The Quest for Gravity Controll......

[peter]

.......Where fact meets Fiction.

In a very odd episode of Horizon screened a day or two ago [Project Greenglow; the Quest for Gravity Controll] an overview was given into the strange world of 'serious science's' attempts to get to grips with the problem of gravity - why it has no 'polarity' [ie why matter only ever attracts other matter and never repels it unless another force is involved], and can it be manipulated in the way that say, the emf can. It seems that in the 90's both BAE and NASSA were very interested in finding new methods of providing propulsion for space vehicles [though BAE's first interest was in the use of gravity waves to detect 'stealth' aircraft] and funded significant work to investigate the potential of new theoretical advances in our understanding of the nature of this fundamental force.

In both cases they [purpotedly] dropped all work in the field, and the program had two rather embittered scientists, one from each institution, both of whom claimed the plug had been pulled on some very promising potential advances - mainly for financial reasons. Both establishments provided rather terse statements saying they were 'no longer working in that field' but later in the program both did however contribute with short segments on work that they were carrying out within the area of new propulsive technologies. Oddly at the very end even The British Department of Defence allowed the previous head scientist from BAE's 'Project Greenglow' into the defence establishment at Porton Down in order to see work they were doing that just might bring the ideas back to life.

There were no major breakthroughs [that we were made party to - but then, would we be?] made by either BAE or NASSA, but recent ideas put forward by a Russian Scientist - and soon to be put to the test at CERN - might just point a way forward. This guy - Dragon Someboby or another - goes deep into the quantum realm for an explanation as to what is going on in respect of why it is that the Universe, instead of colapsing in on itself as one would expect under the influence of gravity, seems to be expanding and all the matter in it accelerating away from itself. Whence, is the question, this acceleration - where does it come from....and the traditional answer is 'dark-energy' [which no-one knows a thing about - but you have to stick it in there to make the sums work]. What happens, says Dragon, is that as the form of space boils and bubbles with matter/anti-matter pairs flashing into existance and then immediately anhialating each other, for the briefest of an instant the matter particle is attracted to the matter of suns, planets etcand this produces a polarity alighnment [like fillings sitting on top a magnet] of the particle pairs where all the matter is directed inward and the anti-matter outward. This produces an anti-matter gravitational force 'envelope' around each sun, planet, moon etc - and it is this that is driving the acceleration of matter away from itself in the expanding Universe.

It's a good enough idea for CERN to have allocated him time to test the theory, and they are at present trying firstly to create enough stable anti-hydrogen to carry out a test to see if it does indeed 'fall upward'. Enter the guys at Porton down who took our 'all pissed of' guy from BAE in to a empty hanger [nothing for the russkies to see there!] and showed him a sreeen with a stable piece of anti-matter that seemed to be repulsed by just the presence of a human body coming close to it. The cagy defence guy even went so far as to say that there might be life in the old Project Greenglow yet!

All through the program you got the feeling that there was much more you weren't being told than what you were, and given the obvious defence applications of the work that's hardly suprising, but one wonders just exactly how far these guys have really got along the path toward controlling gravity. Find this and see it if you can, it's weird stuff presented by a highly respected popular science program.

[Postcript; Some of the other 'techs' they showed were quite interesting. One guy said that 'negative matter' [wtf is that?] could be used to create an effective 'warp drive'. Another was convinced that his 'n-drive' [or was it 'm'] was the way forward. These guys were the 'nutty proffessors' on the edges of the field, running the very real risk of total ostracisation by the fields they had achieved eminance in, by simply placing too much belief in an idea that might not hold water. Brave guys. Respect.]

[Hashi Lebwohl]

The "center of gravity" for any given object is an attractor, with the size of the basin of attraction being based on the amount of mass present. Of course, this doesn't answer why mass is an attractor, only describing that it is one.

The fact that gravity has infinite reach means that the attractive force we know as gravity is somehow linked to one of those higher dimensions (we have 11 of them, remember?) where "distance" as we know it has no meaning. I once read someone's speculation that "gravity" is actually the "spillover" of that force from that dimension into the four we experience. *shrug*

There was a fringe science site I saw some years ago that talked about people's experiments into trying to induce acceleration vectors, which would directly lead to the ability to accelerate an object by manipulating local space-time. There were no conclusive results at the time, of course, but if such a thing were possible then interstellar travel becomes a possibility. It might still take 100 years to reach nearby systems but at least it would be possible.

[peter]

The NASSA guy was talking about ion drives, I believe that was what he called them from memory, that while slow in respect of the acceleration they could produce, could keep producing it consistently until very high speeds were achieved. This tech seems to be already available, and from what the program was saying new, non fuel based propulsion systems are not so very far away. Damn, do you ever get the feeling we may just have missed the boat Hashi?

[Hashi Lebwohl]

We already have a remote, long-range satellite running on an ion drive; at this time it has become the object with the highest velocity we have ever launched in our collective space-based history. It isn't the farthest away but it definitely is the fastest...and is still getting faster, even as I type this.

[peter]

What would be the limit of that Hasi. Could it in theory just keep accelerating up to light speed, or even in deep space would there be a terminal velocity as a result of friction. Will friction ultimately burn these vehicles up even in the absence of an atmosphere?

[Hashi Lebwohl]

Even with a constant acceleration, eventually the object will run into the law of diminishing returns where it isn't getting any noticeably faster. Besides, if your satellite is moving along at .2c if it runs in to a small rock it could be completely destroyed.

[Fist and Faith]

The rock might be in pretty bad shape too.

[peter]

Presumably the faster your ship is going, the less massive the object it can afford to run into. Apparently being hit by a bullet is equivalent to the force of being run into by an elephant going at elephant speed [f=mxa and all that]. At speeds of up near c surely even running into a dust mote would tear your craft to pieces unless you were properly shielded?

[wayfriend]

Just get some cavorite and you'll all be good to go.

[Fist and Faith]

Or corbomite.

[peter]

Or Corbynite! (Little UK in joke there ).

[Fist and Faith]

Mine was Trek.