Absalom wrote:You're thinking of mass manipulation, not gravity manipulation. Gravity manipulation is hopefully accessible via mass manipulation technology, but it isn't the same thing. In the real world we're basically certain that we've found mass's force carrier particle, but we aren't actually certain that gravity should have one.Charlie wrote:I have always thought it was more like a field type like in Mass Effect instead of tractor beam technology akin to Star Wars.
If we attach a drive onto a large enough rock of sufficient mass and structural integrity and get the rock moving at the best possible speeds Terran tech can accomplish then before it get near to the planet we crank the gravity drive to maximum settings, we would have a far heaver rock moving at high speeds aimed at an offending colony.
My apologies, I was told in school that anything with a measurable mass has it`s own gravity well. This is where my confusion comes from. My reasoning was that we make an object heavier and create an extended artificial gravity well.
I have seen videos of grains sugar been shaken together in a bag in micro gravity, to roughly show how stars form. And then planets from the remaining accretion disk.
If a sugar grain weighed three times as much as normal it could attract more sugar to it and increase it`s own gravity well there by attracting more sugar extending the cycle until most of the sugar is a relatively stable clump inside the bag.
Mass manipulation could, however, be potentially very useful. If you can selectively increase the mass of a ship's hull then you could potentially greatly increase the armor value of that hull. This, I believe, is at least part of what you need for WH40k's ramming prows.
This is what I envisioned for my kinetic strike weapons, heaver than normal, powered by star ship engines and aimed at the planets
As for tractor beam/field effects, if you can bend or reflect a field (as you can with photons), then you can manipulate a field into the form of a beam. If you can form a beam with a single-source emitter then you don't need fast switching, if you can't then there's a very real possibility that you'll need fast switching to create a mass driver with gravity technology.
Is this an idea for a gravity powered Coil Gun?
Only useful if mounted on drones, usable in a beam/focused form, or usable as actual anti-gravity. However, if used in a different setting than Outsider this could (and even more so if combined with artificial-mass armor on the defended ship(s)) be used to produce a very distinct technological setting.Voitan wrote:When it comes to artificial gravity the first thing that comes to mind for me in a military use, is to create a field to bend away enemy fire on your ship, or a torpedo that you don't want to get blown up.
It probably couldn't. Unless, of course, you could massively circumvent the front lines, so that you could get around the areas that the Umiak heavily defend. This would probably only work if you could requisition some Farseers, which obviously would require Loroi support.Charlie wrote:However after only one or maybe two impact events a Lorai would undoubtedly know what we are doing as Humans are the only known beings to be stealth to Farseers. How this could work on the bugmen is an unknown. I don`t think it would beyond poorly defended planets which would likely be their slave race`s.
And all of this, of course, would work better if you were using actual Loroi warships, since they have better capabilities. Humanity could build any theoretical "artificial-mass impactors", but actually using them would likely require Loroi ships to help get them into position.
Unless any theoretical gravitons could move faster than light (or, alternatively, were somehow immune to the acceleration applied by moving space-time), I don't think we'd quite be able to produce a black-hole level effect. Though maybe I'm wrong.Charlie wrote:Would not having massive gravity in a certain area bend the beam towards the ship? Maybe if we could project the field we could create ultra dense fields of local gravity, miniature black holes to hide behind at a safe distance.Voitan wrote:When it comes to artificial gravity the first thing that comes to mind for me in a military use, is to create a field to bend away enemy fire on your ship, or a torpedo that you don't want to get blown up.
To be honest I have no idea about the real sciences involved, I was educated on an outdated high school physical sciences level, most of what I know comes from reading articles that pique my interest online. You can be sure however I will read up on this as much as I can until my knowledge base is sufficient to renew this conversation, as at the moment it is fairly one sided as you posses more knowledge on the subject.