How this Russian Scientist made the first attempt to manipulate Gravity in the early 1990s
Can we manipulate gravity? Humans have desired to control gravity since the days of Isaac Newton in 1687. However, it was not until the early 1990s that scientists began to move closer to attempting this groundbreaking discovery.
In 1992, Dr. Eugene Podkletnov, a Russian chemist and materials scientist, revealed that he had observed a small but temporary reduction in the weight of objects placed slightly above a rotating superconductor. He made this groundbreaking discovery while conducting experiments at Tampere University of Technology in Finland in 1992. Podkletnov’s discovery is known as the gravity shielding effect, and it changed our understanding of gravity.
How Dr. Eugene Podkletnov conducted his 1992 experiment of Rotating Superconductor to Manipulate Gravity
Podkletnov conducted his experiment using a high-Tc superconductor known as a YBCO (Yttrium Barium Copper Oxide) ceramic disk. Before he commenced with the experiment, he allowed the superconductor to cool below 70k using just liquid nitrogen.
After that, Podkletnov magnetically levitated the disc and made it spin at extremely high speed, reaching up to 5,000 RPM or more while exposing the experiment to AC magnetic fields. During the entire experiment, Podkletnov observed that the non-magnetic, non-conductive objects which he placed on a sensitive balance above the spinning disk reduced in weight of 0.3% to 2%.
Podkletnov claimed that the gravitational effects were discovered by accident as the pipe smoke from a colleague rose and began to hover over the apparatus. That resulting effect indicates a pressure drop above the disk.
How the world reacted to this discovery
After the experiment was conducted, news began to spread across the scientific community. In 1996, the British newspaper Sunday Telegraph published a leaked report with the headline Scientists in Finland are about to reveal details of the world’s first anti-gravity device.”
That publication spread the discovery even further and made more people investigate the discovery. Tampere University distanced itself immediately from Podkletnov, stating that the scientist worked alone to make the discovery. He was later dismissed from the laboratory.
However, NASA and other agencies investigated the claim in the late 1990s but couldn’t find any reproductive outcome from it. Achieving an anti-gravity experiment was quite challenging as scientists find it difficult to reconcile its effect with General Relativity and conservation laws.
Some scientists suggested that the loss of weight in Podkletnov’s experiment could have been caused by unconventional theories, like “quantised inertia” or that the rotating disc created a “non-holonomic background” that produced a repulsive force (anti-gravity).
