The Ning Li Disappearance | Noah Logan

Transcript

I'm Tim Ventura and we're joined today by Noah Logan, a reporter for the Huntsville Business Journal and Huntsville Event Magazine with a decade of experience covering breaking news headlines and a bachelor's in political science and print journalism from the University of South Alabama. Noah joins us to discuss his research into the story of Dr. Ning Lee, who made global headlines with her research into gravity control using superconductors in the9s before disappearing from public life, leaving behind unanswered questions about her research and the circumstances of her disappearance. So, Noah, welcome, sir. It is a pleasure to have you with me today.

It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me, Tim. Normally, I do a question and answer format. In the case of Dr. Ningley, you and I both have different pieces of a much larger puzzle.

So, we'll try and approach this conversationally. I do have questions that, you know, I have a timeline. I've got all that stuff, but we're going to keep things fast and loose today. I want to start out by asking what first inspired you to research Dr. Ning Lee? Where did you begin and why did you begin? It's interesting.

I even though so I am like I live in Huntsville and have worked in Huntsville for a while. I didn't hear of her at first. It wasn't until I uh came across a video from a content creator. His name is Barely Socialiable and he's got a fairly large channel. He doesn't upload too often, but uh like that was over two years ago.

And so by the time I saw like his video, it was already more than a year old. Had like over like a million views already. So it wasn't particularly new or anything. I just had recently found his channel and like I kind of like just like watched the videos around 30 minutes long and then uh was kind of like amazed from the whole thing and thought that it would be at least a waste of you know to not see if I could find something since I lived in Huntsville and you know and in the area and have a local connection. So I thought I would at least try to see what I could find.

Well, every big story has a hook and in this case, I think the real scoop that you have was interviewing Dr. Ning Lee's son, George. So, what can you tell me about him and what are some of the most interesting things that you learned from him? Yeah. So, I guess like top it off like the thing I found most interesting at first like George uh was very like he invited me into his home. We got to know each other for like a month.

I wanted him to be able to trust me, everything. But um he invited me. That's where we did the interview. And he was not really aware of I guess like just how uh like the sheer volume of people in like the world that were still like asking questions about his mom. Yeah.

He was he was like fairly aware of like a somewhat like sh surface level. He told me that he had gotten like some letters from people in New Zealand one time. So I know like I'm not the like the first person to ever like find him and like associate who he was and who his mom was. Someone else did from New Zealand. uh I don't think he like wrote back or anything but so like he you know he had not seen Barely Social's video or anything and like uh that was so that was like really interesting to be able to kind of like tell him like hey there's this very large kind of following of people who have been talking about your mom like for I guess like the past decade at that point and so I was able like to show him that video and uh his two kids too and so it was just you know really interesting to like be able to like see them watch the same video that I did and like just like learn in real time that like so many people were still uh talking about his mom.

It was really nice. Yeah. Well, she disappeared from view. I think that's what captivates people, right? With a lot of other scientists, you know, they maintain kind of a steady profile. They keep publishing.

They're moving along. You can see their work progressed. with her. She had a lot of big claims initially. She did go to a couple of the big early conferences and then she just dropped out of sight.

Yeah. And that leads people to ask questions, right? Yeah. What was uh was it quantum mechanics that like did a profile on her like the early 2000s I want to say or Yeah. Popular mechanics taming gravity. Taming gravity.

And uh I know like so you know I had been I had heard of you and was familiar with you because like in the story that I published like kind of trying to like uh recap the information that was publicly known before going into what George told me like you were mentioned because you were um you know you I don't know if like I correctly identified you or I did identify you as a journalist. I don't know if that was like what your like profession was back then, but uh you know, you were like on records like saying that she had been reading your emails, but you couldn't like no one could get a response from her and everything. I think if that's correct. Yes. And some of the things that you've told me later put that in context now.

So now I understand that a little more deeply. Uh once upon a time I used to run a you might almost call it a blog or a portal site called American Anti-gravity and I covered all of the big emerging propulsion science. And so I did interviews then you know 20 years ago just as I do today um with scientists and innovators and I was able to interview most of the large players in that area. And so this the area that Ningley was working in grew into a much larger community than it started with, but she was definitely a pivotal player in the beginnings of it. And one of the things that intrigues me about her story is she always stood apart from that larger community.

Why do you think that is? You know, there were two initial people there that were really intriguing. The first was Eugene Pogllinoff. And I do have notes. I mean I can scroll down and read through them if you want but Ningley was the other one. So in let me let me see if I can find my notes here.

In 1991 Dr. Ningley co-authored the effects of a gravidom magnetic field on pure superconductors. She co-authored that with Douglas Tor. It was published in physics review D volume 43. And when that paper came out apparently it did get some mention.

It generated some interest, but it was not as big as it probably should have been. It didn't get the recognition that it needed. What did start a true media frenzy was Dr. Eugene Ponloinoff in 1996. He attempted to publish a paper on research he did back in '92 on superconductors and gravity control.

He was using the same as her. He was using large discs of superconducting material. His were 12 in in diameter, rotating at several thousand RPM. And he published a paper saying that they created a column of reduced gravity above the superconductor. So my research shows that his paper was initially rejected by over a dozen journals.

It did eventually make it through peerreview and physics reviewed D, but then it was leaked to the press because it was such a breakthrough idea. And that led to so much criticism that he eventually withdrew it. And so for Podclonov, that was really where this media frenzy started. And Ning Lee was more quietly doing her research at that same time. This this would have been the mid 90s.

Yes. She would have been at UAH still and probably are working with the um Marshall uh space flight. Yeah. So part of NASA for people who don't know, but there were a couple more big stories that I should mention. Again, I'm just going from the notes that I have here.

Poglanoff and Ningley, from what I understand, were not familiar with each other's work in the mid 1990s. I know that they communicated with each other later because Pogllinoff has told me that. Um, but Pogllinoff was featured in Charles Platt's Breaking the Law of Gravity published in Wired magazine in 1998. That was, I think, the height of the media blitz on this. He made headlines.

He drew a lot of criticism for his journal attempted journal publication. Then Charles Platt did breaking the law of gravity that went worldwide with Wired magazine. And then not too long after that, Ning Lee was mentioned in the article Taming Gravity, which was, I believe, Popular Mechanics, and I I have a date of 2002 for that, but I I could be mistaken. It sounds right. Yeah.

So that's that's kind of the early days you know and again it became very hot. Uh a community started to form around it. Uh Ning Lee presented at the 2003 highfrequency gravitational wave conference. Um so she was involved with a lot of this stuff. She also ended up working with or collaborating with NASA with Glenn Tony Robertson and Ron Koser on a NASA replication team.

So yeah, the advantage she had over Ponloinoff was he was in Tampir, Finland and Russia. I guess he had two different facilities he worked from, but she was right in the heart of NASA country. And so she had access to she had access to funding and she had access to key personnel to collaborate with. Yeah, I'm trying to remember. So, was her uh I have to I'm pulling up the article to remember a direct quote, but uh like I remember one of the last things with the paper trail was her claiming uh results of some kind and in an experiment and uh she gave like there was I have to uh I'll pull it up and but you might know what I'm talking about but she like uh some type of like superconducting experiment and she was able to uh she claimed to like get a result, but I didn't, you know, I'm nodding my head as you like talk about all this.

I'm not I've never studied physics or anything. It's not really my background. I'm just like a Huntsville journalist. So like this kind of falls under my uh jurisdiction why I covered it, but I don't really All this is like another language to me in terms of like the No, I you you you're awesome, man. You are you're pulling the string, right? You're following the story where it goes.

And this is a it it started out, I think, relatively simple. And you know, I was a kid when this started. I think I was like I was in college when the Pogllinoff story broke. So, you know, it it goes way way back and it turned into a much larger effort involving dozens of physicists who were contributing papers on this. Although again, I think her and PCL were the only people that really ever talked much about doing experiments.

There were a couple others that attempted them, but but they were the two big ones. Um, so the paper I think you might be talking about was Ningly presented the paper measurability of AC gravity fields at the MITER HFGW 2003 conference. That paper stated it is found that the effective AC gravity field in a copper nucleus arises from the magnetic dipole field at roughly 10 to the -2 nanogs or sorry microgs. Yeah. So micro G's not nano is a tiny effect that makes this usable possibly for communications sensing or detection but not enough for propulsion or any other large order effects.

So that that's probably the paper you're talking about. Yeah. I was that like the her replication of Paul Clinton's work or was that something else that you know I am not entirely sure. The reason I'm not sure was again they had kind of separate paths that they were following and she really she came up with this term AC gravity right like like alternating current where it could be switched positive or negative and she really tried to brand herself around that and Pllinoff was he was definitely more traditional in terms of okay here is an effect that we're measuring here's what we think it may be but he didn't try and create a lot of physics termin terminology or concepts to explain it. So yeah, and I don't know like it seemed like pod did he stay like an academic of sorts like where it seemed like Ningly she was uh in that same like sphere and then kind of made a decision like she left she was the highest paid female uh employee that was you know UA is part of the University of Alabama system as a whole.

She was the highest paid female employee at the University of Alabama entire system from what I've been told at the time she left and she started her business and like you said her name it named was named AC gravity. She was specifically going to uh you know like focus directly and solely on this type of research. So it seemed like there was like a a point where she kind of like broke off from like being just like a pure academic and was going to go into the private sector. Yeah, you probably know this, but I'll finish the recap. I guess I think the end of the trail was uh right, she got at least an initial grant from the Department of Defense for what was it like $400,000 or something? Uh the number I have is 448,970 and the grant was in 2001.

Okay. But I don't have any results of the grant research. I'm not sure if you ever made the I can share this with you now since uh uh this has kind of happened uh since the article I have to pull it over my phone but I've since done an updated uh foyer request awesome with DTIC I can't remember what the acronym is something defense I'm sure but uh oh yeah defense technical information center but I put it in a pretty like overarching like a large uh broad sweeping request. Uh any documents pertaining to Yeah. All documents produced as a result are pertaining to the agreement found under the Department of Defense's annual report on cooperative agreements yada yada yada gave like the agreement number and that specific grant uh contract also like included any documents uh in which Dr.

Ningley or her company HG Gravity with will serve as author or corporate author from 2001 to 2014 and they all came back like nothing. Like the final correspondence I got for that was April 9th. We have conducted a search of our files based on your below terms and there were no records discovered in the search. So that was that's intriguing. But I did get contacted by I don't know.

There's a you uh another content creator, Johnny Harris. Uh it's a fair very very large channel. He focuses on not I guess like specifically only on stuff like this, but just kind of like science related mysteries. Um and uh a woman called me a few months ago and she was like a she worked for him. she was a researcher and I told her that I had gotten no luck with the foyer request and she said that they had actually uh gotten a little bit more lucky and actually got something back and she said she would share it with me and I actually called her back today in anticipation of this but I haven't seen that she might be like they might be playing cards close to the chest because I assume she called me because they're uh maybe going to make a video about her on the channel or something.

So maybe they don't want me like scooping their foyer request, I'd assume. But um yeah, that was that was the last uh correspondence I had regards to any like attempts to try to find out more about the research. Well, and this is interesting because this period of time is really right before she went dark. So she took the grant, left to start AC gravity in 2001. It indicates she did publish that paper I mentioned earlier at the highfrequency gravitational wave conference in 2003 and she really just dropped off the radar after that.

So, in my own past research, I followed up with Douglas Tour and Joseé Vargas who were associates of hers in the 1990s and my initial thought would be, you know what, if anybody knew what was going on with her, they would have, but they hadn't really interacted with her since she left UA. So, I I kind of hit a dead end there. So, it was this giant blank spot. And then on top of that, I did I recently did an interview with Glenn Tony Robertson, right, over at NASA. He was on the NASA superconductor team that was collaborating with her.

He said that she didn't share information and she did have deliverables in terms of superconductors that she didn't deliver. So, he felt like it was kind of a one-way street, right? They would tell her things, share things with her, but they didn't get a lot back. Um, another person is Paul Murad. Paul Murad was chairman of the ISNPS state conference. Um he had talked with her a few times.

Um he had told me that she was still around but he didn't get much from her in the mid 2000s. So whatever she was doing it was very quiet. Now again I I don't want to be conspiratorial and I know that's one of the things that you've had concerns about is people take these things and they blow them up into something that it's not. Maybe she just didn't have results. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Um, you know, you mentioned like conspiratorial uh mindsets.

I guess one of the reasons that uh really like made me very gung-ho about the article once I kind of got in touch with George was Jack Sarat's interview. I can't remember what publication or network or whatever who was interview. I can't remember who he was being interviewed by, but he said in an interview, and you might actually fact check me on this, but it might have been like 2006 or 2008 or something, but he said that he knew for a fact that she had defected back to China with her research and was continuing her research for the Chinese government, which and that's he didn't use this word, but that's a train that's a that's treason. That's what he's accusing her of. Yeah.

And so uh you know once I kind of uh realized like that was a lot of people like what had what they had assumed happened to her. I was very felt very strongly correcting the record at least like for Georgia's sake. No that's important. It is very important to correct the record. And I think at the time I remember other people saying that.

So, I think probably what happened was Jack heard a rumor from a source he trusted and doesn't didn't realize it was a rumor because what what I had heard later was the Chinese apparently attempted to get her to come back and she turned them down. Yeah. George told me that he said this was when the uh it would have been when the CCP came to visit the United States at the time. Um you'll probably remember more than I do because I think it was a very big deal. It was the first time like uh Chinese Communist Party representation had officially, you know, been like uh in the United States on official business.

But they did approach her and invite uh invite her to come back. I had you know he used the word invite uh he didn't like he never uh portrayed like that you know they were trying to like strong ar she she had no interest in coming back. She had migrated in the 80s and you know she seemed to be a very patriotic like American cit citizen at that point. She had no interest. Uh but I think that her like communication with them might uh as a result a few years later when her mom died uh she wanted to go back to China for the funeral and was denied on the American side.

The whoever makes those decisions for the Department of Defense uh would not let her go. Yeah. Now if I can add a little bit of context there and again this takes the conspiratorial edge off it. There was a doctor named Dr. Fang Yu Lee.

He is still alive. He has a team in China that is doing highfrequency gravitational wave research. And in that time frame, we're talking I think like the 2000s at least until the teens um they were well financed. They were working through university. They were collaborating with researchers in the west.

Um, so they were, you know, that was kind of a Chinese counterpart to this global community of inquiry into highfrequency gravitational waves as well as superconductors because that was what a lot of these folks were focused on. So it's entirely possible that whoever invited her to China was connected with that lab and they were looking at it from a purely scientific perspective. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure.

Uh, so I guess I haven't even Do we need to go over like the main break of the the story I think was that she had been Yeah. Let's So So this is the part that I learned from you and I am so thankful that you're able to share this and shed light on it. Again, this is kind of what you took away from this. There was a car accident that that was the big change, right? Yes. So, there was a a car accident.

Let me get the exact date on that as well. Uh, I'm sorry. Yeah, 2014. And so, up until that point, George said that uh she was working at Redstone Arsenal every day. So, uh, you know, obviously like I would assume from that first contract she got she got absorbed into like uh some type of black budget, you know, program like she uh either her or AC Gravity as a whole like was their employee like she she worked there every day and it wasn't like a on a contract basis anymore.

I guess I don't you you might know more uh the terminology that's to describe that but so she worked there daily and there was a car accident in 2014. This happened actually on UAH's campus. I don't know why specifically she was going back there. Um, uh, George didn't say, but she was with her her husband and she was crossing the street and she was kind of like in the middle of conversation and like, you know, wasn't paying like the utmost attention to the road and she got hit by a car and it was a an unfortunate situation for George's family cuz when it happened hit like obviously his, you know, Dr. Lee got hit by a car.

So an ambulance had to come get her, take her to the hospital and her husband, you know, they've been married for 40 years at the time, whatever it was. Uh he had a heart attack at the same like at the moment he saw his wife tumble over the top of his car. Yeah. And he ended up dying a year later. But when Dr.

Lee got hit by a car and I might have used the wrong terminology in the article and I've since learned that it might be wrong, but George used how George described it was she had um like Alzheimer's afterwards and she wasn't able to like speak or definitely not work anymore after that, but like he had to take care of her. So, I don't think it's correct to say like she had Alzheimer's afterwards. probably I should like said she had a like a TBI, a traumatic brain injury and yeah, Alzheimer's like symptoms from a result of the car wreck, but she ended up living for about six years after that. Uh but like she never spoke again. She never worked again.

And so she uh George George was living in Georgia at the time working as a uh a what's the who do you go to to get your bones realigned? Uh oh chiropractor, right? Yes. Chiropractor. Sorry. And when that happened, he moved back to Alabama and uh you know he was the daily caretaker like for his mom for the next six years after that. And you know, like him talking about that, like it was just so very apparent like how committed he was to his mom.

Like it was a hard situation. It put a strain on his marriage. Like you know, having to be a full-time caretaker for someone who like can't take care of themselves. Like and uh I can't imagine like how hard it was for him. Not even like for one, you like that it's going to be a hard situation for anybody having to take care of their parent like that, but on top of like a secondary factor like knowing that your mom used to be like at the top of her field in academic research, like her brain was probably very important to her in her mind.

So like I imagine it was like doubly hard for him having to be in that situation. So it it sounds like that is kind of the takeaway from this, right? That's at least part of the mystery. So we we do have still over a decade of very mysterious years for her. And from what you're saying, it sounds like she was working very closely with the some part of the military or the US government or something along those lines. Yeah.

But you know, the end of this story is not a flight back to China. It's not kidnapping by men in black or anything like that. It is traumatic brain injury from a really tragic accident that left her as an invalid and took the life ultimately of her husband. Right. Yeah.

So that was the main points that I was able to bring like to the discussion with the story. I would say like the most common question I've been asked since then, which is kind of a frustrating one, is how do you know that the car wreck wasn't orchestrated by those men in black that you refer to? Yeah. And like it just kind of I I find it weird that I have to explain to people like if they're wanting to get rid of someone like car accident that could have any variety of like results of injuries where she ended up living for the next six years. Like that just doesn't really seem like an assassination. And I've been asked to like uh like provide the name of the person that hit her, but it was an undergraduate student at the time who ended up like coming to the hospital and like seeing her family.

She felt bad. But from what I from what from what George knows and like what I know from everyone like it wasn't the driver's fault, per se. It was an unfortunate situation, but that she there wasn't like a crosswalk. She like I guess was at a parking lot was probably taking like the quickest route to wherever she was going. I know uh when I was on campus at South Alabama crossed with a crosswalk uh multiple times a day probably but she like kind of just stepped out in front of this student driver.

And so, uh, but no, I'm not going to put, uh, that woman's name like in the story because I don't really feel like that's there and I don't it seems like it would probably cause a lot of undue harassment towards her direction. Yeah. No, that that seems like it would be Yeah. I I think you're doing absolutely the appropriate thing. Yeah.

People will keep digging because they're looking for a conspiracy sometimes maybe in the wrong place or maybe doesn't exist at all. Right. And so in this case, from everything you've described to me, it does. It sounds like a genuine human tragedy, right? And it's one that just happens to impact the work of a somewhat mysterious scientist at the same time. So yeah, and in terms of like her research, like George didn't know much, so you know, he he was living in Georgia at the time, so it wasn't like he was living with her and discussing with her about her work every day.

And also, you know, when he like moved into the house, uh, it's not like she's able to bring home anything from the Redstone arsenal that's like going to provide a a nice itemized recap of like where she is in her research. Uh, they keep that stuff pretty locked up. So, uh, you know, he knew like, you know, he was able to tell me some things like, uh, like her state of mind before the wreck. He he said that she had been affected very visibly and noticeably uh ever since like she changed from like working at UAH and working with NASA to like being uh working at Redstone every day. Oh, okay.

that she would like come in like uh he said like the not being able to publish and not like be able to go public with her stuff like apparently had a very negative effect on her and like kind of like was made her a little depressed. Um and you have to like I paraphrase George a lot because English is not his first language obviously. that it's like a a little bit of a a language barrier and it's not I don't think it's like the the language he uses every day still because there's a big kind of Chinese community in Huntsville like where he goes to church where he's mainly involved and so I think like he still speaks Mandarin mostly. So, um, but yeah, he said that she, uh, you know, was very a lot more like noticeably tired and like like kind of like worn out from her work at Redstone more so compared before. And he asked her one day, he said, "Mom, like, you know, are you okay? Is something bothering you or is there anything like that you want to tell me?" and the paraphrase him that you know his mom looked at him and just said you don't know anything and if you think you know anything you need to forget it.

So that's a little spooky. I mean uh I don't know spooky is the right word but like I guess like it was obviously like a high strong environment. there is obviously like, you know, some stress going on somewhere. And even this is I've been in Huntsville reporting on stories for years and like when I was asking around about her like in preparation for this story, that was the only time I've ever had someone from Redstone call me out of the blue and say, "Hey, I hear you're asking questions about this." And I I told like barely sociable this we ended up becoming friends and I think like people like hear that and they think that like uh I received that phone call and they're trying to like threaten me like physically. So like I I think the message they were trying to send was like if we even get a whiff that you're trying to figure out classified information is that you're you're never going to be allowed on Red Still again.

obviously like you know uh so I don't I don't think it was like a like a a a threat on my life like but it was really like weird just to get a call from them like and say hey we know that you're working on this story before I tell them about it you know that's so there are little bits and pieces of like the story that like I can see like why people want to try to take it in that direction I understand like that's how you know it it would be a more exciting story that way, but it's not always how it works out, I guess. Well, my thought with Redstone, and I guess there could be a hundred different variations on this, but you know, if she is going into work every day and she's doing her thing and she's producing, she's probably got deadlines, deliverables, and papers she's writing and all that stuff, and suddenly one day she's in an accident, and then after that she's unable to work. My thought would be I I I'm trying to think of like government of corporate America, but usually what they would do is kind of leave the office set up for a month or so and after they figure out what's going on, usually they just put it all in boxes and put it in a safe somewhere, right? So, do you think that her papers are still there just archived? Yeah, if I had to guess, uh, it's not, you know, it's not like some very wild guess. I I think that's the safest answer. like it's that it is either like if there was someone that was maybe capable of like picking up where she left off then maybe not maybe it's like with that person or maybe group of people but if not and I have to imagine yeah it's like in a box somewhere uh you know uh warehouse whatever it's probably not being touched and I I think a lot of people I I'm still wondering like is it possible Maybe like she was working at Redstone at the time like uh taking the the view if like there wasn't any results like say like um they weren't getting anything results or they weren't getting any results that they had hoped.

Is there a possibility that they still kept her there just to make sure that she did not go back to China and still like continue her research there? because that kind of seems like something that uh like the Department of Defense in America would do like just to keep a researcher out of like uh the Chinese government's hands. But yeah, I don't have any obvious I obviously don't have any proof of that. I'm just wondering like like people like to people have asked me do you think the fact that she still worked there up until 2014 is like some type of proof that she was getting results and I just don't know if I can like really confirm that like it just there's just so many different variables at work but I don't know you might know better like do you have any views on that? Yeah, I would say that she was at least she was getting some type of results or at least conducting a field of research that had a progression, right? Because you know, usually even internally with stuff like that, you've got like a contract and then contract deliverables. Now, if she was on staff, all bets are off, but my thought would be if she started out contractbased, they would it would seem like they would continue doing that, right? Otherwise you would go back to teaching. Yeah.

When the business license was being updated yearly. Okay. So I get that uh supports that point of view. Yeah. But the so again not to be conspiratorial that could simply indicate slow but incremental progress.

And going back to the highfrequency gravitational wave conference um there are probably probably 10 to 20 people um who were doing similar research. Theirs was mostly theoretical. They would do the same thing. They would publish, they would make a few revisions, they would solve a few more equations, they come up with some new ideas, publish again the next year. And so it became this long-term incremental progress.

And she could have been in the same boat. So it it's possible that she was getting results, but they were just, you know, slow and and steady, right? And there's nothing wrong with that. That's science. So yeah. Yeah.

The the story like has had a bunch of kind of like waves of like popularity. It seems like when I first published it, it did really well. And then about like a year later, uh I got a text from Barely Socialable and he's like, "Hey, Joe Rogan's talking about you right now." I was like, "Yeah, that's hilarious." Thought he was like joking with me. and he's like, "No, but like he sent me a link and I'm not like a Joe Rogan fan, so I I didn't want to watch the entire three-hour episode, but I was able to find like a clip of him like reading the story and which is like, you know, I appreciate the exposure and I appreciate him helping spread her story, but even like when he I can't remember who his guests were that episode, but they're he's like reading the story and he gets to the point where I recap what Jack Sarati says about her back to China. And then he's like, he's like, "Oh, okay." And then he done talking about it.

They move on. He's like, "I guess she's back in China or went back to China before she died." Like Joe, it's right there. Like just finish reading the story. Like like the the most like exposure I can imagine from a story after the fact. And it's like him coming to like the complete opposite conclusion that the story paints cuz like he doesn't read the last four or five paragraphs, which is funny.

And then like another wave kind of recently, uh the uh the Cybert truck bomber, the guy that blew up the cyber in front of the Trump hotel casino. Yeah. It was apparently his like manifesto um mentioned her by name and some type of like Oh, interesting. He was like talking about how there's some cover up going on with anti-gravity technology. So like I I don't know.

I just I remember getting like a few emails like the next day like I always know like when the story is being talked about by someone fairly big or something has happened that's related to it because I get emails and phone calls about it. Yeah. Well, let me let me scroll down here and let me see if I can find this because so I do have two I I have two notables here in terms of in terms of the most conspiratorial aspect of this possible. Um, in October 2008, the Jason Defense Science Advisory Panel uh basically did a review of highfrequency gravitational waves. The reason they did that was Ron Pandalfi, who worked for the Central Intelligence Agency, um, had concerns that there were claims being made that HFGWs could be used for weapons, right? And because there was collaboration between Dr.

Venue Lee's lab and you know scientists in the United States. This ended up being a concern that went to the Jason panel. They did a careful analysis of this. They did not site Ningley's research specifically. I'll put a link to the document in the show notes here, but this review panel basically argued that highfrequency gravitational waves are incredibly weak, at least based on known physics.

And that aligns with Ningley's earlier papers. So they said this is harmless. Don't worry about it. It's not a threat to anybody. Don't classify it.

And the document for that is public record. Um some people say that they did a giant disservice to that community because they said look there's nothing here. Other people would argue I'm in this camp that they did a giant service to that community because they kept it from being classified. So that's that's one paper. There was another paper in 2010, a defense intelligence reference document entitled the role of superconductors in gravity research that was published in March 2010.

And again, I'll put a link in. Yeah. No, I think I ended up finding that uh I didn't find it before I published it. I think I ended up finding it afterwards kind of when I was doing that most recent foyer request. But does it site her? It does.

It sites Yes, it cites her. It also cites I mean again there were many many many many scientists doing research in this area. So in terms of uh in terms of Ning Lee the the takeaway that I have from that document was she was a part they she was considered part of a larger effort but a scientific review mentions her without focusing on her. Right. So yeah, I I mean so the the that's about as conspiratorial as it gets in terms of what I've seen.

Uh definitely the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency were aware of her work. It was written about and documented, but there doesn't seem to be anything nefarious. There doesn't seem to be any kind of smoking gun or even really steaming barrels there. It just seems like these intelligence organizations were following this progression of scientific research much like they do any other kind of science. So yeah, it was uh kind of strange when the the researcher from Johnny Harris's video or channel called me and she would kind of kept asking questions like uh where I could like tell like she was trying to figure out like the same thing as their conspiracy angle.

And I kept like answer and she eventually she said you know we were just talking and she said well unfortunately you know sometimes like uh you you come to like a dead end or something. I tried to explain to her I was like, you know, I don't work like I don't work for a publication that like specializes in stuff. Like for me it wasn't like a it was still like a Huntsville based human interest story. Like it wasn't like for me I didn't like come to the end and say, "Oh man, there's nothing here." Like I was like I thought it was still exciting just to be able to like uh inform Huntsville readers about her because she wasn't like you know it's not like she's like a uh a household name in Huntsville or anything. I didn't hear of her until watching a few videos about of her.

So just being able to like inform our readership about who she was and you know how important she was to her field and to be able to help her son you know who was at that point she had only been dead it was it was like her two the two-year anniversary of her death and so he was having you know I imagine it's hard like going from living with your parent being you know being their daily uh caretaker and then losing them like you know it was just nice to be able to like you could tell how proud he was like when he talked about her and like her work and so yeah uh I I I think your story is incredibly valuable. I learned so much when I read it. I didn't know about the car accident. I didn't know anything about her passing. Right.

I'd heard a rumor that she might be dead and that was about it. And so your story helped educate me and I think it's helped educate hundreds of thousands of other people who were interested in this topic, you know, and it it's I think it's helped also reinspire interest in this area of inquiry which which is a lot larger and more expansive than just her work. So I think that you've done a pretty amazing service to the country, to the world. Well, I I can only hope so. I can just if more people especially like in Huntsville at least know about her and like her story and George was happy with it then that was really like what I uh was like the top of my priority list in terms of me being satisfied with the story was just to help like more people become aware of her and to if possible help bring a son to a little bit of closure and to set the record straight at least that hopefully no one else will ever come across her story and then come away with the conclusion that she defected back to China or something.

So, as as a next step, because one of the things that you mentioned to me before the interview was now that you've gotten bitten by the bug, so to speak, at least a little bit, you've thought about covering some of the other stories in that area. Um, the reason I mention that is again by coincidence, Glenn Tony Robertson, who is now retired, is working with a small coalition of the willing, you might call it, and they want to get back into superconductor research right there in Huntsville. So, have you thought about covering some of these topics as part of a regular beat? I haven't yet. like almost like I've thought about it in terms like I want to but I don't write for a publication like I write for the Huntsville Business Journal. So even getting like this story was a little bit of a like if I had been if I hadn't been there for years I don't think they probably would have published it but my editor at the time trusted me and so when I came to him and I said look I don't think this necessarily falls under our scope.

It's not there's no financial aspect to it that I can tie back to, but I can I'm pretty reasonably confident that it's going to get uh a large magnitude of like eyeballs at least like I think it's going to get a lot of readers. And so like there's that as like if I could replicate it knowing that like there's going to be a larger audience for it maybe but it's not our general human and so maybe it's like something that I can talk you know maybe we add like an expanded section where we cover like science you know uh science and research more that doesn't necessarily have like a f finance or business uh kind of background to it but you know I don't have like any certain like concrete plans too. But if it ends up being relevant and like newsworthy, yeah, I'll be there and I'll still be covering it. But, uh, you know, that's I guess like to be assumed for every reporter in Huntsville. If it becomes relevant, you'll hear you'll hear about it from a a bigger source than me, I would guess.

But you you are the source. You are the source. You're you're building your reputation. So So, you know, I I hope to see more from you. So Noah, on that note, why don't we close things down for today? But let me before we go, let me ask what's coming up in the near term for you.

What are your plans for the next few months? For the next few months, that's it. Are you talking about in terms of like specific stories wise or Oh, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Your stories, professional career stuff, you know, the directions that you're going, things you're mulling over. Uh yeah. So, a lot of the stuff I do like kind of like it's hard to predict because it's a lot of like daily like uh a lot of like city press conferences like stuff that like I learn about the day of and then report on. Uh but in terms of like some ongoing things like one of the more satisfactory stories recently uh well it's not too recent. It started almost a year ago, but there's been a few apartment complexes that have treated their tenants very badly.

And uh I was able to provide coverage of that and be able to end up reporting on what was like essentially a very illegal kind of activity by a certain apartment complex. And uh they were getting ready to kick out a few tenants because they had complained about fire alarms going off to like 3:00 in the morning. and they had went to like local news uh to complain about it and then they were the apartment complex is going to kick them out and I think uh you know as a result of like coverage from me and uh it was able to get like a class action lawsuit that it's kind of like gotten the ball rolling and so they ended up not getting kicked out either. So that's uh you know very rewarding to do work like that. Yeah.

And so human interest human interest stories and there is a I did recently get accepted into uh Rolling Stones and NYU have like a program through Yellow Brick for modern journalism that takes like a it's like a six-month kind of course. Well, it's six different courses and you end up like you get kind of a not a diploma or anything, but you get a certificate of completion from NYU. And one thing that it focuses on that caught my eye was like uh data science and journalism I think is like the name of the course. and you know not having like a math background. I think it's uh you the the world we live in now with more like AI and just anything like it's just nice to uh get more information and get more uh teaching I guess to like be able to properly relate stories like that.

Wonderful. But other than that, you know, there's nothing I can't say there's anything too huge on the horizon, but I will let you know if anything. Absolutely. Absolutely. I would say stay tuned.

That that would be my my note to the audience. Stay tuned. I'm going to put links to all of this in the show notes. If somebody would have asked me the same question like yesterday, what's the big thing coming up? I would have told them I'm appearing on Tim Ventura's podcast. So, now that this is over, I don't know what the answer will be, but we'll find something, I'm sure.

Wonderful. Well, thank you again so much for your time today, sir. Yeah, I appreciate you having me some.