China Builds 'Hypergravity' Machine 2,000X Stronger Than Earth (futurism.com) 87
Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shared this report from Futurism:
China has unveiled an extremely powerful "hypergravity machine" that can generate forces almost two thousand times stronger than Earth's regular gravity.
The futuristic-looking machine, called CHIEF1900, was constructed at China's Centrifugal Hypergravity and Interdisciplinary Experiment Facility (CHIEF) at Zheijang University in Eastern China, and allows researchers to study how extreme forces affect various materials, plants, cells, or other structures, as the South China Morning Post reports... [Once up and running, it will allow researchers to recreate "catastrophic events such as dam failures and earthquakes inside a laboratory, according to the university."] For instance, it can analyze the structural stability of an almost 1,000-feet-tall dam by spinning a ten-foot model at 100 Gs, meaning 100 times the Earth's regular gravity. It could also be used to study the resonance frequencies of high-speed rail tracks, or how pollutants seep into soil over thousands of years.
The machine officially dethroned its predecessor, CHIEF1300, which became the world's most powerful centrifuge a mere four months ago... It can generate 1,900 g-tonnes of force, or 1,900 times the Earth's gravity. To put that into perspective, a washing machine only reaches about two g-tonnes.
The futuristic-looking machine, called CHIEF1900, was constructed at China's Centrifugal Hypergravity and Interdisciplinary Experiment Facility (CHIEF) at Zheijang University in Eastern China, and allows researchers to study how extreme forces affect various materials, plants, cells, or other structures, as the South China Morning Post reports... [Once up and running, it will allow researchers to recreate "catastrophic events such as dam failures and earthquakes inside a laboratory, according to the university."] For instance, it can analyze the structural stability of an almost 1,000-feet-tall dam by spinning a ten-foot model at 100 Gs, meaning 100 times the Earth's regular gravity. It could also be used to study the resonance frequencies of high-speed rail tracks, or how pollutants seep into soil over thousands of years.
The machine officially dethroned its predecessor, CHIEF1300, which became the world's most powerful centrifuge a mere four months ago... It can generate 1,900 g-tonnes of force, or 1,900 times the Earth's gravity. To put that into perspective, a washing machine only reaches about two g-tonnes.
Re: "China invents centrifuge" (Score:1)
Re: "China invents centrifuge" (Score:3)
No fucking kidding. WTF is with the editorializing being so terrible on slashdot now? There have been bad editors in the past (kdawson comes to mind) but that generally came from them injecting their own opinion as fact. But...gravity machine? This is tabloid level shit.
Re: "China invents centrifuge" (Score:2)
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It's a very fast centrifuge. It's undoubtedly useful for material testing, but calling it a "gravity machine" means that any device capable of constant acceleration is a "gravity machine".
Re: "China invents centrifuge" (Score:2)
I'm still waiting for a zero G machine.
Re: "China invents centrifuge" (Score:3, Funny)
Re: "China invents centrifuge" (Score:2)
You'd have a point if that's what this was, but it isn't. This is centrifugal force; a person experiencing it can easily tell the difference. Carnivals often include those flying saucer things that spin rapidly and pin you to the wall. I don't know if you've ever ridden these before, but you always have the sensation of being pulled lightly to one side, in addition to feeling stuck to the wall. It's analogous to the Coriolis effect, only much more intense.
The effect of acceleration, on the other hand, is in
Re: "China invents centrifuge" (Score:1)
g-tonne (Score:2)
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2,000 g's is definitely a ton of gravity.
Re: g-tonne (Score:2)
Sounds like a Walmart knockoff bike brand name.
Re:g-tonne (Score:5, Informative)
Apparently, a capacity measure of these things.
Among them, two main units have the maximum capacity of 1900 gt, the maximum centrifugal acceleration of 1500 g and the maximum load of 32 t.
So, this one can do max 1500 g for 1.26 ton, or 32t at 60g. It also says the largest outside of China are 1200 g*t.
Here's a more detailed, if older article: https://www.zju.edu.cn/english... [zju.edu.cn]
Re: (Score:3)
What's the maximum gravity for something the size of a Saiyan? I know a guy who might be interested.
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What is Saiyan? You simply divide 1900 tons by its mass (in tons) if it is less than or equal to 32 tons and there you are.
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About 34,000g. That should do the trick.
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What's the maximum gravity for something the size of a Saiyan? I know a guy who might be interested.
I heard he’s only interested if it can be fitted with a hyperbolic time chamber.
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Normal sized or pint sized? (no the hair does not count)
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Definitely Vegita sized.
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He kamay be interested, but he kamay not be.
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Apparently, a capacity measure of these things.
Among them, two main units have the maximum capacity of 1900 gt, the maximum centrifugal acceleration of 1500 g and the maximum load of 32 t.
So, this one can do max 1500 g for 1.26 ton, or 32t at 60g. It also says the largest outside of China are 1200 g*t.
Here's a more detailed, if older article: https://www.zju.edu.cn/english... [zju.edu.cn]
Assuming articles are correct it looks like it’s at a diameter of 49 feet or 15m. This is important because the loading is radial, not virtually parallel like under earths gravity at our scales. In order to be useful as a gravity simulator for high accuracy, you need the force of gravity to point the same way across your whole structure and when the radius of rotation starts to be less than roughly 10x the model width across rotation then the change in angle of gravity across the model starts to ne
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Maybe, there's a piece in the Interesting Engineering website where they claim they'll be studying small models, roughly a ton in size. So, if it is a cube made from concrete, about 70 cm per side?
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I guess I'm not looking at it the way you do. When you say "across the rotation", I'm thinking along the radius vector, which is also "height" in that frame.
If you put a bridge model less than 1m tall in this 8m radius centrifuge, the difference in force on top and bottom is the ratio of the radii, about 12% top to bottom, not 50%. For flatter structures the difference is even smaller. Plus, they can probably play with the model shape and support it so that radial force distribution on the thing flattens o
Re: g-tonne (Score:2)
Re: g-tonne (Score:2)
Re:g-tonne (Score:5, Interesting)
The correct terms are tonne-force (tf), Megagram-force (Mgf) or Megapond (Mp) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Five shit tons.
Space Potential (Score:2)
Flip the vector the other way and with some gravity-based stabilisers, maybe we could use it to hyper-launch objects/shuttles into space without the need to burn rocket fuel.
Re:Space Potential - spinlaunch (Score:5, Interesting)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Re: Space Potential (Score:2, Interesting)
Can we use Trump as a test subject, please?
Re: Space Potential (Score:4, Informative)
He's too fat.
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Re: Space Potential (Score:3)
I'm flexible. Let's explore both options.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
This thing has a very obvious dual use, for studying all those "hypersonic", that is, high acceleration military projectiles.
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Yes, where they change trajectory and experience those accelerations. A.k.a. the interesting points that you care about.
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Flip the vector the other way and with some gravity-based stabilisers, maybe we could use it to hyper-launch objects/shuttles into space without the need to burn rocket fuel.
An ordinary ultracentrifuge would rip itself apart if suddenly unbalanced, for example, by suddenly releasing a projectile.
A spin launcher has completely different design constraints.
Hold your horses (Score:2)
This is only megagravity, it is no where near ultragravity, let alone hypergravity.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
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heaven forbids this.
A typical benchtop lab centrifuge (Score:2)
This centrifuge looks like an interesting middle-ground size that probably has useful research purposes. But it’s not any sort of “centrifuge gap” to worry about. Kudos to the chinese for setting up interesting lab capabilities.
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Yes, the thing about this particular one is that it spins a much larger load at high g than previous designs. Ultracentrifuges [wikipedia.org] can routinely reach a million g, but not for kilogram samples. Large centrifuges can spin hundreds of kilograms, some possibly even a ton (or tonne) or more, but not at super high g.
I'm not sure exactly what research requires thousands or millions of g on large samples, but if that's what you need, this machine provides it.
Forgive me, but why exactly? (Score:1)
You can squish something real good in a hydraulic press. You can put it in a diamond cell. You can do all sorts of things to it without spinning it up that would actually exceed internal forces generated by gravity loading alone.
Why the big spinny thing?
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A vacuum press is not the same as a hydraulic press.
This is more evenly spread uniform force; plus also top pressing down on bottom as well. If you only think top-down then they are the same if that is all that is going on but it's not all of it.
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Uranium enrichment.
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Because gravity pulls all of the atoms in the structure downwards, and accelerates anything that is not static, which is different from just squishing it from above, and this thing simulates gravity - not perfectly as noted in other comments, but certainly better than a press.
And there's headroom (Score:5, Informative)
I didn't read TFA, I just started some back of the envelope math. I was wondering what you build this thing out of and what material has a tensile strength to weigh ratio to hold anything at 2,000 g's. Turns out carbon fiber can easily do it.
Assuming I have a 1m high strength carbon fiber rod with a cross section of 1 cm^2, that's 100 cm^3. According to the Googles, carbon fiber has a density of about 1.6 g/cm^3 so the whole rod has a mass of 160g.
Also according to the Googles, an ultra-strong version of this rod will hold up something like 70,000 kg (!). Even allowing for a hefty safety margin, the rod can hold over 40,000 times it's own weight, well above what this new centrifuge needs.
That's crazy. I knew carbon fiber was strong and light but had no idea it was that strong.
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An inanimate carbon rod?
Boring (Score:2)
Re: Boring (Score:2)
Whew! (Score:2)
Am I seriously the first to mention Kurt Vonnegut? (Score:2)
I am disappoint
Gravity simulation* (Score:3, Insightful)
While our understanding of gravity indicates that the affects will be nearly identical, it's not the same. Furthermore, there may be some effects of gravity that we have yet to understand which do not conform to simulated gravity via centrifuge.
I hear they've already lined up a couple customers (Score:4, Funny)
Vegeta and Goku.
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Boss, the centerfuge isn't working anymore. (Score:2)
"Why?"
"We've recreated a dam disaster. The entire lab is flooded. The guys are all in kayaks. Gonna have to get Grandma off the roof."
Don't call it that! (Score:2)
That's heavy.
From now on I'll refer to it as the "Yo Mama" machine.
Next challenge (Score:2)
You can multiply gravity by 2000? Multiply with 0.9 and win some Nobels.
Imaginary rotation! [Re:Next challenge] (Score:2)
You can multiply gravity by 2000? Multiply with 0.9 and win some Nobels.
Since centrifugal g level is proportional to rotational velocity squared, you just need to rotate at an imaginary velocity.
That's so easy I'm surprised nobody has proposed it before.
hypersmall dong power (Score:2)
behold the force of the small dong
Centrifugal forces are very different from gravity (Score:5, Informative)
It's a common misconception that generating g forces by spinning can replicate gravity but they don't. You can feel this for yourself at most carnivals that offer rides like the "Graviton" where they spin you and then drop the floor out. Good fun, but it doesn't feel like gravity, you can feel the angular momentum (and it makes a lot of people sick).
There is a large gradient in the forces acting on a structure when using a centrifuge but with gravity, that force is constant across the entire structure. The taller the structure the more pronounced that gradient will be. If China is using these test results for building 300m dams I'd be very nervous.
And regarding dam testing - a centrifuge produces Coriolis effects that gravity does not. If they're doing dam testing with any kind of fluids, the results are going to be radically different than those due to gravity.
In typical fashion, China baits headlines with words like "Hypergravity" when this is just a large centrifuge that doesn't replicate gravity at all, not on a normal or a "Hyper" scale.
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Mate, you don't think the engineers, physicists and materials scientists that designed this machine would have taken all of this into account?
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I'm sure they did, just as sure as I am that a large part of the budget revolved around marketing it as a "HyperGravity" machine.
The bottom line is that when considering gravitational impact on large structures you're going to get much better results using simulators built upon decades of real world data than on a centrifuge that introduces forces that will never impact the structures being tested.
This thing is only useful if you plan to build a 300M dam and then spin it.
Re: Centrifugal forces are very different from gra (Score:2)
Technically, it does spin at 1/24 rphâ¦
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The Soviets actually did a lot of experiments with trying to live in "spin gravity" like that, and found that it was difficult to adapt to.
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Exactly. The forces just aren't the same as normal gravity. Every movement has to compensate for angular momentum and your feet are actually much heavier than your head.
Re: Centrifugal forces are very different from gra (Score:2)
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I read the article, I didn't say they were putting full sized structures in it. My point is they are extrapolating BAD DATA to LARGE STRUCTURES and that's a recipe for disaster.
Dragon ball prior art? (Score:2)
Sounds suspiciously like China is attempting to build their own room of Spirit and Time. Didn't Bulma and Capsule Corp have a patent on that?
Will it be marketed as a training room... (Score:2)
Why does China get to do all the cool stuff? (Score:1)
US over here just wasting all their resources on blowing brown people up.
Spinlaunch (Score:2)
Didnâ(TM)t spinlaunch generate more? Or any cannon? If you need to test a material just put it in front of a bullet in a capsule.
Gas Centerfuge from Nuclea Tech (Score:2)
It doesn't exist in functioning form (it seems) (Score:1)
Following the article's provenance leads to claims written in future tense. Give this one a pass, for now.