China Activates World's Most Advanced Hypergravity Facility

China has activated the world's most advanced hypergravity machine to advance studies in geological processes, material behavior, and deep-sea energy exploration. Located in Hangzhou, The Centrifugal Hypergravity and Interdisciplinary Experiment Facility (CHIEF) will be able to produce forces thousands of times stronger than Earth's gravity. Interesting Engineering reports: The facility will house three primary hypergravity centrifuges and 18 onboard units. These centrifuges, machines designed to spin containers rapidly, force heavier materials to the edges or bottom by creating hypergravity conditions, as reported by the South China Morning Post (SCMP). The first centrifuge's main engine, resembling two massive arms holding experimental baskets, has been installed. According to the Hangzhou government, the fabrication of the remaining two centrifuges and 10 onboard units is underway.

[...] CHIEF will surpass the capabilities of the US Army Corps of Engineers' hypergravity facility, which has a capacity of 1,200 g-t (gravity acceleration x ton). Once completed, CHIEF will feature a capacity of 1,900 g-t, making it the most advanced facility of its kind, reports SCMP. The project includes six hypergravity experiment chambers, each dedicated to a specific area, such as slope and dam engineering, seismic geotechnics, deep-sea exploration, deep-earth studies, geological processes, and materials processing.

I don't think I understand...

[TheMiddleRoad]

... the gravity of this advancement.

Seriously, this is a crushing blow for America, flattened by China's scientific might.

Gravity? Well...

Hey, we got nerds here. Somebody needlessly explain the difference between centrifugal and centripetal forces.

Re:

[yog]

My head is spinning. I have a heavy heart and a sinking feeling about this.

Re:

[SlashDotCanSuckMy777]

Not really crushing. They not longer care about science. Thoughts and prayers baby!

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[VeryFluffyBunny]

China now leads the world in cocktail clarification.

Cocktail clarification, i.e. make your cocktails clear with a centrifuge: https://blog.drinkwarehouseuk.... [drinkwarehouseuk.co.uk]

Let's all head to Hangzhou to celebrate!

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[vbdasc]

Gravity? Well...

Indeed, the US have fallen in the gravity well generated by mighty China.

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[Growlley]

There isn't a gravity deficit - you went low tech nothing is as dense as a stack of Trump bibles.

um...

[dicobalt]

Gravity and rotaional acceleration are two different things.

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[Spinlock_1977]

"rotaional" vs. "rotational". One is a ting, one is not.

Re:um...

[necro81]

Gravity and rotaional acceleration are two different things.

Pendantically, sure. And once the length scale of the experiment starts getting large (i.e., once the width or height of the experimental volume becomes an appreciable fraction of the radius of rotation), certain assumptions no longer hold. (You get Coriolis forces, tidal forces, etc., and not nice uniform unidirectional acceleration.) But for the research they want to do there, what they're trying to do is create large forces that are proportional to the experiment's mass and density. A centrifuge is a perfectly good way to accomplish that. And since we don't have ways to generate "real" artificial gravity (of the general relativistic type), this is the next best thing.

Is you're criticism with the project itself, or the fact that it was reported with not 100% accurate terminology?

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[larryjoe]

Gravity and rotaional acceleration are two different things.

Is you're criticism with the project itself, or the fact that it was reported with not 100% accurate terminology?

The question is whether the forces in a centrifuge are exactly the same as hypergravity and, if not, what the differences are. This is a valid and core scientific question. For example, does the centrifuge introduce additional forces in different dimensions, or is the distribution of forces throughout the material the same?

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[necro81]

The question is whether the forces in a centrifuge are exactly the same as hypergravity and, if not, what the differences are. This is a valid and core scientific question. For example, does the centrifuge introduce additional forces in different dimensions, or is the distribution of forces throughout the material the same?

To a first approximation, they are equivalent.

For a small volume containing a mass m, the gravity-like force is F = omega^2 * r, where omega is the rotation rate (in radians/sec) a

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[necro81]

Bah! Formatting got eaten towards the end of a paragraph, and I didn't catch it in the preview. What I meant to say was:

...[t]his is a kind of tidal force. But if delta_h is much less than r, then the difference can be small. For instance, a 10-cm [~4 in] tall experiment will exhibit a 1% difference for a centrifuge arm of 10 m, which is roughly the size of this new facility

Another second order effect is...

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[DamnOregonian]

I feel like any body capable of producing what we are calling here "hypergravity" also has significant surface tidal forces. Probably not equivalent to the tidal force in a centrifuge, but definitely measurable.

As for that, the Coriolis pseudoforce is probably going to be the biggest kicker, but of course it can be precisely constrained to an expected value per "altitude" and so you can decide if it matters for your test.

Let me set my Clothes Washer to spin cycle.

[Fly Swatter]

Oh look, I have one too!

Time to

[Ol Olsoc]

Queue the Yo Momma jokes

Nice to see China

[jmccue]

Nice to see China doing real science. We all know starting soon here in the US, all science funding will be eliminated due to Trump.

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[wyHunter]

Well if we avoid Biden's WWIII, any money funding science would be more than a nuclear wasteland could provide.

Everything is bigger in... China?

[RobinH]

Reminds me of a joke my Russian friend told me years ago... "In Russia we were obsessed with making everything better than in America. The US built a bomb, so we had to build a bigger bomb. The US built a rocket so we had to build a bigger rocket. Finally, the US built a microchip and we built the biggest microchip!"

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[DamnOregonian]

Great joke, but the pedant in me feels compelled to point out that the "bigger" Russian rocket was neither bigger, nor did it ever fly (in an expected trajectory anyway)

Spinlaunch

[spitzak]

I just saw a little documentary that had some sales pitch for SpinLaunch, and it clearly said they were testing ideas for satellites at 10,000Gs which they can achieve with a centrifuge that is not even the one they will use to actually launch things. Though I'm not clear on what a g-t is, but it sounds like this is greater.