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 element ...

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 o ...

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 motio ...

, "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 o ...

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 radio ...

, 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 par ...

, 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 imagination, imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, Paral ...

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 vario ...

'', ''

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 b ...

'' 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 extrate ...

'' 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 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 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 univer ...

'' 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 unive ...

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 force A fictitious force is a force that appears to act on a mass whose motion is described using a non-inertial frame of reference, such as a linearly accelerating or rotating reference frame. It is related to Newton's second law of motion, which trea ...

s requires a

force In physics, a force is an influence that can change the motion of an object. A force can cause an object with mass to change its velocity (e.g. moving from a state of rest), i.e., to accelerate. Force can also be described intuitively as a ...

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 A seat is a place to sit. The term may encompass additional features, such as back, armrest, head restraint but also headquarters in a wider sense. Types of seat The following are examples of different kinds of seat: * Armchair (furniture), ...

, 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. * Defo ...

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 Homogeneity and heterogeneity are concepts often used in the sciences and statistics relating to the uniformity of a substance or organism. A material or image that is homogeneous is uniform in composition or character (i.e. color, shape, siz ...

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. Mathematicall ...

there is the possibility of surrounding them with a

fluid In physics, a fluid is a liquid, gas, or other material that continuously deforms (''flows'') under an applied shear stress, or external force. They have zero shear modulus, or, in simpler terms, are substances which cannot resist any shea ...

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 pilot A fighter pilot is a military aviator trained to engage in air-to-air combat, air-to-ground combat and sometimes electronic warfare while in the cockpit of a fighter aircraft. Fighter pilots undergo specialized training in aerial warfare an ...

s often wear a

liquid A liquid is a nearly incompressible fluid that conforms to the shape of its container but retains a (nearly) constant volume independent of pressure. As such, it is one of the four fundamental states of matter (the others being solid, gas, an ...

-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