What If Anti-Gravity Existed? | Unveiled

What If Anti-Gravity Existed?

Few things are as sure as gravity. Gravity is one of the universe’s four fundamental forces of nature, along with the electromagnetic force, and the strong and weak forces. But what if we could somehow reverse it?

This is Unveiled, and today we’re answering the extraordinary question; What if antigravity existed?

Gravity keeps our feet on the ground, keeps us orbiting the Sun, and keeps the Solar System moving through our galaxy. But while we often call it a force, it’s actually more complicated than that. As Einstein laid out in his theory of general relativity, gravity is actually a consequence of mass curving spacetime. The more mass an object has, the stronger its gravitational pull. “Antigravity” is a hypothetical means of counteracting the effects of gravity. Currently, most scientists say that antigravity doesn’t exist and is impossible. But this hasn’t stopped plenty of people from trying to come up with a way to create it.

In fact, several inventors have claimed to have done so already. In the 1920s, American inventor Thomas Townsend Brown built an electrical device that he claimed could control gravity. The effects have since been attributed to airflow caused by electrostatic forces. More recently, in the 90s, Russian researcher Eugene Podkletnov claimed that a rotating superconductor could reduce gravitational effects. Alas, his experiments have never been successfully replicated. According to conspiracy theories, Nikola Tesla also had a stab ay antigrav technology, having allegedly filed a patent for a device that resembles a flying saucer. Suffice to say, the alleged patent doesn’t exist; the patent number referred to is for a device more like a helicopter than a spaceship.

Even stranger is the legend of “Die Glocke”, or “The Bell”, an alleged Nazi device with antigrav capabilities. According to Polish journalist Igor Witkowski, who claims to have read classified documents, the device resembled a bell, and featured two counter-rotating cylinders filled with liquid metal. When activated, plants and animals in the vicinity all died. Witkowski points to a concrete structure nicknamed “the Henge” as evidence of these tests - but the structure is widely thought to be part of a cooling tower that was never completed.

Even more outlandish are gravity shield theories, first popularized in science-fiction. Published in 1902, H. G. Wells’ novel “The First Men in the Moon” introduced the material “Cavorite”, capable of creating a shield that negates gravity the same way an object creates a shadow. It was deemed so ludicrous that even Jules Verne, the “Father of Science Fiction”, complained about it.

One of the more grounded antigravity theories involves antimatter. Antimatter is composed of antiparticles - particles with the opposite physical charges of their equivalents in normal matter. Instead of having positive protons and negative electrons, they have negative protons and positive electrons, with neutrons remaining neutral in both. Scientists at CERN have successfully made antihydrogen, and scientists at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in the US have made antihelium. The big question about antimatter, however, is how it behaves in relation to gravity. The magnetic fields used to trap antiparticles are so strong that it’s impossible to observe gravitational effects – that is to say, whether they fall down or, alternatively, fall up. If antimatter falls up, then that’s antigravity discovered. However, while we still can’t say for definite, preliminary experiments predict that antimatter will, most likely, behave the same way that regular matter does, falling down. Even if it turns out otherwise, since antimatter is incredibly difficult and costly to produce, it might still not be a viable method for creating antigravity.

While CERN is wholly within the realm of science and research, conspiracy theories about antigravity technology abound. There are many who believe that the US Air Force, the US Navy, and NASA may have access to secret antigravity technology, and jump to blame UFO sightings on these alleged devices. It’s not all science-fiction, though; in 2017, documents from the US’ Advanced Aerospace Threat and Identification Program were made public, revealing research into alternative propulsion devices – including antigravity tech. NASA’s Breakthrough Physics Propulsion Program in the late 1990s and early 2000s also aimed at antigravity propulsion technology. This has given fuel to the theory that UFOs, long thought to belong to extraterrestrial visitors, are really top-secret antigravity machines. If this technology did exist of course, NASA would presumably be using it for their space missions - meaning that their research program might well have just been wishful thinking.

If antigravity could be created, though, it would be one of the greatest discoveries in human history. Right away, the creation of antigravity technology would revolutionise space travel. Space shuttles wouldn’t need anywhere near as much fuel to leave our atmosphere if we could just stop gravity from affecting them. There are some who propose that antigravity technology could lead to the invention of warp drives, since they’d allow us to deform spacetime. By creating opposing regions of expanding and contracting space, we could make a sort of “wave” that spaceships could ride along. The hitch is that it would be difficult to control a ship’s speed and destination using such a method. And it may well break more than a few other laws of physics.

Antigravity wouldn’t only make getting to other planets easier, though; just living on those planets would be easier. We’d no longer have to worry about planets having gravity too strong for human habitation, for example, and we’d have a way to build floating cities in the upper layer of Venus’s atmosphere.

Perhaps there are some antigravity applications closer to Earth, though, namely the things “Back to the Future” promised us decades ago: hoverboards and flying cars. With antigravity technology, both of these things would be finally possible. By blocking or negating gravity we could lift any object of any scale – we might not even need the flying cars because we could get flying boots. The power of flight could be just one gadget away. And along with floating cities on Venus, why not have vast, floating cities in the sky on Earth? Huge structures could be suspended above the Earth’s surface, cities floating over stretches of empty land and sea, where building is otherwise impossible. Flight isn’t the only superpower we could achieve, either: telekinesis would also be within reach by manipulating gravity on a much smaller scale. And as fun as having telekinesis would be, this combined with flying tech could be revolutionary for lots of people with limited mobility.

There are some real-world examples of technologies that have similar effects – but just imagine the boost they could get from antigrav tech. Take maglev trains, which float on magnetic tracks. The largest maglev train operating today is in Shanghai, but they’ve existed in a few other countries as well. They’re quiet, smooth, fast, and energy efficient, but remain expensive and hard to operate. With advanced antigravity technology, maglev trains could become common, or even flying trains without any kind of tracks at all.

It would be a scientific breakthrough of unparalleled proportions granting humanity the ability to conquer the galaxy and some very choice superpowers, all for the benefit of mankind. And that’s what would happen if antigravity existed.