Heavy air

Is there any possibility of creating heavy air, so that a body in that air could weigh less?

There is heavy water, and a couple of more heavy elements, so if we could join these so that it makes up air, could that be breathable?

Application could be amusement parks, where you could fly by flapping your hands, walking on water, etc. Anyone would go so it would probably be good business.


From what I can understand it is the density that can make you weigh less or more in different environments, like being in water.


How dense would air have to be in order for us to be able to fly by flapping either our hands or some device that gives the resistance needed?

 

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This would have to be in a completely closed enviroment, also the air would have to be very dense and probably not breathable. However it is possible ,I think

 

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Heavy water is water where one or both of the ordinary H1 atoms is replaced by H2. It is not much heavier than ordinary water, since the bulk of the mass is from the O16 atom.

It looks like what you are describing for heavy air is air with increased density, not a replacement of either N14 or O16 by a heavier isotope.

You should clarify what you really mean.

 

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Actually, in a way it's one in the same isn't it? I mean a heavy water has a higher molar mass then normal, right? Not enough to increase density by the amounts cyper is describing though.

I dunno though, no air I'm aware of has the density of water (roughly the density of a human body) at any human-tolerable pressure. I could be totally wrong though, I havn't actually looked

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Would be cool if we could do it though

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I will not bother to look up the isotopes abundances of oxygen and nitrogen in air but to significantly change their natural ratios would be very expensive and totally un noticed except by careful measurement with senstive scales.

The density change in air with the weather fronts is probably significantly greater (factor of two, I would guess). Certainly the density change from hot summer day to sub freezing winter day is much greater than could be achieved by isotopic replacements even if willing to pay 100 times the price of gold per each ounze of "heavy air"

If one were to replace all the N2 part of the air with Zenon, but with enough O2 so you could still breath you would get greater effect than swapping O2 and N2 isotopes, cheaper (still expensive) but still no make a noticible change in your weight, without a very good scale. You probably would notice that it was Harder to breath.

The cheaper and more effective way to reduce you weight is to take off all your clothes. Can you fly nude by waving your arms? If not forget about this idea.

 

No way. ( I thought you knew a little chemistry and physics, no?)

The closest you could come would be actually liquefying the air and even then it wouldn't be quite dense enough. Not to mention the facts that you couldn't breath or even survive the low temperature.:shrug:

 

Scuba dive! I think that's the closest we're gonna get to making this a reality

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Or a backpack filled with some exotic matter... someone get cracking on that one!

 

Ah well, it was worth a try.

I will have to do it with magnets then...

 

Use hidden belt with fine wires attached - that is how Peter Pan flew (And others in Hollywood's early days did it - now blue screen and digital editing are used I think. - next time I am with spider man, I'll ask him.

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)

 

Yes, that way I can at least watch myself float. Experiencing would be somewhat better though, but space is so far away...

I think one cubic meter of helium can lift one kilo, so perhaps that *combined* with heavy air!

Or not.

Nah, magnets will have to do.

 

Or a backpack filled with your body weight in exotic matter. From what I understand, that theoretically would have negative weight due to it's negative mass, right?

Making exotic matter is easy, by the way! You just take noodles, egg, cabbage, and some rather odd condiments, and you make what my roomate describes as a "japanesse dish that's actually good if you bothered to try it", but that can't be because it certainly doesn't smell like something edible, so I think it'd exotic matter. Has to be, it looks unlike anything I've ever seen from NORMAL matter...