The Mysterious Anti-Gravity Research Of The 1950s

Transcript

The Gravity Research Foundation did not go without criticism. For instance, Martin Gardner, a renowned author of popular mathematics and science, wrote vituborative remarks stating that the contest irresponsibly encourages radical ideals, calling it perhaps the most useless scientific project of the 20th century. Roger Babson wanted to create insulators, reflectors, and absorbers of gravity, much like how there exists such material for electromagnetism. However, the nonlinearity of general relativity in contrast to the linearity of Maxwell's equations make it either not possible in practice [music] or not possible in principle, at least according to the standard theory. Why not? Well, in quantum mechanics, if you have two solutions, you can add them to form a third.

Whereas, this doesn't work with the field equations of Einstein. Further, there's no negative mass to balance the positive mass and create a neutral object analogous to an electric insulator. In terms of particle physics, this is one of the reasons why the graviton isn't seen to have spin one. Thirdly, there's no currently accepted way to quote unquote bounce a gravitational field off a surface, for instance. Sure, there are wormholes, but that's more like diverting rather than reflecting.

Lastly, all known matter types are coupled to gravity. This makes an absorption mechanism difficult to even conceptualize. Now, keep in mind, we don't have a so-called final theory, and thus it's easy to come to the conclusion that all bets are off and anything is possible. One should note that Joel Sherk showed in the late 1970s that extended supergravity naturally leads to anti-gravity. Further, almost all of the points above are contested, especially when it comes to the details because in condensed matter physics and when dealing with meta materials, there are plenty of exotic properties that can emerge.

It should also be noted that gravity can be derived from matter dynamics rather than psychologically being seen as the a priorized stage that [music] matter plays on. Mathematically, contrary to the way the story is taught in undergrad, gravity is derived from the behavior of matter. That is, we tend to think of the Lorencian metric as coming afterward and giving rise to a playground for matter. However, historically the way that it works is that you take Maxwell's matter so sacredly that you impose a Lorenzian structure and we luckily see that this is the stage that the rest of matter plays. It may be that there are new types of matter and the existence of these exotic fields will dictate a change in the geometry itself.

This is called the principal polomial method. Let's get back to Agnu Bansson. In addition to being an entrepreneur, Agnu was a private pilot with an interest in astronomy. In fact, Agnu was a participant in operation moonwatch. So, what is operation moonwatch? It was a program led by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory that encouraged amateur astronomers to track artificial satellites, a pursuit closely tied to the broader Cold War context.

In other words, watch the skies. This may have fueled Agnes and Roger's fascination with anti-gravity and UFOs. The interest in flying saucers held by both Roger and Agnu seemed eccentric to many, including Wheeler. However, it was Roger and Agnu's willingness to support alternative avenues of research that led to fresh perspectives in gravitational physics, which we now enjoy. Because of the excoriation from Wheeler and others like Martin Gardner, Agnu had developed a protection clause which would accompany any publicity related to his institute.

This clause made it clear that any work conducted at Agnu's institute was not associated with anti-gravity and instead was based on the Newton Einstein analysis. Despite this, Agnu Bansson privately remained steadfast in his pursuit of anti-gravity, even exploring the concept of electrogravidics and achieving lift with the help of his collaborator TT Brown. It was a claim that piqued the interest of physicists. To verify these claims, Bryce Dit and other renowned physicists like Edward Teller were called upon to evaluate these devices. Though they maintained a scientific stance and noted that the lift was likely due to electrostatic effects, Agnu was after all maintaining immense voltages across small distances.

In fact, in another unexpected twist to this story, the poster child of string theory, Ed Witten, has a family involvement in this. His father Lewis Witten was involved with Bansson stating I went to visit him and visited his laboratory and the basic idea of his laboratory was he had a strong electrostatic field which was about 150,000 volts over the distance of about a meter and he had an operator operating this thing but I knew enough about experiments to know that this was not a very happy place because I know that for strong electrostatic fields there shouldn't be any sharp points around everything should be curved and nothing was curved. Lewis Witten also indicated that Agnu started the Institute for Field Physics in particular for Bryce Dit. Perhaps he wanted some facade to get physicists like the duit to verify and even build his anti-gravity crafts. Companies like IBM, General Dynamics, and even Glenn Martin Aircraft Manufacturing Company saw potential applications of anti-gravity technologies in their business.

These corporations weren't just spectators. They were actively engaged. Actually, it was Glenn Martin that after several mergers became what's now known as Loheed Martin. Gravitational physics was no longer just an academic pursuit. It had realworld applications [music] that could irrevocably alter industry.

You've heard of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. This is the place that was home to some of the greatest minds in history. including Albert Einstein and Kurt Girdle. It's also the current home of Ed Witten and Nema Arconi Hamemed and Juan Maldisena. Well, Glenn Martin of Loheed Martin, inspired by Banson and Babson, aimed to create an industrial version of the Institute for Advanced Study, a place where theoretical discoveries could be applied to solve practical challenges.

It was called the RIAS that is the research institute for advanced studies and it was established in 1955. Coming back into the fold, Ed Whitten's father Lewis Whitten was not only hired but helped connect people, organized workshops and also arranged some of the funding for Glenn Martin's research institute at a time when this was extremely uncommon. In fact, Lewis Witten was the only one in charge of finding research for the institute, identifying everyone who could potentially help with Martin's Institute and hiring them. Even Burkhardheim was contracted by the RAS. You may remember Heim from Gary Nolan's podcast on tow where Gary talked about him's theories.

But basically this structure that he draws here at the end is a a visual representation of how when a certain structure is created at the top of it through these levels of organization consciousness would form because of it that then you could take away the underlying structure uh for formed it and then this would continue to exist independently. If it's right, it means you could create an artificial intelligence which was in and of itself could become conscious. Humans might someday be able to without using biology but using purely materialistic uh approaches build a sufficiently complex machine that creates an object with consciousness and a soul. That's fascinating. Heim was one of the first, if not the first, to posit that all interactions, gravity, em weak, and strong are unified in a higher dimensional uklidian space with extra so-called imaginary dimensions.

This was prior even to Yang Mills. Apparently, Herman Vile said that the highest chance of anti-gravity lay with Heim's theories, but unfortunately, after several attempts, I wasn't able to track down this source. If someone viewing this has the source of the text on screen, then please let me know and place it in [music] the comments. While it wasn't said publicly, it was known through the grapevine that the Glen Martin company was interested in anti-gravity. Recall, you can think of the Glen Martin company as the predecessor to Loheed Martin.

In Witten's words, there was a new thing in the wind at the time which was anti-gravity. It was in the wind. I quickly learned that I should talk about gravity and that they [music] would ask me about anti-gravity. And I'd say, "Well, we just learn about gravity. If there's anything to anti-gravity, it'll come along." MIT professor of the history of science David Kaiser along with University of Sydney professor of philosophy and physics Dean Rickles cataloged this and the links are in the description as well as links to all sources.

[music] Now, if this wasn't convoluted enough, Witon explicitly commented on potential anti-gravity materials, saying, "A guy in France was discovering that on the night of a new moon, a pendulum swung faster or slow. A guy named Townsen discovered that there was a type of bismouth that was repelled instead of attracting." The uh first uh astrophysics symposium not only started this field of relativistic astrophysics but it ended a chapter which is a sort of interesting small chapter in the history of relativity. I'm referring to the worldwide craze that h that lasted for about 10 years in the discovery of anti-gravity. And I bring that in because that impacted on my life quite considerably. In the middle 1950s, I found myself after uh a different I should say uh [music] youth than one might expect employed by the Martin [music] Company.

Now the Lockheed Martin Company which was mentioned by the dean earlier in the mid 1950s. Then I found myself employed at the Martin Company with a rather weak [clears throat] PhD I would say. uh at the age of about 35 with a few children. There was a vice president of ideas that was not his title but his function was to bring the company into new eras. The company was building airplanes and building rockets.

It ultimately built the Titan rocket which was used for many uh space vehicle flights. The vice president had the idea which was to him a wonderful idea to develop anti-gravity. Of course, when he tried the when he tried the idea in public, you could imagine the greeting he was he received by the scientists. If you enjoyed that clip, then the full podcast is out right now. You can click around here.

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