Anti-gravity, or something like it

How close do you folks think we are to true antigravity, or at least something really really close to it?

I'm not talking maglev trains (something that relies on a vehicle and platform mechanic...which are awesome, don't get me wrong) or anything else that kind of manipulates it in a gimmicky sense but doesn't outright defy it. I mean genuinely alters the laws or has such power as to defy it.

I'm talking something from sci-fi, like gravity manipulation that allows a vehicle to hover over the ground. I guess the best example would be the speeders from Star Wars, specifically anything using repulsors; they just sort of hover there, without effort, with no real thrusters pushing down to keep them up.

Alternatively, there could be craft designed with powerful thrusters that are either super efficient with fuel, or use a new sort of powerful fuel perhaps? This would seem more likely as it's more in-line with conventional vehicle design. It'd be pretty great to see a vehicle in the next couple decades that could hover like a VTOL, fly like a nimble airplane, and then zoom off into space using the same engines (or maybe a set of engines, I don't know).

I don't know, I just think it'd be cool. I wonder if we are there in secret. Or close, like a few decades away. I know the stuff mentioned in games like Mass Effect--manipulating gravity to that extent, basically making it your plaything--is far far away or even impossible, but it'd be cool to get close to that kind of prowess.

Any physics experts or armchair-experts here that can enlighten?

It would be really cool, but we only got to the point that we could only observe gravity directly for the first time like a year ago so I think we are a bit away from an anti-grav generator. It seems a bit more feasible now, though.

-Byshop

i don't think we are anywhere close to gravity manipulation in sense that we can generate and control gravitational fields to hover and object, attract / repel objects over a distance, etc..

gravitation seems to be a core property of any object that has mass ( anything made of matter) in that sense an anti-gravity device seems like it would tied to an anti-mass / anti-matter device. in a universe completely full of matter, anti-matter is hard to come by.

thinking in terms of a device that would somehow use energy to cause the earth to repel it away rather than attract it, if i had to guess ( non-expert here) i would say humans are hundreds to many hundreds of years away from building any kind of practical anti-gravity type devices.

i'd love to be totally wrong though :)

EDIT: also, **** this breaking off political topics to a new board... wtf

Conspiracy Ideologues actually think we've already developed this technology. I am not a fan of conspiracy nutters but i do think we've developed early forms of it and i think it came from Tesla's work. The problem with Tesla's work however, it was often plagued with issues and didnt work the way he claimed or the way it should.

I know you can do anti-grav with super cooled magnets (there's literally a working hoverboard), but it requires metal surfaces and of course liquid nitrogen, not very feasible for the average person. I just don't think we're going to see true anti-grav in our life time.

Thats not anti-gravity though.

is that what that weird device is they brought on Mythbusters a few times? Do you know what I'm talking about? I'll see if I can find a clip of it but it's this really crazy looking thing that can actually measure the gravity field of individual things.

funny you mention that, went on youtube to search for it, all the top videos are guys that claim to work for Area 51 or "former government officials" claiming to have seen it, or religious wackos, or videos uploaded by "BibleAlienGuy69" lol

There were also a lot of videos with Tesla, I didn't get around to those yet.

I certainly have no doubt, however, that many governments have looked into it, that's for sure!

I said no gimmicks! lol no I kid, but seriously that's more like "fake anti-gravity"

I'm talking either A.) genuine anti-gravity that can be run independently and practically, or B.) something equivalent, like some sort of powerful engine that is equally practical that would be fuel efficient and generate enough thrust to keep a craft levitating

If it's even possible, a millenia or two at best.

The only anti-gravity I can think of is dark energy. We don't even know what it is, much less how to harness it. Even then it would be using dark energy to expand space locally beneath us to counter gravity. Would be nuts.

Or if there is some kind of negative mass, which there is no evidence of. Something similar can be observed in the Casimir effect. But it's on the quantum level.

So yeah, a few thousand years if we're lucky.

BS in engineering physics here, currently specializing in photonics.

Gravity is something we just have to live with. It's something a little more complicated than a mere force, and I don't know jack about it other than that as I don't study relativity, however I know that it's something we can't do anything about, just like entropy.

Gravity is one of those weird ones. It seems to have no effect (of even presence) at the quantum level. It's only when dealing large (macro, not necessarily planet-sized) masses that there's even room in the math for it.

yeah, that's what I keep hearing. Like gravity is this thing and it's just nothing you can do...like death and taxes...and gravity.

just the other day I learned that the sun orbits something called a barycenter (I think that might have been thanks to you @br0kenrabbit). That blew my mind. I mean it makes complete sense when you think about it, but I just kind of assumed the sun was this super duper massive dense ball of stuff that was, for the most part, fixed (relative to the solar system, at least...I know in the cosmic universal sense it is all drifting).

*so photonics, would that be like light-based technologies? Fiber optics and stuff? Is it interesting? Sounds like it would be, I bet you get to work with huge freaking lasers....

You put mercury in a gyroscope and walah.

Everything sounds interesting until you need to study it for an exam, but yeah, fiber optics are one of the things I study.

And you'd be surprised. In photonics you want the smallest lasers you can get as they are easier to couple with fibers, which is why you use semiconductor lasers that are smaller than the width of a hair. If you want big lasers you need to look at spectroscopy or medical and industrial applications where you need to actually burn away stuff.

Considering we only observed gravitational waves for the first time a year ago I'd say we are pretty far off from the actual manipulation of gravity.

wow really, only that recently?

*oh yeah I guess so, wow crazy. LIGO

In my fantasy world i like to believe the government have highly secretive aircrafts with anti-gravity tech and laser beams.