How to get a Kick out of Gravity
By Gary Stephenson, December 11, 2004

Will humankind ever master the control of gravity? If so, how will we be able to control gravity in useful ways, for instance for space propulsion? The answer may involve gravitational waves. Just as alternating current, or AC, unlocked the utility of electricity a century ago, alternating gravity, dubbed "AG", may be the key to unlocking the useful control of gravity in the century ahead.

What is a Gravitational Wave?

What is a gravitational wave? It is a ripple in space-time, predicted by general relativity. Everyone knows Einstein's famous formula E= mc2, which says that energy can come from mass - it was the birth of the nuclear age. But Einstein wrote down an equation even more important: G = K*T. This says that gravity, the shape of space-time, is equal to a constant K, times T, the mass-energy tensor, which describes the shape (or distribution) of mass or energy in space. In other words, gravity, the shape of space-time, depends only on mass and energy.

So all you have to do to make a gravity wave is to change gravity, and all you have to do to change gravity is to move a little mass or energy around. How much? That's the catch: the constant K is a VERY small number: about 2*10-43, a decimal point with 43 zeros, then a 2. So it takes a big change in mass or energy to make a little gravitational wave.

And there are more problems. Gravitational waves are predicted to be quadrupole waves. Due to conservation of momentum, every positive going ripple must be balanced by a negative going ripple - this is the simplest AG (Alternating Gravity) wave that can exist. See figure 1 for one view of how a time varying quadrupolar gravitational wave might propagate.

Another problem: no one has actually measured a gravitational wave here on Earth. It can be induced from the behavior of binary stars that gravitational waves exist, but it would be nice to detect one here on earth before spending a lot of time designing ways to use them.

How Soon is Now?

There is hope. In May of 2003, a group of scientists and engineers met to discuss the possibility of generating AG waves in the lab. This group was called the International High Frequency Gravitational Wave (HFGW) working group. The consensus of that group was that the generation of gravitational waves may now be within reach of technology, and is therefore worth attempting.

Quadripolar Gravity Waves

Figure 1 This graphic shows the structure of an Alternative Gravity (AG) Quadrupole Gravitational Wave (QGW)

"To make a great dream come true, you must first have a great dream." - Hans Selye

It is a fairly easy matter to dream of a new technology, but it is quite another to attempt to develop one. Edison and Tesla did not develop the polyphase electric generator overnight, and no one expects the development of a gravitational wave generator to be any easier. Several ideas have been proposed. Baker, Woods, Li, and others have proposed a number of different ways to create a high order acceleration in mass to create AG pulses, including very fast nano-technology devices.

Portilla, Navarro, and others have developed a concept first proposed by Gertsenshtein, which called for AG generation by passing RF or light through a strong magnetic field, which sets up a resonance with gravity, causing a gravitational wave. I am reviewing this latter technique in an upcoming paper at STAIF 2005, the meeting of the Space Technology & Application International Forum.

A Source of Propellantless Propulsion?

Most propulsion requires something to push against. Cars push against the road with their tires to propel themselves. Aircraft push against the air, either with propellers or with turbofan blades. In space there is nothing to push against except a reaction force: if you push rocket fuel out the back of a rocket, the rocket will get pushed forward by it. But rocket fuel is heavy to carry and runs out quickly. Wouldn't it be nice to get a force in space without needing to carry propellant? The lure of gravitational waves is that they may someday be able to provide a way to create an unbalanced force without the use of expelled propellant.

Name that Technology

When we were kids my brother Ward and I used to play a game. It was a sort of "name that technology" game where we would see some bit of science fiction on TV, and we would take turns trying to explain how it worked. Even though he's 3 years younger he was never easy to fool, and I would like to thing that I wasn't either. So for instance, one if us would ask "How do you think 'phasors' stun?" then it was up to the other to dream up an explanation like "They probably zap your nerves with an electric jolt." Then whoever asked the question would be obligated to sit in judgment on the explanation - the response was either "Cool" or "Stupid."

This was a very fun game, but there were a few sci-fi items that eluded explanation, and the one that comes to mind in the context of this article was the "impulse drive" on Star Trek. Neither of us really ever came up with how you could get the USS Enterprise to turn on a dime without any visible rocket thrusters. Why are there two engines? Why do they stick out like that? According to StarTrek.com the impulse engines employ "traditional Newtonian action-reaction thrust physics." Not satisfactory. Surely we can do better than that. Could gravitational waves be applied to this problem?

AC/DC

The problem with getting a gravitational wave to perform a propulsion function is that waves are in the form of an alternating or AC signal, but propulsion requires a constant direction DC force. The process of converting AC to DC is known as "rectification." In electric current, AC is rectified using a diode, a device that allows current to flow in only one direction, essentially throwing out the other half. (Actually there are ways to reverse the other half but let's not get into that right now.) How would one go about rectifying a quadrupole wave, especially one which requires that momentum be conserved?

The answer may lie in how the alternating gravity is generated to begin with. Some AG generator concepts, such as Baker's spindle, use a series of mechanical motions to generate the gravitational waves, and this motion may be controlled such that it is fast in one direction, but slow in the other direction. The resultant AG signal would be a very strong spike in one direction, but a very low level gravitational signal in the other slower "relaxation" part of the cycle. Since the response of gravity is non-linear with frequency, the fast signal is much, much stronger than the slow signal, resulting in an unbalanced force, which is what we were after in the first place. This concept is known as "quadrupole rectification" (QR). See figure 2 for a graphic of how this might work.

Quadripole Rectification Closeup

Figure 2A This gravity-wave schematic shows the wave-structure for Quadrupole Gravitational Wave Rectification.
Figure 2B This figure shows an example of an individual Quadrupole Rectification (QR) Cycle.

Note that even if the QR device could be made to work, it still does not look that useful. Since it is still producing quadrupole waves, for every two "positive going" (mass-like attractive force) pulses it produces, it also produces two "negative going" (negative-mass-like repulsive force) pulses. So don't they just balance out, causing a jitter? No - notice from figure 2a that the pulse directions are now "sorted" so that all the pulses of one type come out in one direction, and all the pulses of the other "amplitude" come out in the other direction.

Does Life Imitate Art?

Now imagine a ship that wanted to use the quadrupole rectification of gravitational waves, let's call them GW motors. If we take a pair of the GW motors from figure 2b, and we are careful to keep them in phase, and we mount them away from the body of the ship to which they would be connected, then we may see unbalanced propulsion forces result, as shown in figure 3.

Impulse Drive Schematic

Figure 3 This figure shows a balanced pair quadripolar Gravity-Wave Motor Impulse Drive!

Such a scheme might be called a "balanced pair quadrupole rectification gravitational wave impulse drive," but that is a bit of a mouthful. It might be easier to call it an "impulse drive" to give credit where credit is due.

The Other AG

Sometimes when the subject of gravitational waves comes up people get a little nervous. Maybe their face starts twitching, or they look a little clammy, or just not well. Then they will say something dismissive, like, "Are you talking about Anti-Gravity?" That's when I can be sure of what is wrong: fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of being an outcast, fear of not fitting in, Fear. Powerful stuff.

While we are on the subject of Anti-Gravity, and the elephant has wandered into the room, let's also talk about him, or it, namely, UFOs. UFOs, whether you believe in them or not, are allegedly users of Anti-Gravity technology. That means that all gravitationally related work is Verboten, and should be left to conspiracy theorists. This is really where I part company with the critics, by making two points:

1) Closing our eyes very tightly has never made anything go away, other than information and sometimes consciousness.

2) No one tells me what to do, unless I am at work, in traffic, in public, or at home, and even then I don't always listen.

So when it comes to UFOs, I favor the approach recommended by the famous aerospace reporter Nick Cook, who recently challenged the aerospace industry to investigate not whether UFOs exist, but instead to look at how they would work if they were assumed to exist. How would they hover? How would they undergo high G maneuvers without harming occupants? And how would they produce thrust without the use of propellants or propellers? This kind of approach might lead to some inventive and creative thinking of the type that may include the use of gravitational waves.

The Allegory of the Cave

In all fairness, we are still cavemen, and we are all afraid to leave our little cave called Earth. Outside is nothing but the unknown. There might even be monsters. To truly commit ourselves to space exploration, we will have to overcome these fears. Plato explained it best in his allegory of the cave. He said that not only are we cavemen, but we see only the shadows on the walls, and the shadows are not cast by the light of day, but by a fire of our own making.

Let's not be afraid to seek out a new light. If we truly have faith, we have nothing to fear.

About the Author

Gary V. Stephenson received a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy from Montana State University in 1983. Since that time he has worked as a Systems Engineer at Hughes Aircraft Company, ITT, and is presently with The Boeing Company. Starting in 1989 he has also been the President of Seculine Consulting, where he specializes in the study of the history of science.

Related Information

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PopMech - "NASA's Antigravity Machine" by Jim Wilson contains a pre-testing overview of the Nasa replication. (Pop. Mechanics, 12/1997) click here

Wired Mag - "Breaking the Law of Gravity" by Charles Platt was an in-depth breakthrough article about superconductive gravity shielding. (Wired Magazine, 03/1998) click here