The recent announcement by Russian scientist, Eugene Podkletnov, that he has invented an anti-gravity machine, which was to be described in an article authored by Podkletnov and Finnish physicist, Petri Vuorinen, is now tainted with controversy. The British journal New Scientist has reported in its 21 September 1996 issue that the article, which had been scheduled for publication in the Journal of Physics D: Applies Physics, has been withdrawn following a statement by the alleged co-author, Petri Vuorinen, denying that he ever worked on anti-gravity with Podkletnov.
Although Podkletnov has said that tests ruled out the possibility that the claimed weight loss was the result of magnetic fields or air flow, his statement is suspect. His own diagram of the machine indicates it involves a levitating ring of superconducting material spinning at a rate of 5000 rpm. Apparently any anti-gravity effect produced by the machine is the well known magnetic effect associated with superconductivity.
At the Southwest and Rocky Mountain Division meeting of the AAAS in Norman, Oklahoma (May 1995), the author of this article discussed briefly his theory of repulsive gravity which occurs in the centers of the enormously massive central stars that exist in the nuclei of all galaxies, such as the one in the galaxy, M-87, which has a mass of 2.4 billion solar masses. Under this theory, which has nothing to do with magnetism or superconductivity, when the scalar field value in the interior of such a massive star attains a value roughly equal to that which occurs at the Schwarzschild radius, under the formula F = ma, the force also becomes negative or repulsive. This phenomenon has the following effects:
- The central region of the star develops enormous centrifugal forces that counteract the equally enormous centripetal forces developed in the exterior portion of the star, thereby preventing the gravitational collapse of very massive stars, a heretofore unsolved problem.
- It supplies an alternative explanation for the enormous jets of matter that are expelled from the polar regions of the central stars, which jets are currently explained as being propelled by magnetic forces that operate at some distance from the central star, while the central star is described as a "Black Hole" from which nothing, not even light itself, can escape.
The author's paper on this subject is scheduled for publication in Toth-Maatian Review.
