Biefeld-Brown Electrogravity Theory- A hoax or something else?

[vader]

Hi friends
I am an undergraduate student in the field of Aerospace
Few days back in class we had a general discussion hour on certain topics during which the idea of antigravity vehicles came up and certain fellow students quoted the example of the Biefeld-Brown electrogravity theory. Though i did read few articles on the net but i was not convinced about its practicability as it was seen very few progress was made into this field.
so it is just a casual question of
Whether this theory is actually correct in its practical approach or is it just a field that lacks proofs?
Reply
TIA

p.s replies form professors/physicists are expected and if certain links/papers establishing its validity are made accessible to me, it would be highly appreciated

 

[The Dagda]

This wiki has loads of links at the bottom.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrogravitics

You might want to look up Heim theory as well, which is another theory that became recognised in the 50's.

It's all hypothesis at the moment as far as I can tell, with no practical empirical data.

 

[waht]

What Brown probably stumbled upon is just a device that produced a reaction force by accelerating ions using high voltage. There is a black and white video footage somewhere showing Brown's craft made from aluminium foil levitating in mid-air. I guess at the time they thought it had something to with electro-gravity, and classified it not sure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionocraft

 

[Ivan Seeking]

This is no more an anti-gravity system than is a helicopter or a bird.

When I use Google Scholar to search "Biefeld-Brown electrogravity" I get a total of 8 hits, none of which are legitimate scientific references and the fewest I've ever seen for a search like this.
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Biefeld-Brown+electrogravity&hl=en&lr=

In my book, that makes it complete nonsense. If anyone has additional information, please feel free to send by PM and I will take a look.

As for Heim, his work wasn't released until he died in 2001. It has not been published less [allegedly] one paper published in 1977.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Biefeld–Brown Effect: Misinterpretation of Corona Wind Phenomena

With its theoretical origins dating back to the early 1920s, the Biefeld–Brown effect was believed to be responsible for the generation of thrust in capacitor configurations exposed to high voltage. This thrust was claimed to be unrelated to corona wind phenomena and to exist in vacuum. These claims, although only published in patents, survived until recent publications for very advanced propulsion concepts. Brown’s and similar work, as well as credible theoretical and experimental studies relating to the Biefeld–Brown effect, are reviewed. Moreover, an experiment was carried out to investigate any thrust not related to corona discharges. No thrust was detected within the accuracy of the experimental setup. This puts new boundaries on any anomalous Biefeld–Brown force. Measurements indicate that such anomalous force must be at least five orders of magnitude below corona wind phenomena and must have at least a two orders of magnitude higher power-to-thrust ratio compared to traditional
electric propulsion thrusters. Hence, even if the effect exists, it would not be attractive for space propulsion. The obtained results suggest that corona wind effects were misinterpreted as a connection between gravity and electromagnetism. [continued]

http://pdf.aiaa.org/jaPreview/AIAAJ/2004/PVJA9095.pdf
http://www.aiaa.org/content.cfm?pageid=406&gTable=japaper&gID=9095