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NASA Still Trying to Verify Anti-Gravity Claims
uncoda writes "The L.A. Times has an article about NASA research into a phenomenon in which the effect of gravity is supposedly reduced. It sounds like cold fusion or polywater to me, but who knows?" We've posted two previous stories about Podkletnov's research: one from a couple of years ago and another more recently.
Think about the potential this has for revolutionizing small part manufacturing. The precision that was till now only achieved in a LEO or better could be accomplished right here in EveryTown, USA. Well, probably not based on what I read in the article. But it's one of the few practical applications that I could think of (small scale, limited effect). That is assuming this doesn't turn out to be another "Free Energy" type hoax.
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Wired had a good article about this guy a couple of years back.
"less gravity is good for fat people"
I had the same reaction to this comment that I did when an 80 year old man was found dead on an airplane the other day. There was some debate as to whether or not he died before he got on the plane, or after.
One of the officials said "I'm pretty sure we wouldn't have allowed a dead man to board a plane." (true story)
In any case, lower gravity would help obese people move around more, but in the long term it wouldn't be such a good idea. The problem is that it'd make their condition worse as they'd be burning less energy trying to walk.
I realize you were probably just being silly, but it got me thinking. Lets say one day we had gravity reduction devices in our home to make us more comfy. Would that lead to a weaker speices down the road? Some would see the mass production of cars to have had a similar effect on our species.
The thought of gravity reduction devices scares me a little, although their applicates would definitely change the world we live in.
"Derp de derp."
This is what passes for insightful around here? In case you slept through Science 101, the onus is on the discoverer to provide proof in the form of a repeatable experiment. As this has never happened, there's nothing there to disprove. $2.6 million is pocket lint to NASA, this is just someone scraping together the spare change from other projects, not a serious attempt to prove or disprove anything.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Presumedly, if there is a way to counteract the effects of gravity (and that presupposes that's REALLY what this is doing) there'll be a way to simulate the effects of gravity.
That said, unless you can do VERY weird things, simulating gravity REALLY sucks. Think about the energy cost! If you can 'simulate' gravity, then all the matter that's put in that 'simulated' gravity field suddenly has a LOT of potential energy. Where do you think that potential energy has to come from? Gravity can't be free.
We don't need simulated gravity. We need ways of dealing with zero-gravity. If you absolutely have to have a gravity-like force, spin the ship. The only problem with that is that you need a BIG ship so Coriolis forces and a sharp pseudogravity gradient don't screw you up.
Simulated gravity won't happen until we are as good at manipulating gravity as we are at manipulating electromagnetism. The initial gravity field would take A LOT of energy to set up (hell: it took the Earth's mass times c^2 to set up the Earth's gravitational field! We sure as hell don't have easy access to that much energy!)