The Saga of Antigravity

Who will be the first to unlock the next breakthrough technology in propulsion?

Image by StockSnap from Pixabay

If there's one thing that great powers have always sought to acquire at any price, it's disruptive vectors of military power. Russia, China and India have developed hypersonic weapons of varying degrees of maneuverability, impossible to intercept. Iran and North Korea are also working on their development. This global competition, which is also economic, was very well described by Alain Juillet, former director of the DGSE (French acronym for Directorate General of External Security), who mentioned the existence of materials or technology enabling interaction with gravity. It is clear that any potential recovery, even partial, of fragments or technology from UAP, due to their extraordinary performance, could lead to significant progress in the military field. 

Those interested in the subject are therefore not surprised by the existence, alleged by US whistleblower David Grusch, of a UFO wreckage or fragment recovery program covering a large part of the planet for over 60 years. The weaknesses of the latest Russian fighters recovered by the USA are a case in point. Of course, this military research is conducted in absolute secrecy.

What about freely accessible sources? In the civilian sector, there is a great deal of research into antigravity. It's the holy grail that would enable us to travel to the stars. It is interesting to take a look at some of the scientific theories - alternatives to the standard model - that could make this possible. Recounting the various twists and turns, including attempts to develop a means of propulsion without mass ejection, proves fascinating and at times highly entertaining.

Suspicious lab smoke

In 1992, Eugène Podkletnov at the University of Tampere (Finland) was studying the properties of a superconducting ceramic disk (YBA2Cu3O7) cooled to less than 77 kelvin by liquid nitrogen. He deduced that the mass of objects above the disk systematically lightened by up to 2% of their weight when its rotation speed was high, on the order of 5,000 rpm. But his paper, due to be published in the Journal of Physics in 1996, was withdrawn, and the university immediately cut off his funding. 

Some, however, see this as the real relevance of his study and a conspiracy of silence on a major discovery, given its possible military implications. For others, it illustrates the reaction of the scientific reading committee to an experiment that was insufficiently substantiated and, above all, probably incorrect. Finally, physicists' attempts to reproduce convincing results on devices similar to Podkletnov's have all been in vain, and often come up against the physical breakage of rapidly rotating ceramics during the experiment.

Image by Willi Heidelbach from Pixabay

Attempts at theoretical explanations

Martin Tajmar also claimed in 2006 to have succeeded in detecting a gravitational effect from a rotating superconductor, proportional to the acceleration of its rotation. Here we can see his talk from the "Breakthrough propulsion program at TU Dresden" in 2016, where he talks about negative-mass photons, and around the 16 minute mark, positive or negative inertial reaction of neutrons in a crystal, observed in the Geneva particle accelerator. He defends the idea of a possible connection between electromagnetism and gravitation under certain conditions.

The German physicist Burkhard Heim developed the Heim theory, according to which gravitation, electromagnetism, the strong interaction and the weak interaction are all the expression of a distortion in the space-time continuum. According to him, the very high-speed rotation of a magnetic field distorts space in the opposite way to gravitation, and would have the effect of diminishing the space-time curvature of the gravitation surrounding the rotating field. This exotic theory has received no scientific consensus, and implies that the rapid rotation of massive black holes somehow ends up tearing apart our standard space-time.

Between 1991 and 1995, Ning Li of the University of Alabama in Huntsville developed a theory whereby ion rotation would generate gravitomagnetic and gravitoelectric fields in a superconductor, if a sufficient number of ions could be magnetically aligned. Li and his team claimed to have built an operational prototype generating a field called "AC Gravity". But in 1997, Li published a paper acknowledging that the effect was very weak, if not non-existent. All research ceased after 2002, and Ning Li passed away in 2021.

EMdrive: a compass that confused many? 

In 2001, a British aeronautical engineer, Roger Shawyer, designed the EMdrive (Electromagnetic or Quantum drive) based on a magnetron identical to that used in microwave ovens, which would produce thrust without using fuel, and above all without requiring mass ejection. Scientists considered Emdrive impossible, as it did not respect the principle of conservation of motion. Indeed, Martin Tajmar concluded in his own study that it was no more than a compass reacting to the Earth's magnetic field. In November 2023, a solar-powered EMdrive was put into orbit, and should dispel any remaining doubts on the subject in 2024, when precise data on its trajectory variation will have been collected.

Mike McCulloch: when quantized inertia attempts to eliminate dark matter....

Back in 2007, Scottish physicist Mike McCulloch proposed an alternative theory to the classical model, called Quantized inertia or MiHsC (Modified Inertia from a Hubble-scale Casimir effect). According to traditional physics, it's impossible to travel to the stars in the course of a human lifetime, as this requires an enormous amount of energy, probably unavailable on Earth or in deep space. 

The theory of quantized inertia argues that mass inertia is linked to an event horizon phenomenon, itself limited by the propagation of the speed of light. 

When an object accelerates strongly in one direction, a similar event is created, called the Rindler horizon, and anything beyond this virtual horizon is no longer part of the observable universe. 

This horizon has properties identical to those of black holes that cause Hawking radiation. It is therefore likely to create identical radiation, known as Unruh radiation. The theory of quantized inertia postulates that it is these radiations that are responsible for the inertia of bodies, as this Rindler horizon expands in the direction of acceleration and contracts behind it. As a result, there is more Unruh radiation pressure coming from the front than from the back of the object, which slows down its acceleration, thus leading, in this theory, to the observed effect of inertia.

Several observations seem to contradict the classical Lambda-CDM theory, but agree with that of quantized inertia: the expansion of the universe would no longer require the enigmatic dark matter supplemented by dark energy, and the rotation speed of galaxies would no longer pose a problem. Furthermore, the characteristics of globular clusters cannot be explained by dark matter, nor can the behavior of binary stars separated by more than 0.11 light-years. MiHsC, like MOND theory, provides satisfactory answers to the question of the measured rotation speed of galaxies. 

MiHsC also helps to explain the theoretical functioning of the EMdrive sent into orbit, at least if propulsion is indeed confirmed. On Monday November 13, 2023, Rogue Space Systems confirmed contact with its Barry-1 satellite hosting its EMdrive. Mike McCulloch has developed his own propulsion solution, which would theoretically enable a journey to the star Alpha Centauri in just 12 years. In 2018, he received $1.3 million in funding from DARPA to test his "horizon drive" and claims to achieve, without any mass ejection, 0.08 newtons of thrust per kilowatt. His solution would therefore be more efficient than ion thrusters. All his research since 2007 is available on his website.  

Jean-Pierre Petit's work on the Janus model, derived in part from the Russian Andrei Sakharov's work on antimatter, is also interesting, as it includes numerous observational verifications. Janus postulates the existence of a Gemini Universe, through which very rapid space travel would be made possible thanks to a much higher speed of light, and shorter distances in the metric of this Universe. 

Among the 19 observational confirmations of the Janus model are the lacunar structure of the Universe on a large scale, the confinement of galaxies and their overspeed at the periphery, the existence of a dipole repeller, the high velocity of star clusters, the acceleration of the expansion of the Universe, the rate of fluctuation of the cosmological background, the absence of detection of the enigmatic dark matter or of dark energy. 

Although the Janus theory is highly controversial, Sabine Hossenfelder and Thibault Damour have worked on variants of the bimetric universe model, and British quantum physicist Julian Barbour also supports the thesis of twin Sakharov universes with inverted time arrows.

Around 2000, NASA's "Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Program" assessed the feasibility of a number of new alternative propulsion methods considered to be credible, including Alcubierre propulsion, designed by physicist Miguel Alcubierre, which involves surfing on a wave of space-time deformation, theoretically enabling speeds greater than the speed of light. The extraction of the energy contained in fluctuations in the quantum vacuum (zero point energy) was also envisaged, as was the use of negative masses which, linked to a nearby positive mass, would both begin to accelerate permanently against all logical intuition. However, this promising program had to be halted in 2002 due to a lack of funds, following a government decision to restrict funding to NASA solely to technical achievements in the space sector.

Claude Poher, a space research and electronics engineer, and promoter of the GEPAN within the CNES (National Center for Space Studies), has been particularly involved in practical quantum gravitation research since his retirement, earning him a thank you letter from NASA. In 2010, his paper "Propelling phenomenon revealed by electric discharges into layered Y123 superconducting ceramics" was published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal EPJAP. He carried out numerous tests between 2007 and 2015, both with graphite materials at room temperature, and with superconducting YBCO materials at very low temperatures, which resulted in instantaneous thrusts ten times stronger, of the order of 160 to 180 grams. In his paper published in January 2022 by 3AF, he estimated the propulsive effect at 0.125 kg m/s for 1000 joules supplied as input by a capacitor charged to 3000 volts.  

But we're a long way from consensus: for example, Ray Fleming, who has denounced hundreds of inaccurate scientific theories, is highly skeptical about MiHsC, Alcubierre distortion, and gravity research. Of course, such cutting-edge research probably inherently contains biases, errors of measurement or interpretation, possible falsifications to attract private capital or public funding. Sometimes, they are no more than media hype to attract funding. However, in this field, if just one theory among thousands is correct, or if a new experiment proves relevant, humanity could take a great step forward. 

Image by Chil Vera from Pixabay

Anomalous Propulsion

All in all, whether in the field of theory, space propulsion or the understanding of gravity, science still has its work cut out for it. It's hard to imagine all the applications and achievements that civilizations much older than our own have already potentially been able to develop. Because of the technological gap between our human knowledge and theirs, they would be indistinguishable from magic. 

This is probably what is happening with UAP, which seem to display characteristics currently considered totally impossible. The ability to travel through very different media, such as atmosphere and water, without losing kinetic energy, as demonstrated a priori by the study of a UAP video. It presupposes a highly advanced mastery of quantum or physical phenomena that are as yet unknown. The SCU that carried out this analysis of data from an infrared camera showed that there was no water spray at the ocean entrance, and no heat transfer between the flying object and the liquid medium.

If such UFO characteristics are confirmed, the "nuts and bolts" hypothesis could turn out to be very incomplete, or even wrong, and the ufologists of the future could be in for quite a surprise! With this in mind, it is important to remember that, after a 50-year effort, SETI has not yet revealed the presence of extraterrestrial technostructures, and that the very high number of UFO reports, as well as their apparent great historical anteriority without civilizational contact, also pose a problem and raise questions. 

We can only hope that our science, and the funds allocated to it, will continue to progress, in a geopolitically stable world, free from world war or major climate disruption. And let's not forget that, in the very long term, such scientific progress could enable us to exploit new sources of energy and ensure the survival of the human species through the deployment of interstellar colonies. 

Our sun will not be stable forever, and the Earth will one day leave the habitable zone around its star, which means that disruptive technologies enabling space travel will one day be indispensable. In view of the gradual disappearance of fossil fuels and the major economic difficulties this implies, it would be wise to tackle this task without delay.

Translated from French by Guillaume Fournier Airaud

This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0