I enjoy studying the Reformation and its tremendous influence on Western civilization and the founding of America. So when I discovered an organization called The Reformation Project, I was organically intrigued. Their Statement of Faith looks mainstream enough. Described as “a Bible-based, Christian organization,” they espouse beliefs in the triune God, the supremacy of God as the creator, and Jesus Christ as the son of God.
But something caught my eye on a significant point. The Reformation Project declares, “We believe in The inspiration of the Bible, the Word of God.” Many Christians, myself included, believe scripture is God's inspired and inerrant word. But being inspired by the Bible is different from believing God inspires it. To what does the Bible inspire The Reformation Project?
The organization is the brainchild of Matthew Vines, who was catapulted into the establishment media in 2012 when the New York Times wrote a glowing feature about him speaking in a Manhattan church and telling the Times, “It is simply a fact that the Bible does not discuss or condemn loving, gay relationships.” Neither the King James Bible, the Geneva Bible, nor my increasingly dog-eared Reformation Study Bible discuss “loving, gay relationships.” All three, however, do address the behavior that defines such relationships.
A perusal of The Reformation Project’s Brief Biblical Case for LGBTQ Inclusion reveals some extraordinary arguments. The authorship of this document is uncertain, but it reflects a degree of rhetorical adroitness expected of one who studied philosophy at Harvard, which Vines did for two years before leaving in 2010.
This treatise takes a creative approach to rationalizing a “biblical case” for promoting LGBTQ ideology. One rationale is “the inclusion of Gentiles in the church.” Another is “the New Testament’s trajectory toward greater inclusion of eunuchs.” The author further explains that Pentateuchal proscriptions of LGBTQ behavior don’t apply to Christians because "male same-sex relations reflect culturally-bound concerns about patriarchal gender roles,” that were prevalent during the time of Moses.
Vines may have left Harvard to pursue full-time study of the Bible. Still, he seems to disregard the Apostle Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians, which reads, “men who practice homosexuality,” or commit other sins, will not inherit the kingdom of God. Vines also dismisses the first chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans, where Paul delineates a number of “dishonorable passions,” which include, among others, “men (who) likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another.”
We see the same sentiment in the first letter to Timothy, whom Paul reminded that the law of God is laid down “for the lawless and disobedient,” including “men who practice homosexuality” and other sins. None of these New Testament passages, nor any of the Old Testament prohibitions of LGBTQ behavior, are given much credence in the works promoted by this “Bible-based” organization.
The Reformation Project argues that “Non-affirming beliefs about same-sex relationships and transgender people contribute to serious harm in LGBTQ people’s lives,” and there may be a grain of truth in that. If I defined myself by behavior that scripture tells me is wrong, I, too, would feel very bad when others notice and counsel me against it. But we don’t soothe hurt feelings by rewriting the Bible.
Individual guilt or shame over behavior that the Bible explicitly and repeatedly defines as sinful doesn’t seem like a very sound basis for reversing millennia of Christian doctrine. But The Reformation Project has a response to that too, confidently asserting that believing the Bible’s admonitions against LGBTQ ideology is analogous to clinging to disproved beliefs that Earth is at the center of the solar system.
Paul’s instructions to Timothy were to love each other in a way that “issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.” Paul also advised Timothy to be wary of people “desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions.”
The Reformation Project’s promotion of LGBTQ ideology also invokes the Sermon on the Mount, arguing “sound Christian teachings should show good fruit.” But the Gospel of Matthew records Jesus Christ saying in this sermon, “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.” Try as I may, I can’t shake the feeling that Harvard made Matthew Vines very hungry.
All of humankind is sinful in different ways and falls short of God’s glory. That includes me and everyone I know and don’t know, gay or straight. My own sins preclude my inheritance of the kingdom of God, absent my confession and the gift of grace through faith in Christ. We cannot promote or rationalize sinfulness through novel interpretations or rewrites of the Bible.
Kyle Rittenhouse revealed on Friday, the third anniversary of the
incident during the BLM riots in Kenosha that made him famous, he is
been sued again, this time by a firm representing the estate of Joesph
Rosenbaum.
Texas Scorecard reports those also being sued by Rosenbaum's estate
are Kenosha officials, different Sheriff’s departments, the City of
Kenosha, the City of West Allis, and several counties for “compensatory
and punitive damages” for the “wrongful death” of Rosenbaum. They are
requesting a jury trial for conspiracy to deprive constitutional rights,
conspiracy to obstruct justice based on invidious discrimination, and
First Amendment retaliation.
The suit claims "Rosenbaum was among many who protested peacefully..." and "Rittenhouse fired his assault rifle indiscriminately multiple times at citizens on the street."
"I’m being sued again for defending my life," Rittenhouse posted with a link to the story.
"These
lawsuits are making it harder and harder for me to move on with my
life," Rittenhouse told Texas Scorecard. "It is extremely difficult to
go outside without fear of being harassed or assaulted because of the
lies spread in these lawsuits. No one should have to continue to defend
the fact that they acted in self defense."
Rosenbaum was the first person shot by Rittenhouse in self-defense.
Rosenbaum, a previously convicted pedophile, was shown during the 2021
criminal trial to have been a rioter the night of the shooting,
threatening Rittenhouse and others who had firearms to prevent further
looting and destruction of property. Rittenhouse was found not guilty on
all charges, including murder, at the end of the trial. Evidence
presented at the 2021 trial have already proven the aforementioned
claims by the firm representing Rosenbaum's estate to be false.
Now
that it is confirmed Joseph Rosenbaum was one of the people shot and
killed by alleged gunman Kyle Rittenhouse in Kenosha, I filmed him
earlier in the night taunting the armed civilians, saying, "Shoot me,
n***a." pic.twitter.com/Nn2encm78Y
According to ABC News, U.S. District Court Judge Robert C.
Chambers ruled that a restrictive law on abortion signed by GOP Gov. Jim
Justice in September 2022 takes precedence over approvals on
mifepristone from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
“The
Supreme Court has made it clear that regulating abortion is a matter of
health and safety upon which States may appropriately exercise their
police power,” Chambers reportedly wrote in his decision.
West Virginia has a track record of standing up for unborn life. Townhall covered how Justice previously stated that he would sign pro-life measures that made it to his desk.
“I
said from the beginning that if WV legislators brought me a bill that
protected life and included reasonable and logical exceptions I would
sign it, and that’s what I did today,” Justice said in 2022. “That’s
what I did today.”
Today I signed HB 302 - a bill that protects life.
I
said from the beginning that if WV legislators brought me a bill that
protected life and included reasonable and logical exceptions I would
sign it, and that's what I did today.
“West Virginia takes a bold step forward today in the fight
against eugenic discrimination in America,” SBA Pro-Life’s Dannenfelser
said in a statement about the law. “Research shows 99 percent of people
with Down syndrome lead happy lives, yet instead of being cherished and
included, far too often they are targeted for destruction in the womb
where they are most vulnerable.”
And, in 2018, West
Virginia amended its constitution to protect the unborn. In 2020,
Justice signed a bill into law protecting Americans born alive after an
attempted abortion.
“This is an absolute no-brainer as far as I’m concerned,” Justice said
of the Born-Alive law. “I’ve said for a long time, even back before I
took office as Governor, that I would support measures like this because
every human life – born or unborn is precious and truly a gift from
God.”
Despite years of Biden family and media disinformation,
we are finally learning that President Joe Biden really did fire
Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin for looking into state corruption
involving the oil company Burisma and Hunter Biden -- and ultimately Joe
Biden himself.
As vice president, Biden, in his own words, bragged that he had
threatened to cancel the deliverance of American foreign aid to Ukraine
unless Shokin was dismissed.
So what is Congress to do now --
un-impeach and exonerate an innocent impeached Donald Trump, and instead
impeach a guilty Biden for essentially the same allegations?
After
all, the Left redefined the impeachment bar in 2019 as leveraging
foreign aid to Ukraine to benefit one's political career.
And that
is exactly what Joe Biden did to ensure his son could continue to raise
millions for the Biden family with foreign governments while being
shielded from political consequences.
An impeached Trump also was
accused of using the power of government to go after his likely 2020
presidential rival by suggesting that Joe Biden and his family were
corrupt and should be investigated by Ukrainian officials for fraud and
bribery.
Despite Joe Biden's denials, Trump was right: there was
plenty of evidence to link Ukrainian unwarranted payoffs going into
Biden family coffers.
So Trump in 2019 had good reasons to ensure
that none of the Bidens were still burrowed deeply into the Ukrainian
payoff machine.
In contrast, Biden had far less grounds to unleash
the full powers of government against his probable 2024 rival,
ex-president Trump.
Special Prosecutor Jack Smith is not charging
Trump with bribery of the Biden sort. He does not allege that Trump gave
particular foreign policy preferences to those foreigners who paid his
family for such services.
Instead, Smith argues that Trump unlawfully took out classified presidential papers --although Joe Biden did nearly the same.
Biden
kept quiet about his vast removal of classified documents for over a
decade. Not until Trump was being investigated did Biden suddenly notify
the government of his illegal removals.
In contrast, a combative
and boisterous Trump fought openly and constantly with federal
archivists over which of his papers at his Mar-a-Lago estate were truly
classified.
Prosecutorial leaks floated all sorts of unproven
nefarious agendas that had prompted Trump's disputes over his
presidential papers.
But no one to this day has seriously asked
why Senator and then Vice President Biden secretly and weirdly removed
and kept such sensitive material for years.
Recent reports allege
that Hunter Biden may have been treated with kid gloves by prosecutors,
partly because Hunter's lawyers had threatened otherwise to call Joe
Biden to the stand as a favorable witness.
Government prosecutors
under pressure from the White House apparently balked at the nightmare
of a befuddled president of the United States testifying under oath
about the supposed innocence of the very guilty Hunter Biden.
In truth, the former drug addict Hunter has played many strange games with his family.
In his laptop communications, Hunter whined that no one in the family appreciated his hard work at family grifting.
He sounded petulant that his father forced him to fork over half his income to the Joe and Jill Biden household.
At
a time of universal scrutiny of Hunter, the last thing any sane first
son might do would be to hawk his own childish paintings at exorbitant
prices to those wishing to buy influence with his father, the president.
In effect, Hunter was almost daring the White House to stop his blatant grifting artistry.
Instead, the Bidens moved Hunter into the White House to keep him under closer watch.
Hunter
is still out of control. He could take the family down with him unless
President Biden continues to shield him from prosecution.
Ironically, the double standard Biden and the media used to hound Trump has only raised new questions of fairness.
Why had the Biden family -- with its far greater legal exposure -- never faced such serial indictments?
A Republican House of Representatives had ended prior Democratic protection given to the Bidens.
And the Ukraine war has again turned attention to the Biden-Burisma connection and Hunter's shaking down of Ukrainian officials.
Finally, Joe Biden can no longer work a full day. He mutters. He stumbles. He serially lies.
He
hijacks solemn occasions commemorating national tragedies by trying to
one-up the grieving with his own self-absorbed stories -- most of them
irrelevant and narcissistic half-truths.
If a cognitively and criminally challenged Biden cannot finish his
term, we will finally learn the full story of 15 years of Biden family
corruption.
The Bidens will lose the only impediment -- Joe
Biden's political machinations -- left in the way of an honest,
full-blown felony investigation into what is likely the most corrupt
presidential family in American history.
My opinion is just my opinion, no better or
worse than anybody else’s. Facts are different; they can’t (shouldn’t)
be denied—though Leftists do it all the time—but opinions are just that.
The following is my opinion of what I saw in the Republican debate
this past Wednesday night. It was the first time I really had a chance
to hear some of the candidates. Here are some observations (my opinions
only) about each.
First, any of those people would be better than Joe Biden or any Democrat. Any of them.
Now to the candidates in no particular order.
1.
Vivek Ramaswamy. He was the most often attacked, mainly because he was
most on the offensive and was the most decisive in his answers.
Politicians hate absolutes. No squirming room. Vivek is “too young
and inexperienced.” No, he’s not, except he doesn’t always use wisdom.
His “I’m the only person here not bought and paid for” comment was just
dumb. It may be accurate, but it shouldn’t have been said. He had a
good performance.
2. Asa Hutchinson. His J6
“insurrection” comment lost him any chance of winning the nomination,
not that he had any to begin with. His record as governor seems
primarily good, and he made that point. He was actually fairly
impressive, but he won’t win.
3. Doug Burgum. No
significant errors that I could see, but he is too unknown to have much
chance. All his answers seemed solid. He has a long way to go to get
anywhere, though.
4. Ron DeSantis. His answers weren’t
always with “yes” or “no” clarity, and he often sounded like a
politician. But then, he is one. The Fox interrupter accused him (I
didn’t get his name, he was a jerk) a couple of times of not answering
the question asked when I clearly heard an answer. I still don’t know,
for sure, what he will do with Ukraine other than protect America’s
southern border. But maybe he doesn’t know yet, either. Will he
authorize more money for Ukraine? I’m not sure. But his performance was
solid, and he didn’t get into any of the screaming matches the others
did. I thought overall, he did a good job and was steady and solid.
5. Mike Pence. I admire his faith, but he’s just not a
very likable man to me. Sometimes he didn’t know when to shut up. He
had some excellent ideas, as did all of them, but appeared a bit uppity
and arrogant. He did what he thought his job was on January 6, 2021,
and even if you disagree with his actions, you can’t fault a man for
doing what he thinks is right. We all do that. He’s weak, though, and
he isn’t going to win the nomination.
6. Nikki Haley.
I thought she was way too excitable, especially on the Ukraine issue.
Her stance there wholly turned me off. Yes, Putin is a thug and a
murderer. But so is Zelensky, and nobody has ever explained, to my
satisfaction, why we should be supporting one thug over another in a war
that has been going on, off and on, for generations. I get so tired of
the “we can do both” argument, i.e., protect our border and be the
“leader” of the free world by, in effect, getting involved in other
people’s wars and wasting our money whenever politicians want to. Yes,
we can do that, but sticking our noses into other people’s business
usually isn’t a good idea, either personally or as a nation. I’ve also
never bought the “if we allow Putin to take Ukraine, that will give
China a green light to attack Taiwan” argument. No, it won’t if we make
it very clear to China that we won’t tolerate it. I think Vivek was
the best here. We are driving Russia into the hands of China rather
than trying to build a friendship with them. Sometimes we must make
friends with monsters; it’s called “realpolitik.” Vivek, more than
once, indicated that China is our biggest threat, and he is absolutely
right on the money with that one. And yet, he is the one who is
“inexperienced” in foreign affairs. Maybe so, but that doesn’t mean he
is totally stupid. He is also the only one I heard who said “Climate
change is a hoax.” Haley said it wasn’t, she is wrong, and I think she
lost any chance she had at the nomination with that, her Ukraine policy,
and being way too flighty at times.
7. Tim Scott. He didn’t talk as much, but what he said
was good. He didn’t stand out above the others, so he still has little
chance to be the nominee. He probably didn’t gain, or lose, much
support with this debate. His agreement, a few weeks ago, with Kamala
Harris about DeSantis and slavery hasn’t been forgotten (by me) and he
might come back to bite him on the tailbone someday. Tim seems to be a
nice guy but not a President.
8. Chris Christie. I
thought he was actually pretty likable and, from what he said, had a
decent record as governor of New Jersey (I’m no expert on that, maybe
some of you New Jersey folks know better). But he absolutely hates
Donald Trump, and that appears to be the focal point of his campaign.
You don’t hate the (current) most popular Republican and get very far
with the masses who are going to choose the nominee. He would be better
than Biden. But dying in your sleep at night is better than dying of a
long, protracted, painful battle with cancer.
So that’s
what I saw. I’m sure some of you saw some completely different things.
We have nine candidates (at the moment). Let’s see if this debate
helped or hurt any of them significantly. There is still a long road
ahead.
Logging the miles is one
of the best things you can do for your body and mind. However, despite
our best efforts running injuries are still very common!
In fact, research has reported that the majority of runners experience at least one injury in a one-year period. You may develop a stress fracture while trying to improve your 5K timeor sprain your ankle during a trail run.
Fortunately, there are many tools that
can help devout runners who want to recover faster without losing
fitness. One of these is a device known as an anti-gravity treadmill
The National Agency of Space
has reported that antigravity treadmills can help injured college and
elite athletes, military members, seniors, and those coming out from
surgery.
Even the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has cleared this machine to be used as a medical device in rehabilitation back in 2008.
So, the all-important question: Do anti-gravity treadmills really work? Any research that backs up the claims?
In this article, we’ll dive into what exactly is an anti–gravity treadmill, the history behind it as well as some of the research that looked into its effectiveness.
The History Of Anti-Gravity Treadmills
For over 50 years, NASA has been sending astronauts into space.
As missions got more complicated and technology advanced, astronauts were spending more time in orbit. In fact, depending on the mission, the average astronaut could dwell between three to six months in space.
Devoid of the literal pull of earth’s gravity, the muscles and bones of these brave space pioneers start to atrophy.
To counteract this loss in muscle and bone strength, astronauts must engage in regular exercise.Why is it important? Without physical exercise, their bodies, sooner than later, will start losing both muscle and bone density.
This leads to a decrease in size and
strength and can compromise the astronauts’ ability to perform tasks
while in space because it makes them weak.And, God forbid, in case of emergency, they would need to be in excellent shape to get out of the danger as fast as possible.
What’s more, once
the astronauts are back on earth, weakened muscles and bones would make
any form of weight-bearing challenging, even painful.
For these reasons, NASA (as well as other
space agencies) have worked hard over the years to devise plans and
devices to help astronauts stay in good shape.
Then in the 1990s, Dr. Robert Whalen, a biomechanics researcher at the NASA Ames Research Center, was tasked to invent a means for the astronauts to exercise in the space station.
Among the tools he invented was a pressurized bubble that used air pressure to hold the astronauts down. Thus, the concept of anti-gravity treadmills was born.
The process was simple. The original
design placed the lower body of the astronauts in an airtight chamber
where air pressure was increased, pushing them down and simulating
gravity in the process.
This, in turn, increased the astronaut’s apparent weight, allowing them to exercise at their normal earth weight.
This was a big step. With the previous devices, the astronauts could only train at roughly 60 percent of their body weight on earth. But now, thanks to the new device, the astronauts could simulate Earth-like conditions but in space.
However, due to funding limits, NASA decided to pursue some of Robert’s other ideas, and his “air-pressure” controlled treadmill never really caught on.
Then around 2005, Sean Whalen, Whalen’s
son, decided to revive his father’s experimental treadmill. Instead of
adding gravity, Sean wanted to make it possible to reduce gravity on
earth.
Then, by flipping the air pump, thus, creating the opposite gravity effect, Sean designed the initial prototype of the anti-gravity treadmill as we know it today.
In the same year, the Whalen prototype was licensed
to a company called AlterG, which seems to have come up with the term
“anti-gravity treadmill.” For a nice image of this in action check out
the AlterG treadmill featured here on nasa.gov
So What’s An Anti-Gravity Treadmill All about?
It might sound like a contraption from a science-fiction movie, but an anti-gravity treadmill is just a piece of highly specialized equipment primarily used in physiotherapy practice.
The machine is designed for people to exercise with reduced load on their joints and muscles. It works by employing air pressure to make the body “weigh less,” counteracting gravitational forces.
This sensation is created by a system of pulleys and
motors that can negate the weight of the user when it presses against
the belt (more on this later).
The user can choose how high or low they want to go,
and the springs will provide the feeling of walking/running on air
pressure. This, in turn, allows the user to walk or run at 100% to 20% of their body weight.
Since antigravity treadmills are more technical than the typical treadmill, expect an in-depth console.
You can keep track of strike
force, cadence, stance time, stride-length symmetry, as well as other
advanced stats and data relating to the antigravity effect.
The Technology Behind The Machine
The reason anti-gravity treadmills can “manipulate” gravity comes down to the innovative “Differential Air Pressure” (DAP) technology which counteracts gravitational forces.
Anti-gravity treadmills feature a bubble that inflates with air, then surrounds the user’s lower body. This gently lifts them off the treadmill which reduces pressure on the lower body.
So, for example, if you
weigh 180 pounds and use the anti-gravity treadmill at 50 percent
setting, you can walk/run as if you only weigh 90 pounds.
Want to feel what it’s like to lose 30 pounds? Use the 84 percent setting to train at 150 pounds.
The Actual Session
To use the machine, you’ll need to wear special
neoprene shorts that have a skirt around the waist. Next, to create the
vacuum, you’ll get zipped into an airtight, pressurized, bubble
suspended over the machine’s surface.
Once the treadmill is turned on, the casing starts
to gradually fill with air, which creates a waist-high bubble around the
machine and the user’s legs.
Next, the treadmill measures your weight and starts
to calibrate the corresponding pressure for your body. The higher the
pressure, the higher you can be lifted.
By adjusting the pressure inside of the bubble, you
can manipulate your weight, reducing it by as much as 80 per cent in
precise one per cent increments.
As you start to walk, your legs begin to feel
lighter and experience less pressure on your joints. In fact,
walking/running may feel virtually weightless, even with increased speed
and incline.
From there, the treadmill works just like any other.
You can keep a pace of up to 15 miles per hour, adjust the incline as
well as do intervals. You can also perform weight-bearing exercises in
the reduced gravity setting.
Now let’s look at some of the real-life applications of this amazing machine.
Post-Surgery Applications
Regardless of age or fitness level, post-surgery patients, especially orthopaedic procedures, require a long healing period in which various parts of the body recover at various rates before being able to locomote with ease and confidence.
For instance, when recovering from an ACL surgery, expect to have altered walking mechanics for at least a month.
Here’s the good news.
Hopping on an anti-gravity treadmill during the recovery period can help patients walk farther with less stress on the lower body joints and muscles.
This, overtime, helps improve their neuromuscular control as well as keep them away from a completely sedentary lifestyle.
And of course, don’t take my word for it. Over the past few years, there are many studies that examined the usefulness of anti-gravity treadmills.
One example is research that examined the impact of antigravity treadmill on balance during post-surgery knee rehabilitation.
Forty-nine patients who had knee surgery participated in the experiment.
At week one post-surgery, each patient was assessed for a single leg stance on the affected knee on a floor.
Then, they were either placed into an AlterG group or a control group.
The AlterG group performed balance exercises on an antigravity treadmill with the resistance adjusted to a minimal or pain-free level once a day for five days a week.
The other group performed their balance exercises on
the floor in the same manner. All subjects were assessed again at least
two post-operatively.
The conclusion?
One week after surgery, the duration of the single-leg stance was about 40 seconds and 20 seconds for the AlterG group and the control group, respectively,
By week two, the AlterG group improved to 50 seconds while the control group jumped to 35 seconds.
In other words, anti-gravity treadmills can be
useful for post-surgery patients who want to get back on their feet as
soon as possible. This is especially the case for those who experienced excruciating pain during weight-bearing following a knee operation.
Stay In Shape While Recovering
Whether you’re recovering from knee surgery or have
sprained your ankle, you’ll want to stay in shape, especially when
you’re training for a specific race.
Say you’re a marathon runner recovering from a stress fracture. You still have a full range of motion, are willing to run but struggling to log the miles due to pain.
Sure, you could choose to cross-train, but when it comes down to it, logging the miles is what you need to stay on track.
Hopping on an anti-gravity treadmill may help keep
you going without any adverse side effects, providing you’re under the
guidance of a trained health professional.
In fact, many rehab athletes find they can return faster to training with the AlterG Anti-Gravity Treadmill.
Again, don’t take my word for it. Research has shown that the AlterG technology helps reduce swelling, prevent muscle atrophy, and improve patient outcomes.
The Main Conditions
Many conditions afflicting the lower limbs can be improved by exercising on the anti-gravity treadmill. These include
What’s more, the device can also be used to support balance and strength training in the elderly and enhance coordination and motor ability in patients with neurological conditions or disorders such as Parkinson’s disease.
The Downsides
I can go on and on about the benefits of
anti-gravity treadmills, but, just like any other tool, the machine
isn’t without downsides. Here are a few.
The Cost
Anti-gravity treadmillsaren’t your standard residential or even gym treadmills. Costing around $35,000 to $75,000, they’re some of the most expensive training machines on the market.
Anti-gravity treadmills are usually found in university sports facilities and physical therapy offices. You can rent it for one session—usually costing 50$ to 80$ per hour.
It Makes Training Easier (which can be negative if you want a good training effect)
Thanks to the altered gravity, training on an antigravity treadmill is easier than on a standard one, research shows.
Since the majority of the metabolic cost of running
stems from absorbing impact and resisting gravity to create forward
propulsion, it shouldn’t be surprising that lowering apparent body
weight while keeping the same running pace will reduce the energetic
cost of running.
In fact, the research has shown that the metabolic cost drastically decreases with an increasedlevel of support. The more you unload your body weight, the easier the exercise gets.
So is there anything you can do to mitigate this?
Research has pointed out two things: support level and incline.
In an experiment, scientists examined the physiological adaptations triggered by an 8-week training plan on an anti–gravity
treadmill at three different levels of body weight support of 50
percent, 75 percent, and 100 percent in healthy participants.
The researchers reported that training at 50 percent body weight resulted in a slight reduction of aerobic capacity in contrast to training at 100 percent bodyweight.
Whereas training at 75 percent body weight didn’t trigger any drastic change.
Therefore, if keeping your gains is your goal—and not recovery—train at least 75 percent or more of your body weight at moderate intensity.
The next thing you need to dois simply increase the incline.
In fact, research has found that elite runners at high speed can reach their VO2 max with reduced bodyweight by simply upping the incline.
Conclusion
If you’re dealing with injuries, want to
explore more training options, or just want to train in a bubble (no
pun intended), you should give anti-gravity treadmills a try.
When asked about the numerous failures that preceded his invention of
the light bulb, Thomas Edison once famously joked that he hadn’t failed
over a hundred times but instead had simply found a hundred different
ways how not to make a light bulb. Could the same thing be said of anti-gravity and the hunt to defy physical laws?
Although not expressly stated by Mark Sokol, the 33-year-old, wide-eyed, curly-haired founder of New Jersey-based Falcon Space, (in Slavic languages, Sokol means Falcon),
Edison’s light bulb analogy could easily sum up his company’s hands-on,
trial and error approach when it comes to their wide array of very
ambitious planned experiments.
The dividing lines between visionaries and madmen have historically
proven to be thin. As Sokol pushes himself and his company headfirst
into developing a ‘Warp Drive Detector’ and the world’s first
anti-gravity aircraft, it makes you wonder on what side of that line he
dwells.
“I think [that] where science really went wrong was when Einstein got
his Nobel Prize for dreaming up theory, as opposed to experimental
results.” Sokol told The Debrief, “[After that] I think the scientists sort of got addicted to sitting at home and coloring on white boards.”
Mark Sokol, Founder of Falcon Space. (Image: Sokol)
The Toyota Prius May Have Influenced the Creation of a ‘Warp Drive Detector?’
Nearly ten years before his first gravity experiments, Sokol
purchased a used Toyota Prius, only to learn that the already aging battery pack
would soon have to be rebuilt. Unfortunately, with the hybrid market
still new, the equipment to do the job wasn’t yet available. Undaunted,
Sokol simply built his own tools, ultimately leading the then
23-year-old to start his own hybrid battery refurbishment business, a
business he still owns and operates today.
“I built the equipment to refurbish the batteries myself because the
equipment didn’t exist,” he said. Sokol is highly energetic, often
speaking like a human machine gun, yet surprisingly articulate.
This mentally fast-paced, hands-on, problem-solving approach has
translated over to Sokol’s current research, including designing a
device to detect the warping of space-time, or more simply, a ‘Warp
Drive Detector.’
“The ‘Warp Drive
Detector’ was just something that was dreamed up between Jeremiah Popp
[a fellow anti-gravity experimenter] and me,” said Sokol. “The idea is
to figure out if a warp field is being created, to see if something is
changing the speed of light in the vicinity of an experiment.”
Sokol explained that his theoretical device isn’t being built to
detect ultra-top secret man-made spaceships traveling above the speed of
light, much less alien ones, but instead to help the Falcon Space team
with their gravity-related experiments.
“We have a lot of experiments going on in the lab,” said Sokol. “A
lot of experiments we’ve completed, and we realized we don’t have the
proper instrumentation to realize if anything was actually happening.”
In short, if they had any hope of testing whether or not their gravity experiments were achieving a warping of space-time as predicted by Albert Einstein,
the duo realized that much like the tools to remake a Prius battery
pack in 2011, they had to build a warp drive detector on their own.
Mark Sokol, left, with his partner, Jeremiah Popp. (Image: Mark Sokol)
Building The Impossible
Rather than diving straight into the lab, a move Sokol admits is
almost always their first impulse, he and Popp checked out the current
technology used to measure reactions to gravity. Ultimately, they landed
on a laser set up designed to spot gravity-induced changes in light,
like the one NASA’s Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO)
uses to detect gravitational waves in space. And although Sokol didn’t
reveal the engineer’s name, he did indicate that he and Popp have
consulted with one of the original designers of LIGO to make sure they
were setting their experiments up correctly.
“Use a stable laser,” he said, explaining the theory behind their
warp measurement tool. “It gets split into two beams. They bounce around
the table, [then] come back to each other on the receiving end. You
have the experiment affect one of the beams. If it affects it, the
interference pattern will change, and you will be able to measure very
minute details in the change of light.”
A laser in Falcon Space’s lab. Pew Pew. (Image: Mark Sokol)
Sokol said that once these lasers are mounted on his recently
purchased, ultra-heavy duty, composite, dielectric testbed (one he
described as “tough as concrete”), they will be able to use the device
to test anything from mundane objects to a complex, gravity-altering
experiment, all to see if there is a warping effect.
“We’re going to be using a laser that has an extremely stable
frequency output, and we’re going to put the laser, battery-powered,
inside the experiment, and that’s going to shine on to a detector that
will see if there is any frequency change in the laser’s output.”
And what would that frequency change indicate?
“A Doppler Effect,” said Sokol. “If there’s a blue shift, we’ll know
if something happened.” In effect, this tool “will sort of be like a
compass to tell us where interesting things are happening.”
At this point in the discussion, Sokol made sure to point out that
this is merely their first experimental design. Even if successful, he
is not confident their results would indicate whether gravity is causing
the detected warp or if the warping of space-time is something else
altogether.
“There’s a bit of a misnomer about warp fields and all of that
stuff,” said Sokol. “I know Einstein’s theory is that gravity is ‘warped
space.’ We don’t really have any true proof of that, other than light
bends around gravity. There’s no proof that space itself is warping, and
therefore, that’s why the light is curving. It could be that the light
is curving because gravity is an electromagnetic effect, and that
affects electromagnetism, which is light.”
With this theoretical distinction in mind, Sokol clarified his ‘Warp
Drive Detector’ is more accurately just a ‘warp detector’ since it is
housed in their lab and not in outer space where one assumes such a
drive would be put to use.
“We don’t even know if warp drive really exists,” he said, “and I
wouldn’t think that this conclusively proves warp drive. Even if we saw
it bending, it only proves that whatever experiment I did bent light.”
Still, Sokol reiterated that if there is an actual warp of space/time
occurring during their experiments, their custom-built testbed should
find it. And, he says, that measuring capability will be particularly
crucial when testing the concept Falcon Space was started on in the
first place: Anti-Gravity.
The Quest to Defy Gravity
Now firmly on a mission to prove his ancient alien theory, and joined
by a like-minded partner in Popp, Sokol dove headfirst into a field
that he says is littered with frauds and misinformation: anti-gravity
research. Fortunately, their laborious analysis of the scientific
literature guided them to a set of previously published, anti-gravity experiments named for the man who first theorized the idea behind them back in 1981 when he worked for Boeing, then purportedly conducted tests in the 1990s, Frederick Alzofon.
Dr. Frederick Alzofon (Image: Gravity Control)
“It’s a peer-reviewed paper that was written by a highly accredited scientist,” said Sokol about Alzofon’s heretofore unproven
work, “and it has a very salient explanation on how these craft
operate. And everything about the craft really made sense through this
theory.”
In 2018, Dr. Alzofon’s son David wrote a book about the still-controversial
theory wherein, according to Sokol, “he said that his father actually
tried the experiment that he laid out in the paper in 1994, in the
basement of some university.” Unsurprisingly, given the unusual nature
of this type of inquiry, Sokol also said that Alzofon “had to borrow
equipment because nobody would touch this science with a 10-foot pole.”
Nonetheless, Alzofon and his team performed the experiments anyway, and they had some rather eye-popping results.
“They set it all up, turned it on, and a sample lost like 80% of its
weight within 1 second,” Sokol explained. However, these experiments
didn’t convince other scientists, and one engineer, David Prutchi, has pointed out that the experiments were flawed and that Alzofon’s results were “invalid.”
Sokol is convinced that Alzofon was on to something, at least
something he could try to verify in his lab, so he and Popp tried their
own preliminary versions of the anti-gravity experiment. They claim they
had some promising results.
“One experiment showed 17.8% weight loss, but that was still within the
‘noise floor,’ [or margin of error] for this type of experiment.”
Hoping to improve upon that dubious yet still encouraging first try,
Sokol said he plans to upgrade equipment, including a recently purchased
Electro-power Magnetic Resonance generator that he says is like an MRI
machine and one that can retail for as much as 60 thousand dollars.
Using that newer, more powerful generator, he hopes to repeat their
experiments with results “two to three times” above the noise floor.
When asked what happened to Alzofon’s work after the incredible
results purportedly achieved by those 1994 tests, Sokol claims that “all
the investors and everyone got super excited, and they started fighting
over who owns what in this company that never existed, and the whole
thing fell apart.”
Or, as Prutchi argues, “any physicist or engineer…would have
immediately realized that the experimental data shows absolutely no
effect on the gravitational pull experienced by the sample.”
Is Anti-Gravity Possible?
To explain exactly how the anti-gravity experiment he is planning to
try next actually works, as well as the theory behind it, Sokol once
again made sure to point out that he is not a formally trained
theoretical or experimental physicist and that all of this is just
someone else’s theory that he is simply trying to prove (or disprove) in
a practical, hands-on way. He did, however, concede that he has his own
guesses as to the possible underlying mechanisms.
“Well, the first question you should really ask is, why do we have
inertial mass?” said Sokol, harkening back to the theoretical basis of
Alzofon’s original anti-gravity work. “Where does inertial mass come
from? And if you ask any Ph.D. physicist this question, they’ll get mad
at you because they just spent six years in college, and they didn’t get
an answer to that question.”
When asked to elaborate, Sokol offered his more mundane explanation of this inertial mass theory.
“When you take a baseball and throw it, you’re actually energizing
the spins of the sub-atomic particles,” he said. “So, by moving an
object through space-time, you are changing the spin of those subatomic
particles in a way that energizes or slows down the momentum in one
direction or another, and [according to his theory] that’s where the
force that we call inertia comes from.”
If true, Sokol proposes that the mechanisms first suggested by
Alzofon may indeed help him and his colleagues solve the anti-gravity
riddle.
“According to Alzofon, all you’ve got to do is orient the subatomic
particles,” he said. “Take them from being in a state of disorganized
chaos, and bring them all to spin on the same axis and plane, and then
the entire craft along its axis and its plane will become weightless.”
“The reason that perhaps most physicists may not be able to give an
answer is that it requires a deep knowledge of the standard model of
physics (particle physics), quantum mechanics, and nuclear chemistry,”
said Cassibry, acknowledging at least part of Sokol’s premise. “These
topics are probably not covered thoroughly in undergraduate courses, and
may not be taught thoroughly in grad school other than at places that
specialize in that subdiscipline.”
Nonetheless, Cassibry went on to explain the actual mechanics
believed to be at work in the conventional theory, before reiterating
that “there are probably only a handful of people in the world that
might be able to walk through a discussion of how macroscopic forces
manifest on a subatomic scale in a collection of complicated processes
that appear to be a resistance to acceleration on a macro scale.”
Still, although Cassibry stipulated that he is an aerospace engineer
without the formal physics training, and that “there is a kernel of
truth in your source’s claim,” he says inertial mass is something that
those properly trained physicists can confidently explain.
Screwing Around With Magnetic Fields and the World of Anti-Gravity
To run their own, updated version of the Alzofon experiment, Sokol
explained that the team would place a test sample in a plastic, 3-D cage
(which, according to a June email sent to The Debrief, will be printed using Falcon’s newly purchased, state-of-the-art 3D printer), then use a microwave generator to bombard that sample, all while measuring it for any loss of mass or warping effect.
“Your microwave oven is 2.4 Gigahertz,” said Sokol. “We’re not going
to be running it that high. We have equipment to run it in the C-band,
in the 6.2 gigahertz. And also on the X-band, from 9 to 12 gigahertz. So
we have a couple of different pieces of equipment to run it at
different frequencies.”
Sokol said that according to the literature, the most crucial
component of this experiment is making sure that the generated magnetic
field remains homogeneous throughout the sample.
“You don’t just want a tiny speck of the sample to be in tune, and
everything else is out of tune,” he said. “You want most of the sample
to be in tune so that your signal-to-noise ratio is higher.”
And once they run this experiment, how will they know if it worked?
“We’re going to put a piece of graphite in there that will get heated
up by the microwaves, and we’ll look at it with an infrared camera and
figure out at what point it is in resonance with the microwaves.”
If their experiment worked, then along with the reduction in mass,
Sokol said that “you should see the actual microwave marks on the
graphite. That’s what we’re hoping to see if this is all done
correctly.”
Sokol did say that their experiment will only let them test the basic
mechanism behind Alzofon, and not an actual craft. However, in an
unnerving coincidence, Sokol said that in order to build his theoretical
craft designed to operate as its own electromagnet, there is one
particular design that works perfectly. “When you have an electromagnet,
the field sort of pops out like a donut. If you want the homogenous
field line, if you want to follow the field lines that are of equal
strength, it would literally look like a flying saucer.”
Speaking of which…
And Then Came the UFOs.
Sokol’s entire project is highly theoretical, and more than once
during our interviews, he proceeded down one particularly fringe, highly
controversial path: UFOs.
This
photo, from the featured document display, is from a report of a UFO
sighting in Riverside, California on November 23, 1951. (Image: National
Archives, Records of Headquarters U.S. Air Force [Air Staff])
“One interesting thing that kinda points in the Alzofon direction is,
we’ve never seen a flying saucer do a barrel roll,” he said. “Go on
YouTube, try to find videos of flying saucers. They do not do barrel
rolls.”
When asked to elaborate, Sokol explained that they don’t use thrust
to fly. “They don’t need much to move around because they are almost
weightless. But to change their orientation, and the craft weighs, let
say ten tons, they would need ten tons of acceleration, or the
equivalent to move a ten-ton mass in order to shift its angle,” he
theorized.
This, Sokol postulated, “could be why, when they do shift their
angle, they do it very slowly, and then they shoot off along the axis,
or along the plane, at insane speeds, because they’re weightless along
that axis. Moving along its axis, all they need is a tiny amount of
thrust. Frederick Alzofon said that you could get to the moon with a can
of hairspray.”
Falling Down the Rabbit Hole
As the discussion got deeper and deeper, Sokol revealed that some of these anti-gravity theories are connected to Alien Reproduction Vehicles, or ARVs, described by Mark McCandlish, supposedly under development by Lockheed Martin Skunk Works
since the 1960s. A common conspiracy in many UFO circles, there is a
belief that aliens crash-landed on Earth in the 1940s, and the US
Government has been working hard to reverse engineer that technology
ever since.
Sokol admits that part of his desire to test Alzofon’s theory has to do with his interactions with Alzofon’s son, David.
“I showed that (ARV blueprint)
to David Alzofon, who said he’d showed it to his dad, and his response
was, ‘Its creating dynamic nuclear orientation by spinning the disc,
which is made out of aluminum, and the coil on the outside is pulsing in
order to create the same effect through a different mechanism.'”
The image Sokol showed to David Alzofon of a supposed ‘ARV.’ (Image: Mark McCandlish)
To clarify, Sokol explained how this would work.
“You have a disc of aluminum spinning around, and you have a strong
magnetic field that turns on and off, basically an oscillating magnetic
field.” Sokol went on to say that “by creating a dynamic nuclear
orientation in the center, it will affect the surrounding objects at a
subatomic level.”
The object, according to Sokol and Alzofon’s theory, weighs next to
nothing. Add a small thrust device, a “can of hairspray” (as Alzofon
suggests), and off you go.
Once again, making sure to confine the discussion to things he can
actually test in his lab instead of what he described as a “whole host
of unproven theories,” Sokol said his goal is to examine if such an idea
is even possible. He has no intentions of building a flying saucer.
Yet.
The bizarre science (that may not actually be science) and blueprints
from alleged flying saucers were an odd trip to take. However, in the
anti-gravity science subculture, many dabble in UFO lore, if for no
other reason than witness accounts
often describe these craft as having no obvious means of lift or
propulsion. Both Fred and Dave Alzofon were UFO enthusiasts who took an
interest in the subject. Anti-gravity research and UFOs are simply glued
together and are very common bedfellows.
Things had admittedly become a little weird, but taken in context of
Sokol’s real world experimentation-based approach as opposed to formulas
on a white board, the weirdness somehow seemed to make some sort of
sense. And then there was more.
Have something to share about frontier
science, anti-gravity, exotic propulsion, and those who do this
research? The Debrief would love to hear from you. E-mail
tips@thedebrief.org! We’d like to hear from you.
It All Began With An Alien God
Sokol describes himself as an autodidact (he’s self-taught with no
formal training in physics or engineering). Unlike many of his
colleagues who came to study things like anti-gravity or warp drives
through their love of science fiction or interest in UFOs, the committed
trial-and-error experimenter credits his attraction to a personal
journey that started many decades ago.
“This started as a hobby that came out of my research into religion,
namely Judaism,” Sokol says. “After diving extremely deep into Judaism,
spending 20+ years of my life studying just Judaism, I discovered that
it was all alien worship.”
Before conducting his first experiment, it was during these many
years of orthodox education that he studied the faith’s religious texts
through and through, including the Talmud and Mishnah in their Aramaic
form. And, he says, after reading them closely, “a couple of things
stuck out to me.”
In particular, Sokol noted how in the original Hebrew texts, the
description of Moses at Mount Sinai reads as more of a historical
account than a literal one. “There is the supposed conversation between
Moses and this God, named Jehovah, and in the original Torah, it reads
like a historical document,” said Sokol. “Like this event really
happened.”
After his personal revelation, he said, he just started connecting dots.
“If this really happened, it couldn’t be an all-powerful, infinite
being because it would include the entire universe. God wouldn’t be on
the mountain talking to Moses. He would be the mountain and be Moses. But the Torah doesn’t say he’s infinite. That was all added by Rabbi’s years later.”
So, who or what was perched at the top of Mount Sinai speaking to Moses?
“In the Torah, it was a guy named Jehovah,” said Sokol. “There was
also a fire and cloud they would follow through the desert. And [from
ancient textual descriptions] Jehovah’s mothership looked like a
classic, cigar-shaped UFO.” When pressed further, Sokol was direct. “I
would say that the god of the Old Testament, Jehovah, is an
extraterrestrial.”
He was quick to point out that the popular, alternative history book Chariots of the Gods and the TV series Ancient Aliens
have made similar observations, including the possibility of UFOs being
featured in the Old Testament. But for Sokol personally, this new
understanding from his own readings ultimately set him on his path to
Falcon Space. That, and a few friendly nudges from those close to him.
“I started getting into anti-gravity research from people pushing me
to prove to them this alien theory about Judaism,” Sokol said. “And the
only way to do that is to do experiments. Whenever I started sharing
this theory with friends of mine, the conversation always led back to
the same place: ‘show me the technology.'”
This Anti-Gravity Stuff Can’t Be Real…Can It?
For Sokol, Popp, and the others assisting in the still-modest Falcon
Space venture (the founder says they only recently added an apartment
for out of town guests like Popp and others so they wouldn’t continue to
sleep inside the lab), there are many tools left to build and many
tests to run before reaching their ultimate goal of constructing an
actual, bonafide, anti-gravity craft.
But, he said, there are steps within this process where he believes
the proof needed to launch them toward that ultimate goal will appear.
“The next benchmark moment would be an experiment that shows weight loss that is two or three times the noise floor.”
When asked what barriers remain to do that experiment right now, he
repeated his previous limitation on more rapid progress; “Competent
engineers.” When pushed further, Sokol elaborated. “The main restraint
is that we don’t have any competent engineers who are willing to come
and work with us. We are looking for somebody local who can help us here
in the lab.”
Surprisingly, especially for such a small start-up business that
Sokol himself described as beginning a few years ago with dumpster
diving for used equipment, when asked about any financial constraints to
furthering their mission (constraints that almost always hamstring
these more theoretical ventures), he was similarly blunt.
“Funding is not really a problem anymore,” he said.
There was a pause. Were people actually willing to invest in this?
When once again asked to elaborate, Sokol was more forthcoming. “There
was always a chicken or the egg problem. Everyone is offering you money
once you have a proof of concept, but I convinced enough rich people to
say, ‘Hey, you’re not going to get a proof of concept unless we’re
funded properly. Now people came through, and we got that going.”
Come again?
Sokol clarified that he isn’t presently funded at the levels needed
to build a working anti-gravity craft. Once he and his cohorts can show
more substantial, reproducible results with their current funding, that
will not be a problem.
“If we find a sweet spot where the sample loses mass, as predicted by
the theory that it should, we’ve actually got several billionaires who
have offered tons of money to take this on,” said Sokol. “We’ve had lots
of people offer lots of money to take this to the next stage, which
would be building a full-sized craft.”
When pressed about who these potentially famous, would-be financiers
might be, Sokol wasn’t willing to give up any names. However, any hopes
of would-be celebrity rocketeers like Sir Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos,
or Elon Musk taking a secret plunge into this controversial field were
quickly dashed by his subsequent response.
“I don’t think you’ve ever heard of any of them.”
When asked what exactly Falcon Space will need to do to entice that
large-scale funding, Sokol reiterated that achieving successful test
results in his lab that are “at least two to three times above the noise
floor” will make everything else fall into place. “It all depends first
on having a working experiment before you go and dump, you know, a
hundred million dollars into the R & D of building an actual craft
based on this theory,” he said.
But if that experimental result is actually achieved?
“If everything came together as quickly as possible, we might have a
prototype in a year or two,” said Sokol. “Not the proof of concept
stuff. That can be done in a month. I’m talking [about] an actual craft,
could probably be built within a year or two.”
Nothing Is Too Far Out
At the end of both interviews with The Debrief, Sokol
reiterated that his primary desire is to add competent people in his
local area willing to work on this type of anti-gravity and scientific
research, even offering a personal message to pass along.
“For anyone that’s interested in helping us, we don’t care about your
degree or all of that stuff. We actually prefer people who figure stuff
out on their own. That is the mindset that leads to the biggest
innovations. People who get indoctrinated in colleges tend to get stuck
in a box.”
It undoubtedly all sounds pretty far out to say the least, and based
on the mainstream scientific literature along with our own experts
casting nothing but doubts on Alzofon’s theories, it feels like Sokol
and his cohorts will almost surely end up like Thomas Edison, finding
nothing but a hundred different ways how not to make an
anti-gravity drive. Chasing the impossible, especially something like
anti-gravity, can drive you insane. However, something is compelling
about the underdog. Sokol is undaunted, and his mad dash towards
anti-gravity speaks to some complicated aspect of the human spirit and
our desire to forge our names and ideas into history.
In the end, Sokol emphasized that when considering the idea of such a
monumental breakthrough being discovered using his type of hands-on,
unbiased methodology, especially in a field he noted more than once is
rife with “garbage science,” his team’s approach is precisely the way
many discoveries are made. Maybe he’s right, and like that other famous
trial-and-error experimenter Thomas Edison he does ultimately stumble on
the one method that works. Or perhaps over 100 years of conventional
physics is correct, and he is lost in his own dream to achieve what
Alzofon could not.
Unsurprisingly, Sokol doesn’t care, and firmly believes in his approach, a trait common to both visionaries and madmen alike.
“[There is a] reason this type of research isn’t going on in
universities,” concluded Sokol. “They’re afraid of their career, shaking
the status quo, and we all know that doesn’t get us anywhere. It is the
fringes of science that push the frontier. For me, no idea is too far
out to at least think about.”
Many people seem to think NASA has secret training rooms in which gravity can be turned off. Aside from the long-running Anti Gravity column in Scientific American, however, there is no such thing as antigravity.
Gravity is a force arising among any two masses in the universe. Our
most familiar run-in with it is the attraction that pulls our bodies,
our houses and everything else in our lives toward the planet Earth
beneath us. Even in orbit, where astronauts do not feel the tug of
gravity, it is nonetheless abundantly present. Gravity’s draw is simply
masked by the free-falling motion of a spacecraft as it circles the
planet. Only way out in deep space, beyond the domain of any planets or
stars, can you truly escape gravity.
As of yet, no technology exists to neutralize the pull of gravity. The
best way to approximate the feeling of weightlessness on Earth is to
ride onboard a plane flying in parabolic arcs that mimic the shape of
Saint Louis’s Gateway Arch. Such planes, nicknamed “vomit comets”
because of the queasiness they induce, allow passengers to float for a
few moments while the plane is in free fall on the downward swing of the
arc. Astronauts use this method to train for spaceflight; it also gave
us scenes of a weightless Tom Hanks in the film Apollo 13. You
can also experience moments of apparent weightlessness during the drops
on roller coasters or Disney World’s Tower of Terror ride, for example.
“Both you and your rollercoaster carriage are falling at the same rate,”
says Damian Pope, a physicist at the Perimeter Institute for
Theoretical Physics in Canada, “so your seat doesn't push against you
and you don't feel any support. This mimics what you'd feel if, for some
reason, you happened to find yourself in a rollercoaster carriage in
deep space.”
These examples illustrate how we normally experience gravity. During the
rest of a roller coaster ride you feel the upward push of the seat on
you. “A physicist would say that the seat was exerting a force on
you—they'd call it a normal force,” Pope says. “More generally, the
feeling of having weight we experience in daily life is just the feeling
of being supported by the ground, a rollercoaster seat etc., and these
objects exerting ‘normal forces’ on us.”
The lack of antigravity chambers is what makes space-based research
valuable. Without a way to turn off gravity on Earth, scientists must
launch experiments into orbit to test what happens in weightlessness.
The International Space Station, officially designed a U.S. National
Laboratory, houses hundreds of projects investigating everything from
the effects of weightlessness on viruses (which become more virulent)
and crystals (which grow much larger) to human bodies (which suffer bone density degradation and damaged eyesight). Scientists hope medicines developed in the unusual conditions of space can help treat regular health issues on Earth.
If humans are to explore deep space in the future, we will need better
ways of manipulating gravity than we have now—or at least better tools
to fight the ill effects of weightlessness on the human body. In the 16
years since the International Space Station’s first module was launched
NASA and its partners have made strides in using specialized exercise
equipment and nutrition to maintain astronauts’ fitness. Yet these steps
will not be enough to protect crews on space journeys lasting much
longer than a year. A popular science fiction trope is the spinning
spacecraft that creates artificial gravity via centripetal force, such
as the one depicted in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. The
rotation pulls everything toward the ship’s outside wall, which becomes
the floor. The logic behind this plan is sound, but to create gravity
similar to that on Earth, such a spacecraft would have to be much larger
than any spacefaring vehicle ever built. For now, we might as well
enjoy the antigravity aspect of space travel, which is good for, among
other things, some very weird yo-yo tricks.
As the phone started to ring and I
waited for George Guangyu Men to answer, I was still trying to think of
what I would say and how the interview would go. It’s not uncommon in my
line of work to call up a stranger and start asking questions, but how
do you transition from introducing yourself to someone to asking him if
you can write a story about the disappearance of his mother? Everything
about this story was proving to be uncommon.
I first learned about Dr. Ning-Li from a YouTube video
that I watched shortly before summer. Titled “The Scientist That
Discovered Antigravity Then Disappeared Completely” garnered more than 3
million views and was based on a Huntsville scientist. Over the course
of the next 22 minutes, I listened intently as the video’s creator, who
goes by the name Barely Sociable, told a story which seemed appropriate
for a mystery novel.
Not only was Dr. Ning-Li from
Huntsville, she was also a trailblazer in her field of anti-gravity
research. After migrating to America from China in 1983, Li began
working at the University of Alabama Huntsville’s (UAH) Center for Space Plasma and Aeronomic Research.
She became famous and somewhat controversial for a series of papers she co-authored from 1991 – 1993.
In her work, Li described a practical
method of producing an anti-gravity field, which had never been done
before. It’s always been held that, because gravity is a basic force of
nature, constructing an antigravity machine is theoretically impossible.
However, Li and her co-author, Douglass Torr, theorized ways around
this belief using a high temperature superconductor (HTSD.)
In an HTSD, the tiny gravitational
effect of each individual atom is multiplied by the billions of atoms in
the disc. Using about one kilowatt of electricity, Li claimed, her
device could produce a force field that would effectively neutralize
gravity above a 1 foot in diameter region extending from the surface of
the planet to outer space.
To demonstrate their research, they invited officials from the renowned science and technology magazine, Popular Mechanics,
to visit their laboratory in Huntsville to see their work-in-progress, a
12-inch disk which acted as a HTSD. Upon the disc’s completion, they
told the magazine, a bowling ball placed anywhere above this disc will
stay exactly where you left it.
In the late 90s, she claimed to have
created anti-gravity devices that were fully functional, and this was
big news in both scientific journals and mainstream press. In 1997, Dr.
Li continued to expand on her concept and conduct more experiments. She
published papers describing the anomalous weight changes in objects
suspected over a rotating superconductor.
To say her work, referred to as
“taming gravity,” could change the world is an understatement. Taming
gravity would drastically change the way we transportate on every level.
Humans could travel the world at ease and we could finally get our
hands on those sweet hoverboards from “Back to the Future.” It would
also transform how we power transportation and effectively end our
reliance on fossil fuels.
So, what became of Dr. Ning Li? The story gets even stranger.
In 1999, Li left UAH to start her own
company, AC Gravity, and commercialize a device based on her theories.
Her colleagues obviously believed in her work as the chair of UAH’s
Physics Department, Larry Smalley, also departed the university to join
her. Public records show that in 2001, the U.S. Department of Defense gave AC Gravity a grant for $448,970 to research the technology. However, these results were never published.
In fact, Dr. Li never published
anything again. And even though the business license for AC Gravity was
updated yearly through 2018, there is no record of any further work done
by the company.
Li’s career after 2002 is the subject
of great mystery. Barely Sociable’s research turned up a document
showing that she gave a presentation at the 2003 MITRE conference titled
“Measurability of AC Gravity Fields.” The MITRE Corporation manages
federally funded research for several U.S. agencies. At the conference,
she presented along with a Redstone Arsenal official from U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command, meaning that her research was still being conducted up to that point.
The trail on Li ends after her last
documented correspondence in May 2003 when she sent a private email to
colleagues claiming to have conducted an experiment in which she
observed an “11-kilowatts of output effect.” The significance of that
amount is still a mystery as well.
Her absence did not go unnoticed. In
2004, journalist Tim Ventura sent an email to another scientist in the
field named Eugene Podkletnov with the subject line “Tracking Down Dr.
Ning Li.” In the email, Ventura writes, “Every 2 months, I re-try the
lining@comcast.net email address that you gave me for Dr. Ning Li — I
can tell from return-receipts that somebody is reading her email, but I
never get a reply.”
Podkletnov responded, confirming her
wellbeing and that she was still working with the DoD but unable to talk
about her work. He also told Ventura that he was unable to get a
working email address or phone number for her.
As the years passed, the conversation
regarding Li’s whereabouts started to amplify along with the
conspiracies around it. In July of 2008, a scientist named Jack Sarfatti
provided a rather alarming update during an interview that was later
posted on YouTube and included in the video from Barely Sociable.
During the interview, Sarfatti claims
that Li was no longer working for the DoD and had moved back to China
to continue her work. The transcript of the interview conveys the
seriousness of this accusation.
“This is very important from a
national security and political point of view. One of the key scientists
….. is a Chinese woman named Ning Li. She has disappeared and gone back
to China,” said Sarfatti. “She was working at NASA and the Redstone
Arsenal but she has disappeared for several years now. The people at The
Pentagon cannot reach her anymore. She is allegedly back in China and
the Chinese are pouring money into similar experiments now. That’s why
our intelligence guys are very interested. The most likely people to
develop the first anti-gravity propulsion technology are the Chinese.”
The video about Ning Li ends shortly
after Sarfatti’s interview with no clear answer as to her career after
2002. I immediately replayed the video and started to figure out how to
continue this story.
Various articles have been published online in the two years since the YouTube video with only one update. An obituary was published on the Berryhill Funeral Home website: Dr. Ning Li passed away on July 27, 2021.
However, her obituary revealed nothing else regarding her “disappearance.”
“She was 79 years old…One of the
world’s leading scientists in super-conductivity anti-gravity. Dr. Li
constructed the first 12″ HTSD of the world in the late 90s,” the
obituary reads.
Since Berryhill Funeral Home is
located in Huntsville, it’s safe to assume the accusations of Li leaving
for China, or even being kidnapped, were wrong. However, many readers casted doubts on the credibility of the obituary and continued to support various conspiracy theories instead.
The obituary contained the name of
her son, George Guangyu Men, along with his children. After an
embarrassing amount of research, I found where George has registered an
LLC within the city and the phone number associated with his business.
It took a bit to work up the courage, but I was way too far down the
rabbit hole to give up at this point. I gave George a call and, after
getting to know each other a bit, he was gracious enough to invite me
into his home and talk about his mother.
George informed me that while no one
has called his phone before, I wasn’t the first person to contact him on
the topic. He has received various letters from people in New Zealand,
amongst other places, hoping to learn more about Dr. Li’s research. He
can’t help but laugh when he recalls the one time he asked his mom about
her work.
“I asked her once,” he recalled. “I
said ‘Mom, do you need to tell me something?’ She told me, ‘First off,
you don’t know anything. Second off, if you even think you might know
something, you forget about it.’ I said okay that’s fine.”
George was vaguely aware that people
were still interested in his mom but he didn’t understand just how
interested people were. I played Barely Sociable’s video for him and his
two children in his living room along with showing him some of the
online discourse and he was able to clarify some things people have
speculated on over the years. Most importantly, Dr. Li never left the
DoD and never left the country to work for the Chinese government. There
is one nugget of information that lines up with Sarfatti’s 2008
interview.
George said that his mother was
visited by Chinese officials on one occasion in 2008 when members of the
CCP were visiting America. They did attempt to recruit her back to the
country to continue her work, but Li had no interest. Li had migrated
along with George in the late 80s and had no desire to leave her
position. She did attempt to return for her mother’s funeral after she
passed away, but George says that she was denied permission.
“I remember that so clearly,” he said. “She was very upset.”
George also explained how he noticed
change in his mom after leaving UAH for the private sector. He says all
the secrecy that comes with the job began to change her demeanor and
behavior over the years.
“When she was at University, she
loved to publish her findings,” he recalled. “But after she got her top
secret clearance, she wasn’t allowed to share anything anymore with
anyone. She became much quieter. She would return from work looking worn
down with her makeup messed up. It wasn’t like that when she was at the
University.”
I have filed requests through the
Freedom of Information Act for the results of her 2001 grant along with
any other research from her, but it was denied along with requests from
others. It’s safe to assume that we won’t be finding out the specifics
of her research after 2002 for a long time.
It’s immediately apparent, when talking to George, the admiration he still holds for his mother.
“My mother was very concentrated. She
concentrated on one thing and only one thing at a time,” he explained.
“She passed that down too. She told us to find our one thing,
concentrate on it with all you have and don’t feel the need to compare
yourself to any other people. Just do the best you can with your
passion. And I think her grandkids will learn from that.”
Dr. Li continued to work at Redstone
Arsenal every day until 2014 when Li was struck by a vehicle while
crossing the street on the UAH campus. This accident unfortunately had a
lasting effect on their family. His father, Li’s husband, suffered a
heart attack at the moment he saw his wife of 46 years being thrown from
the impact. He would pass away a year later in 2015.
For Li, this accident caused
permanent brain damage that resulted in Alzheimer’s disease shortly
after. Li lived with George who took care of his mom for the last six
years of her life before she passed away in 2021. These years were
difficult for George. Watching a loved one suffer from Alzheimer’s is
always a horrendous thing. Add onto that, he knew intimately how smart
she was before the disease ran its course and how much her intelligence
meant to her.
“For six years, people asked how I
could do that for six whole years,” George said. “I said first of all,
she’s my mother. Second of all, she gave us a better life. Without her, I
wouldn’t have been able to come to the states and get my education.
Third, I just really admired her as a person.”
George found comfort in his religion
and his church community from the Chinese Christian Church of Madison
during these times. He recalled how he could always tell when his mom
was uncomfortable even when she couldn’t talk. When the Buddhism
inspired music he was playing didn’t succeed at comforting her, it was a
member of his church who suggested playing Christian hymns and,
according to George, he noticed the difference right away.
My conversation with George, along
with this entire story, was one to be remembered. I am amazed how such a
brilliant and intelligent woman seems largely forgotten in a community
that places such an emphasis on brilliance and intelligence.
In our first phone call, George asked
me questions about what I hoped to accomplish in this story. I had a
general idea at the time, but it became more and more apparent over
time. What George was able to share might not satisfy the swarms of
conspiracy theorists and UFO enthusiasts that seek out information about
his mom’s research. But hopefully we can bring more awareness, both
within our community and online, about just how amazing of a person Dr.
Ning Li truly was and the story of her life.
