Why can’t we create our own gravity, like lab created gravity. Isn’t gravity just a big object pushing down on some sort of “plane” ?

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Why can’t we create our own gravity, like lab created gravity. Isn’t gravity just a big object pushing down on some sort of “plane” ?

In: Physics

9 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Gravity is not some defined force with particles or physical things to make it up. It is always something that is observed/derived from the system that works together to “create” It. It could not be “it” at all, it could be a summation of the effects of individual forces/matter in a system. An idea that we created by simply observing the interaction of these phenomena. You’re five, you know all those big words too.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Just to add to the other answers, I want to note that you _can_ create gravity in the lab. You can even do it in your basement! You just can’t “cheat” to make it, you have to do it the old fashioned way…with a big, heavy object.

However, thanks to the magic of a torsion balance you can actually see the visible effects of gravity (and not just by dropping things) with a rather simple experimental apparatus.

[Here’s a how-to write up](https://www.fourmilab.ch/gravitation/foobar/). Basically, take a lightweight horizontal beam with two lead weights, one on each end. Balance it from a few feet of fishing line, hanging down from above. Allow it to come to equilibrium so it’s not spinning. Now place a couple of heavy weights or blocks a few inches away from the weights, clockwise (or counterclockwise). Gravity will draw the weights on the beam towards the large weights, causing it to rotate slightly. The weak force of gravity is still able to show up because other forces are in balance and the beam can spin without significant friction.

This experiment was originally performed by Cavendish in the late 1790s

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavendish_experiment

Anonymous 0 Comments

The people above have answered your question, but I would like to add that you can approximate gravity. If you have a plane that is constantly accelerating, then that can make fake gravity. Like if you had a space ship with infinite fuel, you could keep the engine lit forever, and accelerate at 9.8 meters per second and get fake gravity, because the spaceship is pushing your feet into the floor. Keep in mind, even though this would be indispensable from real gravity, it is not. If you have accelerated in a car, you know what I am talking about. When you accelerate, you are pushed by the acceleration back into your seat. This is fake gravity and it is indistinguishable from having another planet behind you pulling you towards your seat.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Gravity is the result of matter manipulating the space around it. Its a fundamental force, and everything has gravity, including you. How much your gravity affects space and time is a difficult question to answer, but its related to the amount of matter and its density.

To create our own gravity would mean we need an object that could fight against Earth’s gravity. I’m sure you can see how disastrous that might become.

Anonymous 0 Comments

No, that’s not what gravity is. Gravity is a property of mass. Everything that has mass has gravity. More mass = more gravity. We can simulate gravity through constant linear acceleration or centrifugal force, but we can’t make “real” gravity without mass.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Others are saying no, and I agree. But you could manufacture swinging similar.

If a spaceship was a big ring rotating at the right speed it would effectively push you towards the edge (like a fast roundabout, you’d slide off). This could be calibrated to replicate gravity as we know it at a limited scale.

It’s a very common science fiction design for ring space stations.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Gravity comes from huge mass, which the earth has. It “pulls” things to it. Your body also has mass but it’s much less than the earth so the earth wins and pulls you down to it. That’s why we weigh much less on the moon, the moon has much less mass than the earth, so it doesn’t affect our own body’s mass and pull it towards the moon as much.

It’s much more complex than that (Google curved space for a fun night!) but to your question, in order to do that we would have to generate a ton of mass first.

Where are you thinking we would want to create gravity?

Edit: after reading your question again, “lab created” gravity, I assume you mean create it here on earth. As you may guess now, in order to do that you’d have to generate more mass, or atleast enough to compete with the earth’s already super strong mass to have any meaningful effect.

You can do it in other ways, like static electricity (rubbing a balloon on your head makes your hair stand up towards the balloon), magnetism/electromagnetism (thinking of that scene in Lost where they stop pushing the button), inertia(like on the Gravitron ride at the fair).. There’s lots of different kinds of forces besides gravity that can “invisibly” affect other objects.

Anonymous 0 Comments

No. Gravity is demonstrated like that because it makes some sense to people, but it is not that. Gravity is a warping of time that arises from the presence of mass, and a related attraction between mass.

All of those demos with rubber sheets do a good job of visualizing how the force tapers with distance, but they completely fail to describe what is ‘actually going on’. There is no grand plane that is being stretched, forming some pit that things fall into, unless you consider time itself to be a plane I suppose. In any case, you can’t well push on time, so creating gravity in any way other than adding mass to something currently seems impossible.

Anonymous 0 Comments

everything creates some amount of gravity (ye even us but its a rly small amount). liek lets say that u were in space not near anything and there were 2 baseballs 1 meter from eachother. they would eventually come together but itd be 3 days. if u drop a pencil from 6 ft it moves teh earth up 1/9 trillionth of a proton. everything creates gravity.