Science Forums 2

[paigetheoracle]

[QUOTE=CraigD;227283]The great difficulty in looking for a means of negating the force of gravity – to be precise, a way to change the attractive force experienced by two bodies due to gravity , without changing the mass , or the distance between them - is that there is no experimentally validated scientific theory suggesting it is possible, no empirical observation that it occurs. There is also no theory or evidence suggesting that the mass of a body can be decreased other than by the usual means of removing some of its matter.

There is no theory or experimental evidence that this change in force or mass, commonly termed antigravity, more precisely described as a difference between inertial and gravitational mass, ever occurs, or can occur.

Although differences between inertial and gravitational mass is not known to be consistent with any physical theory, physicists, engineers, and futurists have speculated at length about the consequences of a body with negative gravitational and inertial mass, which is not inconsistent with theory. However, to the best of my knowledge, no theory suggest the existence of such matter, even though some quantum mechanical effects suggest that a more general form of “exotic matter” may be possible, put could not be used to lift objects (see: Exotic matter - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia).

In short, Paige is proposing that people look for an effect that all scientific theory and evidence indicates does not and cannot exist. Such a search would surely be difficult, almost surely unsuccessful, and worse, likely to result in the searcher, our of frustration with the difficulty of finding such an effect using legitimate scientific methods, accepting ideas unsupported by experimental evidence, or worse, ideas promoted by intentional deception and unintentionally individual and group self-deception. Although such a pursuit can lead to enjoyable social interaction with fellow searchers, I don’t think its ultimately psychologically healthy, nor useful to science of humankind.

I think you are not looking at the problem using lateral thinking (Edward De Bono). In other words again, you are attacking the problem i.e. thinking of how to negate the effects of gravity, rather than work round them. As they say in Britain there's more than one way to skin a cat. Nothing negates gravity? What about Balloons (gas filled or hot aired)? What about gyroscopic motion? I remember a Royal Institute Christmas Lecture with Professor Eric Laithwaite, that had one suspended on a string at right angles (spin again) and what about linear motors, created by him that used pole reversal technology to lift and suspend a tray in space and also propel it across the ground at speed? The problem is not gravity but the limited way we look at it.