What if there was a device that could defy gravity and lift a refrigerator off the floor so anyone could push it out the door. As fantastic as that sounds and as unlikely that it will actually work, it is one implication of the Mach Effect Thruster. If it does work and could be scaled up it would revolutionize just about every industry in the world. It would cause changes more than semiconductors had done and more on the scale of the Industrial Revolution. I want to build and test a very small Mach Effect antigravity device at home.
Is It Antigravity?
The physicists who have been working on the Mach Effect Thruster never use the word antigravity probably because it sounds a bit dramatic. If it works it will be able to provide enough thrust to overcome gravitational fields. Also I’m not a physicist concerned about reputation so I’m calling it antigravity.
It’s actually called the Mach-effect gravitational assist (MEGA) drive, invented by James F. Woodward , a Ph. D. physicist currently at California State University, Fullerton. All current spacecraft carry lots of propellant and expel it out the back in order to generate forward thrust. The MEGA drive purports reaction-less thrust using only electricity for propellant. Dr. Woodward and a few others have published laboratory grade work showing small thrust results around 2 or 3 micro newtons (uN). A recent NASA document reports measurements of 100 uN thrust. A lessor number of equally capable researchers have published results of similar devices that can not produce 1 uN thrust. Nevertheless NASA has seen enough to continue funding Dr. Woodward’s work currently to 500,000 USD. A definitive test of the device is currently scheduled at the U. S. Naval Research Laboratory in Annapolis, MD notwithstanding Covid complications.
Most physicists remain skeptical primarily because MEGA relies heavily on Mach’s principal which they believe violates general relativity. Mach’s principal is commonly stated as in Wikipedia, “local physical laws are determined by the large-scale structure of the universe” or parochially “mass out there defines inertia here”. There are many Machian gravitation theory formulations; but the two most prominent are, Hoyle–Narlikar and Brans–Dicke . Experimental data from the Cassini probe appears to invalidate the Brans-Dicke formulation. These two formulations have been used to derive equations that predict the forces supposedly generated by the MEGA device. With the exception of this MEGA data I believe there is no experimental evidence to support Machian gravitation theory.
My goal with MEGA is to build an inexpensive workbench device that will provide evidence albeit amateur evidence to either support or contradict MEGA theory. What makes me think I can do this when much more capable researchers have had such differing results? All published work uses devices that weigh around 150 g and operate around 35 kHZ. I am working above 600 kHz with about 1-5 g devices. MEGA mass effect gravitation equations suggest frequency has a rather large exponential scaling factor. Even if it is only frequency squared which is at the low end of the mathematically predicted scaling effect, 600 kHz will provide ~300 times thrust multiplier. Using a much smaller mass may or may not help. Considering everything I hope to produce ~100 uN thrust which can be measured on my workbench. My interest include electronics, micro computers and amateur physics so this effort fits to a T.
Design
I plan to document everything on this blog and provide enough information so that other enthusiasts can built on this effort, hence DIY antigravity. The small results that I see to date need to be scrutinized and tested. Feel free to question everything and comments are also welcome. Why are reputable physicists using larger devices? It may be because high frequencies require small devices which raise a host of other problems. This may be a quixotic venture but for me it is entertainment and if I can produce consistent results whether positive or negative it is worthwhile. My device is inexpensive and designed so it can be reproduced by any skilled amateur. All components for the device shown and tested below cost about 200 USD.
There have been lots of devices tried and rejected for various reasons over the past year so I will ignore the experiments that failed to give consistent data. My system design is shown in block form in Figure 1. The oscillator is an inexpensive signal generator which was convenient for my testing. It isn’t required since the signal is narrow band and can easily be produced with a simple breadboard adjustable oscillator. My design for the amplifier is easy to build and provides the stack drive signal. It must produce about 20 watts of power at ~600 kHz and all positive (0 – 40 volts) because the piezoelectric stack cannot tolerate negative voltages. The forward/reverse power sensor measures power going to and reflected back from the device. Although not absolutely necessary it has been helpful to match impedances and improve resonant frequency selection. The device stack consists of one or more piezoelectric stacks glued together with a brass mass counter weight and suspended with a 25-250 mm thread to form a pendulum. The thrust detector consists of a 6 USD laser and 10 USD photo detector aligned with the end of the device. This provides a measure of movement from the vertical plane thereby implying thrust. Dr. Woodward and others are measuring thrust directly with sophisticated balance devices way beyond my means. The last block represents computer control to all blocks and data collection from the blocks.
Very Preliminary Results
Each block will be covered in great detail later but for this first blog I wanted to report some very rough and preliminary results using a subset of Figure 1. Figure 2. shows my first successful build of a thrust measurement device using a pendulum and laser apparatus as viewed from below. The laser on the left emits a beam that strikes the end of the device stack suspended right beside it so that only a small piece of light passes by and is captured by the photo detector on the right. The stack consists of a 9mm long 1/8″ square brass mass glued to a single piezoelectric stack. Since the detector is about 20 cm distant any slight movement of the stack will cause a large change at the detector.
Figure 3. Shows this test device with mounted laser and stack hanging by polyester thread. The photo detector is outside the frame with its output currently routed to an oscilloscope to facilitate tuning and measurement. Since mean DC voltage is being measured I believe this could also be accomplished with a voltmeter. With the laser on I adjusted everything so that about 300 mV was showing on the scope with the drive power off. After the stack is energized the scope output increases by 20-30mV to ~325mV. When the measurement pair is shifted to the back side of the device and readjusted to 300mv the drive power causes the output to decreases to about 275 mV. It appears the stack is not just expanding but is actually moving. This suggests there is a small thrust pushing the stack against gravity and friction in the direction of the brass mass. How much thrust this measurement actually represents will be addressed later.
Eliminating False Positives
Obviously this thrust could be caused by something other than the MEGA force. I’ve thought of three possibilities, electromagnetic effects from the drive signal, the local magnetic field or asymmetric resistance in the pendulum. The first one happened before on a previous design using a load cell so I am skeptical. In order to test this I hung a matching piezoelectric stack and wires down alongside the device shown in Figure 2. I then drove this second chip at resonance frequency with the same power previously used. There was no measured motion of this stack theoretically because it had no brass mass counterweight required in Dr. Woodward’s equations. Looking for magnetic anomalies I rotated the apparatus 90 degrees and 180 degrees and repeated the Mach-effect test. The results were consistent with the first test.
While this is interesting data the apparatus is touchy and too unstable to perform automated tests so it will be torn down. The next build will be more stable and must include a method to eliminate asymmetrical resistance bias. Quoting Dr. Woodward, “Direction reversal is a critical test for false positive thrust signals.” That test requires two runs with the the stack rotated 180 degrees for the second run with everything else remaining the same. This turns out to be very difficult for my design but I’ll be working on that. Meanwhile let me know other error modes or suggestions that come to mind. Until next time, thanks for the viewing and be safe – Larry
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