Post by swamprat on Oct 31, 2019 0:41:23 GMT
The Military Has Been Researching "Anti-Gravity" For Nearly 70 Years
It sounds like science fiction, but the military began working to overcome and harness gravity in the 1950s. From what we can tell, it never stopped.
By Brett Tingley | The War Zone | October 29, 2019
Decades-old questions about the potential existence of fantastical anti-gravity propulsion technologies have resurfaced following the Navy’s own disclosure of encounters with unidentified aerial phenomena and our own original reporting on a series of bizarre patents assigned to the U.S. Navy that seem to defy our current understanding of physics and aerospace propulsion. While the discussion continues over whether any such technologies are feasible, the truth is that the theoretical concepts behind them are anything but new. In fact, the U.S. military and the federal government have been formally researching these radical concepts since the 1950s, and according to our own research, those efforts have continued on to this very day.
In our dive into what seems like something of a bottomless rabbit hole of government studies into this exotic scientific realm, we have collected a body of research, news reports, and firsthand accounts. These establish the fact that the types of "anti-gravity", propellantless propulsion, and mass reduction technologies described in the Navy’s recent "UFO" patents are at least based on more than 60 years of peer-reviewed research conducted and published by the likes of the American Institute of Physics, NASA, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and the Air Force Research Laboratory.
While we can't say that any of this research led to actually being able to harness "anti-gravity" or extremely advanced next-generation propulsion technologies to any useful extent, the most advanced laboratories under control of both the armed forces and the academic world have certainly been trying their best to get there for the better part of a century. Also, keep in mind that all of this information comes from unclassified sources, and there is definitely more of it than just what is represented here. We can only wonder how much work has been done in the classified realm on what was once openly considered the next massive revolution in aerospace technology.
The Martin Company's Early Foray Into Anti-Gravity
In terms of the Air Force’s early anti-gravity research, one intriguing first-hand account comes from Dr. Louis Witten, who was a professor of physics at the University of Cincinnati from 1968 to 1991. Throughout his career, Witten conducted research into gravitation, quantum gravity, and general relativity. The last one of these is the theory first put forward by Albert Einstein that proposes that gravity is essentially a warp or curve in the geometry of space-time caused by mass.
During a roundtable discussion titled “Recollections of the Relativistic Astrophysics Revolution” held at the 27th Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics in 2013, Witten recounted his own work on what he somewhat puzzlingly refers to as "the discovery of anti-gravity."
In his portion of the roundtable, Witten recalls being recruited by George S. Trimble, then serving as Vice President for Aviation and Advanced Propulsion Systems at the Glenn L. Martin Company, which evolved first into Martin-Marietta and eventually merged with Lockheed in 1995 to form Lockheed Martin. The project for which Witten was recruited would come to be known as the Research Institute for Advanced Studies (RIAS) and was officially founded in 1955 by George Bunker, president of Martin, with the goal of advancing aerospace science and development.
"The vice president [Trimble] had the wonderful idea which was to develop anti-gravity," Witten says, noting he immediately balked at the proposal. "When he tried the idea in public, you can imagine the greeting he received from scientists. So he said to himself 'those poor bastards, I'll show them.'" Despite his skepticism, Witten ended up accepting Trimble's offer to join the powerful Martin executive's pet project.
Throughout his short speech given at the roundtable, Witten says that even though he faced ridicule within the scientific community for his research, there was no shortage of people who would tell him they knew how to achieve anti-gravity:
“Some of them were very simple ideas. The simple ideas are always hard to combat. Suppose somebody comes to you and says 'I have a rock of bismuth that demonstrates anti-gravity.' What do you do?
There was a Vice President of the Martin Company who brought that up, he said 'I read about a guy in Indiana who says a rock of bismuth…' I said 'It’s nonsense.' He said ‘How do you know it’s nonsense? How do you know there’s no isotope of bismuth that shows anti-gravity?' What do you say to that?”
Witten's speech begins around the 1:49:10 mark:
youtu.be/iH8btReqv4c
Witten’s ends his speech by pointing out that despite the constant barrage of nonsense claims to investigate, "the power of a Vice President of a big company is so great that the reason there was a laboratory at Wright Field [today known Areas A and C of Wright Patterson Air Force Base] was to find out what we were doing and to help us do it and I got a contract from Wright Field to do it - to do gravity. Which I did, very happily."
It’s unknown what, if anything, ever came of Witten’s research or the program's other related research. While we haven’t found a record of him at Wright Patterson to confirm his account, Witten did in fact publish several theoretical articles concerning general relativity throughout that period including “Invariants of General Relativity and the Classification of Spaces”, “Geometry of Gravitation and Electromagnetism”, and “Conformal Invariance in Physics”, all of which list Witten as an employee of the Research Institute for Advanced Studies established by Martin.
The anti-gravity work Witten claims to have conducted at RIAS on behalf of Martin is corroborated by a series of three articles written by aviation journalist Ansel Talbert and published in the New York Herald Tribune on November 20, 21, and 22, 1956. Talbert served as the aviation correspondent for the Herald Tribune from 1953 until the paper shut down in 1966, after which he wrote for various aviation magazines and trade publications.
The front page of the November 20, 1955 issue of the New York Herald Tribune
The articles outline several research institutes that were focused on unlocking the secrets of gravity in the 1950s, including several major universities and private laboratories. A key part of much of the research conducted at these facilities involved relatively down-to-earth topics like electromagnetism, rotating masses at high speeds, and various methods of attempting to reduce an aircraft’s mass.
Ansel Talbert was offered a firsthand glimpse into the research conducted at many of the laboratories set up in the 1950s to research gravity and attempts to combat it. His series of articles exploring the subject mention the anti-gravity interests and research of some of the biggest names in aviation: William P. Lear, Lawrence D. Bell, Dr. Igor I. Sikorsky, Martin's Vice President Trimble, and even frozen foods magnate Clarence Birdseye. "Mr. Birdseye gave the world its first packaged quick-frozen foods and laid the foundation for today's frozen food industry," Talbert wrote, "more recently he has become interested in gravitational studies."
Talbert’s series offers a fascinating glimpse into the many anti-gravity research efforts which were underway in the mid-1950s, but like all accounts of anti-gravity or breakthrough propulsion research, none of the subjects Talbert interviewed offered any suggestion that conclusive working anti-gravity technologies ever came from these endeavors.
Still, Talbert points out that some of the brightest minds in aerospace engineering and physics were devoted to studying gravity at the time, studies which led to important breakthroughs in general relativity:
The current efforts to understand gravity and universal gravitation both at the sub-atomic level and at the level of the universe have the positive backing today of many of America's outstanding physicists.
These include Dr. Edward Teller of the University of California, who received prime credit for developing the hydrogen bomb; Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, director of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton; Dr. Freeman J. Dyson, theoretical physicist at the Institute, and Dr. John A. Wheeler, professor of physics at Princeton University who made important contributions to America's first nuclear fission project.
It must be stressed that scientists in this group approach the problem only from the standpoint of pure research. They refuse to predict exactly in what directions the search will lead or whether it will be successful beyond broadening human knowledge generally.
One of the biggest takeaways from Talbert’s series is the optimism shared by many of those involved with the project, as well as the stigma surrounding such an endeavor, even back then:
Grover Loening, who was the first graduate in aeronautics in an American university and the first engineer hired by the Wright Brothers, holds similar views. Over a period of forty years, Mr. Loening has had a distinguished career as an aircraft designer and builder and recently was decorated by the United States Air Force for his work as a special scientific consultant. "I firmly believe that before long man will acquire the ability to build an electromagnetic contra-gravity mechanism that works," he says. "Much the same line of reasoning that enabled scientists to split up atomic structures also will enable them to learn the nature of gravitational attraction and ways to counter it."
Right now there is considerable difference of opinion among those working to discover the secret of gravity and universal gravitation as to exactly how long the project will take. George S. Trimble, a brilliant young scientist who is head of the new advanced design division of Martin Aircraft in Baltimore and a member of the sub-committee on high-speed aerodynamics of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, believes that it could be done relatively quickly if sufficient resources and momentum were put behind the program.
"I think we could do the job in about the time that it actually required to build the first atom bomb if enough trained scientific brainpower simultaneously began thinking about and working towards a solution," he said. "Actually, the biggest deterrent to scientific progress is a refusal of some people, including scientists, to believe that things which seem amazing can really happen... I know that if Washington decides that it is vital to our national survival to go where we want and do what we want without having to worry about gravity, we'd find the answer rapidly."
Transcribed full text versions of Talbert’s articles "Conquest of Gravity Aim of Top Scientists in U.S.," "Space-Ship Marvel Seen If Gravity is Outwitted," and "New Air Dream - Planes Flying Outside Gravity" can be found online here: www.padrak.com/ine/TTB_EGP.html#ARTICLE_2, while digital versions of the articles as they appeared in the New York Herald Tribune can be found through the Herald Tribune archives available through the ProQuest database or the New York Public Library system.
The Aerospace Research Laboratories At Wright Patterson Air Force Base
George Trimble, Clarence Birdseye, and Lawrence Bell weren’t the only ones interested in researching anti-gravity. Talbert's series reported that nearly every major aerospace company at the time was involved in some way with researching "the gravity problem": Convair, Lear, Sikorsky, Sperry-Rand Corp., General Dynamics, and Avro Canada. Just as Dr. Louis Witten mentioned off-hand in the closing seconds of his speech at the 27th Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics, the United States Air Force also established its own gravity research project at Wright Patterson Air Force Base.
Read balance of article here: www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/30499/the-truth-is-the-military-has-been-researching-anti-gravity-for-nearly-70-years?fbclid=IwAR1X0gSAAsLlzdmuVF2CUTsonzeM4U_me-RYqjXBIDnZKrp1V6_3rs9t4Ig
It sounds like science fiction, but the military began working to overcome and harness gravity in the 1950s. From what we can tell, it never stopped.
By Brett Tingley | The War Zone | October 29, 2019
Decades-old questions about the potential existence of fantastical anti-gravity propulsion technologies have resurfaced following the Navy’s own disclosure of encounters with unidentified aerial phenomena and our own original reporting on a series of bizarre patents assigned to the U.S. Navy that seem to defy our current understanding of physics and aerospace propulsion. While the discussion continues over whether any such technologies are feasible, the truth is that the theoretical concepts behind them are anything but new. In fact, the U.S. military and the federal government have been formally researching these radical concepts since the 1950s, and according to our own research, those efforts have continued on to this very day.
In our dive into what seems like something of a bottomless rabbit hole of government studies into this exotic scientific realm, we have collected a body of research, news reports, and firsthand accounts. These establish the fact that the types of "anti-gravity", propellantless propulsion, and mass reduction technologies described in the Navy’s recent "UFO" patents are at least based on more than 60 years of peer-reviewed research conducted and published by the likes of the American Institute of Physics, NASA, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and the Air Force Research Laboratory.
While we can't say that any of this research led to actually being able to harness "anti-gravity" or extremely advanced next-generation propulsion technologies to any useful extent, the most advanced laboratories under control of both the armed forces and the academic world have certainly been trying their best to get there for the better part of a century. Also, keep in mind that all of this information comes from unclassified sources, and there is definitely more of it than just what is represented here. We can only wonder how much work has been done in the classified realm on what was once openly considered the next massive revolution in aerospace technology.
The Martin Company's Early Foray Into Anti-Gravity
In terms of the Air Force’s early anti-gravity research, one intriguing first-hand account comes from Dr. Louis Witten, who was a professor of physics at the University of Cincinnati from 1968 to 1991. Throughout his career, Witten conducted research into gravitation, quantum gravity, and general relativity. The last one of these is the theory first put forward by Albert Einstein that proposes that gravity is essentially a warp or curve in the geometry of space-time caused by mass.
During a roundtable discussion titled “Recollections of the Relativistic Astrophysics Revolution” held at the 27th Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics in 2013, Witten recounted his own work on what he somewhat puzzlingly refers to as "the discovery of anti-gravity."
In his portion of the roundtable, Witten recalls being recruited by George S. Trimble, then serving as Vice President for Aviation and Advanced Propulsion Systems at the Glenn L. Martin Company, which evolved first into Martin-Marietta and eventually merged with Lockheed in 1995 to form Lockheed Martin. The project for which Witten was recruited would come to be known as the Research Institute for Advanced Studies (RIAS) and was officially founded in 1955 by George Bunker, president of Martin, with the goal of advancing aerospace science and development.
"The vice president [Trimble] had the wonderful idea which was to develop anti-gravity," Witten says, noting he immediately balked at the proposal. "When he tried the idea in public, you can imagine the greeting he received from scientists. So he said to himself 'those poor bastards, I'll show them.'" Despite his skepticism, Witten ended up accepting Trimble's offer to join the powerful Martin executive's pet project.
Throughout his short speech given at the roundtable, Witten says that even though he faced ridicule within the scientific community for his research, there was no shortage of people who would tell him they knew how to achieve anti-gravity:
“Some of them were very simple ideas. The simple ideas are always hard to combat. Suppose somebody comes to you and says 'I have a rock of bismuth that demonstrates anti-gravity.' What do you do?
There was a Vice President of the Martin Company who brought that up, he said 'I read about a guy in Indiana who says a rock of bismuth…' I said 'It’s nonsense.' He said ‘How do you know it’s nonsense? How do you know there’s no isotope of bismuth that shows anti-gravity?' What do you say to that?”
Witten's speech begins around the 1:49:10 mark:
youtu.be/iH8btReqv4c
Witten’s ends his speech by pointing out that despite the constant barrage of nonsense claims to investigate, "the power of a Vice President of a big company is so great that the reason there was a laboratory at Wright Field [today known Areas A and C of Wright Patterson Air Force Base] was to find out what we were doing and to help us do it and I got a contract from Wright Field to do it - to do gravity. Which I did, very happily."
It’s unknown what, if anything, ever came of Witten’s research or the program's other related research. While we haven’t found a record of him at Wright Patterson to confirm his account, Witten did in fact publish several theoretical articles concerning general relativity throughout that period including “Invariants of General Relativity and the Classification of Spaces”, “Geometry of Gravitation and Electromagnetism”, and “Conformal Invariance in Physics”, all of which list Witten as an employee of the Research Institute for Advanced Studies established by Martin.
The anti-gravity work Witten claims to have conducted at RIAS on behalf of Martin is corroborated by a series of three articles written by aviation journalist Ansel Talbert and published in the New York Herald Tribune on November 20, 21, and 22, 1956. Talbert served as the aviation correspondent for the Herald Tribune from 1953 until the paper shut down in 1966, after which he wrote for various aviation magazines and trade publications.
The front page of the November 20, 1955 issue of the New York Herald Tribune
The articles outline several research institutes that were focused on unlocking the secrets of gravity in the 1950s, including several major universities and private laboratories. A key part of much of the research conducted at these facilities involved relatively down-to-earth topics like electromagnetism, rotating masses at high speeds, and various methods of attempting to reduce an aircraft’s mass.
Ansel Talbert was offered a firsthand glimpse into the research conducted at many of the laboratories set up in the 1950s to research gravity and attempts to combat it. His series of articles exploring the subject mention the anti-gravity interests and research of some of the biggest names in aviation: William P. Lear, Lawrence D. Bell, Dr. Igor I. Sikorsky, Martin's Vice President Trimble, and even frozen foods magnate Clarence Birdseye. "Mr. Birdseye gave the world its first packaged quick-frozen foods and laid the foundation for today's frozen food industry," Talbert wrote, "more recently he has become interested in gravitational studies."
Talbert’s series offers a fascinating glimpse into the many anti-gravity research efforts which were underway in the mid-1950s, but like all accounts of anti-gravity or breakthrough propulsion research, none of the subjects Talbert interviewed offered any suggestion that conclusive working anti-gravity technologies ever came from these endeavors.
Still, Talbert points out that some of the brightest minds in aerospace engineering and physics were devoted to studying gravity at the time, studies which led to important breakthroughs in general relativity:
The current efforts to understand gravity and universal gravitation both at the sub-atomic level and at the level of the universe have the positive backing today of many of America's outstanding physicists.
These include Dr. Edward Teller of the University of California, who received prime credit for developing the hydrogen bomb; Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, director of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton; Dr. Freeman J. Dyson, theoretical physicist at the Institute, and Dr. John A. Wheeler, professor of physics at Princeton University who made important contributions to America's first nuclear fission project.
It must be stressed that scientists in this group approach the problem only from the standpoint of pure research. They refuse to predict exactly in what directions the search will lead or whether it will be successful beyond broadening human knowledge generally.
One of the biggest takeaways from Talbert’s series is the optimism shared by many of those involved with the project, as well as the stigma surrounding such an endeavor, even back then:
Grover Loening, who was the first graduate in aeronautics in an American university and the first engineer hired by the Wright Brothers, holds similar views. Over a period of forty years, Mr. Loening has had a distinguished career as an aircraft designer and builder and recently was decorated by the United States Air Force for his work as a special scientific consultant. "I firmly believe that before long man will acquire the ability to build an electromagnetic contra-gravity mechanism that works," he says. "Much the same line of reasoning that enabled scientists to split up atomic structures also will enable them to learn the nature of gravitational attraction and ways to counter it."
Right now there is considerable difference of opinion among those working to discover the secret of gravity and universal gravitation as to exactly how long the project will take. George S. Trimble, a brilliant young scientist who is head of the new advanced design division of Martin Aircraft in Baltimore and a member of the sub-committee on high-speed aerodynamics of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, believes that it could be done relatively quickly if sufficient resources and momentum were put behind the program.
"I think we could do the job in about the time that it actually required to build the first atom bomb if enough trained scientific brainpower simultaneously began thinking about and working towards a solution," he said. "Actually, the biggest deterrent to scientific progress is a refusal of some people, including scientists, to believe that things which seem amazing can really happen... I know that if Washington decides that it is vital to our national survival to go where we want and do what we want without having to worry about gravity, we'd find the answer rapidly."
Transcribed full text versions of Talbert’s articles "Conquest of Gravity Aim of Top Scientists in U.S.," "Space-Ship Marvel Seen If Gravity is Outwitted," and "New Air Dream - Planes Flying Outside Gravity" can be found online here: www.padrak.com/ine/TTB_EGP.html#ARTICLE_2, while digital versions of the articles as they appeared in the New York Herald Tribune can be found through the Herald Tribune archives available through the ProQuest database or the New York Public Library system.
The Aerospace Research Laboratories At Wright Patterson Air Force Base
George Trimble, Clarence Birdseye, and Lawrence Bell weren’t the only ones interested in researching anti-gravity. Talbert's series reported that nearly every major aerospace company at the time was involved in some way with researching "the gravity problem": Convair, Lear, Sikorsky, Sperry-Rand Corp., General Dynamics, and Avro Canada. Just as Dr. Louis Witten mentioned off-hand in the closing seconds of his speech at the 27th Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics, the United States Air Force also established its own gravity research project at Wright Patterson Air Force Base.
Read balance of article here: www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/30499/the-truth-is-the-military-has-been-researching-anti-gravity-for-nearly-70-years?fbclid=IwAR1X0gSAAsLlzdmuVF2CUTsonzeM4U_me-RYqjXBIDnZKrp1V6_3rs9t4Ig