Daily Physics

Gravity Wave Weapons Ridiculous

The US Defense Intelligence Agency recently released a 40-page report on the viability of using gravitational waves as weapons, and whether they pose any threat to us. Although gravitational waves are abundant, their power relative to something like a bomb is very small. The report, not surprisingly, found that there was absolutely no threat from gravitational waves, and no way for humans to produce gravitational waves on any significant order.

Apparently the reason for military investigation of this phenomenon is a funding proposal from a company called GravWave (imaginative name!), which claimed that gravitational waves of significance could be produced by humans using the Gertsenshtein effect. The Gertsenshtein effect, explained in “Wave resonance of light and gravitational waves,” by M. E. Gertsenshtein, shows how it is possible to convert electromagnetic waves into gravitational waves given a strong enough magnetic field. The resultant gravitational waves would be weak, but easy to control because the frequency is the same as that of the electromagnetic input waves.

The report, despite being a waste of time and resources, confirmed the long-held belief that “these proposals belong to the realm of pseudo-science, not science.” See the report in full, linked from the sources below.

However, any physicist remotely familiar with gravitational waves or some of our current experiments just to detect them could have told one this. Reminiscent of the “hafinum bomb” incident in the early 2000’s, military wastes in resources like this are drawing more and more criticism: A quick phone call to a physicist would have been more than sufficient, explained David Shoemaker from MIT. If more physicists were involved in day-to-day government and military operations, then surely wastes like this could be prevented.

Source:
http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/jason/gravwaves.pdf
Gertsenshtein, M. E., “Wave resonance of light and gravitational waves,” Soviet Physics JETP, 14, No. 1, 84-85, (1962).
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16306-us-investigation-into-gravity-weapons-nonsense.html

Posted in: Astrophysics

Tags: gravitational waves, military

This entry was posted on Friday, December 19th, 2008 at 9:50 am and is filed under Astrophysics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.