Superconductors are back in the news, with a recent ESA announcement by Dr’s Tajmar & de Matos proposing that a gravitomagnetic London-Effect may create a strong coupling between magnetism & gravity. This announcement is the latest in a long thread of anecdotal, experimental, and theoretical evidence linking superconductors & gravity-modification, so to help you get up to speed, we’ve compiled this timeline of important & notable events…[view in PDF format]

1989: Dr. Ning Li publishes an experimental prediction for gravitomagnetic “Cooper-Pair” interactions in Type-II superconductors w/ applications for gravity-modification.

1992: Dr. Evgeny Podkletnov notices a column of pipe-smoke forming over a rotating superconductor, and after further experimentation attempts to publish about the possibility of superconductive gravitational-shielding in several journals. His initial publication attempts are unilaterally rejected.

September, 1996: Podkletnov’s paper is accepted for review by British Journal of Physics-D. The story is leaked to British newspaper “The Sunday Telegraph”, and leads to a subsequent media frenzy after republication by “Business Week”. The journal quickly cancels publication of Podkletnov’s research.

September, 1997: Podkletnov successfully publishes about “weak gravitational-shielding properties of superconductors” on the Los-Alamos pre-print server.

October, 1997: Superconductive gravitational-shielding begins to attract interest in several online newsgroups, the largest of which being Pete Skegg’s “Quantum Cavorite” website. Several independent experimental replications are undertaken, but suffer from poor materials & flawed procedural controls.

December, 1997: Writer Jim Wilson publishes “NASA’s Antigravity Machine”, describing a NASA effort led by Ron Koczor to replicate the Podkletnov gravity-shielding apparatus.

March, 1998: Wired publishes “Breaking the Law of Gravity”, the definitive overview of the Podkletnov saga. During research for the story, author Charles Platt investigates newsgroup replication efforts & debunks John Schnurer, an Ohio inventor claiming to have replicated Podkletnov’s experiment.

October, 1999: Ning Li forms AC Gravity, LLC – a University of Huntsville funded startup to investigate the potential for superconductive gravity-modification. Writer Philip Gentry documents her efforts in “Taming Gravity”; including claims by colleagues that they are leaving the University join her startup.

April, 2001: The US Department of Defense publishes the “Annual Report on Cooperative Agreements and Other Transactions Entered into During FY2001”, which cites the payment of $448,970 to Ning Li’s AC-Gravity, LLC by the US Army Aviation and Missile Command (AMCOM). The report cites the funding as being allocated for “Gravito-Electro Magnetic Superconductivity Experiments”, with described goals including the eventual implementation of gravity-control for propulsion & weapons applications.

August, 2001: Podkletov & coauthor Dr. Giovanni Modanese publish the results of an “Impulse Gravity-Generator” experiment on the Los Alamos pre-print server. They describe a High-Voltage Marx-Generator discharge through a statically-positioned superconducting spark-gap creating the deflection of a pendulum by a gravitational-beam of force.

July, 2002: A Boeing Phantomworks employee leaks an internal document describing corporate interest in Podkletnov’s research to Jane’s Defense World Magazine. The subsequent media-frenzy leads to a company-wide crackdown on BPP research. The media claims the research involved rotating superconductors, but the Boeing document itself was about the Impulse-Generator experiment. Oops!

September, 2002: Podkletov & Modanese publish the results of a subsequent experiment involving “High-Voltage discharges in low-voltage gases through superconducting electrodes”. It describes the generation of a collimated beam of radiation they describe as being non-electromagnetic in nature and exhibiting a repulsive force on mass.

September, 2002: NASA scientists Glen “Tony” Robertson and Ron Koczor report experimental failure in testing Podkletnov’s original rotating-superconductor experiment. The experiment required the rotation of a $600,000 superconductor built by SCI-Engineered Materials up to 5,000 rpm. NASA was concerned about explosive decomposition from the high-velocity, and abandoned the test at only 200 rpm, calling it a failure.

April, 2002: Dr. Raymond Chiao conducts a well-publicized “Gravity Radio” experiment, which attempts HFGW signal transmission between two superconductors using microwave-frequency electromagnetic bombardment. The experiment fails.

May, 2003: The Mitre Corporation sponsors the first annual High-Frequency Gravitational-Wave Conference, featuring a collection of papers by over 30 authors on a variety of applications for modifying gravity. Several of these papers propose utilizing Type-II superconductors to generate gravitational effects of varying proportions.

May, 2003: Boeing releases a public presentation on “The Application of High-Frequency Gravitational-Waves to Communications”. It proposes a variety of concepts for modifying gravity, including several utilizing Type-II superconductors.

May, 2003: Dr. Ning Li sends a private email to colleagues claiming to have experimentally verified a large-scale AC-Gravity measuring “11-kilowatts of output effect”, and abruptly disappears from public view. (this is her last known public communication)

February, 2004: The University of New Mexico’s ISNPS STAIF Conference adds Section-F to cover advanced topics in breakthrough propulsion physics. It is chaired by HFGW organizer Paul Murad and draws heavily from the HFGW 2003 pool of scientific authors. Publications include several on superconductors & gravity-modification.

April, 2004: Gravity Probe-B is launched to measure Lense-Thirring forces predicted by General Relativity. Ning Li had previously claimed that a positive measurement of frame-dragging would offer experimental support for “AC-Gravity” effects.

July, 2004: In a live-interview with American Antigravity’s Tim Ventura, Podkletnov describes his continuing experiments with the Impulse-Generator as generating a powerful gravity-beam capable of “punching through brick and warping metal like hitting it with a sledgehammer”.

August, 2004: In a follow-up interview with Tim Ventura, Podkletnov describes his continuing experiments with the Impulse-Generator as generating a powerful gravity-beam capable of “punching through brick and warping metal like hitting it with a sledgehammer”

February, 2005: The STAIF 2005 Conference continues to attract a number of papers relating to superconductor research, in addition to a growing number of authors from increasingly diverse scientific & engineering disciplines who address a number of BPP-related technologies. Theoretical support for superconductor gravity-modification is now offered by a number of theories within mainstream physics as well as independently-derived physical models.

January, 2006: Rumors begin to circulate about the potential for a 2nd HFGW Conference in late 2006 to focus on concepts in applied physics relating to High-Frequency Gravitational Waves, to include theoretical & experimental publications relating to superconductive gravity-modification concepts.

February, 2006: The STAIF 2006 Conference features 2 notable papers relating to superconductive gravity-modification, including an analysis of superconductor optical focusing by Dr. Clive Woods that may explain past experimental failures & future optimization, and an overview of theoretical gravitomagnetic effects in superconductors by Dr’s. Martin Tajmar & Clovis de Matos.

March, 2006: Dr’s Tajmar & de Matos publish experimental results on the Los-Alamos pre-print server claiming up to 100 µg change in the acceleration of a rotating superconductor. These results are claimed to have been the result of 250-independent experiments over a 3-year period, and demonstrate a much stronger gravitomagnetic coupling than previously thought possible, raising renewed interest in earlier experimental claims by Podkletnov, Li, and others…