A Secret Project to Counter the Force of Gravity | Space’s Deepest Secrets | Science Channel

Transcript

I had to go away and come up with some Concepts and come up with some ideas that could actually feature an anti-gravity or gravity type propulsion system well this was one of the designs that we came up with for start it wouldn't be limited just flying in the air it could fly anywhere into space even into water of course it was a vertical takeoff design because it had a gravity engine inside but it didn't look very exciting and so we asked the artist to put some green Rays underneath that made it look far more futuristic let's be clear that not everyone in the company thought we should be doing it there were quite a few that felt we make aircraft we're good at it and that's what we should be doing but there were a few and some very senior people that felt okay let's just have a a little look at the future and the concept became known as green glow [Music] as head of project greenlow Ron's job was to find and develop Advanced propulsion systems to overcome Gravity the potential was enormous if it happened it would totally change Aerospace and Ron was not alone at around the same time in the US NASA began a parall parel project headed by aerospace engineer Mark Millis it was around 1996 when I was asked to lead the Breakthrough propulsion physics project things like um non-rocket space drives uh Interstellar propulsion to manipulating gravity things like that for that project the idea was to think radical think big today NASA says it has moved on and doesn't want to look back I can't go in there uh to talk about it now because uh NASA's not doing that work right now at ba systems the same situation the company no longer wants to discuss project greenlow we asked whether we could go there and talk to them about it and they just said no gravity control is a dark and dangerous science but like modern-day Alchemy it promises a glittering prize but it can destroy your [Music] reputation years earlier Ron had watched a gravity experiment bring down one of Britain's best known scientists this time I call for a volunteer professor of engineering at Imperial College London Eric lawe and then we're going to spin up the biggest gyro of the day which is here like millions of others Ron had been Spellbound by La weight's Christmas lecture at the Royal Institution in 1974 I can make him raise it now lweight suggested that by spinning a heavy wheel he could make it counteract gravity Ron has returned to the Royal Institution to to try and recreate the effect does it feel light it does it feels very light with the help of fellow engineer Dr Adam vek if I slow down it feels what I think was at the back of Lee's mind was that there was a force in One Direction More than in the other and so the gyro will start to rise up and that gives you the illusion as though it's losing weight it isn't It's Just an Illusion but is it like when the gyroscope is rotated in the same direction it's spinning it's given an upward lift and if I rotate in the opposite sense oh that does look heavy oh careful careful careful when it's rotated in the opposite direction the opposite happens and it seems to get heavier still hoping to make gravity control a subject of serious research lweight acknowledged his mistake yet his reputation was permanently damaged he was snubbed by the academic establishment 20 and felt compelled to leave his position at the Royal Institution Professor laway got into a lot of trouble with this really because of the claim that it got lighter which is anti-gravity and the academics jump on any anti-gravity device as being impossible well it's not impossible it's just we don't know how to do it what we should look it's like flight in the last century in those days anybody that said they could fly was looked upon as a [Music] lunatic the dream of lifting effortlessly from the earth is not confined to Engineers despite being so contentious many academics are rather seduced by the idea Dr Tamara Davis is among them from a little kid I always wanted to go and visit other planets and go up into space and to be able to have a form of propulsion that could get me there easily would be fantastic but we don't yet know whether we can manipulate gravity or have any control over it there is one fundamental Force we know we can control which we've used to build our modern world electromagnetism it gives us a tantalizing illusion of gravity control when we levitate a [Laughter] magnet electromagnetic repulsion balances the weight of the magnet by using the same magnetic polarity in the base we know that like charges repel so here we just have a magnetic field that's levitating a magnet so this is nothing mysterious this is just electromagnetism see if I can get this [Music] across the power of control we get from electromagnetism lies in the fact that we can change its polarity and make it either repel or attract so in electromagnetism we have positive charges and negative charges and they tend to attract each other if you have a positive charge and a positive charge it will repel from each other but wouldn't it be great if we could get gravity to work in reverse and be able to levitate things using gravity only problem is there isn't any negative gravity there isn't any anti-gravity that pushes gravity always pulls as far as we know the reason seems to be that unlike electromagnetism gravity has only one kind of polarity positive one mass is simply attracted to another gravity and electromagnetism are completely different forces there's a very special property of gravity that is that it adds up inside an atom there's a positive nucleus surrounded by negative electrons so the electromag magnetic value cancels out whereas there's nothing to cancel out its mass so the force on one atom adds to the force on another atom and so they generate an attractive gravitational force so if you get enough of those atoms together like in a planet or in a star then the gravitational force is very strong so gravity is different it adds up up as you increase the amount of matter in a way the other forces don't [Music]