Scientists funded by the European Space Agency have measured the gravitational equivalent of a magnetic field for the first time in a laboratory. See
http://www.physorg.com/news12054.html

They call this effect the "Gravitomagnetic London Moment", which I believe is a follow on from Podkletnov's work.

This is not good news for General Relativity, because it doesn't allow for gravity to be produced by a machine.

And they are confident their results are genuine.

"We ran more than 250 experiments, improved the facility over 3 years and discussed the validity of the results for 8 months before making this announcement. Now we are confident about the measurement," says Tajmar.

Well, this is the gravitomagnetic force, not gravity. There is a difference between the two.

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Actually, general relativity does predict a gravitomagnetic effect. However, there is still some discrepancy, since the size of the effect they observed appears to be much larger than that predicted by relativity. Of course, it would be a good plan to wait for confirmation from other researchers, as well as exploring possible problems with their measurements or other effects that could be involved, before deciding that general relativity has been shown to be false. Still, a very interesting result!

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But....but....but....if we do that, then there wouldn't be much ATM interest in it, right?

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Neptune- The original Dark Matter.

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Why, if a machine has mass, then it produces it gravity according to GR. I know, I'm a smart-aleck.

I would also quibble with saying the gravitomagnetic force is different from "regular" gravity. It's similiar to separating the E and M from EM, and depends on your POV. <g> You can look at E and B as separate fields, or think of them as just one thing.

But GR gravity gets far more complex than EM, unfortunately. Einstein's Field Equation blows my mind. It looks simple in tensor notation, but I forget, but doesn't it have rank-4 tensor differential operators? Expand that out and you have a mess. No wonder Einstein's hair looked like it did.

You can "linearize" Einstein's equation in a certain way, and get something that looks like Maxwell's equations. That is we have a "gravitoelectric field", which is our familiar Newtonian gravity field, which we can call "g", the acceleration field. Then when get a "gravitomagnetic field", which is produced by moving mass and acts on moving mass, analogous to the magnetic field. And gravitational radiation is then predicted, just like EM waves. This is sometimes called "Maxwell-Einstein" equations, or "gravitoeletromagnetism", GEM

Interestingly, gravity is different because like mass signs attract rather than repel, and this carries over to the gravitomagnetic field, where "like currents" *repel* rather than attract. Or in terms of magnetic poles, ff we imagine a gravitmagnetic dipole produced by a mass current loop, then gravitomagnetic like poles attract and opposite poles repel. Gravitomagnetic "north" would attract another north pole and repel a south pole.

And you get a Lorentz-like expression,

g = g_e + v x g_b. "v x g_b" is the additional acceleration of a mass due to the gravitomagnetic component. (and there is some business about a factor of 2 or 4 that comes in from the full GR equations that gets tricky. Apply it blindly and you come up with the speed of gravity is 1/2 c in GEM. GR has g_b being 2 or 4 times as strong as GEM "wants" it to be to keep c_g equal to c and that has to be handled. Some put the 2 or 4 right in the Lorentz-like expression, which others wrap it up inside g_b)

All of that is a very interesting exercise, but not too good for the "real world", because the linearization to get the Maxwell-like GEM equations is not too accurate. The terms from the full GR equations you must drop and ignore are significant compared to the terms you must keep.

One way to express this is to consider the full GR field, "g" to consist of three components:

g_e + g_b + SM

g_e and g_b are the GEM components and SM is the "spatial metric" terms. It turns out that SM is generally larger than g_b, although it is possible to come up with contrived mass and mass current distributions that cancel SM while leaving g_b. I recall something about a rotating torroid of some sort.



-Richard

I distrust that this experiment is very similar my patent:

http://www.geocities.com/rolfguthman...nt/patent.html

See more details in the following Site:

http://www.geocities.com/rolfguthmann/

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This is a very important point that's been overlooked here. Can you explain what they use to measure this force? I'm assuming it isn't gravity pulling ome metal ball toward the device.

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ove

A set of acccelerometers. One far from the source (the reference), one inside the superconducting ring and one just above the rim of the ring.

See here:

Experimental Breakthrough or Misstep?

This is what seperates real science from psuedo-science...

(emphisis mine)

My questions: how scalable is the effect, and is it reversable? (i.e. is this the first step towards antigravity and "ships gravity?)

Or do I just misunderstand the whole thing?

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441!!!! :)

I was looking at this some more. The force they measured was actually a g-field created by "gravito-magnetic induction", the gravitational equivalent of Faraday's law, and measured by accelerometers. Such a g-field is non-conservative, non-zero curl ("solenoidal" to use the language of EM). This is indeed a very signficant experimental finding. This is truly an "artificial" g-field in a sense.

The EM analog of this is mutual induction or transformer effect. The accelerating superconducting ring created an increasing gravitomagnetic field. This time-varying gravitomagnetic field then induces a gravito-electric field (a g field). The lines of this induced g-field are little circles. At first blush, since we're so used to thinking of gravity as conservative, one might think a non-conservative g-field would violate conservation of energy or momentum. Not at all -- it works just the EM analog of transformers and mutal induction. If a test mass were accelerated by the solenoidal g-field, it would cause a counter force on the mass current distribution producing it. Energy would be transferred from the source of the gravitomagnetic field to the test mass. If we wished to keep accelerating the test mass, we would have to apply force to the source. It would work just an electrical generator.

We can think of this as a "GMF", "gravitomotive force". 10 points for what the units of GMF would be. <g> ..............................

velocity squared, same as conservative gravitational potential (per unit mass)

-Richard

Err.., just a guess here, but <g> in SI units should work out to be: Volts meter squared per second, or V m^2 s^-1.

... don't know if this fits into GMF(?), but gave it shot.

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Gene,

I'm sorry about my confusing "emoticons". My "<g>" didn't have anything to do with my 'g' for the acceleration field, but is a "syntax" for emoticons I picked up from years of participating in various Compuserve fora (which is unfortunately about dead -- with sadness, I dropped my Compuserve account a little over a year ago). Anyway, we didn't have any fancy graphics, just ASCII, and so brackets were used to denote emoticons. "<g>" means "grin".

It's old habit and I didn't realize readers might not understand the syntax.

Anyway, check your dimensions. The units of "GMF" would be velocity squared. This is energy per mass, as EMF and electric scalar potential is energy per charge.

-Richard

Yes, this is a relevant question because it has been suggested that this result may have implications related to quasar redshifts, which is about as big a scale change as one can imagine. Other questions about whether this is a reasonable suggestion include: Can quasars be considered superconductors? If so, are quasars spinning at sufficient rates to produce such an effect?

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I just read a interesting criticism of this experiment. The forces they were measuring may not be gravitomagnetic, but just plain magnetic. There is a question about their EM shielding of the accelerometers. The rotating superconductor has a magnetic moment, and the accelerometers are metal and, if there's any steel involved, ferromagnetic too. The accelerating superconductor would produce a time varying magnetic field, which would induce currents in metals, and that would produce (small) forces. Steel would experience direct magnetic forces.

The experimental group claims they had a "Faraday cage" mechanism for shielding their accelerometers but there is a question if it was adequate. It's hard to keep out a strong, relatively slowly varying magnetic field.

-Richard

Very interesting. Not to contradict but the experimenters seem very aware of this issue and claim that (page 6) the accelerometers are individually shielded from the EM fields (nothing to do with the Faraday cage that envelops the whole setup). Here is the link to their paper:

http://esamultimedia.esa.int/docs/gs..._Detection.pdf

Well, "grin" in this case has SI units too! Good joke.

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At the risk of congenial babbling on ATM, aren't smiles measured in watts?

Thanks for that link. Very interesting. I had to read it several times to get a mental picture of the setup in my mind, but I think I've got it. It also reminded me the Europeans use "rot = rotation" for curl. I saw "rot g" and wondered what that was for a second.

And yes, they did indeed test for magnetic effects on the accelerometers. They had a coil around the superconducting ring, and put an AC current through it to see the effects on the accelerometers. If I understood correctly, that did produce a signal on the accelerometers of around 10 micro-g. However, the purported acceleration due to the gravitomagnetic effect was around 100 micro-g, so that's a big difference.

And something else I didn't appreciate was this effect occurs in only certain types of superconductors, not all. They used a couple of high Tc superconductors which didn't show the effect at all, which agrees with whatever the "Tate effect" business is they were basing the effect on.

-Richard

I think that the Gravity Probe-B results are due shortly, let's see if they confirm the above results or not.

Sounds like a 'free' energy device to me . . . plop, plop, between hoofprints.

I'm not sure where "free energy" comes in. Myself, I'm just going to wait for confirmation - or not. On the face of it, this looks like a properly done experiment. They could have made mistakes, but I'm not going to assume that.

Even if real, it isn't clear what it would mean, though if real and they can't figure out the numbers they're getting, it could mean some hints to going beyond current theory.

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The results are a trillion times greater than the effects predicted by GR, so special is happening. The experimenters believe that the forces measured are caused by the gravitomagnetic effect. But I believe they are completely separate forces that happen to be produced by this device.

Do we have any proof that gravitational and magnetic forces are linked?

That's entirely possible. As some have suggested, they might even just be normal electromagnetic effects

When people talk about "gravitomagnetic" effects in this context, they don't mean an actual magnetic field. Rather, they mean something analogous to a magnetic field. That is, a changing electric field produces a magnetic field, and we'd expect a changing gravitational field to produce a field somewhat similar to a magnetic field, in more or less the same way.

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Was looking at some diagrams of thier device and I think I understand how they got a gavitomagnetic effect.

First it helps to understand that once an electrical current is induced into a superconductor (especially in a loop or ring) that the cureent continues to flow even when the source is taken away.

It also moves at 99.9999999% c instead of the normal 98.989898%c in a super conductor.

What caught my attention is that they rotated the ring in the opposite direction of the current flow.

This would in effect cause the the electromagnetic current pressure wave to procede at a faster rate through the material. When the current proceeds at a rate where it's relative speed to the material is just at or over 100% c this causes a causality violation (anomoly) within the material, they notable effect from the causality viloations (anomoly) is the graviomagnetic field they observed.

My guess is this is from the fact as the electrons flowing in the current's pressure wave are not gaining energy to accelate (in the manner of thrust), but instead they are abosbing energy in the form of mass from existing magnetic and and gravitational particles. The faster the relative motion over c, the more potential there is to temporalily draw in the EM and G particles, which to correct the causality violoations, are re-emitted as a G/M field.

This would explain the 1 million + times increase in the mesured effect over GR, it that it allows for gravitons from existing fields to be absorbed, focused, and re-emitted.

Testable items:

The formula for determining the strength of the G/M field should be determinable by more experimentation at varying speeds where the material is rotated/accelerated in opposite direction of current.

When the superconductor is rotated in same direction as the E current pressure wave, there should be no disernable G/M effect as the relative motion in the material is actually being slowed down.

Untestable Items:

At certain high energies of G/M fields, there may also be a weak Temporal field caused by the causality violations (anomolies)

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I suspect that this will be an inverse of the inverse square law, based on probibility of graviton abosorbtion based on the relative speed of the wavefront over c in the superconductor. (Bascally the effect curve will increase by a square based on the relative speed over c that was induced).

This has one issue that if the ring is rotated at 99.9999% c in opposite direction of the current wave front, it would cuase an G/M field strength of Black Hole like or Singularity proportions. I'd think the superconductor would undego a catastrophic degradation from G/M resonaces before that point could be reached however.

Hmm what to call whats been discovered though...GMASERISRE, Gravitomagnetic Amplification due to Stimulated Emisions of Radiation from Induced Super-Relativist Effects? Or just GAISRE? (pronounced gyser? )

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http://worldsofothersuns.home.comcast.net/

Oops, I got it wrong, since units should work as velocity squared (per unit of mass), or v^2. My Volts mass squared per second was way off! So bear with me, but this is a little bit of mathematical humor. Just for fun, if you find it amusing.

Per the SI units, Volts = W/A, and A = N/m, which means Volts can also be expressed as =W/N/m. If we plug in SI units for this: W = m^2 kg s^-3, N = m kg s^-2, and A = m kg s^-2 /m = kg s^-2. So taking V = W/A, we get V = m^2 kg s^-3/ kg s^-2, which reduces to V = m^2 s^-1. Cute, eh?

Now, in my (silly above) V m^2 s^-1, I was really showing it as (because V = m^2 s^-1) V^2 (Volts squared), which is also m^4 s^-2. But we can recognize this as being also (m^2 s^-2) * m^2, where we know m^2 s^-2 as being (m/s)^2, or velocity squared. Soooh…. In my original V m^2 s^-1 (as a fictional value for g) I was actually off by m^2!

To correct my error in my (silly) above, taking out m^2, I should have said g units are in V s^-1, or Volts per second, because per SI units, V s^-1 is equivalent to v^2, velocity squared! Pure chicanery? Anyway, what in the world does Volts per second represent?

Of course, this is pure fiction, just post it for a laugh. …per Joff, measured in =watts.

I hope you were as entertained as I was by this silly turn of units… or is there egg on my mathematical face?

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Thanks for clarifying the gravitomagnetic term.

I see the pdf paper explains this
http://esamultimedia.esa.int/docs/gs..._Detection.pdf

“The gravitational field is emitted from the superconductor and follows the
laws of field propagation and induction similar to those of electromagnetism
as formulated in linearized general relativity.”

And they say the effect – small though it is – is 30 orders of magnitude higher than GR predicts. Isn’t that some million trillion trillion times higher.

“Since the peaks are “only” 100 μg, they have previously not been observed in measurements for the classical London moment.
Nevertheless, they are 30 orders of magnitude higher than what general relativity predicts classically13 and are therefore of great technological and scientific interest.”

The result is much smaller than that measured by Podkletnov, but there may be a link.

Suppose I make a dyanmo that uses little battery-powered electromagnets. Now there's no reason why the output from that dynamo is limited to the strength of the batteries, right? It's converting the mechanical energy into electricity.

Now by analogy can we take these gravitomagnetic generators and build them into a mechanical system to generate a gravitational field?

In theory anyway?

There is a saying that you should learn to walk before you run. But if we take it one step further, what happens if the gravitational fields of two machines are pointed towards one another, will they repel or attract?