Naked Science Forum
On the Lighter Side => New Theories => Topic started by: Geezer on 28/10/2010 07:30:54
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I've heard some people opine that, because of the similarities between electromagnetic and gravitational fields, there is no reason why we could not build a transformer that operates on gravitational, rather than electromagnetic, principles.
Is this a load of boll credible theory?
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its called gravitomagnetism
gravity probe b was supposed to detect the frame dragging
dont know what ever became of it
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Hydroelectricity transfers gravitational energy into electricity. Nuclear reactors transfer nuclear energy into electricity. Both type of energies is transferred into kinetic energy before being transferred into electricity though... Kinetic energy is similar to gravitational energy.
If the photon Theory is true, it is theoretically possible to transfer matter into light, send it somewhere else and re-materialize it. Beam me up Scotty!!!
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Hydroelectricity transfers gravitational energy into electricity. Nuclear reactors transfer nuclear energy into electricity. Both type of energies is transferred into kinetic energy before being transferred into electricity though... Kinetic energy is similar to gravitational energy.
If the photon Theory is true, it is theoretically possible to transfer matter into light, send it somewhere else and re-materialize it. Beam me up Scotty!!!
This was not about an energy conversion device. It was an analog of an electric transformer operating on gravity rather than electricity.
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I don't see how it could be possible because of the wave particle duality...
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I don't know. The big difference between electromagnetism and gravity is that the former can both push and pull, while the latter can only pull. I don't know if this would preclude a transformer, but if I had to guess, I say it would be impossible to build one...
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This was where I saw it. See, I wasn't making it up [:D] (this time)
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=going-with-the-flow
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A frame dragging immune hose, coiled around a spinning black hole, filled with liquid. This device generates hydrostatic pressure, the longer the hose the bigger the pressure.
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What would a "gravity transformer" actually do?
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What would a "gravity transformer" actually do?
Well, transform gravity of course. What else would it do? Really BC....
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An electrical transformer can up a voltage at the expense of the current.
If we transformed gravity from one strength to another what would we lose.
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An electrical transformer can up a voltage at the expense of the current.
If we transformed gravity from one strength to another what would we lose.
Beats me! I was sort of wondering about that myself [;D]
Presumably there would have to be analogs of current and voltage.
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A frame dragging immune hose, coiled around a spinning black hole, filled with liquid. This device generates hydrostatic pressure, the longer the hose the bigger the pressure.
No frame dragging immune hose needed actually. Just attach the hose with wires to ... somehing.
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In analogy to current and voltage, it could be acceleration vs gravity... An accelerator transformer could generate a gravitational field... By the generation of black holes...
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An electrical transformer can up a voltage at the expense of the current.
If we transformed gravity from one strength to another what would we lose.
The gravitational transformer example in the Scientific American article was the earth and a satellite. I think the “Ohm’s Triangle” analogy would look like this:
Power = Gravity
Voltage =Potential Energy of the satellite if it were allowed to free fall, this is a function of distance between the objects and their respective masses (time is lurking in there somewhere… as always).
Current = Orbital Velocity.
We can trade Potential Energy for Orbital Velocity but the gravity or power in the system is constant.
The trick with building a gravitational transformer might be to throw the secondary coil at the primary and miss…
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Thanks Lee!
That helps. Mind you, the whole idea of the thing sounds distinctly dodgy if you ask me [;D]
Sci-Am was probably a bit short on material.
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I think the really interesting part is what happens when we crank up the mass flow (current). Obviously a standard orbit - as described in the article - would be broken and our satellite would fly out into space which says to us that mass can be made to flowing along a path that allows us to defy - or at least strongly disagree with the direction of - gravity… I think…
So the task then might be to design a path for the mass flow that allows that mass to break orbit without actually circling the globe. The only thing I’ve come up with so far is like a slinky curled into a doughnut that spins like a top. The mass moves down toward the earth on the outside of the doughnut and then returns to the top of the doughnut as it curls around the inside. All the while the doughnut spins about it's empty center. This way the mass is more likely to be found moving down toward the the primary mass in our transformer than it is to be found on its way back up away from the primary mass at any given moment. The idea is we should be able to mathematically "uncoil" the path and it would follow the same curve described by a typical orbit. It does seem a bit like an M.C. Escher picture though...
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I don't see how the spinning will make a difference with the slinky experiment.
At any one time, half the mass of the slinky will be upward bound, and half the mass of the slinky will be downward bound.
Obviously looking at the donut, the density is higher in the middle of the donut than on the outside... and the spinning would give some sort of a space filling effect, but wouldn't do much to affect the mass movement.
You could probably do a similar experiment with a set of rings around the donut rather than a "slinky".
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My question has been whether antimatter (anti-protons, positrons, and anti-neutrons) would exhibit the same gravitational pull as normal matter.
I think there have been some research to this affect, but the difficulty of synthesizing & storing stable, neutral anti-hydrogen and anti-deuterium makes the experiment very difficult. Perhaps one could measure gravitational pull on ions too.
There would be 3 likely choices....
1) Same gravitational pull
2) Repulsing
3) No gravitational interaction.
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How about a tube around a black hole and let frame dragging make a ball inside spin around? Heh, and then a coil.. and then ..
We would need to anchor the tube of course.
but that will be Geezers job.
It's his idea.
See it?
The light :)
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I don't see how the spinning will make a difference with the slinky experiment.
At any one time, half the mass of the slinky will be upward bound, and half the mass of the slinky will be downward bound.
Obviously looking at the donut, the density is higher in the middle of the donut than on the outside... and the spinning would give some sort of a space filling effect, but wouldn't do much to affect the mass movement.
You could probably do a similar experiment with a set of rings around the donut rather than a "slinky".
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I totally agree with the amount of mass moving upward vs downward being equal under normal circumstances, that's what the Escher comment was about. "http://lukehimself.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/escher-waterfall-medium.jpg" (My wife doesn't think I'm funny either). And I think you're right, one long coil vs many rings probably wouldn't matter.
I suggested spinning the coil (or set of rings) to try and create a system wherein we might have an opportunity to manipulate the frame dragging effect. In a natural system, frame dragging would occur and make sure the inertia of the mass flow in opposing directions at any one moment would completely cancel out, as you suggest. But since - in this case - we are controlling the mass flow at every point along the path, complete cancellation can perhaps be avoided. The total inertia of all mass flowing downward as we approach the exact outer most edge or apex of the doughnut's cross section would be greater than that of the matter flowing upward along the inner most apex at any one moment. Obviously this inequality would require energy input to maintain.
I think if the spin were fast enough, say, ludicrous speed... ish, we might see a slight but measurable inequality there and the energy transformation that would otherwise result in frame dragging within the flow path might in this case cause some other trade off. Like maybe an increase in the overall gravitational potential, meaning the entire mass flow path might shift upward along the earth's natural frame dragging curve to account for the missing frame drag within our flow path.
Or if Geezer anchors the flow path as yor_on suggests we might instead rip a hole in space time, instantaneously being sent back to November 5, 1955 where they don't have the internet and I would be forced to do my actual job...
Anyway, I hope that sounded sciencey.
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Many thanks everyone (excluding Yoron) for the many helpful suggestions. I must confess that I am still the teeniest bit confused about what a person might actually do with a gravity transformer if, for example, one was to fall out of a packet of corn flakes of a morning.
Would I be correct in assuming that I could use it to multiply the effect of gravity by some factor? If so, presumably I could multiply gravity by 0.00001 or other values, which might be quite entertaining.
However, I'm concerned that transformers (at least the ones that I'm familiar with) only seem to work on alternating current. Would this mean that a gravity transformer would only operate on alternating gravity? If so, I imagine that might present a few problems.
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Obviously the ability to control gravity would have significant repercussions everywhere, especially with space travel, but also in building and construction, and other fields.
We could levitate objects, and create things like the Star Wars speeders (although we can make hovercraft now). It would certainly aid in the launching and landing of space ships.
We could create artificial gravity fields independent of acceleration and rotation of space craft.
Once I tried to calculate what speed we could accelerate a space ship around a circular accelerator, say the size of Jupiter, and limited the acceleration one would expose the human body to about 100G's, both in centrifugal/centripetal acceleration as well as forward acceleration. The results were disappointing both in time required for the acceleration as well as the total speed if the goal was to get to a high fraction of the speed of light. Artificial ways to counteract gravity would potentially expand these limits.
And, if gravity links the universe in ways we don't currently comprehend, then it may be the key to generating some kind of warped space travel.
I suppose the question would be what the cost of such an antigravity device would be. If it was extremely large, cumbersome, and energy intensive, then it would only be useful in the most extreme of conditions.
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However, I'm concerned that transformers (at least the ones that I'm familiar with) only seem to work on alternating current. Would this mean that a gravity transformer would only operate on alternating gravity? If so, I imagine that might present a few problems.
Alternating gravity does sound tough but alternating mass flow - say a compressed (non-flammable) gas in a doughnut shaped pressure vessel, adorned internally with a series of electro-active baffles (Beifeld-Brown capacitors) along the inner walls and a rotating magnetic field going "round the outside!"- sounds almost doable, even on a budget. It's also starting to sound a bit dangery.
As for usage, while I love flying saucers, ray guns and boobs as much as the next nerd, I wouldn't want to see that much energy wasted to accomplish what could - in most cases - just as easily be done with solar powered dirigibles. I think the most believable application might be as a sensor. We might be able to build a small, stable transformer that would allow us to detect gravitational anomalies (as we fly over the land and sea in a solar powered dirigible). The same way we use a metal detector to find coins on the beach gravity transformers might allow us to identify various geological formations underground and greatly reduce both the economic and environmental cost of resource mining.
Ooh hey look I mentioned environmental cost reduction; I think that makes us eligible for a government grant! Who's in?
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We might be able to build a small, stable transformer that would allow us to detect gravitational anomalies (as we fly over the land and sea in a solar powered dirigible).
Eweeooo! That sounds interesting. Send me the blueprints and I'll patent it. I'll patent it for you.
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Don't we already have gravitational field sensors?
The simplest gravity sensor I can think of is just hanging a weight on a spring, or comparing the wight on a spring to a mass/mass balance.
The problem with loading it on blimp is that gravity and air density will affect how the blimp flies.
There are already good maps of Earth's gravitational field.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_of_Earth
(https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2F7%2F78%2FGRACE_globe_animation.gif&hash=8f04ef6736bdd6e2b9c09a5b951e2f51)
It isn't too surprising that you can pick out the Andes, the Amazon, and the Rockies.
Heck if I know how these maps are being made, but they are done with satellites.
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Lovely, It's me waving over there :)
See me?
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Awh, wrong page :(