In November 2020, a number of scientists from NASA, DARPA, MIT, and the Air Force met on Zoom to discuss something usually reserved for fringe theorists and eccentrics: how to defeat gravity. There Inaugural Alternative Power Energy Conference (APEC) it gave scientists the chance to discuss taboo and sometimes far-fetched ideas. What's better than anti-gravity technology?
Since then there have been 22 meetings in the series since then, and scientists have taken up several taboo ideas. Aside from antigravity, in fact, experts have discussed everything from non-Newtonian EM propulsion to sightings of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP). Without hesitation, in extreme freedom.
Far be it from me to make a comparison, but these "Carbonari" of science, almost "flat earthers of scientific research" have my attention. A bit like in tales of ghosts around the fire, researchers are welcome to speculate on frontier topics. These meetings plan the “Woodstock research on gravity modification,” in the words of Ron Kita, founder of Chiralex, a company that is working on “gravity shielding” materials, and this is also good stuff to dig into.
Interesting, and a little surprising.
“The Alt Propulsion community is highly intersectional and we are sandwiched between the cultures of aerospace, defense, electrical engineering, physics, UFOs and 'frontier science,'” says the moderator and conference organizer Tim Ventura.
We have people from all these cultures visiting the conference and presenting, and despite the fact that these various communities don't always agree on some topics. We were able to avoid conflicts.
Tim Ventura.
Naive themes, serious participants
Despite the strange theme of antigravity technology, 16 of the 71 attendees at the November event were NASA scientists and engineers, and another 14 were affiliated with reputable institutions including MIT and Harvard. The topic of UFOs also had great success, at least in the first conference in November.
Needless to say, the issue has suffered from the revival due to military pilots who have spoken openly about close encounters, and the Pentagon which has announced a long-awaited report on the issue (report then pulled out in June with more questions than answers). In the past, everyone was aware of the UFO phenomenon, but they were not very motivated to talk about it. Today the scientific community takes the topic more seriously than ever, even in the absence of confirmation.
