Physicists instinctively seem to recoil from the speculations in
popular journalism and fiction about where gravitational research
might be leading, and the 'bad science' in media reports of current
experiments tend to reinforce this perception. Amused tolerance and
perhaps an attempt to make the complexities of their work more
accessible to the average person might be more helpful.
A fascination with gravity is entirely understandable in the wider
population - after all, it affects their everyday lives in many
fundamental ways, and popular fiction, movies and comic books have fed
on this obsession for a century or more. Levitation, from Biblical
accounts through to modern times, has been the most obvious
manifestation of this.
More practically, the benefits that would result from an ability to
manipulate gravitational waves must be of fundamental interest to the
military/industrial complex worldwide.
What are the physicists' views of the real possibilities, and of the
treatment of gravity in popular fiction, such as 'The Ancient Order of
Moridura', a current example of the genre? Or is it beneath them to
take a view on such a topic - or too dangerous to a serious reputation?
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