On 18 June 2019 Dr. Salvatore Cezar Pais from the „Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division“ (NAWCAD) filed on behalf of the US government a patent on a high frequency gravitational wave generator. Details described here
https://patents.google.com/patent/US10322827B2/en?inventor=Salvatore+Pais&oq=inventor:(Salvatore+Pais)
This device apparently uses the Gertsenshtein Effect [see M. E. Gertsenshtein J. Exptl. Theoret. Phys. (U.S.S.R.) 41, 113-114 (July, 1961) or M. Portilla & R. Lapiedra Phys. Rev. D 63, 044014 (January 2001)] for " the possibility of inertial ( or gravitational ) mass reduction using high energy electromagnetic (EM) fields".
I am not a specialist in relativity theory, but in my simplistic understanding the Gertsensthein Effect states that an oscillating electromagnetic field can cause gravitational waves and vice versa. My question: Are there any reliable experiments on this Gertsensthein Effect? How likely is it that this above patent is usable at all?
Some background to spice this story up: my very old physics teacher from grammar school in Germany told us boys in the 1970s about Nazi projects exploiting strong electromagnetic fields neutralizing gravitation fields to allow for levitation (and here I don't mean the Meissner-Ochsenfeld effect). He also mentioned Quirino Majorana's gravity shielding experiments in this context. The above patent seems to suggest that my old physics teacher was maybe not such an old crazy guy at all.
Hi Markus,
I'm not a specialist in GR either but this report from 2008
https://fas.org/irp/agency/dod/jason/gravwaves.pdf
mentioned in this article
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16306-us-investigation-into-gravity-weapons-nonsense/
is quite pessimistic about the feasibility. As far as I can see the invention contains nothing that frees it from the limits given in the report. So it seems that - whatever else the fate of our earth might be - no maniac will be able to disrupt earth by generating GWs of 1032 Joule at four cardinal points, as described in the patent.
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