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. Schleiren 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 Schelerien 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://www.eskimo.com/~billb/freenrg/gravpool.txt http://www.eskimo.com/~billb/freenrg/antigrav.txt