Inertia negation is a hypothetical process causing physical objects with
mass
Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a physical body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different ele ...
to act as if they were of lower mass or were massless. The effect is the opposite of adding
ballast
Ballast is material that is used to provide stability to a vehicle or structure. Ballast, other than cargo, may be placed in a vehicle, often a ship or the gondola of a balloon or airship, to provide stability. A compartment within a boat, ship ...
. No such process is known to exist in the real world: if current understanding of physics is correct, such a process would be impossible. There is currently no known material or technology that is able to eliminate or negate the effects of
inertia
Inertia is the idea that an object will continue its current motion until some force causes its speed or direction to change. The term is properly understood as shorthand for "the principle of inertia" as described by Newton in his first law ...
that all objects with mass possess.
Overview
According to
Newton's first law
Newton's laws of motion are three basic laws of classical mechanics that describe the relationship between the motion of an object and the forces acting on it. These laws can be paraphrased as follows:
# A body remains at rest, or in motion ...
, "A body will continue in its state of rest or of uniform motion in a straight line, unless compelled to change that state by a net force."
Inertia
Inertia is the idea that an object will continue its current motion until some force causes its speed or direction to change. The term is properly understood as shorthand for "the principle of inertia" as described by Newton in his first law ...
is the resistance against changes in the motion of an object. Objects within objects each possess their own inertia, and will collide with each other when the containing object is moved.
A device that would be capable of inertia negation is described as being capable of reducing the inertia of both the larger containing object, and of all contained objects within, so as to make changes in motion easier, and to reduce or prevent damage due to internal collisions. The inertia is not absorbed or redirected but simply ceases to have a physical effect.
Antimatter
In modern physics, antimatter is defined as matter composed of the antiparticles (or "partners") of the corresponding particles in "ordinary" matter. Antimatter occurs in natural processes like cosmic ray collisions and some types of radioac ...
, while being the opposite of
matter
In classical physics and general chemistry, matter is any substance that has mass and takes up space by having volume. All everyday objects that can be touched are ultimately composed of atoms, which are made up of interacting subatomic part ...
, has the same kind of inertia, with the forces oriented in the same direction, as normal matter. Thus, storing antimatter on board a vehicle made of matter would not achieve any kind of inertia negation.
Inertia negation in fiction
Inertia negation is a commonplace technology in numerous
science fiction
Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel uni ...
series. It is used as an explanation as to why the crew of starships can withstand complex maneuvers or acceleration to
FTL speeds.
The first Sci-fi media to explicitly mention inertial dampening technology include the ''
Star Trek
''Star Trek'' is an American science fiction media franchise created by Gene Roddenberry, which began with the eponymous 1960s television series and quickly became a worldwide pop-culture phenomenon. The franchise has expanded into vari ...
'', ''
Stargate
''Stargate'' (often stylized in all caps) is a military science fiction media franchise based on the film directed by Roland Emmerich, which he co-wrote with producer Dean Devlin. The franchise is based on the idea of an alien Einstein–Rosen ...
'' and the ''
Alien
Alien primarily refers to:
* Alien (law), a person in a country who is not a national of that country
** Enemy alien, the above in times of war
* Extraterrestrial life, life which does not originate from Earth
** Specifically, intelligent extrater ...
'' franchises. However, the technology is depicted implicitly in many more movies and TV shows where the crew inside a spaceship are not affected by acceleration of the ship itself.
Inertial Canceller, a power in the PlayStation 2 game
Wild Arms 4
''Wild Arms 4'', known in Japan as , is a role-playing video game developed by Media.Vision and the fourth installment in the ''Wild Arms'' video game series. The game's overall look and feel is a departure from the Wild West feel of '' Wild Ar ...
is used by a boss named Jeremy Noin. Like indicated by the name, it allows him to cancel inertia on items held in his hands, allowing him to use even a
Gatling gun
The Gatling gun is a rapid-firing multiple-barrel firearm invented in 1861 by Richard Jordan Gatling. It is an early machine gun and a forerunner of the modern electric motor-driven rotary cannon.
The Gatling gun's operation centered on a c ...
without being bothered by its weight or recoil.
In the fictional ''
Mass Effect
''Mass Effect'' is a military science fiction media franchise created by Casey Hudson, Drew Karpyshyn and Preston Watamaniuk. The franchise depicts a distant future where humanity and several alien civilizations have colonized the known unive ...
'' universe
dark energy
In physical cosmology and astronomy, dark energy is an unknown form of energy that affects the universe on the largest scales. The first observational evidence for its existence came from measurements of supernovas, which showed that the univ ...
fields are used ubiquitously to modify mass of objects, e.g. of weapon projectiles to allow use of compact mass accelerators in order to achieve higher muzzle velocity, or even negate the mass of entire spaceships in order to enable FTL travel.
Inertial damper as shock absorber
Inertia negation is used to counter the effects of sudden acceleration that would impart structural stresses on star ships when suddenly accelerating to or decelerating with the
impulse drive
Impulse or Impulsive may refer to:
Science
* Impulse (physics), in mechanics, the change of momentum of an object; the integral of a force with respect to time
* Impulse noise (disambiguation)
* Specific impulse, the change in momentum per uni ...
, and which would cause passengers to be thrown against walls and crushed by the inertial effects of the vehicle suddenly accelerating or slowing.
Inertial damper in real world
Countering the effect of
inertial forces requires a
force that compensates them. For example, a
pilot
An aircraft pilot or aviator is a person who controls the flight of an aircraft by operating its directional flight controls. Some other aircrew members, such as navigators or flight engineers, are also considered aviators, because they a ...
of a rapidly accelerating
fighter aircraft is acted upon by his
seat, which compensates the inertial force, which would otherwise make him fall through the seat. However, the distribution of the compensating force throughout his body is different from that of the inertial force, and thus a
deformation
Deformation can refer to:
* Deformation (engineering), changes in an object's shape or form due to the application of a force or forces.
** Deformation (physics), such changes considered and analyzed as displacements of continuum bodies.
* Defor ...
of his body occurs (such as swelling of the legs and insufficient blood supply to the brain).
To avoid the deformation, the distributions have to match. For bodies with
homogeneous density
Density (volumetric mass density or specific mass) is the substance's mass per unit of volume. The symbol most often used for density is ''ρ'' (the lower case Greek letter rho), although the Latin letter ''D'' can also be used. Mathematical ...
there is the possibility of surrounding them with a
fluid of the same density. The resulting
buoyant force compensates the inertial forces. It is distributed across the body surface and transferred to its interior in such a way that no deformation stress occurs.
Fighter pilots often wear a
liquid-filled
g-suit
A g-suit, or anti-''g'' suit, is a flight suit worn by aviators and astronauts who are subject to high levels of acceleration force ( g). It is designed to prevent a black-out and g-LOC (g-induced loss of consciousness) caused by the blood pool ...
for this purpose. However, as the human body is not entirely homogeneous (bones are denser, air in the cavities is lighter than the rest of the body), some deformation stress remains.
References
* McCampbell, J. M
"UFOlogy" ''
UFOlogy
Ufology ( ) is the investigation of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) by people who believe that they may be of extraordinary origins (most frequently of extraterrestrial alien visitors). While there are instances of government, private, and ...
'', Celestial Arts, Berkeley, 1976. Retrieved in September 2016.
External links
{{Memory Alpha , Inertial damping system
Force
Mass
Theoretical physics