Anyone who knows me or reads my blog knows that I’m fascinated by the possibility that we Earthlings have been visited by beings of extraterrestrial origin. I like to watch shows about sightings and such to see what sort of evidence is offered to substantiate the various claims.
I remain unconvinced that we’ve been visited by ETs but there are things that cannot be explained, credible witnesses that it is hard to dismiss. All of which is to say that I find this topic interesting.
One of the things that bugs me about UFO sightings are the people who ponder the UFO’s rapid course changes and always hypothesize that the craft must have some sort of “inertial compensation” to prevent the occupants from being squished by the G-forces generated when the craft (if it is a craft) abruptly makes a right-angle turn while going 4000 MPH.
Newton’s first law of motion says that an object in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted on by an external force. That is, it has inertia. So, an object moving at 4000 MPH in a particular direction will tend to maintain that speed and direction until acted upon by an external force. The same goes for the contents of an object. Put a grape into a glass jar and give it a good shake. Imagine that the jar is a spacecraft and the grape is some hapless occupant. Poor guy.
After a few shakes, simulating rapid course changes, you can see why some folks might think that inertial compensation is needed. Something has to protect the pilot from inertia, right?
OK, on this point I have to clarify just a bit. Inertia will not harm the pilot. Moving at a great, but constant velocity results in some fixed amount of inertia. Newton’s second law tells us that force is equal to mass times acceleration. If acceleration is zero (as when at constant velocity), there is no force acting on the pilot. The force comes when the craft speeds up, slows down or changes direction. That’s when the pilot will experience G-forces due to acceleration. So, inertia is not the culprit here, acceleration is. So, what’s really needed is acceleration compensation.
Coming from an engineering background and having worked on industrial controls for decades, I can say that any “inertial compensation” system would have to be perfect. A miscalibration of even a fraction of one percent could be fatal, given the tremendous G-forces involved. No beings capable of interstellar flight would dare trust their lives to an inertial compensator. Nor would they have to.
The inertial compensation school of thought is based on yesterday’s technology. Rockets are old tech, very old. Rockets work on the action-reaction principle. The rocket expels hot gasses out one end (an action) and the rocket engine itself is accelerated in the opposite direction (a reaction) by a force equal to and opposite the direction of the expelled gasses. Basic physics: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. (This is Newton’s third law of motion.)
The rocket is attached to the frame of the craft and thus accelerates the craft and its contents. Within the craft, the pilot’s seat, being attached to the accelerating craft structure is itself accelerated and thus accelerates the pilot occupant. The pilot, accelerated by the seat, is subjected to G-forces as the seat presses against his back, causing his internal organs to be accelerated in turn. The inertia of his internal organs will tend to keep them going in the same direction at the same speed until the external force transferred from the rocket engine to the craft frame, to the seat, to the pilot’s back and finally to his innards gets everything going in the same direction at the same velocity.
Now imagine a rocket ship that makes a right angle turn at 4000 MPH. Inertia will tend to keep the pilot going in the direction he was while the rest of the craft makes a right-angle turn. The acceleration forces on his body would tear it apart. What to do?
There was a time when people said the human body could never withstand speeds of 50 MPH on a train pulled by a steam locomotive. So too, people who want to cobble together some sort of inertial compensation system are living in the past.
I believe that future propulsion systems will operate by generating a force field which accelerates everything within it equally. Every molecule, every atom, every neutron and electron within the field will be acted upon equally, thus doing away with the need for an “external force” to accelerate the craft.
Instead, the propulsion controls will simply change the direction and magnitude of the force field that is applied to the craft and its contents. Since everything within the field will experience the same acceleration at any given instant, there is no danger of squishing.
Newtons laws would still apply, of course, and running into an asteroid or a planet would still have dire consequences for the craft and its occupants. But occupants of the craft will not even feel any effects of the propulsion system’s output — even right angle turns at 4000 MPH would go unnoticed.
Does there exist such a force, one that can accelerate everything within it equally? Well, sure. Gravity is one such. People have long surmised that flying saucers have “anti-gravity” propulsion systems. They may not be much off the mark. There’s no reason to suppose we won’t eventually figure out how gravity works and how to generate gravity-like forces.
Humans have only recently realized that more of the universe is made up of “dark matter” than matter we can see and have hypothesized that it is a force called “dark energy” that is causing the universe to expand at an ever-increasing rate. Perhaps future spacecraft will employ dark energy drives. Dark energy is in great abundance; it makes up more than 70% of all mass-energy in the entire universe. When we harness it, we’ll have abundant power with no “carbon footprint.”
It will eventually come to pass that propulsion systems employing Newtonian physics will be a thing of the past. And there will be no need to “inertial compensators” even when doing right-angle turns at 4000 MPH.