Japanese Antigravity experiment

Anti-Gravity?

Japanese scientist's findings not expected to survive further investigation. Japanese scientists have reported that small gyroscopes lose weight when spun under certain conditions, apparently in defiance of gravity. If proved correct, the finding would mark a stunning scientific advance, but experts said they doubted that it would survive intense scrutiny.

A systematic way to negate gravitation, the attraction among all masses and particles of matter in the universe, has eluded scientists since the principles of the force were first elucidated by Isaac Newton in the 17th century.

The anti-gravity work is reported in the Dec. 18 issue of `Physical Review Letters,' which is regarded by experts as one of the world's leading journals of physics and allied fields. Its articles are rigorously reviewed by other scientists before being accepted for publication, and it rejects far more than it accepts.

Experts who have seen the report said it seemed to be based on sound research and appeared to have no obvious sources of experimental error, but they cautioned that other seemingly reliable reports have collapsed under close examination.

The work was performed by Hideo Hayasaka and Sakae Takeuchi of the engineering faculty at Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan.

Unlike the exaggerated claims made for low-temperature, or "cold," nuclear fusion this year, the current results are presented with scientific understatement. The authors do not claim to have defied gravity, but simply say their results "cannot be explained by the usual theories."

More important, the experiment is outlined in rich detail, ensuring that other scientist can try to duplicate and assess it.

"It's an astounding claim," said Dr. Rober L. Park, a professor of physics at the University of Maryland who is director of the Washington office of the American Physical Society, which publishes `Physical Review Letters'. "It would be revolutionary if true. But it's almost certainly wrong. Almost all extraordinary claims are wrong."

The experiment looked at weight changes in spinning mechanical gyroscopes whose rotors weighed 140 and 176 grams, or 5 and 6.3 ounces. When the gyroscopes were spun clockwise, as viewed from above, the researchers found no change in their weight. But when spun counterclockwise, they appeared to lose weight.

The rate of decrease was small, ranging up to 11-thousandths of a gram when the gyroscopes turned at 13,000 rpm. But two effects were significant. First, the weight loss increased as speed did. Second, the pattern was stronger with the larger gyroscope, indicating that the results might be applied to still larger objects.