Anti-Gravity

[Harwood Butcher]

Right now I'm watching an episode of Mythbusters, which deals with the possibilities of anti-gravity.

To be vague, their definition of "anti-gravity" is canceling the effects of gravity. Pretty simple.

This caused me to start thinking about how that would even be possible, so I started thinking about the basics. "What causes gravity?” That would be mass and density. So basically, in order to escape the attraction between both gravitational pulls, I thought that you'd have to either cancel the mass and or density of either of the objects, preferably the object needing the use of anti-gravity.

Out of mass and density, it seems more likely that mass would be the easiest thing to attempt to cancel, with my way of thinking. But how would you cancel mass? It's a hard question to answer, but my thought is antimatter.

Antimatter, in my opinion, is a lot more complicated than anti-gravity. We at least know what anti-gravity is and what it could do for us and so on and so forth. Antimatter, on the other hand, is somewhat an unknown. Not much is known about it and we haven't been able to really study it because we don't have any to work with, from my understanding.

If we were able to some how turn the matter we're trying to give anti-gravity into antimatter, then I think it would automatically be immune to gravity.

I haven't thought this out fully yet, but if you have any constructive ideas about this, please post here.

EXTRA THOUGHTS: Without mass or density, I don't think there can be matter, which is what lead me to the idea of changing matter into antimatter.

Edited September 8, 2008 by Harwood Butcher

[Dark Lord]

To be vague, their definition of "anti-gravity" is canceling the effects of gravity. Pretty simple.

You got it right here.And then into something else

( a )--->

|xxxxx|

----------

|xxxxx|

[ x-axis >]

( b )--->

|xxxxx|

Suppose persons "a" and "b" are pushing the box in the x direction.Is it necessary that to cancel the forward movment of the box the either of ( a ) or ( b ) should stop pushing it(in your case Mass and Density)

( a )--->

|xxxxx|

----------

|xxxxx|

<---C [ x-axis >]

( b )--->

|xxxxx|

If a heavy guy "C" pushes the box towards the (-ve) x-direction such that his total effort is equal to the sum of a and b.Then the box will still stay in the same place.

So it is not necessary that to cancel the effect of gravitation either of mass or density should disapper.An equal force exerted from the opposite direction is enough to feel weight-less.

[Spaz The Great]

To be vague, their definition of "anti-gravity" is canceling the effects of gravity. Pretty simple.

You got it right here.And then into something else

( a )--->

|xxxxx|

----------

|xxxxx|

[ x-axis >]

( b )--->

|xxxxx|

Suppose persons "a" and "b" are pushing the box in the x direction.Is it necessary that to cancel the forward movment of the box the either of ( a ) or ( b ) should stop pushing it(in your case Mass and Density)

( a )--->

|xxxxx|

----------

|xxxxx|

<---C [ x-axis >]

( b )--->

|xxxxx|

If a heavy guy "C" pushes the box towards the (-ve) x-direction such that his total effort is equal to the sum of a and b.Then the box will still stay in the same place.

So it is not necessary that to cancel the effect of gravitation either of mass or density should disapper.An equal force exerted from the opposite direction is enough to feel weight-less.

However, that is not anti-gravity. That is resisting, or equaling gravity, which we've done countless times with countless things.

If we were to achieve anti-gravity by means of anti-matter, I doubt it would be all that useful to us.

But then, it wouldn't matter

Sorry.... Rocky Horror moment.....

[Righty]

Anything is possible. But we don't have the knowledge of how to do it.

[claude-5]

you watch mythbusters , i think this will be possibl in about 2-4 years

[Harwood Butcher]

So it is not necessary that to cancel the effect of gravitation either of mass or density should disapper.An equal force exerted from the opposite direction is enough to feel weight-less.

Yeah, I believe that would be considered thrust of some sort.

If we were to achieve anti-gravity by means of anti-matter, I doubt it would be all that useful to us.

Well I was thinking along the lines of converting matter into antimatter. Right now it's just a theory of mine, with not too much supporting it.

Now if we were able to some how convert matter into antimatter...then we'd have to see if antimatter is affected by gravity at all. Basically, we'd want to find out if antimatter is affected by gravity before we attempt to convert matter into antimatter.

I'm pretty sure we'd be able to figure all of this out using some physics equations, but since I can't remember the correct ones needed for this particular problem, I'll have to improvise...in a way.

Let's look at the mass of the Earth as +6X10^24 and an average person as +70. Now if both of these positives create an attraction, then what would cause this attraction to be canceled? Thinking in a somewhat mathematical sense, if both masses were equal then they would have either no attraction to one another or most likely, or definitely in a physics sense, would be equal. So if gravitational attraction is caused when either an object is larger in mass than the other or when they have the same mass, then what else is there to cause cancellation of gravitational attraction? Maybe if one does not have mass or, if possible, negative mass. That got me thinking that maybe antimatter might appear massless(…?) to regular matter.

Now let me remind you, mass and density causes gravitational attraction. So it doesn't matter how much more massive something is, a less massive object could actually have a greater gravitational attraction, depending on it’s density.

[Gerard]

There are a few inaccuraccies in your post.

Firstly, mass and density aren't separate things. Density is just mass in a particular volume. The other big thing that affects it is distance.

Secondly, you say we can't prove anything with antimatter cos we don't have any. That's not true, we've been making it since 1995.

You say mass/density causes gravity, and thus cancelling it will negate the effect of the gravity. This is a bit lopsided. The mass of (say) the planet causes the gravity which pulls anything else with mass (eg us) towards it. This is where weight comes in, with the mass times the gravitational force.

As you have all hinted at, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. This is the key, and so beating gravity is very simple.

We can slow down the effect of gravity by exerting some upthrust. Imagine a parachute, or even just plain old resistance of a person in the air. The air exerts a force on us, which removes some of the effect of the gravity, so we fall slower.

We can equalize the force completely by standing on the planetary body - such as the ground or a building. This stops us moving down at all, so the force pulling us down is equal to the force holding us up.

We can overwhelm that balance by using more force to push ourselves up, by jumping or using a lift/elevator or aircraft etc. So the force pushing us up is greater than the force holding us down, so overall we go up.

We can also 'float' in a gravitational environment by free-falling. If we were inside a box which was falling through the sky, we would fall at the same rate and be able to float around inside that box (relative to the box) with very little effort.

But anti-gravity means defeating gravity without this opposing force.

Antimatter acts the same as normal matter - it has positive mass and positive energy content, and thus reacts the same to gravity as normal mass.

If gravity was carried by gravitons (like light is photons), then it stands to reason we could have an anti-graviton. However the existence of either of these has not been proved, and all experiments so far have failed. Mathematically it also fails to fit into the unified theory with the four forces (strong, weak, electromagnetism, gravity).

Negative mass is a funny concept, but it doesn't seem to fit into our main existing theories, most notable general relativity. There's a funny quote at WP which outlines one of the problems:

"Negative mass also seems to suffer from problems similar to the gravity shield. Forward pointed out that a negative mass will fall toward "normal" matter as normal, while normal mass will fall away from the negative matter. Forward noted that two similar masses, one positive and one negative, placed near each other will therefore accelerate in the direction of the line between them, away from the negative mass. Notice that because the negative mass acquires negative kinetic energy, the total energy of the accelerating masses remains at zero."

And before you start talking about levitating frogs, that's simply diamagnetism, which creates an opposite repulsive magnetic force.

[Harwood Butcher]

There are a few inaccuraccies in your post.

Firstly, mass and density aren't separate things. Density is just mass in a particular volume. The other big thing that affects it is distance.

I never said they were separate, but in the equation they are.

Secondly, you say we can't prove anything with antimatter cos we don't have any. That's not true, we've been making it since 1995.

This is why I try not to use Wikipedia. I've seen so many things on Discovery Channel about antimatter and assumed that we've experimented with it before, but when I went to make sure...Wikipedia said something else. Since most people on here worship Wikipedia...I decided to just go with what that said so I could stop researching. Thanks for pointing that out.

You say mass/density causes gravity, and thus cancelling it will negate the effect of the gravity. This is a bit lopsided. The mass of (say) the planet causes the gravity which pulls anything else with mass (eg us) towards it. This is where weight comes in, with the mass times the gravitational force.

Yes, but without mass...no weight, no gravitational pull. That's how I viewed it.

As you have all hinted at, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. This is the key, and so beating gravity is very simple.

We can slow down the effect of gravity by exerting some upthrust. Imagine a parachute, or even just plain old resistance of a person in the air. The air exerts a force on us, which removes some of the effect of the gravity, so we fall slower.

We can equalize the force completely by standing on the planetary body - such as the ground or a building. This stops us moving down at all, so the force pulling us down is equal to the force holding us up.

We can overwhelm that balance by using more force to push ourselves up, by jumping or using a lift/elevator or aircraft etc. So the force pushing us up is greater than the force holding us down, so overall we go up.

We can also 'float' in a gravitational environment by free-falling. If we were inside a box which was falling through the sky, we would fall at the same rate and be able to float around inside that box (relative to the box) with very little effort.

But anti-gravity means defeating gravity without this opposing force.

Exactly, we have ways to slow the effects of gravity with air resistance and escape it with thrust, but it isn't getting rid of it.

Antimatter acts the same as normal matter - it has positive mass and positive energy content, and thus reacts the same to gravity as normal mass.

Ok, then we don't have to worry about that anymore. Now we could just focus on how we could take away mass from matter without destroying it. Even though matter can't necessarily be destroyed.

If gravity was carried by gravitons (like light is photons), then it stands to reason we could have an anti-graviton. However the existence of either of these has not been proved, and all experiments so far have failed. Mathematically it also fails to fit into the unified theory with the four forces (strong, weak, electromagnetism, gravity).

Negative mass is a funny concept, but it doesn't seem to fit into our main existing theories, most notable general relativity. There's a funny quote at WP which outlines one of the problems:

"Negative mass also seems to suffer from problems similar to the gravity shield. Forward pointed out that a negative mass will fall toward "normal" matter as normal, while normal mass will fall away from the negative matter. Forward noted that two similar masses, one positive and one negative, placed near each other will therefore accelerate in the direction of the line between them, away from the negative mass. Notice that because the negative mass acquires negative kinetic energy, the total energy of the accelerating masses remains at zero."

And before you start talking about levitating frogs, that's simply diamagnetism, which creates an opposite repulsive magnetic force.

There is supposedly a way to change matter into light, which isn't taking away all of it's mass, because light does have mass, but this would allow us to use a very low amount of energy to get speed.

The way to supposedly change matter into light is by bouncing ultra high frequencies, medium high frequencies and low frequencies off of the object in a certain pattern and speed. Not sure if it's true, but people have apparently done this before with it working.

Edited September 9, 2008 by Harwood Butcher