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Old March 4th 05, 06:48 PM
Christopher M. Jones
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Matthew Hagston wrote:
There's an idea that's been going through my head dealing with creating
artificial gravity, before you think troll just stay with me here. It deals
with two of Einstein's papers; the first stating as an object speed
accelerates closer towards the speed of light, it's mass increases, the
second states mass is directly related to gravity. So Take an object like a
large super-conductive disk, inside a vacuum to reduce friction, and spin
it. If you can make it spin fast enough (up towards the speed of light) you
should be able to create gravity with out having the real mass required.
Creating a sort of virtual mass so to speak.

I realize there must be something wrong with my logic because this seems
like such a simple solution, so I invite some criticism here.


It would work, to a degree depending on the strength of the
disk, but you gain nothing. Remember E=mc^2, mass and energy
are two sides of the same coin. When you create a
"mass-energy" in a rapidly spinning disk that mass is no
different than any other mass. Moreover, the energy you use
to spin up the disk is no different than any other mass. In
order to spin up a disk fast enough to increase it's mass by,
say, 1kg, you need to input 1kg of mass/energy, period.
Using your method that would require harnessing 1kg of energy,
90 petajoules!, transporting it to the vicinity of the disk,
and then applying the energy to spin up the disk. It would
be quite a lot more direct to simply transport a 1kg mass, as
the result is exactly the same without the inefficiencies and
incredible difficulties. Additionally, to generate 1 gee of
gravity through this method would require a mass/energy on
the order of that of the Earth.