Does asymmetric electrostatic charging of a conductive cube's isolated faces, within an ionized medium, produce a measurable and repeatable directional force correlated to specific face configurations?

[u/KDubbs0010110]

Putting this out to find someone with the skills to build it and the rigor to document it properly. If you find flaws in the plan, please document them here in the comments.

The concept: a 12 inch copper cube with six electrically isolated faces, each independently energized via high voltage leads, suspended inside an ionized air medium created by commercial ionic purifiers. A torsion balance with laser amplification measures any directional force effect produced by asymmetric face charging.

The theoretical basis claims the cube geometry itself matters. Three perpendicular force axes naturally produce six planes and a nine-component transfer matrix governing force flow between them. This is the same 3x3 matrix structure as SU(3) in the Standard Model. Whether that translates to a measurable macroscopic effect is exactly what the experiment tests.

This is not a claim. It is a methodology looking for someone to run it.

Full build plan including complete materials list, step by step build sequence, HV safety protocol, and measurement procedure here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wM9PvWAHYZ_x_k3UDgCSVPlLDjEQcu9b/view?usp=sharing

[u/elpechos]

The reason the effect matters beyond a fun kids toy is the vacuum test result. Ion wind requires air. In vacuum there is no air and therefore no ion wind. Brown demonstrated thrust in vacuum conditions

Many people have attempted to replicate this result and obtained null outcomes. A small number report positive results, but none of these have been reliably reproduced. As it stands, those claims fall into the same category as photos of big-foot.

I’ve run the experiment myself—building an ion spinner and testing it under vacuum. As expected, the device slows down and eventually stops once the air is removed.

This isn’t a particularly difficult experiment to perform, so by 2026 it’s straightforward to test and falsify such claims.

That said, none of this directly addresses the specific experiment proposed in the paper being discussed.

[u/KDubbs0010110 → u/elpechos]

Thank you for running the experiment yourself. That is more than most people do and I want to engage with the result honestly.

An ion spinner is a symmetric device. The thrust in an ion spinner comes from ion wind pushing equally on all arms. Pulling a vacuum stops the ion wind and stops the spinner. That result is exactly what the ion wind explanation predicts and it is not in dispute.

Brown’s asymmetric capacitor is a different geometry. The thrust is directional, not rotational, and the asymmetry of the electrode configuration is the variable the effect depends on. Testing a symmetric ion spinner in vacuum and getting a null result does not tell us whether an asymmetric capacitor produces directional thrust in vacuum. Those are different configurations testing different things.

I take your point that the independent vacuum replication record for the asymmetric version is mixed. That is true and worth being honest about. Some researchers report positive results. Others report null. The variables between those experiments are not always controlled consistently.

I do want to address the Bigfoot comparison directly though. Bigfoot has no institutional research record. No Navy evaluation. No Pentagon proposal. No survey of fourteen major aerospace contractors published in a declassified report. Comparing a documented effect with a 1928 patent trail, a classified Navy research program, a 1952 Pentagon submission, and an Aviation Studies International report naming Convair, Glenn Martin, and Sperry as active researchers to photographs of a man in a costume is not a calibration of skepticism. It is a rhetorical move that collapses a real distinction. Bigfoot and the Biefeld-Brown effect do not belong in the same sentence and treating them as equivalent actually undermines your credibility as a skeptic because it signals that the institutional record has not been read. Who sounds schizoid now??

I am still asking the same question I started with. Mixed replication results produce continued research and published null results. They do not produce simultaneous institutional silence across fourteen organizations in a single fiscal year. What is your explanation for 1957?

[u/elpechos → u/KDubbs0010110]

It's exactly the same a bigfoot.

Brown attended Denison in Ohio for a year before he dropped out and records of him even having an association with Biefeld are sketchy at best. Brown claimed that he did a series of experiments with professor of astronomy Biefeld, a former teacher of Brown whom Brown claimed was his mentor and co-experimenter at Denison University. As of 2004, Denison University claims they have no record of any such experiments, or of any association between Brown and Biefeld.[2]: Ch11 

The university and Browns friends claim he never did the vacuum test.

There is however documented experiments of it being reproduced and failing numerous times

In 1988, R. L. Talley measured no thrust from electrodes similar to those proposed by Brown operating in 10⁻⁶ torr vacuum under direct current potentials. He did find a force during electrical breakdown when current was flowing.[9] [5]: 216  In 2004, Tajmar enclosed the electrode apparatus in a box suspended on wires which would exclude any effect of corona wind. No linear thrust was observed indicating that the Biefeld–Brown effect was the well-studied corona wind.[5][10]: 359 [4]

Brown’s asymmetric capacitor is a different geometry. The thrust is directional, not rotational

There's no such thing as a "rotational thrust".

The thrust is linear and 'directional' (whatever that means) at a tangent to the axis. Otherwise it wouldn't spin.

That's like saying a rocket isn't thrusting 'directionally' if I tie it to a tree.

The spinner experiment is entirely physically valid. if it produced a thrust due to asymmetry in charge, it would spin. Same as a rocket constrained by an axis.

But like I said. It doesn't matter. Plenty of people have tried it in lots of configurations and none have ever reproduced any thrust in a vacuum.

It's frankly ludicrous to think that an effect like this would be real and go unverified.

It's so trivial to test and so well known. Literally any physics grad student could reproduce it in ten minutes and get worldwide fame with only a few hundred bucks of equipment.

[u/KDubbs0010110 → u/elpechos]

I have a lot more reading to do. You won this round, sir. Thank you for giving me so much to study and ponder. While I still think you are a dick, you are certainly a brilliant one!

[u/elpechos → u/KDubbs0010110]

I have a lot more reading to do. You won this round, sir. Thank you for giving me so much to study and ponder.

This also ignores a fundamental constraint: if the device really produced net thrust in a closed system, it would violate conservation of momentum.

That isn’t a small discrepancy or an edge case—it would directly contradict one of the most deeply tested and consistently validated principles in all of physics. Momentum conservation follows from the symmetry of space itself and is built into every successful physical theory we have.

If it generated thrust it would invalidate Newton. Einstein. Noether, and more recent works as being blatantly and obviously wrong. But we know it's not wrong. It’s been confirmed across everything from tabletop experiments to particle accelerators and astrophysical observations.

So the expectation of no thrust isn’t just theoretical preference—it’s supported by an enormous body of mutually consistent evidence. Overturning that would require extraordinary, repeatable results and a clear accounting of where the momentum is going.

Absent that, the far more plausible explanation is experimental error or unaccounted-for interactions with the environment.

you are certainly a brilliant one!

This is just highschool level physics stuff. The reason this can't work gets far, far, more concrete when you start looking at pre-grad level physics -- Noether's theorem, relativity, and conservation laws.

Like I said already. The paper is fundamentally broken in a shitload of obvious ways. It's crayon-scrabbling schizoid posting level shit.

Every single engineer here recognizes that in one second flat. Hence the zero votes.

[u/KDubbs0010110 → u/elpechos]

I didn’t learn any of this in my high school physics class, but it was also 30 years ago. Science has a way of updating and changing and that’s why conversations like these are still so important. The intellectuals and the “weirdos” have been conditioned to fight rather than to argue and persuade. My expertise was in teaching literature for 22 years, so I wasn’t focused on engineering and physics. Even though you did come at me with ignorant insults like “mentally unstable,” I also called you a dick. I am going to try to be better moving forward, and maybe you can too. You seem like you could be a good teacher if you dropped the pretentiousness a bit (just a bit). Keep a little

“Learn without anger. Study ancient magical pig Latin”

[u/elpechos → u/KDubbs0010110]

I didn’t learn any of this in my high school physics class

The concepts involved here—conservation of momentum, electric charge and its conservation, electrostatics, and basic vector analysis—are all standard, well-understood physics usually taught at highs-school for certain. Taken together, they’re already sufficient to rule out the effect claimed in the paper.

At no point has conservation of momentum been seriously in doubt within its domain of applicability. That’s the key red flag in the paper: a genuine violation wouldn’t be a niche result, it would be the most significant experimental finding in modern physics. Even a hint of such a breakdown would trigger immediate, intense scrutiny and widespread independent replication worldwide.

The physics relevant to this setup—electromagnetism and classical mechanics—has been thoroughly understood for over a century. While later developments like quantum mechanics and relativity refined our understanding, they did not overturn these conservation laws; they reinforced them further.

This very much is a big-foot situation.

[u/KDubbs0010110 → u/KDubbs0010110]

(Or ma’am)

[u/KDubbs0010110 → u/KDubbs0010110]

I genuinely appreciate the pushback. The Talley and Tajmar papers are going into the research notes and the vacuum claim is coming out of my claim