Artificial gravity - can it be "negative"?

[kilemall]

Gravity pulls you in one direction.

The opposite would be weightlessness, or neutralization of weight.

What artificially actually causes that, I don't know, except in our terms, neutralization of all or part of that gravity pull.

So, in theory, we could install gravity tiles in the ceiling, though that creates a force that would, if strong enough, just make you fall upwards.

In raw form, would that mean to countervailing forces acting on the body?

If you had two Earths close enough that at equidistance, a human could feel the effect of both one gee gravity fields, would he float in microgravity, or have two one gee gravity fields pull him apart?

Could also be repulsion from the ceiling pushing to floor.

 

[Tobias]

Could also be repulsion from the ceiling pushing to floor.

Considering that tractor beams are supposed to be higher tech (TL 17 IIRC) than repulsors, that would make sense.
Of course, it leaves an open-topped air/raft as an even bumpier ride than it already is.

 

[Condottiere]

Mini black holes.

No, the gravitic tiles create nano black holes.

Feels like walking on cobblestones, since each tile creates a small curve.

 

[McPerth]

ITTR to have read somewhere (maybe MT:SOM?) taht one of the parts of the anti-hijack program was altering the gravity where the would-be hijackers were, so throwing them up and down...

SO, asking to the OP question: I'd say yes, it can be negative.

 

[Condottiere]

You could achieve the same effect with tractor/repulsor beams.

 

[Garnfellow]

The Traveller Adventure is pretty explicit on this point in the description of The March Harrier.

Sections of the internal grav plates can be turned on or off, or even reversed, locally or by the computer. The negative grav field is used on the cargo deck to assist in loading and positioning cargo.

 

[Tobias]

That's a good catch, thank you. That is basically the exact kind of application I was thinking about.

 

[kilemall]

Hmm perhaps a good place to intro a piece of grav tech from the video game Star Citizen, the multi tool-

Pyro RYT Multi-Tool

The Pyro RYT Multi-Tool is a handheld power tool manufactured by Greycat Industrial. The Multi-Tool's key feature is that it can accept various modules that enable...

starcitizen.tools

The relevant bit is the tractor beam module, which they use to move around cargo (1 cubic meter boxes) or heavy weapons/missiles.

Notice the cargo boxes lock onto the floor. Dedicated cargo ships have a gravitic grid that clamps the cargo onto the deck. Ships can have holds which don’t have grids so they float around and can be damaged/do damage.

You can use it to swap out missiles and turret sized weapons-

It also works as a zero G EVA tether-

Personally a bit overpowered in terms of miniaturized toolset, I would probably make this TL12 with a power backpack and TL13-14 with the handheld unit.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

are also installed, as in, they are installed as well as, in addition to. Different systems, same tech base.

Or just more of the same.

To compensate for a varying and fluctuating field is presumably a more difficult job than maintaining a steady 1 G deckward field.

Something like the difference between a headphone and a noise-cancelling headphone. It's still just a speaker...

 

[Marcatlas]

But this could simply mean that the "internal gravity" grav-plate system for floor gravity is a separate system of plates installed within the outer "cage" environment of grav-plating used for the acceleration compensation system which is tuned to vary its vector with engine output. That it is not the only interpretation of course, but a possible one.

I do in a simpler way IMTU. The M-Drive is a Gravity drive which moves the entire ship using a grav field. So in bare bones mode it is a free fall situation in which you of course don't experience acceleration no matter the maneuvering of the ship. Added to that are the plates in the floor that provide a "down" direction force as you stated, "a polarizable short-range force (i.e. not inverse-square with distance) that acts on mass, either some force that we currently do not know about or a spin-off or secondary-effect force arising from some "Hyper-Grand Unified Field Theory" of Nature that we currently do not have."

 

[coliver988]

I do in a simpler way IMTU. The M-Drive is a Gravity drive which moves the entire ship using a grav field. So in bare bones mode it is a free fall situation in which you of course don't experience acceleration no matter the maneuvering of the ship. Added to that are the plates in the floor that provide a "down" direction force as you stated, "a polarizable short-range force (i.e. not inverse-square with distance) that acts on mass, either some force that we currently do not know about or a spin-off or secondary-effect force arising from some "Hyper-Grand Unified Field Theory" of Nature that we currently do not have."

basically how I've handled it when it came up. it rarely comes up from players just wanting to play a game and not argue over the minutia of how things work. Until they do...

 

[Marcatlas]

basically how I've handled it when it came up. it rarely comes up from players just wanting to play a game and not argue over the minutia of how things work. Until they do...

I have had players bring up many times over the years. Usually revolving around trying to do something nefarious on a ship or hindering others from doing so. Never just asking how it worked though.

 

[whulorigan]

This is the key thing to remember: In Traveller, "Artificial Gravity" is "Pseudo-gravity". It is NOT gravity. It is a polarizable short-range force (i.e. not inverse-square with distance) that acts on mass, either some force that we currently do not know about or a spin-off or secondary-effect force arising from some "Hyper-Grand Unified Field Theory" of Nature that we currently do not have. Perhaps it is secondary field effect related to or arising from the Unification of the Strong and/or Weak Force and Gravity (or "Hypergravity" if we are including Jump-space physics in our gravity calculus).

Another possibility to consider is this: Maybe the "pseudo-gravity" is in fact not reacting to mass at all, but rather reacting to something that is equally fundamental to most normal matter so that it is effectively like pseudo-gravity reacting against the mass. For example, if some type of Grand Unified Theory (GUT) is eventually achieved (or a Hyper-Grand Unified Theory - HGUT), then perhaps just as the Electromagnetic (EM) and Weak forces were unified under the Electro-Weak (EW) interaction, so eventually the Electroweak and Strong Nuclear Force might be unified at very high energy under an "Electro-Nuclear" (EN, or EWS) interaction (in fact, this is likely pre-supposed in Traveller due to the existence of Nuclear Dampers and Meson Screens). We can even presume that it might be unified with some other as yet unknown interactions that have to do with Hyper/Jump Spaces.

If that is the case, then what if the "pseudo-gravity" is actually a spin-off of some high-energy interaction of nuclear-level forces at macroscopic but short ranges (say a hyper-unification strong-nuclear/quark/gluonic and/or electroweak interaction at some deeper level of understanding and manipulation)? Since all common matter is made of bound-particles that interact with these forces, applying a push-pull via a hyper-nuclear interaction of some sort against the nucleons and electrons of the atomic matter would be just as effective, and would skirt the gravity issue entirely.