Thread: Gravity? We don't need no steenking gravity!

  1. #1
    Mayor of Awesometown Govtcheez's Avatar
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    Gravity? We don't need no steenking gravity!


  2. #2
    Just because ygfperson's Avatar
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    no. as usual, i'm skeptical. the details of the experiment don't exist (or at least not publicly). it's based on the heresay of a scientist, which is never a good idea. why, just a month ago, they were talking about nuclear fusion in a coffee pot-sized reactor, boiling bubbles.

  3. #3
    Red Panda basilisk's Avatar
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    gravity sucks !!
    sorry had to put that one in somewhere
    don't really know about the possibilities of the experiment - its very difficult to come up with a supposition when the paper itself is so wishy-washy. However it seems as though no-one has been able to duplicate correctly the work yet and if someone had really been able to produce this wouldnt they be desperate for their paper to be published (nobel prize material and all that)
    Do not meddle in the ways of dragons, for thou art crunchy and taste good with ketchup

  4. #4
    Aran
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    this is possible

    you can nullify gravity, although to make your grandmother float you would need magnets of enormous size (a few hundred tons perhaps).

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    Either Nassa or the us airforce are always coming up with new crazy plans like this. In the 70's they had some project Orion where they planned to propell huge manned space crafts using blasts from nuclear warheads.

  6. #6
    train spotter
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    Lets not forget the 'chicken cannon' for stress testing aircraft.

    (take a chicken, load it into a cannon and shoot it at a plane to see if the plane can survive an impact with a flying bird)
    "Man alone suffers so excruciatingly in the world that he was compelled to invent laughter."
    Friedrich Nietzsche

    "I spent a lot of my money on booze, birds and fast cars......the rest I squandered."
    George Best

    "If you are going through hell....keep going."
    Winston Churchill

  7. #7
    The Artful Lurker Deckard's Avatar
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    Originally posted by novacain
    (take a chicken, load it into a cannon and shoot it at a plane to see if the plane can survive an impact with a flying bird)
    Oh my God. I can't believe I've wasted all these years in programming only to find out I could have been shooting chickens out of cannons. I want to be a Fowl Ballistics Engineer!
    Jason Deckard

  8. #8
    *cut n' paste*

    Sometimes it DOES take a rocket scientist:

    Scientists at NASA built a gun specifically to launch dead chickens at the
    windshields of airliners, military jets and the space shuttle, all travelling
    at maximum velocity. The idea was to simulate the frequent incidents of
    collisions with airborne fowl to test the strength of the windshields.

    British engineers heard about the gun and were eager to test it on the
    windshields of their new high speed trains. Arrangements were made, and a gun
    was sent to the British engineers. When the gun was fired, engineers stood
    shocked as the chicken hurtled out of the barrel, crashed into the
    shatterproof shield, smashed it to smithereens, blasted through the control
    console, snapped the engineer's backrest in two and embedded itself in the
    back wall of the cabin, like an arrow shot from a bow.

    The horrified Brits sent NASA the disastrous results of the experiment, along
    with the designs of the windshield, and begged the U.S. scientists for suggestions.

    NASA responded with a one-line memo: "Thaw the chicken."
    "There's always another way"
    -lightatdawn (lightatdawn.cprogramming.com)

  9. #9
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    LOL

    Thats the funniest thing I've heard in ages. Can't be true though, the British would never make such a silly mistake, would they??

  10. #10
    Mayor of Awesometown Govtcheez's Avatar
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    I've seen tests of the chicken gun on TLC or the Discovery Channel - it's hilarious. On one, they slowed it down so we could see the chicken come out and impact it.

    Imagine the mess a successful test would make....

  11. #11
    My diaper's full....... stevey's Avatar
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    the frozen chicken thing is a classic, first laugh ive had all day !!

    unfortunately i must stick up for the British nation, i'm afraid its not true.
    i worked for a company that sold engine parts to Rolls Royce Aerospace, and have seen videos of the chicken testing. its hilarious to watch !! should be shown on TV !! "when chickens attack" !!
    they were firing the poor little birds into engines to see if the engine could take an impact without shattering a turbine blade - so all of us who fly will appreciate the serious aspect of this. there was even standards all engines must pass, a certain mass of chicken per minute to simulate running into a flock of birds. they were also using large turkeys to simulate big birds like swans !!!
    fascinating and hilarious.

    but the RR engineers told the same joke the other way round !!!
    ie NASA used em frozen.

    still they may have turned it round to cover there tracks !!!
    Steve

  12. #12
    No, its just a joke. But it pretty hilarious to think about.

    And about the whole anti-gravity thing (origional point of the post, remember? ) - It is possible to levitate an object. I dont have any data on it right now but a buddy of mine takes a lot of advanced physics and was telling me about an experiment they did where they levitated a penny. I'm talking about fractions of a second but i'm assuming thiers was a simplified process...
    "There's always another way"
    -lightatdawn (lightatdawn.cprogramming.com)

  13. #13
    Mayor of Awesometown Govtcheez's Avatar
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    > And about the whole anti-gravity thing (origional point of the post, remember? )

    Oh yeah...

    I wonder if more places would adopt the same sort of technology as electromag trains, if it got less expensive....

  14. #14
    My diaper's full....... stevey's Avatar
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    i originally trained as a Materials engineer, and was taught a fair bit about super-conductors, magnetism etc.
    it was thought at the time (10 years ago) that soon a room temperature super conductor would be produced, thereby achieving the levitation only currently seen at liquid nitrogen temps. its not happened yet, but if and when it does, we may defeat gravity. no friction for moving vehicles will have a tremendous impact !! you could push a train by hand !!

    then again, my lecturers were also predicting ceramic car engines, and ceramic scissors and they never took off.
    Steve

  15. #15
    5|-|1+|-|34|) ober's Avatar
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    Originally posted by stevey
    unfortunately i must stick up for the British nation
    is your real name, by chance, william? or do you have direct ties to the queen?

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