Propellant-less Drive Experiment Produces Enough Force to Counteract Earth’s Gravity and Possibly Explain UFO Propulsion

A veteran NASA engineer has announced that his private company has made a major breakthrough in electrostatic propulsion, with one of their test devices producing at least one Earth gravity of force using only an electrical charge—without the use of any propellant. He believes that their devices may be demonstrating a previously-undiscovered fundamental force that could explain the thrust being measured in the controversial EM Drive and Mach effect—and may also be the basis of the exotic propulsion methods used by UFOs.

“This discovery of a New Force is fundamental in that electric fields alone can generate a sustainable force onto an object and allow center-of-mass translation of said object without expelling mass,” explains Dr. Charles Buhler, co-founder of Exodus Propulsion Technologies.

Currently, all of our propulsion methods require projecting some sort of mass in the direction opposite to the direction that we want to travel in: from pushing backward on the ground with our feet to expelling heated gases through the exhaust nozzle of a rocket, Newton’s laws demand that to move forward, something has to move backward.

Hence the importance to space travel of the development of a propulsion method that bypasses the need to expel propellant from a rocket: although our rockets can accelerate astoundingly quickly, they can only carry a limited amount of bulky propellant, resulting in accelerations that are measured in mere minutes, meaning that craft propelled this way will always have a severely limited top speed.

But if a spacecraft can accelerate gradually for a long period of time, it can build up a significant amount of speed over that time, rather than having to rely on expending a great deal of propellant and energy at the start of its journey. For instance, a spacecraft accelerating at a rather comfortable one Earth gravity—9.8 meters per second per second, the same force you’re experiencing right now—would only take 117 days (16 weeks and 5 days) to reach 33 percent of the speed of light.

Dr. Buhler, who, as the electrostatics expert who co-founded NASA’s Electrostatics and Surface Physics Laboratory, has had an interest in propellantless propulsion since the early 1990s. His current research started in April 2016 when he was approached by a colleague who was measuring an anomalous force that was causing an electrified component to move on its own.

Buhler began experimenting with the homebuilt device—a simple electrified needle encased in a clear Teflon tube—and was able to reproduce the effect. Subsequent experiments with different configurations yielded increases in the mysterious force, although the strength of this force was still very weak, still only measured in thousandths of a newton by 2019.

In January 2020 Buhler’s experiments included a high-vacuum chamber—vital to eliminate the potential that this force was due to the devices being pushed by a flow of ions in the air—and by September 2021 the team had tested 146 different iterations of the device. Progress started accelerating rapidly, with thrust of their devices increasing from the previous millinewton-range to hundredths of a newton; although this isn’t a great deal of thrust when it comes to propelling a vehicle, Buhler’s team was teasing a motive force out of thin air that isn’t supposed to exist.

That is until November of 2023, when their experiments began to produce enough thrust that exceeded the 40-gram weight of the test device, enough force to, if the apparatus was arranged correctly, cause it to levitate, countering the effect of Earth’s gravitational pull.

It’s important to bear in mind that these devices aren’t made of exotic materials with special properties, but are simply constructed from “Teflon, copper tape, and foam,” according to Buhler; rather, the secret to unlocking the electrostatic thrust is generating an asymmetrical electrostatic field in the device. This asymmetry is accomplished by using layers of materials that have different dielectric properties, with the arrangement forcing the electrostatic field into a lopsided shape.

Buhler says that the effect has been verified by at least two independent research groups, and has been observed by numerous researchers for more than a century, including the effects in asymmetric capacitors studied by Thomas Townsend Brown. This force may also be responsible for “momentum anomalies” that affect the orbits of satellites as they move through the Van Allen radiation belts high above the Earth.

Buhler also believes that the force driving his devices may also be what is producing thrust in the controversial microwave-powered EM drive, and the piezoelectric-based Mach-Effect Gravitational Assist (MEGA) drive; it also might go so far as to explain the mystery of dark matter: what is the force that makes the matter that makes up the universe seem like it’s five times more massive than it should be?

One oddity presented by some of the test devices is that they continued generating thrust even after the electrical charge was shut off, something Buhler suspects is due to the dielectric materials retaining their charge after the power source is disconnected.

“We can see some of these things sit on a scale for days, and if they still have charge in them, they are still producing thrust,” Buhler said. “It’s very hard to reconcile, from a scientific point of view because it does seem to violate a lot of energy laws that we have.”

He says this anomaly might present a problem when it comes to future experiments conducted in space: if the thrust does not stop in an experimental drive, it could conceivably continue to accelerate until it reaches the speed of light, at which point its mass would become infinite—basically, it would be a black hole that is moving as fast as a photon. In his presentation with the Alternative Propulsion Engineering Conference (APEC), Buhler joked that “this is why the aliens are here,” to save the “dumb humans” from accidentally creating such an unstoppable projectile.

During his presentation, Buhler did not shy away from speculating that this effect may be the force that powers UFOs; he points out that the layers in the “metal sandwich” of bismuth and magnesium found in some recovered UFO samples would have different dielectric properties, meaning that the components that these samples came from could have been used to generate this electrostatic force.

Buhler also discusses some of the details of the propulsion units in the craft reportedly stored at the S4 secret research facility, as described by UFO whistleblower Robert Lazar: the waveguides described by Lazar may have been used to conduct electromagnetic waves to the propulsion units, and the craft reportedly travelled in the direction the propulsion units were facing, consistent with what was happening with the Teflon and copper devices constructed by Buhler and his team. Additionally, building a high-energy RF resonant cavity, like the EM drive, would benefit from being constructed from a material like element-115, the substance described by Lazar as being the poser source for the craft he was working on, as it is estimated to have a very high melting point.

Buhler hopes to raise enough money to launch one of Exodus’ experiments into orbit: outside of the influences of gravity and the atmosphere, the drive can prove whether or not it is a viable propulsion method.

“We’re hoping to do some demos, some space demos,” Buhler explained. “That’s what we’re trying to get some funding to do. I think that would be a great way to show off the technology.”

In the meantime, Exodus’ experiments are easily replicated using commonly-sourced materials, making the apparatus readily accessible to researchers looking to reproduce the effects. Aside from having others verify the effects, this is important since Buhler and his team says that they have no idea how the thrust is being produced: although the effect appears to demonstrate a force not currently recognized by modern physics, they have no idea what that actually is.

“There’s not a lot to this,” Buhler said during his APEC presentation, regarding how easy it is to build their devices. Hoping that someone more knowledgeable with the underlying physics can crack these secrets, he pointed out that “you’re just charging up Teflon, copper tape, and foam, and you have this thrust.”

“It’s easy to make these things, so it’s a tool for the scientific community to use to try to explore those hard questions.”

“There are rules that include conservation of energy, but if done correctly, one can generate forces unlike anything humankind has done before,” Buhler added. “It will be this force that we will use to propel objects for the next 1,000 years… until the next thing comes.”