VIEW 2D PATTERNS OF DISTORTED GRAVITY               (c)1997 William J. Beaty

With Podkletnov's announcement of reduced gravity over rotating
superconductors comes the question: what shape is the distortion pattern?
Is there a quick and easy way to detect and map forces produced by these
devices?  Here is an untried suggestion.

Schlieren optics is traditionally used to map the 2-dimensional
distribution of variation of refractive index of fluids, for example
pressure distribution in shockwaves in air, temperature differences in
fluid, etc.  This same method can be harnessed into displaying a
distortion of gravity force if the force is a significant percent of
earth's gravity.  Simply incorporate a shallow pool of reflective fluid
into the optical path, allow the gravity field to distort the fluid
surface, then view the result on the Schlierien system's screen. 

Not quick and dirty enough?  How about this then.  Fill a shallow pan with
1cm of water.  Place it in the sun.  Arrange a screen to catch the
reflected light from the surface.  Place the gravity-producing device
under the pan of water.  Now, if any fields distort the surface, they will
be revealed as dark and light patterns projected upon the screen. 

This crude arrangement can be improved by replacing the sun with a
point source or line source illuminator.  The sun, being an extended
source, injects inherent blur into the system.  Replace the sun with a
slide projector having an opaque slide with a point aperature or slit
aperature.  The resulting images on the screen will be much sharper.

Note that water is paramagnetic, so powerful magnetic fields will distort
the surface.  This can be demonstrated by holding a large NIB permanent
magnet slightly above the shallow pan described above.  So, don't mistake
a conventional magnetic field for a beam of quantum gravity! 

http://amasci.com/freenrg/gravpool.txt
http://amasci.com/freenrg/antigrav.txt