Alien Base: The Evidence for Extraterrestrial Colonization of Earth – GRAVITATIONAL FIELDS
The voice explained the question of acceleration and why it had no effect on the occupants of their craft; a question ‘which seems to have come up quite often in the minds of the men of science, and many others of your people’.
Whenever our sampling devices or landing vehicles have been observed by them, and when the velocities and acceleration are described, disbelief is always apparent . . . This has been one of the causes of disappointment to us in our evaluation of the intelligence of the people of Earth . . . The answer is simply that the force which we use to accelerate our vehicles is identical in nature to a gravitational field. It acts, not only upon every atom of the vehicle, but equally upon every atom of mass that is within it, including the mass of the pilot and any passengers. Regardless of the intensity of the field therefore, every particle of mass within the influence of the field is in a uniform state of acceleration or, as you would term it, free fall, with respect to the field. Under these circumstances acceleration has no effect upon the vehicle or anything within it.
‘But in that case,’ asked Fry, ‘why am I not floating around in the air as things are supposed to do in a missile that is in free fall?’ Back came the answer: Before the ship’s own field was generated, it was resting upon the earth, and you were resting upon the seat. There was a force of one gravity acting between your body and your seat. Since the force which accelerates both the ship and your body acts in exact proportion to the mass, and since the Earth’s gravity continues to act upon both, the original force between your body and the seat will remain constant except that it will decrease as the force of gravity of the planet decreases with distance.
When traveling between planetary or stellar bodies far from any natural gravity source, we find it necessary, for practical reasons, to reproduce this force artificially The gravity to which we are accustomed is but little more than one-half that of Earth. It is one of the reasons that it will require so much time for one of us to become completely acclimatized to your environment. If I were to land now upon your planet, I could tolerate the doubled gravitational force for a time but the double weight of all my internal organs would cause them to be displaced downward, seriously hampering their functions. The difference in blood pressure between head and feet when standing erect would be double that to which we are accustomed, and there would be several other complications . . .
If, on the other hand, I remain in my own ship, the gravitational force to which I am subject can be increased by small but regular increments: the supporting tissues will gradually increase in size and strength until, eventually, your gravity will become as normal to me as my own is now.
Fry asked for an explanation of the craft’s propulsion system, specifically as it related to the tremendous amount of energy presumably required to accelerate the ship to such fantastic velocities. The voice began by saying that there were several concepts and words which did not yet exist in human vocabulary, or even in human consciousness, to allow for a complete explanation. But after several analogies by way of simplification, he continued: The large drum-like structure just above the central bulkhead is the differential accumulator. It is essentially a storage battery that is capable of being charged from a number of natural energy sources. We can charge it from the energy banks of our own ship, but this is seldom necessary. In your stratosphere, for example, there are several layers of ionized gas which, although they are rarefied, are also highly charged. By placing the ship in a planetary orbit at this level, it is able to collect, during each orbit, several times the energy required to place it in orbit. It would also, of course, collect a significant number of high-energy electrons from the Sun.
By the term ‘charging the differential accumulator’ I merely mean that a potential difference is created between two poles of the accumulator. The accumulator material has available free electrons in quantities beyond anything of which you could conceive. The control mechanism allows these electrons to flow through various segments of the force rings which you see at the top and bottom of the craft . . . The tremendous surge of electrons through the force rings creates a very strong magnetic field. Since the direction and amplitude of the flow can be controlled through either ring, and in several paths through a single ring, we can create a field which oscillates in a pattern of very precisely controlled modes. In this way we can create magnetic resonance between the two rings or between the several segments of a single ring.
As you know, any magnetic field which is changing in intensity will create an electric field which, at any given instant, is equal in amplitude, opposite in sign and perpendicular to the magnetic field. If the two fields become mutually resonant, a vector force will be generated. Unless the amplitude and the frequency of the resonance are quite high, the vector field will be very small, and may pass unnoticed. However, the amplitude of the vector field increases at a greater rate than the two fields which generate it and, at high resonance levels, becomes very strong. The vector field, whose direction is perpendicular to each of the other two, creates an effect similar to, and in fact identical with, a gravitational field.
If the center of the field coincides with the craft’s center of mass, the only effect will be to increase the inertia, or mass, of the craft. If the center of mass does not coincide with the center of force, the craft will tend to accelerate toward that center. Since the system which creates the field is a part of the ship, it will, of course, move with the ship, and will continue constantly to generate a field whose center of attraction is just ahead of the ship’s center of mass, so that the ship will continue to accelerate as long as the field is generated . . . To slow or stop the craft, the controls are adjusted so that the field is generated with its center just behind the center of mass, so that negative acceleration will result.