BUSINESS WEEK ONLINE NEWS FLASH! September 25, 1996 ONE STEP CLOSER TO AN ANTIGRAVITY MACHINE Is it possible to create a device the reduces the effects of gravity? Business Week reported in its Sept. 30 issue that it might be (see "An Antigravitiy Machine? Take That, Issac Newton"). Now, preliminary results from initial attempts to confirm the possibility of an antigravity machine appear to have turned out positively. John H. Schnurer, a researcher at Antioch College in Ohio, conducted two trials over the Sept. 21-22 weekend, and both seem to have caused a small weight loss in objects suspended over a superconducting disk. Schnurer cautions that his experimental setup is "still very crude, so don't hang your hat on it yet." But if Schnurer's initial results hold up as he refines his techniques, the 2% weight loss reported by Eugene E. Podkletnov, the Russian scientist who discovered the anomaly while doing research on high-temperature superconducting materials in Finland, might even turn out to be conservative. "This is a new field of investigation, so nothing is cast in stone," says Schnurer. Although a small weight-loss effect was observed, he adds, the cause is still a mystery. It could end up not being a "gravity shield" but some other phenomenon. Schnurer used a disk furnished by Superconductive Components Inc. in Columbus, Ohio. He is working on several refinements of Podkletov's techniques he believes may be patentable. Indeed, a patent lawyer witnessed one of Schnurer's experiments. Copyright 1996 The McGraw-Hill Companies All rights reserved. [JS note: the BW article from the issue dated Sept. 30 is available on America Online; keyword: BW.]