First real challenge to General Relativity?, (and not from Gravity Probe-B) Options

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

...in the form of what may be an accidentally discovered artificial gravity generator, with possible practical applications!:
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/GSP/SEM0L6OVGJE_0.html

If this effect is real, it's fully 1/10,000 G -- which is not to be sneezed at, and might conceivably lead us to Bigger Things.

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

Sorry ugordan, but seemingly I am not alone to be cautious about this strange result. Of course it is too soon to decide weither or not the effect is true (replication is still missing) but there was already some false alarms... The worse of all is that, if one day some fringe theory proves valuable, it will be all the more difficult for scientists to accept it, and even to notice it. We have a proverb in France, about a guy who always shout "fire fire" for nothing. Until one day his own house is on fire, but nobody believes him...


About the result itself, admitting it is true, I don't think it makes a hole in General Relativity. Why? a field is generated, that relativity knows. It arises into conditions which are not predicted by relativity, because they arise from quantum phenomena. But after, this force still behaves how relativity predicts. We have discovered the gravitationnal equivalent of a magnet, fine.


What is strange however (I say strange, not suspicious) is that this field appears when Cooper pairs* are rotating. Why Cooper pairs? To be exact, any rotating mass generates a magnetogravitationnal field, and any particule do it, the intensity of the field depending only on the rotating mass. So 1kg of electrons and 1kg of protons give the same result. But Cooper pairs would give a 10 power 30 more intense field. What is special with Cooper pairs? Have they an unusual spin, giving them some special properties, for instance being Böse-Einstein*** in place of the Fermi-Dirac** electron? Are they Böse-Einstein with a mass, unlike the photons? (they would be the only particules like that). Or are they just much bigger in geometric size? Or what else?


*Cooper pairs are two coupled electrons which allow for superconductivity.

** Böse Einstein particules can be piled the ones on the other, like photons the particules of light that we can "go through" without touching them. Beams of light can cross each other without disturbing each other.

*** Fermi Dirac particules cannot be together on the same place, like the atoms, protons, etc. So the result is that they form "solid" bodies which occupy a minimum volume, we can touch them and we cannot go through.

[ugordan]

Sorry ugordan, but seemingly I am not alone to be cautious about this strange result.

Cautious is fine, but let's not dismiss this immediately on the grounds it's unconventional. And let's not also accept it as a given, either. More experiments clearly are needed to veryify/dismiss this effect.

We have a proverb in France, about a guy who always shout "fire fire" for nothing. Until one day his own house is on fire, but nobody believes him...

Or as the English speaking folks would say: "the boy who cried wolf".

But Cooper pairs would give a 10 power 30 more intense field. What is special with Cooper pairs? Have they an unusual spin, giving them some special properties, for instance being Böse-Einstein*** in place of the Fermi-Dirac** electron? Are they Böse-Einstein with a mass, unlike the photons? (they would be the only particules like that). Or are they just much bigger in geometric size? Or what else?

The article seems to suggest that the effect arises because of a non-zero graviton mass in the superconductor. I'm in no position to judge the validity/plausibility of that claim, though, but it does look like a quantum effect manifesting itself gravitationally, which might be the first experiment ever to do so (?!).
And there, I think, might lie the significance.

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

Cautious is fine, but let's not dismiss this immediately on the grounds it's unconventional. And let's not also accept it as a given, either. More experiments clearly are needed to veryify/dismiss this effect.
Or as the English speaking folks would say: "the boy who cried wolf".

I agree.

The article seems to suggest that the effect arises because of a non-zero graviton mass in the superconductor. I'm in no position to judge the validity/plausibility of that claim, though, but it does look like a quantum effect manifesting itself gravitationally, which might be the first experiment ever to do so (?!).
And there, I think, might lie the significance.

The effect would be unusual, because the graviton would have an unusual property in superconductors. But why it should have a mass here and not elsewhere? We already know very little about gravitons, which are still hypothetical particules, not yet observed (as far as I know). But what is there special in a superconductor? There are only very ordinary electrons, protons and neutrons. If there is something special, it can be only about Cooper pairs, which may have a special spin, or are the "largest" known particules.

I agree that if the effect is real, it is extremely important, as you say, a gravitationnal effect resulting only from quantum stuff. Important theoretically, and maybe in practice, for eventual technical applications. Still far from an UFO working with a gravitation ring, but...