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Artificial gravity 2.0

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Shaq19941 Since: Apr, 2018
#26: May 20th 2018 at 10:02:41 PM

As far as dark matter goes, it may allow us to control gravity, we don't know enough about it. And containing it isn't a problem, artificial gravity fields can be used.

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#27: May 21st 2018 at 4:05:48 AM

You're just throwing things out there randomly without investigating or understanding. That's not good science. For example, the expansion or contraction of spacetime that may allow us to build a warp field has nothing to do with creating artificial gravity, although it could be an application of that technology. And you just said we could use artificial gravity to control dark matter to make artificial gravity. Huh?

note 

Again, I want to point out that I'm not trying to squash anyone's dreams for an epic sci-fi story. Write what interests you and don't sweat the realism as long as you're consistent about what you do put in.

edited 21st May '18 7:24:50 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Belisaurius Since: Feb, 2010
#28: May 21st 2018 at 6:34:33 AM

Honestly, I'm wondering why artificial gravity is all that important. 1 gravity of acceleration is plenty for cruising speed and humans can take up to 40 gs with the right orientation.

As the Expanse showed, a lack of inertial dampening can add to the drama.

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#29: May 21st 2018 at 7:35:11 AM

I believe it's obsessed over because it's a really convenient way to avoid having to show actors in freefall on the sets of sci-fi shows.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
archonspeaks Since: Jun, 2013
#30: May 21st 2018 at 10:42:06 AM

It’s sort of a Required Secondary Superpower for a lot of sci-fi, especially visual mediums. Of course, the massive technological and scientific implications are usually overlooked.

edited 21st May '18 10:42:29 AM by archonspeaks

They should have sent a poet.
TacticalFox88 from USA Since: Nov, 2010 Relationship Status: Dating the Doctor
#31: May 21st 2018 at 10:58:33 AM

I wonder if the Square Cube Law for robotics could be a thing of the past with artificial gravity. I could definitely see someone making Gundams for shits and giggles if it were possible.

New Survey coming this weekend!
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#32: May 21st 2018 at 11:11:17 AM

Well, speaking extremely hypothetically, if you could alter the local force of gravity around a vehicle or structure, you could ignore some, but not all, of the factors associated with the square-cube law, such as the material strength required for the object to support its own weight, the force applied to the ground when it moves, and the energy required to move it. You couldn't do much about heat dissipation, though... you could try using an artificial black hole as a heat sink, perhaps, if you could somehow fix the Hawking radiation problem.

It's also worth pointing out that, if you have the technology to create localized gravitational fields to help a giant mech move around, you can do so many other, more efficient/effective things that it's kind of absurd. It'd be like installing a terabit fiber optic trunk line and using it to transmit the sound of someone tapping out a message in Morse code.

You could recreate the Unicron transformation scene from Transformers: The Movie, I suppose.

edited 21st May '18 11:16:30 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Shaq19941 Since: Apr, 2018
#33: May 21st 2018 at 9:21:11 PM

I'm not just throwing things around. Artificial gravity has to do with controlling gravity akin to electromagnetism.

We just don't know how to do it.

archonspeaks Since: Jun, 2013
#34: May 21st 2018 at 9:32:28 PM

[up] The attempts to unify gravity and electromagnetism or create artificial gravity with electromagnets have all failed. That’s firmly in the realm of pseudoscience these days.

They should have sent a poet.
Belisaurius Since: Feb, 2010
#35: May 22nd 2018 at 5:42:31 AM

I suppose you could put so much electromagnetic energy into an object that it would increase in mass.

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#36: May 22nd 2018 at 5:43:53 AM

Sure, but that'd go into the "making gravity by pumping a bunch of energy into a small space" thing I mentioned several times earlier, which is inefficient to say the least.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Belisaurius Since: Feb, 2010
#37: May 22nd 2018 at 5:50:30 AM

[up]Agreed. Between being unable to accelerate due to having the mass of a planet and causing tides on the planets you want to visit, synthetic gravity just has too many implications.

I'll stick with inertia based g-forces and tractor beam floorboards thankyouverymuch.

DeMarquis (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#38: May 22nd 2018 at 6:13:03 AM

What gravity is exactly is one of the great mysteries of the universe. We have very precise mathematical models that describe how it behaves, but not much of a clue as to what causes it to behave that way. Bits of matter are attracted to each other—it's lucky for us, because that is what allows structure to exist, but we don't know why it does that.

I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#39: May 22nd 2018 at 8:25:12 AM

The new Lost in Space (2018) series has an interesting use of artificial gravity (in a rather spoilerrific part of the show, but I'll skip the details), and one that my scientific mind found slightly inconsistent. It's not clear where the gravity field begins and ends, because a character walking in apparent full gravity on the deck of a ship seems to instantly transition to weightlessness when they step outside it. Or maybe the transition is gradual, but it's not clearly shown.

I can accept that with suspension of disbelief, but I'm a little surprised that they don't immediately lose their lunch, other than that the plot has no time for it. Come to think of it, none of the characters display space- or motion-sickness, so that's probably in the qualification regimen.

edited 22nd May '18 8:40:33 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Shaq19941 Since: Apr, 2018
#40: May 28th 2018 at 6:51:46 PM

We Don't know how to control gravity.

It doesn't violate conservation laws. Because you're interacting with fields (gravity fields) which carry energy and momentum.

Some applications of artificial gravity i can think of. Fusion power plants. Coilguns. Particle beam weapons. Kinetic barriers Etc

archonspeaks Since: Jun, 2013
#41: May 28th 2018 at 7:09:46 PM

Artificial gravity pretty much inherently violates conservation of energy, but that's the whole trick.

Once you have it you can pretty much do anything, the possibilities are endless.

They should have sent a poet.
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#42: May 28th 2018 at 8:06:52 PM

[up] and [up][up]

Let's put it in a slightly different way. The science fiction concept of artificial gravity violates conservation laws as we currently understand them, but there may be a mechanism for it that does not, which we have yet to discover.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Belisaurius Since: Feb, 2010
#43: May 29th 2018 at 6:54:27 AM

I imagine that turning on an artificial gravity device would actually produce power and you'd actually need power to turn it off. At least, that's my interpretation of the universe.

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#44: May 29th 2018 at 7:02:05 AM

There's no experimental evidence to support that claim, obviously, but if you consider our current models of the universe, artificial gravity would probably require tapping into some source of energy that we can't currently see or access, such as whatever's wrapped up in the extra dimensions of string theory, or in the vacuum energy of quantum fields, or some such.

The thing is that, by our current understanding, successfully tapping such an energy source might be catastrophic, as there'd be no way to turn it off. A vacuum energy collapse would literally destroy everything that exists, reformatting the universe like a hard drive. The wave would expand at the speed of light in a sphere from the origin point with a corresponding release of energy that would be so unimaginable that it might as well be a second Big Bang.

Now, the whole universe wouldn't be destroyed by this, only the parts that are causally bound to the point of origin. The parts that are or will be beyond the cosmic event horizon would continue rushing away, never knowing that someone accidentally pushed the Big Red Button... not that it'd be any comfort to the now-annihilated civilization that did it.

edited 29th May '18 7:04:51 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Belisaurius Since: Feb, 2010
#45: May 29th 2018 at 7:13:23 AM

Frankly, any mucking around with the fundamental rules of the universe could case a similar disaster. I mean, there were some theories that the LHC could create a black hole that would destroy us all. Completely unfounded hypothesis, it turns out, but mucking with the fabric of reality isn't something you should do casually.

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#46: May 29th 2018 at 7:17:22 AM

The concern over the LHC was rather clumsily reported by the media. Scientists weren't worried that they'd accidentally cause a vacuum energy collapse, but rather that the concentration of energy from particle collisions in such a tiny space might be enough to cross the Schwartzchild radius and generate nanoscopic black holes. At least, that's how I remember it.

Such a black hole would evaporate almost instantaneously, so consuming the Earth is right out.

Edit: Honestly, I feel that the anthropic principle rules out vacuum energy collapse as a thing that can happen in our universe, or at least happen easily. If it is possible at all without a googol years passing, and it's something that a sufficiently advanced species can potentially trigger with their fumblings, then it ought to have happened in our universe. If it happened, then there'd be a wave of absolute destruction hurtling towards us at the speed of light — or more than one, probably.

If even one such event happened in the causal past of our observable universe going back to the Big Bang, we'd be gone: erased like a DRAM chip when the power turns off.

edited 29th May '18 12:29:04 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
KnightofLsama Since: Sep, 2010
#47: May 29th 2018 at 5:32:07 PM

Some applications of artificial gravity i can think of. Fusion power plants. Coilguns. Particle beam weapons. Kinetic barriers Etc

Wouldn't be coilguns. Coilgun refers to a specific configuration of the electromagnetic induction system, in this case wrapped around the barrel in a coiled spiral configuration as opposed to a linear configuration as in a railgun.

And while if you could control/manipulate gravity, you could use it to accelerate a projectile, depending on the exact tech you wouldn't need to have it in the same configuration as an electromagnetic induction system. Though it would have the advantage of not relying on ferro-magnetic materials.

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#48: Jun 4th 2018 at 9:44:06 AM

If you can control gravity, why use it to accelerate projectiles when you could use it to accelerate your target... like, say, into a star or planet? Or rip them apart with gravitational gradients, or form an event horizon around them, etc...

Think about dissuading unfriendly visitors by flinging them out of your star system at half the speed of light...

edited 4th Jun '18 9:44:55 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
SeptimusHeap from Switzerland (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Mu
#49: Jun 4th 2018 at 10:14:04 AM

Of course, the law of conservation of mass - in the context of general relativity it implies among others that spacetime is continuous and cannot "rip", for example - would still apply.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Corvidae It's a bird. from Somewhere Else Since: Nov, 2014 Relationship Status: Non-Canon
It's a bird.
#50: Jun 4th 2018 at 10:33:24 AM

[up][up] All the possible uses of gravity manipulation won't necessarily be equally easy or practical in every situation though. We have a pretty good grasp on electromagnetism, but that doesn't mean that modern armies fry their enemies with artificial lightning storms, for example.

Still a great "screw depression" song even after seven years.

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