How to bend spacetime with electromagnets

by André Füzfa (UNamur)

Wednesday 24 Feb 2016, 13:00 → 14:00 Europe/Brussels

E/3rd floor-E.349 - Seminar room (E.349) (Marc de Hemptinne (chemin du Cyclotron, 2, Louvain-la-Neuve))

Out of the four fundamental interactions, gravitation remains the only one not to be under technological control. While we are commonly using devices such electromagnets, radioisotope electric generators or nuclear reactors, gravitational field generators is a technology captured or left to science-fiction. However, bending spacetime with magnetic fields is a possibility offered by Einstein’s equivalence principle. I will present how one can obtain the curved space-time around current loops and finite solenoids carrying arbitrarily large steady electric currents by solving Einstein-Maxwell equations. With such gravitational field generators in hand, we will explore one possible way of probing the human-made spacetime deformation through its physical effects on light propagation. While constituting a true experimental challenge, the detection of such artificial gravitational fields would open the way to new laboratory tests of the equivalence principle and of the possible deep relations between gravity and electromagnetism. But, most of all, a success in this experiment would also imply a drastic change in our attitude on gravity: passive observers will turn into pioneering actors.

Slides seminar_Gravity_Machines_UCL.pdf