Antigravity

“ Throughout all of this never-ending metamorphosis of energy and matter we must reckon with the influence of gravity pressure and with the antigravity behavior of the ultimatonic energies under certain conditions of temperature, velocity, and revolution. ”

“ Gravity acts positively on the power lanes and energy channels of the power centers and the physical controllers, but these beings have only a negative relation to gravity—the exercise of their antigravity endowments. ”

“ A round airlock door stood open, waiting.
Joe raised the strange robot globe and depressed the keys. Out on the plain a space ship came into being.
"A—A rocket ship!" Bowen gasped.
"More than that!" Joe was grinning as he moved out toward the open airlock. "She's equipped with water and air purifying devices and food synthesis tanks that'll supply one man as long as ten years! She has antigravity equipment that can lift her right off the Earth—and a rocket drive that'll accelerate to a velocity of two hundred and seventy-eight miles per second! That's roughly a million miles an hour! ”

“ Within the bulk of the top third of the ship was this massive power source, its atomic components, its uranium-hydrogen fuel, and the beam that channeled the gravitational drive.
"Negating gravity is not a simple matter like inventing a magic sheet of metal that cuts off the pull of the Earth, such as H. G. Wells wrote about," Oberfield had explained. "That is impossible because it ignores all the other laws of nature; it forgets the power of inertia, it denies the facts of mass and density. It takes just as much energy to lift an anti-gravity ship as to lift a rocketship. ”

“ Give us the real dope on how you're going to do it.”
“Well, with what I picked up from the Lassans, I think I know. They know all about light and mechanics, but they're rotten chemists, and don't realize how good a thing they've got in lots of ways. Now look—if you throw a beam of radiations from a cathode tube into finely divided material you break up some of the atoms. Well, all we have to do is get an extra-powerful cathode tube, break up a lot of atoms, and then deliver the positive charges from them onto whatever we're going for. That would be your gravity beam.” ”

“ Thus each molecule, or atomic system forms a perfect mechanism in itself, with its own centre of gravity, and subject to the same laws of repulsion and attraction, or pressures and tensions--due to the vibrations and motions of the universal electro-magnetic Aether.
In each of the planetary systems we get an illustration of the same perfect mechanism, which is indicative of all systems whether large or small; each system being characterised by the same beauty of order and harmony of motion which are equally characteristic of atomic systems. ”

“ And what about the polarization of that plastic?"
Morrow pursed his lips, contemplatively. "Like all materials on Earth, it's polarized—if you want to use that word—to the gravitational and magnetic fields of Earth. I see what you're driving at, though—the gravitors establish a field in which the Earth's gravity and magnetism are cancelled out, or bent back upon themselves. The mechanism of the gravitors, the hull they support, everything within their field of influence is placed on a basis of its own gravity, mass-attraction, magnetism, what-have-you." ”

“ In our black box, we've been breaking up the atoms of lead into positive and negative charges. We've been using the positive, and then just turning the negative loose. This thing will make use of both, and give us a swell new weapon all at once.
"Look—the negative charges will do for our gravity beam just as well as the positive. They will create an excess of negative electrons instead of an excess of positive protons in the object we hit, and cause atomic disintegration. It's a gravity process just the same, but a different one. Now that gives us something else to do with the positives. ”

“ So it is that in all crystals the atoms are mutually balancing, and balanced by perhaps a dozen others. The electrostatic forces hold the crystals together, and the crystals then hold together by gravity in many cases; otherwise they don't hold together at all. A block of steel is made of billions of tiny crystals, each attracting its neighbor, and thus are held together. But this force is a gravitational force.
Now what would happen if the force of gravity between these crystals were annihilated? Instantly the piece of metal would cease to have any strength ”

“ It takes power, plenty of it, to maintain the force which neutralizes the inertia of mass, and if that force fails, even for an instant, while a ship is upon a planet's surface, the consequences are usually highly disastrous. For in the neutralization of inertia there is no magic, no getting of something for nothing, no violation of Nature's law of the conservation of matter and energy. The instant that force becomes inoperative the ship possesses exactly the same velocity, momentum, and inertia that it possessed at the instant the force took effect. ”

“ The second flaw is what puzzles me, and I think that herein lies our hope. Any gravity beam, no matter how refined, can be at least partially disrupted by passing another object between the sending unit and the target. This particular beam, in order to travel such a distance and affect such a large, dense mass, is extraordinarily well honed. The solar flares of Marcum and Lauries have been only mildly affected. So. If we were able to pass a large mass, say an asteroid or small moon, between the planet and the station..... ”

“ The argument there is that, in view of the demonstrated fact that particles of matter in collision with each other tend to acquire the same kinetic energy, therefore the kinetic energy of a molecule of ordinary matter would ultimately tend to become equal to that of a gravific particle, and that therefore it would appear that the continual impacts of the particles of the gravific medium would necessarily raise matter to an enormous temperature, as the velocity of the gravific particles must of necessity be assumed extremely high. ”

“ Le Sage held that such collisions are extremely rare; that each collision, even between the ultramundane corpuscules themselves, destroys some energy; [9] that at a not infinitely remote past time they were set in motion for the purpose of k',eping gravitation throughout the world in action for a limited period of time; and that both by their mutual collisions, and by collisions with mundane atoms, the whole stock of gravific energy is being gradually reduced, and therefore the intensity of gravity gradually diminishing from age to age. ”

“ It will be best to treble or quadruple the apergetic charge, which can easily be done, in which case your speed will exceed the muzzle-velocity of a projectile from a long-range gun, in a few seconds. As the earth's repulsion decreases, the attraction of mars and Jupiter will increase, and, there being no resistance, your gait will become more and more rapid till it is necessary to reverse the charge to avoid being dashed to pieces or being consumed like a falling star by the friction in passing through Jupiter's atmosphere. You can be on the safe side by checking your speed in advance. ”

“ All that is required, therefore, to explain gravity, is a diminution of pressure, or increase of tension, caused by the formation of a matter unit—that is to say of an electron or corpuscle. And although we do not yet know what an electron is—whether it be a strain centre, or what kind of singularity in the ether it may be—there is no difficulty in supposing that a slight, almost infinitesimal, strain or attempted rarefaction should be produced in the ether whenever an electron comes into being—to be relaxed again only on its resolution and destruction. ”

“ Most of the forces at our disposal, applied to a body, are transmitted from molecule to molecule, and produce tension, crushing, etc. Gravity and magnetic attraction form an exception; their point of application is found in all the molecules of the body, and they produce pressures and slidings of a peculiar kind. But these forces are of a very limited magnitude; but it might nevertheless be of great interest to amplify them in a strong measure. Let us, for example, suppose that a magician has found a means of increasing the intensity of gravity tenfold in his laboratory. ”

“ The gravitation of the earth has gradually overcome the velocity produced by the explosion, and down the body falls. But let us suppose that the eruption is still more violent, and that the stones are projected from the planet to a still greater height above its surface. Suppose, for instance, that the stone should be shot up to a height equal to the planet's radius, the attraction of gravitation will then be reduced to one-fourth of what it was at the surface, and hence the planet will find greater difficulty in pulling back the stone. ”

“ In the note which I had the honour of laying before the Academy of Sciences of Paris I stated that, in accordance with all experiments, magnetism is a power acting like universal gravitation, solely in some function of space. The integral comparable with the known number , represents the mean action furnished by the attraction of two points, and is not at all affected by their relative velocity. The inversion of the poles being effected instantaneously, we should thus have a velocity infinitely accelerated. ”

“ In contrast to electric and magnetic fields, the gravitational field exhibits a most remarkable property, which is of fundamental importance for what follows. Bodies which are moving under the sole influence of a gravitational field receive an acceleration, which does not in the least depend either on the material or on the physical state of the body. For instance, a piece of lead and a piece of wood fall in exactly the same manner in a gravitational field (in vacuo) , when they start off from rest or with the same initial velocity. ”

“ I contend that it was placed there at the birth of the molecule by the law of sympathetic etheric focalization towards the negative centres of neutrality with a velocity as inconceivable in its character as would be the subdivision of matter to an ultimate end. Again, what is the energy that is held in the molecular embrace of that small portion of dynamite which by slight concussion, another order of vibration, evolves volumes of terrific force, riving the solid rock and hurling massive projectiles for miles? If it is not latent power that is excited into action, what is it? ”

“ We can't try to be rescuers and wind up murderers by mistake!"
Three hours later Benton Allan came again from the computers.
"It's undoubtedly anti-gravity," he announced. "I've done considerable work on magnetic lines of force and theoretical work on possible creation of force fields for use as meteor screens. This math weaves in and out of mine like a pulse across a synchroscope. I'd been incredibly close to anti-gravity myself! That one blasted equation! Amazing!
"Lizio has been working with others on the autopilot computer. ”

“ Fourthly, That Gravity does equally affect all Bodies, without regard either to their Matter, Bulk, or Figure; so that the Impediment of the Medium being removed, the most compact and most loose, the greatest and smallest Bodies would descend the same Spaces in equal {308} Times; the Truth thereof will appear from the Experiment I before-cited. In these two last Particulars, is shewn the great difference between Gravity and Magnetism, the one affecting only Iron, and that towards its Poles, the other all Bodies alike in every part. ”

“ Well, that’s all the Aero-Medical lab can do—guess at it. They’ve been trying to work out some way of duplicating the effect of zero gravity, but there’s just no answer. If you could build a machine to neutralize gravity, you could get all the answers, except to the ‘dead distance’ question.
“For instance, there’s the matter of whether the human body would even function without gravity. All down through the stages of evolution, man’s organs have been used to that downward pull. ”

“ When mass becomes overaggregated and threatens to unbalance energy, to deplete the physical power circuits, the physical controllers intervene unless gravity's own further tendency to overmaterialize energy is defeated by the occurrence of a collision among the dead giants of space, thus in an instant completely dissipating the cumulative collections of gravity. ”

“ The majority of persons, when thinking of "Gravitation," are satisfied with the idea that it is a power that "pulls things down to the ground," and do not think of it as a force that "pulls things" other ways besides "down," and which is possessed and exercised by the speck of dust as well as by the whole earth—by the molecule as well as by the mass. The reason of this is that this power is so slight in small bodies of Substance that it is unnoticed; and that only when the mass is sufficiently large to make the "pull" strong does one perceive and appreciate that the force exists. ”

“ Whatever Gravity be, ’tis plain that it acts every moment of time: for should it’s action cease, the projectile force would instantly carry off the Planets in straight lines from those parts of their Orbits where Gravity left them. But, the Planets being once put into motion, there is no occasion for any new projectile force, unless they meet with some resistance in their Orbits ”

“ Hitherto, our rare flights to Venia and Mirla had been primitive affairs in which the dangerous rocket principle was employed, with the terrific effects of acceleration crushing the crews and making landing an even greater hazard than the flight itself. But now, through inconceivable efforts of thought—aye, through sheer desperation!—our scientists evolved a system of atomic integration in which free orbital electrons were utilized to create atomic quantities beyond our known table, drawing upon the energy that could be harnessed in the process. ”