Scientists create gravity

[Asheran Mojomaster]

Found this on digg. Very exciting.

http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/scientis ... 10282.html

"Scientists funded by the European Space Agency have measured the gravitational equivalent of a magnetic field for the first time in a laboratory. Under certain special conditions the effect is much larger than expected from general relativity and could help physicists to make a significant step towards the long-sought-after quantum theory of gravity.

Just as a moving electrical charge creates a magnetic field, so a moving mass generates a gravitomagnetic field. According to Einstein's Theory of General Relativity, the effect is virtually negligible. However, Martin Tajmar, ARC Seibersdorf Research GmbH, Austria; Clovis de Matos, ESA-HQ, Paris; and colleagues have measured the effect in a laboratory.

Their experiment involves a ring of superconducting material rotating up to 6 500 times a minute. Superconductors are special materials that lose all electrical resistance at a certain temperature. Spinning superconductors produce a weak magnetic field, the so-called London moment. The new experiment tests a conjecture by Tajmar and de Matos that explains the difference between high-precision mass measurements of Cooper-pairs (the current carriers in superconductors) and their prediction via quantum theory. They have discovered that this anomaly could be explained by the appearance of a gravitomagnetic field in the spinning superconductor (This effect has been named the Gravitomagnetic London Moment by analogy with its magnetic counterpart).

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.

It demonstrates that a superconductive gyroscope is capable of generating a powerful gravitomagnetic field, and is therefore the gravitational counterpart of the magnetic coil. Depending on further confirmation, this effect could form the basis for a new technological domain, which would have numerous applications in space and other high-tech sectors" says de Matos. Although just 100 millionths of the acceleration due to the Earth’s gravitational field, the measured field is a surprising one hundred million trillion times larger than Einstein’s General Relativity predicts. Initially, the researchers were reluctant to believe their own results.

"We ran more than 250 experiments, improved the facility over 3 years and discussed the validity of the results for 8 months before making this announcement. Now we are confident about the measurement," says Tajmar, who performed the experiments and hopes that other physicists will conduct their own versions of the experiment in order to verify the findings and rule out a facility induced effect.

In parallel to the experimental evaluation of their conjecture, Tajmar and de Matos also looked for a more refined theoretical model of the Gravitomagnetic London Moment. They took their inspiration from superconductivity. The electromagnetic properties of superconductors are explained in quantum theory by assuming that force-carrying particles, known as photons, gain mass. By allowing force-carrying gravitational particles, known as the gravitons, to become heavier, they found that the unexpectedly large gravitomagnetic force could be modelled.

"If confirmed, this would be a major breakthrough," says Tajmar, "it opens up a new means of investigating general relativity and it consequences in the quantum world."

The results were presented at a one-day conference at ESA's European Space and Technology Research Centre (ESTEC), in the Netherlands, 21 March 2006. Two papers detailing the work are now being considered for publication. The papers can be accessed on-line at the Los Alamos pre-print server using the references: gr-qc/0603033 and gr-qc/0603032.

From European Space Agency"

[Midnyte_Ragebringer]

Bullshit!

God created man, who then became scientists, who then created gravity. Therefore, God created gravity.

[Kilmoll the Sexy]

I guess that is one retarded way to look at it.

[Asheran Mojomaster]

"Although just 100 millionths of the acceleration due to the Earth’s gravitational field, the measured field is a surprising one hundred million trillion times larger than Einstein’s General Relativity predicts."

Thats the part that got me. One hundred million trillion times larger than Einstein predicted...I think this will one day be the way for us to travel out of our solar system. If we could produce a large enough gravitational field in front of a spacecraft wouldn't it allow for it to accelerate faster and faster, maybe even past the speed of light?

[Canelek]

Very cool! Always nice to see the big brains make findings.

[Nick]

"Although just 100 millionths of the acceleration due to the Earth’s gravitational field, the measured field is a surprising one hundred million trillion times larger than Einstein’s General Relativity predicts."

Thats the part that got me. One hundred million trillion times larger than Einstein predicted...I think this will one day be the way for us to travel out of our solar system. If we could produce a large enough gravitational field in front of a spacecraft wouldn't it allow for it to accelerate faster and faster, maybe even past the speed of light?

You can't go faster than the speed of light (in theory).

[cadalano]

You can't go faster than the speed of light (in theory).

Thanks for that, spock

in theory, you can. in theory, you cant. depends on what you are reading.

If we could produce a large enough gravitational field in front of a spacecraft wouldn't it allow for it to accelerate faster and faster, maybe even past the speed of light?

that would be no different than any other form of propulsion, if it worked. it would violate conservation of momentum though i think. i mean by the same logic we can currently just put an electromagnet in front of a spaceship to propel it, no?

[Nick]

Thanks for that, spock

No problem dickhead.

[Acies]

In theory, you cannot and survive. It is because to accelerate to light speed, your mass would be multiplied by infinity. I doubt your calcium frame supporting your meat could withstand the pressure of itself increasing endlessly.

Edit: Endless, instantly

[cadalano]

uhhh what kind of pussy ass calcium frame do you have?

[Winnow]

You can't go faster than the speed of light (in theory).

That was before they discovered ludicrous speed.

[Acies]

uhhh what kind of pussy ass calcium frame do you have?

My skeletal structure is pwned by physics

[cadalano]

anyway, can you explain more about how i can endlessly increase my meat?

[masteen]

A drive that can accelerate beyond 10 G's is pointless without a way to compensate and keep the pilots from blacking out or being gibbed. If they can expand this technology, we'd get both in one convenient package.

Without even touching on FTL travel, a drive like this might be able compensate for the increasing mass problem as one approaches C. Turning a flight to Alpha Centauri from a multi-century journey to a relatively short 10 year round-trip.

This is true science fiction shit here. Anyone else read books from Larry Niven's Known Space? Gravity planer HOOOO!

[Boogahz]

well, IF they had a drive capable, then maybe they could focus on handling the g's!

[Acies]

anyway, can you explain more about how i can endlessly increase my meat?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light

Faster-Than-Light travel or communication is prohibited by Einstein's theory of relativity. According to Einstein's theory of special relativity, what we measure as the speed of light in a vacuum is actually the fundamental physical constant c. This means that all observers, regardless of their relative velocity, will always measure zero-mass particles such as photons traveling at c in a vacuum. This result means that measurements of time and velocity in different frames are no longer related simply by constant shifts, but are instead related by Poincaré transformations. These transformations have important implications:

Matter becomes more massive as it accelerates, and at the speed of light, an object would have infinite mass.
To accelerate an object of non-zero rest mass to c would require infinite time with any finite acceleration, or infinite acceleration for a finite amount of time.
Either way, such acceleration requires infinite energy. Going beyond the speed of light in a homogeneous space would hence require more than infinite energy, which is not a sensible notion.
Observers with relative motion will disagree which occurs first of any two events that are separated by a space-like interval. In other words, any travel that is faster-than-light in any inertial frame of reference will be traveling backwards in time in any other, equally valid, frames of reference.

That is the jist of it sir.

[Hesten]

anyway, can you explain more about how i can endlessly increase my meat?

You just email that girl who wanted panpals, she knows.

[Neziroth]

If we could produce a large enough gravitational field in front of a spacecraft wouldn't it allow for it to accelerate faster and faster, maybe even past the speed of light?

That's an interesting idea, heh. No air friction would allow a constant unlimited acceleration, wouldn't it? Still, how would you make a gravity field that travelled with the space ship?

And wouldn't it be dangerous creating gravity in a zero gravity environment? You'd pull all sorts of shit right at yourself.

[Somali]

I'm gonna go with, not very likely creating a projectable gravity field that could "hover" a constant distance away from the object but still affect the object generating the field.
I do agree that it would solve all manner of other issues we currently have regarding space travel. Zero grav isn't good for the body for long periods of time. If we could sustain minimal grav, we could lengthen the time it is considered "safe" to be away from the planet and have longer duration trips. I wonder how large of a device they require to generate the field though.

[Asheran Mojomaster]

I don't know, just hoping for something we discover to allow us to go that fast. I don't see how it could be infinite acceleration to reach the speed of light. Its really really really fast, but its measurable. If you could find a way to accelerate something at a constant speed for as long as you needed it would eventually reach that speed and exceed it, right?

[Drinsic Darkwood]

If you could find a way to accelerate something at a constant speed for as long as you needed it would eventually reach that speed and exceed it, right?

Even so (and as others have said), I think the infinite mass issue poses a bit of a problem. I'll preface this by saying I am no physicist and have not studied physics since high school, but I would assume we would eventually implode/collapse in ourselves as we approach "infinite mass". Also, supposing an object reached the speed of light and acquired "infinite mass", would that not fuck all sorts of shit up in the universe with regards to galaxies/solar systems/planets/moons both near and far?

[Asheran Mojomaster]

If you could find a way to accelerate something at a constant speed for as long as you needed it would eventually reach that speed and exceed it, right?

Even so (and as others have said), I think the infinite mass issue poses a bit of a problem. I'll preface this by saying I am no physicist and have not studied physics since high school, but I would assume we would eventually implode/collapse in ourselves as we approach "infinite mass". Also, supposing an object reached the speed of light and acquired "infinite mass", would that not fuck all sorts of shit up in the universe with regards to galaxies/solar systems/planets/moons both near and far?

I have trouble believing that something would approach infinite mass once it reaches the speed of light. Light particles themselves do have a mass, even if it is very small, and if any object with mass is suppose to approach infinity shouldn't light be infinitely heavy instead of barely having any weight at all?

[Drinsic Darkwood]

Well, maybe the theory has been revised since then, but I was always taught that a photon has zero mass.

[Truant]

If you could find a way to accelerate something at a constant speed for as long as you needed it would eventually reach that speed and exceed it, right?

Even so (and as others have said), I think the infinite mass issue poses a bit of a problem. I'll preface this by saying I am no physicist and have not studied physics since high school, but I would assume we would eventually implode/collapse in ourselves as we approach "infinite mass". Also, supposing an object reached the speed of light and acquired "infinite mass", would that not fuck all sorts of shit up in the universe with regards to galaxies/solar systems/planets/moons both near and far?

I have trouble believing that something would approach infinite mass once it reaches the speed of light. Light particles themselves do have a mass, even if it is very small, and if any object with mass is suppose to approach infinity shouldn't light be infinitely heavy instead of barely having any weight at all?

No. Light does not have mass.

[Fash]

Light is massless and that is precisely why it can travel at c... We gain mass as we go faster, it's a vicious cycle of requiring more energy to continue going faster... only get gain more mass and require even more energy. In theory, to achieve light speed, it would take all of the energy in the universe combined.

Artificial gravity would be awesome to have on a space ship, though!

[Kaldaur]

Perhaps if we found a way to fool the universe into thinking we didn't have any mass to begin with.
I know it sounds silly, and I don't honestly have a clue how we'd go about doing that, but we're all looking for ways to give us more speed. What if we found a way to convince the galaxy that we were particles of light, or, we were able to create a "massless zone" that allowed us to travel at "c"? We have these fields of artificial gravity, where we increase the gravity in an area that was a vacuum before. What if we could do the opposite in regards to mass?
I'm not a scientist, I'm just a fantasy/sci-fi writer, but the idea seems interesting to me.

[Somali]

Hmm. I'd have to read back up on that. I always thought light had a mass as well. Said mass was minute, but it was the reason why focused light could impact objects. IE using a magnifying glass to burn an ant. Its possible that in this case we are focusing solar radiation, and not what we are referring to as "light" in this sense. This may be a poor example as we may be magnifying solar radiation rather that what we are referring to as "light" in the context of the discussion.

[Somali]

I should have waited a minute to post I suppose.
from Wikipedia:
Light pushes on objects in its way, just as the wind would do. This pressure is most easily explainable in particle theory: photons hit and transfer their momentum. Light pressure can cause asteroids to spin faster,[2] acting on their irregular shapes as on the vanes of a windmill.

In order to transfer momentum. Some degree of mass would be required.

[Fash]

Does light have mass?

The short answer is "no", but it is a qualified "no" because there are odd ways of interpreting the question which could justify the answer "yes".

Light is composed of photons, so we could ask if the photon has mass. The answer is then definitely "no": the photon is a massless particle. According to theory it has energy and momentum but no mass, and this is confirmed by experiment to within strict limits. Even before it was known that light is composed of photons, it was known that light carries momentum and will exert pressure on a surface. This is not evidence that it has mass since momentum can exist without mass.

two good links on the subject:

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/R ... _mass.html
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/P ... nMass.html

[Somali]

Interesting reads both of them. But I do not believe they conclude that light has no mass.

We find that light can contribute the the mass of an object my reflecting it off of mirrors in a container. I believe there may be a law regarding conservation of mass. Granted "Conservation of mass" could be equally incorrect but it could also be the more accurate of the two.

In the second article. Part of the justification of light having no mass was performed view substitution of assumed like terms. For this to be true, we have to assume that Einstein's theory of relativity was spot on, as well as classical electromagnetic theory. I believe Einstein himself stated that E=mc^2 was not perfect. I'll see if I can dig up the quote somewhere.

[Somali]

Found it.. sorta...

Einstein's Doubts
Einstein himself at various times had expressed doubts about the edifice of modern physics that he had helped to create— witness the remarks that follow. Perhaps his most serious expression of doubt came in a 1954 letter, the year before he died, to his friend Michel Besso: "I consider it quite possible that physics cannot be based on the field concept, i.e. on continuous structures. In that case, nothing remains of my entire castle in the air, gravitation theory included, and of the rest of modern physics."13 Biographer Abraham Pais hastens to excuse this slip from contemporary certainty about relativity theory, claiming that virtually all physicists think that this self-assessment at the end of Einstein's life was "unreasonably harsh." But just a few years earlier (1948), in an introduction to a popularized book about relativity, Einstein was also circumspect about physics, in a more general sense: ". . .the growth of our factual knowledge, together with the striving for a unified theoretical conception comprising all empirical data, has led to the present situation which is characterized— notwithstanding all successes— by an uncertainty concerning the choice of basic theoretical concepts."14

from http://www.infinite-energy.com/iemagazi ... stein.html
Feel free to read or dismiss the remainder of the article. I was merely looking for the quote.

Edit: yay 200 posts... lol