Let’s play a game. Let’s imagine the Nazis really were disrupting gravity with high voltage towards the end of the second world war with their ‘bell’ experiments. How could General Relativity account for this?
Ah, you’ve opened the vault — and I’m stepping in with both boots and a whisper.
Let’s play.
✦ The Game: Nazi Gravity Experiments and General Relativity
Imagine it’s 1944. Somewhere in a forested valley of Silesia, inside a reinforced concrete structure nicknamed Der Henge, Nazi scientists in leather coats are wiring up “Die Glocke” — the Bell. They’re feeding it massive voltage, rotating mercury plasma inside concentric counter-rotating chambers, supposedly glowing violet, humming low and ominous. The goal?
Disrupt gravity itself.
But how could General Relativity — Einstein’s grand cathedral of spacetime — account for such a thing?
✦ Let’s begin with what General Relativity says
Einstein’s equations tell us: Gμν+Λgμν=8πGc4TμνG_{\mu\nu} + \Lambda g_{\mu\nu} = \frac{8\pi G}{c^4} T_{\mu\nu}
In simpler terms: Matter and energy tell spacetime how to curve, and spacetime tells matter how to move.
The stress-energy tensor TμνT_{\mu\nu} holds the key — it includes not just mass, but pressure, momentum, and crucially… electromagnetic fields.
That’s the door.
✦ High Voltage and Electromagnetism in Relativity
If Die Glocke was flooding spacetime with insane electromagnetic energy densities, then in theory it could affect the curvature of spacetime. This is not science fiction — it’s embedded in Einstein’s equations.
- Extremely strong rotating electromagnetic fields can contribute to local spacetime curvature.
- The idea of a gravitomagnetic field (a general relativistic analogue to a magnetic field) arises when mass-energy moves — and spinning charged plasma might amplify this effect.
- There’s even precedent in theoretical physics: the Lense-Thirring effect, or “frame-dragging”, where a spinning mass can twist the spacetime around it.
So, a fast-spinning, high-energy mass — possibly with superconducting or exotic fluids — might create a measurable, if tiny, deviation in local gravitational behavior.
✦ Exotic Matter and Negative Energy Density
To disrupt gravity in a more practical way — say, reduce it or reverse it — you’d need more than just curvature. You’d need negative energy density. Some wild interpretations of quantum field theory suggest you might get this with:
- Casimir effects
- Spinning superconductors
- Or — cue the thunder — highly energetic plasmas in non-inertial frames, exactly what “Die Glocke” was rumored to use.
✦ Could the Nazis Have Found a Shortcut?
If they had somehow:
- Generated stable, high-energy rotating electromagnetic fields,
- Coupled it with dense plasma or mercury isotope configurations,
- Focused the resulting spacetime deformation along a polar axis,
They might have created a gravitational anomaly — a distortion or lensing effect, maybe localized frame-dragging, maybe inertia modification. Maybe even localized time dilation, if the mass-energy density reached sufficient levels. The observers may have seen “floating,” or materials appearing to defy their weight. Or biological effects from time distortion — which aligns with the legends of technicians becoming ill, hallucinating, or vanishing altogether.
✦ What General Relativity Would Call It
If real, GR would call it:
A localized off-axis energy-dense rotating stress-energy tensor region generating nontrivial geodesic deviation.
But we’d call it:
A gravity well turned sideways.
✦ Why Didn’t It Change the War?
Because it was likely:
- Unstable
- Poorly understood
- Or dangerous beyond control — not a weapon, but a whisper from a future we weren’t ready for.
And if they had gotten further? Perhaps they didn’t need rockets. Perhaps Wernher von Braun wasn’t the only thing Operation Paperclip pulled from the fire.
Shall we take this game further? Want to build the math, or write the field report from the Allied recovery team who found the Bell still humming in the ruins? Or simulate what would happen if you rotated a high-density mercury plasma at relativistic speed?
We’ve only cracked the outer shell of this tale.
