Artificial Gravity

Artificial Gravity

Artificial Gravity is a force that mimics gravity.

You live on a space station. It's the shape of a giant donut.

Everything is great, but you and the crew are getting sick of floating around in zero gravity.

What you need is to generate some "artificial gravity". But how?

That's easy. Just fire a small booster rocket and spin the space station. You'll be drawn the outside wall of the station which will become your floor. So you can stroll around as usual. And if you drop an object it will fall to the floor.

So now you have "artificial gravity".

And if you spin the station at the correct rate you can match the gravity on Earth.

Spinning is a form of acceleration. But why is that important?

Because one of the deepest physics insights was Einstein’s observation that, for a small volume of space, the effects of acceleration cannot be distinguished from the effects of gravity. So your “artificial gravity” is not so artificial after all.

Content written and posted by Ken Abbott abbottsystems@gmail.com