Manipulating Gravity: Is It Possible?

[wolram]

I do not have a paper to quote but this article claims that gravity can be manipulated., is this pie in the sky or is gravity manipulation a possibility?

Creating artificial gravitational fields that humans can manipulate and observe may seem like an idea from science fiction, but one researcher is now looking to turn the concept into a reality.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...s-using-current-technology.html#ixzz4MDOXczha

 

[Jonathan Scott]

Here's the original paper "How current loops and solenoids curve spacetime": https://arxiv.org/abs/1504.00333
I hope the date on which it was submitted (1st April) is not significant. In any case, it seems to be an extraordinarily tiny effect.

 

[Jimster41]

wild. I'd love to hear the verdict.
I know this is sci-fi land but what if knowing exactly what to do with those EM fields reduced the amount energy required?
And if perhaps all of human history has been about accumulating the exact information needed - isn't that equivalent to a lot of stored energy?

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2010/nov/19/information-converted-to-energy

This has been the argument I keep succumbing to for why maybe it's not impossible.

 

[mfb]

I hope the date on which it was submitted (1st April) is not significant.

Could be. It would be a direct detection of the gravitational influence of electromagnetic fields. Assuming the calculations are done right, the effect is 14 orders of magnitude weaker than the gravitational wave signal LIGO saw. No, we won't detect it, we don't have the technology to measure effects that tiny.

Calling that "artificial gravity", as done by dailymail, is just nonsense. It is as artificial as the gravity of a rock next to me: I can move it and influence the gravitational field that way. Great. Moving that rock has a larger effect than the one discussed in the preprint.

 

[vanhees71]

Hm, the paper doesn't look like an april fool's day joke (at least not at the first glance :-)). To measure the influence on em. fields seems to be out of reach given the tinyness of the effect, but according to GR it should be there.

 

[PeterDonis]

And if perhaps all of human history has been about accumulating the exact information needed - isn't that equivalent to a lot of stored energy?

No. The experiment described in the article you link to does not show that stored information is equivalent to stored energy. It just shows that, by using information, you can manipulate objects using energy from the environment (by taking advantage of random fluctuations), instead of having to supply it yourself. But the information itself isn't energy and isn't equivalent to it.