Why Don't We Have Anti-Gravity Devices Yet?

[dgoodpasture2005]

then why don't we have some "anti-gravity" device by now...?! No one has ever given me a clear definition of gravity. Yeah it's a force.. that makes things stick to it... what about intricacies?! What's the true properties of gravity? If we really understood it, we'd be able to get off this planet without using combustable rocket propulsion, and why is every attempt at it laughed at, skorned, and debunked? How will this ever achieve any advancements in physics or technology?

 

[Pengwuino]

Well for one, I don't think physicists understand gravity as much as other things. Two... why do you think there is an anti-gravity? Just because we understand something doesn't mean we can do whatever we want with it.

 

[matthyaouw]

We understand pretty well how volcanoes work. That doesn't mean we can stop them from doing their thing.

why is every attempt at it laughed at, skorned, and debunked?

Because they don't work.

 

[Pengwuino]

Because they don't work.

Yah I mean... if it is laughed at and debunked... that means there's a fatal flaw in the theory. If a theory makes sense and there's no inconsistencies or incorrect math, by definition it can't be debunked at the time!

 

[Tony11235]

No one ever said that we fully understand gravity.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

then why don't we have some "anti-gravity" device by now...?! No one has ever given me a clear definition of gravity. Yeah it's a force.. that makes things stick to it... what about intricacies?! What's the true properties of gravity? If we really understood it, we'd be able to get off this planet without using combustable rocket propulsion, and why is every attempt at it laughed at, skorned, and debunked? How will this ever achieve any advancements in physics or technology?

We have a theory that works extremely well - General Relativity - and it doesn't yield any easy way to do what you say. In fact it may true that anti-gravity cannot exist. If we ever find a Theory of Everything, then we should know for sure exactly what is and what is not possible.

Most people who pursue anti-gravity "research", and I use that term as loosely as possible here, are not physicists at all. What is laughed at, scorned, and debunked is for the most part a bunch of people who are way out of their league and who have no idea what they're talking about. Now if someone actually demonstrated an anti-gravity device, scientists would be rushing to see it no matter who did it. But that's not what happens. Instead we find people with little to no scientific training who are either making things up, selling conspiracy theories, and/or whether or not they know it, promoting complete nonsense.

Would you want credible and highly trained scientists who have spent between ten and fifty years refining their skills, to pretent that a bunch of half baked amateurs are doing something, when they're really just talking nonsense and gibberish?

 

[Cosmo16]

then why don't we have some "anti-gravity" device by now...?! No one has ever given me a clear definition of gravity. Yeah it's a force.. that makes things stick to it... what about intricacies?! What's the true properties of gravity? If we really understood it, we'd be able to get off this planet without using combustable rocket propulsion, and why is every attempt at it laughed at, skorned, and debunked? How will this ever achieve any advancements in physics or technology?

As far as I know, we do not understand why gravity does what it does, (As in tht cause of it) however we understand, or believe we understand, what its effects are.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Curved spacetime according to the stress energy tensor is what acts as the force of gravity, but I think it's fair to say that we don't know what spacetime is.

 

[Don J]

Yah I mean... if it is laughed at and debunked... that means there's a fatal flaw in the theory. If a theory makes sense and there's no inconsistencies or incorrect math, by definition it can't be debunked at the time!

Lets see
Here the maths
A Quantum Mechanical Approach to the Existence of Negative Mass and Its Utilization in the Construction of Gravitationally Neutralized Bodies

http://au.geocities.com/psyberplasmic/ccX-3-a2.html

Here the practical application

CA 726,958 - Method for benefication of & Devices employing gravitational isotopes -1966 followed by "Method for producing Gravitationally-Anomalous materials - 1973 (

http://ether.sciences.free.fr/patents/TTBrown/CA726958 and method 1973.pdf

 

[Pengwuino]

Hmm a geocities website eh...

Ivan, have at it :)

 

[dgoodpasture2005]

It's nice to hear that everyone admits we don't know what gravity truly is :) This gives me some more motivation to work towards understanding it, and eventually rocketless/combustionless flight. I have a deep appreciation for science and scientists.. and i find it disturbing when others are bashed for making attempts at the unknown... it's like calling someone stupid for asking a question. In fact it is exactly like volcanoes... we know what volcanoes are doing.. but we don't understand them... give us another couple hundred years of research (wish i could live that long to see it) and i think we'd all be surprised at the ways we could maipulate mother nature. Well anyway... I'm going to spend my adult life searching for an answer to flight without rockets. Laugh if you want... but if you have all the answers to gravity, then people like me will stop our attempts in seeking them out.

 

[Pengwuino]

You do realize there are already probes out in space that do not use chemical rockets...

Also, here's an analogy that really fits the situation...

I'll assume your a guy for this analogy. What if someone walked up to you and said "you're a girl because I remember you wearing a pink shirt one day. I am right, do not dismiss me as wrong because I am right". Now... let's say you actually never wore pink in your life. What can you judge about this person? Well, 1) he/she used incorrect logic in determining the factual basis of something (since what you wear is not an indicator of sex), 2) he/she was wrong in their evidence (since you never wore pink in your life) and 3) that person knows nothing about your dna or "whats in your pants".

This is what happens to people who are laughed at. They will make illogical assumptions such as the person I just made the analogy about did. They will also have inaccurate/wrong data about what they are saying, just like the person did. Of course, last but not least, they do not know hte ultimate truth themselves but will assume they do.

If you cannot see how one would laugh at them... well then i don't know what to say.

You're idea that there is a such thing as anti-gravity is as stupid as our idea that there is no such thing as anti-gravity... the only difference is that the greatest minds and numberous experiments have shown that the no-anti-gravity side is probably right. There very well may not be a way to achieve anti-gravity and to make the assumption that such a thing exists is to make a very bad scientific mistake. It's possible... but quite improbable.

 

[dgoodpasture2005]

i don't think any of the ideas are stupid... i don't know if there is actual anti-gravity, persay... but i'd like to find a way to get out of Earth's atmosphere through gravity modification after truly understanding what gravity is. Also to make an assumption that something does not exist, is highly improbable... and false... with time things change. I never assume i know the ultimate truth.. i am the first to admit that neither I or anyone else does... but everyone i come across always implies that they do. I don't ever laugh at anyone's ideas or assumptions... i have been in the same place before, so i understand how it feels. In fact, everytime someone laughs... it gives me more motivation to do what i am trying to do. So in the end... whether i figure it out or not, i get the last laugh. The worst scientific mistake is to think you know everything, and to never make an assumption about what may exist. I'll take bad over worse.

 

[Pengwuino]

give us another couple hundred years of research (wish i could live that long to see it) and i think we'd all be surprised at the ways we could maipulate mother nature.

That's omniscience. We may very well be at the same mercy in 500 years that we are today. Who knows. But really, when you say "I don't think any of the ideas are stupid", you need to realize that the backbone of science is that theories must have mathematical backing in order to be real. These ideas proposed normally involve completely incorrect math or ideas that defy the current physical laws (which all have mathematical backing) we know of. That is why they are normally called stupid.

 

[dgoodpasture2005]

That's omniscience. We may very well be at the same mercy in 500 years that we are today. Who knows. But really, when you say "I don't think any of the ideas are stupid", you need to realize that the backbone of science is that theories must have mathematical backing in order to be real. These ideas proposed normally involve completely incorrect math or ideas that defy the current physical laws (which all have mathematical backing) we know of. That is why they are normally called stupid.

It may be omniscience, i just like to look forward and dream. The current physical laws are not complete... to call someone stupid based on something( a belief) that isn't complete(blind faith)... is extremely ignorant and irresponsible.

 

[Pengwuino]

It may be omniscience, i just like to look forward and dream. The current physical laws are not complete... to call someone stupid based on something( a belief) that isn't complete(blind faith)... is extremely ignorant and irresponsible.

Actually its science because most people who are laughed at don't call it a belief, they call it a theory. People can go off and believe whatever they want to believe but once you start proposing real scientific ideas and theories, you better have some logic and mathematical reasoning to back it up.

 

[dgoodpasture2005]

Actually its science because most people who are laughed at don't call it a belief, they call it a theory. People can go off and believe whatever they want to believe but once you start proposing real scientific ideas and theories, you better have some logic and mathematical reasoning to back it up.

I think I've done a good job of that... no one here admits they know what gravity is.

 

[ZapperZ]

I'm just glad that this isn't in the Physics forum or I would have been seriously pissed! :)

I think I've done a good job of that... no one here admits they know what gravity is.

DEFINE what you mean by "know".

I will put it to you that what you accept as something that YOU know has less certainty than what physicists describe gravity with. Think about it - we can use gravity and predict the constellation, send spacecraft to planets, predict motion of celestial bodies, etc. We have qualitative AND quantitative predictions that agree with observations. Compare that with what you can predict of the things that you "know"?

You and every one need to keep in mind what physicists mean when they say "oh, we don't know about so-and-so". These are the same people who would say that there is a small, but non-zero probability that if I throw a broken vase onto a floor, it can reassemble itself. The high standards that we have to finally be able to say "yes, we know about so-and-so" is why many keep saying we don't know ENOUGH about gravity. But please, don't mistaken it by assuming that we DON'T KNOW about gravity. This is not only wrong, it's hysterically funny and contradicts what we have done and can do.

And no one seems to notice of what exactly is meant by "anti-gravity" here. For example, is a repulsive force considered as an "anti-force"? If it is, then someone needs to do a lot of explaining. We have repulsive force in EM interaction, yet, I see no one calling that as an "anti-EM" force. Do we have an "anti-EM" concept? Sure we do. EM forces are mediated by photons. We have anti-photons. They are the same as the photons themselves.

So, are these "anti-force" defined strictly as the anti-particle carriers, such as anti-gravitons? Or are we simply talking about a "repulsive" gravity, something that is already contained in GR?

When you don't have ample knowledge of what we already formulated, and then start making all these statements and "accusation", then you can't help but make a series of ambiguities. When this occurs, there's more uncertainty in your question, then there is in the issue that the question asked.

We understand gravity ENOUGH to make it work. It may not have the same degree of certainty as some areas of physics, but it has more than enough to hold its own.

Zz.

 

[dgoodpasture2005]

First off... thank you very much for the post! very informative for the reader, straight to the point, and not rude :) a good neutral stance. I thought about posting this in the physics area... And that's exactly why i posted it here :P
I agree... i never said that gravity is not understood... it's just not TOTALLY understood... if it was, it'd seem quite easy to say, "hey okay, then we can do this to manipulate it, and we can do this for propulsion." or modification. I don't necessarily mean "anti"... i just mean understanding gravity at such a minute nature, that it would become clear what is needed to have a repelling force large enough to have flight without rockets. I know the many marvelous things phycisists do/have done :) I'm not knocking them... I'm just knocking the "know it all" position some take. It's alright sometimes to just admit that not everything is known... Einstein wasn't Jesus... so he shouldn't be viewed as a religion (i have resect for him too! but i just see this often as well) In fact many of the things Einstein said, he later wishes he woudn't have, because he realized the implications he was having on people.. they were believing every theory or idea as absolute. I think the current understanding of gravity is justttt fine for calculating etc... but wouldn't it be great to get down to the nitty gritty and start doing amazing things?

 

[dgoodpasture2005]

I mean it's all good to know how much X volume of water will weigh... and how it will re-act when a rock is thrown into it... but once you figure out it is made up of oxygen and hydrogen atoms.. everything changes.

 

[-Job-]

I feel as if this is a thread that calls for an absurd theory of gravity. At one point i considered that perhaps matter in the universe was expanding in size at some constant rate r (ie. the elemntary particles are getting bigger). Because everything is increasing in size at the same rate, it's not detectable, because proportions are kept alike. Then consider an object A 10 miles above the Earth and another (similar) one, B, 10 miles above the moon. If the rate of increase of matter is 2 in some unit of time t, then, because the mass of the Earth is greater than that of the moon, after 1T, the distance between object A and the Earth is smaller than the distance between object B and the moon. Changing perspective, object A takes less time to "travel" the 10 miles and reach the surface of the Earth than object B takes to "travel" its 10 miles and reach the surface of the moon. This can model why bigger objects have bigger gravity, and why an object near a large body seems to accelerate towards it. At one point i calculated what the expansion rate r was by using the mass of the Earth and the acceleration due to gravity. Anyway, i dropped this model because i couldn't explain why an object would orbit another.
I understand why physics people don't like when people with little background in the matter come up with wild theories, in my field of Computer Science is like someone with no CS background claiming he has proven P=NP by reducing an NP-Complete problem to one that's solvable in P time. I think everyone has their area of expertise, we can only pick one, but we always have an amateurish interest in the other fields, so sometimes it's hard not to say something stupid, and even harder to say something that's not so stupid without coming across like a total idiot.

 

[dgoodpasture2005]

hahaha... very itneresting model you came up with.. i followed it quite well.. thought you were onto something there for a while, until you brang in orbit... plus if the moon and Earth were expanding.. explain how they wouldn't expand into each other? Or is the space in between then expanding as well? Or are they moving away from each other at a constant rate too... haha i know this isn't possible because the moon is always the same size! But it was a nice brain twister, thanks for the excercise. b ut maybe that's where the current undrstanding of physics comes in, and you mix the two around and together a little bit. ;P I want to be an expert in philosophy/physics/psychology/biology and astronomy... I'm only 20 years old.. so i have a long time to do it. Hopefully i make it to 50 :) Maybe I'll surprise the world with something great, and i promise i won't make any WMD's.

 

[-Job-]

Yes the constant distance between the Earth and the moon was a problem. I thought it might be solvable by having the moon move away from the Earth in some direction. Initially i though the moon would need to be not just moving but accelerating away from the earth, but then i realized that space units were increasing in size as well, so a constant speed would be enough. The orbiting is a hard one though.

 

[dgoodpasture2005]

wow that's a crazy idea the more i think about it. You wouldn't even be able to tell anything was going on. I edited my post up there... i said if the space was expanding too, then the space between the Earth and moon would remain the same. But i guess that wouldn't work sicne space doesn't have any repelling force.. they'd just go right into each other. Unless the expansion of the space in between the two was pushing the two apart because it had nowhere to go... oh no.. *sniff sniff* i smell something cooking.. did someone put a theory in the oven? Kidding... but it's fun to see what you can try and make of something.. 'cause you never know.

 

[dgoodpasture2005]

lol this is so funny... good thing it's on S&D. I love this, this is what i live for, i have the imagination of a curious 6 year old. (random number, child)

 

[Aether]

lol this is so funny... good thing it's on S&D. I love this, this is what i live for, i have the imagination of a curious 6 year old. (random number, child)

What's so funny? In 1973 P.S. Wesson (P.S. Wesson, Q.J.R. Astron. Soc. 14, 9 (1973)) "...concluded from a compilation of data that 'the expansion from a completely sial-covered globe of about 3700 km radius at a constant rate of $0.66 mm \cdot yr^{-1}$ over a $4.5E^9 \ yr$ interval would give the continents a configuration as we now see them'...". - J.P. Uzan, Rev. Mod. Phys. 75, 428 (2003).

I'm not saying that I believe in Wesson's theory, only pointing out that it exists.

"...Dicke (1962b, 1964) related the variation of the Earth radius to a variation of the gravitational constant by $\Delta ln r_{Earth}=-0.1\Delta ln G$. McElhinny et al. (1978) reestimated the paleoradius of the Earth and extended the analysis to the Moon, Mars, and Mercury."

 

[dgoodpasture2005]

Oh.. i didn't mean funny as in incredible! I meant funny as how we were getting somewhere.. i enjoy such things... it's fun.. and tends to make me laugh. Those are interesting facts by the way, thanks for the knowledge of his work. btw, what does the word sial mean? [EDIT] okay nevermind.. i got it now, looked it up. thanks.

 

[dgoodpasture2005]

So it's an illusion... the tectonic plates aren't moving... the Earth is expanding. Or well they proably are really moving... but the Earth is possibly getting bigger... which would make perfect sense as to why we do archeological "digs" for antiques.

 

[dgoodpasture2005]

So what if when the Earth first formed, it was extremely small and lame.. but vrey very dense... and over time it began to expand (similar to a star... but not containing the same characteristics, because of different compositional make-up) as it expands... everything it contains inside of it is released... hydrogen, oxygen.. etc... hmm... How are planewts formed? Isn't the inside of the Earth almost comparable to a star... what if they are so small that they don't ever produce enough heat to continue to be liquid, and the outer layer forms a crust, but inside it is still liquid (magma) and the pressure of the outter layer on the core also keeps the heat needed to continue to allow magma to exist for such a long period of time. Ever notice how there are no planets born as big as stars? and no stars born as small as planets?

 

[Aether]

So it's an illusion... the tectonic plates aren't moving... the Earth is expanding. Or well they proably are really moving... but the Earth is possibly getting bigger... which would make perfect sense as to why we do archeological "digs" for antiques.

If you are really interested in Wesson's theory, then I recommend that you find a good University library that subscribes to the journals I cited, copy the articles, read them, and then let me know what you think.

 

[dgoodpasture2005]

Wait a second, i believe in this, i just had an epiphany... the Earth is expanding... pangea is always viewed as being a land mass surrounded by ocean... put all the land together, then make it a small ball with no ocean! An all land planet, that is extremely small... NOW have it start to expand, and the land has no choice but to break apart... holy bajesus.. i need to start studying.. i think I'm gunna come up with something good.

 

[dgoodpasture2005]

Jesus christ... everything MUST be expanding universally... stars expand... why not planets? Maybe there is even a constant?! Look what you've done -job-, you've turned me into a madman. Now i won't be able to sleep for 2 days. Maybe the big bang wasn't really a Big bang... but more of a slow... gradual/constant bang(that of course is still going on!)... and everyother circular celestial body is imitating this process as well... as the universe expands, everythings expanding with it.

 

[dgoodpasture2005]

is there some unkwown force influencing everything to expand? Why is expansion happening? Everything within the universe is working exactly the way the universe does... expanding and then imploding.

 

[Aether]

is there some unkwown force influencing everything to expand? Why is expansion happening? Everything within the universe is working exactly the way the universe does... expanding and then imploding.

The universe is not only expanding, the rate of expansion is accelerating!

 

[dgoodpasture2005]

Had to take a break and play guitar quite vigorously... made a complete song in about 1 minute thanks to all this emotion.. lol.. yeah this is crazy... oh man i cannot sleep now, this is going to be going through my head all day long until i settle on something.