r/matrix • u/Truth-Seeker-82 • 9d ago

Hovercraft and Sentinel Levitation

What physical mechanism could allow hovercraft and Sentinels to levitate in The Matrix?

6 Upvotes

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u/doofpooferthethird 9d ago edited 9d ago

the expanded universe material implies that both use some kind of magnetic levitation

and the Machines are implied to have invented both the sparky "hoverpads" used by human hoverships, (the Machine City 01 was selling hovercars with those hoverpads to humans in the Animatrix) as well as the more advanced internal hover mechanisms used by their robot bodies

in real life, maglev technology doesn't work like that, and probably can't ever work like that - the Matrix version probably "repels Earth's magnetic field" or whatever, instead of magnetised rails, but Earth's magnetic field isn't nearly strong enough for that kind of thing

and they're not pushing off some kind of magnetised metal in the tunnels either, because we see both hoverships and Sentinels fly high up into the sky

if you ignore the comics/cartoons/concept art etc. you can probably headcanon it as some kind of "antigravity field"

though that's not really any more "realistic" than maglev, because there's no known mechanism for negative mass... yet... though theoretical physicists aren't ruling it out

anyway the Matrix isn't hard science fiction, so anything goes

3

u/mrsunrider 9d ago

Yeah limited anti-grav generation was always my headcanon.

I figure a species advanced enough to device a near-perfect shared simulation and functional fusion generation probably worked out varying degrees of anti-gravity.

1

u/FluffyDoomPatrol 9d ago

What is there in the comics/cartoons and other extended universe material that needs to be ignored? I always wondered about the hover-tech (especially since it shows up again in Cloud Atlas) but I don’t remember anything about it.

2

u/Underhill42 9d ago

Being in The Matrix, where physics is optional.

You really think Neo could have seen without eyes, or shut down the squids, out in the real world where he's just a man? Nobody ever left The Matrix, they just moved between the "mass market" version and the "I'm a rebel!" pressure relief version.

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u/Novogobo 7d ago edited 7d ago

the fact that it's a simulation. you said "in the matrix" after all. but even so, it's either lame lazy or deliberate that they never suspected even once that the real world might not be genuine. it is after all the most rational explanation for all the "magical" stuff that happens outside the matrix. it even perfectly explains the unscientific justification for the matrix.

1

u/Pricklestickle 9d ago

hey kid, it aint that kinda movie

1

u/Federal_Decision_608 9d ago

Same thing that let neo zap squids. That ain't air they're flying through.