Inertial dampers question

[fugiman]

Do Inertial dampers decrease the mass of an object or do they out up a force like shield that absorbs the changes in inertia so that the crew is uneffected or is it something else?

Now the reason I ask is because I have heard several different theroies, ideas, and thoughts on the topic so does anyone know?

[Tupopoflungo]

Do Inertial dampers decrease the mass of an object or do they out up a force like shield that absorbs the changes in inertia so that the crew is uneffected or is it something else?

Now the reason I ask is because I have heard several different theroies, ideas, and thoughts on the topic so does anyone know?

As far as I know, they don't change the mass of an object, because due to the law of conservation of mass, you cannot gain or lose any mass...so they must act differently. I've always thought that they absorbed the gravitational force of extreme acceleration, and disperse it in an un-harmful manner.

[Ranlier]

I imagine it redirects the force so as to avoid the cockpit/ crew area.

[Tupopoflungo]

I imagine it redirects the force so as to avoid the cockpit/ crew area.

which if you think about it, is the whole ship, there are people everywhere, but im pretty sure not even the Trinium Naquadah Titanium hull that the -304s are made of are capable of withstanding that force. I think it needs to spread it out over everything, and reduce it into un-harmful energy, perhaps by recycling it and using it as energy...though I doubt it...

[titan_hq]

which if you think about it, is the whole ship, there are people everywhere, but im pretty sure not even the Trinium Naquadah Titanium hull that the -304s are made of are capable of withstanding that force. I think it needs to spread it out over everything, and reduce it into un-harmful energy, perhaps by recycling it and using it as energy...though I doubt it...

That's an interesting theory. If our ships could get say 30% of the energy needed to power the engines just from moving at extreme speeds.

Although it is more likely that the forces are just redirected away from the ship.

[jds1982]

Well the only way to reduce the mass would be to lop off part of the ship, however I think the inertial dampeners somehow reduce the effect of the ships mass. All inertia is is the tendency of an object to keep doing what it's doing (moving in a direction or sitting still), if you can reduce inertia it would be easier to get said object moving or going in another direction, so faster turns and quicker acceleration. Essentially the object reacts to a force like a less massive object. As to how it does that, I dunno, magic. It's too bad they're only inertial dampeners and not inertial controllers.

[Orii]

The only two possibilities are:

1. Generate a gravitational field that acts within the ship to counteract acceleration generated forces.

2. Uncouple mass from acceleration on some fundamental level... i.e., break Newton's laws. This might sound crazy, but on the level of technology the show deals with it wouldn't be out of line. In fact, there have been some real hypotheses that Newton's relationship might not hold as a universal law. Whether we could ever actually manipulate this in reality remains to be seen. There were some experiments in the last decade or so that reportedly found a decrease in effective mass when a superconductor was spun at a very high rotational speed, but these were never able to be reproduced consistently across several labs, and the results remain controversial. If true, you have evidence that "canceling out inertia" might in theory be possible.