The asymmetric torsion balance is an instrument described in N. A. Kozyrev's September 1967 paper, designed to break the internal compensation that would otherwise cancel the effect he was seeking. It is the culmination of the paper's experimental program.
Design as reported
- Main load about 300 g on a 1.5 m capron filament (0.15 mm diameter).
- Horizontal plate about 10 cm.
- Small load about 10 g.
- Oil damping.
- Optimal test distance about 5 m; effect observable to 10–20 m.
Reported performance
- The design is reported as successful.
- Predicted turning angle about 14°; observed deflections reached that value.
- Stable discrete states appeared at one-fourth of the full effect (3°5′), a recurrence of the quantized stages seen in the gyroscope balance tests.
Deflecting processes
The paper lists processes reported to deflect the balance: heating a body; burning an electric tube; cooling a previously heated body; an electrical battery closed through resistance; dissolving various salts in water; and "even the movement of a man's head." Nonstationary processes, such as a blinking electric bulb, were reported as particularly strong. The weights are described as behaving "very erratically," with a zero point that often shifted.
Related claims
- Chiral shielding: sugar shields the balance, turpentine "evidently" causes the opposite effect.
- Relaxation-time law: after vibration stops, the additional forces decay as e^(−t/t₀).
Assessment
The reported deflections are of the same order as plausible thermal, electrostatic and air-current artifacts, and the paper itself notes erratic behaviour and a shifting zero point. No independent replication is reported. See Kozyrev Claims vs. Evidence.
Source notes & attribution
- https://rexresearch.com/articles/kozyrev.htm