The gravitational pull of the earth and the challenge to resist it have long inspired artists. Like the Greek vases depicting Sisyphus’s endless quest to push his boulder up a hill and the Whirlwind Lovers in Dante’s Inferno, images that portray the defiance of gravity or submission to it permeate the artistic world.
The concept of gravity shielding is a common concept in science fiction literature, especially for space travel. One of the first and best-known examples is the fictional gravity shielding substance “Cavorite” that appears in H. G. Wells’ classic 1901 novel The First Men in the Moon. Wells was promptly criticized for using it by Jules Verne.
Roger Ward Babson (July 6, 1875 – March 5, 1967) was an American entrepreneur, economist, and business theorist in the first half of the 20th century who declared war to gravity in an essay titled Gravity – Our Enemy Number One. In 1948 he established The Gravity Research Foundation, an organization dedicated to find ways to implement gravitational shielding.
Gravity is most accurately described by the general theory of relativity (proposed by Albert Einstein in 1915), which describes gravity not as a force, but as the curvature of spacetime, caused by the uneven distribution of mass, and causing masses to move along geodesic lines. The most extreme example of this curvature of spacetime is a black hole, from which nothing—not even light—can escape once past the black hole’s event horizon
In general relativity, gravitational fields represent the curvature of spacetime. General relativity states that being in a region of curved space is equivalent to accelerating up the gradient of the field. By Newton’s second law, this will cause an object to experience a fictitious force if it is held still with respect to the field. Therefore, a person will feel himself pulled down by the force of gravity while standing still on the Earth’s surface. In general, the gravitational fields predicted by general relativity differ in their effects only slightly from those predicted by classical mechanics.
Gravity Warrior (acrylic on canvas 40′ x 20′) examines gravity and levity symbolically, metaphorically, and expressively by creating new ways to represent visually the human struggle with gravity. Fighting with gravity as a force, is a way to attack the stability of form. As human civilization is bound to extend beyond the planet, its culture will be altered by the conditions of the new environment. This painting examines the ways in which human perception have been influenced by the “gravity constant” and explores the multiple resting points on the infinite perceptual possibilities attainable in the space environment.
Shaharee Vyaas 