Hollington & Kyprianou

BOSE-EINSTEIN

In the 1980s, Ning-Li – a world renowned scientist predicted that if a time-varying magnetic field were applied to superconductor ions trapped in a lattice structure, the ions would absorb enormous amounts of energy. Confined in the lattice, the ions would begin to rapidly spin, causing each to create a minuscule gravitational field.

It wouldn’t actually be an anti-gravity machine’ it would, however, be exerting an attractive or repulsive force on all matter and would therefore be pretty close to an impossible machine.

Dr Ning Li, working in UAH's Centre for Space Plasma and Aeronomic Research has recently been working at UAH on an ‘artificial’ gravitational field made inside a container made of superconducting material.

“If Einstein was right, the amount of gravito-magnetic energy produced by an object is proportional to its mass and its movement”, explains Dr. Li. To create the artificial gravitational fields, Torr and Li propose placing a superconducting container in a magnetic field to align ions that are spinning or rotating in tiny circles inside the superconducting material. Their theory predicts the existence of ionic spin or rotation in a superconductor in a magnetic field.

To understand how an HTSD (The high temperature superconducting disk) is critical to the construction of a force-field machine, it's useful to know something about an unusual state of matter called a Bose-Einstein condensate. In our day-to-day lives we encounter three states of matter: solid, liquid and gas. In the laboratory it is possible to create another state of matter in which all the atoms are aligned in a way that makes them behave as if they were one single atom. This unique state of matter is named after Albert Einstein and Indian physicist Satyendra Nath Bose who predicted its existence decades ago. The Bose-Einstein condensate is essentially when many atoms squeeze into a small space.The first time it was produced about 2000 Rubidium atoms fitted into a 20 micron space. These experiments were run at a temperature as close to absolute zero that science will allow due to quantum mechanics and thermodynamics. The high temperature superconducting disk (HTSD) allows for each atom to produce a gravitational effect six orders of magnitude higher than usual. Because of the small mass of an atom the acceleration must compensate in order to make a strong enough force. Atoms spin very quickly and in a Bose-Einstein condensate enough atoms come together to form a force that is perpendicular to the spin of the atom. This produces a gravity-like field, which could be controlled in any direction.

In an HTSD, the tiny gravitational effect of each individual atom is multiplied by the billions of atoms in the disc. Using about one kilowatt of electricity, Li says, her device could potentially produce a force field that would effectively neutralize gravity above a 1-ft.-dia. region extending from the surface of the planet to outer space.

Li describes her device as a method of generating a never-before-seen force field that acts on matter in a way that is similar to gravity. Since it may be either repulsive or attractive she calls it "AC gravity."
Larry Smalley, the former chairman of the University of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH) physics department says of this work "Basically, you are adding a couple of vectors to zero it [gravity] out or enhance it."

Interestingly, Einstein's theory of relativity predicts this effect. All objects produce gravito-magnetic energy, the amount of force proportional to its mass and acceleration. Li says that the main reason this energy has never been detected is that the Earth spins very slowly and the field's strength decreases rapidly as you move away from the center of the planet.
Beginning with the most basic law of physics--force = mass x acceleration--Li reasoned that it would be possible to perform the same experiment here on Earth, using ions locked in the aforementioned lattice structure inside a superconductor because when an ion rotates around a magnetic field, the mass goes along for the ride. This, according to Einstein, should produce the gravito-magnetic field.

Ions, unlike Earth, have a minuscule mass. But another important difference to the Earth is that they spin very quickly, rotating more than a quadrillion times a second, compared to our planet's 24 hour rotation. Li calculates this movement will compensate for the small mass of the ions.

Li explains that as the ions spin they also create a gravito-electric field perpendicular to their spin axis. In nature, this field is unobserved because the ions are randomly arranged, thus causing their tiny gravito-electric fields to cancel out one another. In a Bose-Einstein condensate, where all ions behave as one, something very different occurs.

Li says that if the ions in an HTSD are aligned by a magnetic field, the gravito-electric fields they create should also align. Build a large enough disc and the cumulative field should be measurable. Build a larger disc and the force field above it should be controllable –something pointable in any direction.

Li's theory has passed through the scientific quality-control peer review process and an HTSD has been constructed, but important technical unknowns remain. Li has since left UAH. She and several colleagues are striking out on their own to commercialize devices based on her theory and a proprietary HTSD fabrication technique. Public money goes private again?

Li's next step is to raise the several million dollars needed to build the induction motor that individually spins the ions in the HTSD. "It will take at least two years to simulate the machine on a computer," says Smalley, who plans to join Li's as-yet-unnamed company after he retires from UAH. "We want to avoid the situation that occurred in fusion where extremely expensive reactors were built, turned on, and didn't work as intended because of unforeseen plasma instabilities." Li says she has turned down several offers for financial backing. It is less about money than control. "Investors want control over the technology," she says. "This is too important. It should belong to all the American people."