Man has always wished to be able to fly. Seeing how birds do it and not being able to do it has obsessed him, to the point of causing quite a few accidents. It is a craving that even very young children know. Some mishaps caused by the viewing of the movie Superman at the end of the seventies may be proof.
At the end of the 19th century, two fundamental interactions were known: electromagnetic and gravitational. In one respect, both are quite different. Electrically charged bodies can have a positive or a negative charge. A positive and a negative charge attract each other; two positive or two negative charges repel each other. Likewise, magnetic bodies have two ends with magnetism of a different type, north and south. If we bring two magnets together, the north end of one and the south end of the other attract each other; ends of the same type repel each other.
On the other hand, gravitation only gives
rise to attractions, never repulsions. Under normal conditions, two bodies with
mass always attract each other, they never repel each other. However, from
another point of view, gravity is very similar to electromagnetic attraction, as
both decrease in inverse proportion to the square of the distance that
separates the bodies that attract each other. Shouldn’t there also be a negative
gravity, antigravity, gravitational repulsion,
or whatever we want to call it?
As a science fiction
glossary says for the term antigravity, the
applications of such technology are obvious and stimulate the imagination... It
would be possible to manufacture safer aircraft or replace them with vehicles
equipped with some type of antigravity propulsion; if the device could be
miniaturized, it would be possible to work on a scaffold without the need for
safety cables, or to fly like birds.
Around the end of the 19th century, the
idea that science would soon discover antigravity was welcomed with joy by
science fiction writers, a literary genre that was then in its beginnings. That
discovery would then make it possible for technology to develop ways to use it.
These are three of the works from that time using this idea that I have read:
- A prodigious discovery, published
in 1867 and mistakenly attributed to Jules Verne during a century, for its
author seems to have been François Armand Audoin. The protagonist uses
antigravity to fly, and to lift aerial vehicles. He justifies it this way:
Didn’t gravitation have its opposite? It
must have it. The double phenomenon of attraction and repulsion is
observed in chemical combinations and in the composition of bodies. It was
confusedly suspected that there was some relationship between electricity
and magnetization, but no one knew exactly how to realize the identity of
those phenomena, that the electric spark, magnetism, galvanism,
magnetization, gravitation and chemical affinities are no more than
diverse manifestations... Gravitation is nothing more than one of the modes
of manifestation of electricity.
- A tale of negative gravity by American
novelist Frank Stockton, most famous for his short story The Lady or the Tiger? In this tale, an
American researcher discovers antigravity and uses it to transport heavy
loads and climb mountains effortlessly. When everyone thinks he is crazy,
he decides to hide the discovery, although he leaves a description of the
procedure in a letter that will be delivered to his son after his death.
In the end, he sends his device into the stratosphere, setting the
antigravity intensity to maximum, but removing the load. This point in the
story is a mistake. As it ascends, the influence of the Earth’s gravity would
decrease, so the device should not stop in the stratosphere, but rather
leave the Earth and disappear into the depths of space.
- The First Men in the Moon by H.G. Wells. Unlike Cyrano de Bergerac, who sends his protagonists to the moon in a rocket-propelled boat, Wells provides them with a substance (cavorite) that shields the effect of gravity. Therefore, it would be enough to place a cavorite plate under a vehicle so that, oblivious to the attraction of the Earth, it would be able to rise with little effort. In this way, they reach the moon. This is not, therefore, gravitational repulsion, but the technological result is equivalent.
Throughout the 20th century, with the rise
of science fiction, antigravity became one of the classic themes, practiced by
several of the best-known authors, such as Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke.
Science, however, followed other paths. Einstein’s theory of General
Relativity, for example, offered a new interpretation of gravity that, rather
than being a force, would be a modification of the geometry of space-time
around masses. And since there are no negative masses, there would therefore be
no antigravity.
At the end of the 20th century, with the
proposal by the standard cosmological model of the possible existence of dark energy, antigravity has once again
appeared in the field of science. Dark energy appears to oppose gravitational
attraction, causing the acceleration of the expansion of the universe that our
instruments have detected. If we could tame it and use it in suitable
technological devices, the dreams of science fiction could be realized. But
first we should learn what is dark energy and confirm that it actually exists. And
even if it exists, it may be impossible to make it technical.
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