Most popular sci-fi in visual media up until recent examples like The Expanse and Cowboy Bebop (though only because the remake revived interest in the original) are soft sci-fi when it comes to walking around in spaceships.
This got me thinking. There are fairly hard takes on most fictional technology but I don't know that I've ever come across one for artificial gravity. At least no examples immediately come to mind.
I guess that's just too far out in the fictional physics system weeds for even the more dedicated of authors.
Gravity is one of the four fundamental interactions (albeit the weakest one), perhaps trying to create it artificially is a bit beyond even hypothetical physics. Sounds like the latest suggestion for it is from 2016:
> Now, Füzfa has shown, mathematically speaking, that by stacking large superconducting electromagnets we would be able to produce a very weak gravitational field, and that we'd be able to detect it using highly sensitive interferometers. These interferometers would work by basically superimposing gravitational fields on top of each other so that physicists could obtain information about them.
Right, but in a fictional universe we aren't constrained by real world physics. Yet no "hard" takes on artificial gravity come to mind. I assume this is partly because any explanation would be difficult to work into an interesting narrative (unless you consider physics journal articles and mathematical equations interesting) and also because "simulating" the downstream impacts of changes at such a low level of physics just sounds incredibly daunting and probably near impossible to get right.
The linked article is interesting. I'm amused by the mental image of the Millennium Falcon crumpling like a tin can into a singularity when magnets of ludicrous strength under the deck plating are suddenly switched on.
> Yet no "hard" takes on artificial gravity come to mind.
Yeah, I’m just suggesting maybe there just haven’t been any hypothetical speculative physics concepts that could explain artificial gravity. At least with FTL we’ve got wormholes, the Alcubierre drive, zero-point energy, etc.
> any explanation would be difficult to work into an interesting narrative
With sci-fi people seem to like explanations of FTL well enough, both the soft fantastical kind and the hard speculative physics kind. I think artificial gravity just needs its own visual/conceptual equivalent to the going into hyperspace effect, or warping space, or stargate relays, etc.
But artificial gravity itself is indeed conceptually and perhaps literally “low” because it’s much more mundane than other aspects. You might as well explain it away by everyone wearing magnetized boots. Tractor beams / interdictors with gravity well projectors are neat, though.
Is it though? It brings to mind the humorous essay that attempted to extrapolate in a hard sci-fi manner the consequences of the existence of phasers and teleporters in star trek. It seems likely to be a mundane usage which is merely the tip of the iceberg for an absurdly powerful technology.
> the hard speculative physics kind
Apologies if I'm off the mark but just to be clear you don't need speculative real world physics for a "hard" take. All you need is an author dedicated enough to invent his own set of rules and then faithfully "simulate" it. It's just that most authors are lazy and go with speculative real world physics as the base.
At some point I started seeing people conflate hard sci-fi with real world physics and I'm not sure where that came from.
David Webers Honorverse is mostly build on handwaved artificial gravity and FTL being possible. Largely it is hard take on whole thing. Though I think there is some other stuff as well.
It does do a lot with ship to ship fleet combat and at least some implications how ships work inside the constraints.
