Boeing Joins In Anti-Gravity Search

SimcoFrappe writes: "BBC News reports that Boeing is trying to extend the research of Russian scientist Dr. Yevgeny Podkletnov to develop a device to shield against gravity. The military branch of the British BAe Systems announced a similar program in 2000. One step closer to cheap space travel or just more sci-fi jive?"

Comments

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[mccalli]

I heard this on the BBC's Today programme this morning. They had a professor from my old university, Lancaster, on explaining his disbelief.

He pointed to the fact that an Irish university (sorry - don't remember which) had spent quite some time reproducing the experiment, and that this re-running of the experiment had failed to verify a single claim.

I'd love this to be true. Sadly however, at this moment I'd have to put myself in the non-believer camp.

Cheers,
Ian

Or maybe it *is* that unbelievable

[alienmole]

Now like electromagnetism, gravity is one of the four fundamental forces. If we can create a shield to block one of them why not block gravity?

Hmm, although I agree it's difficult to say that shielding against gravity is impossible, the above is not exactly sound logic. You need to look at the origin of the forces in question to see why.

The general relativistic model of gravity as the effect of warped spacetime would seem to indicate that blocking gravity could be a fundamentally different problem than blocking electromagnetic radiation.

Electromagnetic radiation travels through spacetime, i.e. it follows the curvature of spacetime. Blocking it is simply a matter of constructing the right kind of interfering device, such as a faraday cage, to prevent electromagnetic photons/wave packets from penetrating.

OTOH, according to GR, gravity as we perceive it is essentially a secondary effect due to the curvature of spacetime. To "block" it, you would have to be able to uncurve spacetime in the vicinity you wish to block. This is a little different from blocking photons. The only thing we've ever discovered that's capable of warping spacetime is "mass". So sure, we can counter the effects of gravity, there's no mystery about it: simply use a mass as large as the mass of the object whose gravitational effects you want to counter.

Unfortunately, in the case of gravity, this doesn't really work the way we want. Let's say I create a black hole with a similar mass to that of the Earth (I have a fairly well-equipped basement). In the vicinity of the black hole, I would feel a force towards the hole (please no goatse jokes) of approximately 1G (adjust masses to achieve appropriate effect outside the Schwarzchild radius, etc.) So if I hang the black hole from my ceiling, I could create a micro-gravity environment in my basement, with the force upward cancelling the force downward.

Astute readers have by now noticed a slight problem with this scenario. Despite my well-equipped basement, I don't happen to possess a means for suspending an Earth-mass object a few feet above another Earth-mass object (i.e. the Earth itself). There's not going to be a heck of a lot I can do about the fact that my black hole is going to shoot down towards the earth under a combined force of 2G and a momentum that would require numbers with "E" in them to describe. (I had better not be standing beneath it, if I want to avoid rather nasty tidal effects as the black hole travels through my body - that killed a guy on Mars once.)

Because of the nature of gravity, "shielding" against its effects may not even be meaningful. Even if it is possible, it's highly doubtful that we will stumble across the solution by random experimentation with e.g. spinning disks. Spinning disks might confuse researchers, but they don't confuse the universe.

Re:Or maybe it *is* that unbelievable

[jtdubs]

Of course in Quantum Physics where gravity is explained as an exchange of gravitons (a type of particle) it could be possible to block them...

Justin Dubs

Re:Or maybe it *is* that unbelievable

[thogard]

Nice math to back up thouse ideas. In fact thouse ideas are the math. The problem is reality is playing a slightly different game. This is why The Voyagers and Pioneer spacecrraft are slowing down as well as all the GPS sats. There is also that slight problem with pendulums and eclipses. But other than thouse things, GR gravity models work great.

Re:Worth it: Pascal's Gamble

[young-earth]

For those who are interested, Pascal's Wager actually involves something far more significant.