h a l f b a k e r yIt's as much a hovercraft as a pancake is a waffle.
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Newtons law of gravity states that the attractive force between two masses is represented by F =(G*m1*m2)/r*r, where m1 and m2 are the two masses, r*r (r squared) is the square of the distance between the centers of mass and G is the gravitational constant. G is very small (6.672E-10) which is why to
get a gravitational force that we can feel, one of the objects must be very big, like the earth.
Or another way to get some gravitational force is to get m1 and m2 very, very close together. You can see that even if G*m1*m2 is a very small number, as r approaches 0, F gets huge. Big enough to suck some juice out!
Now, I suspect that the reason my fingers are not sticking to the keyboard as I type is that other forces come into play that prevent atoms from getting that close together. Neutrons are neutral, and thus will not be repelled by like charges as would protons, or atoms carrying spheres of negatively charged electrons that bump into and repel each other.
The engine would start with two neutrons held close together. Imagine them at the points of a very large scissors. An explosion as with a piston engine drives the handles of the scissors together, and levers the neutrons very close together. The explosion provides only enough energy to get the neutrons so close that the gravitational force between them is meaningful. As the neutrons draw closer to one another, they carry the handles of the scissors closer together as well. The handles are attached to a gear and it is this stage that captures the energy as the handles are irrevocably pulled by the enormous gravitational forces between the two neutrons. The closer they get, the more force is available!
I am not sure what happens to the neutrons when r=0. Something good, I hope. But they are still useful! They remain stuck to one point of the scissors and the blades are opened again, with a fresh neutron loaded into the empty one. With the next cycle, the force is even greater since the mass on one point is twice what it was.
Eventually enough neutrons would accumulate on the scissors tips that they would need to be cleaned off to start fresh. They might be used to make beautiful jewelry.
Pico-assembly
http://www.orionsar.../Pi-Pk.html#picofab
A quick analysis of working with matter on the neutron-scale. [Chrontius, Nov 23 2004]
[link]
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You don't just find free neutrons. (If you do, you probably
have cancer already.) They're very hard to capture and
confine, and manipulating single particles of anything to
the point of getting them to the points of your machine
require inordinate amounts of energy. |
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The neutrons obey the Pauli exclusion principle just like
any other Fermion (electrons, for example). While it's true
that they don't have mutual electrostatic repulsion, they
do experience both the electromagnetic force and the
strong nuclear force, by way of their quark constituents.
Getting them close together would probably cause them
to bind, or "slip" past each other, or recoil from each
other. |
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For the neutrons to be close enough for the gravitational
effect to be meaningful, they would be close enough for
the other three forces to be several orders of magnitude
more significant. Gravity is almost always neglected when
looking at particle processes, as it is completely - well,
negligible. There's also the fact that the uncertainty
principle doesn't allow them to get that close; and in fact
causes the word "close" to lose all meaning. |
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In short - energy required to set up machine: vast. Effect
of using neutrons instead of electrons: little. Energy
obtained: miniscule. |
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You work for Mobil, don't you [Detly]? Fessup! You just want to stoke our addiction to petropower! |
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as r approaches zero...
Force might be huge, but distance will be negligible, and thus energy released would be tiny. |
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Mobil? Ha ha – I laugh at such a preposterous notion...
um... [nervous glance, picks up phone, calls Mobil(r) Hired
Goons(tm)] |
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([UB] - not quite, but getting ever closer.) |
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Just make the back wheels bigger than the front wheels: then the car is always going downhill!! Instant gravitational engine. ;) |
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[UB] - not for at least another year, and possibly as long as
another three. But I've just – a few days ago – finished the
essential requirements of a basic, rudimentary Piece of
Paper. Everything I do now is just for more letters
afterwards, or possibly before. :P |
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I'd like an Evil Genius title one day, but at the moment I'm
only at the Moderately Unbalanced and Fairly Resourceful
level. |
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The problems with the resulting
neutronium you'd be producing are
many. Let's see... |
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1) Neutronium is theoretically unstable,
and when it decompresses... well, you
could fit a Hiroshima nuke in a bomb
the size of a red blood cell. |
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2) Neutronium is damn dense, a
teaspoon weigh like a ton or something. |
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Similar energies could be obtained from
fusion, with a much lower investment in
R&D. |
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When I was at university, one of my physics profs mentioned once that he had never been able to figure out why anti-gravity by induced reverse precession would fail, but he was sure it would. |
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I would like to hear more about this induced reverse procession. It sounds formidable. |
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totally impossible and based on misunderstanding of physics, but in a creative way. bun. |
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