Hollington & Kyprianou

Dr. Eugene Podkletnov, & anti-gravity

Aeroplane manufacturers get in on the act, as Jane's Defence Weekly reported:
"Boeing, the world's largest aircraft manufacturer, has admitted that it is working on experimental anti-gravity projects that could overturn a century of conventional aerospace propulsion technology if the science that underpins them - science that senior Boeing officials describe as "valid" - can be engineered into hardware."

Dr Podkletnov claims to have carried out an experiment involving a supercold, spinning ceramic ring. An object held above the ring lost about 2% of its weight. The pull of gravity on the object was reduced, he claims. It seems that the first time was at the Tampere University of Technology in Finland in 1992. However, the research paper that described the results was submitted to a scientific journal but then withdrawn. The same happened in 1996 when news of the paper's imminent publication leaked. However, Dr Podkletnov has continued to work on his ideas and is reported to have seen similar effects in his studies.
Several teams have tried but none has seen the same thing. The American space agency Nasa tried but said it couldn't find any effect. Although Ning Li, who was working on their behalf is currently continuing this research.

According to Dr. Eugene Podkletnov, the discovery was accidental. It emerged during routine work on so-called "superconductivity", the ability of some materials to lose their electrical resistance at very low temperatures. The team was carrying out tests on a rapidly spinning disc of superconducting ceramic suspended in the magnetic field of three electric coils, all enclosed in a low-temperature vessel called a cryostat.

In an article in the Sunday Telegraph BREAKTHROUGH AS SCIENTISTS BEAT GRAVITY by Robert Matthews and Ian Sample September 1, 1996, page 3 he is quoted as saying

"One of my friends came in and he was smoking his pipe," Dr. Podkletnov said. "He put some smoke over the cryostat and we saw that the smoke was going to the ceiling all the time. It was amazing -- we couldn't explain it." Tests showed a small drop in the weight of objects placed over the device, as if it were shielding the object from the effects of gravity - an effect deemed impossible by most scientists. "We thought it might be a mistake," Dr. Podkletnov said, "but we have taken every precaution." Yet the bizarre effects persisted. The team found that even the air pressure vertically above the device dropped slightly, with the effect detectable directly above the device on every floor of the laboratory.”

Speculation and controversy as to the validity of his tests had reached boiling point in 1996 when his paper which had been scheduled for publication in the Journal of Physics D: Applies Physics, had been withdrawn following a statement by the alleged co-author, Petri Vuorinen, denying that he ever worked on anti-gravity with Podkletnov. Things went rather quiet. The mystery deepens.