Can Element 115 Create Anti-Gravity?
A tiny chip of element 115 sits inside a reactor, supplying the power for a craft that flies by controlling gravity. That's the promise in Bob Lazar's account of alien technology, and it's a much bigger claim than predicting a new square on the periodic table.
Element 115 is real. Scientists call it moscovium, and they have made and studied its atoms. But no verified public test has shown that it creates anti-gravity.
The gap between those facts contains several separate problems. The fuel has to last long enough to use, and it has to supply power. Making a craft move by controlling gravity then needs proof of its own.
Moscovium: The Real Element 115
The Two Jobs Inside Lazar's Reactor
In a 1989 interview with George Knapp, Lazar described a chip of element 115 inside a reactor. He said striking it with protons, particles found in an atom's core, made it release antimatter. That supplied the craft's power.
He also described a gravity field that the craft could draw from the reactor. Devices he called gravity amplifiers would then help it move.
His account gives the same reactor two jobs: making power and supplying a gravity field. Proving one would still leave the other to explain.
Our Bob Lazar and element 115 timeline follows the claim and the later discovery. Those dates leave a question open, though: what does the stuff actually do?
Keeping the Fuel Together
Moscovium gets its number from the 115 protons in each atom's core. Its known forms decay, or break down into other elements. The element 115 guide covers how scientists first made it.
Change the number of neutrons in the core and you have a new isotope, or version of the element. It might last longer. The island of stability is a predicted group of heavy atomic cores that hold together longer than their neighbors.
Extra time could make the atoms easier to study. Whether they could last long enough to use as fuel is another matter, and their claimed power output and grip on gravity would still need testing.
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What Happened When CERN Released Antimatter
Antimatter sounds tailor-made for reversing things. Its name doesn't mean negative mass, though. As CERN explains, these particles have the same mass as their matter partners, with opposite electric charges.
When matter meets antimatter, they can turn into other particles that carry away energy. Whether antimatter falls up or down is a different question. In 2023, CERN's ALPHA team put it to a direct test.
The team worked with antihydrogen, the antimatter version of hydrogen. They held these atoms in a magnetic trap, keeping them in place until they were ready to study how they fell.
Then the team changed the fields and watched the atoms escape. The ALPHA experiment found that Earth's gravity attracted antihydrogen. Within the limits of the test, it felt the familiar downward pull.
The team hadn't tested moscovium or Lazar's claimed reactor. They had watched real antimatter fall, and the word “anti” hadn't turned gravity upside down.
Does Antimatter Fall Down?
Energy Still Needs a Way to Make Motion
Suppose a new fuel really could release a huge amount of energy. To take a vehicle anywhere, it would need a way to produce a force in the right direction.
Ordinary rockets provide a useful example. They push exhaust backward at speed, which creates thrust that pushes the rocket the other way. NASA's explanation of thrust follows that exchange.
Picture being handed a brand-new fuel and an empty engine bay. Knowing that the fuel stores energy doesn't tell you what to build in that space. You still need a machine that turns its output into motion you can control.
Lazar's gravity amplifiers would take a different route. A test would need to show the claimed force, connect it to the reactor, and show how the craft's movement could be controlled.
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Why Floating Wouldn't Settle It
A floating object would catch the eye. But being held up isn't proof that gravity has stopped working. ALPHA's magnetic trap held atoms in place while gravity still acted on them.
For a claimed element-115 drive, the test would start with the material inside it. A team would need to identify the sample and measure the power going in and coming out. They would also need to work out which forces might explain the motion.
That last step turns an eye-catching display into a tough test. If a known force can account for the lift, the object hasn't yet shown a new gravity effect. Other teams would need enough detail to repeat the test and see whether the effect survives.
Those checks would connect the craft's motion to a known sample and a cause that can be measured. A viewer could then judge more than how good it looked in flight.
What Scientists Actually Caught Moscovium Doing
By 2024, chemists had found a way to study how these atoms act before they fall apart. Their target was moscovium-288, a form that typically lasts only a fraction of a second.
That sounds like no time at all. But in a 2024 chemistry study, a team tracked how atoms of this element met and stuck to surfaces. They could measure how individual atoms behaved without having a chunk of the metal to hold.
The study used silicon oxide and gold surfaces to examine this short-lived element and a product of its decay. Those encounters let the team estimate how strongly the atoms clung to silicon oxide, then compare that result with their predictions. A short life made the work hard, but it still left time to learn how the atoms behaved.
The experiment's finish line was an atom on a surface. The team reached it before the atom decayed, with a piece of real chemistry to show for the chase.
Can Element 115 Be Stable? A Trip to the Island of Stability
Bob Lazar and Element 115: How Did He Know?