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Except under strictly controlled conditions removing an individual from Earth's gravity is invariably fatal due to the speed of the Earth's rotation and revolution around the Sun.
No.
Now, I'm not a physicist, but I'm pretty sure that is not how it works.
The idea is that the device not only negates gravity, but the momentum you have from riding the planet.
edit: Eh, never mind. Don't feel like putting something else like that in. The planet is still going to keep on moving without you, and now you're not being pulled along for the ride. That still means you get flung into orbit or smashed against something even if you've still got your momentum.
Ah hah, yeah, after actually asking a physicist the cessation of being attracted to the Earth would indeed fuck your shit up.
Yeah, the deconstruction of a superpower is enough for me to upvote, then.
Ignore this, I forgot solar and galactic gravity. Not sure how high they are, need to check.
Nope: still can't work out how this SCP is supposed to be deadly. Neither solar nor galactic gravity is even noticeable for this purpose. You're essentially going to behave like a helium balloon.
While I don't love the style overall (or lack of picture), I like this one because it is a practical approach to what most people consider to be an awesome super power. Kind of like the time machine issue, where if a time machine took you six months into the past or future but didn't change your position, you would be in outer space.
Know what would make this better? If it ran on AA batteries.
The line "contains a superfluous set of interlocking gears and colored LED light bulbs" amuses me probably more than is healthy.
Gah! I was going to use the "found recently in an antique store but it turns out the store had been abandoned for years" shtick when I got around to writing my own SCP…
C'est la vie.
Still an awesome Factory trinket. +1
in case anyone wasnt sure on this article(which it sounds like from earlier comments), removing all gravitational effects is all this needs to do to produce these results. dont go thinking it's stopping you dead in place. if this somehow fixed your position in space, then for one you'd be the only object in the universe whose position and speed wasn't relative, people could use you as an absolute :P that part would be fun
but it would also mean an instant "acceleration" to, at minimum, 100,000 kph relative to the earth's position, which would blow you straight through basically anything in your path on your rather rapid departure. this also would happen if, rather than fixing your position in space, it just completely stopped your momentum vs the earth's motion. this article doesnt describe that kind of effect….
if gravity ceased to affect you then your trajectory would be whatever straight-line direction the earth had been moving you in, acceleration rapid but not instantaneous. it might be a "gradual" shift for the first half second or so, but it would become a major deal very very quickly. you might survive if you were very close to a wall as you wouldnt have enough time to build up much speed before you slammed into it, but you'd be pinned quite firmly by centrifugal force.
i'm curious about the math on that as to what angle/speed you would start moving in, but do agree this is about what you could expect as your result. just hope that it doesnt get activated outside.
When I first wrote it I wasn't going by the notion that the item fixes you in place, but I figured that might be a better way to explain it when Chubert questioned the idea. Then I realized that was silly and I didn't need to do such a thing.
yeah, i knew you were on track, but some people still sounded like they were considering the other
not that the other would be bad as an SCP, just….a bit overkill. the foundation's involvement would be to figure out what was causing these random sonic booms with holes blown through concrete walls or some such, there would be nothing left to actually find
How fast do you think the Earth is currently accelerating?
The acceleration of the Earth around the Sun is significantly less than 1g. It's more like 0.0001g
Which is not going to splat anyone.
The Earth's acceleration refers to the change of direction as it goes around the sun, not any change in its speed.
True, it's a change in velocity, not a change in speed.
It's still only fractions of a g. The Earth may be moving at tremendous speed around the sun, but it takes a whole year to make an orbit, so the actual acceleration required is quite small.
The centrifugal force of the earth is strongest at the equator, where it is less than 1/300th of normal earth gravity. Removing gravity would not be sufficient for you to be hurtled in to the air. You could hold yourself to the earth by putting pebbles in your pockets.
Think really hard about what you just said and see if you can figure out why I want to slap you.
hahahahahaha
YES you can totally beat the anti-gravity machine by making yourself heavier, you are agenius.
You are talking about a force that effects theshape of the planet itself, let alone that said planet is spinning at over 1,000 miles per hour at the equator while hurtling at 67,000 miles per hour around the sun and god knows how fast through the universe. A tiny fraction of that speed would be deadly to a human when experienced relative to the speed of the planet which you are no longer relative to when using this item.
But that's okay.You've got a safety belt made of pebbles.
Rage against the dying light! Empty your pockets as you soar through the air! You are become death, dispenser of hypervelocity rock-shot! With a wave of the hand, you erase entire city blocks from existence! ALL THE WORLD SHALL TREMBLE AT YOUR POWER!
Or at least wonder why a vest and a mangled corpse accompanied a meteor shower. Ho hum.
The light wouldn't be dying when you launch yourself into the sun.
I was briefly considering the possibility that extra-terrestrial bodies of mass like the Sun and the Moon might still have a gravitational pull on the belt wearer, just to further underscore that the item worked on nonsense handwaving rather than some scientific principle that counteracted gravity but people are having a hard enough time with this one as it is.
I like the idea that it gibs them due to spontaneous breaking of the sound barrier, total collapse of organ systems due to sudden however hundreds or thousands ofgs of acceleration, etc. I don't even care if it's not or won't be written like that, I'm pretending that's what it does.
"Hey dad, can I buy this vest! Can I! Please?"
"What's that, son?"
"It's a superpower vest that lets me fly like Superman by counteracting gravity! I'll use my own money and everything! Pleeeeease?"
"Sure, why not."
Four to six weeks later:
"Look dad! It just got here!"
"Neat."
"I'm gonna try it out now!"
<Queue sonic boom and a sound similar to light rain.>
"…"
The idea of instant splats is not without merit, that would be the the danger inherent if the device had canceled your momentum in addition to gravity's influence.
But just to put this issue to rest I'm probably going to start working on an update note for clarification. It's not the power of centrifugal force that gets you itself — it's that the planet is going tens of thousands of miles per hour in one direction while you are going tens of thousands of miles per hour in adifferent direction. That ends in a collision or what appears to be a launch intoorbit space from the perspective of others.
Anti-gravity is often used to describe a force that is pushing against the Earth's pull while still leaving you as part of the larger system. In that sense of the term, the Earth's spin and orbit aren't much of a big deal because gravity is still there. That's not what this device does, and that is a fatal distinction.
I don't think the problem is the power of the forces involved as much as, you know, pebbles in your pockets only working if gravity is there to holdthem down.
What people are forgetting here is air resistance. Even if you're no longer affected by gravity, it's not like you'll just start flying through everything.
That's not much of an issue. If you are not of an aerodynamic shape, then the sound barrier will provide one for you. Fairly sure an aircraft not designed for supersonic flight breaking the sound barrier ends with said aircraft's wings sheared off. Extrapolate that to flesh and bone.
Also worth noting that there is no terminal velocity here. Terminal velocity is the force of the gravity being counteracted by drag. Also consider that you start off going, what, just over three times escape velocity? Kind of curious why this vest isn't hurtling through space, to be honest. May have been covered already, though.
I apologize if this was incoherent, am a bit tired.
EDIT: Now that I think about it, I kind of wonder if the person wearing the vest wouldn't be gibbed almost instantly upon its activation. The result I'm picturing would be that the vest appears to turn people into a shotgun blast of smoking gore the moment you turn it on, an X mile long trail of body parts, blood, and viscera, which to me seems darkly humorous.
Uh, no terminal velocity? Drag opposes -all- forces, it doesn't identify them by names. If it didn't, you'd be able to accelerate your car to any speed you wanted just by stepping on that gas pedal.
…
Yeah, no man. I want you to take a toy car and push it along a desk, and observe the wheels in particular and the relation between their speed of rotation and the speed of the toy car. Yeah, drag is going to factor in, but it is not the sole restriction of the max speed of a wheeled vehicle. It's a poor example in any case, and it occurs to me you may be confusing the concept of aerodynamic drag with general friction and perhaps inertia, and I'm probably too tired to convey my thoughts in an intelligible manner.
We're only turning off gravity, not putting on some sort of cosmic break relative to earth.
Well a human being is much heavier than a helium balloon.
But, like it was pointed out, the centrifugal force is less than 1% of gravity. You could easily swim against that much.
It seems to me that some people think "turning off gravity" would just send things flying off like a champagne cork. If that were the case, you could hold a racecar with some rope and then, when the light went green, cut the rope and watch the car instantly run to 300 km/h.
That makes no sense whatsoever.