Dig It

Let's get right to work. This time we'll continue the attack on the tiny end of the spectrum. This in an attempt to get a handle of any kind on gravity. I'm slightly hindered by the lack of a lab and a research staff ☺.  A simple search reveals that there are all kinds of forces that have been quantified. That certainly doesn't help.

So what we have at a 'macro' level is gravity, magnetism, electro-magnetism, and electricity. That seems to argue that we've missed a category: magneto-gravitic, for want of an actual term. If such a thing exists, that is where we would look for an 'anti-gravity' drive.

Of course since we can't detect gravity, it may be a while before that concept does us any good. What's that you say? You can detect gravity (as he jumps up and down like a monkey)?

Sorry, but you can't detect gravity any more than Heisenberg can tell you where that phantom electron is. What you and every other thing in the solar system can detect is the effects of gravity. And darned happy about it, generally speaking. However, we're left with the same sinking feeling we got when we tried to nail down the atom. Yes, I know that there are things out there called gravity detectors, but it's the same story as before- we can see the critter's tracks, but the animal itself is invisible. We'll deal with the atom later. Maybe we can figure out where it went by then.

The trouble is, nobody can prove what gravity is or how it propagates. Since we can't detect it, we're going to have a rough time doing anything with it. It seems reasonable to consider it a force, but there are so many forces (well, at least they have been named forces... it's another case of The Cat Syndrome). And how do we know that they aren't all the same force with another name? We don't. There you are. The 'experts' really hate admitting that they have no clue. I don't. We are simply clueless about most things that happen at the atomic level. This is not to say that we can't use what we've deduced to operate these forces- atomic fission bombs still wipe out cities and all, but we're frankly jungle savages playing with an iPod. We can poke the buttons and make it run, but we have no real clue of how or why it works. We find something that goes boing when we poke it there and then we scribble down a theory that describes why.

For heaven's sake, the entire realm of physics and chemistry is loaded with enough fudge-factor numbers to sink a doughnut. Or an aircraft carrier. That alone should be screaming that there are things going on that we know nothing about! There are huge gaps in what we know about atomic and molecular forces and I seriously doubt that we'll make any progress until we do. It's really disappointing to me, but there's no choice. We have to build the foundation before the roof goes up.