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.""
How about creating foam metals in a low gravity field?
meh
Its one small step for man, one slightly more difficult giant leap for mankind.
but a "gravitomagnetic one", which is a field that moving objects with "gravitational charge" (i.e., anything that produces gravitational force) make. it acts to repel or attract other gravitational charges. Still a huge discovery if true, could lead to inventions like (non-electromagnetic) "artificial gravity" or "force fields" or "levitation fields"
Because it seems to me that the only way they could be certain it was gravitational influence and not some other phenomenon is if they also saw an apparent increase in the mass of the system.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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 opens up a new means of investigating general relativity and it consequences in the quantum world."
but i'm running scared
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
-Oscar Wilde
This sounds like the work of Yevgeny Podkletnov He claimed to have countered the effects of gravity in an experiment at the Tampere University of Technology in Finland in 1992 using a spinning super conducting ceramic ring.
Yeah. I'm finding this very hard to believe. But it's the European Space Agency...
If true, this would be pretty much the biggest breakthrough since Einstein.
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?
"IF" this is a real first step to artificial gravity (big if), then this is the natural progression to warp drive. Artificial Gravity - Gravity Shielding - Anti Gravity - Continuum Distortion - Warp Drive. My own scale.
You haven't been keeping up on your Trek manuals, have you? The Inertial Dampening System predicts the adjustments it has to make when the command to jump to warp is issued. With weapons impacts, those are not predicted. The system can only REACT, therefore you get the shaking and jolting...
You're messin' with my Zen Thing, man.....
They won't be able to leap as far with it turned on though...
"The weirdest thing about a mind, is that every answer that you find, is the basis of a brand new cliche" -
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.
but we don't call that artificial electricity.
Obviously that's because if they let on that it was artificial, elitist snobs would demand the real thing.
Like that time I got slapped for giving that lady artifical respiration..
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Have you watched any Hollywood movies lately?
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
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.
Hi, i found the paper at the Los Almos pre-print archive.
http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0603033
Actually, i think i believe the experiment, but i don't
think i believe the interpretion, as the article and
the above paper state, this effect is 10^30 times stronger
than the gravitation force you'd expect from too small
chunks of matter. I think they've discovered a new force
all together.
The tachyon reverse polarity quantum flux adds a degree of unpredictability to the energy output, dumbass. Though the heizenburg compensator is at full pelt, you aren't going to get the compensatory power fluctuation to work perfectly.
Any energineer worth his brains would recognize that nanites would provide this kind of appropriate, precise energy output readout, but of course, deployment of such self-aware entities increases chances of a artificial intelligence takeover, which would suck.
Slashdot had an article on a "hyperdrive" paper which is based upon Heim Theory. Heim theory postulates EM-gravity coupling via the gravito-photon, and the experiment the Heim researchers recommended to produce gravito-photons, and thus produce gravitational effects, sounds similar to what this article is describing.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
Please excuse me if I'm asking something stupid, but does this relate with the Heim theory? I recently a very interesting paper about its possible use in space propulsion, but I can't tell if this article is about the same thing, not being much of a physicist. :)
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
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.
Questions I'd like to see explained:
It states that the acceleration is 100 millionths that of Earth's gravity. How was that measured? Against what constant?
What was the effect on nearby matter placed in the field?
If the type of matter was capable of it, was the matter polarized (possible indication that it's a electromagnetic field).
And most importantly, what happens to radio waves as you fire them across the gravitational field? Cassini-Hyugen's experiment demonstrated that waves propagating at C will behave according to GR (spacetime bending) when shot across gravity fields. This behavior is different from electromagnetic influences, so it seems like a great validation test.
This is fantastic news and I hope it turns out to be a valid gravitational effect. Studying this phenomenon could open up new doors in physics.
Give us more details! I'm curious!
What you're asking is not stupid, but where you're asking it might be. It's highly doubtful that anyone here on Slashdot knows anything more about Heim theory than what the Wikipedia tells us. It's obscure and mostly understood by German speaking physics doctorates. (I challenge you small handful of physics experts on Slashdot who might have actually read his math and understood it to prove me wrong.) Fortunately, Germany is part of the ESA.
However, from what I've read on "teh intarweb" from laymen speculators about Heim theory, his theory does supposedly predict that a rotating magnetic field would have a gravitational effect.
Another physicist, Dröscher, has taken his theory further to say that in a similar setup -- a rotating ring above a superconducting coil -- could theoretically lift a 150-ton spaceship with a magnetic field of "only" 25 Tesla. He also claims that this might allow "hyperspace" travel where the speed of light changes, so I -- in my layman's knowledge of physics -- put Dröscher in the crank science box. You can read more about it in this New Scientist article. Take it with a good-sized chunk of rock salt.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
If true, this would be pretty much the biggest breakthrough since Einstein.
And what a breakthrough he was! I don't recall who invented him, but man, they don't build jews like that anymore...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
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.