Do High Frequency Gravitational Waves Explain Li & Podkletnov’s Experimental Results?
By: Tim Ventura
Tags: Physics, Futurism, Science, Technology, Gravity

Scientists like Dr. Ning Li & Eugene Podkletnov have claimed to see anomalous gravitational effects for decades. Could High-Frequency Gravitational Waves provide an explanation? We join Dr. Robert Baker, Jr. to discuss international HFGW research and hypothesize about what might be causing these strange experimental effects…

Robert, I understand that there are literally dozens of physicists & engineers doing research on High Frequency Gravitational Waves, and the 2003 Mitre HFGW conference was a pivotal first event in terms of bringing them together as a community. Can you describe this for me a bit?

Dr. Robert Baker, Jr — view his bio here.

The MITRE conference was a crucial first step in bringing scientists together to discuss HFGWs from both the perspectives of theoretical physicists and practical engineers and included scientists from all over the world.

Interestingly though, scientists from China who were not able to attend the event became some of the biggest proponents of HFGW research and use the MITRE papers as background for their research.

The community that took shape at the MITRE Conference later evolved into STAIF Section-F, and this was due entirely to the tireless efforts of Paul Murad and Tony Robertson. STAIF proved to be an excellent forum for the presentation and discussion of new concepts in gravitational science.

I’ve been following a few of them recently — such as Dr. Ning Li. The last I’d heard from her was a very brief message in which she claimed to have achieved an 11 kilowatt experimental result for gravitational wave production. She calls this “AC gravity”, which is poorly understood by myself and many others.

Well, at the 2003 MITRE conference, we had participants from about nine countries and about 25 papers, indicating quite a bit of interest — particularly in Russia and China.

Ling Li presented a paper there, which was theoretical in nature and perhaps not easily understood by laymen, and in it she did indicate a theoretical output of 11 kilowatts from her system. In her mind, “AC gravity” is simply alternating current — the rest of us refer to it as high frequency gravitational waves. So we’re really talking about the same thing — with frequencies on the order of a hundred kilocycles and on up to the gigacycle range and beyond.

As I understand things, Ning Li’s research uses rotating superconductors, and is similar to the experiments that Eugene Podkletnov claimed results for in the early ’90s. The biggest difference is that she’s working on a theoretical model for her experiments, right?

Well, she worked with Douglas Torr while they were at the University of Alabama and came up with a very significant paper back in 1992 which indicated that these gravitational waves could be refracted.

Essentially, she theorized that there’s an index of refraction, which means you could make a gravitational wave lens out of a superconducting material. It this idea pans out, it would lead to all kinds of optics and a lot of future innovation — it would be quite an amazing feature of her studies.

Dr. Ning Li, demonstrating the superconductor she claims to have generated “AC Gravity”.

The superconductors that both Li & Podkletnov have been experimenting with are quite large — much larger than what NASA used during their experimental replication. Does that play a role in their results?

Yes, they’re both using discs up to almost 10 inches, I think. I’m not quite sure, but certainly 10 centimeters at the least. They’re quite large.

My thesis has been that high frequency gravitational waves are the basis for the effects Li & Podkletnov have claimed. In other words, the rotating disc, fields, high frequencies, harmonics and so on could be producing HFGWs that are perhaps about below the limits of detection at the magnitudes they work at, but may be influencing the local gravitational field, perhaps through self-rectification or something along those lines.

That makes sense. She’s been rather quiet lately — I haven’t heard from her in some time, but did see a recent funding request that appears to have been fulfilled by the Department of Defense, so it seems they may be financing part of her research?

Well, they did, and I was a part of the oversight committee. It was done by the U S Army and the Redstone Arsenal there in Huntsville. They did indeed have her do some research, and I was on the panel that was taking a look at that research for the Army.

There was a problem, though: we couldn’t get a final report out of Ning. You know, we had to get something. She is a brilliant scientist, but like so many brilliant scientists, sometimes they’re a little less than practical.

It’s not that she was hiding it or anything nefarious. In fact, I was on the panel that was talking to Ning, and I said, “well, where’s the final report?” Well, she just didn’t quite get around to it, you know, and that’s a problem. I‘ve talked with her since then, however, and she would play a role in the efforts that I’m trying to promote.

Back in the 1990's, Podkletnov claimed a 3% loss in weight in a rotating superconductor, which is similar to Ning Li’s experiments. However, in the early 2000’s he co-authored a paper with Dr. Giovanni Modanese claiming that a spark discharge onto a superconductor was generating over 20 pounds of force. Are you familiar with this second paper?

Podkletnov’s rotating superconductor was claimed to produce a 3% loss in weight.

Well that’s interesting, and I would love to see a replication of it. Some of their work I have seen, and it had interesting correlation with frequency. In other words, the higher the frequency, the greater the effect, or rather with the square of the frequency.

That caught my attention, because high frequency gravitational wave influence also increases with the square of its frequency, so again I can’t help but wonder if there’s an HFGW effect that might explain their claims.

Please keep in mind, however, that I’m an engineer — not a theoretician. In this particular case, you’d want to follow up the experimental work with a detailed theoretical analysis.

That’s not always the case. Often you have a theory and then develop an experiment to you know, to test it, but since they already claim to have experimental results I think they should work it the other way around.

The Podkletnov & Modanese claims are significant, as is this 11 kilowatt effect that Ning Li claimed to generate — how is that measured? What kind of force could we anticipate from future experimental devices?

Well it’s hard to tell. I mentioned Landau and Lifshitz, but they do not give any particular specifications. Now another scientist that you might get in touch with is Professor Giorgio Fontana over in Italy.

Fontana has come to some of the HFGW meetings and presented papers on gravitational wave beams, interactions and so forth. He’s one of several researchers in Italy looking at gravitational wave beams — what happens when they intersect, and how they might change the gravitational field.

I think Giorgio’s work is good, and he’d be a good person to talk with, but I really don’t think anybody’s theoretically come up with the magnitude.

Do you have any ideas on how conservation of energy is preserved in these experimental claims? I ask because these are claims for pretty substantial results, and I wonder how input power might be coupled to output effect.

I’m not sure and I don’t think anybody’s quite sure. Again, that’s why an experiment is valuable. I’ve not seen any of these purported gravitational change experiments myself, of the people who are reporting claims, none of them have reported any kind of permanent effect or easily replicable effects that would allow for detailed measurements coupling measurements.

In some of the work that I’m doing with the Chinese, you can get up to 10²⁰ watts per square meter for a small area, and that might really open things up. After all, when Marconi developed his ship to shore radio telegraphy, I don’t think he ever thought about microwave oven applications for his work. So we just won’t know until we actually do more experimental research.

Podkletnov’s “impulse generator” was claimed to generate up to 20 lbs of force.

A lot of that research is currently being done in China, from what I understand. Can you tell us a bit about their efforts, and how many people have become involved in their research projects?

Yes, the Chinese sponsored me on a month-long lecture tour of Universities and Institutes in China on the subject of HFGWs. Right now there are probably more scientists in China working on HFGW research than in the whole of the rest of the world.

I’m also working on a project with professor Fangyu Li at Chongqing University in China on an experiment attempting to emulate the gravitational waves produced by a double star system. Fangu Li has a detector that would be well suited to detecting these gravitational waves, and we’re excited to see what kind of results we can produce & detect.

What is the anticipated timeframe before we can anticipate seeing scientific applications for High Frequency Gravitation Wave research?

It’s like anything, it really boils down to money. If the A-bomb project during World War II had proceeded at a normal pace, it probably would have taken 50 years to develop — but when the Manhattan project funded it & removed all the stop, then it happened very rapidly. You could make the same case for the rapid development of computer processors.

Basically as I see it, there’s a tipping point in terms of experimental results, and once that’s been reached then mainstream “big science” gets involved and further research will move rapidly. The question is how fast we’ll reach that tipping point — it could be a couple of years, or it may be a decade. It’s difficult to say.