[Ghostavo]

http://www.physorg.com/news10789.html

On Tuesday, Feb. 14, noted physicist Dr. Franklin Felber will present his new exact solution of Einstein's 90-year-old gravitational field equation to the Space Technology and Applications International Forum (STAIF) in Albuquerque. The solution is the first that accounts for masses moving near the speed of light.

[achtung]

w00t! I guess.  I understand some of it, I think.  But just to be sure I'm gonna run through  that again.

[FireCrack]

Doesnt antigravity make FTL drives possilbe?

[aldo_14]

Doesnt antigravity make FTL drives possilbe?

I think they'd have said so if it did.

[an0n]

If you can control anti-gravity, you control gravity. At that point, all you need is a sufficiently massive power source and you can just start cutting up the universe.

But the entire thing just seems like bull**** to me. It appears to work upon the same principle as the water breaking across the bow of a ship as it moves through the water. And if that's the case, then you'd need to account for a massive gravitational wake being created. At the very least it'd have to distort the space behind the object to a degree equal to that of the distortion infront of it.

I get the feeling it'd just generate a gravitational sheer and tear the object to pieces, or at the very least create an opposing gravitational force that would **** with the speed. Basically, it'd turn the object into a giant gravitational magnet with Grav/Anti-Grav poles.

None of which sounds particularly fun.

[Ghostavo]

I get the feeling it'd just generate a gravitational sheer and tear the object to pieces, or at the very least create an opposing gravitational force that would **** with the speed. Basically, it'd turn the object into a giant gravitational magnet with Grav/Anti-Grav poles.

Your last sentence is the correct one as the object's gravity field would become something similar to this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Alcubierre-NASA.png, although it's "anti-gravity" component would be much narrower.

[aldo_14]

If you can control anti-gravity, you control gravity. At that point, all you need is a sufficiently massive power source and you can just start cutting up the universe.

But the entire thing just seems like bull**** to me. It appears to work upon the same principle as the water breaking across the bow of a ship as it moves through the water. And if that's the case, then you'd need to account for a massive gravitational wake being created. At the very least it'd have to distort the space behind the object to a degree equal to that of the distortion infront of it.

I get the feeling it'd just generate a gravitational sheer and tear the object to pieces, or at the very least create an opposing gravitational force that would **** with the speed. Basically, it'd turn the object into a giant gravitational magnet with Grav/Anti-Grav poles.

None of which sounds particularly fun.

It's not accelerating the ship or using anti-gravity from what I can read, but suggesting using a natural anti-gravity effect from a star travelling at over 0.57c to accelerate the payload via its anti-gravity repulsion.  What I'm trying to figure out is how or where you'd get a sufficiently fast star; the sun reportedly is travelling at about 225,000 m/s, which is less than a percent of the speed of light.

[an0n]

What I love about physicists is that they get caught up in the math and forget that the most fundamental rule of the universe is that you don't get anything for free. For every push, there's a pull. For every up, there's a down. And for every positive distortion in the fabric of space generated by an anti-gravity field, there's a negative that cancels out it's propulsive force.

See, this ties in with my theory of why the universe is expanding.

Gravity dips space down, right? But space doesn't like being dipped, so past the crest of the dip, I reckon it creates a less intense, more widely spread anti-gravity force of equal total kinnetic force. Distant **** pushes, close **** pulls.

[Ghostavo]

What I love about physicists is that they get caught up in the math and forget that the most fundamental rule of the universe is that you don't get anything for free. For every push, there's a pull. For every up, there's a down. And for every positive distortion in the fabric of space generated by an anti-gravity field, there's a negative that cancels out it's propulsive force.

Hm... no.

Unless you mean to say that movement altogether is impossible.

[Turnsky]

i think a lot of physics people get caught too much in the math, and not figure out any potential engineering problems that builing a functional propulsion system might have, there'll be a lot of trail, error, and spectacular explosions, kinda like mythbusters on a good day. 

[Ace]

If the "gravity generators" (EM superconductor experiments) are true then this could be used to make artificial navigation lanes.

What this means is while the speed of light itself isn't changed, the reaction mass (the main limiting factor of space travel beyond politics) can be much less.

So, you do is have a railgun at say L2. Inside of it is the ship and the "grav generator." Shoot both out. Now the grav generator and ship are going 0.6c, and the ship gets the benefit of the grav generator's repulsive effect from the acceleration of a large (albeit artificially large) mass.

The initial shot wouldn't be too good for humans though, so roll in the Cylons!

[Turambar]

by your command

[an0n]

Hm... no.

Unless you mean to say that movement altogether is impossible.

It is.

You can't move **** without moving something else in the opposite direction.

[FireCrack]

Anon, gravitational "dips" are asymptopic(i spelled that wrong, i'm sure), meaniong the crest of the dip exists only at infinite distance.