A Brief History of Science with Levity Read online

  We will now discuss a project to which I have devoted many years – the design and construction of a superconducting turbine that can generate a local gravitational field.

  In physics, the graviton is a hypothetical elementary particle that mediates the force of gravitation in the framework of quantum field theory. If it exists, the graviton must be massless (because the gravitational force has unlimited range), and must have a spin of 2. This is because the source of gravitation is the stress-energy tensor, a second-rank tensor, compared to electromagnetism, the source of which is the force-current, a first-rank tensor. Additionally, it can be shown that any massless spin-2 field would be indistinguishable from gravitation, because a massless spin-2 field must couple to (interact with) the stress-energy tensor in the same way that the gravitational field does. The author believes that this spin-2 field is created inside the superconducting vortex generated by the turbine.

  When the superconducting turbine is operating, and positrons interact with the zero-resistance electrons along the crystal boundaries, large forces are produced that drive the turbine.

  The basic principle of operation of the superconducting turbine is to create a superconducting vortex. When you also have matter-antimatter annihilations taking place within this vortex, some quite exotic physics occurs.

  I should state at this point that I was not the first person to investigate the properties of rotating superconductors, or to patent the equipment developed in order to protect the results achieved. I was fascinated by this whole area, as it really is cutting-edge physics, and you do not need the budget of CERN in order to investigate it.

  I started by researching the work of all of the people who had gone before, and then purchased English translations of all of the patents that had been awarded in this field. After carefully studying these patents, I tried to think outside the box into reasons why other designers only managed to produce marginal and fairly weak artificial gravitational fields. I think that what they achieved was amazing in itself, but the results had little commercial value, as you can get a similar small reduction in gravity just by climbing up a mountain.

  All of the prior work involved rotating superconducting discs at very high speeds, forcing the zero-resistance electrons within the superconductor to take curved paths. Unfortunately there is a limit to how fast you can rotate any mechanical assembly before it finally disintegrates.

  I decided to remove this limitation by incorporating a counter-rotating electromagnetic field surrounding the spinning superconductor itself. This resulted in the zero-resistance electrons behaving as if the superconducting disc was spinning at an enormous speed, and increased the previously observed effects substantially. The counter-rotating field was initially rotated with a clock frequency of 1 Megahertz. This is equivalent to 60,000,000 rpm, and no mechanical assembly could possibly even get close to this level of rotational velocity.

  This enabled me to reproduce the results demonstrated by others, but also to greatly increase the strength of the local gravitational field generated due to my innovation of including this counter-rotating field. This was recognised by the various international patent authorities to be an “inventive step”, which is necessary in order to obtain a new patent which incorporates some features from earlier existing patents.

  The second innovation, which was also considered an inventive step, was to incorporate the matter-antimatter annihilations within the vortex itself.

  I consider myself to be very fortunate, as at the time I started developing the turbine, I was the CEO of a successful company in Aberdeen. The best thing about being a CEO is that provided you meet the profit targets that the board sets each year, you can pretty much do what you want. Most of them just play golf. The downside is that if you do not hit your targets you will be out of a job fairly rapidly, irrespective of how hard you have been working. My strategy in this area was to surround myself with a team of very competent staff. We all have strengths in certain areas, but are not so competent in other areas.

  I believe that in order to be successful you must build a team of people who collectively will be very effective in every area that the business needs to operate. This includes technical, engineering, marketing, legal, health and safety and others. I employed a team of people to enable us to reach this goal, and achieve the requirements set by the board for the annual growth in company profits.

  Once you have done this, you can generate a lot of free time to follow your own interests. I used to arrive at work very early each day, and check what had arrived from our overseas operations overnight. Sometimes certain technical tasks or the need to attend meetings cropped up, which I had to deal with myself. Other than these, I delegated the other tasks to the staff members best qualified to deal with each particular issue. I often finished my work by lunchtime, and then disappeared off to my private lab for the rest of the afternoon. My secretary was instructed to tell callers that I was in meetings unless it was an extremely serious situation.

  The main business area of my company (NSI) was to develop innovative technical solutions to new challenges as they arose in the oil and gas industry worldwide. In order to perform this work, we were authorised by the Scottish EPA to hold quantities of many different radioactive isotopes, reactive chemicals, liquid nitrogen and other materials. As well as being the CEO, I was also the head of R&D. This ensured that in addition to being free to grow the company in a direction that would achieve the required financial growth, I also had access to virtually any materials and outsourced precision machining services etc. that I required for my own pet projects.

  Before going into the details of the design concepts and operational principles of the superconducting turbine, I am starting this section with information regarding the first public demonstration of the equipment. The post-demonstration interview and draft PR release is now shown, followed by scans (Figures A and B) of the heavily sanitised version that was actually published following the demonstration.

  Proposed press release:

  ALTERNATIVE ENERGY – THE

  SUPERCONDUCTING TURBINE

  Aberdeen geophysicist and entrepreneur Mike Bennett has now released details of a recently developed superconducting turbine. It is believed to have the potential to usher in a new chapter in energy efficient transportation.

  The turbine uses axial superconductors to produce exceptionally high thrust to weight ratios. This equipment has so far shown the ability to accelerate any object or material at rates of up to 1.8 G, around 18 m/s/s. The turbine was recently demonstrated on objects of various sizes, shapes and construction materials, and the following interview was then conducted.

  How does the turbine work?

  Well basically, I am using class II superconductors coated with positron emitters and charged to many thousands of volts to produce a vortex with extremely high flux densities. By spinning both the source and drive fields at high speeds, a propulsive force is produced. This is known as a spin-2 field.

  This equipment was built on a small budget, mostly from components salvaged from ex-medical and military equipment. Although it works well, it could be far more efficient if certain parts could be custom manufactured for the specific purpose for which they are now used.

  How does this spin-2 field differ from a normal electromagnetic field?

  An electromagnetic field will only act on certain materials, such as magnetic and diamagnetic substances. A spin-2 field will act on any material, and will apply the same acceleration to any object. I have tested it on metals, plastics, wood, many liquids and various other everyday objects.

  The demonstration of the equipment then followed. After charging up the equipment, three objects – a large bolt, a length of wood and a bottle of soft drink – were placed above the turbine. The turbine was then run up to speed. At this point, the air surrounding the turbine ionised and emitted a blue/white light. All three objects then accelerated vertically and hit the ceiling.

  What do you see as the potent
ial uses for this turbine?

  I think that the primary application will be in the field of transportation. When fully developed, the cost will probably be too high for cars and other surface transport, but the application to the aviation industry could be very significant.

  How so?

  I believe that if fitted to aircraft, fuel savings of up to fifty percent could be achieved when compared to the fuel consumption of conventional turbine engines. A fifty percent reduction in fuel consumption would, for example, save British Airways alone over £1 billion annually on their fuel bills, in addition to the environmental benefits of avoiding the need to burn some three million tonnes of jet fuel. The commercial attraction of a superconducting turbine is therefore clear.

  What is your educational background and experience in this field?

  I graduated from the University of Manchester in 1979 with joint honours degrees in physics and geology. After five years working in the oil industry I founded my first company in 1984. This company adapted new technologies to help solve reservoir engineering problems and therefore maximise oil and gas recovery. We applied techniques and equipment normally only used by research physicists, and used them to solve problems in the real world. After building up the company over twelve years, I sold it on in 1996. I now work part-time as a consultant, in order to have more time to pursue my other interests.

  What other new technologies have you successfully developed?

  Initially, we built laser diffraction equipment to improve the completion quality of wells in the UK and Norwegian sectors of the North Sea. It took a while to obtain ABS and DNV certification for this equipment, but once in use offshore it proved to be very successful. In the 1990s, I visited the Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island to share the developments we had made in the North Sea. In return, I was briefed about techniques that they had developed for the US government for use on non-oil related projects. This research was then seeded back to the North Sea, and the new reservoir engineering techniques that we then pioneered on the UKCS are now industry standards worldwide.

  Would you describe your talents as just being able to think outside the conventional box?

  Well, not really. I have developed and patented equipment that is unique, but most of the commercial success has come from taking existing ideas and techniques that were developed in unrelated spheres, and developing them for a completely different use.

  Finally, why are you making your current project public at this stage?

  This technology is now ready for commercial development. However to develop and produce a final product requires financial resources that are beyond my means. I am therefore hoping to raise venture capital to enable this goal to be achieved.

  CHAPTER 16

  Following the demonstration of the superconducting turbine to industrialists in Aberdeen, I needed to expose this work to a wider audience. One of my good friends in Aberdeen is a gentleman called Alan Scott. He is an extremely colourful character, but a very intelligent and well-connected man. He was born and brought up in Ulster, and was an officer in the Royal Ulster Constabulary before he worked his way up in the publishing business to eventually become the managing director for DC Thompson Publishing in Scotland.

  Every year DC Thompson would arrange an outing to the Perth Races for friends and associates. After an early breakfast in the pub, our group would be picked up by coach and driven down to the Perth Races. On the way, everyone was plied with champagne to the point where we were all extremely happy before we arrived.

  I remember that after we had all boarded the coach, Alan would introduce everybody. The coach was full of dignitaries and major business players from the northeast of Scotland. The guests usually included the Lord Provost of Aberdeen, the Brigadier General in Command of the Gordon Highlanders Regiment, various knights of the realm, lords, and the list goes on. When Alan got to me I was merely introduced as English Mike.

  We all know what corporate entertainment is like. By the end of the day in the coach on the way back home, we had all of these dignitaries singing Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport, The Irish Rover and The Green Alligator Song. We all had a really good day out. It is amazing how normal some of these upper-crust individuals can behave after you get to know them.

  Alan’s news group also had an executive box at Old Trafford. Every time there was a major match such as Manchester United playing in the Champions League at home, we would all fly down to Manchester for the day. It was yet more normal corporate entertainment, and after the first half you needed to close one eye or you would see two balls on the pitch.

  Sometimes our corporate entertainment would take us abroad. On one occasion we had a golfing trip to the Spanish Costa Del Sol for a long weekend. Many senior dignitaries were on this trip, but they will not be named as they are whiter than white and squeaky clean when in the public spotlight. However, on this trip, there were two gentlemen in our group who were so inebriated the entire time that they never even managed to play golf at all.

  We needed to rub their golf shoes over the grass and put some spare score cards in their luggage before they returned home, so that their families believed that they had in fact been on a golf tour.

  The main newspaper that Alan presided over was the Aberdeen Press and Journal, although his company also printed the News of the World and other major newspapers for distribution within Scotland. The P&J is read throughout the UK, and I thought this was probably the best way forward for me to achieve the maximum free publicity.

  Alan was always to be found in a certain bar in Aberdeen at lunchtime every Saturday. One Saturday I met up with him, and gave him the draft press release that had been prepared by my PR agent following the turbine demonstration. After plying him with a few single malts, he agreed that it would be the lead feature in his business section the following Thursday. However, soon after this article was published, I had my first face-to-face encounter with the security services.

  I will now describe aspects of the security services that I have encountered during my career, particularly following the early demonstration of the superconducting turbine. I had to be very guarded in what I included in this section in order to get the book published.

  I had my first confirmation that the security services are always operating behind the scenes, whether we know it or not, when I was living in Aberdeen. I had a sports fishing boat that I kept at Peterhead Marina to the north of Aberdeen. It was an American boat, and I chose it because the dimensions were 25 feet long and 8.5 feet wide, which is just within the legal towing limits for an SUV on UK roads.

  Peterhead is the biggest white fish port in the UK. It is also a major support base for the North Sea oil and gas industry. It is therefore very busy with commercial traffic. Before you are allowed to enter or leave the port you must obtain permission from the harbour master on VHF channel 14. This is sometimes quite difficult, as although you may have a very strong signal, their accents in this part of the north-east are so strong that they are often difficult to understand. I sometimes had to ask them to repeat the instructions, saying that the signal was breaking up.

  One day when the children and I were boarding the boat for a fishing trip, I noticed dog paw marks on the decks. I thought this was strange because the marina is well-guarded and you need a key to gain entry through the high metal gates. On opening the cabin, I discovered that there were dog footprints inside there as well.

  I contacted the marina manager, who informed me that the Grampian Police Special Forces were at the marina earlier in the week, and their dogs searched a number of boats for drugs and explosives. If it had not been for the fact that the dogs had wet paws, I would never have known this.

  Anyway, we proceeded with our fishing trip. To the north of Peterhead there are very good fishing areas. The main pipelines carrying North Sea oil production are routed to St. Fergus, which is nearby. You can pick up the pipelines on sonar, and as the oil is still warm at this point there are normally a lot of fish ar
ound. We had a good day’s fishing, but on the way back we were approached at speed by a large, orange, rigid inflatable boat carrying four men in black wetsuits. I assumed that they were a bunch of divers horsing about, so when they came very close to my boat I made a sharp turn and covered them all with spray.

  They then produced a megaphone and informed me that they were Customs and Excise officers and they intended to board my vessel. During the day we had been over the horizon and therefore beyond the range of land-based radar, which is why I believe they intercepted us. They searched the boat from bow to stern, and even gutted three of the fish that we had caught to check what was inside them.

  The remainder of this chapter deals with information that I have received from well-connected friends in the intelligence community. As it concerns the activities of the CIA, the NSA, British intelligence and Mossad, the names of some of the people involved have been changed.

  While writing this chapter, the memories of Julian Assange come to mind. As I am sure the reader will recall, he was the founder of Wikileaks. He started the website when he decided that the activities of the American intelligence services had gone way beyond their remit. He therefore exposed information pertaining to this to the world in general.

  Soon after this, when the Americans were unable to extradite him from the UK, somebody probably coerced the woman in Sweden to claim that he had sexually assaulted her. Under UK law, this was grounds for extradition. He knew that if he was extradited to Sweden he would end up in the US shortly thereafter, and they would probably lock him up and throw away the key.