correct name).
> A pulsed laser will pass through parts of the body without diffusion.
That's the one where some of the photons travel all the way through
the object at velocity c, rather than at the speed determined by the
optical index of the material. I don't think this has a direct
connection to these "nearfield electrostatic waves" which have
field lines parallel to the direction of propagation.
Richard Perry
Well like I said, the electrons will not respond fast enough to counter
the field on the other side of the plate (due to their momentum). And I
think you'll find that some leakage occurs even given farfield waves if
you want to count pennies.
>
> Imagine a capacitor made from a long rod of PZT or BaTi, with small
> plates fastened to the ends. If a large voltage is suddenly applied
> to the plate at one end of the rod, an intense "polarization wave"
> should propagate along the ferroelectric rod. If I understand Hale
> correctly, he's implying that, if this rod was placed against a metal
> block, the polarization wave would continue right through the metal.
> It's a longitudinal effect in matter, more like a sort of electrostatic
> acoustic wave than an EM wave.
>
> If he's right, then it should be possible to flash a neon tube while
> it's buried within a thick block of copper. Now wouldn't THAT be
> cool?
Interesting. I was unaware that this effect had already been postulated.
I'll have to do some digging.
>
> On the other hand, he has an article in the hobbyist pub. Electric
> Spacecraft Journal where he says that something called an "FDTD"
> EM simulator is wrong, and perhaps airliners and military
> EMP-hardened equipment are very vulnerable to lightning strikes,
> even though they would be well shielded against conventional
> EM waves. We don't want lightning transients to end up doing bad
> things in nuclear missle silo control rooms! Being deeply buried
> and having lots of shielding wouldn't stop these electrostatic
> waves.
>
> Hey, as long as we're on a crackpot topic: ball lightning is
> commonly reported as appearing inside airplanes after a lightning
> strike. This isn't easy to explain, since the lightning currents
> would stay on the outer metal skin. If metal acted as a dielectric
> where fast-changing e-fields were concerned, then lightning strike
> transients which pass right through an aircraft hull wouldn't
> be forbidden.
Good point.
> > determines the initial power, and the initial field is conveyed
> > "instantly" to the surrounding objects. Subsequent antenna oscillations
> > are then regulated by the return signal reflected off those objects.
> > I.e. the initial wave front is superluminal.
>
> Why superluminal? If it moved at c, nearby objects would still be
> unable to "report back" to the antenna during the initial transient.
Another good point, but I threw it in because I believe it to be true.
>
> > As such it will "seem" to
> > pass right through any type of material unimpeded, as supposedly
> > observed in this experiment. Moreover the initial force on those objects
> > will be proportional to their mass, as stated, and as postulated by me.
>
> So it'd be like the changing attraction force of a dielectric exposed
> to a transient in a non-uniform field? But why would the force go as
> the mass, rather than as the dielectric constant?
Clarification: Proportional to the mass of a "given material". I believe
that I stated the same earlier.
A charged metal
> sphere pulls much harder upon a block of barium titanate than upon a
> block of polyethelene. Why would permittivity be ignored during
> a transient?
Not totally ignored. A real duration of the event must occur in order to
impart energy to the pendulum, but as the transient time is reduced
permittivity should tend to unity for all materials.
>
> > As a supporting argument for this theory, I will refer you to Maxwell's
> > original conceptions of em wave generation, and to the relatively recent
> > advent of the pulsed laser scanner (not sure of its correct name).
> > A pulsed laser will pass through parts of the body without diffusion.
>
> That's the one where some of the photons travel all the way through
> the object at velocity c, rather than at the speed determined by the
> optical index of the material. I don't think this has a direct
> connection to these "nearfield electrostatic waves" which have
> field lines parallel to the direction of propagation.
>
> ((((((((((((((((((( ( ( ( ( (O) ) ) ) ) )))))))))))))))))))
> William J. Beaty SCIENCE HOBBYIST website
> bi...@eskimo.com http://amasci.com
> EE/programmer/sci-exhibits science projects, tesla, weird science
> Seattle, WA 206-789-0775 sciclub-list freenrg-L vortex-L webhead-L
--
ralph sansbury
"Dirk Bruere" <art...@kbnet.co.uk> wrote in message
news:uZ_c7.16395$tq.17...@news6-win.server.ntlworld.com...
>
> "William J. Beaty" <bi...@eskimo.com> wrote in message
> news:2251b4e6.01081...@posting.google.com...
> > > > it's supposed to work without superconductors, replication
> > > > should be almost trivial.
> > >
> However, a VDG a bit of glass tubing and a spark is incredibly simple.
> Someone here *must* have access to such.
>
> I want someone with no previous fringe science connections and no axe to
> grind have a go.
> I suppose if nothing happens here I'll buy a VDG and try it.
> I performed a variation of the Woodward device expt and detected nothing,
> and that was far more complex (and plausible).
>
> > named Klaus Schlecht at the University of Karlsruhe in
> > Germany says its real. Each built a different sort of
> > device, but all had the high-volt discharge path and
> > all described a narrow "beam" of something that could move
> > bits of paper and pass through various shields.
>
> Can you point me to references please?
> Preferably with full scientific reports rather than something written up
in
> anecdote form.
>
> > The trouble with fringe experiments is, if you try to
> > replicate and you get zero results, you don't know if its
> > because you set something up wrong. To debunk it, you
> > have to achive something like the same phenomenon, then
> > see if it has an obvious explanation. That's what happened
>
> Yet if the reported phenomenon was total bullshit by a publicity seeking
> psycho, conman or the deluded nobody will ever replicate anything because
> there's nothing to explain.
I have seen the paper on Beaty's site and I have seen similar things
done by Graneau at MIT in the 80s and if you go to these sites you can see
some of the scientific reports.
One explanation that seemed to work was that electrostatic dipoles
transverse to electric currents produced the magnetic effect of currents and
that these dipoles could interact with dipoles somehow existing in materials
that were not conductive or magnetic.
Electrostatic dipoles could be produced in all of the atoms of the
earth transverse to their spinning and orbiting etc motions which means that
there are longitudinal and radial dipoles in all of the earth's atomic
nuclei of about 10^-18 meters (see gravity chapter in
http://www.bestweb.net/~sansbury/book01.pdf)
So in the Morton and Podkletnov etc experiments the force in newtons is
9(10^9)[(Mri/c)](Nre10^-18) which means M and N and i have
to be fairly large.
If 1.21kg/m^3 is density of air where the arc current is and there are
6(10^26) molecules of O2 plus N2 in a volume of mass of 30kg then this
volume would be almost 30 m^3 so in a m^3 volume there would be 1.21/30 =.04
times 6(10^26)=2.4(10^25) molecules in the cylinder of air of 10^-5 sq
meters cross section times a half meter about or 10^-6 cu meters volume so
M=10^19 about.
Assuming each one of these has a dipole moment of ri/c there would be
about M=10^19 dipoles moments of
(r)(10^3)/(10^8) =10^-5 so if r=1 meter then the factor in braces is about
10^14
If we assume M=10^21 for the molecules in the piece of paper on the
pendulum and take into account the downward force on the rising pendulum
etc we would get a fairly noticeable force eg 10^-2 newtons or more.
ralph sansbury
VandeGraff high voltage generator to ground or a superconductor is
that they produce a movment of a non magnetic non conductive material
on a pendulum placed along a line colinear with the high currents and
shielded from them by dielectric and conductive materials.
Richard Perry
ralph sansbury wrote:
>
> The Podketnov and Morton effect of a high current in an arc from
> VandeGraff high voltage generator to ground or a superconductor is
> that they produce a movment of a non magnetic non conductive material
> on a pendulum placed along a line colinear with the high currents and
> shielded from them by dielectric and conductive materials.
I thought that much was already covered??
The real problem then seems to be the projection of the field "through"
the shielding. The question is "why should the shields work?" If the
source current were parallel to the shield then currents would be
induced within the shielding material that produced a field that opposed
the source field at points distant, but in the case of the electrostatic
field of the dipole no such impeding currents will be generated in the
shields. The field will then expand unimpeded through all material.. to
an extent. There will be a magnetic field generated that expands
orthagonally to the direction of motion of the electrostatic field, but
it will not arrive at the pendulum until some time after the
electrostatic field, since it travels via reflections while the
electrostatic field advances in strait line fashion.
So if the transient is of small duration then electrostatic induction
will be in effect for any and all objects along the path of the
electrostatic field, which is directed along the dipole axis. This
inductive event does not require that matter be composed of atomic
dipoles; they will be produced by the electrostatic field impinging on
them. The energy transferred to the pendulum will be roughly
proportional to the mass of the suspended object, "for any given type of
material".
Richard Perry
A Galilean Invariant Electromagnetic Synthesis
Http://www.cswnet.com/~rper
ralph sansbury
> ralph sansbury wrote:
> >
> > The Podketnov and Morton effect of a high current in an arc from
> > VandeGraff high voltage generator to ground or a superconductor is
> > that they produce a movment of a non magnetic non conductive material
> > on a pendulum placed along a line colinear with the high currents and
> > shielded from them by dielectric and conductive materials.
>
> I thought that much was already covered??
> The real problem then seems to be the projection of the field "through"
> the shielding. The question is "why should the shields work?"
the atomic nuclei and inside the free electrons of the current
carrying solid or gas etc, these dipoles exert a force on the
longitudinal electrostatic dipoles inside the atomic nuclei of
dielectric shields and conductive shields and inside the free
electrons of the conductive shields. But these shields unlike the bit
of paper on a pendulum that is free to move with the pendulum, do not
move as noticeably as the pendulum and paper.
The formula then for the force in all these cases is as stated above
and quoted here below:
Vittorio
ralph sansbury <sans...@bestweb.net> wrote in message
news:aca0c2cc.01082...@posting.google.com...
Richard Perry
I see your point now.
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