NASA’s Lead Electrostatics Scientist, Dr Charles Buhler, claims he’s discovered a “new force” that counteracts gravity with no fuel necessary. Dr. Charles Buhler has run 2,000 vacuum chamber experiments showing a propellantless thrust force that persists after the power is switched off, and cannot be explained by ion wind, magnetic effects, or classical energy conservation. The input is pure electricity and the output is millinewtons of thrust counteracting gravity. Youtube Our American Alchemist had a long interview this week with Dr. Charles Buhler.
This work if it is true is better than cancelling gravity. This is using no propellant to create thrust that counters or applies force for propulsion and other effects.
The effect and propulsion if real would already be useful for no fuel maintenance of orbits for satellites.
Increasing the propulsion effect are materials that can handle higher voltages and other material properties.
The founders have their own vacuum chamber and are building a larger walk-in vacuum chamber.
They have eliminated issues about ion wind which is a propulsive force.
A true electrostatic pressure force that enabled unlimited propellantless drive with nuclear power sources for years of acceleration would enable drives that could reach near light speed. Interstellar and interplanetary travel would be possible. It would become similar to the world of the Expanse TV show.
Nextbigfuture has covered this work before.
Buhler has tried to use standard physics QED (Quantum Electrodynamics) to explain what he is seeing. There was some prior work that used QED to explain Coulombs Law. Coulombs Law explaining everything that we know about two atoms and two charges. Coulombs law is more complete than the simplified Maxwell equations. The effect has to do with exchanging virtual particles. His physics theory discussion starts around 1hour 55 minutes into the video.
Buhler believes his work vindicates the legacy of midcentury antigravity pioneer Thomas Townsend Brown and will lead to an age of propellantless deep space travel.
🚨BREAKING: NASA’s Lead Electrostatics Scientist claims he’s discovered a “new force” that counteracts gravity with no fuel necessary. Dr. Charles Buhler has run 2,000 vacuum chamber experiments showing a propellantless thrust force that persists after the power is switched off,… pic.twitter.com/ImRBnJGb6q
— Jesse Michels (@AlchemyAmerican) March 30, 2026
Charles Buhler has a PhD in condensed matter physics from Florida State University, spent over two decades at NASA’s Electrostatics and Surface Physics Laboratory at Kennedy Space Center (which he now leads), and is the incoming president of the Electrostatic Society of America. He is NASA’s authority on electrostatics. His colleague Andrew Aurigema, a 35-year veteran engineer working from the Townsend Brown electrogravitics lineage, developed a parallel version of the same experiment independently, and the two discovered each other through a mutual colleague who had been watching both of them work in silence for years. Together, under their company Exodus Propulsion Technologies, they have tested nearly 2,000 variations of what they believe is a previously undocumented force.
1. Buhler’s Skeptic Mentor Stopped Cold in 2010
The first demonstration happened in a non-vacuum lab using a laser aimed at a wall to detect small displacements. Buhler had his future brother-in-law run the test. His mentor, Dr. Sid Clements, an electrostatics expert who had dismissed the work entirely, watched the laser move and immediately abandoned what he was doing. He walked over, ran through a series of verification steps on the spot, and never questioned the reality of the effect again. That was 2010. It took two more years working with Drew before Buhler realized the force appeared even without any B field or current present. He wasn’t in the field momentum regime at all. He was in pure electrostatics.
2. The Force is Not Explainable by Newton’s Laws or Ion Wind
Ion wind produces thrust in the same direction the ionized air is traveling. The “Exodus force” (Buhler’s name for his new force) produces thrust perpendicular to the expected ion wind direction, reverses cleanly when the device is flipped, and remains present inside a sealed enclosure where no ionized air can escape. Buhler documented this publicly with video: a balsa lifter placed inside a sealed plastic box on a scale, powered up, lifts internally while the scale reads flat. That is conservation of momentum. That is what ion wind looks like. The Exodus force is something different, and Buhler, as the person who leads NASA’s only electrostatics lab, is in an unambiguous position to make that distinction.
3. 2,000 Variations, All Producing the Same Result
Since beginning collaboration with Drew, Buhler has tracked nearly 2,000 distinct test articles, each tested multiple times. Pendulums. Spinners. Rotators. Force plates. Scales. Pendulum deflections inside Faraday cages. Reversed polarity tests. Vacuum chamber runs at multiple pressure levels. DC-only configurations that eliminate magnetic field artifacts entirely. Every geometry, every material, every packaging approach. The force appears consistently. When a confounding variable is proposed, they address it, run the modified test, and the force is still there. Buhler says if an exotic explanation remains, it is not one he or any colleague has been able to name.
4. The Device Generates Thrust With the Power Off
This is the finding that breaks the classical framework entirely. After charging the device and disconnecting it from the power supply, the thrust continues. The capacitor does not drain in the way a simple energy storage calculation would predict. Put on a scale, the weight reduction persists. Buhler’s description: if placed in space with the power off, the device would accelerate. He cannot explain that to the scientific community and says so directly. David Chester, who has independently interacted with Drew through APEC sessions and private communications, said he cannot think of a prosaic explanation for this. The phenomenon has been reproduced enough times across enough configurations that calling it experimental error is no longer a defensible position.
5. The Implications of This for Past Antigravity Work
Buhler believes his work is derivative of and related to Townsend Brown’s midcentury asymmetric capacitor experiments also showing thrust with pure electricity as the input.
6. The Patent Office is Running the Peer Review
Buhler made a deliberate choice not to pursue academic peer review as a primary path. His second patent is currently under examination, and the examiner’s office has been reaching out to independent witnesses who have signed affidavits confirming they have seen and reproduced the effect. Buhler describes this as equivalent to scientific peer review, run by people with no financial interest in the outcome. His first patent may have been held under a national security review process before release. He does not confirm this, but he was aware it was a risk when he filed.
7. A QED Theorist Could Poke Holes in the Theory, But Not the Experiment
We [Jesse Michels] brought in UCLA PhD David Chester to evaluate Buhler’s ideas on quantum electrodynamics (which might account for the thrust being seen). David Chester’s contribution was not to validate the theory Buhler proposed. He found some issues with the specific scalar virtual photon framing Buhler had developed. What Chester could not do was provide a prosaic explanation for the experimental results themselves. He said directly that, of all the anomalous phenomena he has surveyed, Buhler and Drew’s work ranks in the top ten for experimental persuasiveness, specifically because of the iteration rate and the self-consistency across configurations. He noted that Drew’s innovation rate alone, constantly testing new geometries and material stacks, is unlike anything he has seen from other groups making similar claims. Buhler pointed out that his theories were based on time-independent perturbation theory which Chester admits requires further examination from him.
8. The Force Crosses the Unity Threshold for Space Already
The current demonstrated force is in the five to ten millinewton range. For Earth launch, that is not yet sufficient, and Buhler does not claim otherwise. For orbital station-keeping, for preventing satellite orbital decay, for repositioning between orbits in microgravity, the force exceeds what is needed. Buhler calls this hitting unity for space, moon, and Mars applications without any major development beyond what has already been demonstrated. The self-launcher, a device capable of lifting itself from Earth’s surface, is the declared goal. No blueprints exist yet for the energy requirements. But the force is real, it is directional, it reverses on command, and it does not require continuous power to sustain.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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