Everyone's always going on about antigravity being cool, but no one really does anything about it. Even NASA are too busy designing sailing ships for outer space, and working out how to power spacecraft by atomic bomb blasts without launching radioactive material into space, to bother inventing a proper gravity shield or anti-grav engine.
We need more of an incentive. Therefore, I propose we increase gravity until people have to find a solution. If we reduce the earth's radius by 30% (keeping the same mass) we would approximately double the acceleration due to gravity on the surface. And if that didn't work, we'd reduce it some more.
I don't quite know how we could convert the earth's core into a neutron star, but there's a simple thing you can do right now. Everyone jump up and down, we got a lot of squishing to do! It's the way to the stars!-- pottedstu, Jan 07 2002 Fa(c)t http://www2.gvsu.edu/~witmerj/gpy356.htmA Study/Comparison of European Diets/RDA with US Diets/RDA [thumbwax, Jan 10 2002, last modified Oct 21 2004] Fishbone. The reduction in the radius would reduce the surface area. This would reduce the distance between Britain and France from 26 miles to 18.2. THE HORROR!-- dare99, Jan 08 2002 Details, details, details-- thumbwax, Jan 08 2002 Once we lessen the radius, and invent the antigrav things, what will we have? a smal earth with more gravity with antigrav to get us back to normal gravity. so in order to keep what we have already, we create an irreversable problem and then find a way to live arround it. Not to mention that it's impossible. I do agree that we should have some antigrav stuff by now though.-- mephisto, Jan 08 2002 thought that was 'gravitas', RT.dare99's horror is another person's joy - think of the all-round reduction in long-distance relationships. (oh, and another person's horror again - exclusion orders on violent partners would have to be increased. Yeugh, paperwork)-- lewisgirl, Jan 08 2002 I jumped up and down. It doesn't seem to have worked.-- beauxeault, Jan 08 2002 ...or the levity.-- snarfyguy, Jan 09 2002 After three days of thought, I finally must post these thoughts for answers...If we all jump at once...i) the oceans won't be depressed, so we might just drown, or give the earth topspin and fall off the axis! ii) Americans are significantly heavier than those of other continents, I believe...Surely all continents are not equal, anyway...If everyone jumped at once, repeatedly, wouldn't, say, America, in my example, compress the earth faster, and throw the earth off it's axis? I hope I get an answer from a scientist!-- crackriot, Jan 10 2002 After the antigrav device is invented, it can be applied to the Earth itself. Freed from its surly self-gravitational bonds, it will relax back to a larger size. Thus reversing the brief inconveniences incurred by thumbwax's [er, I mean, pottedstu's] proposal.-- wiml, Jan 10 2002 I proposed?-- thumbwax, Jan 10 2002 Something like 60% of the earth's surface is covered by sea. My proposal would initially reduce the surface area (proportional to square of radius) by one half. We'd just have to concentrate our bouncing on the sea bed, and we'd have no problems with shrinking land.-- pottedstu, Jan 10 2002 PeterSealy - couldn't we simply rename war to make it go away? (Perhaps Canuck should post this as an idea?)
beaux - Canuck is sorry, whilst you were jumping up and down, he was jumping down and up, thereby negating your actions. Oops!
crackriot - as a scientist, Canuck is more concerned by the fact that as we pump all of our oil out of the Earth, the internal friction increases on the axis, contributing to the global warming effect and slowing down the earth's rotation. This means the Earth will eventually stop spinning, and we all know how painful that can be. No amount of simply jumping up and down will rectify that. Canuck suggests we all run really fast toward the east, jump up, and land on both feet to provide not only the compression for pottedstu's idea, but produce an eastward momentum to keep the Earth spinning as it should.-- Canuck, Jan 11 2002 Lewisgirl, you're missing the worst of it. Twice the acceleration means twice the weight. Don't step on those bathroom scales, it might be a bit scary...-- goff, Jan 11 2002 Thinking further of course, this buggers everything up as far as making physics calculations simple doesn't it? A kilogram (mass) currently also 'weighs' a kilogram. In the new world, a kilogram will weigh 2Kg. Of course, we could just go back to pounds which are a weight measure anyway. In which case do we convert all our scales so that a kilogram still weighs 2.2 pounds, or will a kilogram now weigh 4.4 lbs? What will we do with cake recipes?? (OK in the states cos they use volume measures (cups) but over here in blighty and euroland we weigh stuff). We used to use 10Ms-2 as a rough acceleration due to gravity, so a kilogram exerts a force of 10 newtons at the earth's surface. All nice round numbers. Now its all doubled with this double gravity thing. Very confusing.-- goff, Jan 11 2002 UnaBubba, you ain't heavy...you're my double gravity brother.-- goff, Jan 11 2002 Ohh, sorry if I make it hard for the physicists, because they're the ones who should have come up with the antigravity machine in the first place. They deserve all they get.
And it's really a person's mass not weight that we want to know, so whilst we'd have to calibrate scales you wouldn't actually be any heavier, just as a 300lb person on the earth wouldn't suddenly become svelte and healthy if they went to Mars.
However, I concede that with the extra gravity you might become shorter. I read somewhere that people are an inch shorter in the evening than the morning because they've been standing up all day and their head's sunk.-- pottedstu, Jan 11 2002 Is it really the person's mass you want to know? Defintitely disagree that they won't be heavier - they very much will be. Just try picking up your arm when it weighs twice as much, and you'll see what I mean.-- goff, Jan 11 2002 You know, jumping up and down could compact the earth, but so could just walking around on it, you'd just have to walk around for a little longer than it would take to jump up and down. But we (mankind) have been walking around on the earth for weeks now, if not longer. And running, and jumping, and putting heavy weights on it like shopping malls and The World's Largest Ball of String. And tearing down mountains with bombs and bulldozers.
So a million years or so ago, the earth's diameter must have been much greater than it is now, and gravity was probably negligible. Therefore, the real solution would be to simply go back in time, which, of course, has the added benefit of being easier to achieve.-- beauxeault, Jan 11 2002 goff, real physicists use different units for mass (kilograms) and weight (newtons, usually --- weight is equal to the mass times gravity). This is the place where the non- metric system really shines, because we get cool units like "slugs" (the unit of mass), "poundals", etc.-- wiml, Jan 13 2002 If we reduce the earth's radius, we'll drown. So stop jumping up and down! You'l'l kill us all!-- beerhunter, Jan 13 2002 Instead of jumping up and down to change the radius of the earth thus increasing gravity, how about just change the unit of measure itself? Just make 1 gravitational unit equal 2 and presto you have doubled the gravitational force without moving. WRT antigrav,obviously it exists because after we double the force of gravity by changing the unit of measure we still feel exactly the same.-- Barley, Jan 13 2002 Well, at last, a voice of reason! This idea [Barley] has presented intrigues Canuck, and he is pleased to support it because it requires a lot less work. Kudos!-- Canuck, Jan 15 2002 I agree with the premise, but this is the wrong way to increase gravity. It has too many problems (as mentioned above). The other way to increase gravity is to increase the mass of the earth. Obviously, a large lasoo could be built to hogtie the moon, and bring it down here with us.
This solution would actually increase landmass. The proceeds from property sales could be used to fund the development of the now-necessary anti-gravity technology.
Furthermore, the rotation of the earth would slow down - increasing the length of a day. If we use that time to increase the length of the average work day, it should increase productivity. The resulting improvement to the world economy could be used to further fund development of the now-necessary anti-gravity technology.-- carpe diem, Jan 15 2002 But if we brought the moon down, and landed it on, say, Sri Lanka, we'd have this big ol' nasty lopsided glob spinning in space rather than the nice efficient ovoid sphere we have now. So it wouldn't spin so smoothly any more. It'd be more wobbly, like a top that's slowing down and about to fall over. And we'd all die of motion sickness.-- beauxeault, Jan 16 2002 Why has this impossible non-idea drawn so much attention? I wonder about youse guys sometimes.-- MauiChuck, May 27 2005 //Why has this impossible non-idea drawn so much attention// Well, it beats working.-- coprocephalous, May 27 2005 antigavity is just another form of perpetual motion-- quantum_flux, Nov 14 2007 //antigavity is just another form of perpetual motion// Not necessarily. An aeroplane is an inefficient antigravity machine. A perfect antigravity machine would expend as much energy as it would take to lift the object to the same height - no energy violation is necessary.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Nov 14 2007 Synchronised (resonant) jumping will help.-- VJW, Jul 09 2011 random, halfbakery