First Steps Toward Artificial Gravity

CompaniaHill writes "Have scientists been able to artificially generate a gravitational field? Researchers at the European Space Agency believe so. "Small acceleration sensors placed at different locations close to the spinning superconductor, which has to be accelerated for the effect to be noticeable, recorded an acceleration field outside the superconductor that appears to be produced by gravitomagnetism. This experiment is the gravitational analogue of Faraday's electromagnetic induction experiment in 1831." The effect is very small, so don't expect to see it used in spacecraft any time soon. But the effect is still many times larger than the predictions of Einstein's theories. "If confirmed, this would be a major breakthrough," says [Austrian researcher Martin] Tajmar. "It opens up a new means of investigating general relativity and it consequences in the quantum world.""

Comments

Next thing you know

[ch-chuck]

some bottled water swilling, cell-phone fearing, earth hugging idiot will be complaining that it's not as good as *real* gravity, or worse, that AG causes some vague and unspecific health problems that only *they* can perceive and can never be reproduced in the lab and yet they'll have enough collective political pull to keep it an ongoing issue and complete waste of time in the public discourse.

Hmmmpf.

Intellectual figleaf

[amightywind]

From you [sic] reply you clearly have a bias against the ESA, which appears to be derived from their view on global warming.

Far from it. The Mars Express is a fine mission. They do good work and are getting better all the time. ESA is no worse than NASA when it comes to global warming. Both rely on spreading hysteria for funding.

You also don't mention that much of the research done by space agencies, including the ESA, is based on looking out at space. Cosmic background radiation, supernovas, etc... and observations of these phenomena have provided essential data for use in theoretical physics.

I know enough not to dismiss the factual dark matter/enery observations made in the last 10 years. These results are startling and *real*. It is the cranks trying to ride the coattails of the results that annoy me.

I very much doubt that theoretical physicists would be as dismissive as you based on the source.

I don't see any of them rushing to your defense.

PS. Anomalous is spelled with an "a", dimwit.

Since you dropped your drawers on every other point, I'll let you have the spelling flame to save face.