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(electro)mechanical spacetime simulator?
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coppercone2:
So I was thinking about space time warpage (the bed sheet bowing ball example) and I got annoyed because its almost like conic sections, the analogy you see is just a cross section, and it is essentially an absolute value, since you only see the deflection one way. There are 3d drawings of the issue, I posted an example of one that seems like it did the best job for my imagination based on a short study of various images.



Now I got to thinking that is starting to look like bed springs. If you made a lattice, that is a matrix of magnetic balls, joined by (non or semi magnetic) springs on all 6 sides, to make a structure, and you shoved a magnet on a stick in there, a powerful one, it seems like it would kind of start to represent the three dimensional drawings.

Does any machine like this exist? I assume maybe just the properties of magnetism make it too weak to show such a phenomena given gravity and all the friction and spring tightness's, needing too high a magnetic field strength that is not practical. Not necessarily normal helix springs, but perhaps even springs that have nonlinear spring constants and designed in such a way to better suit the simulation.

I find it interesting because with a complex array of reflection analyzers (TDR), you could measure the spring extension lenght to feed numbers related to spacetime into an analog or semi analog computers, if it formed a cubic resistor network that can be analyzed (in terms of equivalent circuit).
AlbertL:
"The Outer Limits" had it figured out back in 1964!
coppercone2:
lol that might have some EMI problems too, 125 motors might make a dev board cry, that might need a industrial controller. '

Still not a bad project IMO

perhaps an application for piezomotors since you can make the face of the thing a thick ass PCB, not sure if gearbox required
Infraviolet:
It wouldn't be mechanical, but what about doing it with a grid of LEDs and light sensors, plus a reflective or emitting ball acting as your mass. Hae light intensity varied to show the amount of deviation from flat space time, each LED could either be controlled from a microcontroller with some PWM drivers reading all the sensors, or each LED could be connected to the sensor beside it by decentralsied analogue circuitry to control its birghtness in response to the proximity of the mass.
coppercone2:
given the high motor requirement, I wonder if you can use something from old CD drives or hard drives or floppy drives that might be available cheap, since this is already complicated, with tons of motors, perhaps the complex drive system is not the problem since boards would have to be made anyway for 125 motors.. you definatly would want to figure out how to modularize that.

since the hard drive spindle motor is kinda PCB friendly, do you think those would work? Big board with pins that has little motor boards go into it chessboard style. Then if one burns out it can be removed from the main board and replaced.

fyi I got this idea because I rewatched the re imaged battlestar galactica series, which has a focus on 'lower tech' stuff, and I was kind of imagining what that would entail, the idea of one of battlestar staff fooling around with such a mechanical contraption seemed amusing, given that normally in scifi GR related things seem to have legions of white collar IT personnel to deal with 'warp mathematics'... but humor aside when you start talking about bedsheets and bowling balls trying to explain physics it gets really really confusing and old. many people just can't imagine a 3d space being explained as a 'bedsheet'. And I know for sure, from education, some of the few things I renember are the models/prototypes, etc.. you never forget how devices work when you build a mockup, specifically motors. I forgot coding projects already but I still remember cardboard structures etc.
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