ScienceDirect - Technol Rep Tohoku Univ ... - Garryck Osborne

NICK COOK 101
propulsive antigravitational effect, but opened up other more esoteric
possibilities, such as time travel.
I asked Millis if this stuff was for real and for a moment he looked
unsure. The mere mention of time travel and we were suddenly into
science-fiction territory. It was enough to put any serious scientist on the
defensive.
"The immediate utility is not obvious," he said stiffly, "but it's like a
foot in the door."
The fourth experiment looked at "superluminal quantum tunneling"-
faster-than-light speed. Recent laboratory tests had shown light pulses
accelerating beyond the speed of light, thereby shattering Einstein's
Theory of Relativity, which said that the light-speed barrier was unbreachable.
If a light pulse could arrive at its destination before it left its
point of departure, the theory said a spacecraft might be able to as well.
"How it translates into space travel," Millis said, anticipating my next
question, "is way down the pike."
Again I was presented with a failure of fit. If NASA was still struggling
with the theory now—40 years and a world of knowledge after the
pronouncements of George S. Trimble and his colleagues in 1956—what
on earth had led them to believe they could crack gravity then?
Something I'd written down tugged me back to the present. I flicked
back over the list of experiments and did a quick inventory count.
"You said there were five contracts. I've only got four. What's the
fifth?"
He looked momentarily taken aback.
"It's conducted under the auspices of the Marshall Space Flight
Center itself," he said. "Since you'd just come from there I rather
presumed they'd briefed you on it."
I shook my head. "Briefed me on what?"
Millis reached into a drawer and pulled out a file full of newspaper
clippings and magazine articles. He rifled through them until he found
what he was looking for, a clipping from Britain's Sunday Telegraph
dated September 1,1996. The headline read: "Breakthrough As Scientists
Beat Gravity."
"I'm surprised you didn't know about this," he said, pointing to its
source.
I said nothing. I had a photocopy of the same story in my files at home.
I'd not taken much notice of it because it had seemed totally outlandish.
The story detailed the experiments of a Russian materials scientist
called Dr. Evgeny Podkletnov, who claimed to have discovered an