AAWSAP DIRD, The Role of Superconductors in Gravity Research, March 2010

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Our own version of the Podkletnov spinning disk experiment was completed in late
2001 and published in 2003 (Reference 35) showing a null result. It represented-and
still represents-the closest published replication of the original Podkletnov experiment.
It contains a discussion of the experimental difficulties arising from the nature of the
experiment itself and highlights the inability of the experimentalist (Podkletnov) to
supply critical data on his alleged prior experiments. Such a lack would have seriously
hampered our replication had not Podkletnov been actively involved in the experimental
setup, at least from the standpoint of the construction of the ceramic disk. In fact, we
sent to Podkletnov in Finland one of our bi-layered disks that he pronounced acceptable
for experimentation. Unfortunately, neither Podkletnov's 1992 publication nor
subsequent discussions with Podkletnov allowed a complete understanding of how the
original experiment was carried out.
In 2001, Tajmar and De Matos began publishing a set of theoretical and experimental
papers (Reference 36) that essentially carried on and incorporated Li and Torr's earlier
work while also providing additional insights. Martin Tajmar was a newly minted post­
doc working at the European Space Research & Technology Centre, Holland. The paper
condensed the previous work, including that of Li and Torr, to show that every
electromagnetic field is coupled to a gravitoelectric and gravitomagnetic field and that
the coupling "is generally valid and does not require special properties like
superconductivity." The authors acknowledged the criticisms of Li and Torr by Kowitt
and Harris and noted that the simple coupling coefficient they derive is exceedingly
small. However, it can be increased by using massive ion currents (for example,
moving/rotating mass or dense plasmas) and by aligning electron and nuclear spins. In
a roughly concurrent publication (Reference 37), De Matos and Tajmar, now at the
Austrian Research Centres, extended their previous ideas and used a Barnett Effect
analog to show that "any substance set into rotation becomes the seat of a uniform
intrinsic gravitomagnetic field."
Some experimentalists were still not willing to give up on superconductor-mediated
gravity effects, in spite of the failure of our replication and the null results of NASA and
others. In 2002, a few researchers at Boeing Phantom Works in California attempted to
interest their management in replicating the Podkletnov high-voltage impulse gravity
beam experiment but were turned down in part because of the publicity resulting from
a leaked copy of the internal proposal getting to the media. That same year, Chiao in
California proposed (Reference 38) using superconductors as gravitational wave
transducers into RF radiation and vice versa and attempted an experiment that
apparently failed. Harris (Reference 39) later rebutted Chiao by stating that neither
gravitoelectric nor gravitomagnetic fields accompany gravitational waves.
In his 1950 book on superfluids, London (Reference 40) derived an expression for the
magnetic field produced by a rotating superconductor or superfluid that was
proportional to the Cooper pair mass-to-charge ratio and the angular velocity. This is
also called the London moment, and its value had been measured in the laboratory by
Tate et al. (Reference 41). A general expression of the London moment can be used to
determine the Cooper pair mass. In a 2003 paper, Tajmar et al. (Reference 42) noted
that the Tate experiments showed that the Cooper pair mass, which had been predicted
to be slightly smaller than twice that of the electron, was actually slightly larger.
Intrigued that there had been no published solution to this disagreement, Tajmar asked
if a gravitational effect might be at work. By applying his previous work to this "Cooper
Pair Mass Anomaly," he found that a relatively huge internal gravitomagnetic field
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