This question

[Sniperjak]

Hey all, I am new here, so if this question I am about to ask sounds stupid, please go easy on me.

Anyhow, even though I know this is unrealistic, I am curious about this one thing, and I hope you can help me out by answering this question I am about to give:

If someone (anyone) could completely negate their inertia (Newton's first law and such), what special abilities would be granted to that person?

Anyway, to those who answer, thanks.

[lemit]

Originally Posted by Sniperjak

Hey all, I am new here, so if this question I am about to ask sounds stupid, please go easy on me.

Anyhow, even though I know this is unrealistic, I am curious about this one thing, and I hope you can help me out by answering this question I am about to give:

If someone (anyone) could completely negate their inertia (Newton's first law and such), what special abilities would be granted to that person?

Anyway, to those who answer, thanks.

Dissolution of all the tissues of the body?

I suppose that wouldn't be considered a "special power," would it? I'm a dumb, non-science guy, so don't pay any attention to me.

--lemit

[maddog]

Originally Posted by Sniperjak

If someone (anyone) could completely negate their inertia (Newton's first law and such), what special abilities would be granted to that person?

I don't think I ever heard of reversing inertia so that is a new one. In a Science Fiction Series from the 30's, the Lensmen Series by Doc E.E. Smith had the concept of an Inertialess
Drive to propel their Starships. Thus his thinking was without inertia, the ships could go faster... This was the 30's....

Let's see... if the notion of inertia were to change sign. The effects of Gravity would be reversed as
well. Thus Anti-Gravity is then simply Inertia Reversal. This could be kewl.

Interesting.

maddog

[Pyrotex]

I am not sure that nullifying one's inertia would "reverse gravity". It would mean that you personally would exert no gravitational pull on anything else. That much is certain.

It *might* mean the converse as well -- nothing would exert any gravitational force on YOU. The more I think about it, the more I agree. You would be weightless.

It would mean that you would have no 'resistance' to any force applied to you.

So, a 5 MPH breeze would have a greater force on you than it would on a dandelion! You would immediately drift off at whatever speed the wind was. If you crashed into anything, it would not hurt you at all. You would instantly lose your speed. You would instantly take on whatever speed your environment had.

Then there's the force of sunlight hitting you. If your inertia was actually absolute zero, then I can think of no reason why -- at the first light of dawn -- you wouldn't be instantly blown off the Earth and propelled away from the Sun at the speed of light. Then again, you would be absorbing EM radiation from all directions, so as you left the vicinity of the Sun, you would be blown away from the nearest stars, then the nearest star clusters, then the center of the galaxy, then the nearest galaxy cluster, until finally....

you would come to rest in the nearest large starless, matterless, dark, lightless, VOID in the inter-galactic web.

[Boerseun]

I can smell a Comic Book Superhero here...

Awesome!

Will this negation of inertia be applicable to only the hero's person, or to stuff he touches as well?

Because then if he only loses his bodily inertia, he should be well stable with clothes on, but if that ghastly scenario as proposed by Pyrotex were to occur, where he's blown to the outer reaches of the biggest galactic void, he will do so... naked. The first time he drops his rods to have a shower, he's gone.

But then, I suppose you can arrange your narrative so that stuff he touches loses their inertia, too - then he can conceivably use flashlights for jet engines. But then, when he touches down on Earth and touches the mother planet, Earth itself would fly away from the sun!

Don't know how you're gonna get around that one...

[SugarMoses]

The problem is that if one has no intertia, not only could anything (including the sunlight) propell the person, anything (including a grain of sand) could stop the person... right? because intertia can be a stagnant state and a moving state.... right?

[Pyrotex]

Originally Posted by SugarMoses

The problem is that if one has no intertia, not only could anything (including the sunlight) propell the person, anything (including a grain of sand) could stop the person... right? because intertia can be a stagnant state and a moving state.... right?

Yup, you're absolutely right!

So our superhero opens the front door,
gets hit by sunlight,
immediately accellerates to the speed of light,
immediately is stopped by a carbon dioxide molecule,
gets hit by sunlight,
immediately accellerates to the speed of light,
immediately is stopped by an oxygen molecule,
gets hit by sunlight,
immediately accellerates to the speed of light,
immediately is stopped by a nitrogen molecule,
gets hit by sunlight,
immediately accellerates to the speed of light,
immediately is stopped by a dust particle,
...

[modest]

I've never really understood inertia.

If mass is a measure of inertia (more massive objects have more resistance to change in motion) then wouldn't zero inertia mean zero mass? If that's the case then perhaps the speed of something with no inertia would have to be like light—always c. But, then again, light does have some inertia, doesn't it? It imparts some energy to the thing which propels it or stops it.

~modest

[SugarMoses]

Originally Posted by Pyrotex

Yup, you're absolutely right!

So our superhero opens the front door,
gets hit by sunlight,
immediately accellerates to the speed of light,
immediately is stopped by a carbon dioxide molecule,
gets hit by sunlight,
immediately accellerates to the speed of light,
immediately is stopped by an oxygen molecule,
gets hit by sunlight,
immediately accellerates to the speed of light,
immediately is stopped by a nitrogen molecule,
gets hit by sunlight,
immediately accellerates to the speed of light,
immediately is stopped by a dust particle,
...

That's quite the superhero if I've ever seen one...

[freeztar]

Originally Posted by modest

I've never really understood inertia.

If mass is a measure of inertia (more massive objects have more resistance to change in motion) then wouldn't zero inertia mean zero mass? If that's the case then perhaps the speed of something with no inertia would have to be like light—always c. But, then again, light does have some inertia, doesn't it? It imparts some energy to the thing which propels it or stops it.

~modest

It's always confused me too and I think I finally found out why. This wiki paragraph sums it up nicely.

In common usage, however, people may also use the term "inertia" to refer to an object's "amount of resistance to change in velocity" (which is quantified by its mass), or sometimes to its momentum, depending on the context (e.g. "this object has a lot of inertia"). The term "inertia" is more properly understood as shorthand for "the principle of inertia" as described by Newton in his First Law of Motion. This law, expressed simply, says that an object that is not subject to any net external force moves at a constant velocity. In even simpler terms, inertia means that an object will always continue moving at its current speed and in its current direction until some force causes its speed or direction to change. This would include an object that is not in motion (speed = zero), which will remain at rest until some force causes it to move.

So, this is yet another scientific term that has a common use as well.
According to the scientific definition, an inertialess superhero could travel with a velocity anywhere between zero and c (depending on the forces present).

This makes our superhero quite unlucky as pointed out already. Though I suppose we could put him or her to work as a neutrino detector technician at the bottom of some old mine shaft.

I guess you'd still have to pad the room though...

Wait...What would happen to your body? Wouldn't you become instantly cratered and amorphous with all those high speed particles knocking around you?