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.
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