[00:00] This video is sponsored by me.
[00:04] Over the decades, anti-gravity has been
[00:06] the stuff of science fiction.
[00:08] But with the recent government releases
[00:10] of videos showing UAPs doing things that
[00:13] we cannot explain, and even
[00:15] congressional meetings on the subject,
[00:18] one of the fundamental features of these
[00:20] craft, objects, or whatever they may be,
[00:23] is their seeming ability to manipulate
[00:25] gravity in a way which we simply have no
[00:27] clue about.
[00:28] Now, this may be just coming from the
[00:31] fevered imagination of AI, or just the
[00:34] latest form of disinformation or
[00:36] perception management, possibly using
[00:38] UAP stories as a cover narrative. But
[00:41] what it does do is to make us look again
[00:44] at gravity and the seemingly gaping
[00:47] holes in our knowledge of what it really
[00:50] is, and the attempts to try and make it
[00:53] work for us like other fundamental
[00:55] forces of nature, like electromagnetism.
[00:59] Almost everything so far which has been
[01:01] claimed to be a form of anti-gravity is
[01:03] just really using other known forces.
[01:07] Though there is a very interesting
[01:09] effect which, if verified, could be the
[01:11] closest we have come so far, and we'll
[01:14] look at that later.
[01:15] A plane could be said to be an
[01:17] anti-gravity machine because it can lift
[01:19] you up and away from the surface of the
[01:22] earth and the gravitational pull. But
[01:24] it's actually using the pressure
[01:26] differential of a wing traveling through
[01:28] air at speed create lift.
[01:31] A rocket does a similar thing by burning
[01:33] fuel which expands, creating thrust and
[01:36] pushing it along. With enough thrust, it
[01:39] can overcome the pull of Earth's
[01:41] gravity, but it's nothing more than a
[01:43] chemical reaction.
[01:45] And magnets can lift objects and
[01:48] vehicles so that they float above a
[01:50] surface.
[01:51] But this is just the effect of repulsive
[01:53] magnetism, like when you try and force
[01:55] two magnets together with the same poles
[01:58] on each. It's just the electromagnetic
[02:01] force.
[02:02] In the '80s and '90s, gyroscopic
[02:04] inertial thrusters were seen as
[02:06] potential sources of reactionless
[02:09] thrust.
[02:10] When seen in action, they appear to be
[02:12] able to generate lift and defy gravity.
[02:16] They use various methods of leverage
[02:18] against the support of a large flywheel
[02:21] or gyroscope. And this appears to
[02:23] generate lift when the angle of the
[02:25] gyroscope is changed, but after years of
[02:27] theoretical and laboratory testing by
[02:30] NASA and others, no thrust or
[02:32] anti-gravity forces in free space were
[02:35] found to be produced.
[02:37] Other so-called anti-gravity lifters
[02:40] using the Biefeld-Brown effect are in
[02:42] fact using the propulsive force of ion
[02:44] flow.
[02:45] By charging a very lightweight object or
[02:48] lifter, usually with a positive high
[02:51] voltage, the surrounding air is ionized.
[02:54] As the ions are attracted to the
[02:56] opposite negative electrode, usually the
[02:57] ground, they interact with the neutral
[03:01] air molecules, creating an air flow with
[03:03] enough force to levitate the lifter.
[03:06] Some claimed that the effect works in a
[03:09] vacuum and therefore must be some form
[03:11] of interaction between the electric
[03:13] field and the Earth's gravity field, and
[03:15] implying that it could be used to create
[03:18] an anti-gravity effect. When NASA tested
[03:21] it in a vacuum equivalent to that found
[03:23] in the lower Earth orbit, the effect
[03:25] disappeared, proving that it was caused
[03:27] by the propulsive force of ions pushing
[03:31] against the air.
[03:32] Gravity is one of the fundamental
[03:34] forces, and thus anti-gravity, in
[03:37] theory, would be impossible.
[03:39] It has been proposed that if another
[03:41] force could attract matter or repel it
[03:45] like a theoretical anti-gravity, then
[03:48] maybe a machine could be made to
[03:50] simulate that effect.
[03:52] One of the simplest possible loopholes
[03:54] used to be antimatter. If antimatter
[03:57] fell upwards in Earth's gravitational
[04:00] field, then it would have been a real
[04:02] form of repulsive gravity
[04:04] and a major crack in our current
[04:06] theories.
[04:07] But in 2023, CERN's Alpha G experiment
[04:11] directly measured [clears throat] the
[04:12] motion of antihydrogen and found that,
[04:15] within the limits of the experiment,
[04:17] antimatter falls downward like normal
[04:19] matter. That does not explain why the
[04:22] universe contains so little antimatter,
[04:25] but it does make the most obvious form
[04:27] of anti-gravity much less likely.
[04:30] So, what about gravity shielding,
[04:32] similar to a Faraday shield for radio
[04:35] waves? Electromagnetic fields are easy
[04:38] to shield because they have both
[04:40] positive and negative charges. By
[04:42] arranging these charges in a conductor,
[04:45] like the Faraday shield, you can cancel
[04:47] out an external field.
[04:50] To see if any material does have an
[04:52] effect on the weak equivalence
[04:54] principle, this has now been tested to
[04:56] an extraordinary level of precision. The
[04:59] weak equivalence principle, or WEP, aka
[05:02] the universality of free fall, states
[05:05] that all uncharged, structureless test
[05:08] particles fall with the same
[05:10] acceleration in a gravitational field,
[05:13] regardless of their mass or composition.
[05:16] This is very similar to the hammer and
[05:18] feather test that the Apollo astronauts
[05:20] did on the moon to see if in a vacuum
[05:23] they both fall at the same rate.
[05:25] Universal attraction, according to WEP,
[05:27] says that all mass energy acts as a
[05:30] single type of gravitational charge.
[05:33] Because there is no known negative mass,
[05:37] you cannot create a configuration of
[05:39] matter that cancels out the gravity of,
[05:42] say, a nearby object, like another
[05:45] planet, by adding more matter. The only
[05:48] thing it does is it just increases the
[05:50] total gravitational pull.
[05:52] From 2016 to 2018, the Microscope
[05:56] satellite compared how different
[05:58] materials fall in Earth orbit and found
[06:01] no violation of the WEP down to one part
[06:06] in a quadrillion, or one with 15 zeros
[06:09] after it.
[06:11] If ordinary materials could block or
[06:13] alter gravity in any simple way, that
[06:16] was the kind of experiment where the
[06:18] difference might have started to show
[06:20] up.
[06:21] Now, this episode's sponsor is me.
[06:24] I've mentioned occasionally that I'm a
[06:25] bit of a synth head, and I've been into
[06:28] electronic music since I was 12, way
[06:30] back in 1974.
[06:32] That was the year that Tangerine Dream
[06:34] released Phaedra. Kraftwerk released
[06:36] Autobahn, and Isao Tomita released
[06:38] Snowflakes are Dancing, three landmark
[06:41] electronic albums from pioneering
[06:43] artists that had a huge influence on me.
[06:47] But it was Tomita's work that really
[06:49] fascinated me. Over nine albums from
[06:52] 1974 to '84, he took classical works by
[06:55] composers like Debussy, Mussorgsky,
[06:57] Stravinsky, Holst, and many others, and
[06:59] recreated them electronically using
[07:01] synthesizers such as the Moog modular.
[07:04] Now, this was similar in concept to
[07:06] Wendy Carlos' Switched-On Bach, but
[07:08] Tomita's music was more colorful,
[07:10] surreal, and flamboyant.
[07:12] Back then, I knew almost nothing about
[07:14] classical music, and the sounds Tomita
[07:16] created were completely new to me and
[07:19] everyone else.
[07:21] That combination of classical
[07:23] composition and the strange, beautiful,
[07:25] otherworldly electronic sound was
[07:28] utterly fascinating.
[07:30] It followed the original scores, but
[07:31] somehow sounded like nothing else.
[07:34] Since 1998, on and off, I've been making
[07:37] electronic music inspired by that same
[07:40] approach.
[07:41] I'm not covering the same pieces Tomita
[07:43] did, but reworking other works by some
[07:47] of those composers using a mixture of
[07:49] hardware and software synthesizers.
[07:52] Last year, I finally had an album's
[07:54] worth of material that I felt was good
[07:56] enough to release.
[07:57] This is what I'm promoting today.
[08:00] As I've [music] been speaking, you've
[08:02] been hearing snippets of the music from
[08:04] the album.
[08:05] This is made very much in the spirit of
[08:07] Tomita, classical pieces reimagined
[08:10] through synthesis with dark, bright,
[08:13] strange, colorful [music] sounds and a
[08:14] deliberately electronic character.
[08:18] So, if you're a fan of Tomita-styled
[08:20] music, or you're into the more eclectic
[08:22] electronic music, you can hear the whole
[08:25] thing for free on my Bandcamp page,
[08:28] paulshelitommusic.bandcamp.com.
[08:32] If you enjoy it, you can purchase the
[08:34] album or individual tracks for the price
[08:36] of a coffee or two.
[08:38] It helps support the channel, and it
[08:40] also helps keep this slightly unusual
[08:43] corner
[08:44] of electronic music alive.
[08:52] In scientific papers published between
[08:55] 1991 and '93, American scientist Ning Li
[08:59] claimed that anti-gravity effects could
[09:02] be achieved if the ions in a
[09:04] Bose-Einstein
[09:06] condensate, that's a state of matter
[09:08] where all the atoms in it can act like
[09:11] one, could be trapped into a
[09:13] high-temperature superconducting disk
[09:15] with a time-varying magnetic field. A
[09:18] huge amount of energy could be stored in
[09:20] its lattice structure in this way.
[09:23] As each ion would spin rapidly, it would
[09:26] create a tiny gravitational field.
[09:28] However, because all the ions in the
[09:31] Bose-Einstein condensate would be
[09:33] aligned, the effect would be magnified
[09:35] by the billions of ions in the disk.
[09:39] The theory is that this would create a
[09:41] gravity-like field that could either
[09:43] increase or decrease the effect of
[09:45] gravity, which Ning Li called AC gravity
[09:48] because it could be attractive or
[09:50] repulsive in nature.
[09:51] She said that the experiments in the lab
[09:53] had created a beam-like effect above the
[09:55] disk, which affected matter for some
[09:58] distance and this backed up her
[10:00] theories.
[10:01] Even though it had created a lot of
[10:03] interest at the time, in 1997 she
[10:05] published another paper saying that
[10:08] using new measurements with a more
[10:10] sensitive gravimeter had shown the
[10:12] effect to be either very small or
[10:14] non-existent. In 2000 Ning Li left the
[10:17] University of Alabama and set up her own
[10:19] company, AC Gravity LLC. And in 2001 she
[10:24] was awarded a grant worth just under
[10:26] $450,000
[10:28] from the Department of Defense to
[10:30] investigate it further.
[10:31] Since then she has all but disappeared
[10:33] and nothing more has been heard about
[10:35] her research but the company, AC Gravity
[10:38] LLC, apparently was still in business.
[10:41] Ning Li died in 2021
[10:44] and as of now there is still no public,
[10:47] independently repeated demonstrations of
[10:49] her AC Gravity idea. So her work remains
[10:53] one of the more intriguing anti-gravity
[10:55] claims to come from the 1990s and early
[10:58] 2000s but it is not a confirmed
[11:00] technology.
[11:02] Experiments carried out by Evgeny
[11:04] Podkletnov in the early 1990s using
[11:06] rotating superconducting disks in a
[11:08] magnetic field claimed to decrease the
[11:11] effect of gravity by about 2% on objects
[11:14] placed above the disk and again it
[11:17] appeared to act like a beam above the
[11:19] disk for a considerable distance.
[11:22] However, these results had not been able
[11:24] to be verified by other scientists. He
[11:27] claimed that the other researchers had
[11:28] not used the same setup and that's the
[11:30] reason why they could not reproduce the
[11:32] same results.
[11:33] And when NASA was about to complete the
[11:35] experiments they ran out of funding and
[11:38] the research was taken over by the
[11:39] Department of Defense and he was shut
[11:42] out of any further research in the US
[11:44] because of his Russian citizenship.
[11:47] This and Ning Li's work is said to have
[11:49] prompted Boeing to investigate the
[11:51] effect of rotating superconductors with
[11:54] Project GRASP, Gravity Research for
[11:57] Advanced Space Propulsion.
[11:59] With potential uses including space
[12:01] launches, artificial gravity on
[12:03] spacecraft, aircraft propulsion and
[12:06] fuel-less electricity generation.
[12:09] Although others have pointed out that if
[12:11] the effect could be proven and directed
[12:13] into a beam, it would be able to be
[12:15] weaponized creating steerable artificial
[12:18] gravity forces to destabilize missiles,
[12:21] planes and satellites.
[12:23] Since the information was released,
[12:25] Boeing has backtracked and said it was
[12:27] offered the proposal but chose not to
[12:29] fund it with company money but refused
[12:32] to comment if this was a black project
[12:35] on the company books.
[12:37] This is also where the story starts to
[12:39] overlap with the more controversial
[12:41] subject of classified aerospace work and
[12:44] UAP claims.
[12:46] To keep the known science separate from
[12:48] speculation, there is no public evidence
[12:50] that Boeing, NASA, the Department of
[12:52] Defense or any private contractor has
[12:55] demonstrated working anti-gravity
[12:57] propulsion.
[12:59] What does exist are historical
[13:01] proposals, rumors and claims around
[13:04] black projects, some of which use the
[13:07] same language of superconductors, field
[13:09] propulsion, gravity beams or inertial
[13:12] mass reduction.
[13:14] These and others are based on the idea
[13:16] of gravit electromagnetism which looks
[13:18] at the analogies between Maxwell's
[13:20] equations for electromagnetism and
[13:23] Einstein's equations of relativistic
[13:26] gravitation.
[13:27] Basically the premise is that just as a
[13:29] spinning electron creates a magnetic
[13:31] field, then a massive spinning object
[13:34] like the Earth will create drag on
[13:37] space-time, a bit like when you spin a
[13:39] ball in a viscous fluid like oil.
[13:42] Although this drag was predicted nearly
[13:45] a hundred years ago, Einstein called it
[13:47] frame dragging, it's taken the best part
[13:50] of a century to prove if it actually
[13:52] existed with several independent
[13:55] satellite missions which did indeed
[13:57] measure a small but noticeable dragging
[14:00] effect. This is important because our
[14:02] current theories of gravity are that
[14:04] mass curves the otherwise flat
[14:07] space-time and this deformation of
[14:10] space-time is gravity.
[14:13] This is shown quite well with the weight
[14:15] in a rubber sheet experiment that
[14:17] represents the Sun and pulls the sheet
[14:20] down in the center.
[14:21] A ball rolling in a straight direction
[14:24] follows the curve. This is like the
[14:26] Earth which is traveling in a straight
[14:28] line but is caught in the curve of
[14:30] space-time created by the Sun's mass and
[14:33] so long as the Earth's speed is
[14:35] constant, it orbits the Sun.
[14:38] If the frame dragging effect is real,
[14:40] then it is affecting gravity and a
[14:42] moving object near a massive rotating
[14:45] object would experience acceleration not
[14:48] predicted by Newtonian laws.
[14:51] It's been suggested that this effect
[14:53] might be behind the massive jets of gas
[14:56] that are ejected from quasars and
[14:58] galactic nuclei. Rotating supermassive
[15:01] black holes at the centers of galaxies
[15:03] would also create enormous frame
[15:05] dragging effects.
[15:07] This is where the spinning
[15:09] superconducting disks in Ning Li's and
[15:12] the GRASP experiments come in
[15:14] to simulate this frame dragging and the
[15:17] gravitational warping effect but on a
[15:20] very much smaller scale.
[15:22] But the elephant in the room is that we
[15:25] still don't know what gravity really is.
[15:28] Yes, we have Newton and Einstein's laws
[15:31] which predict with amazing accuracy the
[15:34] effects of gravity but these theories
[15:36] don't tell us how gravity works or what
[15:39] the mechanism is that makes mass bend
[15:43] space-time. All we know is that gravity
[15:46] is a consequence of mass and the greater
[15:48] the mass, the greater the bending of
[15:50] space-time and hence the greater
[15:51] gravity.
[15:53] Although gravity works over huge
[15:55] distances on the grand scale of planets,
[15:57] stars and galaxies,
[15:59] we don't know how it really works on the
[16:01] very small things at the distances of
[16:03] atomic scale because its effect is then
[16:06] so weak and difficult to measure.
[16:09] Conversely, we don't know how it works
[16:12] where gravity is incredibly strong such
[16:15] as in a black hole.
[16:17] There are many theories as to how
[16:18] gravity actually works but none of which
[16:21] have been proven.
[16:23] In quantum mechanics, there is a
[16:24] prediction that a force-carrying
[16:27] particle called a graviton might exist
[16:30] even though there has been no proof
[16:33] found of their existence.
[16:34] But as all the other three fundamental
[16:37] forces, strong nuclear force, the weak
[16:39] nuclear force and the electromagnetic
[16:42] force have at least one force carrier,
[16:45] it's believed there must be one for
[16:47] gravity, too, if gravity is a true
[16:51] force.
[16:52] Another route is quantum gravity. There
[16:55] are now serious proposals for small
[16:57] laboratory experiments that try to test
[16:59] whether gravity can create quantum
[17:02] entanglement between tiny masses.
[17:04] If that is shown, it would suggest that
[17:06] gravity has quantum properties. But
[17:09] again, this would not be a gravity
[17:11] control device. It would just be a clue
[17:14] about what gravity really is at the
[17:16] smallest scales.
[17:19] Gravity appears to have virtually no
[17:21] interaction with any other forces and
[17:24] works on any form of matter, even ones
[17:28] which we can't currently detect, namely
[17:30] the still unknown dark matter.
[17:33] There is also no known way to shield
[17:36] against it because it bends space-time
[17:39] which is the underlying fabric of the
[17:41] universe and as such it's not really a
[17:43] force.
[17:45] We can only feel the effects of it when
[17:47] we are stopped from moving like when
[17:49] we're standing on the ground but being
[17:51] pulled by the mass of the Earth below
[17:53] us.
[17:54] If we were free falling in space
[17:56] just above the Earth, we would feel
[17:58] nothing at all.
[18:00] True anti-gravity would need something
[18:02] deeper, negative mass, negative energy,
[18:06] a new force or some way to manipulate
[18:09] the geometry of space-time itself.
[18:12] Then there are the observations of the
[18:14] physical universe that show that the
[18:16] rate of expansion from the Big Bang is
[18:18] speeding up instead of the expected
[18:20] slowing down under the effect of
[18:22] gravity.
[18:23] So either we have a major problem with
[18:25] our theories of gravity or there is
[18:27] something else out there that is
[18:29] providing a yet unknown force which is
[18:32] overpowering gravity and pushing the
[18:35] universe apart in all directions which
[18:37] we currently call dark energy.
[18:40] And like dark matter, we cannot detect
[18:43] it directly but only see the effect it
[18:46] has a bit like gravity itself.
[18:48] Dark energy is still one of the
[18:50] strangest parts of the story. It behaves
[18:53] on the largest scales like a repulsive
[18:56] effect causing the expansion of the
[18:58] universe to accelerate
[19:00] but it's not something that we know how
[19:02] to collect, focus or switch on inside a
[19:05] machine.
[19:06] If dark energy is a kind of
[19:08] anti-gravity, then it is a cosmic one
[19:11] and not an engineering tool.
[19:13] So given all this, is true anti-gravity
[19:16] or some form of gravity control a
[19:18] realistic proposition? We still don't
[19:20] know if anything has really come from
[19:23] the research by Ning Li and Project
[19:25] GRASP. It's been rather quiet on that
[19:27] front in recent years.
[19:29] A source at NASA said that the science
[19:31] appeared to be sound but the difficulty
[19:33] was in scaling it up.
[19:35] At some point in the future when we have
[19:37] a much better understanding of what
[19:39] gravity really is and how it really
[19:40] works, we might find a way to manipulate
[19:43] it as we want but unless a new
[19:46] breakthrough is announced, it appears to
[19:49] be in the realm of science fiction. As
[19:51] it stands, antimatter does not fall
[19:53] upwards. Simple gravity shielding looks
[19:56] like it's even less likely, and the old
[19:58] superconducting claims remain
[20:00] unverified.
[20:01] But some theories, namely warp drive
[20:03] mathematics, negative energy, quantum
[20:05] gravity, modified gravity, and dark
[20:08] energy all show that gravity is not yet
[20:11] a finished subject.
[20:13] But the gap between our theories and our
[20:16] understanding of the real-world
[20:17] engineering that will be required,
[20:20] however, is still enormous.
[20:24] So, if you enjoyed the video, then
[20:25] please thumbs up, share, and subscribe.
[20:27] And a big thank you goes to all our
[20:28] patrons for their ongoing support.