FAQ
about Lifters and How They Work. (A
work in progress.)
This being an explanation of the modern mystery of the Lifter as promoted by J. L Naudin and Transdimensional Technologies.
This explanation can serve as a complement, supplement or a complete replacement of any and all explanations given elsewhere of how the Lifters of J. L. Naudin and Transdimensional Technologies operate, (and being currently and IMHO the best explanation available.) Note: this assumes the reader is already familiar with lifters as given on the websites of J.L. Naudin (http://jnaudin.free.fr) , Transdimensional Technologies (http://www.tdimension.com) , Saviour (http://www.blazelabs.com), Tim Ventura (http://www.americanantigravity.com) or Mark Tecson
( http://www.geocities.com/marktecson/
) among many others.
Back to Home Page for Rolland
Swank
Note: You can email
comments, criticisms or questions to me at:
rollandswank@yahoo.com or swankr@hope.edu
III. A VERY brief history of Lifters
IV. The electrostatic explanation of how lifters Work
VI. Some Consequences of the Electrostatic Explanation
VIII. Lifters in Science Fairs
A lifter is an electrical device that when charged to a sufficiently high voltage actually levitates or “lifts”. Other than the electrical voltages involved, there are no motors, fuels, gas cells or any of the other things normally associated with flying devices, and well-made lifters are silent (or nearly so) when flying. These devices can take on many shapes and sizes and can be make from many different types of materials. Currently a standard or typical device consists of an equilateral triangle made from lightweight aluminum foil some wire and balsa wood. This is the current prototypical lifter and most lifter builders will start with this basic device.
Yes, they do fly. There are no tricks, hidden wires, etc. The wires you do see in pictures of flying lifters are the power feeds (positive and negative) to the two active elements and (usually) threads in the corners to hold it down. But the device is actually flying. The wires and supporting threads are often blurry in the pictures you see because they are often shaking rapidly.
So in that spirit, click here for a picture of my flying lifter (use your back button to return).
Thomas Townsend Brown and Asymmetric Capacitors.
Lifters and lifter-like devices have a long history. Certainly one person that must be mentioned in any history is Thomas Townsend Brown (TT Brown). He patented many devices including a device he called the Asymmetric Capacitor. This device consists of a straight wire held by insulating standoffs at a short fixed distance from a flat metal plate. The plate is oriented in such a way that the wire and plate lie in the same plane. Whereas a plate to plate capacitor would consist of two parallel metal plates, and a wire to plate capacitor would replace one of the plates with a wire, TT Brown’s device replaced one of the plates with a straight wire and then turned the remaining plate so the wire faces the edge of the flat plate, not the surface. When Brown put a large positive DC voltage on the wire and a negative voltage on the plate, the device moved toward the wire (i.e., in the direction from the plate toward the wire). Interestingly, if the voltages were reversed, the device still moved toward the wire. This effect has come to be known as the Biefeld-Brown effect. (Biefeld was Brown’s physics teacher in college). The question is whether this effect is evidence of some new and unknown law of nature or rather can be explained in terms of conventional (and known) physical principles.
Brown patented this device and many other similar devices from the 1920’s to the 1950’s. He believed he had discovered a relationship between gravity and electricity. He developed more and more elaborate devices, some shaped like flying saucers, which he was able to either suspend and “fly” around a support pole, or levitate. He never was able to build a device that could carry its own power supply, so all of his devices used wire feeds from stationary (and increasingly higher voltage) power supplies. He spent much of his life promoting and building such devices and trying to convince others that a practical flying device could be constructed. While there are many websites devoted to TT Brown and his work, the main one, totally and uncritically devoted to him is:
To gain a slight perspective on Brown, the following website has a review of some of Brown’s work, written by the Office of Naval Research. The U.S. Navy was one of the groups that Brown tried to convince of the practicality of his devices. While the paper is located on a website that has many other weird and wonderful things, I think this paper is of interest because it gives an insight into how Brown worked from an unbiased outsider.
http://www.rexresearch.com/ttbrown/ttbrown.htm
My reading of the above shows that Brown was NOT a careful experimenter.
Alexander P. de Seversky
The next person I will mention is Major Alexander P. de Seversky and his Ionocraft. A very nice summary of his work related to lifter-like devices is on the following site. This consists of a reprint of an article that appeared in Popular Mechanics in August 1964 plus some of his patents and a video of his device flying.
http://www.rexresearch.com/desev/desev.htm
What I would point out is that while de Seversky’s device looks quite different than Brown’s UFO’s, I think they work on exactly the some principle. Much has been made of the fact that after this article appeared de Seversky’s device seems to have disappeared. Some claim that it was taken over by the government and became a Top Secret or Black Project. I suspect the explanation is much more prosaic, it didn’t scale up.
Note that over the years voltage driven devices have been patented by many other inventors. In fact, similar devices continue to be patented to this day. Some names involved are Hagen, Bahnson, Serrano, NASA, Transdimensonal Technologies and many others. I think they all work on the same principles.
Transdimensional Technologies.
The current interest in lifters and the current standard triangle design for a basic lifter can be traced to Transdimensional Technologies, which created the following website in the summer of 2001. The have some nice videos of lifters flying.
http://www.tdimension.com/lifter.html
Transdimensional also makes a series of claims on the following page.
http://www.tdimension.com/lifter_questions.html
Two that are of interest (and which we examine later) are:
1. That the thrust is not ion wind. One of their videos shows a piece of cardboard “blocking” the ion wind.
2. The devices are scalable (i.e. larger and larger devices can be built).
J. L. Naudin
Jean-Louis Naudin reproduced the Transdimensional lifters and created a very elaborate website devoted to lifters. (In fact he maintains parallel websites in French and English). He also created the Lifter Group Site. All of the current interest in lifters can probably be attributed to his work. His lifter website continues to grow and change (often almost daily). He encourages lifter experimenters worldwide and maintains a log on his website for users to report their first successes. He has long experimented with a variety of electrical phenomena (the lifter site is in fact only a subset of a much larger website.)
Jean-Louis Naudin as built and reported on a whole series of lifters and lifter-like devices.
(Recently he seems to be doing more experiments in the area of “COLD FUSION”.)
The full Naudin website is at:
The Main JLN Lifter Website (English version) is located at:
http://jnaudin.free.fr/html/lifters.htm
The Naudin Lifter Group is located at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lifters
Users can gain access to the group site by setting up a Yahoo account (which is free) and then applying to join the group. Jean-Louis Naudin is the moderator of the group. As moderator he controls what is “published” by the group. He seems to be selective in what gets “published”. He has thrown out members (including me) out who disagree with his own “vision” and interpretation of the “facts”. So be aware that this group may not necessarily exist to promote a free and open discussion of lifters.
Other such groups exist, for example at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/blazelabs is a group started by Saviour.
Note: This “historical” section is an attempt to trace the basic lifter up to early 2002. Certainly many experimenters have contributed both before and after that time. The interested reader will find many other such histories both more complete and with perhaps a different “take” on the main developmental events on other websites.
Some of the following are taken from postings I made to the Lifter User Group or are modifications of postings I have made (when I was still a member). Hence some are in the form of letters.
The first is an explanation of the electrostatic theory without the mathematics. One of things I have learned as a member of the Lifter Group is that many of the users don’t have a strong background in mathematics. That prompted this verbal explanation.
Hi All,
I would like to summarize the “electrostatic” explanation for the lifter effect for the benefit of Newbies (who understandably have a difficult time trying to trace the explanation through various past postings). I include in this explanation the role of the neutral air, which I don’t think has been discussed before.
The “lift” mechanism is provided by Coulomb’s law of electrostatics. The positive ions that are created around the top wire are repelled from the top (positively charged wire) and attracted toward the bottom negatively charged electrode. The forces involved are given by Coulomb’s Law. As the ion is attracted toward the bottom electrode, it in turn attracts the electrode toward it pulling the lifter up. (At the same time, its repulsion from the top wire also pushes the lifter upward.) By Newton’s laws, the momentum that the lifter gains in the upward direction is equal to the downward momentum of all the ions. (Conservation of momentum). Now if this were all that happened, when the ions collide with the lifter at the bottom electrode, (as they all probably do), the momentums would cancel (add up to zero) and the lifter would stop. If it were “flying” in a gravitational field, gravity would take over and it would fall. Here is where the neutral air molecules come into play. As the ions travel “downward” toward the bottom electrode, they collide with neutral air molecules, transferring some of their downward momentum to the neutral air, driving them generally downward. The total momentum of the ion and the air molecule it hits would be the same both before and after the collision, but after the collision, the ion would have less downward momentum. It has “transferred” some downward momentum to an air molecule. After many such collisions, the ion having speeded up and crashed many times, eventually hits the lifter, transferring any remaining or reacquired “downward” momentum against the “upward” momentum of the lifter. But the amount of downward momentum it transfers is not equal to the total amount of upward momentum it “provided” the lifter during its travel down. Some of that momentum has already been shifted to the “neutral” air. The neutral air, since it is not attracted to the lifter by electrostatic attraction, will just blow by the lifter and can be detected as a “wind” below it. If we add up all the downward momentum of the neutral air and the ions in flight, it will equal the “upward” momentum of the lifter. I don’t think we violate any of Newton’s Laws here. The lifter can fly in the air, because the neutral air can take away some of the downward momentum, leaving the lifter/ion combination with a net upward momentum.
If we start to increase the size of the bottom electrodes (or more generally the cross-sectional area of the lifter “presented” to the direction of flight), it can be either in the “electrode” or not, more and more of the neutral air will hit the lifter structure. If enough “neutral” air is hitting and transferring momentum back into the lifter, the lifter will be unable to fly. Experiments have been done that seem to suggest this phenomenon.
If we start to reduce the air pressure, i.e., taking away some of the neutral air, the ions (which are still being created), can transfer less and less momentum to the neutral air. There is less and less air to hit. Instead, they carry more and more momentum all the way to the lifter, and transfer it when they hit. At some reduced pressure (no where near a vacuum) not enough momentum gets transferred to the neutral air, it is all getting transferred back to the lifter and the lifter will fall. The ions now are hitting it with enough momentum to cancel any upward momentum and gravity will pull the lifter down. The vacuum experiments that have been done seem to suggest this.
I don’t think lifters violate any known “conventional” science. TT Brown comments in a letter that the Navy rejected his device because, (he was told), his mechanism operated on just a “transfer of momentum”. I think it is very possible that he was given something very similar to the above explanation. He just refused to accept it.
Note: the mathematical explanation of all of this is on Evgenij’s website.
Regards to All,
Rolland
In light of this explanation it is of interest to look at the “Experiments” that block the ion wind.
In the classic Transdimensional experiment, a big piece of cardboard is attached to a stick and then inserted into the gap between the wire and the bottom foil of a flying lifter, completely blocking the ion wind, but with no apparent change in the lift. Remember that the ions are still being created at the wire and trying to move to the foil wing. Since they are blocked, they build up on the cardboard making the surface of the cardboard positive. Now the experimenter is holding a positive charge near the negatively charged foil. In effect the experimenter is attracting the lifter and holding it up. There will not be much, if any, wind below the lifter because the mechanism of lift has been changed.
Note that if you attach the cardboard to the lifter, for example, lay it across the foil wing, you may have increased the cross- sectional area enough that the momentum of the neutral air and ions striking it will be enough to prevent flight.
Another experiment is Naudin's example of putting the wires inside glass tubes so no ions can actually flow to the foil base, and
in-fact, if the tubes were vacuum tubes, no ions may be created inside them at all. But remember the tubes contain a positively charged wire. By holding the tubes, which contain a positive charge, near the negatively charged base, he attracts the base upward with no wind effect at all. But this is merely an example of Coulomb's Law.
Both of these experiments are merely demonstrations of known electrostatic principles. They merely change the mechanism of flight from momentum exchange between ions and neutral air to pure electrostatic attraction. Nothing magic here. You can produce similar effects by running a comb through your hair then bringing it near little bits of paper. The paper bits will lift… amazing. :-)
A mathematical theory of lifter operation was done by Evgenij Barsoukov. The complete explanation is on his website. Because the physical situation is actually very complex this explanation (as in others) makes some simplifying assumptions. Thus this explanation is probably NOT the final word.
http://sudy_zhenja.tripod.com/lifter_theory/main.html
In particular Evgenij derives two important equations. The implications of these are discussed in the next section.
I should note that there are other websites with mathematical and lifter related discussions.
Henri Bondar has an interesting website on Electric Coronas and some lifter related pages.
http://membres.lycos.fr/plasmapropulsion/Default.htm
http://membres.lycos.fr/plasmapropulsion/the_lifters_dedicated_page.htm
I sent this back in May 2002 to Naudin’s group..
Hi All,
To elaborate a little with more details on the non-scalability of the lifters which originally, I sent in a previous e-mail several days ago (but has not yet (as of 5/2 @ 8:00 am EST appeared), let us start with the two lifting force equations given by Evengij on his website.
F = I* d/k (eqn 1)
F=2*pi*e0*L*V(V-V0)/(d*ln(f_geo/r))) (eqn 2)
Where the terms below are defined as follows:
G = 2*pi*e0*L/(d^2*ln(f_geo/r))
e0 - dielectric permittivity of air
r is the wire radius;
d is the wire-plate spacing;
W plate width
L plate length (should be >> W)
f_geo is the characteristic length of particular electrode geometry
(1) f_geo=4d/pi for 2*d/W<= 0.6, and
(2) f_geo=W/(2*pi exp(pi*d/W)) for 2*d/W>=2.0
First is more near to lifter case, but maybe second case with some effective W can also be used.
In eqn 2 above, part of “G” has dropped out (i.e., the d^2 term has been reduced to d) which is why you see the eqn 2 written as it is, without the G appearing.
Now for ANY lifter design, once you have found an optimal arrangement and design of the electrodes, you would have fixed the values of r and W. The electrode spacing, “d” is more variable, in fact you would need to vary d within some fixed limits “on the fly” so to speak to keep your lifter flying at different altitudes (air pressures). We showed that is true with our experiments of flying the lifter in a vacuum jar, which we reported earlier to the group. (It did not fly very well with a fixed d).
The first equation says basically that you want to make d large to increase the lifting force F, while the second equation says you want to make d small to increase lift. What this means in practice is that for a given lifter design (even with a variable “d”), d is greater than some fixed minimum value, dmin and less than some fixed maximum value, dmax. So dmin < d < dmax for any realistic design. (Note this means you need some type of adjusting mechanism to maintain an optimal d while flying which adds weight to the lifter, but lets assume for now it weighs very, very little.)
Now in the second equation, we note that the voltage V must be greater than some minimal value V0. V0 is defined on the website as:
V0=g0*r*ln(d/r)
Where:
g0=30*kV/cm*delta*(1+0.301/sqrt(delat*r))
If you follow this through, (don’t let the symbols scare you), it means basically that for a given design, V0 is some fixed value greater than 0. But those of you that have actually built a lifter know that you can’t increase V beyond the breakdown point at which arcing (visible or not occurs). Since d is limited by dmax, this implies that the voltage of your lifter will lie between some fixed values V0 and Vmax. ( V0 < V < Vmax).
If we reexamine eqn 2 again, putting everything that is fixed or bounded into a big constant called C we will find that the lifting force F is less than or equal to a function of the form C*L, where L is the electrode length. What this says in mathematical terms is that the lifting force is a linear function of L. If you graph F vs L you will see a straight line sloping upward was you move to the right. (L > 0).
Now let us imagine our lifter with an optimal value for C. To give it some numbers, let us imagine we have designed a lifter that for every one cm increase in electrode length we can lift an additional gram of weight. (Based on what we have seen so far, this would appear to be a highly optimistic assumption). Anyway, in the appropriate units, F = L, (the constant C = 1). Whatever this lifter looks like and ignoring any weight of the mechanism that varies “d” and the weight of the electrodes themselves, it must be supported by some type of material. Let us imagine the electrodes are attached to a single stick of super balsa that has dimensions 100 cm by .1 cm by .1 cm and which weighs .01 gm per cm length. So our 100 cm length of this stuff weighs one gram. Again, these are some very optimistic numbers. Now, no matter how strong super balsa is, for some length of a beam of the stuff, (if we tried to keep the width and depth .1 cm by .1 cm) it will bend and/or break if we put some weight, (say a power supply) in the middle of the beam. This means that as we scale up a super balsa beam i.e., increase its length L, and if we want to keep it from bending or breaking under any load at all, we need to increase both its width and depth. Suppose we say that for every 1 cm increase in length we need to increase the width and depth each by .001 cm. This means that the width of a beam of length L must be .001 *L and so also must the depth be .001*L. Now the weight of a uniform (homogeneous material) depends on its volume (length*width*depth). So in general:
W = D* L*width*depth for some constant D which depends on the material.
In our example of an optimal lifter with the super balsa beam,
W = L * (.001*L)*(.001*L) (the D will be 1).
But we can now rewrite the equation as W = (.001) ^2 * L^3 = (.000001)* L^3. What this says mathematically is that the weight of the beam is a cubic function of its length L. If we graph the equation, the weight rises faster and faster as L increases.
Now, if our optimal lifter is to lift itself, the force of the lift must be greater than the weight of the lifter.
How big can this optimal lifter be and how much can it lift?
At its maximal size, let us find out by equating the lifting force with the weight.
F = L = .000001*L^3 = W. If we solve this for L we find that L = 10^3 cm or 10 meters. Note also that the total weight we are lifting is 10*3 grams or 10 kilograms and that is just the weight of the supporting structure of our lifter. If we increase the size of this lifter by increasing electrode length L, the weight of the resulting structure will be greater than the force of the lift generated by the lifter and it will not fly.
If you look at this graphically, what you are seeing is that a cubic function in L, (of the form y = D*L^3 ) will always “overtake” a linear function (of the form y = C*L), no matter what values you choose for the constants C and D.
Now it can be argued that no one would build a lifter as a straight line with a single beam and this is true. Maybe we should make each lifter panel only one meter long, using 1 meter lengths of super balsa, then mount them parallel to each other in a rigid frame made out of ….what? And the power supply is mounted in a frame made out of…what?
And the cockpit for the payload or pilot is made out of a sturdy material of ….. what? In a certain sense our straight-line theoretical lifter might be the lightest possible model as it uses a very minimal amount of material and the power supply is just stuck on in the middle and the pilot rides it like a horse and yet it does not scale up.
We are now into the realm of engineering a real world 3-dimensional object that must be made from real materials with sturdiness and real weight.
What I think this all means (and this is certainly open for discussion) is that if the mechanism for the lifter has been described correctly (and I think I did that in earlier messages, and if the wonderful lifting force formulas that Evengij developed (based on that mechanism) are correct (or even close to correct, and I think they are), then no lifter design will be scalable.
Regards,
Rolland
B. A follow-up to
the scaling argument.
Due to Jean-Louis’ careful construction and measurements on a series of increasingly larger devices, i.e., lifter 1, lifter 2, etc. lifting larger and larger payloads, I was able to analyze some of his data. I recently sent another message related to scaling. (This message never appeared in the group postings.) Saviour, (mentioned in the letter) is another lifter experimenter. He has created a nice program that can predict lifter performance based on inputting a series of parameters. That program is available on his website and on the Naudin website.
Jean-Louis,
(Jean-Louis, I will try the sending a version of this again, since the previous five have never appeared I am assuming the Black Hole is working overtime).
Jean-Louis—well done on your Maximus lifter. 60 grams of payload is very impressive! However, I foresee some difficulties ahead. I went back and ran some numbers based on the lifter designs on Naudin’s website. I am looking at total weight lifted divided by the total length of all the wing-electrodes in the design.
Lifter 1 3.3 grams vs 600 mm length = 5.5 grams/meter
Lifter 2 9.6 grams vs 1800 mm length = 5.3 grams/meter
Lifter 3 20 grams vs 3600 mm length = 5.6 grams/meter
Lifter 4 36 grams vs 7200 mm length = 5 grams/meter
3 stage lifter 3-------54 grams vs 10800 mm = 5 grams/meter
3 stage Coliseum----90 grams vs 21600 mm = 4.16 grams/meter
3 stage Maximus ---- 194 grams vs 50400 mm = 3.85 grams/meter
The results, when plotted as wing-length on the x-axis vs total weight lifted on the y axis are pretty much a along a straight line with a very high correlation.
The least squares regression line for the first 6 lifters is:
y = (4.13) x + 4.1 (x in meters, y in grams)
(We may want to exclude the Maximus as we await a new power supply and hence some new values.)
If we include the Maximus, the least squares regression line for all 7 lifters is:
y = (3.77) x + 6.39
In both the cases, the correlation coefficient r = .99. These equations can be used to predict total lift weight y for a given total wing length x. It can be used to predict results fairly well for the current aluminum foil wing types, especially for the larger wing lengths in lifters version 2 and higher. I suspect as we explore some different materials and wing designs (using say small cylinders of coated Mylar as per Evgenij), we will come up with lines whose equations have different slopes, (the x coefficient), and different intercepts (the constant term), but they still will be straight lines. This result would imply that stacked lifters are really no more efficient than a single stage lifter when we look at total wing length.
It looks like you will soon be in a position to see if what I predicted back in May in message 3053, (The rise and fall of the lifters) will come true or not. If we want to lift a payload of 100 grams, can we do it with a lifter structure that weighs around 100 grams giving us a total lifted weight of 200 grams and a total wing structure around 50 meters? Might be possible, especially if you use a bigger the power supply on the Maximus lifter. You may need around 600 watts. How about lifting 1000 grams of payload with a 1000 grams of lifter (total lifted weight of 2000 grams) and a total wing length is around 500 meters? Maybe it is here we start to run into problems. 500 meters of wing length is a lot of stuff no matter how you stack it up. I am not sure you can keep building it with the same linear density of material that you use on lighter structures, and no matter what materials you use, you will not be able to scale that design indefinitely.
The above argument also leads to the difficulties I have with Saviour’s prediction program. He allows the user to enter a linear structure density factor (in grams per centimeter) for a given lifter and then it appears that that density is used unchanged to scale up the lifter size and/or stack the lifter size. As the lifter gets bigger you cannot keep the same structural density that existed on the smaller lifter. You have to use stronger/larger (hence) more linearly dense materials for some parts of the structure. In the race between increasing total wing size to increase the total weight lifted and the actual total weight of the resulting lifter, the lifter eventually becomes too heavy to lift, no matter how you build it.
Best Regards,
Rolland
Click here for an example of the type of linear plot being discussed above. (Note it was done at a later time, using 10 lifters as data points, and was plotted as grams per cm instead of grams per meter, but the “point” is the same).
The following is a reply to points raised by Saviour concerning this scaling argument.
I will add some clarification to the website of how I think the scaling argument works. Basically, if we say that the current line shown on the graph is for Naudin’s 30 KV power-supplies (and he uses a gap size of about 5 cm) the slope of the line (the value of B in the linear form y = A+ Bx ) is determined. That B value appears to be about .0365 when x is in cm. The value of the A for this line is essentially zero.
For a 70 KV or 100 KV power supply (using gap sizes on the lifter of about 7 cm or more) you will be looking at a larger (but again positive and fixed) value for B. For your lifter (the winner of the 100 gm challenge) it appears that B is about .1. That is a significant improvement.
What we are comparing then, is the equation y = Bx, (we will take the A to be zero) and the B is fixed and positive (and depends on the power supply and gap size, etc.), verses the cubic equation y = C (x ^3) where C is some positive fixed value dependent on the materials, etc. that are used for the construction. Both these equations are then graphed for positive values of x. Note that x is the total wing length, so for larger and larger values of x we are building bigger and bigger lifters. They meet at x = 0, (no surprise) and again at the value of x = + sqr(B/C) . At this second value the weight of the lifter just equals the lift that can be generated. For values of x larger than this value, the weight of the lifter exceeds the lift that can be generated (the cubic equation will graph above the linear equation) so the lifter will not fly.
Click here to see the two types of graphs being discussed, for some appropriate choice of the x and y scales and for B and C.
So what then? Do we build bigger (and heavier) power supplies, which create a larger fixed value of B? But that will require stiffer and stronger (and heavier) construction materials to build our lifters with larger gap sizes. Thus we also increase the value of C. Perhaps this can be done, at least to the point of getting a lifter to fly and to carry its own power supply. I would really like to see that happen. But beyond that, I think (and this is pure speculation here) there might be another limit we run into. It may be that in the air gap there is only so much neutral air available and it can “absorb” only a certain amount of the ion momentum. Once that limit is exceeded, the ions will be left with too much residual momentum when they hit the wing and so they will knock the lifter down.
It seems we are trying to juggle a certain number of balls and as we try to increase the size of the lifters we keep adding more and more balls to the mix.
C. Lifters can be dangerous (high voltages and ozone production).
D. Lifters are based on conventional physics.
E. Lifters are NOT anti-gravity devices
F. Lifters will NOT work in a Vacuum or anywhere near vacuum. (see below)
Here is a message I sent to Naudin’s lifter group in April 2002.
Subject: Lifter flight in vacuum jar
Hi All,
Today, April 16th, we tried flying our 7 cm on a side .8 gm lifter in a vacuum jar. The lifter was set up on a stand which allowed it to slide up and down a center "pole" made from a plastic straw. The pole had a stopper which prevented the lifter from flying up off the pole. With
the jar sealed but before the vacuum pump was turned on, the lifter
flew up to the stopper on 16.3 kv dc (not pulsed) and drawing
approximately .75+ milliamps and stayed there. The voltage was not touched again during the experiment. Pressure in the vacuum jar was 740 mm Hg. When the vacuum pump was turned on the pressure started to drop. When it reached approximately 500 mm Hg (which takes approximately 10 seconds), the lifter dropped down the pole and stayed
down. Pressure was allowed to continue to drop but the lifter did not move. When the vacuum pump was turned off and air allowed back in, the lifter flew back up the pole again when the pressure reached
something above 500. This happened very fast so it was hard to watch
both the pressure readout and the lifter. At the end with the pressure back up to 740 mm Hg the lifter was flying at the top of the
pole. It would appear that this lifter at least cannot fly in a low pressure
environment, nowhere near a vacuum. Regards,
Rolland
Click here to see the lifter flying in a sealed vacuum jar before the pressure was reduced.
Click here to see that the same lifter fallen down once the pressure is reduced below 500 mm Hg.
(Note: the lifter twisted on the pole as it fell, so it appears that because one edge is up, it might still have
a little lift. Once down, it did not move at all, there was not enough thrust for even a little twitch.)
Lifters of different shapes & sizes but still lifters (see Naudin’s Lifter Log for examples)
Lifter in an a closed Aquarium (experiment done by Stefan Kaechele) and in effect repeated (see above) when
we flew a lifter in a sealed vacuum jar.
Lifter in a Bag (experiment done by Bert Pool). (The link for this experiment has unfortunately been taken down.)
This experiment carefully weighed a lifter sealed in a plastic “bag”. In effect, it showed that the operating lifter and bag combination did not lose weight when the lifter was operating. (The very, very small weight loss seen was due, I think to the hot air balloon effect. An operating lifter heats the air around it so the bag structure they used acted like a hot air balloon. When our lifter was in a sealed in a vacuum jar, there is an increase in pressure when the lifter was first turned on. This is a hot air effect.)
Lifter in a Vacuum Jar (experiments done by Rolland Swank (see above), Stefan Kaechele, Willy Guns and others)
(None of them flew)
Stefan Kaechele: http://www.t-spark.de/t-spark/t-sparke/liftere.htm
Or http://www.t-spark.de/t-spark/t-sparkd/lifterd.htm
Willy Guns: http://blazelabs.com/l-vacuum.htm
NASA (ref) http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.08/pwr_antigravity.html
Lifters of increasing size. (see lifters done by J.L. Naudin, Saviour, a Japanese group and many others).
For example, a nice lifter design by Saviour won Naudin’s 100 gram (payload) challenge.
Lifters come in all different shapes & sizes but they are all still lifters and work the same way.
Some interesting experiments showing possible measurement difficulties.
(This section is to be completed but these anomalies are all essentially caused by electrical effects in the measuring devices themselves. The strong electric field around an operating lifter affects the electrical circuits in the measuring device itself, making the measurements unreliable).
Experiment claiming Gamma Ray emission and possible explanation.
Experiment claiming X-Ray emission and possible explanation.
Experiment claiming inertial changes and possible explanation.
Experiments claiming time and space distortions and possible explanations.
Possible Dangers – Ozone and High Voltages. The device must be set up in such a way that no one can get very close. There is a great shock danger associated with an operating lifter. They should probably not be operated for extended periods of time.
My big question with showing lifters in Science Fairs is: Where is the Science and evidence of the Scientific Method? What I would like to see in any project done for a Science Fair to show some Science, Some Measurements, Some Evidence of the Scientific Method, Some Historical Background, a Scientific Explanation, Etc., Etc. Just to build a lifter, using an old color monitor and the instructions readily available on the web is really not a big deal and should not get any great credit.
In particular, the sponsors of such an event should be ashamed if the newspaper coverage of lifters in the event promotes claims of UFO’s and Antigravity. This seems to have happened several times here in the USA.
Websites and links for further information, (or misinformation), more speculation, experiments and other theories and explanations. Many such sites are mentioned above. A Google search using the words:
“lifters” and “Naudin” or
“lifters and Transdimensional
will turn up lots of sites for further exploration.
Below are some Science Links
that a reader of this site might find interesting.
Bill Beaty’s website
Dr. Antonio Carlos Moreirão de Queiroz website and pages on Electrostatics.
http://www.coe.ufrj.br/~acmq/electrostatic.html
Donald E. Simanek’s website and pages on Unworkable Devices.
http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/home.htm
http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/museum/unwork.htm
Bernard Thomas’s website on early Electrostatic Devices.
(This web page last revised on June 26, 2003)
