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The Antigravity Underground

The fantastic floating device called a lifter has no moving parts, no onboard fuel, and no shortage of wide-eyed admirers. Even inside NASA....

..."We're ready now," he says. "Stand back." He throws the switch.The lifter begins hissing like an angry snake. The noise comes from two places: the current arcing through the air and the thin wires ringing the top of the craft, which vibrate like guitar strings. For a moment, it doesn't look like anything's going to happen, and Ventura frowns slightly. But he eases the power up, from 30,000 to 40,000 volts, and there's a fusillade of snapping and popping as tiny lightning bolts shoot between the top wire and the foil skirt. The current jumps across the gap, flowing down the lifter through empty space.

One corner eases a few inches off the ground. Another corner lifts up. Then the whole thing abruptly jumps 2 feet off the ground, wobbling side to side drunkenly. Ventura pushes the voltage higher, and it leaps up again, stabilizing 6 feet off the ground, the long tethers straining to hold it down. "Awesome!" he exclaims. "Awesome!"

And it is strangely awesome. As I watch this enormous structure floating placidly above his deck like a shiny tinfoil ghost, I understand why so many people have become so enamored of these toys: They inspire a goofy mad-scientist feeling. I felt it myself, when I first turned on my own tiny lifter and watched it successfully levitate. No matter how skeptical you are, how understandably laughable you find the idea of antigravity - for a split second you abandon all logic and think, Wow, there's a freakin' UFO hovering 3 feet from me....