Created and maintained by Bill Beaty. Mail me at:
.
|
UP TO "ELECTRIC ROCKET" | |
GOOD STUFF | |
NEW STUFF | |
HELP | |
See the main page:GRAVITY CAPACITOR |
Also see:
THE ANTIGRAVITY UNDERGROUND |
NEW AND DIFFERENT SCIENCE PROJECTS |
STRANGE AND TWISTED SCIENCE PROJECTS |
WARNING: This capacitor can store energy at lethal (electrocution) levels.
If you charge this capacitor with even a feeble "static electric" type of
high voltage supply, it can become extremely dangerous. If you aren't
familiar with electrical safety regarding capacitors and high voltage,
don't mess with this device.
Update: as of 2005, many hobbyists have built the Gravity Capacitor yet observed zero thrust. The only ones who claim success have never provided any evidence other than their words, nor have they helped other people to make the device operate. I conclude that the ones who claim success are very probably lying about it ...and Gravity Capacitor is very probably worthless; it's only a rumor, a rumor backed by detailed plans. Speaking of lying, Thomas Kennedy is not dead. He did have a car accident, but his father lied to telephone callers about the death. Speaking more of lying (or at least dishonesty through omission,) Thomas Kennedy never built a working Gravity Capacitor. He never mentioned this important information in his plans.
Update: "S" reports full success (see "S Positive Results") Also Cliff L. reports success but the details are sketchy. Several people on freenrg-L have built copies of this device, but detected no thrust at all. One possibility: The device built by "S" used 13 switches in sequence, and this applied very large pulses of current as each switch was closed. Another possibility: Cliff L. thinks that the length of the short foil strips is important, and they cannot all be exactly the same length. Update: Cliff L. reports that mylar insulation does produce thrust, so wax paper may not be necessary. He also reports that alternating layers of copper foil and aluminum foil produce thrust. See the link to "C Positive Results". Update: someone on freenrg-L contacted the original author's family and found that he had been killed in a car accident. I don't understand why the author didn't include a patent number. A cursory search of 1930 patents shows nothing called "electric rocket" or similar, but a more intensive search could be done. I wouldn't be suprised to discover that the article is a hoax, with the goal being to get someone to put massive effort into building a foil-stack capacitor with thousands of layers, each made of many small parts! Fascinating idea though, and very much in line with T.T.Brown's work with the small apparent gravity forces generated by large capacitors at high voltage. It's also similar to the Morton Effect described at http://amasci.com/freenrg/morton1.html Mr. Morton observes his effect during an electric discharge. Perhaps the gravity capacitor only produces thrust during a discharge, and not when the net charge is constant? (John Bedini thinks so, but nobody yet has built one.) Also, the author doesn't say "I built one and it really worked." This leads me to wonder: where did he get the plans? Maybe the original inventor THOUGHT such a device should work, yet never actually built one? (In my experience with weird science, this is common: people draw detailed plans for devices which exist only in their minds and have never been tested. I've done this myself many times!) Note: the article doesn't mention high voltage, but it is apparant that a "Fitzeau's Condenser" is a high-voltage device akin to a Leyden jar. I vaguely recall that Fizeau's Condenser was the very first stacked-plate capacitor. It is intended to operate at high voltage. That's probably why the author requires two sheets of wax paper per layer: more sheets mean that a higher voltage can be attained without internal arcing. Once the capacitor arcs through the wax paper, it is ruined, since the wax paper is carbonized in one spot, and this acts as a short circuit. (You'd have to unsolder all of the foils, and track down which layer had the short.) Remember the first rule of Weird Science": FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS, AND DON'T CHANGE ANYTHING. We don't know what makes this thing work, or even if it does work. If you decide to "improve" it by using plastic instead of wax paper, and if the finished device creates zero thrust, what then? What if it really would have worked, if only you'd followed instructions exactly? If you're going to do that much work, why risk failure by changing the device? Without knowing exactly how it works, it is impossible to improve it. Your best course of action is to build TWO devices, then add your improvements to only one of them. (Or, simply build one device, and follow instructions exactly.) WARNING: If you charge this capacitor with even a feeble "static electric" high voltage supply, the capacitor will store energy at lethal, electrocution levels. If you aren't familiar with electrical safety regarding capacitors and high voltage, don't mess with this device. > question: have you actually tried to build the "Gravity emitting > capacitor"? Nope, nobody has as yet. Since it might be a hoax, cutting all that foil and paper is a whole lot of work. But even if it doesn't emit gravity fields, you'll end up with a spiffy high-voltage capacitor for home experiments. Hint: tin foil is available from dental supply houses, and pre-cut squares of wax paper can be had from restaurant supply outlets. It might be more efficient to have a die-cut print shop make a die-cut master and stamp out thousands of little tin foil sectors... > Could we replace those little segments with solid rings? Nobody knows. Beware, if you don't follow instructions, you might cause failure. Something about those segments might originate the thrust. For one thing, a solid ring is the same above and below, so how could such a ring "know" which way to move? Maybe those little strips of tin on top of the foil segments are the things which "program" the capacitor to produce thrust (and maybe if the strips were BELOW the segments instead of above them, then the thrust would reverse... or maybe thrust is produced by the voltage polarity, and no segments are needed. Who knows?) > It seems rather interesting, but I don't have the slightest > clue how it would work.. it doesn't make much sense that a stored > electric charge would produce a gravitational field. Maybe it only produces thrust during a discharge? Also, major new discoveries in science RARELY make sense. If they did, then someone would have already discovered them. The gravity-capacitor article states that the inventor stumbled across the effect accidentally. This is a good sign, since in the "weird science" arena there are lots of people with unusual THEORIES which lead to experiments which have never been tried before. Unusual theories rarely are correct, and the devices almost never work. If, for example, suppose I have some novel theory about gravity and capacitors, and I have not tested my theory by doing an experiment, then the chances are almost certain that the experiment will not work. Yet on the other hand, if somebody reports that they have (accidently) performed an experiment which gives unexpected, unexplainable results, and that they have no theory to explain the strange events, then chances are much better that it is real and not just a mistake. Human beings occasionally stumble across phenomena which are not explained by contemporary science theory. For example, Bequerel stumbled across the fact that uranium ore, when placed against a photographic plate, will expose the plate even if opaque cardboard paper is in the way. At the time, this made no sense at all. Magic light from a rock? Perpetual motion! And light which goes through opaque objects? Ridiculous! Fortunately the experiment was very easy to perform, and so the disbelieving scientists rapidly became convinced that the effect was real. They just couldn't explain it at the time. This, and other similar experiments, led to modern theories of nuclear physics. If the gravity-capacitor is real, it requires that there be an upheaval in physics. Currently there are NO theories which predict that capacitors will emit significant thrust. A few years after the discovery makes the rounds, "electrogravity theory" might become part of mainstream science. Unfortunately, the experiment is not trivial to perform, and even if the gravity-capacitor is built, there is a chance that the experimenter will make some mistake or "improvement" which causes the effect to fail. Also unfortunately, there IS a chance that the thing is a hoax, and therefor anyone who builds the capacitor might waste their time. (Actually, it is not a complete waste of time, since a high-voltage capacitor is the end result. Use it in a tesla coil or something. Immerse it in a bucket of mineral oil to attain a higher maximum voltage. Don't electrocute yourself though! High voltage capacitors are not toys.)
.