Re: [Leica]antigravity WAS snoregate

[Johnny Deadman <john@pinkheadedbug.com>]

on 5/14/01 3:01 AM, Robert Appleby Personal at rob@robertappleby.com wrote:

> There's a Professor Laithwaite at London University, with many years
> experience as an engineer/physicist (can't remember which) who passionately
> espouses the old chestnut of gyroscopes producing an anti-gravity effect.
> He's wrong. Gyroscopes are effectively dealt with and archived at A-level in
> perfectly normal classical dynamics. There is no mystery.

Well, there certainly IS a mystery as to why a man like Laithwaite steeped
in classical dynamics who I am sure understands A-level gyroscope theory
better than you or me should destroy his reputation in the way he did.

The story of the so-called anti-gravity device is a fascinating one.

Eric Laithwaite is a physicist. He's also the idiot who first touted the
idea that life could have arrived here on meteorites. Numbskull!

Oh, sorry, my wife the biologist tells me that's respectable now. Hmmm.

Oh yeah and he's the total dork who invented the linear electric motor...
now being used to power the next generation of super trains in Germany &
Japan...hmmm...

Like a lot of scientific mavericks, Laithwaite basically destroyed his
reputation by transgressing against current scientific orthodoxy. The device
in question wasn't invented by him at all but a chap called Jones.

Not that it is evidential in any way but I do know a science journalist who
claims to have seen one of these Jones devices working and to having been
rather freaked out by the whole experience.

Anyway, as the story goes, Jones approached Laithwaite. The following
no-doubt-extremely-biased-but-nevertheless-entertaining version of the story
comes from 

    http://www.alternativescience.com/eric-laithwaite.htm

> Jones claimed to have a remarkable new invention to demonstrate which he had
> tried to interest scientists and engineers in, so far without success. Would
> Laitwaite like to take a look at it? While others had dismissed Jones as a
> crank, Laithwaite, now with time on his hands, invited him to come to Imperial
> College.
> 
> When Jones arrived in the laboratory he had a strange-looking contraption to
> show. It was a simple wooden frame on wheels that could be pushed backwards
> and forwards on the bench top, like a child's trolley. But suspended from the
> front of the frame was a heavy metal object that could swing from side to side
> like a pendulum. The metal object, Jones explained, was a gyroscope.
> 
> As Laithwaite looked on in puzzled amazement, Jones started the gyroscope
> spinning and then allowed it to swing from side to side. The wooden box moved
> along the bench top on its wheels although there was no drive to the wheels
> and no external thrust of any kind -- something that shouldn't happen
> according to the laws of physics.
> 
> 'When Alex switched his machine on,' recalled Laithwaite, 'it was quite
> disturbing to one's upbringing. The gyroscope appeared to be producing a force
> without a reaction. I thought I'd seen something that was impossible.'
> 
> 'Like everyone else I was brought up on Newton's laws of motion, and the third
> law says that for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction,
> therefore you cannot propel a body outside its own dimensions. This thing
> apparently did.'
> 
> Laithwaite started some gyroscope experiments of his own, making large
> spinning tops with most of the mass in the rim of the wheel, and he found
> that, 'these very definitely did something that seemed impossible.'
> 
> It was at this critical point in his career that he was invited by Sir George
> Porter, president of the august Royal Institution, to deliver a Friday Evening
> Discourse.
> 
> In retrospect it might seem to be rather risky for Sir George to have invited
> a blunt-speaking and controversial figure to address the Institution. But,
> until then, Laithwaite's clashes with the government and scientific
> bureaucrats over the development of his Maglev train had been a conflict over
> money and over innovation: not over scientific principles. He had fought the
> same kind of battle as most senior scientists in Britain for scarce
> resources. 
> 
> He may have been the sort of outspoken individualist who finds himself in the
> headlines, but he was still a distinguished professional scientist, still a
> member of the club.
> 
> It was against this background that the Royal Institution invited him to
> deliver the lecture. But the Friday Evening Discourse is no ordinary lecture.
> It is a black tie affair, preceded by dinner amidst the polished silver and
> mahogany of the Institution's elegant Georgian dining room, under the
> intimidating gaze of portraits of the giants of science from the eighteenth
> and nineteenth century, staring down from the panelled walls.
> 
> When you are invited to be thus feted by your fellow members of the Royal
> Institution and to deliver a Discourse from the spot where Faraday and Davy
> stood, it is usually the prelude to collecting the rewards of a lifetime of
> distinguished public service: Fellowship of the Royal Society; Gold Medals;
> perhaps even a Knighthood. In keeping with such a conservative occasion, those
> invited to speak generally choose some worthy topic on which to discourse --
> the future of science, perhaps, or the glorious achievements of the past.
> 
> But Laithwaite chose not to discourse on some worthy, painless topic but
> instead to demonstrate to the assembled bigwigs that Newton's laws of motion
> -- the very cornerstone of physics and the primary article of faith of all the
> distinguished names gathered in that room -- were in doubt.
> 
> Standing in the circular well of the Institution's lecture theatre, Laithwaite
> showed his audience a large gyroscope he had constructed -- an apparatus
> resembling a motorcycle wheel on the end of a three foot pole (which, is
> precisely what it was). The wheel could be spun up to high speed on a
> low-friction bearing driven by a small but powerful electrical motor.
> 
> Laithwaite first demonstrated that the apparatus was very heavy -- in fact it
> weighed more than 50 pounds. It took all his strength and both hands to raise
> the pole with its wheel much above waist level. When he started to rotate the
> wheel at high speed, however, the apparatus suddenly became so light that he
> could raise it easily over his head with just one hand and with no obvious
> sign of effort.
> 
> What on earth was going on? Heavy objects cannot suddenly become lighter just
> because they are rotating, can they? Such a mass can only be propelled aloft
> if it is subjected to an external force or if it expels mass, in a rocket
> engine for example. Had Laithwaite taken to conjuring tricks? Were there
> concealed strings? Confederates in trapdoors?
> 
> If Laithwaite expected gasps of admiration or surprise, he was disappointed.
> The audience was stunned into silence by his demonstration. When he went on to
> explain that Newton's laws of motion were apparently being violated by this
> demonstration, the involuntary hush turned to frosty silence.
> 
> 'I was very excited about it,' he recalled, 'because I knew I had something to
> show them that was startling. And I did it rather in the spirit of "come and
> see what I've discovered -- come and share this with me." It was only
> afterwards that I realised no-one wanted to share it with me. The reaction was
> "the man's obviously a lunatic". "There must be some trick" was what people
> said.'
> 
> 'I was simply trying to tell them, "look, here's something very unusual that's
> worth investigating. I hope I've got sufficient reputation in electrical
> engineering not to be written off as a crank. So when I tell you this, I hope
> you'll listen." But they didn't want to.'
> 
> 'After the Royal Institution lecture all hell broke loose, primarily as a
> result of an article in the New Scientist, followed up by articles in the
> daily press with headlines such as "Laithwaite defies Newton". The press is
> always excited by the possibility of an anti-gravity machine, because of space
> ships and science fiction, and the minute you say you can make something rise
> against gravity, then you've "made an antigravity machine". And then the flood
> gates are unleashed on you especially from the establishment. You've brought
> science into disrepute or you're apparently trying to because you've done
> something that is against the run of the tide.'

- -- 
John Brownlow

http://www.pinkheadedbug.com