Pascal's Wageritish Aerospace, has confirmed it has launched an
anti-gravity
research programme.
It hopes that
Project Greenglow will draw scientists from
different
backgrounds to work on future technologies that
will
have echoes
of the propellantless propulsion systems being
investigated
by Nasa's Breakthrough Propulsion Physics
Program.
Gravitation
shielding
If any of the
work is successful, it could lead to dramatic
developments
in the way we travel - anti-gravity devices
could make it
much easier for aeroplanes, spacecraft and
even the next
generation of cars to get off the ground.
In 1996, the
experiments of a Russian scientist were jeered
at by the
physics world. Writing in the journal Physica C,
Dr
Yevgeny
Podkletnov claimed that a spinning, superconducting
disc lost
some of its weight. And, in an unpublished paper
on
the weak
gravitation shielding properties of a
superconductor,
he argued
that such a disc lost as much as 2% of its weight.
However, most
scientists believe that such anti-gravity
research is
fundamentally flawed. It goes against what we
know about
the physical Universe and is therefore
impossible,
they say.
Pascal's
Wager
"I find
it rather peculiar that they've done this," said Bob
Park
from the
American Physical Society, in reaction to the BAe
Systems
admission. "One can only conclude that at the
higher levels
of these organisations there are people who
don't
have a very
sound grounding in fundamental physics.
"You can
invest a little money in far-out projects if they
have
some chance
of success - it's called Pascal's Wager. In this
case, most
scientists would say there is zero chance of
success."
Nonetheless,
this view will not stop anti-gravity devices
from
continuing to
be a popular feature of science fiction and
the
inspiration
for countless websites.
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