An anti-gravity claim

[Micael]

As the article implies, good to not jump to conclusions with this one. Still, it’s possible that they’ve stumbled on something, and I do believe that humanity will eventually crack the anti-gravity enigma, though perhaps not anytime soon.

An Engineer Says He’s Found a Way to Overcome Earth’s Gravity
Darren Orf

Discovering a machine that could somehow produce thrust without releasing propellant would be a game-changer for human space travel. There’s just one problem—such a device would defy the laws of physics.
This limitation has not stopped people from investigating the possibility, and the latest addition to the propellant-less club is an electrostatic design developed by a former NASA engineer.
While the company behind the drive, Exodus Propulsion Technologies, says that the drive can achieve a thrust to counteract Earth’s gravity, such a claim still needs independent verification and a healthy dose of skepticism.

In 2001, British Electrical Engineer Roger Shawyer first introduced the “impossible drive,” known as the EmDrive. It was called “impossible” because its creator purported that the drive was reactionless, meaning no propellant required—in other words, it defied the known laws of physics (specifically, the conservation of momentum).

As with anything that appears to thumb its nose at Newton and Einstein, scientists raised more than a few eyebrows, and two decades of testing eventually boiled down to an inevitable (and somewhat predictable) conclusion in 2021: the EmDrive was bunk. But that’s the nature of the scientific method—take a seemingly impossible idea, put it through rigorous testing, and hopefully get to an unassailable conclusion (or new discoveries that lead in other directions).

The not-based-in-physics dream of a propellant-less machine, however, didn’t die with the EmDrive. Instead, a new challenger approaches, and this one has a former NASA scientist backing it up.

While at NASA, Charles Buhler helped establish the Electrostatics and Surface Physics Laboratory at Kennedy Space Center in Florida—a very important lab that basically ensures rockets don’t explode. Now, as co-founder of the space company Exodus Propulsion Technologies, Buhler told the website The Debrief that they’ve created a drive powered by a “New Force” outside our current known laws of physics, giving the propellant-less drive enough boost to overcome gravity.

“The most important message to convey to the public is that a major discovery occurred,” Buhler told The Debrief. “This discovery of a New Force is fundamental in that electric fields alone can generate a sustainable force onto an object and allow center-of-mass translation of said object without expelling mass.”

Buhler stressed that this work is unaffiliated with NASA, and that he recently presented his findings at the Alternative Propulsion Energy Conference (APEC), which is a club of engineers and enthusiasts eager to find ways to overcome the limitations of gravity and physics—and not always with the most scientifically sound methods.

In an interview with APEC’s co-founder Tim Ventura, Buhler explained how his background in electrostatics led to the discovery. He says his team—made up of people from NASA, Blue Origin, and the Air Force—investigated propellant-less drives for decades before arriving at electrostatics. For years, their devices produced negligible thrust, but saw increases with each new iteration. This culminated in 2023, when this “New Force”-powered drive generated enough thrust to overcome Earth’s gravity.

“Essentially, what we’ve discovered is that systems that contain an asymmetry in either electrostatic pressure or some kind of electrostatic divergent field can give a system of a center of mass a non-zero force component,” Buhler told The Debrief. “So, what that basically means is that there’s some underlying physics that can essentially place force on an object should those two constraints be met.”

Obviously Buhler’s claims are pretty “woah, if true,” but the history of propellant-less drives is filled with seemingly positive results that are eventually dashed upon the rocks of scientific reality. For the EmDrive, hopes for the device skyrocketed after NASA’s Eagleworks team, which is dedicated to investigating new forms of propulsion (i.e. warp drives), claimed to measure thrust from the “impossible” drive in 2016. However, subsequent studies—including an exhaustive (no pun intended) one at the Dresden University of Technology—found zero thrust.

Before any alternative propulsion enthusiasts should start popping corks, rigorous, third-party research will have to verify the results again and again. While it’s not impossible that Buhler et. al stumbled across some unknown quirk of physics, it’s an extremely unlikely outcome.

For now, let’s call it an “improbable engine.”

[Pdf27]

The fact that he's presenting it at "alternative" conferences rather than at a Nobel Price dinner in Stockholm tells you most of what you need to know. He's claiming something outside the classical laws of physics, which if true is far more important than the drive itself.

[Kunkmiester]

Quantized inertia, aside from supposedly eliminating the need for dark matter, also provides a method of action for devices like this.

[Nik_SpeakerToCats]

I'm glad that the report deployed appropriate caution.

Let's not forget infamous 'Dean Drive', which yet lingers in niches of 'Alt-Tech' community.
Or hapless Prof Eric Laithwaite, who became enthralled by gyroscopes.
To put it politely, they spun his wits...
Or those Rus workers who toy with magneto-gravitics...

IIRC, electrostatic thrusters, lifters and flyers have been around for decades.
They may not require propellant, but they *do* need lotsa power.


If this guy has found something new, kudos !

Remarkable claims require remarkable evidence, but 'magic' is just tech we don't understand...

[Nik_SpeakerToCats]

Oh, and waiting in the wings --Perhaps !!-- is Teleparallel Gravity.

IIRC, Einstein (!!) toyed with it, but lacked the math-tools to do it justice.
Recently found new enquirers...

Very roughly put, TG invokes 'Twistors'...
If you twist space-time on one axis, you get familiar electro-magnetic stuff.
If you twist along a different axis, gravity.
( TG 'Twistor' math apparently 'simplifies' to 'common-or-garden' Relativity... )

Snag is there's currently not even the slightest notion how to get a g-twist.
Needs a 'Faraday' to find the first clue...

[Craiglxviii]

Oh, and waiting in the wings --Perhaps !!-- is Teleparallel Gravity.

IIRC, Einstein (!!) toyed with it, but lacked the math-tools to do it justice.
Recently found new enquirers...

Very roughly put, TG invokes 'Twistors'...
If you twist space-time on one axis, you get familiar electro-magnetic stuff.
If you twist along a different axis, gravity.
( TG 'Twistor' math apparently 'simplifies' to 'common-or-garden' Relativity... )

Snag is there's currently not even the slightest notion how to get a g-twist.
Needs a 'Faraday' to find the first clue...

To quote Iain M. Banks, it’s “just around the corner”.

[Nightwatch2]

This is an interesting discussion. I just can’t put it down…

[Craiglxviii]

This is an interesting discussion. I just can’t put it down…

Wait wait. Don’t tell me. You’re that interested in it… you’re… <floating> on cloud nine?

[Nathan45]

You guys need to come back down to earth...

[Nightwatch2]

You guys need to come back down to earth...

The secret to coming back down to Earth is

Gravity

Without it You can -

https://youtu.be/ZEcqHA7dbwM?si=PFqoqAJLVFMt2p0I

[Kunkmiester]

It seems we're drifting off topic again...

[Nightwatch2]

It seems we're drifting off topic again...

It is a heavy discussion

[David Newton]

I believe that their theory is into very dark matter. Those who follow it will either have a WIMP problem or a MACHO problem.

[jemhouston]

It seems we're drifting off topic again...

It is a heavy discussion

Which we need to lighten.