Alongside the generator, the documentary presents an even bolder claim: that Searl built disc-shaped craft — “levity discs,” or Inverse-G-Vehicles — that rose into the air using the same claimed effect, and that some 1960s UFO sightings over the English countryside may have been these devices being tested. It is the most cinematic part of the film. It is also the least supported.
What is claimed
In the film's telling, the discs demonstrated lift and extreme acceleration, were witnessed by the public and even by military observers, and hint at a hidden history in which governments quietly took an interest. This weaves the SEG story into the wider folklore of anti-gravity and unidentified flying objects — a folklore with enormous popular appeal.
The 1991 investigation
Claims like these can, in principle, be checked: named witnesses can be interviewed, alleged press coverage can be found, dates and places can be confirmed. In 1991 the Danish researcher Anders Heerfordt did exactly that, following up on Searl's accounts of his demonstrations and the witnesses he cited. The result was telling: the claims could not be substantiated. The demonstrations that were supposedly public and widely observed left no independently verifiable trail.
Anti-gravity and physics
There is no accepted physics by which spinning magnets cancel gravity. Gravity is not a force you neutralise by clever mechanical arrangement; genuine research into gravitation (for example, the detection of gravitational waves) looks nothing like a backyard flying disc. Claims of practical anti-gravity devices sit outside mainstream science for the same reason the SEG does: no reproducible demonstration has ever been produced for independent experts to examine.
The UFO connection
Linking the discs to UFO sightings is rhetorically powerful because it borrows the mystery of one unexplained thing to prop up another. But “unidentified” means only that a sighting was not identified — not that it was a suppressed super-technology. Modern official reviews of unidentified aerial phenomena have found no evidence of exotic anti-gravity craft. Treating a vague light in the sky as confirmation of a specific invention is a leap the evidence does not license. For how to spot reasoning like this, see Watching Critically.
How stories like this take shape
To doubt the flying-disc claims, you do not have to accuse anyone of lying. Decades of research into human memory show that recollections are reconstructed rather than replayed, and that they drift over time, especially for dramatic events discussed and retold within an enthusiastic community. A half-glimpsed light, a rumour of a demonstration, a strongly-held conviction — these can, in complete good faith, harden over the years into a confident memory of having seen a craft fly. Add the natural human tendency to notice what fits our expectations and to overlook what does not, and you have all the ingredients for a vivid, sincere, and mistaken account. This is not a slur on witnesses; it is simply how ordinary minds work, which is exactly why science leans on instruments and independent replication rather than on testimony.
The same forces operate on inventors themselves. Someone who has devoted a lifetime to an idea has every psychological reason to interpret ambiguous results as success and every failure as sabotage. That is not unusual or shameful — it is human — but it is why self-report from a deeply committed believer is the weakest kind of evidence for an extraordinary claim, and why outside verification matters so much.
Holding two ideas at once
None of this requires dismissing the people in the story as liars or fools. Human memory is fallible, enthusiasm is contagious, and a good story grows in the retelling. The discs make thrilling cinema. They remain, as a matter of evidence, unproven. For balanced coverage of how such claims are investigated, the Skeptical Inquirer and its parent organisation are reliable guides.