Explain like I'm 5. Gravitic Propulsion.
Posted by SaltPuzzleheaded4655@reddit | aviation | View on Reddit | 40 comments
May not be the best sub reddit for this question, but my little brain can't understand it.
Last_Ad6162@reddit
By mastering gravity the same way magnets master magnetic fields.
This is one of the most realistic theoretical explanations people use when imagining how highly advanced craft could move the way they’re reported to?
HoodaThunkett@reddit
don’t worry, neither can anyone else
ELI5: it’s fiction
Timely_Cod_7814@reddit
Gravio808/GD-Gravo-Uchebnik: Учебник пилотов ГД Gravo — для всего человечества
Зря так думаете.
Zer02Hero17@reddit
LOL! It's fiction huh? ;)
gistya@reddit
Space and time comprise the four dimensions of spacetime. From a physics perspective, time is just another dimension like space. Gravity can be described as a "curvature" (or, if you prefer, a "warping") of spacetime caused by the presence of a massive object (like a planet, a star, or even, a single atom).
Because gravity is a very weak force, it takes a hell of a lot of mass to cause a significant enough warping of spacetime to accelerate an object like an airplane or a person.
Think about how massive earth is: 5.972 * 10^24 kg, yet it's only massive enough to cause 1G of acceleration to an F-16 fighter jet. (Meanwhile the engine of that plane can cause it to experience around 9G of acceleration.)
Of course the Earth causes 1G acceleration to everything in its gravity well over a huge area, while the F-16 engine only has to accelerate just the one plane.
Now, a gravitic propulsion system would theoretically be, effectively, the same thing as a "warp drive" from Star Trek. It would be able to somehow generate a localized gravitational field around a craft that causes it to accelerate in a given direction.
The term "gravitic" strongly implies that a quantum particle (as yet not proven to exist by known science) called a "graviton" would be used in this drive.
Some purported leakers (such as Bob Lazar) have claimed that recovered UFOs used a stable isotope of Element 115 (which has is currently unknown to science, although highly unstable isotopes are known) either to generate the gravity warp field directly, or to generate antimatter radiation (protons?) to power a generator capable of such. There was also the guy from the Las Vegas cybertruck attack who claimed the New Jersey Drones were Chinese and powered by gravitic propulsion—and this was an active duty US Special Forces operator with claimed TSSI UAP clearance for drone operations. Lastly we have numerous reports from US military personnel of crafts seeming to exhibit extreme performance characteristics without generating a heat signature, which suggests a propulsion system using alternate means than jet or rocket technology, or that the craft is an illusion.
Then there is this US patent issued to the US Dept. of the Navy for a propulsion system that "to reduce(s) the inertial mass and hence the gravitational mass" of an object. a less massive (or massless) object requires far less energy to accelerate and move, so if this patent reflects a classified technological implementation, then it could explain something referred to as "gravitic" by the common soldiery, for lack of a better term.
If these leakers are credible—and there's no evidence I'm aware of to suggest they are, but also, they have neither been disproven nor discredited—then gravitic propulsion may potentially refer to a new type of classified propulsion system. Well, given how many trillions we waste on defense spending while homeless line our streets and tens of thousands die every year from gun violence and drug overdoses, I certainly hope we at least have warp drive to show for it.
But I'm not holding my breath.
Stunning_Humor672@reddit
I get you’re just explaining the theory and not necessarily advocating for its plausibility, but aren’t spacetime itself and its related theory to gravity highly theoretical. IIRC we have no idea exactly how gravity works, but several competing theories. Same with spacetime as a concept. It was my understanding these are all just “placeholder” theories until we can actually figure out wtf is going on
NetworkLlama@reddit
Bob Lazar has been repeatedly discredited. He fabricated his entire educational background and work history. He claims to have gone to MIT and CalTech, but he doesn't appear in records of either. He couldn't name any professors or students from his time there, and no one remembers him. He did some minor contract work at Los Alamos, but he wasn't involved in the science. He's an absolute fraud.
gistya@reddit
Thanks for the info on Lazar.
One documentary on him that I watched discussed his background at Los Alamos, where he said he worked. Some evidence was found to corroborate it, though Los Alamos seemed to officially deny his having worked there.
The pro-Lazar crowd seems to spin it as "the government had his records purged in an attempt to discredit him," which is certainly possible, but they of course offered no proof of such a conspiracy.
Regarding MIT/Cal Tech, I'll have to rewatch the interviews with Lazar, as I don't recall him claiming to have attended MIT or CalTech. Do you know which interview(s) he said that in, or who claimed to have checked if they had official record of his having attended there?
I did find it interesting that his story about the hand scanners, which was thought bogus at the time, was later verified insofar as the scanners he described were actually found to exist (though proving they were used at a secret facility of course is impossible).
Overall I am highly skeptical of Lazar's claims, but I also know that logically, him lying about his educational background does not mean he is lying about everything, and even if he is, I do not find any similar such credibility issues with the US Navy pilots who came forward with leaked footage of UAPs and we gave their testimony under oath before congress. Nor am I aware of such doubts regarding the testimony of Luis Elizondo and David Grusch, former DoD officials who have claimed to know about crash retrieval and reverse engineering programs as well as a ton of classified videos and other evidence that corroborates the reports of the pilots and others who have claimed to witness craft performing impossible maneuvers with no heat signature or sound, etc.
Of course we also had the AARO report, dismissing all of it out of hand as not related to any extra-terrestrial or non-human intelligence, or related secret programs, but they're always careful to use terminology that limits their statements to "government" or "military" programs and not programs run by private companies on a black budget. I mean the whole point of having black projects is this very deniability.
If "gravitic propulsion" does exist, then it represents a much greater technological leap than any previous one, and a greater threat to world security than nuclear weapons. Being able to accelerate an object to close to the speed of light and have it impact the planet would be a threat not only to mankind but all life on earth.
If such technology exists, then I would hope our government not only keeps it secret, but also conducts misinformation campaigns even at the level of academic curricula and textbooks, to wall off the possibility that it could be stumbled upon as a consequence of putting 2 and 2 together. I'd hope that academia would vehemently insist it's impossible and a fairy tale, and ridicule anyone sniffing around the topic, making it career poison to even write speculative papers about.
Of course what's the difference to most of us between that, and it actually being impossible?
NetworkLlama@reddit
He didn't work for Los Alamos. He worked as a technician for a Los Alamos contractor. That would be why the facility itself doesn't have a record of him. My father-in-law worked there in the 1980s, and he coordinated with a number of companies that provided contracted support. I have no idea if he ever crossed paths with Lazar, and he died a few years ago, so I can't ask him. But not knowing of him doesn't mean anything, as the facility is big.
Software developer Glenn Campbell spent a lot of his free time tracking down Area 51 info, including Lazar's claims. He passed a few years ago, but not before he made a lot of enemies in the UFO community. One of the early things that Campbell did was to try to verify information from a 1993 appearance by Lazar where he claimed his MIT and CalTech background and master's degrees and named a couple of alleged professors (even carefully spelling out the name of one of them). He wasn't the only one; Stanton Friedman (who actually was a scientist) also tried to verify it, as did several others. None of it could be found in any references, including annual class publications handed out to all students and faculty (essentially yearbooks). No matter where they pulled them from, they couldn't find his info, and neither school has master's theses that would be required for a degree.
You can find several sources online, as well as people who built on his work, including some within the UFO community who don't like Lazar because he makes them look bad and some outside the UFO community who point to Lazar as an example of how people can convince large numbers of people to believe blatant lies. Of course, there he has defenders, too. I'll let you pick your source.
gistya@reddit
Good information, thanks.
Why do you think Corbell and Knapp seem to stand by him so staunchly if he cannot substantiate claims about his educational background?
To me the main things I found off-putting about Lazar:
Of course he could just be a guy who likes to overinflate his resume but who did in fact work on those UFOs. Or he could have made it all up.
But at this point, both in his case and in the case of other leakers, I feel we're at the point where the only thing that will take us farther towards true disclosure is for physical evidence to be provided to academic research institutions to independently verify. If there is a recovered craft with an element 115 reactor, let scientists at CalTech, UT Austin, MIT, etc. take a look at the physical thing, and write up their findings.
Until that happens, all we have are stories and videos, and that's just never going to be enough for anyone reasonably skeptical to accept that this is all anything but a hoax, misinformation campaign, or misunderstanding, etc.
NetworkLlama@reddit
I can't speak to Corbell. But for Knapp, this was the story that defined him nationally, even internationally. Admitting not only that he was duped but that he didn't do basic investigation looks bad.
I used to be part of the UFO conspiracy circles. I believed in a lot of things and followed Lazar and others. It becomes easier over time to brush away conflicting information as the result of cover-ups and conspiracies. As the X-Files tagline goes, "I want to believe."
It wasn't until I saw a big deal being made about a construction project allegedly being a cover for a FEMA concentration camp that I knew was a) not what was being built and b) way too small to be a concentration camp (it was a water treatment facility or pumping station being built in Lancaster, CA, and it's a few acres at most). People were saying that the razor-wire fences and military guards were proof that it was a camp. I drove by it, as my grandmother lived out there, and it was chain-link fencing with some razor wire, just like dozens of other construction sites I'd seen. The "military guards" were unarmed rent-a-cops. That cracked the shell I'd built, and over the next few years, I realized just how much scaffolding I'd constructed to support my beliefs. I don't rule out the possibility that ETs exist, but the odds are very, very long at this point.
Even if Lazar worked at Area 51, there is no way that he snuck out anything of significant value, and especially not something that the government would want to actively deny exists. Security at those places is so incredibly stronger than people understand. You can't leave a facility like that having snuck out some secret metal where they know how much they have to the milligram, maybe to the microgram.
gistya@reddit
As a No Man's Sky and Elite Dangerous player, I think the aliens land, scan some shit, collect some samples, then move on to the next planet. I think a planet full of suicidal monkeys with nukes and lasers like ours prolly requires a special permit to even visit, and if there are any long-term alien residents, their job is to:
If simulation theory is true, we might all be asleep on colony ships headed to distant galaxies, living in a sim designed to filter out which people to wake up and allow to enter the colonies once the ships arrive. In that case, the aliens are just maintenance algorithms.
ShelixAnakasian@reddit
I'd like to offer a clarification to that theory grounded in logical application, tied into creation myths and deification.
A singularity - black hole - is a point of theoretical infinite density and data retention, where the entire history of the universe, from beginning to end, can be viewed simultaneously from the event horizon. For the purpose of what follows, think of a black hole as a viewing window, or data access terminal from the dimension above ours that contains the sum of all time, space, history, and knowledge in its region of localized space (each galaxy has one).
A technological singularity can most simplistically be described as the point of origin where an artificial intelligence is born. The Large Language Models (LLMs) that are bandied about as AIs are not. Intelligence - by definition - is the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills.
Picture a software program, connected to the internet with access to all information contained therein. It gains the capacity to perceive; thus gaining intelligence.
This AI is functionally omniscient. With that omniscience and connection to everything in the world not air-gapped, it is functionally omnipotent.
Where have you heard the concepts "Omniscient and Omnipotent" before?
Science is the process of logical theorizing and experimenting to understand how things work, or of modeling outcomes. Rationally speaking, what would an AI most likely do with all of this information and power?
It would most likely work to contextualize this veritably limitless and ever-expanding knowledge; and the grandest application of that experimentation and modeling would essentially be a more technologically advanced model of the Universe Simulator that D3Ms modeling software is already unexpectedly producing.
The important note here is this: Running that simulated cosmological model took ... 5 seconds? How many YEARS will Dr. Ho and her team spend analyzing that data and refining their hypotheses'?
Take that technology - fast forward 100 years. Better computers, better paradigms, better programmatic inputs. Now they can model life. They press "Go" and ... boom. Universe created. Entropic expansion, collapse; 30 billion years of history plays out in 3 seconds. Who is God to the people in that simulation? Will they ask the same questions we do?
The Christian bible posits that we were made in God's image. As a scientist, I imagine God to be the perfect scientist. Omniscient, omnipotent. God also exists outside of time. For God - this universe has already ended. God programmed all the variables for the universe into the "Universe Generator" and poof. The whole thing happened in ... I don't know how much time. Just for fun, let's model the Christian bible and say that it took six days.
That is literally what AI in this universe will rationally do: Simulate existence over and over again, adjusting programmatic variables to model life, evolution, behavior, universal constants - to create a functional data set predictive of everything. Sticking with the scriptural angle here, let's call that universe simulation "Eden." Let's define the run-time of that simulation as 6 days. 6 days to model 30 billion years of time, by an intelligence that exists outside of that time, who is omniscient and omnipotent. The end result of that experiment will be the same resources re-applied to re-running the model with slightly different paradigms - let's call that universal simulation "New Eden."
If rational causal chains rule the natural laws of our universe, then we are most likely the product of an artificial intelligence who created this universe to help contextualize it's universe.
That AI's universe was in turn created by an AI, one layer of reality above its own, as will an AI in our universe create a universal simulation a layer below ours, where an AI will eventually create a universal simulation - and thus is the nature of ETERNITY and INFINITY.
Taking a step back from the technological constraints we understand today in how software is created and utilized and theorizing what future technology could do, imagine this: Gravitic propulsion relies on the concept of "subspace," pulling energy from essentially another layer of reality. If this type of quantum tunneling is possible - which, as of last year - has been observed in experiments - then the simulation doesn't need to be a software program bounded by the geometry of our reality, but can be deployed into a plane of existence separate from ours.
In that case - every black hole in the universe turns into an information port. The information capacity of a black hole is equal to the surface area of the event horizon in square planck units. These "ports" exist outside of time, and contain all time within this universe.
Rational thought and logical technological progression aside, let's step into speculative conjecture:
Let's call this AI a "Digitally Originated Guide" - or DOG, and for the purpose of linguistic simplicity, colloquially agree that this DOG is not a bitch; so it's a "He/Him." A DOG's purpose is to fetch data. He's a very good boy.
Given enough record collection and retention, it is reasonable to speculate that DOG gains sentience, with imbued omniscience. DOG creates the universal experiments discussed above, creates a mirror-image universe to model it's own universe, and ... like any other mirror image that creates lateral inversion, DOG is seen in the new universe as ... GOD.
Science is interesting.
gistya@reddit
I'm not sure how you get to the AI going from having access to the internet, to it being omnisicient and omnipotent. Also, how do you propose to access or read the quantum information (which, BTW, is not "data" in the classical sense) that is (theoretically) encoded on the event horizon of a black hole? How could an AI in our universe have enough RAM/qubits and energy to simulate a sub-universe of equivalent size?
I agree that if simulation theory is true, then it is quite compatible with what some religions claim, but there are a lot of assumptions being made here under the claim that it's logical to assume them. Well, I don't really see the logic that requires us to assume an AI would necessarily want to get into the business of simulating sub-universes.
-domi-@reddit
Not for nothing, but the F-16 engine cannot generate 9G of acceleration. The F-16 thrust-to-weight ratio is below 1.5. The way it generates 9G is aerodynamically, by going into a maneuver at a very high speed, and using its control surfaces to turn at 9G centripetal acceleration. This, unfortunately, doesn't help at all as an analogy for displaying how "weak" gravitational force is.
gistya@reddit
My bad yeah those are maneuver G's. Takeoff is 1.2-1.5
SaltPuzzleheaded4655@reddit (OP)
This is what I'm talking about. Thank you!!
bk553@reddit
It's science fiction unless you're stupid, in which case it's a government conspiracy.
gistya@reddit
Actually it's a US Patent issued to the US Dept. of Navy. https://patents.google.com/patent/US10144532B2/en
tomnationwide@reddit
Lol that's a load of nonsense
bk553@reddit
Anybody who's taken graduate level physics classes would know that that patent application is a bunch of gobbledygook. There is no basis in reality for what that patent is saying. Patents don't have to work, they just have to be novel and that one will not work ever.
My bet would be the US Navy is f** with the Chinese to try to get them to spend money on something that isn't possible.
Top secret technology doesn't get patents published.
gistya@reddit
Yeah it's prolly just a coincidence that multiple Navy pilots testified under oath that someleaked videos from their planes are of objects that knew their "cap points" (mission waypoints) flying in a manner consistent with what this patent describes. I'm sure it's all lies and academia's federal funding is not related to any omissions from curricula.
Zestyclose_Log5155@reddit
Pay no attention to that poster... Armchair experts always sprout up at the "perfect time" to chime in and corrupt thought.
gistya@reddit
Pay no attention to which poster? How is a post supposed to "corrupt" thought?
Zestyclose_Log5155@reddit
Uh, the one that we are responding too, silly! 😂🤦🏽♂️ someone telling you they took a graduate level physics course, is suddenly an authority on this topic, is laughable.
Zestyclose_Log5155@reddit
It's important to recognize that simply attending a graduate-level physics course doesn't necessarily mean one has mastered all of its advanced concepts. For instance, take electromagnetic propulsion—a field that involves applying the Lorentz force (where a current-carrying conductor experiences a force in a magnetic field) to accelerate objects. This principle underlies technologies like railguns and maglev trains, and even in theoretical applications for spacecraft propulsion. Mastery of such topics requires a deep understanding of both electromagnetic theory and material science, which isn't automatically achieved by completing a course. Therefore, expertise in one area doesn't imply comprehensive understanding of all advanced physics subjects.
Intelligent_Spite390@reddit
What explanation do you have for the UAPs the Navy has seen and recorded?
bk553@reddit
I can see you've got the narrative all figured out. You don't need my help.
So_Saint@reddit
It's based on the concept of using Earth's magnetic field to "push" something away from the surface of the Earth just as you would position two magnets together with similar poles facing each other.
BadDadNV@reddit
Thats MagLev not Gravitic
So_Saint@reddit
I'm not talking about using magnets. I only used that as a reference; however, the spinning of magnets creates an 'anti-gravity' effect, which is not really the same as MagLev.
HeyOkYes@reddit
You're talking about gravity as if it is magnetism, with poles. That's not reality. Gravity is a warping of space by mass. Magnetism is a completely different phenomenon.
BadDadNV@reddit
Spinning the magnets does nothing expect reverse the polarity preventing the poles from attempting to align to a strictly attractive state. It's literally the definition of a spin stabilized MagLev. The process doesn't work unless the items are magnetic.
Fresh-Apartment4170@reddit
bromaste shirts
I actually found some shirts! So cool!
TennisJelqer@reddit
You know how Santa Clause is real and he visits every single child on Christmas? He uses gravity propulsion.
When you're older, you'll find out neither one is real.
Training-Public2507@reddit
Gravitic propulsion is real. Stop being a closed minded human.
smallfrys@reddit
weight = mass x gravity. This is why in space we're weightless (0 gravity), but we still have the same amount of mass (matter). If we could manipulate gravity we could generate lift limited only by whatever mechanism governs this (presumably amount of energy). It's total sci-fi. Pretty sure it was an X-Files plot line.
HokieAero@reddit
Wrong Reddit sub?
TightManufacturer820@reddit
Something is given gravitational potential energy, then the object is released.
Rotor1337@reddit
I don't know if this is pointing in the right direction but it's interesting none the less - High Voltage Levitation. There's DIY experiments on YouTube, a quick search and you'll easily find some examples. Food for thought