Lennart,
I don’t wish to portray myself out as an expert on gravitry. I’m definitely not. All I can say is that I have been interested in the subject for most of my life. (I’m 62.) As such, it should not come as a surprise that I have come up with a few eccentric observations. As a freshly minted retiree who is still in training, I’m currently refreshing my education of calculus, so perhaps I may end up doing some damage here before I die. With that disclaimer firmly in place there might be certain visualizations I can offer up here that might help make some of my points a little clearer to some. For example: Let’s pretend there exists hidden underground somewhere in a secret base out in the deserts of Nevada… a black ops program where they have secretly constructed a gravity lens. (It’s probably next to a fully operational Star Gate device, but that’s literally a different story. ;-) ) Ok… Now, our gravity lens is basically in the shape of a large tube. It’ 200 meters long and 10 meters wide. Lots of machinery is involved in running the contraption. Probably a lot of electricity too. Perhaps the Lights in Reno flicker just a tad when they fire up the tube. Let’s pretend that when the scientists finally got the device operational they tossed a baseball into one end of the tube. They observed the baseball shooting out at the other end 1.5 seconds later at the significantly accelerated speed of 300 mph. The Gravity lens operates like a cannon. After additional experiments the scientists decided it’s time to get a human volunteer to jump into the device to see what he experiences. One dark night, under cover, they transport the machine outside and prop it up at a 30 degree incline. They make sure the brave volunteer wears a parachute that hopefully will deploy seconds after he is jettisoned. Fortunately, our brave volunteer survives the experience of being the first human cannon ball jettisoned out of the “barrel” of a gravity lens machine. Later when they ask him did he feel the effects of acceleration he tells the scientists he felt absolutely nothing during the 1.5 seconds he was still inside the gravity lens. He only felt an acute sense of deceleration after exiting the gravity lens, after his parachute deployed brining him safely back to earth, well... except for a sprained ankle. (He gets a bonus check for his brave efforts.) So, why didn't our volunteer feel any acceleration while inside the gravity lens? Read on. Granted, our mysterious gravity lens machine is a hypothetical construction. Presumably, we don’t know how to build one. That said, we can easily construct something that can mimic the accelerator effects of a gravity lens. In fact any gardener watering his lawn with a hose employs the trick all the time. The following analogy might be considered crude by some, but still, I think it gets the point across. Pretend our gravity lens device consists of a very elongated funnel filled with water. A steady stream of water is being introduced at the large end of the funnel. The water is subsequently being forced under pressure to exit the other end where the diameter opening is significantly smaller. If you insert a ball (with the same buoyancy as water) at the large end of the funnel you will notice that as the object begins to travel down the length of the funnel it moves at ever increasing speeds. It is in fact accelerating even though within the medium of water immediately surrounding the ball - the medium of volume remains perfectly still. Eventually the ball spits out the tiny opening of the funnel travelling significantly faster speed than its initial stationary position. Keep in mind all during this time the water surrounding the ball remains relatively stationary. It’s as if the ball experiences no effects of acceleration. Of course it really is experiencing acceleration, but again, this is just an analogy. A better analogy I’m trying to make here is that the volume of water is literally being forced to accelerate in order to conform to the decreasing diameter constraints of the funnel wall. It’s important to point out this is acceleration effect is happening within the constraints of a slice of time held at a constant rate. My analogy is equivalent to Nature essentially attempting to compress (or funnel) gravity lines of 3D space due to the effects a large nearby planetary mass. If nature attempts to compress (or funnel) the lines of 3D space, 3D “space” compensates by spending less time occupying the same AREA of 3D space during the same unit of time. We actually see this phenomenon being played out all the time in Kepler’s 2nd law of planetary motion, where an imaginary line joining a planet and the sun sweeps out an equal area of space in equal amounts of time. The closer the satellite is to the central body of mass, the faster the satellite has to travel during the same period of time. It is similar to water being forced to accelerate through a narrowing funnel because the same unit volume of water is forced to spend less time occupying the same area of space during the same period of time. Nature knows how to accelerate things up as well as decelerate them. We see it constructed in the elegant shape of an elliptical orbit. We have yet to figure out how to construct something as elegant, and practically speaking at our own human scale. I can only suggest that the amount of energy that may need to be expended will likely be equivalent to the amount of energy being expended to get a satellite in orbit. So... let's continue to hope for cheaper energy in our future! Regards, Steven Vincent Johnson svjart.orionworks.com zazzle.com/orionworks
