Secrets of Antigravity Propulsion (48 page)

Figure 12.4.
A device, similar to
Thomas Townsend Brown’s electric
disc, built and tested by Tom
Turman.
(Based on a sketch by T.
Turman)

In a subsequent telephone conversation, Turman learned from Brown that the patent did not include a depiction of an optimal design and that the blunt-edge design performed better because it produced a more nonlinear field configuration between its electrodes.
Brown emphasized the importance of creating a nonlinear E-field to maximize thrust.
Although Brown’s patents mentioned nonlinearity, Turman found that Brown placed far more emphasis on this point in his personal conversations.
If Turman had decreased the diameter of his positive leading-edge electrode wire by a factor of 120 and had shaped the edge of his negatively charged disc to have a gradual curvature, he would have greatly increased the nonlinearity of the disc’s electric field.
This would have produced a substantially greater ion emission from the vicinity of his positive electrode, whose forward-acting repulsive forces would have translated into a substantially higher forward thrust for the disc.

Turman asked Brown many other questions as well: Compared with the results of a static test, is the propulsion efficiency of the device increased if it is allowed to run in a circular course?
Does the ratio of thrust to weight increase as the size of the disc is increased?
What was the largest-size disc that you constructed and what were the problems you encountered?
Brown was reticent on the subject.

Turman also built an asymmetrical capacitor device to test the performance of a slatlike device described in Brown’s 1960 electrokinetic apparatus patent (see figure 12.5).
⁵
It bore a close resemblance to the lifter devices that later became popular among electrogravitics hobbyists, but it was of much heavier construction.
Turman used a stack of four brass slats as the negative electrode, each slat measuring 1 inch by 12 inches, and a 12-gauge (110-mil-diameter) copper wire as the outboard positive electrode.
^*36
Turman said that his device produced a tremendous ion wind when energized with 30 kilovolts.
In addition to applying high-voltage DC to the electrodes, he electrically heated the positive electrode using a modified 12-volt X-ray-tube filament transformer.
He found that by heating the positive electrode, he was able to get a greatly increased thrust.
He noted that luminous ionization beads would form at regularly spaced intervals along the wire, forming sites where ions were discharged at a higher rate.
As the wire was heated to a higher temperature, an increasing number of beads would form along the length of the wire.
In his 1928 patent, Brown similarly proposed electrode heating as a means of improving the electrogravitic thrust of his vacuum tube gravitator cells (recall figure 1.6).

Figure 12.5.
A slat-style asymmetrical capacitor device built by Tom Turman that used a heated positive electrode.
(Based on a sketch by T.
Turman)

Turman noted that after a black oxide coating had formed on the wire, he could still get a lot of thrust, even when he stopped heating the wire.
The oxide-coated wire apparently produced a lot more thrust than did a clean copper wire.
Turman felt that Brown’s flying discs may have used a positive electrode wire that was coated with some exotic material to enhance ion emission.
Such a film may have formed on the wire’s surface as the result of heating and oxidation.
For example, rare-earth oxides are used in radio tubes to enhance the emission of electrons from their filaments.
The same type of coating might also enhance the formation of positive ions at the surface of a positively charged electrode.
Brown did not mention using heated or coated wires in his flying-disc experiments, and Turman never brought up the subject with him since he performed his tests on heating wires years after he had talked with Brown.

More recently, after reading my paper on the B-2 bomber, Turman speculated that the leading edge of the B-2’s wing may have an oxide or chemical coating to enhance ionization.
Another way of inducing ionization might be to use RF excitation.
According to one source, a major aerospace company had taken out a patent in the late 1950s on a method of using high-frequency voltage on the skin of planes to reduce air drag.
A similar technique might be employed in electrifying the B-2.

12.2 • LARRY DEAVENPORT’S ELECTROKINETIC DISC TEST

In 1995, independent researcher Larry Deavenport carried out high-voltage tests designed to investigate Brown’s electric disc experiment.
He constructed a 16-inch-long armature made from shellacked balsa wood and suspended two aluminum discs 5.5 inches below each end of the arm (figure 12.6).
⁶
Each disc measured about 2.6 inches in diameter and was one-eighth of an inch thick at the center, tapering to 20 mils (0.02 inch) at the edge.
A curved piece of brass wire measuring about 50 mils in diameter and held 1.8 inches from the disc by shellacked balsa wood fingers served as the positive leading-edge electrode.
Each disc weighed approximately 33.5 grams.
The entire carousel rig was pivoted at its center of gravity on a needle bearing.

Figure 12.6.
A small-size rotary electric disc setup built by Larry Deavenport to duplicate Thomas Townsend Brown’s electrokinetic disc experiment.
(Photo courtesy of L.
Deavenport)

When the discs were energized with 0.8 milliamp at 30 kilovolts DC, the apparatus revolved at a speed averaging three-quarters of a revolution per second and reaching as high as one revolution per second (4 feet per second).
Ballistic pendulum measurements determined that the discs produced a thrust of 0.58 gram when energized at 25 kilovolts and 1.7 grams when energized at 50 kilovolts.

Deavenport had used a 50-mil-diameter wire, much finer than the 125-mil-diameter wire that Turman had used.
However, Deavenport’s wire still was about fifty times thicker than what Brown recommended in his letter to Turman.
According to Brown, using a smaller-diameter wire would have increased the field nonlinearity around the leading electrode and that would have boosted the thrust developed by the discs.

Deavenport also conducted carousel tests of a cylindrical electrokinetic device made from aluminum bottles.
⁷
He was able to get the apparatus to revolve at up to one revolution per second by applying high voltage between 50-mil-diameter curved emitter wires secured at the bow and stern of the cylinder and separated from the cylinder by about 2 inches.
The rear wire was connected to the cylinder body.
He found that the apparatus revolved slightly faster when a negative potential was applied to the lead wire, indicating that the propulsion he was seeing was primarily electrostatic and not gravitic.
Deavenport’s disc electrodes instead performed better with their lead wire made positive, as in Brown’s experiments.
Nevertheless, this suggests that Brown’s electrokinetic discs most likely would also have revolved if charged with a reverse polarity and that a large fraction of their thrust may have been due to electrostatic force effects.

12.3 • ROBERT TALLEY’S ELECTROGRAVITIC ROTOR TEST

Between 1988 and 1991, Robert Talley conducted research at Veritay Technology Inc.
to investigate Brown’s electrogravitic rotor experiment.
⁸
The project was financed by a Small Business Innovation Research grant under sponsorship of Phillips Laboratory at Edwards Air Force Base.
Talley’s experiment was similar to the vacuum chamber experiment that Brown conducted in Paris (figure 3.1), but with two exceptions.
Tally used DC voltages ranging up to 19 kilovolts, rather than up to 200 kilovolts as Brown had done.
Sparking between Talley’s electrodes prevented accurate measurements from being made at higher voltages.
Also, unlike Brown’s rotor, which was free to revolve, Talley’s was restrained by fibers that allowed the rotor’s thrust to be assessed through the amount of twist it generated.
This arrangement was sensitive to thrusts as small as 0.2 microgram.

Talley’s rotor consisted of two capacitors mounted in pinwheel fashion (figure 12.7).
Each consisted of an 8-centimeter-diameter brass disc separated by 4 centimeters from a 1-centimeter-diameter aluminum ball electrode.
In some cases, a quarter-inch-diameter rod of high-K dielectric such as titanium-lead zirconate (K = 1,750) was placed between the electrodes.
The rotor was mounted inside of a chamber that was evacuated to a pressure of 10
^-6
torr (10
^-6
millimeters of mercury, or about a billionth of an atmosphere).
Talley found no evidence of thrust when his rotor was powered with steady potentials of up to 19 kilovolts.
However, he found that the rotor developed substantially large rotational thrusts when sparks jumped between its electrodes.
Since this spark-induced thrust was observed only when he used a high-K dielectric between the rotor’s capacitor plates, he concluded that the dielectric material must somehow be directly involved and that this thrust phenomenon could not easily be attributed to ion propulsion or to other known electrodynamic effects.
Talley’s experiment provides support for the thrust effect that Brown observed when his electrogravitic rotor sparked during tests in a high vacuum.

Figure 12.7.
A schematic of the test rotor Robert Talley used
in his vacuum chamber experiment.

In 2003, American inventor Hector Serrano duplicated Talley’s vacuum chamber rotor experiment.
⁹
Unlike Talley, Serrano was able to get a 70-degree rotational deflection of the rotor element in the absence of sparking in a vacuum of 10
^-7
torr.
Serrano’s success may possibly be due to his use of a greater voltage potential, 41 kilovolts instead of 19 kilovolts, so his tests appear to confirm Brown’s findings that an electrogravitic force is propelling the rotor in the absence of any ionic discharge.
Talley’s finding that his rotor did not develop any torque at 19 kilovolts is consistent with Brown’s findings that a certain voltage threshold must be exceeded in order to observe a thrust effect.
For example, in testing his highly efficient vertical-lift electrokinetic apparatus, Brown observed that he had to apply in excess of 10 kilovolts before any noticeable thrust effect was observed.
Also, if we extrapolate the voltage-speed trend line for Brown’s electrokinetic disc (figure 2.4), we find that saucer speed drops precipitously, projecting just 9 centimeters per second at 30 kilovolts and 1 centimeter per second at 20 kilovolts.
Brown has no data points at such low voltages probably because he found the thrust to be so low that it was unable to overcome his carousel’s bearing resistance.

Talley’s observation that the spark-induced thrust was greater when a high-K dielectric was placed between the rotor electrodes confirms Brown’s statement that the thrust on his electrokinetic apparatus was proportional to the dielectric constant of the support rod placed between its electrodes.
For a given voltage differential across the rotor element, a material with a higher dielectric constant would cause more negative charges to accumulate on the negative electrode.
Hence, the negative ion cloud formed at the time of spark discharge would have repelled these accumulated charges with greater force to produce a greater thrust in the direction of the positive electrode.