3 Responses

1. no

   electrical charges can repel or attract

   so if two planets were attracted, one would be positive, one negative

   introduce a third and it should be attracted to one and repelled by the other, but it isn’t, it’s always attracted

2. no..that’s like saying the mustard taste on your hot dog is from the ketchup…it’s two different things!

   There are 4 fundamental forces in the universe…gravity, electromagnetic, the weak force (allows protons to mutate into neutrons to produce radioactive decay) and the strong force (holds atomic nuclei together). Each force is orders of magnitude stronger than the previous on this list but also acts at much MUCH shorter scales of distance respectively.

   For example, gravity stretches over infinity but is overall very weak. Electromagnetic force easily overpowers gravity..you can prove this by passing a magnet over a paper clip…the magnet sucks the paper clip up overcoming gravitational force. That’s why electromagnetic cranes can lift tons of scrap iron. But where as the earth feels gravity all the way from the sun, and we feel earth’s gravity from 1,000’s of miles away (it keeps the moon in orbit remember!), the magnet must be within a few inches of the paperclip to be felt.

   SO the strong force is much much stronger still! SO strong that it overcomes electromagnetic forces to hold protons together. Protons with their like positive charges would normally repel each other vigorously flying apart, but the strong force overcomes this and keeps them bound tight. But it works over even SHORTER SUB-atomic distances.

   Of the 4 forces, gravity is special…even odd!…as it can just keep increasing by increasing the mass and / or decreasing the distance without limit…this is how black holes are formed…in stars many times the size of our sun, when they use up their hydrogen fuel, then helium, carbon etc etc, eventually they collapse…as they do, gravity increases until it becomes stronger than the electromagnetic forces trying to push the atoms apart, and it collapses into nothing but with huge mass.

   There are some theories that say as temperatures and pressures get higher (like when the universe began in the big bang, the forces were all one force, but just as water can exist as ice, liquid or steam, or plasma, these forces went through ‘phase changes’ as the universe cooled to form the 4 distinct forces we see today. But water is not ice!…So gravity is not electromagnetic.

   Vasimr does not change gravity any more than a chemical rocket does…where a chemical rocket produces thrust as a reaction force to the expulsion of gasses out a nozzle, Vasimr creates a reaction force by expelling ions (which also have mass) out a magnetic nozzle. Ions are atoms that are so ‘hot’ they become a plasma and have an electric charge).

   A nuclear reactor produces electric power to both make the plasma and then accelerate it (the same way a maglev train is accelerated). Since the plasma can be accelerated to much higher exit velocities, there needs be less mass ejected to get the same force, so it becomes very efficient from the point of view of less “fuel mass” needed.

3. You look up the Biefield-Brown effect and Kaluza-Klein theory in physics,they are somewhat related to that idea