Slashback: Boeing, Fraud, Fundage

Slashback tonight with a larger passel than usual of updates, corrections, clarifications, etc. -- among them, Boeing's reaction to anti-gravity hype, the sad truth about one man's powerline data-delivery claims, and the steady climb of the Blender Fund's money meter.

Next they'll tell us they're not involved with Areas 51-63! Louis_Wu writes: "Space.com says that Boeing isn't really working on Anti-Gravity, regardless of previous news from the the BBC or Jane's Defence. It seems that the rumors spread because some people in Boeing were thinking of developing a relationship with the Russian scientist who did anti-grav research a few years ago, Dr. Evgeny Podkletnov.

Boeing spokesman:

'The recent report that we are [involved in anti-grav research] is based on a misinterpretation of information. For instance, GRASP is not a codename for a current project but rather an acronym for a presentation entitled "Gravity Research for Advanced Space Propulsion," in which a Boeing engineer explains Podkletnov's theory and proposes that we should continue to monitor this work and perhaps even conduct some low-cost experiments to further assess its plausibility. No steps have been taken beyond this point by Boeing.'

Jane's also mentions theorized weapons 'capable of producing a beam of "gravity-like" energy that can exert an instantaneous force of 1,000g [1000 Gravities, not grams] on any object -- enough, in principle, to vaporise it, especially if the object is moving at high speed.'

Don't tell Einstein. :)"

And here's the part where I skip town. Planetes writes "The Florida Times Union (Jacksonville, FL) has an interesting article about a lab testing company that has discounted his claims about some technology previously discussed on /.

Personal favorite paragraph:

'Lawyers for the company, Intertek Testing Services, discounted almost every aspect of a three-page letter that appears to validate an invention that sends high-speed data over electrical power lines. The letter is addressed to Madison Priest, a St. Augustine man whose disputed communications technologies were the subject of a sweeping Times-Union investigation this year.'"

Not at all what he said. knorthern knight writes: "Crow tastes icky, but here goes. Since I submitted the original citing about the story in The Register, ISPAI have sent a polite note to me. Here it is ...

Subject: ISPAI Reaction on HT News Item dated 27th July '02

Dear Sir,

This is in reference to the front page news article by the Hindustan Times dtd: 27/07/02. Mr Amitabh Singhal, Secretary, ISPAI has denied having made any statements favoring blocking of sites by Indian ISPs.

In reply to Mr. Singhal's letter to Hindustan Times,(copy enclosed) the HT has released the following news clipping at today's news paper http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/printedition/01 0802/detECO07.shtml

This is for your informaton and necessary action please.

With regards,

Puneet Tiwari Sr. Executive -ISPAI"

Behind every horde of enemy attackers are the people who thought them up. Anonymous Coward writes "I've finally posted the game binaries and source code to the Indie Game Jam games. The Indie Game Jam is a yearly game design and programming event designed to encourage experimentation and innovation in the game industry. 14 professional game developers created 12 experimental and innovative games in 4 days! The source to the engine and all the game code is GPLed on SourceForge, so enjoy. Remember, they're experimental and a bit rough, not commercial quality games."

One Blender you can buy for forever. kabir writes "The Blender Fund is up around 65K Euro right now... so close, yet still so far! This would be a great time for anyone who was on the fence about donating (wondering if the fund would make it, etc.) to pitch in and help put us over the top." Here's our previous story about this effort to liberate the Blender source. Does anyone have a business which might see a donation here as a good long-term investment?

Comments

The editors are morons!

[Anonymous Coward]

All these stories have been posted before!

Are you people actually paying for this stuff?!?

Re:The editors are morons!

[Anonymous Coward]

The only difference between slashbacks and normal stories is that, in the normal stories, they don't include links to the previous articles.

Re:The editors are morons!

[Pig Hogger]

No, but the editors are getting paid for it...

Re:The editors are morons!

[Anonymous Coward]

A rare post where the moderators actually understands the post better than the commenters.

Re:The editors are morons!

[Anonymous Coward]

The versions posted today have been spellchecked.

Yes!

[SpatchMonkey]

Let's talk about other people's conversations!

Boeing and Anti-gravity

[Shadow Wrought]

I guess that means the new 787 won't be anti-grav after all. Damn.

Gravities?

[Wrexen]

[1000 Gravities, not grams]

For those of you not accustomed to metric, 1 Gravity is equivalent to 35 Pressures, 18 Forces, 340 Micro-lengths, 2 electromagnetisms, or 42 CowboyNeals.

Re:Gravities?

[zaffir]

or 42 CowboyNeals

So that's like, what, 50 tons?

Re:Gravities?

[squiggleslash]

So about the size of a small car, or possibly 50 Libraries of Congress?

Re:Gravities?

[JabberWokky]

Funny, I always thought 1G was around 9.8 m/s2. It's been many a year since I did physics in college, but I can guess what is meant but the phrase "exerting 1000 G" is intended to convey - applying the one thousand times the energy inherent in that of gravity at the earth's surface.

Only problem is, that's not that much energy. Gravity is a very weak force, IIRC (again, many years since I studied this stuff for a grade).

--
Evan (no reference here)

Re:Gravities?

[halftrack]

Wow, back down. 1G is not 9.8 m/s. Although in a gravitational field of 1G things would accellerate at 9.8 m/s. 9.8 m/s is earths mass accelleration or whatever it is called in my not native language English.

Re:Gravities?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell that your hard drive when it receives a shock exceeding 50G's or so while operating.

Re:Gravities?

[AJWM]

If it isn't already, 1G ought to be standardized at 10.0 m/s2, to simplify calculations. Of course, that would mean Earth's gravity was .98 of a standard G, but I thought we dumped geocentrism a few centuries back.

(And you can look at it either as a unit of acceleration -- how it's usually used -- or as a field strength indicator -- 1 G exerts a force of 10 newtons on a 1 kg mass.)

Re:Gravities?

[Wavicle]

Awww, can't we just adjust the size of the meter so that 1G ends up being 10.0 m/s^2?

Re:Gravities?

[os2fan]

1 G is 9.8 m/s/s, and yes, you can exert a force per mass of 1000G This works out to be something like 2.3427 calories per gram-metre.

Gravity may be pretty weak, but the earth is pretty big :)

BTW 1 gravity = 1 force, eg 1 lb * gravity = 1 lb force.

Re:Gravities?

[Shimmer]

Or just increase the mass of the Earth a smidge? (1 smidge = .02G)

Re:Gravities?

[(outer-limits)]

In fact gravity is so weak that I just jumped out of the fortieth floor and landed on my feet quite nicely.

Re:Gravities?

[Wavicle]

I'm pretty sure the average citizen of the U.S. is doing its part to reach the increased mass goal. It's time we started feeding McDonalds, Taco Bell and KFC to all the other nations!

Re:Gravities?

[global_diffusion]

1G is not 9.8 m/s. Although in a gravitational field of 1G things would accellerate at 9.8 m/s. 9.8 m/s is earths mass accelleration ....

To clear some things up, 1G is not even in m/s^2 units. 'g' a.k.a. "little g" is ~9.8m/s^2 (so that mass*g is a force, kg*m/s^2), but 'G', a.k.a. "big G", is, ~6.67*10^-11 m^3/kg/s^2 (in mks).

The confusion is that 'g' is the acceleration due to gravity close to the earth, while 'G' is the universal gravitational constant. It is a constant that is used to derive little 'g'. The relationship can be explaied in a couple of steps.

1. The gravitational force between two objects is
   F=G*m1*m2/r^2
   m1 = mass of object 1,
   m2 = mass of object 2
   r = distance separating objects 1 and 2
2. put m1 = mass of earth, M
   m2 = mass of random object, such as a super-ball, m
   r = radius of Earth, R
3. F is now = G*M*m/R^2
4. This form of the equation now has two constant-ish variables that are closely tied to eachother (M and R), one constant (G), and one independant variable (m). Let's tie up all the constants into one variable and call it 'g'. That is,
   g = G*M/R^2
5. We now have F = mg for objects close to the surface of the earth.

Here we can see that 'g' is just an easy generalization for calculations and not anything defining about the universe. Hope that helps. The use of the same letter but differing in capitalization can lead to confusion and silly misunderstandings.

Re:Gravities?

[Megahurts]

That's going to take a while, what with the pesky laws of thermodynamics. We need Space Chickens to fulfill that rather lofty goal. In fact, if we increase the caloric intake of the entire world's population, the mass of the earth's bisphere would actually decrease due to heat losses and whatnot. Oh the woes of being an entropic lifeform.

Re:Gravities?

[Chexsum]

...I just jumped out of the fortieth floor...

Are you OK?

Re:Gravities?

[Invidious]

"BTW 1 gravity = 1 force, eg 1 lb * gravity = 1 lb force." ...No. A pound is a measure of weight, not mass, and thus it's influenced by gravity.

Re:Gravities?

[matrix29]

That's going to take a while, what with the pesky laws of thermodynamics. We need Space Chickens to fulfill that rather lofty goal. In fact, if we increase the caloric intake of the entire world's population, the mass of the earth's bisphere would actually decrease due to heat losses and whatnot. Oh the woes of being an entropic lifeform.

(Not that Christians are all that keen on the laws of Thermodynamics, but I suppose you HINT HINT wanted this link posted.)

Adventures with Chickens developed by RockSolidSoftware is a whimsical Christian
action/puzzle/adventure game for the Windows 95/DirectX platform. Your goal is to
rescue purple Chickens from suffocating in the harsh confines of deep space.
Along the way you get a healthy dose of scripture!

http://www.xgames3d.com/prchick.htm

Features
Edutainment - Learn the Bible as you play.
Non-Violent Christian based gameplay for the whole family.
High Resolution graphics and DirectX.
Digital sound FX and music.
Supports different difficulty levels and pieces to play with.
25 levels in Registered Version.

(On the upside the Space Chickens are flash frozen in the cold depths of space.)

Re:Gravities?

[frost22]

If it isn't already, 1G ought to be standardized at 10.0 m/s2, to simplify calculations.

Good Idea. You should try to submit your idea to this USian commitee that already had such tremendous success standardizing PI at an easier to handle number.

Ah. I love Americans.

and check this

Re:Gravities?

[JabberWokky]

In fact gravity is so weak that I just jumped out of the fortieth floor and landed on my feet quite nicely.

I meant in comparison to the other forces in the universe (electromagnetic, strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force and trek technobabble).

--
Evan (no reference worth guessing)

Re:Gravities?

[(outer-limits)]

Yeah, I know, I really should start putting smilies on my posts at the appropriate times.

Re:Gravities?

[os2fan]

1 lb = 0.45359237 kg by definition.

Originally, weight stood indifferently for what we call mass and force. The equation F=mg actually defines the constant g, which separates Force from Mass.

That g varies from place to place can be demonstrated by a spring balance.

That m is constant, at least to 1e-14, has been demonstrated inertially.

Therefore, units from the group "weight" are understood to be units of mass.

Re:Gravities?

[SEWilco]

(You neglected to mention how many rods per fortnight per quarter)

Note that HOW the 1,000 gravities is applied is relevant.

• If applied evenly across the object, it will merely accelerate very suddenly in a new direction and be undamaged.
• If applied unevenly and quickly, everything will be shaken. Imagine a pulse, so the acceleration first affects only one side of the object, then all of it, then it stops affecting one side.
• If applied only to one part of the object, that part may be ripped off and torque will try to spin the object.
• If the acceleration is different enough between the near and far sides, tidal forces will stretch the object.

I am reminded of the beam weapons in the Honor Harrington series. The only beam technology seems to be tractor and pressor beams. But they're also being used in weapons, by making a very narrow beam which alternates quickly between tractor and pusher. So it grabs what it hits and tries to shake it loose from whatever it is part of...causing a great deal of heat at the same time.

Verbal diahorea...

[Anonymous Coward]

Dueling Machine looks like fun. Won't work in XP though. Damn - any advice... anyone?

Re:Verbal diahorea...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait... there's a log file saying it can't find "sprites/doom95/sprites/sargA1", and that directory isn't included in the download. Am I supposed to download Doom?

Great for horney geeks

[papasui]

Imagine a condom that could increase the gravity whenever the budding young geek started to think about the HS cheerleading captain. Press a button on his PDA and a 802.11b signal activates the gravity enhancing condom. I could of used on of those.

Re:Great for horney geeks

[pokeyburro]

Actually, what you want is to gravity-enhance the cheerleader's uniform.

Smoking Crack at Jane's

[CaptainCarrot]

Jane's also mentions theorized weapons 'capable of producing a beam of "gravity-like" energy that can exert an instantaneous force of 1,000g [1000 Gravities, not grams] on any object -- enough, in principle, to vaporise it, especially if the object is moving at high speed.'

If it can vaporize the target, it's also able to vaporize the weapon that's emitting the beam. Newton's Third Law of Motion hasn't been repealed as far as I know.

Re:Smoking Crack at Jane's

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that your high school?

Re:Smoking Crack at Jane's

[QuantumFTL]

It was good of you to notice this rather important issue, however you are only partially correct... Imagine a situation where this gravity-like force is not evenly distributed, in fact the force vectors are such that they have a high magnitude, but are pointing in different directions in different places so that when summed up together, they add to zero (or near zero). This is a very common occurance in situations where forces between two objects are applied via waves (and different areas of the object may be at different phases of the wave, and thus have different vectors).

Don't be so quick to assume that this weapon is simply a pushing or pulling effect... it could be a symmetrical sheering force (part of the target is, say, pulled up, and part is pulled down, ripping it apart) or something similar.

How the hell they generate a gravity-like force, however, is completely beyond me. No problem with Newton though. Perhaps it's electromagnetic yet affects nonconductors?

(Also, if you did have a "poking" type weapon, it may be possible to couple the gravitational force to a plasma inside the weapon that will be accellerated out of the back, absorbing whatever momentum the attack generated).

DISCLAIMER: I am not a physicist (yet) but I'm studying to become one.

Re:Smoking Crack at Jane's

[Professor Farnsworth]

Duh, it will just move backwards in time. The microwave radiation, combined with the gravitons and graviolies from the supernova will blast you through time itself!!

Re:Smoking Crack at Jane's

[SevenTowers]

hum, do high-power lasers vaporize themselves? no, but the target is pretty much fried.

Re:Smoking Crack at Jane's

[pete-classic]

Yes, in much the same way that a .50BMG, which is capable of vaporizing a gopher, vaporizes when fired at one.

. . . wait, that's not right . .

-Peter

Re:Smoking Crack at Jane's

[Anonymous Coward]

Presuming that the ever-elusive "graviton", or whatever other source that is being projected by this theoretical weapon, doesn't contain a rest mass of zero, I'd agree. But powerful lasers don't require massive foundations to keep them from flying away when fired, so if a similar "particle" was involved in achieving this massive destructive potential, the weapon firing it would be similiarly safe.

Of course, this doesn't account for the localized impact of slamming the molecules in the atmosphere between the device and its intended target with the 1,000 gravities of force as it passes through. But then we are simply making all of this shit up as we go along anyhow as this is all nothing more than science fiction meeting mental masturbation, so we can say that it will result in Natalie Portman appearing naked and petrified with a hot bowl of grits in hand and be just as likely of being correct. :)

Re:Smoking Crack at Jane's

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, this crowd is starting to sound like the kooks who post to sci.physics.relativity.

Re:Smoking Crack at Jane's

[fiftyfly]

mmm, fresh whoop ass _and_ hair styling to boot! i hear the charred look is really coming back...

Re:Smoking Crack at Jane's

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh man!! I love those Chef Boyardee graviolies!!

Blender HoneyFund?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, being that the MCATs are about 11 days away, I guess I wasn't thinking straight due to fatigue. I went to the Blender site and saw the thermometer and thought it said "HoneyFund". I was like damn, they are gonna buy all the open-source hackers a lapdance.

I guess I was wrong. =(

hmm

[SHEENmaster]

If I got one of these graviton ray guns, could I get my site, http://flame.dnsart.com/ /.ed? I can see it now:
Programmer killed in moronic advertising stunt involving gravitron ray beam

And then people can reply with 300 comments of:
It's a graviton beam you moron.

But that won't be enough to take my server down. Nothing can harm a linux box, especially at 256 kilobits/second!

The games.

[TheOnlyCoolTim]

Unfortunately, to play almost all of the games you have to own/warez a copy of Doom 2.

Too bad, some of them looked like they'd be fun to waste away a few hours.

Tim

Re:The games.

[danny256]

What's your point? Who doesn't own a warez copy of Doom 2?
After my last format, I got a copy of it from my grandma.

Re:The games.

[kisrael]

I don't know what OS you need for these...sure aint WinXP-able (even in "compatability mode")

Re:The games.

[alannon]

As far as I knew, the source to the Doom 2 engine (and Quake 1, and Quake 2) was open sourced by ID many, many years ago. Only the art (.wad) files are commercial.

Re:The games.

[TheOnlyCoolTim]

The games use the sprites from Doom 2.

Tim

Re:The games.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you dont have a legal copy of Doom 2 then you aren't old enough to be playing it ok? When it came out Doom 2 was a fuckin masterpiece. And you were probably like 4 years old.

Re:The games.

[alexjohns]

Man, who doesn't have a copy of Doom 2? Somewhere in my pile of, uh, stuff, I've got copies of Doom, Doom 2, Ultimate Doom, Final Doom, Simpsons Doom, Aliens Doom, Crack of Doom, Doom's in the House, Doom-Doom, Killer Doom, Doom Redux, Doom and Robin, Doom: The Final Chapter, Doom X, Doomed Again, Doomenator... well, you get the idea.

For a few years there, it was pretty much all Doom. A little side-tracking for Descent and Duke Nukem, but other than that, from about 93 to 96, I was 'Doomed', so to speak. My relationships were doomed. My pay raises were doomed. Going out with friends was doomed. Movies were doomed to not get any money from me. The only ones who weren't doomed were the hardware manufacturers. Everyone else... yeah, doomed.

Got it all out of my system. Haven't touched a first-person shooter in years. Of course, the little rugrat is turning 4 in a couple of weeks and he wants a new bike and a gaming system. Oh man, the wife's gonna hate us spending hours on the couch. Quality time, sweetie. Quality time.

Lets go Redhat

[MADCOWbeserk]

The Blender Fund is up around 65K Euro right now... so close, yet still so far! This would be a great time for anyone who was on the fence about donating (wondering if the fund would make it, etc.) to pitch in and help put us over the top."

Of all the stupid things Redhat has bought or funded over the last few years, why can't they step in and front some cash and open up blender. At least blender is useful and the investment to buy it is dirt cheap. Finally the community has pretty much proven that it will actively develop the project. Perhaps this can be part of a Linux's new MM distribution.

Could Jesus microwave a burrito so hot that he himself could not eat it? HS

Re:Lets go Redhat

[mr. marbles]

i think everything they've brought in the pass has been too add to the value of their business. i don't think that donating to blender would make it high on that list. well the other thing is redhat doesn't have all that investment money to throw around anymore.

Re:Lets go Redhat

[NanoGator]

"Of all the stupid things Redhat has bought or funded over the last few years, why can't they step in and front some cash and open up blender. "

I don't think that's good idea. I think Redhat would be better off making an 'artist' distro that comes with Gimp, Killustrator, and eventually a version of Gimp that works like After Effects. Basically, they'd make one big distro that has all the tools us 3D Arists need. If they do that, then they make Redhat far more enticing as a graphic-workstation platform. That would give Newtek more reason to port Lightwave (which kicks Blender's butt up and down the court) over to Linux.

That'd be a hell of a deal. "Buy Lightwave, get RedHat Artist's edition for only $100 more. No need to spend $500 each on Photoshop and After Effects, and no need to have a Windows license!"

Re:Lets go Redhat

[waspleg]

redhat needs to step in and buy its stock back so the price goes back up then it can go around playing mother theresa

yea my redhat stock is worthless and i'm bitter, but i don't need my karma points =)

Re:Lets go Redhat

[MADCOWbeserk]

Still 100,000 euro is dirt cheap, even for poor Redhat. If redhat gets a few big support clients for shops running it, it will pay for itself.

Re:Lets go Redhat

[glwtta]

why can't they step in and front some cash and open up blender.

because they don't need to - the fund has been going for just a few weeks, they are up to 68K right now, 100K is absolutely no problem. and hey, I just kicked in my $75, screw RedHat, we don't need them for this. :)

Re:Lets go Redhat

[gmhowell]

Redhat? What about VA? Wouldn't it be nice if they at least had some goodwill left to write off?

Re:Lets go Redhat

[glitch!]

i don't think that donating to blender would make it high on that list. well the other thing is redhat doesn't have all that investment money to throw around anymore.

I cannot comment on Redhat's business goals, but it looks like they still have a few nickels left in the bank. Take a look on the right side where it says, "Total Cash (mrq) $102.5M"...

Re:Lets go Redhat

[global_diffusion]

Could Jesus microwave a burrito so hot that he himself could not eat it? HS

Perhaps if it was a bean and cheese burrito. Not even He could withstand the power of the hot cheese plasma.

Re:Lets go Redhat

[Cryptnotic]

Ahh, but God's power is immeasurable. He is more powerful even than the hottest cheese plasma. However, God can do anything he chooses. What if He choose to create some creation more powerful than Himself? Could He do it? Of course. But isn't He the most powerful thing in existance?

This line of logical thinking actually can lead to either St. Anselm's "proof" of the existance of God or a "proof" of the non-existance of God. Actually, it either prooves nothing, or if you take those statements to be true, you can proove anything.

Basically,

1. For all x, G > x.
2. There exists some y such that y > G.

How do these two statements resolve? They don't. True equals false, black equals white, anything and everything becomes provably true and provably false at the same time. But this is high school logic bullshit. If you want to use math or logic to get people to believe in God, explain to them the Church-Turing thesis or that relationship between the roots of the Reimann Zeta function and quantum physics or discuss incomputable functions.

Before people flame me for believing in God, let it be known that I am an athiest. I know, however, that there is beauty and order in the universe. I have seen the proof in mathematics and physics and computer theory. I have an appreciation for beauty, and distaste for arrogance.

Re:Lets go Redhat

[Hard_Code]

If you have another second to waste on Slashdot, would you mind writing a short laymans explanation of the significance of these two items with regard to the conception of "god". From what I glean from Godel's incompleteness theorem, it seems to indicate there may indeed be things that are "unknowable" or at least "unable to be derived from any given set of knowledge". As I understand it, calculus itself was one of these "non-derived" fields...something that just sprang from Newton's head, but was not "derived from" any other mathematics. I am a weak atheist, empirical agnostic, and Godel's incompleteness theorem to me means that there may be "truths" in this universe that are not obtainable by mere reasoning/rational thought alone, which leaves a tiny niche for the possibility of some notion of "god" or at least something "supernatural". So then, how does the Church-Turing thesis or Reimann Zeta function (sorry, I'm not a mathematician, I have no idea what this is :( ) apply?

Re:Lets go Redhat

[global_diffusion]

My favorite god-argument is the one which says that god can't be all good, all knowing and all powerful (omnibenevolent, omniscient and omnipotent). It's rather fun. I enjoy that because I am not a thiest either.

Re:Lets go Redhat

[Galvatron]

How about this, which shows that they lost well over $100 million last year? They're hanging by a thread.

heh

[Sergeant Bash]

I've seen anti-gravity aircraft out here in Utah- yup. Seen'um fly right into the "cloaked" anti-gravity hovering military base. True true.

Why else is most of the state "goverment no-fly zone"?

Greetz Jase... whatever your nik is...

Physical properties of matter...

[Gamasta]

Hey, take antigravity stuff, it would have negative wheight (wheight!=mass). Now think of antimatter, possibly with negative mass, also could have antigravity properties. That would rock! Except that you wouldn't be quite able to walk in a antimatter ship or whatever.

--
If you find yourself struggling with loneliness, you're not alone. And yet you are alone...

Re:Physical properties of matter...

[Anonymous Coward]

Antiparticles have the same mass as their charge conjugated counterparts.

Re:Physical properties of matter...

[Glytch]

Particles have the same mass as their corresponding antiparticle.

Re:Physical properties of matter...

[Maverick TimeSurfer]

Disregarding the fact that half of what you just said was wrong, as has been pointed out already, you have caused a great thought to come forth in my mind: Would negative masses have antigrav properties?

Re:Physical properties of matter...

[allanj]

Disregarding the fact that you're wrong, the idea is still interesting. In todays world, however, negative mass would somehow find its way into fastfood so that the dangerously obese would weigh a scant 10 kg or so. Hell, some of them would take off after a particularly large meal - new reason to sue McDonalds, perhaps?

"I swear, your Honor, I just had 6 BigMacs with fries and when I left the joint, I took off and was subjected to a traumatic view of the inner city - I demand compensation!".

Re:Physical properties of matter...

[Gamasta]

For those who do not write programs, != is the logical operator not. So 'wheight!=mass' is a correct statement which says 'wheight not equal mass'.

Now answering to the thought, I try to build ideas to make antigravity something real.

The gravitational force is given by
F=GmM/r^2.
Then take one of those masses to be negative and the formula says that it would show gravitational repulsion.

Nothing hasn't been yet shown, but it was pointed out by a french scientist that in one of his experiments, antimatter showed some gravitational repulsion, but this was not the key idea of his study so he did not carry on further investigations regarding this subject. And he denied my explanation with negative mass...

Incorrect interpretation

[marick]

Actually, it depends.

If the weapon sending the beam is enormous (say 100 times the size of the target), it can withstand the "equal and opposite" force generated by object it's acting on.

Furthermore, if it's in space, it might just be sent to a higher orbit around the earth.

Re:Incorrect interpretation

[geekd]

Furthermore, if it's in space, it might just be sent to a higher orbit around the earth.

Orbital Sniper

Make people little red stains from a few miles up.

Re:Incorrect interpretation

[Fuzzums]

let's assume graviry is mass, so shooting 'gravity' is shooting mass, you still need a counterforce to stop the gun from leaving earths orbit.

Probably this is solved if you fire an equally strong shot in the opposite direction (most likely not in the direction of earth). You might hit the moon or some other plantes on the way, but what the heck ;)

Re:Incorrect interpretation

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that you have a gravity gun in the first place implies you're ignoring Newton's Laws.

HOWTO: move a planetoid

[bpfinn]

Um, just do what Q does - "Change the gravitational constant of the universe." *duh*

Don't worry

[Anonymous Coward]

If you do happen to mention it to Einstein, he won't listen.

1000 g? Say 'bye bye earth as we know it'.

[Fuzzums]

I was thinking about the samg thing, but probably there are theoretical ways to do something like that.
Think about radiating cancer. If you would use one beam, all the tissue 'in the line of fire' gets fried, so they use several beams that focus on one point. I can imagine the same thing for 'gravitational guns'.

That solves one problem. Now for an other.
1000 g. That is 1000 times the power of earth's gravitation. So how far stretches this gravitational field? The moon is influenced by the earths one g gravitation. And vice versa, we have tides because of the much weaker gravitation of the moon.
My guess is that if you generate a 1000 g gravitational field anywhere on earth, the earth probably will collapse or is torn apart.

Has anyone other or more theories on this?

Re:1000 g? Say 'bye bye earth as we know it'.

[halftrack]

Theories my a__. Let's just try building one. Now let's see, what do we need?

As soon as someone leaks info and tells me the DoD or Darpa or Area51 or George Bush (no wait ...) is working on a gravity weapon of mass destruction I am most definitly moving from earth to, say, the other end of the galaxy.

Re:1000 g? Say 'bye bye earth as we know it'.

[phriedom]

Drop a PDA or cellphone onto concrete from shoulder-height and you will subject it to over 2000 g's , yet the earth and moon are not knocked out of orbit.

The important point you are overlooking is that this fictional weapon generates a gravity RAY not a gravity FIELD. Much the way a 60w laser would cut through most anything that the small focused beam hit, even a long way off but not effecting stuff right next to it, while a 60w lightbulb would warm up everything very close to it.

Anti-grav condom

[MADCOWbeserk]

I'm gonna lose some karma for this, but I don't think most geeks are hung enough to need this. Who's gonna notice the excited geek sitting in class. If a geek is big than hell he should be proud and it might be the only way that some girls notice him.

Re:Any one with moderation points...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, I need a rimjob... do you have a tongue?

Re:777

[kingOFgEEEks]

Not only the 777, there many other things that make America great. Think of the Corvette (beat it for the money), the pickup truck (any brand), guns guns guns, and the modern PC industry (i know they're not made here, but they're thought of here)

oh, did i forget to mention engineering (all modern iterations)

Re:777

[ScottKin]

I used to work for a major Aircraft Manufacturer (you're free to guess which one (grin)) back in 1991, and was there to celebrate that company's 75th Anniversary with a special Air Show near the company's facilities - which culminated with a *very* low, high-speed fly-by of the #2 777.

I was absolutely dumbfounded by this single fly- by - quick, fairly silent (due to the Very-high Bypass Engines) and gracefull...until the pilot pushed the twin-throttles forward to the stops and pulled back on the yoke - I swear it looked like the plane virtually LEAPED into the sky. Everyone around cheered, whooped, yelled and screamed with elation when that beautiful, white plane roared skyward!

The only word I can gather to describe that sight (and sound) is "Breathtaking"!

I received an email from a family member shortly after the attacks on 9/11 which had a JPEG attached to it, with several pictures of various military hardware in the JPEG, and a single caption:

"Mr. Osama Bin Laden: Now that you have acquainted yourself with some of our fine aircraft, please allow us to acquaint you with our other products"

The pictures were of a B-1B, a B-2, F-14 F-15, F-16, FA-18, Cruise Missles, etc.

ScottKin

Acceleration, etc.

[Scaebor]

Jane's also mentions theorized weapons 'capable of producing a beam of "gravity-like" energy that can exert an instantaneous force of 1,000g [1000 Gravities, not grams] on any object -- enough, in principle, to vaporise it, especially if the object is moving at high speed.'

I may just be confused (very likely, as a recent graduate of America's public school system), but aren't gravities a measure of acceleration(i.e. a change in velocity)? If so, would there be any appreciable difference in the effectiveness of this theoretical superraygunofinstantgravitationaldeath on an object going at a high velocity versus a stationary object? It seems to me that if the acceleration that comes as a result of the beam is the same in either case, it would result in essentially the same amount of destructive force.

Re:Acceleration, etc.

[Chris Y Taylor]

You are right. I don't know where the "high speed" bit came from, whether it is Boeing or Jane's idea, but it is incorrect. The destruction would also probably only happen if part of the object were in the superraygunofinstantgravitationaldeath's beam path and part was not. Otherwise the object would be acclerated but would likely experience little or no internal stresses. Good catch.

Chris Y. Taylor
http://www.gravity-society.org/abstract_AI AA.htm

Re:Acceleration, etc.

[GigsVT]

Yes, but the next derivitive is the one that vaporizes things, jerk.

No, I don't mean you are a jerk, well you might be, but anyway, the measure of acceleration of acceleration is called "jerk".

Basically it is a measure of the rate of change of acceleration.

Position->Velocity->Acceleration->Jerk

Velocity is the measure of the rate of change of position.

Acceleration is a measure of the rate of change of velocity.

Jerk is the measure of the rate of change of acceleration.

Anyway, the jerk is what would be doing the destroying, so something that has a high velocity would probably be easier to destroy in theory, especially if it is moving away from you at the high velocity.

I think the idea is that you don't want to suddenly accelerate things toward you, that would sort of suck, but if they are already moving away from you, you can bring them to a rest destructively without shelling your gravity ray gun with pieces of the target.

As someone else said, this thing would be pretty likely to destroy itself anyway, but I think if it had enough mass in relation to the target, it could happen.

And all this is assuming you could even build this gravity ray, which is likely junk science at this point in time.

Re:Acceleration, etc.

[vegetablespork]

A non-physics major comes out: is there an end to this? Is there a meaningful parameter for the rate of change of jerk?

Re:Acceleration, etc.

[Chris Y Taylor]

Snap.

rate of change of Snap is called Crackle.

rate of change of Crackle is called... can you guess it...

Pop.

I don't know what they are beyond that.

Chris Y Taylor

Re:Acceleration, etc.

[renehollan]

Yes, named after the Russian scientist that first proposed it, the Jerkov.

Look if you have to worry about the derivetive of jerk being positive, it most likey will come ov.

Re:Acceleration, etc.

[Chris Y Taylor]

"I think the idea is that you don't want to suddenly accelerate things toward you, that would sort of suck"

I think that would literally suck. Dr. Podklentov reports, however, that his impulse gravity generator "pushes" on objects not "pulls." You don't have to worry about pulling debris into the emitter.

Also, it is reported to penetrate bulk matter and act on all types of matter with the same acceleration (just like gravity, hence the "gravity" in impulse gravity generator). The portion of the object in the beam path would experience NO internal stresses from that, just like an object in freefall may be accellerating rapidly, but because every part of it is accelerating the same there are no internal stresses. What might get destructive is where you have only a portion of the target in the beam, causing high internal stesses at that intersection. The portion in the beam undergoes high accleration, and the rest of the target does not; the beam takes a "core sample" out of any delicate components of the target in beam path. This is actually something you want to be careful to avoid when using the beam for propulsion. Current technology is so inefficient right now (and might have pointing accuracy limitations), however, that a gravitic ray is not likely to replace more conventional weapons in the near future.

Chris Y Taylor
http://www.gravity-society.org/abstract_AI AA.htm

Re:Acceleration, etc.

[GigsVT]

That's interesting, I figured the idea would be that this ray would only act mostly on the surfaces exposed to it, in a collision sort of way, like running into an invisible brick wall.

Slicing a cylinder out of something seems much more sci-fi though. :)

Re:Acceleration, etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

Somebody mod this guy up! I'm out of points! And I'm posting anonymously to avoid losing karma with this plea.

Re:Acceleration, etc.

[QuantumFTL]

First of all, mad props for knowing the proper term for change in accelleration. Unfortunately you have a few incorrect physical ideas, perhaps based on some false assumptions.

I would like you to imagine a body in free space. Any accelleration of that body, or any change in that accelleration (and so on), provided the change was uniform throughout the body. This is the norm for graviational forces with extremely small gradients, like that a tthe surface of the earth). In fact, uniform accellerations cannot possibly inflict damage on an object. There is no truth to the idea that "jerk" is what causes damage.

What causes damage to any object is the application of differing amount of force to different parts of the object. For instance, if I was to hit you with a baseball bat, I'd be applying a lot of force to a small area of your body (that is, the outer layer of your skin at the point of impact). The rest of your body would not feel this force, and thus part of you would be compressed. If I was to, say, apply the same amount of force evenly over your body, it would do you no harm whatsoever (in fact, you could not possibly detect it, unless you noticed you were suddenly moving relative to everything nearby, that is, assuming things are in fact nearby).

"Jerk" has nothing to do with it. The only way a gravity weapon can be harmful to something is for it to have a very strong gradient, or for you to change the path of the body in such a way that it causes a high speed collision.

See my other post about possible ways the device could inflict damage on something else without inflicting damage on itself. It's quite possible to destroy an object without applying a *NET* force to it.

Of course, we do not even fully understand what gravity "is", so it's somewhat rediculous to think that they are developing gravity based weapons any time soon. They did say "gravity-like" though, so who knows what that means...

DISCLAIMER: I am not a physicist, but I am studying to become one at Cornell.

Re:Acceleration, etc.

[moogla]

If a sufficiently high acceleration was applied to a target for a very short period of time, and then reversed, you can vaporize an object by the liberation of kinetic energy (this implies a large jerk). HOWEVER we assume that the gravitational ray doesn't somehow absorb the kinetic energy of the decelerating object, which may be moot if this is all happening in the atmosphere. The atmosphere is what the object collides into converting kinetic energy into heat.

Re:Acceleration, etc.

[hubie]

In fact, uniform accellerations cannot possibly inflict damage on an object.

Certainly they can. Take a familiar object (say, an empty soda can) and put it in a uniform 20g field and it would crush.

(in fact, you could not possibly detect it, unless you noticed you were suddenly moving relative to everything nearby, that is, assuming things are in fact nearby)

Be careful that you are not confusing uniform acceleration with uniform velocity. The first is not an inertial reference frame while the second is. Any simple accelerometer will tell you that you are accelerating; it is the special relativity constancy of physics that holds in the intertial reference frame. You might be thinking of Einstein's Equivalence Principle that says (colloquially) that you can't tell if you are standing on the surface of the Earth or in an elevator that accelerates in free space at 9.8 m/s2.

Re:Acceleration, etc.

[QuantumFTL]

I'm sorry man, but you're completely wrong.

> Certainly they can. Take a familiar object (say, an empty soda can) and put it in a uniform 20g field and it would crush.

It would only crush if it was being pushed by the gravitational field against something else. And, if that is true, then obviously the bottom of the can is not being accellerated at all (it is staying in the same place). From the can's perspective, part of it (the top part) is being accellerated, while the bottom is not. That's not a uniform accelleration. The reason that objects can be crushed is that you can accellerate part of the object without accellerating the rest of the object, thus changing the size of said object!

Be careful that you are not confusing uniform acceleration with uniform velocity. The first is not an inertial reference frame while the second is. Any simple accelerometer will tell you that you are accelerating; it is the special relativity constancy of physics that holds in the intertial reference frame. You might be thinking of Einstein's Equivalence Principle that says (colloquially) that you can't tell if you are standing on the surface of the Earth or in an elevator that accelerates in free space at 9.8 m/s2.

Once again, you are wrong. A simple accelerometer only tells you if you are applying a force on the sensor element in the accellerometer. Imagine that you are in free space with no forces acting on you. A properly calibrated accellerometer will read zero. Then imagine that you are moving with some velocity, and you encounter a planet. You begin to be pulled towards the planet, but your accellerometer reads zero. It will only register a gravitational pull on the sensor element if there is something to oppose it. In this case, you have nowhere to stand, so you cannot oppose the gravitational force; thus it reads nothing. It is physically impossible for the accelerometer to "know" you are falling down the gravity well. Another way of saying it is that accelerometers only work if you are feeling a force that the sensing element is not. (for instance, you're being pulled by a drag line to a spaceship)

So while it is true that there is a big difference here between constant acceleration and constant velocity, it doesn't change the validity of my previous post. And inertial reference frames have nothing to do with this, my discussion is entirely in newtonian mechanics, it need not require relativity.

I suppose I understand how my points could have been misunderstood, as I use my words in a very precise manner. They will not be true when interpreted imprecisely.

Re:Acceleration, etc.

[Inthewire]

If I was to, say, apply the same amount of force evenly over your body, it would do you no harm whatsoever

-- and --

It would only crush if it was being pushed by the gravitational field against something else.

make me think that you are looking at this from a different perspective than many of us would. If you supply a uniform force to my body you will crush me if the force is directed towards my center. This is how I read your statement - that the force in question would be like atmospheric pressure.
I assume you mean all that equal force would be acting in the same direction, not pressing on the outside of my body or can towards the middle.

Re:Acceleration, etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

What I think the Jane is trying to say, is this

If you run really fucking fast away from someone that fires a bullet against you, you will reduce the impact force of the bullet on your body. This is because the difference between your velocity and the velocity of the bullet will be smaller, and the directon of your motion vectors will be the same or similar. If you run REALLY fucking fast, this means that you can take a bullet to the back of your head suffering no more damage than a mosquito bite.

Now. Gravity is a force that accelerates mass. I'm therefor assuming that a superraygunofinstantgravitationaldeath is a weapon that emits some kind of force that accelerates mass. Should you happen to be running really fucking fast away from someone who is firing a superraygunofinstantgravitationaldeath at you, your own acceleration will in fact make the matter worse, as the increase in acceleration required to make your body disintegrate will be smaller.

Now, if you stop running fucking fast and start flying fucking fast in a plane instead, some of this might actually matter. I dunno.

But remember, kids, that if someone tries to fire a superraygunofinstantgravitationaldeath on you, you must run super fucking fast directly TOWARDS them, thus neutralizing it's effect.

(Disclaimer: All this assumes that the superraygunofinstantgravitationaldeath shoots gravity rather than suck gravity. If it can do both you're fucked in either direction)

Re:Acceleration, etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

It would only crush if it was being pushed by the gravitational field against something else

You are assuming vacuum, which is a common error to make by physicists as they are used to simply disregarding anything that will not fit nicely into the equation they have decided to create.

Something, say a human, would not need to be accelerated that much before being ripped to pieces by air.

Re:Acceleration, etc.

[QuantumFTL]

make me think that you are looking at this from a different perspective than many of us would. If you supply a uniform force to my body you will crush me if the force is directed towards my center. This is how I read your statement - that the force in question would be like atmospheric pressure. I assume you mean all that equal force would be acting in the same direction, not pressing on the outside of my body or can towards the middle.

Yes, alas, I'm a Physicist In Training, so I tend to use such terms rather litterally. When I speak of force, I speak of it as a vector quantity, thus a uniform force could really only be in one direction. When I say uniform, I mean applied to the entire body, not simply to the surface as one would apply a force with, say, an earth-like atmosphere.

You raise a good point, I should be more careful to specify what I mean by things... I talk to physics majors so often that I take it ofr granted that everyone knows a "uniform force upon a body" means throughout the body inside and out. Clearly you've shown that's not the standard way of perceiving it.

Cheers,
Justin

Re:Acceleration, etc.

[GigsVT]

This was also my assumption, that this effect would be basically limited to a surface of the object in question, which lead to my jerk post.

Re:Acceleration, etc.

[hubie]

I am sorry. It is my turn to disagree.

Simply put, accelerometers tell you if you are accelerating and it says nothing about applying different forces to particular sensor elements and not others. Consider the simplest of accelerometers: a flashlight. Shine a flashlight across a room and the beam travels a straight line. Now constantly accelerate the room and the beam "falls." No moving parts. This is a very nice Newtonian argument that you can find all over the place (such as here). If you invoke the Equivalence Principle, then this says that your flashlight beam will bend when you are in the constant accelerating field of the Earth. This is a nice General Relativity argument which you will find in pretty much all GR books (it will be referred to as the Einstein Elevator).

Rotation is something else that is very easy to detect, even if you are out in free space with no points of reference (such as a star field). Simply hold a ring laser gyro. This whole device relys on the Sagnac Effect which will tell you whether you are rotating (i.e., accelerating) or not. Rotation is just as easy to detect because it is involves acceleration.

As an aside, inertial reference frames do not depend on special relativity (SR), it is SR that depends on interial reference frames (this is the first of Einstein's three postulates). In the context of this discussion intertial reference frames have everything to do with it, and it doesn't mean we have to be talking about SR when we talk about inertial reference frames. The whole point of my previous post is that you can always tell that you are accelerating even if you are falling in the potential well of a planet or any other scenario you can dream up. Just use your flashlight (a finite speed of light is a wonderful thing, even in the Newtonian world). If you want to live only in a Newtonian world and you don't have a flashlight, then perform some intro physics conservation of momentum experiments on those noisy airtracks to see that you are not conserving momentum in your uniformly accelerating reference frame you say you cannot detect.

You also need to be careful about associating acceleration with motion. The can in the previous example does not crush because the bottom of the can is not accelerating while the top does, the whole can is accelerating (and uniformly (20g), I might add). Right now you are accelerating in your chair, but you don't move because the Earth is pushing back on you, but that doesn't mean you aren't accelerating. Remember, your weight is a force, and the force is proportional to your acceleration; no acceleration, no force holding you to your chair, and you would fly away.

Re:Acceleration, etc.

[darqchild]

Bad Joke Part: That's odd, i don't recall seeing "Fucking Fast" in the table of accepted SI units of measurement. Serious part: Velocity/Speed should be unimportant unless "High Speed" is near the speed of light. Since none of our "targets" are likely to travel that fast for a while, i'm assuming that they meant "accelerating rapidly"?

Re:Acceleration, etc.

[QuantumFTL]

The problem with that is if it was in fact a truely gravity-like force, it would not be limited to the surface.

It's odd, most of the forces we encounter in our daily life are contact forces, so we're not intuitively used to the idea of a permeating force (like gravity).

But just to be a smart ass, I'll show that jerk is once again not responsible for the damage, no matter if it's being pulled on the surface or what.

I want you to imagine a body in free space, no forces acting on it. Now, say you have a drag line or something connected to it, from which you can pull on the object. This drag line is connected to the surface of the object, so, your force only acts on the object.

Now, to make things more obvious, lets say the object is a long chain of various modules... you're only pulling on the first, and the chains holding them all together pull on the rest. In reality, any structure is a lot like that on a very small level, so it seems appropriate enough to me. Lets say that you use a rocket to apply a near-constant acceleration pulling this thing. I say near constant, because its thrust slowly increases.

As this thrust slowly increases, so does the force on the first module. And anyone that's done a bit of mechanics will know this also increases the force on the next module, and so on. Chains have a finite strength. Continue to keep upping the trust and you will reach a point at which the object breakds because the chains holding it together can no longer take this constant force.

Anyways... why isn't JERK the problem? Well, it comes from the fact that the thing that deforms an object is a force, not a change in force. If you took a can and suddenly applied 500+ lbs of force to the top of it, sure it'd crumple but the same thing gos if you slowly stacked up weights on top. There are exceptions to this rule (namely certain materials are affected by the shock waves created by large change in force at their surface) or that have structural properties that change over time (for instance, oobleck, that gooie cornstarch stuff that gets hard if you smack it). This is a valid point, however this is a specific phenomenon related to a specific set of materials, and is not a general physical principle. I suppose it could be argued that if you had a gravity weapon like that, that to save power, you'd pulse it such that the force wasn't enough to destroy the object but that it was quick enough to send a shockwave through the object to destroy delecate internals.

Is that what you meant?

Re:Acceleration, etc.

[GigsVT]

Is that what you meant?

In your chain example, if the acceleration is constant, I don't see why the chain has to break eventually. Since the acceleration is constant, the stress on the chain links is constant.

Right?

Funny stuff...

[hackwrench]

I like the part where the Space article just assumes that "Artificial gravity on spaceships and rockets levitating themselves into orbit will remain the stuff of science fiction for some time to come..." just because Boeing isn't working on the concept

Tractators! Tractators!

Re:Funny stuff...

[Chris Y Taylor]

... doesn't mean that I'm not.

Chris Y. Taylor

I dont even know where to start....

[PhreakOfTime]

Perhaps its just flame-bait, but the statements you just made, while interesting, are completely wrong..

weight, is the result of acceleration, not mass, although technically at VERY high speeds mass is related a bit closer to acceleration. but weight does not = mass

antimatter is only different than normal matter in the respect that the particles composing it have an opposite charge than their matter counterpart. so anti-matter does not mean anti-gravity. just because the prefix of the word is the same, doesnt mean the concept for it being there is identical.

After all does anti-perspirant result in anti-gravity?

and since your mangling facts so badly, why didnt you just say you could walk in this 'spaceship'

Gravity is not a type of mesurement.

[autopr0n]

Gravity is a force, it's not mesured seperately like 'pressue' or 'length'.

Re:Gravity is not a type of mesurement.

[Chris Y Taylor]

They really meant "gees". It is not a unit of force, it is a unit of acceleration (roughly 32ft/s^2 or 9.8m/s^2). Multiplied by the mass of the portion of the target in the beam path, this gives you units of force.

Chris Y Taylor

Re:Gravity is not a type of mesurement.

[tcc]

>Gravity is a force, it's not mesured seperately like 'pressue' or 'length'.
>PORNO FOR THE PEOPLE [autopr0n.com]

Yep... measurement theory people, if a p0rn webmaster tells you about length, don't argue with him. He probably knows a hell of a lot more than you do :)

Re:Gravity is not a type of mesurement.

[Afrosheen]

I'll argue with a porn webmaster, but you won't catch me arguing with Ron Jeremy.

(related) Hindustan Times advertising

[Artifex]

Has anyone else noticed that the ads on hindustantimes.com are not only all in English, but also appear to be in US Dollars, and more significantly, from US companies?

It would seem that the Indian Internet is already partially, if indirectly, funded from international sources.

Re:(related) Hindustan Times advertising

[udhay]

Ads are served based on your IP.

Re:(related) Hindustan Times advertising

[Artifex]

Ads are served based on your IP.

Still the ads wouldn't be there without US companies paying for them, which brings me back to my point: they're already getting money from us.

Re:(related) Hindustan Times advertising

[Anonymous Coward]

Most international sites sells bulk adds to companies like doubleclick, which use their own servers to push adds based on IP address.
Probably HTimes doesn't even know what adds tey're serving

Ros Cabezas

energy?

[autopr0n]

There is no energy 'inherent' in the gravity at earths surface, just force. energy is force times distance, IIRC.

So if you dropped a 1kg weight 1 meter, 1 watt of energy would be used up.

Re:energy?

[JabberWokky]

There is no energy 'inherent' in the gravity at earths surface, just force.

Yes. Thus I said (paraphrasing) 'I understand what they are trying to convey'... not that I thought it made scientific sense. It could be interpreted to mean many different specific things.

--
Evan

Re:energy?

[pmc]

1 watt of energy would be used up

The watt is not a unit of energy - it is a unit of power (i.e. how much energy per unit time). The unit of energy (in SI) is the Joule.

So if you dropped a 1kg weight 1 meter, 1 watt of energy would be used up.

No - it would be converted from gravitational potential energy to kinetic energy (and it would be 9.8J anyway). You don't use up energy per se (although you do (almost invariably) convert it from useful forms to less useful forms - this is entropy exerting its grip).

whuh?

[autopr0n]

let's assume graviry is mass, so shooting 'gravity' is shooting mass...

Yes, and while we're at it, lets assume that light is force, pressure is density, and that current is pizza.

from what I know, the devices work by reflecting (and, I guess in this case) amplifying earth's gravity.

Re:Any one with moderation points...?

[GigsVT]

Welcome to Slashdot.

Do not feed the trolls.

Last one out, switch off the lights.

Thank You.

Completely ignores...

[hackwrench]

addition and subtraction of vectors... If you can split the opposing vector into two vectors to either side..that should be end of problem... though I don't know if I've got that quite right

Some quote from 'Tron about energy being diverted was supposed to go here, but I couldn't find the exact quote on the internet and don't want to go hunting for the tape and I haven't bought the DVD (yet)

Re:Completely ignores...

[srhuston]

Some quote from 'Tron about energy being diverted was supposed to go here, but I couldn't find the exact quote on the internet and don't want to go hunting for the tape and I haven't bought the DVD (yet)

"Elementry physics, a beam of energy can always be diverted. Are we there yet mommy?"

Re:777

[Anonymous Coward]

Pontiac GTO beats the Corvette when it breaks cover in 2003. For now it's called the Moraro in Australia where it's made.

My theory: you are a moron.

[autopr0n]

g is just a mesure of force. 1000g is just 9800 newtons. I could probably generate that much force with my car.

Re:My theory: you are a moron.

[MAXOMENOS]

That's 9800 Newtons per kilogram. I'd love to see your car do that.

Boeing can afford it

[g4dget]

After they got many billions of dollars in corporate welfare for converting and "leasing" 767's to the military as refueling planes the military doesn't want or need. Your tax dollars at work.

Re:Boeing can afford it

[Anonymous Coward]

actually, many of the existing refueling planes are getting quite old. The airframes are pushing 50 yrs old, in some cases. Sure, the KC135Rs have been re-engined. But there are a lot of older ones still flying with the J58 engines.

Gravity guns == Gravy guns

[mcoletti]

Oh! Gravy guns!

bin laden jpg.

[autopr0n]

Yeh, someone made a flash animation with really obnoxious sound effects of that.

No..

[autopr0n]

Newton doesn't (as far as I know) prevent any of this stuff, it's Einstein's relativity.

Re:No..

[Anonymous Coward]

Newton's Law doesn't admit the existence of gravity waves, it's purely action-at-a-distance. General Relativity describes how you might transmit gravitational energy from gun to target, but I would imagine this isn't too feasible. After all, if you have to build a miles-long interferometer like LIGO just to have a slim chance of seeing a supernova, gravity waves must be pretty hard to create.

Re:No..

[Anonymous Coward]

After reading all your replies, I now realize that YOU ARE THE ONES who I beat up in gradeschool, and whose lunch money I extorted! Muahahah Purple nurples for you all!!!!

Indian burns for your arms!
--Your Local Bully, beating the geek out of you--

shameless gravitics plug

[Chris Y Taylor]

The Space.com's article quotes Boeing's press release as stating:

GRASP is not a codename for a current project but rather an acronym for a presentation entitled "Gravity Research for Advanced Space Propulsion," in which a Boeing engineer explains Podkletnov's theory and proposes that we should continue to monitor this work and perhaps even conduct some low-cost experiments.

I suspect that this internal Boeing presentation was the result of my presenation of a paper by Dr. Modanese and myself entitled "EVALUATION OF AN IMPULSE GRAVITY GENERATOR BASED BEAMED PROPULSION CONCEPT" (http://www.gravity-society.org/abstract_AIAA.htm) at the 38th AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference earlier this year. I don't know who all attended my talk, but there were Boeing guys all over the conference, so I wouldn't be surprised if I had a few in the audience. Copies of the paper are available from the AIAA. Dr. Modanese may post a copy it on the internet at www.gravity-society.org soon. The ESA also released a report on the implications of Dr. Podkletnov's research for aerospace called "Gravity control and possible influence on space propulsion: a
scientific study" that may have contribued to Boeing's internal GRASP presentation. I don't know where you can get a copy of the ESA's study.

Chris Y Taylor

Re:shameless gravitics plug

[Anonymous Coward]

... so I wouldn't be surprised if I had a few in the audience.

When I go to meetings I always like to drop in the "crackpot" session for a chuckle too.

Re:shameless gravitics plug

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, or irreverent: +4, +5

Original Source of information discussed in this thread: +2

Yup, we've got this karma thing totally figured out.

Meta-moderators, *where are you*???

Sigh.

[OOPS, there goes my karma - and just when I'm starting to understand how it *really* works. Wait, I know a funny story...]

-30

Re:shameless gravitics plug

[Chris Y Taylor]

I prefer the term "kook".

If any such papers actually lead to a functioning propulsion system, of course, they then become "breakthrough propulsion physics".

Chris Y Taylor

Same to you

[Fuzzums]

I just love to see you generate 1000 g with your car.
g-force isn't equal to 9.8 Newton
1g pulls with 9.8 newtons on 1 kg of mass.
even is you can generate 9800N with your car, you'll never be able to generate 1000g with it.

Re:Same to you

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually it is not unreasonable. Striking a hard surface with a hammer can easily generate an instantaneous force of 100's of g's. The mass of a car moving at a moderate speed could generate 1000's if it struck a stationary object, and the contacting surfaces were very rigid. A g is a measure of force and is proportional to acceleration by F = ma. You can determine F by knowing 'a' and 'm'. Imagine a rigid stationary object, say a block of steel, being struck by another rigid block of steel attached to the front of the car. What is the value of 'a' (the acceleration) for the stationary block the moment after contact? It is very high, the block goes from stationary v = 0, to a very high speed in a very short period time, a = v/t, v is large, t is small, hence the acceleration is very high. There is a spike in the acceleration curve, an impulse. A very large value of 'a' times the mass of the car results in a very large value of 'F' *but* over a very short period of time.

What you are really interested in is the amount of energy released.

Energy or work = force x distance. The amount of energy released can be determined by measuring how far the target is moved. Of course this is an over simplification, which assumes that energy is not lost thermally, acoustically etc.

No, but you are...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a "Slashback" post - the week in review as it were. Duh!

Hrm...

[autopr0n]

Yes, I suppose you're right. Still though, I think I could produce that much force if I had a good lead in. If I hit something and managed to accelerate it to 100mph in .004 seconds I would have done it.

If only

[Anonymous Coward]

Cowboy neal got the antigrav tech, then we emt's would'nt have to bust his house walls down to get him to the hospital again.

Dude, you can't *own* warez..

[Anonymous Coward]

Warez want to be free!

g is a measure of acceleration

[smiff]

g is a measure of acceleration. It is specifically defined as the acceleration due to the Earth's gravitational pull, so it is a constant of 9.80(m/s)/s.

An object with 10.0kg of mass would apply a force of 98 (kgm/s)/s at the surface of the earth, which is 98.0 newtons. An object with 20.0kg of mass would weigh 196 newtons. On the moon, a 20.0kg object would weight 32.7 newtons.

1000g is 9800(m/s)/s. In a gravitational field of 1000g, a 10.0kg object would apply a force of 98,000 newtons. That's 22,000 pounds.

Re:777

[Stoptional]

Americans LOL - the funny part is that you just don't get it.

Just a simple question of 1st grade physics

[ChaoticLimbs]

Can anyone tell me how (theoretically) to apply 1,000g (gravities) to an object without causing that object to hurtle toward the projector assembly at ludicrous speed? Especially in space, wouldn't the object you shoot simply come toward you at breakneck speed and annihilate you and your fancy and expensive gravitron hardware? And if you're tugging on the object with 1000g, doesn't your highly expensive raygun snap its mooring and go happily hurtling away at the same time toward the object you unfortunately shot at? No wonder they won't build it! It's bloody insanity!

Re:Just a simple question of 1st grade physics

[Anonymous Coward]

I want to know what's faster, ludicrous speed or breakneck speed.

Re:Just a simple question of 1st grade physics

[matrix29]

I want to know what's faster, ludicrous speed or breakneck speed.

Ludicrous Speed involves cartoon animals.
Breakneck Speed requires a neck to break.

Therefore, a cartoon animal will outrun a fish, but not if it's a cartoon fish. Given that you can safely assume that Ludicrous Speed easily is faster than Breakneck Speed (as Breaking The Neck of the Speeder should pretty much end the speeding). If you are a cartoon animal you cannot permanently break your neck so therefore you can exceed Breakneck Speeds.

Whoa!! I own Boeing stock!!

[SPYvSPY]

As a shareholder in BA, thanks a fucking lot for putting
"Boeing" and "Fraud" together in the headline. Especially these days...sheesh...

GTO

[baxshep]

I doubt the GM will let the GTO beat their Corvette flagship but how do they compare?

RE: High-speed data/electrical power lines.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well,

The "Lawyers for the company, Intertek Testing Services" who "discounted almost every aspect of a three-page letter that appears to validate an invention that sends high-speed data over electrical power lines" are idiots.

It's not a new invention as Europe has been doing it for quite sometime. Not to mention at least three power companies have had pilot programs for over a year now.

Mr. Coward

Re:Boring ..

[muffel]

This is so boring. Is anyone else bored by this?

Yeah, I think Nils is, too.

mass accelleration

[Catskul]

Although in a gravitational field of 1G things would accellerate at 9.8 m/s

Actually, if you want to get technical, 1G only accelerates masses at 9.81 m/s2 at 1 earth radius... and slower at distances farther away.

Re:mass accelleration

[Wavicle]

Okay, let's get it straight here... The accepted value for "standard acceleration of gravity" is 9.80665 m/s^2 - exactly. There's no "plus or minus" or "uncertainty".

That's it. No magic. 1G *always* accelerates mass at 9.81 m/s^2 (rounded). If the acceleration is something else, whatever is being accelerated isn't experiencing a net force of 1G.

The value is pinned. It isn't variable over the earth's surface in accordance to the proximity to more dense matter in the earth. Yes its value was chosen to be pretty much the force you feel on the surface of the earth.

Re:mass accelleration

[Anonymous Coward]

>Okay, let's get it straight here... The accepted value for "standard acceleration of gravity" is 9.80665 m/s^2 - exactly. There's no "plus or minus" or "uncertainty".

There is uncertainty. The traditional equation for gravity (the one without integrals) is F=G(m1m2)/r12^2. The variables are: m1 and m2 are the masses in question, r12^2 is the distance between them squared, and G is the universal gravitational constant. Thus if an object has more mass, it feels more force. In the same light, if an object is farther away from the center of mass of the Earth, it feels less force. It just so happens that the Earth is so large and so massive that it overwhelms your part of the equation.

Re:mass accelleration

[Wavicle]

Okay fine, the posts saying "it's G not g" aren't actually correct, it's g not G. In any case...

The value for little g - "standard acceleration of gravity" is fixed. 1g does not depend on where on earth you are - or how far from earth you are. The value is always the same because it was chosen for convenience. Look it up. Some scientists got together and said "Hey, let's define this value as being 1g - it mostly works most of the time".

Re:mass accelleration

[Invidious]

"One Gravity", that is, "One Gee" has NOTHING to do with the affect of gravity on an object, other than that its value is the downward acceleration that an object undergoes when it's at sea level on earth due to gravity. It is a measure of accelleration. Saying that an object is accellerating at one gee is saying that it's accellerating at 9.8 meters per second. It doesn't matter how close or how far away from any other objects it is.

Re:mass accelleration

[thomas.galvin]

Thus if an object has more mass, it feels more force.

True, but it also has more inertia, so the net effect is the same. Larger objects pull harder, but are harder to get moving. Smaller objects don't pull so hard, but are easier to get moving.

Re:mass accelleration

[Steve Franklin]

So why is this thing defined in terms of metric units when it's obviously not a metric unit itself? Certainly they wouldn't invent two (2) units with the same symbol, "g".

Since weight = mass x acceleration due to gravity, the metric unit of acceleration due to gravity would be given in terms of Newtons/Kg or m/s^2. 9.8 m/s^2, or 9.8 Newtons/Kg, is a physical constant. It is not a unit. It is NOT correct to speak of 1000g unless one is talking about mass. 1000 x the acceleration due to gravity at the earth's surface would be 9800 m/s^2, or 9800 Newtons/Kg. I.e., the aforementioned weapon is capable of producing an acceleration of 9800 m/s^2 or 9800 Newtons/Kg. It is NOT capable of producing "1000g" unless it's also a cookie machine and can produce 1000g of chocolate chip cookies.

The use of the plural term "Gs" to refer to multiples of the constant g is technobabble. Constants do not have plurals. This is just another example of the kind of lazy American usage that led to the abomination "Saudi," presumably some mythical city in Arabia, during the Gulf War.

Bad Q!

[global_diffusion]

Silly Q! The constant is simply there to make up for the units that we are using. You could pick units such that there was no need for G if you wanted.

Re:Bad Q!

[k98sven]

My personal favorite is in the god-awful "Moonraker":
(Q shows Bond an organic molecule)
Bond: It's the formula for a plant.

Uh. Ok. Plants are chemical compounds. Sure.

Re:777

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, unless you consider buying a motor/chassis and putting the tray from a dray on it ( I believe this was done in the UK very early last century), what you American's call a 'pickup truck' is an Australian Invention called the Utility, usually refered to as a 'Ute'. I think the first proddy ones were based on the FX Holden.

incoherent

[slashdot2.2sucks]

the statement "a force of 1000G" is completely incoherent.

there are three 'g' variables in gravitational theory, not one of them is a force

'g' lower case, vector: is the acceleration due to gravity on the surface of the earth

'G' uppercase, scalar: is the universal gravitational constant that is the proportionality constant in Newtons famous equation

'G' uppercase, tensor: is the sometimes used notation for the Einstein curvature tensor

Re:incoherent

[joto]

Yes, but the article did use 1000g, which is exactly what you asked for. Now, of course, if they had said (where g=9.81m/s^2) instead of (gravities, not grams), then maybe more people would understand what they were talking about. And if they wanted to let even more people understand, they could have said (where 1g equals the gravity of earth at sea level).

It is also quite common to use scalar numbers when direction is implied by context, so lowercase g is certainly not always a vector.

So who are you complaining about?

Re:incoherent

[Salsaman]

The use of 'G' as a measure of force is common in avionics. For example, you might say that during a certain manouvre, a pilot feels a force of 6G. This means that he will experience 6 times the force of the Earth's gravity at the surface.

I guess your point is correct that they should use (lower case) g, but it's clear enough when used in the right context what 'G' means.

Gravity Guns? Anyone heard of relativity?

[Anonymous Coward]

Accelerating a mass at 1000G won't vaporise it.
How fast are we accelerating (positive or negative) through the universe without even feeling it?

Accelerating a mass at 1000G relative to something it comes into contact with (including other parts of itself) might do the trick tho'.

Re:Gravity Guns? Anyone heard of relativity?

[sailor420]

How fast are we accelerating (positive or negative) through the universe without even feeling it?

We arent. There is a big difference between acceleration and velocity.

Re:Gravity Guns? Anyone heard of relativity?

[sstory]

We are. Since we are in the arm of a rotating galaxy, we are accelerating. Acceleration is a change in the velocity vector, not the speed scalar.

Photoshop is $100

[yerricde]

No need to spend $500 each on Photoshop and After Effects

Photoshop Elements for Windows is $100 if you leave out the advanced pre-press functionality, which is useless if you do no pre-press work.

GIMP can't do prepress because of patents in several jurisdictions on CMYK and Pantone.

"Formula for a plant"

[Anonymous Coward]

Bond: "It's the formula for a plant."

Uh. Ok. Plants are chemical compounds. Sure.

Along with the presence of chloroplasts, the presence of cell walls, made primarily of the chemical compound "cellulose", distinguishes the plant kingdom from the animal kingdom. So it could be said that in a way, the formula for cellulose is the formula for a plant. However, I haven't seen Moonraker (I started following James Bond when Pierce Brosnan took the role), so I wouldn't have been able to press pause and look up the formula in the encyclopedia.

-- Pinocchio

Intertek Fraud

[Frightened_Turtle]

The one thing not mentioned by the article is the fact that the reason Madison Priest didn't want anyone opening up his stuff was the fact that hidden inside the receiving computer chasis was a remote controlled VCR.

The only demonstrations to which there were actual witnesses were the demonstrations he gave in his home, or in a local hotel room where he had time to set up the fraud.

It should also be noted that when the scam was first revealed, Priest skipped town and left his wife holding the bag.

What the heck...

[Salsaman]

...is a 'passel' ? I looked it up on dict.org, but I couldn't find a definition.

Re:What the heck...

[alteran]

Passel -- a large quantity or number.

The American Heritage lists the words as "regional," which may be a polite way to call it slang. It doesn't say which "region," but it's probably American. I know it's used here in the Southeast.

Use big G

[Anonymous Coward]

"1,000g [1000 Gravities, not grams]"

Ok, then just use an upper-case G. Metric is case-sensitive, you appear not to know.

Thoughts

[ziggy_zero]

I'm pretty sure most people who use Red Hat for CAD use Maya - although bundling it with it's MM distro could pave the way for Blender to be used in commercial 3D modeling applications, like films, but the program will need a little work. Yeah, opening up the source could contribute to a free program being used to create film-quality special effects. That'd be nice.

Re:Whoa!! I own Boeing stock!!

[kweg]

Don't worry, if Boeing invents antigravity... :-)

Re:Any one with moderation points...?

[Anonymous Coward]

fuck you for offtoping me