Gravity Modification

[muff528 3]

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My understanding of orbit is that one object is constantly falling toward another object which has a greater mass, but it is that momentum of the orbiting object which allows it to remain on its curved path. Provided there is sufficient gravitational pull and momentum to establish an equilibrium. Otherwise objects would either collide or one of them would careen off into space.

basically what you said; an orbit is due to a combination of the greater gravity of one object and the velocity of the other.

Anyway, Newton aside, i guess we can't really talk about gravity and its curvature of space without a discussion on black holes.

Both objects are orbiting a common center of gravity, the location of which is determined by the masses (and distance apart) of the objects.

[lurch 0]

Well what I was thinking was a real-world exploit of any such gravity attenuation effect would obviously be far more evolved than the crude tabletop demo I described here. Could probably be done with a liquid now that I think about it. And yeah, "free energy" wasn't really the term I was looking for. I'd bet if such an effect actually worked, any energy you could get out of one end would match (or be just under, due to losses) the energy it took to do the effect in the first place. Intuitively though, something just doesn't look right about the idea, it strikes me as something like a lever with nearly unlimited leverage. A cheat, where for the energy cost of a given field the return is whatever the amount of force gravity puts on your mass minus whatever weight was left in the side in the field.

Hell. For that matter it would work with a simple wheel. Put field under one side of the wheel. Wheel becomes unbalanced and "falls" by rotating in direction that is NOT in the field. As mass of wheel comes up underneath and into field, its weight vanishes, allowing heavy side to just keep pulling that side down.
Wouldn't it just keep accelerating to the limits of friction and air resistance?

Every which way I look at it, it almost immediately appears to break one or more unbreakable laws. The Inertial Thruster all over again.

Bummer.

Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

[champu 1]

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...NOT in the field... ...and into field, its weight vanishes

Well there's yer problem.

You can't just "be in a field" and then wander along and suddenly "not be in a field" without passing through a boundry of some sort and incurring the effects of whatever is going on at that boundry.

[skipbelt 0]

larger masses exert the same gravitational force as smaller masses on each other. orbit is achieved when orbital velocity laterally exceeds gravitational pull downwards . so you fly as far as you fall !

[billvon 2,435]

>Hell. For that matter it would work with a simple wheel. Put field under one
>side of the wheel. Wheel becomes unbalanced and "falls" by rotating in
>direction that is NOT in the field.

You could do the same thing you described with a magnetic or electrical field - and indeed there have been any number of gadgets that claim to exploit that imbalance to produce power. Still, none work.

[skipbelt 0]

the closest thing to a perpetual motion man made machine is an artificial satellite !

[champu 1]

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larger masses exert the same gravitational force as smaller masses on each other. orbit is achieved when orbital velocity laterally exceeds gravitational pull downwards . so you fly as far as you fall !

For me, and this is a personal preference, I like to avoid concepts such as "falling" or "flying" when it comes to describing orbits. They're so... terrestrial.

[champu 1]

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>Hell. For that matter it would work with a simple wheel. Put field under one
>side of the wheel. Wheel becomes unbalanced and "falls" by rotating in
>direction that is NOT in the field.

You could do the same thing you described with a magnetic or electrical field - and indeed there have been any number of gadgets that claim to exploit that imbalance to produce power. Still, none work.

But if you imagine such a device in terms of gravity the implications become pretty funny (in, as one might imagine, a nerdy sort of way.)

In order to for the motion to continue you'd need to be sinking Higgs bosons (or whatever) out of the system. Surrounding matter would start getting heavier.

[Low-Mao 0]

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I think it will come to fruition right about the time I buy a car powered by a cold fusion reactor.

If you got the cash, I got ur cure....

[Misternatural 0]

>If you got the cash, I got ur cure....
Cash for Kush?

The cure is science.

That's the great thing about these revolutionary ideas, they can be considered myths or holy grails until the next breakthrough or series thereof leading to a proof.

or completely disproved, in which case we are stuck here mostly fuckin' around with combustion and fission reactions, plus the associated geopolitical resource struggles.

speaking of combustion, maybe I should just start smoking pot again :)

Add; Consider how cool a gravity modification tunnel would be, silent- although there would be no wind to "fly" in.

Beware of the collateralizing and monetization of your desires.
D S #3.1415

[Belgian_Draft 0]

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I'd like to be able to selectively increase gravity. Think of the implications to high performance automobiles! Being able to increase traction by a significant amount with only a very small increase in rolling resistance and no increase in aero drag.

It used to be that drivers believed cars could not
go faster than 150 on a flat track because the tires
would break traction in the corners.

Among other things, banked tracks solved that problem.

So did a larger radius of turns in the track.
It was once thought no car could accelerate at greater than 1G without aero help.

HAMMER:
Originally employed as a weapon of war, the hammer nowadays is used as a
kind of divining rod to locate the most expensive parts adjacent the
object we are trying to hit.

[lurch 0]

Not sure we're on same page here...
Yeah there have been plenty of attempts at gravity powered motion by lunatic fringe types, but none work because there is no actual imbalance. Can't extract energy from the existence of gravity because theres no way to set up a gradient. Gravity on all parts of device is the same.
If you actually had a field though, one that just turned down the gavity on whatever was above it, then you could set up a gradient and have more gravity applied to one side of a wheel than the other, same way ordinary motors use magnetism.
Am I wrong about this? If you could turn down gravity you could set up a situation where you get more energy from the descending mass than it takes to raise the mass on the shielded side.

Now that I think about it though it'd be the equivalent of a gravity steam engine, a really weak motor unless it had a buttload of mass.

Now what I'd REALLY like to see wouldbe inertial modification. You could do some neat tricks with that if you could just break that one law of physics since it would become possible to get near-unlimited accelerations of objects with near-zero energy input. I read a speculative scifi detective story about a guy committing a murder by a side effect of inertial modification nobody predicted.

Story goes guy has inertial cancelling prototype gadget, demonstrates it on a pool table. Kills rival with it... Takes a shot, cue ball hits ball sitting in the inertial cancelling field and struck ball vanishes with a small sonic boom.

Forensics eventually realizes the second ball, with all inertia briefly cancelled, instantly accelerated to beyond orbital speed, punching neat ball shaped hole in murder victim and was most likely on its way out of the solar system at that time.
-B

Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

[skipbelt 0]

if you could set up a tiny area of higher gravity an object close by would accelerate towards it until it centered on the gravitational anomaly then it would deccelerate the original object til it reachieved it's initial energy state !

[kallend 1,651]

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if you could set up a tiny area of higher gravity an object close by would accelerate towards it until it centered on the gravitational anomaly then it would deccelerate the original object til it reachieved it's initial energy state !

If the 2nd Law of thermodynamics could be repealed it would be possible to build a perpetual motion machine.

If my aunt had balls she'd be my uncle.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[champu 1]

Re-read my post #28.

It doesn't matter if you're talking about EM, strong force, weak force, or gravity. Just because there are things we understand about the other three forces that we don't about gravity doesn't make it's any more productive to have fantastic musing about it.

[skipbelt 0]

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if you could set up a tiny area of higher gravity an object close by would accelerate towards it until it centered on the gravitational anomaly then it would deccelerate the original object til it reachieved it's initial energy state !

If the 2nd Law of thermodynamics could be repealed it would be possible to build a perpetual motion machine.
If my aunt had balls she'd be my uncle.

perpetual motion systems exist , manmade ones as well ! i hope you take the bait and challenge me , 2nd law of thermodynamics notwithstanding !

[champu 1]

Satellites do NOT orbit perpetually.

Don't confuse "for a really long time" with "forever".

[Belgian_Draft 0]

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if you could set up a tiny area of higher gravity an object close by would accelerate towards it until it centered on the gravitational anomaly then it would deccelerate the original object til it reachieved it's initial energy state !

If the 2nd Law of thermodynamics could be repealed it would be possible to build a perpetual motion machine.

If my aunt had balls she'd be my uncle.

perpetual motion systems exist , manmade ones as well ! i hope you take the bait and challenge me , 2nd law of thermodynamics notwithstanding !

Betcha can't name even one.

HAMMER:
Originally employed as a weapon of war, the hammer nowadays is used as a
kind of divining rod to locate the most expensive parts adjacent the
object we are trying to hit.

[lurch 0]

Oh, well now I'm not sure I'd agree with that Champu, after all, fantastic musings about this neat new force we don't understand yet in the 1800's eventually led to highly evolved and useful toys based on manipulating that force, like the computer you typed that message on.
Electricity ring a bell?

Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

[juanesky 0]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KeBJZGSIa0

"According to some of the conservatives here, it sounds like it's fine to beat your wide - as long as she had it coming." -Billvon

[skyrider 0]

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KeBJZGSIa0

And I thought I had fun riding the flooded creek 3+ miles home when I was a kid, (on rainy days)...

[muff528 3]

Good thing they have those tires at the bottom. That ride would be so unsafe without them. Also, I'd like to send that girl a new burlap bag. Any ideas how to get it there?

[skyrider 0]

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Good thing they have those tires at the bottom. That ride would be so unsafe without them. Also, I'd like to send that girl a new burlap bag. Any ideas how to get it there?

Airmail...

They got a camera crew there....but couldn't get them proper brakes!

[billvon 2,435]

>Can't extract energy from the existence of gravity because theres no way
>to set up a gradient.

Sure there is; just go up. Gravity falls off (slowly) over miles. A large enough device could see a significant gradient.

But that doesn't matter. A gradient of any force (gravity, magnetism, charge attraction) won't give you energy, even with clever devices.

[muff528 3]

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>Can't extract energy from the existence of gravity because theres no way
>to set up a gradient.

Sure there is; just go up. Gravity falls off (slowly) over miles. A large enough device could see a significant gradient.

But that doesn't matter. A gradient of any force (gravity, magnetism, charge attraction) won't give you energy, even with clever devices.

Yeah, taking it to an extreme, a black hole's gravitational field can have a very large "gradient" across atomic distances.