This exact concept has been the central burning quest of my life ever since I watched a pair of brightly radiant ufo’s execute zig-zag hairpin maneuvers in perfect formation against a cloudless daytime summer sky, as I stood amazed alongside five of the other kids in my neighborhood when I was seven years old.
So I’ve either read every published academic paper on this subject, or close to it. I started a new thread about this subject before I realized that it was a duplicate of this one.
You guys are going to like the answers to these questions. Because even though we can’t yet build a gravitational field propulsion system, the general theory of relativity tells us a great deal about the physics of this propulsion concept, and it’s very exciting stuff.
Can any one explain in a simple way why many people think that some sort of anti gravity propulsion is the answer to ufo-propulsion and how we would benefit from it?
I am at a really low level of the topic so plese keep it simple..
My thoughts, could a "anti gravitymotor" generate more "anti gravity" than the gravity that exist on its location?
If not, wouldent the craft with the anti gravitymotor just levitate?
Or at best just fall in the opposite direction of earths gravitypull?
And in space with almost zero g it would be useless?
At best it would be a great compliment to an other propulsion for taking stuff in orbit, or what?
Most of your questions were answered in an academic physics paper by theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre in 1994. It’s very easy to read – you don’t need to understand the tensor calculus mathematics in the paper because he discusses what they mean in pretty clear and simple terms:
“The warp drive: hyper-fast travel within general relativity,” Alcubierre, Classical and Quantum Gravity, 1994
https://arxiv.org/pdf/gr-qc/0009013.pdf
But here’s a list of the unique performance characteristics of a gravitational field propulsion system. Once you see these, you’ll understand why most people have concluded that ufo’s are employing this kind of field propulsion mechanism:
1.) Silent hovering with no emissions.
2.) The capability of essentially instantaneous changes in velocity. This can mean changes from stationary hovering to extremely high speed, or extreme changes in direction at extremely high speed.
3.) Zero inertial reaction forces within the field. A pilot within a gravitational field propulsion device would feel like they’re standing motionless, even under extreme accelerations. Looking through a window in the craft, the pilot could see the world zig-zag outside of the craft at high speed as the craft maneuvered erratically, as if watching a movie screen of the world erratically moving about.
4.) There’s no upper limit to velocity. A craft that exploits a polarized gravitational field for propulsion can travel much faster than the speed of light. In theory, the crew aboard the craft could travel to Alpha Centauri and be back in time for lunch.
5.) No special relativistic effects: the craft remains on a “locally flat” region of spacetime, and is propelled by the gravitational field distortion ahead of the craft and behind the craft, so the craft doesn’t move *through* spacetime. So special relativity doesn’t apply. There’s no time dilation, no length contraction, and no relativistic mass increase.
6.) No energy is expended for propulsion. Once the propulsion system is charged, the only cost in energy to produce accelerations, is the inherent systemic inefficiency of the technology that utilizes the energy.
7.) This final point hasn’t been mentioned in the academic literature yet (I first heard about it in the 1950s-era books by the self-proclaimed contactee Daniel Fry), but it’s readily apparent once you understand this concept: the field is transparent to other gravitational fields. So while the propulsion field has no effect upon the passengers (inertia remains the same within the field – things still have their usual mass), any external gravitational field is felt within the craft. So the passengers in a craft maneuvering over the surface of the Earth would still feel the Earth’s gravity until they rose in altitude so high that the gravitational acceleration is no longer noticeable at that height.
A gravitational field propulsion system doesn’t rely upon the ambient gravitational field at all – it’s a totally independent system. The magnitude of available acceleration is limited only by the technology used to control the energy that produces the field. This is because there’s no known upper limit to the degree/rate at which spacetime can be distorted. The concept was inspired by the inflationary era of the early cosmos, at which time spacetime expanded by many orders of magnitude faster than the speed of light. During cosmic inflation, the universe expanded by a factor of over 10^60 times in the span of roughly 10^-30 second*. The expansion of spacetime isn’t technically something that’s measured as a velocity, because velocity is what we measure *through* spacetime, so it’s tricky and misleading to call it a speed, but I’ve seen estimates of 10^20 times the speed of light and higher – in theory there’s no known upper limit to the rate that spacetime can expand and contract.
*
How can the Universe expand faster than the speed of light during inflation? (Advanced) - Curious About Astronomy? Ask an Astronomer
If some mechanism could counter gravity's downward pull, enough to equate to the craft's weight, then it would not cause the craft to rise or go horizontally etc, an additional net force would have provide actual propulsion.
No, you just need to change the shape of the field – for hovering, the orientation of the gravitational dipole field would be antiparallel to the Earth’s gravitational field, and to move you just tip that axis in the direction that you want to go.
If many UFO reports/footage are to be believed, something allows UFOs to pretty much attain huge velocity instantly, without suffering structural damage. In our physics this would expend an insane amount of energy. What energy source and power mechanism so powerful could fit in small craft?
As long as the craft itself is within the region of flat spacetime at the center of the field, the structure would feel no stress at all, even under very high accelerations, as Usual Suspect described. Think of it this way – the craft itself and everything within it, is in “free-fall.” In general relativity this is called “following a geodesic,” where no inertial forces exist.
Energy is a very interesting issue. General relativity describes precisely
the degree to which any given density and magnitude of mass-energy-pressure-stress curves spacetime – but it doesn’t tell us
how mass-energy couples to spacetime. If we understood the coupling mechanism, then we might be able to amplify the effect, or even change its polarity, by some vast factor. Theoretical physicists working on models of quantum gravity hope to illuminate this question: it’s the key to everything pertaining to an attainable gravitational field propulsion system.
But if we believe that any ufo has ever crashed upon the Earth, then we know that there’s a way to produce intense gravitational field propulsion effects without astronomical magnitudes of energy, because a craft that’s harnessing the mass-energy equivalent of, say, a house…would sterilize the Earth if that energy were suddenly released in a field containment accident (the explosion would yield several times times the energy of the Chixulub impact that wiped out the dinosaurs). So it would appear that there’s a way to achieve these effects with a comparably modest magnitude of energy: we just haven’t figured out how to do it yet.
Ive no idea if any of these ideas are already ruled out by what science currently knows. I'm possibly crucifying some science I used to know but no harm in trying!
There many heads at the forum whose mastery of any science is far better than my own and I welcome criticism warmly if it provides answers i dont already have or better still, replaces my wrong ones altogether. And I'd be flabbergasted if I actually managed to hit on only correct answers, as the whole academic community combined has failed to hit on antigravity effectively enough to make it a reality so i doubt ill have better ideas than they!
You’ve clearly read about the warp field bubble described by Alcubierre, so you’re definitely ahead of the pack, Goggs. Hopefully I’ve cleared up your other questions, and you can find out more from the Alcubierre paper above. And NASA is currently testing a tiny warp field experimental device at the Johnson Space Center – the team leader Harold “Sonny” White has written some good papers on the subject. His paper “Warp Field Mechanics 101” is quite interesting and easy to read (it has some pics of their device as well, at the end). He gets a couple of points wrong, but his work on writing a canonical reformulation of the Einstein field equations (published in his earlier papers) is marvelous. Here’s the link to his unpublished paper that I mentioned:
“Warp Field Mechanics 101,” White, 2011
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20110015936.pdf
I think the best interpretation isn't simply a gravity nullifier but a gravity projector; something capable of projecting a gravitational effect some distance from the generator itself in a given direction. This solves virtually all the issues. How it would be done is another matter. Hypothetically energy = mass so energy could hypothetically be used to create mass, and if it was massive enough and short lived, it would briefly draw the craft in its direction and then dissipate. Rinse and repeat and you get movement. Maybe the dissipation could even be recirculated through the system somehow to increase efficiency.
You’re right that Alcubierre’s warp field needs to surround the craft to avert steep gravitational field gradients (commonly known as “gravitational tidal forces”) intersecting the craft that could otherwise tear it to shreds. But dissipation can be averted by using resonant evanescent field – basically any kind of field can be created in a form called a “harmonic oscillator,” which behaves like a pendulum, oscillating between states of potential and kinetic energy. And just like a pendulum, it contains its energy, minus whatever friction losses occur at the pivot point. All real systems have some level of loss, but it can be very tiny, like we see in electrical superconductors.
Now we have come a long way, this could work for propulsion.
But the amount of mass/energy to create that kind of force must be absolutly staggering!
Now you see why this is such an exciting concept =) I wish more people knew about the intricacies of this principle – it’s deeply inspiring stuff. If I do an interview on the show we’ll get into it in more detail. You’re right about the mass-energy requirements specified with our current level of understanding of this concept: White optimized the field configuration of the warp bubble and got it down from Alcubierre’s requirement of the mass-energy equivalent of the planet Jupiter, down to the mass-energy equivalent of a Volkswagen bug automobile. But that’s obviously still way too high for modern human technology. We need a better understanding of the coupling mechanism between mass-energy and spacetime. That might change the game significantly, and bring this kind of technology within reach.
If a craft is travelling in a given direction at high speed and say we want to "ufo-like"(?) turn in an other direction would a gravity pull from a star be enough to make it turn that fast??
You’ve touched on a fascinating and controversial concept here. Viewpoints differ greatly on this subject…which comes down to the origin of inertia. There’s no consensus about that yet. But in my estimation, the theory published by Dennis Sciama in 1953 is by far the best one (in fact this paper was his PhD thesis under Paul Dirac, the genius who predicted antimatter). He presented a paper that attributes inertial mass to the gravitoelectric interaction between an object and all of the other matter in the universe – thereby giving Mach’s principle a formal and quantitative expression. And it matches the data remarkably well. Here’s his paper if you care to check it out:
“On the Origin of Inertia,” Sciama, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 1953
1953MNRAS.113...34S Page 34
If he’s right (and frankly at this point I’m pretty much convinced of it), then you've raised an intriguing new thought: what if we could amplify the gravitational interaction of a craft with all of the matter along a given vector in space? In that case, we wouldn’t need to generate a new gravitational field at all – we could just focus the existing field along a given axis, like a taut rubber band, and be pulled in that direction. We don’t know how to do something like that yet, or even if it’s possible, but it’s neat to realize that if Sciama is correct then all of the field energy we need is already all around us, and if we could shape it to our purposes then we could use it to reach the stars.
On energy requirements, there is a fair bit of room for speculation there. The lighter the craft the easier it is to move around, so super lightweight materials would be advantageous.
You’ve got some good thoughts this subject; I was hoping that some others here had put their thinking caps on regarding how these things propel themselves.
One of the convenient things about a gravitational field propulsion system, is that gravitational fields accelerate all masses equally. So you don’t have to worry about mass restrictions: it’s the magnitude of the field gradient that counts – a light craft will “fall” at the same rate as a heavy one. So I suspect that the lightweight materials we’ve heard about, are simply a reflection of the technological efficiency/mastery of the civilization that created it. If you can make an incredibly resilient and radiation-proof hull plus structural beams using a tiny amount of lightweight matter, and cost is not an obstacle, then that’s what you’re going to do, y’know?
I realize this all sounds very sci-fi, and I'm non-apologetic about that. I don't claim to be doing science here and therefore this cannot be legitimately classed as pseudoscience either. But sci-fi sometimes becomes sci-fact. A few centuries ago a vehicle like the Tesla wouldn't even have been imagined, let alone that the mysterious magnetic fields that drive the wheels have built-in energy reuptake systems. Finally, I've seen a UFO pulling those fantastic maneuvers. So have a lot of other people. Therefore somehow it is possible. Maybe we're completely off-track with the gravity projector theory, but so-far, it seems like the best explanation to me, assuming that is, that we are in-fact dealing with craft made of materials and high-technology, which I personally believe is the case with UFOs. Other phenomena not made of materials and technology do not really count as UFOs, but that's a whole other discussion.
I like the cut of your jib, Sir. When I posted about this topic the other day, the backlash was unbelievable – in our pathetic culture it’s more fashionable to be the ignorant jerk who proclaims that anything which hasn't been done yet, can’t be done. The same kind of visionless people guffawed at the Wright brothers too, until they actually flew at Kitty Hawk in 1903. Those of us who have witnessed these craft performing extraordinary maneuvers in the sky, know that it can be done. And that’s the first step to achieving anything – knowing that it’s possible.
And today, we already have a solid theoretical basis to evaluate this concept and its capabilities, which are fully consistent with the general theory of relativity. We’re in the position of Leonardo da Vinci, who published “Codex on the Flight of Birds” around 1506, which explained the aerodynamic flight of birds and proposed the first designs for flying machines based on his analysis.
We may not be able to build a ufo yet, but now we know that it’s possible. And so far, we humans have achieved everything that we’ve proven to be theoretically possible, and usually sooner than later.
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