You’ve goose outlet canada seen the crew on board the
Could We Make Artificial Gravity
Science fiction is great for the imagination, it’s rich in iron and calcium, and takes us to places we could never visit. It canada goose outlet canada also canada goose clearance sale helps us understand and predict what might happen https://www.fanclub-fulton-smith.de in the future: tablet computers, cloning, telecommunication satellites, Skype, magic slidey doors, and razors with 5 blades.
These are just some of the predictions science fiction has made which have come true.
Then there are a whole bunch of predictions that have yet to happen, but still might, Fun things like the climate change apocalypse, regular robot apocalypse, the giant robot apocalypse, the alien invasion apocalypse, the apocalypse canada goose uk shop apocalypse, comet apocalypse, and the great Brawndo famine of 2506.
Not to mention things that’ll probably never happen, things that could not be, in accordance with the canada goose canada goose uk outlet outlet sale laws of nature. Faster than light travel, instantaneous teleportation, and the ability to destroy whole planets with a space station laser pointer.
But there’s one future technology, a massive violation of the laws of physics which plays a role in nearly every single book, show and movie you can mention.
I’m talking artificial gravity.
It’s magical. Captain Kirk can actually stand on the bridge of canada goose outlet nyc the USS Enterprise, and he just stands there. He can sit in the mess and enjoy canada goose black friday sale a pint of Romulan Ale not served in a plastic bag, uk canada goose or go just to the bathroom without a freaky weirdo suction toilet.
On Earth, you can stand on the deck of your warship, drink your Romulan Ale from an open topped non collapsible container, and it’s all thanks to you, gravity. The Earth is pulling the ale towards its center, and it’s stopped by the glass, which is stopped by your meat and skeleton, stopped by your well polished boots, stopped by the plates on the deck of the ship, held up by the rest of a the ship, held up by buoyancy, which all work to keep everything from zipping down to the center of the planet, or at least the floor of the ocean.
Astronauts share a lunch on the ISS. Credit: NASAOut in space, no gravity. You’ve goose outlet canada seen the crew on board the International Space Station.
Once you’re in microgravity, you float around like a balloon. You have to drink and pee into a tube, and one of those involves a vacuum cleaner. Protip: Do not mix up those tubes.
Most importantly, once a spaceship started moving, or undertook evasive maneuvers, canada goose outlet reviews everyone would ping pong around like crunchy meaty bingo balls.
Will we ever develop artificial gravity?
The only way to get gravity is with mass. The more mass, the more gravity you get. Without mass, you can’t have gravity.
Before we go any further, there’s no such thing as anti gravity.
Now that’s out of the way, there are a few ways we can fake it.
The force of gravity that we feel is actually just an acceleration towards the center of the Earth at 9.8 meters canada goose outlet uk sale per second squared, or 1G.
As Einstein showed us, everything’s relative. If you were in a spacecraft and it was accelerating away from Earth at a rate of 1G, it would feel exactly the same if you were standing on the ground.
This is known as constant acceleration, and if you could somehow power a spacecraft with that much energy, it would be just what you needed.
Astronauts on the canada goose outlet Moon. Image credit: NASAWant to get to the Moon? Accelerate at 1G for an hour and a half, turn around, and decelerate for the same canada goose outlet shop amount of time. Not only would you get to the Moon in under 3 hours, but you would have experienced Earth gravity the entire time.
Want to fly to Jupiter? It would only take about 80 hours of acceleration, and then 80 hours of deceleration. At the halfway point of this journey, you’re going more than 2,800 kilometers per second, which is close to 1% the speed of light.
Want to travel a light year? Accelerate for about a year, then decelerate for a year. At the mid point, canada goose coats on sale you’ll be going the speed of light.
Uh oh. There’s the problem. As you probably know, as you approach the speed of light, it Canada Goose Online requires more and more energy. And you can’t go faster than the speed of light. So using this method only lets you canada goose outlet travel about a light year at a time.
There’s an idea that I’m sure you Arthur C Clarke fans know, which requires way less energy: artificial uk canada goose outlet gravity from centripetal force spinning.
Take a large enough spacecraft canada goose outlet online and set it spinning.
Interior of the Discovery, from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Credit; Metro Goldwyn MayerThanks to inertia, free floating objects within the spacecraft, like astronauts, would try canada goose outlet store uk to fly off into space, but the hull of the spaceship would keep them inside.
To make this comfortable, you need a ring shaped spacecraft with a radius of 250 meters. This ring canada goose outlet toronto factory would need to turn about twice a minute for astronauts within the spacecraft to experience 1 G.
Building a spacecraft like this is an engineering challenge, buy canada goose jacket but it’s probably within reach of our current technology.