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Ask Ethan: Is antigravity even possible?
Big Think ^ | November 08, 2024 | Ethan Siegel

Posted on 11/21/2024 1:13:49 PM PST by Red Badger

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To: Red Badger

I don’t have a clue about any of this but I wonder why any created force can’t be countered. Or created.


21 posted on 11/21/2024 2:09:15 PM PST by TalBlack (Time to use the Law and the Power. Good luck Mr. President.)
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To: Red Badger

22 posted on 11/21/2024 2:14:54 PM PST by Magnum44 (...against all enemies, foreign and domestic... )
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To: algore
back in the the 60s I remember thinking we were in the golden era and everything had been invented.

In the 1800s there was a movement to close the patent office since everything that could be invented, had been.

23 posted on 11/21/2024 2:17:21 PM PST by TangoLimaSierra (⭐⭐To the Left, The Truth is Right Wing Violence⭐⭐)
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To: All

If only there was some planet we could exploit.

24 posted on 11/21/2024 2:19:42 PM PST by BipolarBob (Our prodigal Haitian son has returned!! Prepare the fatted cat.)
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To: Responsibility2nd

No, it pushes. Down.


25 posted on 11/21/2024 2:21:53 PM PST by Sirius Lee (Trump/Vance 2024 or GFpu)
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To: dpetty121263

“I am not sure Mankind can avoid destroying itself, more than likely not.“

Well we sat and watched as unseen figures stole an election and installed a senile illegitimate and a puppet who is presently trying to piss off the Russians as a way to strike back at his nemesis. So yeah, I’m with you. Seems more likely than not.


26 posted on 11/21/2024 2:23:13 PM PST by TalBlack (Time to use the Law and the Power. Good luck Mr. President.)
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To: PIF

“Today, Maxwell is little known”

He is hardly little known. Every student of physics, at any level beond high school, knows about the 4 Maxwell equations.


27 posted on 11/21/2024 2:38:40 PM PST by pelican001
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To: Red Badger

Eric Weinstein posited recently that string theory is fake and being used to distract the physics world from researching this exact stuff.


28 posted on 11/21/2024 2:38:49 PM PST by struggle
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To: pelican001

Every student of physics, at any level beond high school, knows about the 4 Maxwell equations.

But those are not his, but Heaviside’s. The other 196 are unknown.


29 posted on 11/21/2024 2:40:10 PM PST by PIF (They came for me and mine ... now its your turn)
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To: Red Badger

The problem with “anti-gravity” is that it’s not really about you or me or anybody else... it’s about the Earth (or whatever large celestial body that’s pulling you toward its center.

If your mass were to dramatically increase, that would only increase the gravitational attraction between you and earth. If the standard equation holds (no reason to think otherwise), you only overcome Earth’s gravity in 2 ways:
> your own mass becomes zero
> you provide a sustainable thrust away from the center of the earth sufficient to match or overcome the force of gravity.

That ‘anti-gravity thrust’ would generally vary with height since the force of gravity will vary, depending on your proximity to the earth’s center. So technically, anyone on top of Everest could jump higher than they can on the shores of the Dead Sea... not that anyone’s measured that difference (it would be a very very tiny difference).

But nothing is gonna simply cancel out gravity... the gravitational force needs to be countered, and that only comes via something that provides its own upward force... a plane, a rocket, a leap (which clearly doesn’t last very long), etc.


30 posted on 11/21/2024 2:44:53 PM PST by alancarp (George Orwell was an optimist.)
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To: Red Badger

Anti-gravity? Sure, we’ve got some of that. Right over in aisle 12, next to the magnetic monopoles. Can’t miss it.


31 posted on 11/21/2024 2:56:36 PM PST by Moltke (Reasoning with a liberal is like watering a rock in the hope to grow a building.)
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To: PIF

I am assuming you are talking about Faraday.


32 posted on 11/21/2024 3:09:37 PM PST by wbarmy (Trying to do better.)
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To: wbarmy

He’s talking about Oliver Heaviside who reduced/rewrote 20 quaternion equations into the 4 vector calculus equations all classical E&M students know and love. Same underlying equations, more compact notation. He didn’t ‘throw away’ anything.


33 posted on 11/21/2024 3:19:19 PM PST by SpaceBar
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To: Red Badger

Is it ‘gravity’ or just bent space time?


34 posted on 11/21/2024 3:29:29 PM PST by Track9
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To: TangoLimaSierra

“Everything that can be invented has been invented” - attributed to Charles Holland Duell, Commissioner of Patents in the US Patent Office, 1899.

Note that inventions are the creation of something entirely new, while science is discovery - the laws of nature were already there, just formerly unknown, to be discovered.


35 posted on 11/21/2024 3:32:09 PM PST by Moltke (Reasoning with a liberal is like watering a rock in the hope to grow a building.)
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To: SpaceBar

Yeah, I know that quaternion equations deal with movement in three dimensional space, but shoot me in the head if I was ever asked to actually solve one.


36 posted on 11/21/2024 3:47:43 PM PST by wbarmy (Trying to do better.)
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To: wbarmy

Oliver Heaviside.


37 posted on 11/21/2024 3:49:58 PM PST by PIF (They came for me and mine ... now its your turn)
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To: Red Badger
Just expressing my simple-minded thoughts on this.

I believe that gravity and time are intimately related.

Time-dilation occurs when traveliing near the speed of light beause of the propulsion force required to achieve the near light-speed velocity. The Gs observed in the acceleration are the same Gs exerted by gravity.

In my simple-minded opinion, if time-travel is possible then anti-gravity is possible, and vice-versa.


38 posted on 11/21/2024 4:05:30 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum (The worst thing about censorship is █████ ██ ████ ████ ████ █ ███████ ████. FJB.)
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To: Red Badger

Hmmm...
It is really a geometric problem and the real question is: Can we turn space-time inside out?


39 posted on 11/21/2024 4:11:08 PM PST by SuperLuminal
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To: Red Badger

But of course it is.

One problem: We are somebody’s ant farm.

And if Earth is some type of cosmic oasis, I’m pretty sure that by now they solved the crossbreeding problem.

I really don’t think anti-gravity will matter (it’s the reason I opted to not have children).

Enjoy life; our fate is not our own (except for what we choose).


40 posted on 11/21/2024 7:03:20 PM PST by logi_cal869 (-cynicus the "concern troll" a/o 10/03/2018 /!i!! &@$%&*(@ -)
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