What's up with spinning superconductors?

Gerenuk

Years ago they showed on TV, that spinning superconductors sort of shield gravitational field.

Now I read
http://news.softpedia.com/news/The-F...ng-20259.shtml

How serious is this to be taken?

mgb_phys

Not a shield, a spinning mass generates a gravitational field.
AFAIK any mass should work - the superconductor is just experimental convenience.

Legit researchers at a legit institution and there is every reason to suspect that GR isn't quite correct at quantum scales.

Gerenuk

The claims on TV that I saw were even more fantastic.

They said that a spinning superconductor reduces the gravitational field above them! It was visible with even blowing smoke over the apparatus. Apparently it only worked with superconductors and people had troubles reproducing the results, since it was tough to get a large enough superconductor spin fast enough.
How to think about that?

Doc Al

I'd say not at all. Podkletnov's 'antigravity' claims have never been duplicated and he's squarely in the "fringe science" camp and thus beyond the scope of PF.

Doc Al

Regarding the Tajmar results of 2006 (which is what the OP's link directly referred to), I could not find any published results, only a preprint from 2006. (http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0603033) If the work was published in the mainstream press, PM me and I'll reopen this thread.