Ning Li (January 14, 1943 – July 27, 2021) was an
Han Chinese
The Han Chinese () or Han people (), are an East Asian ethnic group native to China. They constitute the world's largest ethnic group, making up about 18% of the global population and consisting of various subgroups speaking distinctiv ...
scientist holding dual citizenship in both the
USA
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
and her birth country of
China. She is known for her physics and
anti-gravity
Anti-gravity (also known as non-gravitational field) is a hypothetical phenomenon of creating a place or object that is free from the force of gravity. It does not refer to the lack of weight under gravity experienced in free fall or orbit, or t ...
research. In the 1990s, Li worked as a research scientist at the Center for Space Plasma and Aeronomic Research,
University of Alabama in Huntsville
The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) is a public research university in Huntsville, Alabama. The university is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools and comprises nine colleges: arts, humanities & social scienc ...
. In 1999, she left the university to form a company, AC Gravity, LLC, to continue anti-gravity research.
Anti-gravity claims
In a series of papers co-authored with fellow university physicist Douglas Torr and published between 1991 and 1993, she claimed a practical way to produce anti-gravity effects. She claimed that an anti-gravity effect could be produced by rotating ions creating a
gravitomagnetic
Gravitoelectromagnetism, abbreviated GEM, refers to a set of formal analogies between the equations for electromagnetism and relativistic gravitation; specifically: between Maxwell's field equations and an approximation, valid under certain c ...
field perpendicular to their spin axis. In her theory, if a large number of ions could be aligned, (in a
Bose–Einstein condensate
In condensed matter physics, a Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) is a state of matter that is typically formed when a gas of bosons at very low densities is cooled to temperatures very close to absolute zero (−273.15 °C or −459.6 ...
) the resulting effect would be a very strong gravitomagnetic field producing a strong repulsive force. The alignment may be possible by trapping
superconductor ions in a lattice structure in a
high-temperature superconducting disc. Li claimed that experimental results confirmed her theories.
Her claim of having functional anti-gravity devices was cited by the popular press and in popular science magazines with some enthusiasm at the time. In 1997 Li published a paper stating that recent experiments reported anomalous weight changes of 0.05-2.1% for a test mass suspended above a rotating superconductor. Although the same paper describes another experiment that showed the gravitational effect of a non rotating superconductor was very small, if any effect existed at all.
Li is reported to have left the University of Alabama in 1999 to found the company ''AC Gravity LLC''. AC Gravity was awarded a
U.S. DOD grant for $448,970 in 2001 to continue anti-gravity research. The grant period ended in 2002 but no results from this research were ever made public. No evidence exists that the company performed any other work, although as of 2021, AC Gravity still remains listed as an extant business.
Death
On July 27, 2021, Ning Li died at the age of 78.
See also
*
Eugene Podkletnov
References
External links
Breaking the Law of GravityA 1998
''Wired'' magazine article reviewing her work, as well as others.
Bose-Einstein and Anti-Gravity() A narrative of Li's theory of operation and her future plans from the 1990s.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Li, Ning
21st-century American physicists
University of Alabama faculty
Anti-gravity
American women physicists
American women academics
1943 births
2021 deaths
21st-century American women scientists