And now for today's most random post. This is not meant to be kooky but rather a serious question. I was thinking today that in all sci-fi movies/tv series with space craft, nobody (to my knowledge) ever addresses how they create artificial gravity. Now, I get that this is fiction and they can do whatever they want. I also understand that gravity is a function if mass, but could it be done on a small scale?

 

It's not a function of friction. It's simulated gravity in the form of centripital force. In other words, they spin the craft fast enough that it feels like gravity.

 

[QUOTE=plutonium239,Feb 5 2008, 09:03 PM] And now for today's most random post.

 

Watch 2001: A Space Odyssey

 

That is not completely correct there.

Mass is not "what creates gravity", for example a tiny piece of lead creates more gravity than a large amount of cotton. The density of an object has a huge influence on the gravity it creates...

For example, White dwarf and black dwarf stars are tiny in comparison to our sun, yet have much more gravity. This is because they are so dense. Black holes for example, are really small in size, (they are collapsed stars just like dwarf stars), but are so dense that they pull even light in that passes by them...

So, your idea of having gravity created on a small-scale is more of a true statement, Yes, there are small objects that produce high amounts of gravity. Can it be reproduced? that is another question. but theoretically possible.

 

Slightly off topic, but watch the movie Thank you for Smoking. In that they deal with the whole how much of science fiction needs to be plausable.

A Hollywood exec is talking to a guy from the tobacco lobby about putting more cigarettes in movies, maybe even one in space. The lobbyist brings up the whole smoking and pure oxygen probably going to be a bad mix and the exec says something along the lines of

"We can fix that with one line. All you gotta say is, 'Thank God they invented the whatever device that now lets us smoke in space' and you're set."

I saw the movie last year so I'm paraphrasing to all hell, still found it very funny.

 

Weight = Mass x Gravity

 

Mass is still part of the equation though as well as density.

 

I expect artificial gravity might be achieved in a sci-fi sense by particle accelerator loops in the "bottom" of a ship. Highly accelerated particles have greater apparent mass. If you could sustain a large enough stream of near-light-speed particles in an accelerator loop you might have a source of gravity, similar to just having a large enough mass (e.g. a planet).

Of course this is my same reasoning for thinking every sufficiently advanced civilization destroys itself by making powerful enough accelerators to momentarily generate a black hole...

 

NASA uses rotation to create artificial gravity. Its not a new concept.