Slashdot Mirror
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.""
Maybe there is something to all of those internet kooks afterall? This is hardly the first time I've seen talk of creating (or nullifying) gravity by spinning superconductors around, sometimes with electromagnetic charge and sometimes without.
The problem usually comes when someone wants to see the experiment replicated. For some reason the effect always seems to go away when other people are looking. Or worse, other people notice things like "you've got a lot of evaporating liquid nitrogen flying past your mass sensor, isn't that going to affect the readings?
Still, effective anti-grav in my lifetime would be quite a breakthough.
I read the internet for the articles.
It seems to me if you can take some manner of electricity, and produce some manner of a magnetic feild, and generate some amount of gravity... then doesn't it seem that there should follow a mathmatical equation that, sort of, unifies these observations in a grand and quantifiable way?
Why is this called Artificial Gravity? They seem to have found a way to stimulate the generation of a gravitational field. But its still gravity. A radio transmitter stimulates the creation of an electric field (and the associated magnetic field) but we don't call that artificial electricity.
Nevertheless, this is a very interesting discovery. Anyone have any other links?
You're kidding, right? Mass is independent of gravity. That's second-grade knowledge.
I believe you misunderstood the parent of your post. If I understand that post correctly, he's referring to Newton's gravitational law. It states that the gravitational force between Object A and Object B is directly proportional to the product of the two masses.
So, in other words, your parent was asking: If we assume that the distance between two objects remains constant, as does the gravitational constant of the universe, shouldn't there be an increase in the mass of one of the objects to account for the gravitational force increasing?
Or, put more simply: Did the spinning superconductor experience an increase in mass (somehow?), or was it the universal gravitational constant that was (somehow?) affected by the spinning superconductor?
Artificial gravity is not the real exitement around this experiment. The really important part is, you know, experimental evidence that may provide insight into the unification of relativity and quantum mechanics.
... or we could talk about some artificial gravity field thingy that will make crackpots and sci-fi fans excited. Well, it looks pretty obvious. Defer to the crackpots."
I wonder what the editors were thinking:
"Well, we can talk about the really exciting implications of this experiment that will be relevant to respectable physics
How long before some crackpot on the threads says: "Well, if you just spin the disk backward, logically it should follow that the artificial gravity will turn into anti-gravity! I have made the greatest scientific discovery since Einstein! Wait... I better be quiet about this before the oil companies and government agencies try to sabotage me, just like they did with my zero-point energy machine and my perpetual engine (I'm still working on getting the lubricant working correctly...)"
Nice job, guys.
My guess is that it was a perspective trick - like you sometimes get in funhouses, you know? The slope was steeper than it looked, and your brain interpreted the conflicting information from your eyes and your inner ear as a horizontal force.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Neither. Apparently, you've been asleep since the beginning of the 20th century: Newton is WRONG. Gravity is the bending of space, and it just happens that the main thing that bends space is mass - but not the only thing.
(But this device, apparently, isn't entirely consistent with General Relativity either. Nor does it generate gravity - it apparently creates a force that relates to gravity in the same way magnetism relates to electricity. I can't understand that.)
Maybe the faster than light speed drive accelerates all mass that is connected to it equally. This would make more sense in my mind because the entire starship moves instead of the incredible forces that would be exerted on the structure itself from the engine nacelles.
Well even if it could predict where it would be fired that doesn't mean it can tell how strong or weak the impact will be.
If it over corrects it would damage the crew inside, who knows, maybe it is correcting and the shaking and such isn't as bad as it would be otherwise.
I'm not so sure about that. Consider the following analogies:
If you can create light, it should be easy to create antilight, i.e., darkness.
If you can create sound, it should be easy to create antisound, i.e., silence.
If you can create heat, it should be easy to creat antiheat, i.e., cold.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
All good points.
Now, would you care to comment on the likelihood that the scientists conducting this research thought of these same factors, and accounted for them in their experimental methodology?
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Don't you think that's a bit trivial? The impact of the ability to manipulate gravity is enormous. Your comment reminds me of the guy who posted that he was looking forward to teleportation reducing his commute time.
Exactly.
Cold is defined as the absence of heat. There is no such thing as measuring how "cold" something is - heat is the intrinsic property, cold is just a lack of it.
Same thing with light.
A lack of gravity does not imply anti-gravity. It just means that spacetime is flat in that particular region (and of course we know it's never truly flat, there's always some deviation). Anti-gravity would be akin to emitting gravitons with a "negative gravitational charge" - it's possible in theory and that's about it as far as we've discovered.
# fuser -v
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I you were building superstructures in space, yes. If you are trying to build something the size of the space shuttle, or even the ISS, spinning is not going to work. Besides, space travel is not the only place that artificial gravity would be useful. How about gyms. How about if being able to create artificial gravity leads to advances in deflecting or shielding of gravity. What if it leads to figuring out a way to make a repulsion as opposed to the normal attraction.
While spinning is still probably a good idea for space superstructures, there are lots of uses for artificial gravity, and even on a spinning space superstructure, you might want to even out the gravity close to the center with that at the rim.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Remember, every generally accepted scientific theory today started life as a fringe theory that the general consensus held was wrong. This is why groups like the NSA, DARPA, CIA etc continue to investigate "stupid" stuff like teleportation, mind control, hyperspace, gravity control, etc. 99% is probably BS, but there's a good bet that some fringe theory or phenomenon today will evolve into generally accepted wisdom within the next 50 years. If you're not looking at the edges of science you won't see where its reach is expanding.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.