Artificial gravity-generator discovered?!

[Malenfant]

http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/GSP/SEM0L6OVGJE_0.html

This is really rather intriguing. Apparently if you spin up a superconductor you get a 'gravitomagnetic field' and it's been measured in the lab. By (apparently) reputable scientists, no less!

If this pans out into something usable, it could result in some rather nifty technologies...

[eburacum45]

I am not surprised that something like this is possible. However I wouldn't expect artificial gravity in spaceships just yet; this is a very small effect, and even if scaled up the gravity gradient from (say) an underfloor gravitomagnetic generator would be completely different to the gravity gradient on a planet.
Imagine standing on the floor in a ship with artificial gravity generators; your feet are close to the generator and are heavy, while your head is far from the generator and practically in free fall. In such a situation you would get blood pooling in your feet and probably black out in short order.

[wcomer]

You are right, but for the wrong reasons. The ring doesn't create a gravitational field, rather a gravitomagnetic field. Unless you were wearing another such ring, you wouldn't be pulled towards it. However, a toroidal ring of such rings could be used to generated an gravity field within the hole of the torus. This would be a gravitational dipole, much like a magnetic dipole. You could accelerate objects through the hole of this torus (though there are easier ways to accelerate objects.) I guess a larger torus of such torii could be used, to cause an object to orbit within it's tube. Maybe in another 50 years, undergrads will be studying gravito-gravitomagnetism in the same manner as electromageneticsm is taught today.

cheers,
Walton