NASA's Lead Electrostatics Scientist claims hes discovered a "new force" that counteracts gravity with no fuel necessary

[Mr. Sparkle]

NASA's Lead Electrostatics Scientist claims he’s discovered a “new force” that counteracts gravity with no fuel necessary. Dr. Charles Buhler has run 2,000 vacuum chamber experiments showing a propellantless thrust force that persists after the power is switched off, and cannot be explained by ion wind, magnetic effects, or classical energy conservation. The input is pure electricity and the output is millinewtons of thrust counteracting gravity. He believes his work vindicates the legacy of midcentury antigravity pioneer Thomas Townsend Brown and will lead to a new paradigm of propellantless deep space travel that transcends chemical combustion rockets.

Link to tweet

[rampartd]

1. "not saying i'm bending space time...."

[Wounded Bear]

2. Good luck with that. TANSTAFL*...

Granted that we need a new way to push mass into orbit, but this sounds a bit like woo to me.

*there ain't no such thing as a free lunch

[WheelWalker]

3. The moon, she's a Harsh Mistress

Just sayin'

[Stryst]

10. How is a laser like a goldfish?

Neither one can whistle.

[yaesu]

4. I think it's called LSD 😉

[WheelWalker]

5. Anybody got anything for an acid stomach?

[dgauss]

14. When I was in college, I think I replicated this experiment once.

[progressoid]

6. "Buhler made a deliberate choice not to pursue academic peer review as a primary path."

hmmm....

[NNadir]

7. Martin Fleischmann was a very respected electrochemist.

Last edited Mon Mar 30, 2026, 06:17 PM - Edit history (1)

When cold fusion was announced I asked myself how it could have been missed with all the experiments conducted involving the well known diffusion of hydrogen through palladium. Why, I asked myself, were people never killed by neutrons during these experiments?

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

Stanley Pons career was wrecked by putting media announcements in front of the harder routes of scientific communication.

[El Supremo]

8. Sounds like HG Wells' The First men in the Moon.

[-misanthroptimist]

9. The only limit is your imagination!

Color me skeptical. There are several hallmarks of classic woo in that thread:

- No peer review jumps right out at me
- Experiments all done by the same group
- Implication that other scientists are against him
- Don't know what the hell the UAP stuff was supposed to be about

There's a couple more that I'd have to re-read to find. All in all, I find the claim dubious.

[NNadir]

12. Exactly. It's like Randall Mills and his hydrino of Black Light Power, "overturning quantum mechanics."

The guy got a lot of "investors" rather like Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos.

These people are prime examples of making it clear that our rich people are not really "geniuses" in a meritocracy. Many of the presumed "geniuses" are cheap carny barkers who found lots of marks and got lucky (or were born with money).

(I want to throw up every time someone around me calls Musk a "genius." )

Black, now Brilliant, Light Power.

[JoseBalow]

11. Cool story bro

[snot]

13. Here's an article about it in Popular Mechanics:

https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/rockets/a69897524/engineer-can-overcome-earths-gravity/

Notes that it's still considered unproven.