5 ms·
By the way, if you stop and think about it, you'll realize how much effort it is to "stay in one place" if you have some kind of anti-gravity drive. For instanc
by lkrubner 9y ago
By the way, if you stop and think about it, you'll realize how much effort it is to "stay in one place" if you have some kind of anti-gravity drive. For instance, right now, I'm sitting at a Starbucks in New Jersey. From my point of view, I have not moved during the last 8 seconds. And yet, planet Earth just moved front-to-back over a point on its orbit around the Sun. And the Sun is rotating through the galaxy at about 40 kilometers per second. So long as you are constrained by gravity, you don't have to worry about this. But what if you had an anti-gravity drive, such that you never experienced gravity? Can you imagine the incredible effort it would take to remain in a "stationary position" if that position was, from your no-gravity perspective, moving very fast, in several dimensions? That's why this jumped out at me:
"The craft was jumping around erratically, staying over the wave disturbance but not moving in any specific direction"
We should exactly expect a craft to be "jumping around erratically" if it has an anti-gravity drive, yet is also trying to stay over "fixed position" relative to another object that is rapidly spinning (the Earth).
And boiling or frothy water is, again, exactly what water should look like if it is being effect by anti-gravity:
"The disturbance looked like frothy waves and foam, as if the water were boiling."
If you could wave a magic wand and make all gravity on Earth stop, the ocean would rapidly disappear into space, and as it did so it would look as if it was boiling.
- AlbertoGP 9y agoThat's interesting and reminded me of Asimov's "The Billiard Ball": http://www.e-reading.club/chapter.php/82002/30/Azimov_-_Asimovs_Mysteries.html http://www.e-reading.club/chapter.php/82002/30/Azimov_-_Asim...
- valuearb 9y agoIf you had an antigravity drive, the only reason you would bounce around is if it’s poorly calibrated. And if you had one, why would you travel all the way to earth and not say hello? Your power would be so immense you could wipe out life on this planet if you chose. You have zero reason to hide.
- frankquist 9y agoSay these were aliens with an antigravity drive. They may be scientists who do not want to disturb the phenomena they are observing. They might have a Starfleet like noninterventionist philosophy. Perhaps the objects are unmanned probes akin to the ones earth sends into space. Who knows?
- lkrubner 9y agothe only reason you would bounce around is if it’s poorly calibrated It's likely that there is no way to calibrate it correctly. If you don't have the benefit of gravity to hold you at a specific point of space/time, then where would you get the coordinates that would allow you to remain in a specific spot, especially when that spot is moving rapidly, relative to a previous spot in space/time?
- fapjacks 9y agoIf you had a powerful enough computer being fed comprehensive enough sensory data, I think it would be trivial to stay in one spot relative to something else (e.g. the Earth). I mean, if you had some kind of fairly magical propulsion device and could also ignore gravity.
- jacobush 9y agoWhat the heck are you discussing?! If there was such a thing as an antigravity device, there are so many unknowns, that to even pretend we can have the slightest cue about if or how it could be calibrated, is just ... weird.