Levitation and the Biffeld-Brown effect, ionic wind - how it works

Aluminum food foil and the finest copper wire, and between them - only 3 centimeters of air. The foil and wire are mounted on a square dielectric frame made of light plastic sticks. The design rests on the table, and like any object, gravity acts on it from the side of the Earth. But it is worth creating a potential difference of several thousand volts between the foil and the wire, applying a high constant voltage of about 30,000 volts to it from a low-power source, as the structure takes off, as if by magic.

We are not talking about a take-off capacitor, because the plates, if you can call them that at all, almost do not overlap each other in any significant fraction of their areas, which means that practically no energy accumulation in the dielectric between the "plates" occurs.

If the structure did not hold the thinnest strong strings on the table, it would continue its progressive movement in the direction of the thin wire electrode, but since the strings hold the product firmly, it simply hangs in the air above the table and levitates above it.

This experiment is a clear demonstration of the so-called Biffeld-Brown effect, known to many experimenters, lovers of “lifters” (from the English Lifter), whose crafts can be observed on YouTube on a huge variety.

The Biefeld-Brown effect is one of those few physical effects that are not so easy to unambiguously explain and clearly describe even today. In fact, near a small-area wire electrode, the electric field is tens of times higher than the voltage near a large-area electrode-foil.

This means that these “covers” affect the surrounding space in different ways. In the space between the electrodes and around them there is a highly asymmetric picture of the electric field strength constant over time.

Here, of course, there is, as one of the components, the so-called "ionic wind", whose contribution, however, to the movement of the structure is very, very small, the "ionic wind" accounts for less than a hundredth of the total thrust - less than 1% of the lifting force.

The ionic wind is only enough to deflect a little tongue of flame, as in a school experiment with a high voltage at the tip of a needle held up to a lit candle. This is a very scanty force, it will not even be able to lift the foil from the table, not to mention holding a product weighing tens and hundreds of grams in a suspended state on tensioned threads. Out of 100 grams of thrust, the "ionic wind" creates a maximum of 1 gram.

In addition, 40% of the thrust when working not in a vacuum is created by the movement of the air flow arising from the corona discharge effect on a sharp face in an electric field. On this principle, electrostatic fanless fans are already operating today.

Near the thin electrode, air atoms ionize and begin to move in the direction of the wide electrode, along the way they collide with other air molecules, give them a fraction of their own kinetic energy, or again ionize, and therefore they are accelerated.

This creates an air flow from a thin electrode to a wide one. This air flow is enough to lift very light models according to the principle of jet propulsion with the rejection of mass (mass of air molecules). But in the context of what will be discussed below, even this large component of the Biffeld-Brown effect is just a parasitic component, depending on the magnitude of the current (in fact, the leakage current).

The whole point of the effect is that about 49% of the thrust, as scientists say, is of an unknown nature here, that is, almost half of the total lifting force is somehow related to the action of the asymmetric electric field on the surrounding space, and is not related to the amount of current generated a stream of air ions.

In all likelihood, we are talking about the effect of this charged structure on the gravitational field above a small area electrode. If you remove the strings that hold the product on the table, it will always go up - towards the electrode of a small area.

Based on this principle, as Russian scientists Emil Biktashev and Mikhail Lavrinenko suggest, one can try to build a very efficient engine for the spacecraft. An experiment in vacuum confirmed the fundamental possibility of this venture.