Quote:
Originally Posted by The_Heretic
I'm not sure anyone knows what magnetic fields are, but- to date I don't think there's a working theory that they're spacial distrtions. If they are it would be simple to see if they exert or alter gravitation. If that's the case I'm betting the effect is so minor as to be impossible to detect with today's instrumentation. In my science fiction novels I do work with the idea that magnetic fields can distort space the same way the gravity from matter does, thereby allowing a bubble of a spacial sheer to be created, and then letting the sheer-bubble move instead of the vessel within.
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What we think of as gravity is, in and of itself, spatial distortion. Anything that has a rest mass of greater than zero will curve space-time toward itself it accordance with its mass and its velocity. This is a big part of why I do not regard gravity as being a fundamental force...It has no direct effect on matter, but rather on the space-time through which matter moves. The reason you come down when you jump up is not because the Earth is pulling on you. It is because the space-time through which you are jumping is curved much more towards the Earth's mass than it is towards your mass. We tend not to notice this because we observe the phenomenon using light and light, too, follows along the manifold curves of the space-time continuum. This is why good science fiction generally uses some means of stepping outside of normal space-time in order to circumvent the speed of light. By travelling in a straight line while space-time is curved, one can reach a destination before light would, while never exceeding light-speed locally.