People may recall that in my biography of Johann Bessler, "Perpetual Motion; An Ancient Mystery Solved?", I described a paper from Sir Isaac Newton's notebook in which he speculates that "gravity (heaviness) is caused by the descent of a subtle matter which strikes all bodies and carries them down. Whither ye rays of gravity may bee stopped by reflecting or refracting ye, if so a perpetual motion may bee made one of these two ways." Adjacent to these words, Newton added two sketches of perpetual motion powered by the 'flux of the gravitational stream'. I included this information in support of my argument that gravity could ultimately be used as a source of energy - if it was good enough for Newton then it was good enough for me.
"The term gravitational shielding refers to a hypothetical process of shielding an object from the influence of a gravitational field. Such processes, if they existed, would have the effect of reducing the weight of an object. However experimental evidence to date indicates that no such effect exists. Gravitational shielding is considered to be a violation of the equivalence principle and therefore inconsistent with both Newtonian theory and general relativity." Thanks to wikipedia again.
There is an irony in the last sentence of the above paragrah, 'gravitational shielding ....... is inconsistent with both Newtonian theory and general relativity,' seeing that Newton himself suggested that gravity shielding might be possible.
I was suprised to discover that research into this concept continues. The consensus view of the scientific community is that gravitational shielding does not exist, but there have been occasional investigations into this topic, such as those funded in 1999 by NASA. Scientists Ning Li and D.G. Torr at the University of Alabama, Huntsville, wrote several papers in major journals on the relationship between superconductors and gravitation. And there are the "gravity shielding” experiments at Tampere University in Finland carried out by Dr. Podkletnov.
This of course has nothing to do with my own suggestion that a successful Bessler's wheel might be adapted and driven to provide directional, or inertial thrust ...sideways and upwards!
JC
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