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Gravity regulation involves "gravity regulation satellites". These satellites employ controlled beams of graviton streams, which specifically focus interference patterns on the "gravitational core" of a celestial body. A network of many satellites doing this results in significant fluctuation in the gravity field being imposed on that body. Controlling the focal point and interference patterns of the graviton beams enables use of this fluctuation to either decrease or increase the gravitational pull of a celestial body, literally changing its surface gravity.

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Originally posted by AnObjectinSpace:
Gravity isn't something that can be put into a beam.

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Originally posted by citizen:

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Originally posted by AnObjectinSpace:
Gravity isn't something that can be put into a beam.

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How do you know?

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Originally posted by citizen:
All we know is that as far as we can tell gravity only occures naturally where we have mass. Since we still don't know what 'causes' gravity for sure. Relativity says Mass warps space time in such away that it feels like Gravity, but can't tell us how Mass warps space time, Quantum Gravitational theories, OTOH, often talk about discrete particles, which is where the idea of the Graviton came from.

The point is we have no solid idea of what gravity is and what causes it, so we have no way of saying with certainty what can and what can not 'create' gravity.

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Quick read over Graviton. It is an interesting prospect.

.....
"It's just an Object"
[IMG][/IMG]

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Originally posted by FlatTop:
I'll toss my $0.02 into the mix here...

Gravity (g) is the (or one of) weakest force(s) known. It can be overcome by any of the other forces (normal force, wind (multi-ton airplanes fly daily and are the safesest (statistically) way to travel), magnetic, chemical reaction, etc.

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Originally posted by AnObjectinSpace:
Gravitiational Force is the attraction of two bodies with a mass.

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Originally posted by AnObjectinSpace:

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Originally posted by citizen:

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Originally posted by AnObjectinSpace:

Gravity isn't something that can be put into a beam.

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How do you know?

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Gravitiational Force is the attraction of two bodies with a mass.

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Originally posted by asarian:
I don't necessarily agree. In General relativity, gravitation is not really a Force, but rather the manifestation of curved space and time. As such, light, while it has no mass, its own self, simply follows the curvature in space, generated by the mass-energy of the object in space it passes.

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Originally posted by Uriahone:
...that's all the explanation i need.

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Originally posted by CrevanReaver:

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Originally posted by Uriahone:
...that's all the explanation i need.

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But it's not for us nit-picking geeks.

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CrevanReaver wrote:
Friday, February 02, 2007 21:35
According to Joss Whedon's "A Brief History of the Universe circa 2507 A.D." that was in Serenity: The Official Visual Companion terraforming the new worlds involved "gravity regulation".

Here's my theory on the subject:


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Gravity regulation involves "gravity regulation satellites". These satellites employ controlled beams of graviton streams, which specifically focus interference patterns on the "gravitational core" of a celestial body. A network of many satellites doing this results in significant fluctuation in the gravity field being imposed on that body. Controlling the focal point and interference patterns of the graviton beams enables use of this fluctuation to either decrease or increase the gravitational pull of a celestial body, literally changing its surface gravity.
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Originally posted by Calhoun:
I see your graviton beam theory and raise it by tachyon particles.

Hasnt anyone watched Star Trek? There is always tachyons involved...

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citizen wrote:
Sunday, February 04, 2007 13:44

Tachyons only travel faster than the speed of light because they have negative rest mass. I assume theres a time expansion issue but theres nothing in hard science that really says what happens beyond lightspeed because Special Relativity says its impossible.

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Originally posted by Calhoun:
and yet.. there they are.

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Originally posted by DonCoat:
It's also likely that these same discoveries are probably behind the technology of the spaceships like Firefly that can cover very large distances very quickly -- not to mention the ships that made the trip from Earth-That-Was.

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Originally posted by AnObjectinSpace:

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Originally posted by citizen:

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Originally posted by AnObjectinSpace:
Gravity isn't something that can be put into a beam.

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How do you know?

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Gravitiational Force is the attraction of two bodies with a mass.

.....
"It's just an Object"

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Originally posted by wratchit:
I think it's MAGIC!
Help me Tom Cruise! Make gravity with your witchcraft!

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Originally posted by doctroid:

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Originally posted by DonCoat:

If nothing else -- assuming (and I think you have to) interplanetary distances are comparable to what they are in our own solar system -- there's no way you're getting from one planet to another as fast as Serenity tends to unless you're going pretty darn fast -- and even then, it'll take a long time unless you accelerate pretty darn hard. In which case all the crew ought to be a thin layer of yuck on the aft bulkheads... unless the gravity generator is compensating for the acceleration to produce 1-g downward at all times.

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i noticed that, but also if you noticed, that they didn't go flying into the wall every time they turned around during flight, but if they were really traveling at speeds necissary to get from one planet to the next, that would crush everybody, or take a significant ammount of time to turn around, but maybe they also have some way of defeating inertia, hell it is science fiction.

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Originally posted by Uriahone:

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Originally posted by doctroid:

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Originally posted by DonCoat:

If nothing else -- assuming (and I think you have to) interplanetary distances are comparable to what they are in our own solar system -- there's no way you're getting from one planet to another as fast as Serenity tends to unless you're going pretty darn fast -- and even then, it'll take a long time unless you accelerate pretty darn hard. In which case all the crew ought to be a thin layer of yuck on the aft bulkheads... unless the gravity generator is compensating for the acceleration to produce 1-g downward at all times.

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I noticed that, but also if you noticed, that they didn't go flying into the wall every time they turned around during flight, but if they were really traveling at speeds necissary to get from one planet to the next, that would crush everybody, or take a significant ammount of time to turn around, but maybe they also have some way of defeating inertia, hell it is science fiction.

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Originally posted by DonCoat:
If nothing else -- assuming (and I think you have to) interplanetary distances are comparable to what they are in our own solar system -- there's no way you're getting from one planet to another as fast as Serenity tends to unless you're going pretty darn fast -- and even then, it'll take a long time unless you accelerate pretty darn hard. In which case all the crew ought to be a thin layer of yuck on the aft bulkheads... unless the gravity generator is compensating for the acceleration to produce 1-g downward at all times.

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Originally posted by asarian:
That's where the Inertial dampers come in. Hasn't anyone watched Star Trek? :)

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On a side-note, it is said that, "If a starship were to jump to warp speed without using inertial dampers, the members of the crew would almost certainly die as the rapid acceleration would throw them back in to the consoles and rear walls killing them instantly. Conversely, they would also be killed if a ship were to come out of warp but in this instance the crew would be thrown forward."

I wonder how true that really is, though.

If you were to create a warp field, loosely defined as a localized, self-induced field around a ship which distorts space-time in such a manner that you're, effectively, continually propelled forward as you're warping each new section of space you traverse, then I believe the ship itself, relative to its own warp-field, would appear, to itself, as standing still. Or just appear to be travelling at the same, pre-warp speed. And this because you're not literally propelled forward THROUGH space, but rather, as it were, it is space itself, being warped, that's effectively "bend" forward (if you can call it that). You're basically just riding on its coattails. Nor is space-time warped here because you're travelling at high (near lightspeed) velocity; but rather, you bend space first, and then use the "pinch" forward.

So, that leaves me to question how much going to, or dropping out, warp would be really noticed, inertia-wise. Inertia deals with the motion of matter, and how it is affected by applied forces. Newton's First Law of Motion states: "Every body perseveres in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight ahead, except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by forces impressed." Like forces that cause acceleration or deceleration. But since warping space would not be moving through space (but rather: moving space), inertia would not come into play. Turn off the warp-engine, and space around you would simply no longer be warped. So, in absentia of inertia, where's the need for Inertial dampers?

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Serenity don't have warp-engines, though. Just plain jet-engines. And a standard radion-accelerator core, of course. :) The latter, I don't think, is a warp engine (let alone an FTL drive).

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Originally posted by citizen:
I think that given the concentration of planets the distances between worlds is likely to be somewhat less than our solar system. Assuming the single star system which is the front runner I think, all those worlds are going to be packed into the habitable zone, an area occupied by the Earth's orbit and at the edges Venus and Mars in our system.

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Originally posted by doctroid:
But that's the part I don't buy. There are "dozens of planets and hundreds of moons" in the system; most of those moons must be orbiting gas giants. No one ever said all of the planets and moons were terraformable, but it's implied a lot of them are. So there are gas giants in the habitable zone, and gas giants sweep up everything around for a very large distance. (Like the region between Jupiter and Saturn.)

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Oh, and I hadn't heard the term "radion" in physics before. Has it been around long? Seems likely to be a pretty recent coinage.

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Originally posted by DonCoat:
A very much larger star than Sol would have a very much larger habitable zone. It would start farther out but extend much farther. That would make interplanetary distances larger than in the inner solar system, but would give more room for terraformable planets and moons.

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Another possibility is a multiple star system. There's controversy about whether there could be stable planetary systems in a multiple, but it seems likely there could be if the stars were either very close together or very far apart.

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Originally posted by DonCoat:
We should also keep in mind that planets (Greek: wanderers), well, move. The trip from A to B could be short one month and much longer the next.

An example in our own neighborhood is Earth and Mars. Sometimes Mars is quite close to us (we had a couple unusually close encounters in the last couple years) while at other times it's on the far side of the Sun from us.

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I kind of like the idea of a distant-binary or -trinary system. Each of the stars could have its own system of planets. Going to one of these from the "main" system (the one with the Core Worlds) would always take a long time compared to moving around in the main system.

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Originally posted by citizen:
The Radion scalar field first appeared in the KK-Theory published in the 1920s, though it wasn't called Radion then I think.

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Originally posted by zoid:

It is also postulated -- by no means without controversy -- that the universe is made up of more than the four dimensions we normally perceive as the 'spacetime continuum'. We do not 'see' these other dimensions -- between 6 and 22 additional dimensions, depending on the theoretical flavor you choose -- because they are 'wound up' very tight, say +/- the distance between an atomic nucleus and its first electron shell.

The point is, that every discrete point in the macroscopic, visible universe (not quite infinite in size, but pretty darned close) has a corresponding reference point in each of these 'rolled up' dimensions.

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Alternatively, you could just let your hair down and engage in a little speculative daydreaming with everyone else. (NB: Don't worry, we won't tell any of your colleagues that you are a less than perfectly serious scientist.)

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That's a real sticking point, isn't it? It is the weakest force, and yet it binds the galaxies together, because it also has the broadest (infinite?) range of effect.

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...But two 1 mC point charges at 1 m away from each other will repel by ~ 9 kN, or about the weight of 10 people. None of the Firefly hugging scenes would have ever worked out...

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...The force of an electron has a similarly infinite range of effect. The reason you don't see much in galactic electrodynamics is that the world is remarkably charge-neutral on average, because electrons and protons are unimaginably good at attracting each other...

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...Don't get me wrong; I think your speculations about the progress of science are sweet. Nonetheless, particle physics has been moving slowly as of late, and a big part of the problem is that we've run into a wall where science can no longer be done quite so descriptively. Our present understanding of gravity does not include anything other than mass creating the curvatures that affect everything else in the world...

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