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/sci/ - Science & Math

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5199446 No.5199446 [Reply] [Original]

What is gravity?
Is it possible to "generate" gravity?

>> No.5199469

That's the wrong question.

It's possible to simulate gravity by Centripetal force. If you are in space, in a circular hulled ship that is spinning, you will have gravity in a sense because your body is being pushed against the "floor" of the ship.

If you mean the actual 'force" of gravity, it is doubtful. Since nothing can be created nor destroyed, and gravity is theorized as a particle, you cannot just "generate" gravity particles. You can, however, isolate and possibly combine more particles of gravity to get a desired effect (increase or decrease in gravity in a specific location), but like all things you take energy to expend energy.

>> No.5199473

sit on your ass all day and eat greasy food. generate gravity like a boss

>> No.5199476

>>5199473

Or you can do this!

>> No.5199479

>>5199469
If you could hypothetically create a device that generated a one-directional gravity "beam", would it act as anti-gravity once you directed it at "real" gravity?

>> No.5199486
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5199486

>>5199446
>>5199479
physics troll thread? post your favorites

>> No.5199488

In general relativity, gravity and acceleration are the same thing.

>> No.5199495

>>5199488
>>5199486
hhhahhahaaha holy fuck my sides

these are great, keep posting

>> No.5199496

>>5199479

I dont think I have the knowledge to speculate on that sort of idea. Reason being, we are still trying to understand gravity as a particle even now. Without knowing it's properties and experimenting, it's hard to think about.

Say for example you choose a beam in a direction counter to the current pull of gravity. Do the particles collide, condensing gravity and making it denser, thereby increasing gravity when you thought it would give you weightlessness? Or would it push other particles in the beams direction, giving weightlessness?

It's kind of impossible to know unless we isolate and experiment

>> No.5199501

>>5199496
> trying to understand gravity as a particle even now. Without knowing it's properties
We know to look for a tensor (spin-2) gauge boson

>> No.5199502

>>5199501

That doesn't mean we understand it.

>> No.5200498

Picture a trampoline. Fat woman sits on trampoline, draws all the shit around her to her. Bam. Gravity. And you already generate (an insignificant amount of) gravity.

>> No.5200513

By using an isotope of element 116 it it possible to generate enough energy to create a gravity field around an area which can enable faster than light technology.

>> No.5200517
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5200517

>>5199486

>> No.5200525

um /sci/?

of course you can generate gravity. It's what masses do. Make a giant planet sized mass, and it generates gravity all around it.

you generate gravity with your mass too, just with minuscule effects that have no effects on anything.

>> No.5200567

>>5199496
One way gravity? Just pick a different frame of reference.

>> No.5200581

It's hard to say what gravity is. Newton says it's a force (whatever that may be). Einstein observed that slow mass is the same heavy mass, and thus showed that there is a one to one correspondence with curved space time and this so called force.
But those are models, and even worse, they're models on the large scale. If you look at it on the quantum level, each atom should collapse into itself. And at this moment we have only one model for quantum gravity. An untested model. So, to answer your questions: we don't know what gravity is, and we don't know how to generate it atleast until we can correctly describe quantum gravity.

>> No.5200612

>>5200581
Firstly, we know perfectly well what forces are, and secondly, there are multiple models for quantum gravity (string theory and loop quantum gravity being the most famous ones).

>> No.5200613
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5200613

>>5200517
I have one like that.

>> No.5200638

>>5200612
Then explain to me what a force is, and not in mathematical terms.

>> No.5200651

>>5200638
Particle interactions. See W and Z bosons in the SM for strong and weak force, photons for EM force.

>> No.5200664

>>5200651
Hmm, well, you're right. I remember that the strong force comes from a spatial symmetry between quarks, which is really elegant. It's a total mindfuck to try to imagine this, though.
But according to the classical view, we can't see this any other way but "magic."

>> No.5200670

>>5200664
What you are referring to is the fact that the particles in question are elements of a module on which the adjoint representation acts (or, in horrible physicists language, they 'are in the representation'...I have no idea why physicists have such a hard time discerning between a map and its image). In case of the strong force, the symmetry group is SU(3).

Also, I don't know why people insist on trying to imagine things in any other way than through mathematics. Even quantum mechanics 101 is fucked up trying to think about in any other way than "shit doesn't commute".

>> No.5200672

>>5199469
Under this idea, flashlights could not exist

>> No.5200678

>>5200670
I'm gonna do a few more mathcourses next semester; I don't wanna be a physicist who only knows the weird mathematical structures of physics, and not the correct and rigorous ones.

Well, last year I got into the philosophy of physics (I read "The sleepwalkers" by Koestler) and it all went downhill from there. Also the fact that we will never know what really goes on below ---because we can't measure it, ever--- bugs the hell out of me.
But it's getting better now, though. I can imagine complex numbers as an extension of the reals and imagine that nature does not only "use" the reals (or at all).

>> No.5200698

>>5200678
Although I am of course very biased, I'd say that's highly advisable.

Also, there's no reason to assume we will never know what goes on 'down there'. Arguments for this, from bad to better, are 1: we might figure out some way to massively increase our measurement capabilities, 2: we can measure stuff indirectly by comparing consequences at macroscopic scales, and 3: there simply is no constructive way to demonstrate that we can't, so it is not excluded.

>> No.5200738

>>5200698
This is very motivating. Thank you. I see that I fell into my own trap: I think we should never be biased, we should watch out for dogmas. I see now that thinking that way I actually made my own dogma.

As a last thing, to contribute to this thread:
I advise people to read a biography on Kepler. Not only did he have a (sad, but also) hilarious life and personality, he was the person to throw away the dogma of Plato's circles. He showed (implicitly) that the universe is not a clockwork. He wanted to describe planetary motion, and he just started calculating descriptions of orbits. He first tried circles, which didn't work. Then he tried eggshaped orbits, using ellipses to approximate it, and got something that could only imply that the orbit was an ellipse. He then looked at it, and thought "I can't do anything with this, let's try ellipses." He then went on, making several errors that canceled each other out in the end, and found that the earlier result also implied that orbits were ellipses.
Just thought I'd share these fun bits.