On May 31, 2007, at 6:37 PM, Ghost of Brorillium wrote:
Can someone with more knoweldege of these effects look at this and give some opinions? Is this the real thing or is it something mundane?
This may be the real thing, though there is no need for an "ether" explanation. The permittivity of the vacuum is due to "virtual pairs" of particles of opposite charge that pop into and out of existence in the vacuum, their energy and the time of their existence limited by the Heisenberg Principle. The pairs don't (need to) continue on beyond the ping pong ball surface as the author says of ether particles. The pairs quickly self-annihilate, either with each other, or in the case of a current, with particles from adjacent pairs.
The source of the effect I think is a net space charge maintained in front of the tip by the field gradient near the fine tip and the virtual current through the vacuum near the tip. The field gradient concentrates (virtual current) charge near the fine point electrode tip, and that concentrated charge has the opposite polarity as the tip. This space charge maintained in the vacuum in front of the tip attracts the tip. The virtual charges in the vacuum move toward the tip but mostly annihilate before reaching it. That motion of charge in the vacuum is virtual current. The virtual current is necessary to establish and sustain the vacuum space charge upon which a momentum purchase can be gained.
Though their existence is brief, the pair momentum is tapped on average by the field gradient. The repelled particle of the pair is (on average) further away from the tip for most of its lifetime. Due to the 1/r^2 force field near the tip, the force on the tip from the closer particle of the pair is larger. It is an attracting force, thus the thrust obtained from the vacuum is in the form of an attraction of the ball.
I think the capacitance of the ping pong ball is important to creating a large effect with the device shown. The objective is to selectively increase the gradient in *front* of the tip and thus the virtual current in *front* of the tip. I suggest moving the ping pong ball closer to the tip, therefore moving the back side of the ball back away from the tip, so as to create a larger gradient in front of the tip. A custom designed envelope would be better, but not necessary. In the absence of a foil counter electrode on the outside of the front of the ball, I suggest increasing the thickness of the insulator in front of the tip to make available a larger quantity of charge to oscillate in front of the tip and thus to stimulate the motion of the vacuum pairs between the ball and the tip, i.e. to increase the virtual current. This might be quickly and easily be done by coating the outside of the front of the ping pong ball with an insulating material, like silicone caulk. Using AC should increase the virtual current through the vacuum, and thus the pair motion and thus the sustained vacuum space charge in front of the tip and thus the effect. A small tesla coil should work well. The pulsating nature of the DC supply you used may have been important to size of the effect you observed. The frequency of an AC supply can be matched to the ball capacitance (or the size of the ball and electrode matched to the supply frequency) so as to maximize the virtual current to the tip through resonance.
Regards, Horace Heffner
