Fun With... Gravity Technology

[rhoenix]

There is much put about "natural consequences of progression" in many stories involving sci-fi. When a given piece of technology is introduced in a sci-fi universe, there is always discussion about what the related technology would become - the "reactionless drive technology becoming a very cheap planet-buster" is one such natural consequence that must be accounted for.

As some of my other posts in this and other forums may have suggested, I'm rather interested in how gravity technology can be used in a sci-fi setting. The purpose of this thread is to examine the ramifications, consequences, and natural progression of such technology.

So, without further ado, here's the scenario:

A scientist manages to create a working device which can alter the gravitational force affecting a given object or small area. This device can completely cancel the effects of gravity upon that given object or small area - moreover, it can also create artificial gravitational force acting upon that object or small area in a different direction, stably, for long periods of time, requiring only a steady flow of electricity.

If this technology (essentially, the idea that gravity can be influenced by electromagnetism) and consequential device were introduced, what would be the ramifications, consequences, and natural technological progression as you foresee it?

[Solauren]

Mass Driver Weapons for one

Put an Anti-gravity device on an object, launch it, and when it gets up to speed, turn gravity back on (or intensify it)

Gravity mines, anti-gravity prisons also come to mind

[darthbob88]

Isaac Asimov wrote a story in which an antigravity machine was created and found to be a "mass-negation" field more than anything else; when an object was put into the field, it lost all mass and gained all velocity, accelerating to the speed of light. One of the characters theorized that this would create a perpetual motion machine of the first(?) kind, where particles are injected, accelerate to c, and collide with other particles to produce UV light which can be converted into electricity. Free energy!

The crux of the story, though, was the application of this idea to macroscopic scale; when a large object is injected, it will accelerate to c and continue on its path at extreme speed, making a perfect mass-driver. As an example, a billiard ball was shot into the field, accelerated, and punched a neat billiard-ball-shaped hole through a man's heart, a window, and whatever else was in the way.

[RedImperator]

Gravity is a fundamental force that acts on absolutely everything, and interlocks with all the other forces (in ways we don't fully understand). You can't monkey around with it--or even have a universe where it is possible to monkey around with it--without breaking almost everything else.

[Darth Raptor]

Isaac Asimov wrote a story in which an antigravity machine was created and found to be a "mass-negation" field more than anything else; when an object was put into the field, it lost all mass and gained all velocity, accelerating to the speed of light. One of the characters theorized that this would create a perpetual motion machine of the first(?) kind, where particles are injected, accelerate to c, and collide with other particles to produce UV light which can be converted into electricity. Free energy!

That's a neat trick. You could even eliminate the "potential superweapon" problem (while losing the free energy generator) by making it so the device doesn't negate all mass. You could easily fly an aircraft carrier if it were suddenly lighter than air.

[Darth Wong]

The above machine sounds like it just annihilates matter into energy.

Mind you, a machine which automagically annihilates matter into energy would be a neat sci-fi plot device. Imagine the dilemma if your ship is low on fuel:

"Sir, we're not going to make it to the next star system."
"What can we spare?"
"Well, we already threw all the ballast into the reactor. Do you really want to throw in the cargo too?"
"We could throw the turret motors in there. They're worth less than the cargo."
"Great idea Cap, but what happens if we get in a firefight?"
"You re-discover religion."

[SirNitram]

I beleive I've run into a story which did that in the Age of Steam: The wooden ship began stripping itself to fuel the boiler.

[Hawkwings]

Silly first professor. He thought that the billiard ball would simply float up into the air. But he forgot to take into account the fact that the Earth was moving through space, and blah blah bolash.

That's how the story went, anyways.

I think I remember it breaking conservation of energy by having the field be a completely different universe, with different laws of physics. Except that things from our universe could travel into and out of it.

[Eulogy]

Couldn't a device that generates gravity be used to as a fancy training or climatization method? It could very slowly increase a person's gravity, thus his or her body would adapt to it.

[Darth Wong]

If all you want to do is generate gravity, you can just go to a carnival or amusement park:

[Eulogy]

Gravity Gyms. Now there's an idea.

What would the membership cost?

[Winston Blake]

Isaac Asimov wrote a story in which an antigravity machine was created and found to be a "mass-negation" field more than anything else; when an object was put into the field, it lost all mass and gained all velocity, accelerating to the speed of light. One of the characters theorized that this would create a perpetual motion machine of the first(?) kind, where particles are injected, accelerate to c, and collide with other particles to produce UV light which can be converted into electricity. Free energy!

That's a neat trick. You could even eliminate the "potential superweapon" problem (while losing the free energy generator) by making it so the device doesn't negate all mass. You could easily fly an aircraft carrier if it were suddenly lighter than air.

You don't lose the free energy generator. Negate some the mass of the right half of a wheel and gravity will turn it clockwise. Attach a generator and voila. Free energy is a natural consequence of screwing with gravity.

[rhoenix]

You don't lose the free energy generator. Negate some the mass of the right half of a wheel and gravity will turn it clockwise. Attach a generator and voila. Free energy is a natural consequence of screwing with gravity.

I would say for the purposes of this exercise, the electricity you'd get back from such a device as the above would be less than that which is required to power the device responsible for the effect in the first place.

[Mad]

I would say for the purposes of this exercise, the electricity you'd get back from such a device as the above would be less than that which is required to power the device responsible for the effect in the first place.

So spin the wheel faster.

Conservation of Energy will be violated unless the anti-gravity field is really just another force field pushing in the opposite direction. In that case, though, the gravity well isn't nullified, it's just canceled out by another force of equal magnitude in the opposite direction.

[Molyneux]

Isaac Asimov wrote a story in which an antigravity machine was created and found to be a "mass-negation" field more than anything else; when an object was put into the field, it lost all mass and gained all velocity, accelerating to the speed of light. One of the characters theorized that this would create a perpetual motion machine of the first(?) kind, where particles are injected, accelerate to c, and collide with other particles to produce UV light which can be converted into electricity. Free energy!

That's a neat trick. You could even eliminate the "potential superweapon" problem (while losing the free energy generator) by making it so the device doesn't negate all mass. You could easily fly an aircraft carrier if it were suddenly lighter than air.

You don't lose the free energy generator. Negate some the mass of the right half of a wheel and gravity will turn it clockwise. Attach a generator and voila. Free energy is a natural consequence of screwing with gravity.

It's really easy to use gravity to get free energy, even if you don't mess with the gravity itself - take two portals, place one above the other and drop a ball into the lower one. Voila, perpetual motion!

I think that the simplest and most enjoyable result of this hypotech would be truly three-dimensional houses - I've always wanted to have a bed on the ceiling.

[Arrow]

What sort of consequences would a straight up artificial gravity generator have, one intended to provide gravity in ships without having spinning sections and to provide inertia compensation?

[Elheru Aran]

I beleive I've run into a story which did that in the Age of Steam: The wooden ship began stripping itself to fuel the boiler.

Jules Verne, 'Around the World in 80 Days'. Phileas Fogg rents a ship; to make it go faster he literally purchases it from the captain, and orders them to start stripping it down to the hull and feeding the wood to the boiler. They get to London just in time. Wasn't really a case of them running out of fuel (though that did happen), but more them just not having sufficient fuel to go fast.

[rhoenix]

Conservation of Energy will be violated unless the anti-gravity field is really just another force field pushing in the opposite direction. In that case, though, the gravity well isn't nullified, it's just canceled out by another force of equal magnitude in the opposite direction.

Amusingly enough, this is what I was trying to get across in the OP, though I don't think I communicated it very well. Thank you, Mad.

[RedImperator]

What sort of consequences would a straight up artificial gravity generator have, one intended to provide gravity in ships without having spinning sections and to provide inertia compensation?

Perpetual motion machine. Set one up on Earth, crank it up to two gees, and mount a spinning wheel so one half of it experiences two gees and the other experiences one. Free energy until the bearings wear out.

[Beowulf]

What sort of consequences would a straight up artificial gravity generator have, one intended to provide gravity in ships without having spinning sections and to provide inertia compensation?

Perpetual motion machine. Set one up on Earth, crank it up to two gees, and mount a spinning wheel so one half of it experiences two gees and the other experiences one. Free energy until the bearings wear out.

The obvious solution is that the power required to generate the field is proportional to the total energy gained by objects in the field, instead of being some fixed amount.

[Lord of the Abyss]

The above machine sounds like it just annihilates matter into energy.

Mind you, a machine which automagically annihilates matter into energy would be a neat sci-fi plot device. Imagine the dilemma if your ship is low on fuel:

"Sir, we're not going to make it to the next star system."
"What can we spare?"
"Well, we already threw all the ballast into the reactor. Do you really want to throw in the cargo too?"
"We could throw the turret motors in there. They're worth less than the cargo."
"Great idea Cap, but what happens if we get in a firefight?"
"You re-discover religion."

Amusingly, that's sort of how Schlock Mercenary teraports work; they tranform part of the transported mass to energy to power the transfer.

One thing I thought of immediately is a neutral particle accelerator; scientists have wanted one for a while.

[Vendetta]

I think that the simplest and most enjoyable result of this hypotech would be truly three-dimensional houses - I've always wanted to have a bed on the ceiling.

Until it breaks down.

Only Forward has a device like this, the main character has all his stuff on one wall, until the batteries run out and it all ends up in a heap he can't be arsed to sort out.

[Sikon]

Couldn't a device that generates gravity be used to as a fancy training or climatization method? It could very slowly increase a person's gravity, thus his or her body would adapt to it.

Yes, though pseudogravity with a rotating structure can have the same effect too, as Darth Wong implied. For a moderate increase in effective gravity, the effects would be less than the following but somewhat analogous:

There was the hyper-G work done on chickens, for example, by Arthur Hamilton ("Milt") Smith in the 1970s. Milt Smith was a gravity specialist at the University of California at Davis who wanted to find out what would happen to humans if they lived in greater-than-normal G-forces. Naturally, he experimented on animals, and he decided that the animal that most closely resembled man for this specific purpose was the chicken.

Chickens, after all, had a posture similar to man's: they walked upright on two legs, they had two non-load-bearing limbs (the wings), and so on. Anyway, Milt Smith and his assistants took a flock of chickens -- hundreds of them, in fact -- and put them into the two eighteen-foot-long centrifuges in the university's Chronic Acceleration Research Laboratory, as the place was called.

They spun those chickens up to two-and-a-half Gs and let them stay there for a good while. In fact, they left them spinning like that day and night, for three to six months or more at a time. The hens went around and around, they clucked and they cackled and they laid their eggs, and as far as those chickens were concerned that was what ordinary life was like: a steady pull of two-and-a-half Gs. Some of those chickens spent the larger portion of their lifetimes in that goddamn accelerator.

Well, it was easy to predict what would happen. Their bones would get stronger and their muscles would get bigger--because they had all that extra gravity to work against. A total of twenty-three generations of hens was spun around like this and the same thing happened every time. When the accelerator was turned off, out walked . . . GREAT MAMBO CHICKEN!

These chronically accelerated fowl were paragons of brute strength and endurance. They'd lost excess body fat, their hearts were pumping out greater-than-normal volumes of blood, and their extensor muscles were bigger than ever. In consequence of all this, the high-G chickens had developed a three-fold increase in their ability to do work, as measured by wingbeating exercises and treadmill tests.

Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition by Ed Regis, ISBN 0-201-56751-2