Another thing, whether it is the theory of relativity or global climate change. Unless it can be proven without a shred of doubt they are still theories.

Have you been blogging long? not martha – bacon cups is a great blog, you have a great writing style too. Found this post last Thursday and i’ve been reading your blog since. I’ve subscribed to your RSS feed and I am excited for more quality posts …

As for travelling to the stars, they’re awfully hot, and the planets orbiting the stars are only slightly more hospitable, but maybe we will find that they were colonized by humans billions of years ago. Maybe we will even go on dinosaur safaris. Don’t laugh, there are hundreds of out of place artifacts (ooparts). Some date back to the paleozoic, and a beautiful pewter vase with silver inlaid flowers was blasted out of the precambrian Roxbury conglomerate in Massachussets in 1852. Nowadays, such anomalies are usually ignored but not always.

Given that none of you are completely familiar with what Heim wrote, as are most physicists as well, don’t decry his theory/theories until you’ve done the experimental work yourself. Or have seen and can vouch for experiments done by others. Even then, it won’t necessarily discount his work because we may not have the requisite technology to fully perform any experiments to confirm/deny the theory. This was the case with Einstein for quite a number of years.

Discounting anything, without proof positive that you’re correct in your assumptions, is a very dangerous situation to get yourself into. You may never see the results come to light (as it maybe 100 years before they come in, for instance), but you may have to, metaphorically, eat your own words. You never know what’s around the corner.

This is about the work of the late obscure physicist Burkhard Heim, who lived, studied and worked on his Field Theory in my hometown of Goettingen, Germany. In short this guy most probably was a genius in the realm of Einstein (some tentative proof for this claim later) but was shunned by most of his contemporaries mainly because his stuff was way over their heads. Even today there’s said to be only a handful of physicists worldwide who are able to grasp his work (and having to admit this is something every expert in any field really loathes).

In short (and by no means accurate because I’m a clinical psychologist by trade with just too much curiosity for other disciplines) this is what he tried and (if those who understand his work are right) even achieved: he wanted nothing less than to bridge the theoretical gap between the General Theory of Relativity and the Quantum Theory (in short he was after a Grand Unified Theory: No GUT, no Glory!). Note: he was NOT trying to devise any kind of propulsion for interstellar space travel, this is more like a by-product developed later on by the physicists Dröscher & Häuser.

Heim’s “Field Theory” states that the principle of Quantitizing is also valid in the fabric of space-time, and that subatomic particles are the source of gravitational forces. This guy was physically handicapped after he lost 90% of his eyesight and both arms in a freak explosion in a lab in 1944 and yet he kept on working in reclusion with help from his wife for many years.

Here’s an *ultra short* synopsis of what he did come up with: his postulate was that there is a “middle field” between electromagnetism and gravitation in the 6-dimensional space. This “middle field” he stated in 1957 can be used to derive gravitational from electromagnetic waves. He was soon contacted by Wernher von Braun but refused to give out more of his work
because he felt he still had a long way to go before putting any piece of it to real world use.

After being coaxed by Prof. Pasqual Jordan (an expert on GRT) in 1964 Heim set out to find a way to accurately calculate the masses of subatomic particles (something nobody else has done so far). In 1977 he published his solution in the “Zeitschrift für Naturforschung” of the german Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, and in 1980 he published his first book “Elementary Structure of Matter”.

Now, what’s really mind-boggling is that researchers of the german Electron-Synchrotron (DESY) in 1982 programmed and tested Heim’s equations and found that by using them they could calculate the masses and energy states of particles with an accuracy that fell within 0.01% of the empirical values as determined by use of DESY and other accelerators/colliders. Compare this to an accuracy of only between 1% and 10% of empirical values when using calculations based on lattice quantum chromodynamics (as done in 2003).

But the problem remains that Heim’s work is so complicated that even todays best physicists need to study it for at least one year before beginning to grasp its true potential (according to the DESY guys). Lately, a group of physicists devoted to Heim’s theory have repeated the mass and state
calculations using a more precise value for the gravitational constant as it is known only now and they found even better accuracy compared to the empirically derived values than in the older work done by DESY. So, in short it looks like Heim was really onto something and clearly knew what he was talking about.

Now onto the practical application of his work: one of the few colleagues who actually did work with Heim during his lifetime is an austrian physicist named Walter Dröscher. He found some conceptual errors in Heim’s theory and helped him to work around those missteps. They both came up with the two additional dimensions which interact with our 4-dimensional world: where Heim’s theory claimed that the dimensions #5 and #6 are the ones that effect gravitation, in the 8-dimensional Heim/Dröscher-World dimensions #7 and #8 are the sources of a new quasi-gravitational force that is repulsive rather than attractive, called “Quintessence” (note the similarities to the new concept of Dark Energy in cosmology). Whereas photons as the bearers of the electromagnetic force result as a geometric structure by combination of the dimensions #4-#8 Heim & Dröscher then describe a new particle that results from a combination of the dimensions #5-#8.

And here it gets really good: Dröscher and his colleague Häuser developed the theoretical (and practical) framework for an advanced propulsion system, the so-called Dröscher/Häuser gravitophoton-field drive (now named Hyper-Drive). Based on Heim’s theory this is what they basically say (in my
complete lay terminology): a spacecraft is able to project its own gravitational field by producing gravitophotons. To do this, the craft is fitted with a massive ring (appr. 2 tons) that is rotating inside a magnetic field (20 Tesla is said to be sufficient to constantly accelerate a spacecraft of 150 tons with the equivalent of Earth’s gravity). The rotating mass inside of the
strong magnetic field will produce virtual pairs of gravitophotons through vacuum polarization. This, according to quantum electrodynamics, is a process in which a background electromagnetic field produces virtual electron-positron pairs. In the framework of Dröscher/Häuser and Heim it also produces virtual pairs of gravitophotons. Because the effect on mass
is much stronger in the case of attracting gravitophotons this kind of propulsion will result in a force (called Heim-Lorentz force) that can be used to counter the gravitational force excerted on the spacecraft by e.g. earth.

This kind of spacecraft could cover the distance Earth-Moon in appr. 4 hours. Because it always follows the resulting accelerating force the craft could perform almost all kinds of flight manouvres as well as drastic accelerations
without negatively affecting the passengers (note that this could explain the erratic flight patterns that are described in so many UFO observations).

But it gets even better: according to Dröscher/Häuser it is mandatory, that after reaching a certain critical limit the spacecraft must leave 4-dimensional space and transit into a parallel or higher order space! Here’s why: because repulsive gravitophotons would reduce the gravitational potential of the whole spacecraft, or its inert mass, and because energy needs to be preserved (E=mc^2) it then follows that the craft must go faster than the speed of light. Of course, in 4-dimensional space-time this cannot happen thus forcing the craft to transit into a parallel space called R4(n) in which it is actually possible to travel at n-times the speed of light.

Dröscher/Häuser have calculated that it should be possible to travel to Mars in 2.5 hours and to reach the star Procyon (distance: 11.4 ligtyears) in just 80 days – not too shabby, indeed! Imagine the following dialog at a breakfast table in NYC, say some 25 years from now. He: “I’ve got an appointment today in New Berlin (capital of Mars) at 1pm.” She: “Okay! Don’t forget that the Wilsons come in for dinner at 7.” He: “No problem! I’ll be back at 6.30 the latest … gotta buzz now, have a nice day, honey!”

All that is needed to bring this theoretical stuff into real world usage are the will and the money to finance experiments accordingly. For more and far far better information cf. e.g. http://heim-theory.com/Contents/contents.html
Note that Dröscher/Häuser have presented their framework three times since 2002 at the Annual Conference of Interstellar Spacetravel of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, so I guess some people do actually listen to them …

Also, since all this stuff has been out there for more than 20 years now it may very well be that someone has already put it into practical use without bothering to tell the public about it. You know who the usual suspects are.

I’ll apologize for my german tainted english and lay man’s translation of this stuff (that is also waaayyy over my poor psychologist head). I just thought it might be of interest to you.

Cheers -mike

shnood: (roughly) an imposter; a person oblivious to just how trivial or wrong his ideas are.
“Were there any interesting speakers at the conference?”
“No, just a bunch of shnoods.”
“The magazine New Scientist loves to feature shnoods on the …

The theory was discussed in great detail by NASA scientists. You may want to try and read them. http://www.hpcc-space.com/publications/index.html

You can also get more information at the web site http://www.heim-theory.com

Please remember to keep an open mind. It is essential to all science. If experiments are done to show that the predictions made by his theory are incorrect, I will be more than willing to dismiss his work. I think though, the mass calculations made from his theory, and how well they match experiment, and that his theory unifies Gravity and electromagnetism, which no other theory can do, merits a good look at what he has done.

Bob Zubot

The site has Phd’s and amateurs.

Take Care!

Article link http://www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/mg18925331.200.html

New Scientist: “Leap into Hyperspace”

Far less radical than string theory–but not nearly as understandable and debatable, which has got to just burn some of ya’s up, doesn’t it?

Just noting all the comments above, a few points to clarify:

On predictions – Heim theory has an outstanding prediction on the Neutrino masses. Either we measure neutrino masses more accurately to see if Heim’s mass values are correct or we check the formidable maths background to the mass formula which has already reproduced the known masses to great accuracy using only G, h and c as input.

Also, if Heim-Droscher theory is right, there should be particles called gravito-photons transforming electromagnetic energy into gravitational in certain conditions. If an effect is seen at 25 Teslas in the coils as described in their experimental setup, this would be one prediction of the theory – without the need for that extra hyperspace effect. And note that Heim was emphatic about not wanted to violate energy conservation – he was relieved that the theory gave no ‘free energy’ since, as he correctly noted, the environment is in enough of a mess from waste energy.

As for the number of dimensions – the full exposition does require 12 dimensions it seems. In the 8-D version, the energy density tensor has only 36 non-zero elements and so Heim justifies restriction to a 6 x 6 space. 6 x 6 is enough for the mass formula derivation. Quoting Hauser & Droscher “The dimensional law derived by Heim requires a 12-dimensional space, but the additional four coordinates are needed only in the explanation of the steering of probability amplitudes (information).”

The surface element, the ‘metron’, is similar to that in LQG. Heim derives the need for it in his own calculations. Hopefully they can soon be published in the standard journals to see if they are plausible.

In Heim theory, particles are stable distortions in the 6-D metron lattice – the ‘condensation’ that results in a particle involves projection from 6 dimensional structures on 4-D. I confess that the details of this are hard to understand and I haven’t got that far yet. Charge is associated with a partial-metric: the full metric is a ‘poly-metric’, with the normal g(i,j) of gravity and others for the other forces. That part is rather elegant and not at all ‘ugly’. Heim acknowledged Kaluza-Klein theory as having the right idea. Only for Heim the extra dimensions are not compacted – there are 3 normal space dimensions, 3 time-like dimensions (including normal time) and the rest of an ‘organisational’ nature, having to do with quantum probabilities etc.

Von Ludwiger is working on transcribing tapes of Heim speaking on all this (in German admittedly) and wants to then have it translated into English and published as an introduction. Apparently when he talks about it, it’s much easier to understand where he’s coming from.

On the issues mentioned by Stuard above – these are repeating the discussion we already had in Wikipedia talk pages on Heim – see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Heim_theory and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Burkhard_Heim

This shows the falsity of some forms of empiricism, incidentally, since the polynominal would meet the goal of “acting as a data summary”. One also wants what is sometimes called “consilience” and other, transempirical, virtues.

Until then, it does at least provide us fiction writers with a new name for our rubber-science spacedrives.

JLC

Or possibly moblogging, as in blogging from a mobile device such as a PDA or cell phone.

JB

I suppose it all depends upon the manner in which said FTL is accomplished, and perhaps the fancy of the person making the discovery. Said person may choose to call it Warp Drive out of homage to ST, or he might prefer Hyperspace as an allusion to Star Wars. Or he might think Weber’s got the better terminology with Warshawski sails and hyper walls.

And if you go back to the original ST pilot, you’ll find the actual term was Time Warp Drive, but that got truncated to obfuscate the time element.

Jon Niehof, I followed that link to the BPPP. Poking around, I came up with this on submitting ideas/papers for screening:

http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/bpp/faq.htm

Scroll down to Credibility Screening Criteria. Lots of nice sounding stuff, but especially this:

(e) Investigation of an Unconfirmed Anomalous Effect:
In cases where an anomalous effect is being discussed that has NOT YET BEEN CONFIRMED in the literature, it is mandatory that the author concentrates on the experimental methods for isolating the effect rather than speculating on a new theory to describe the unconfirmed effect. (No jumping to conclusions!) To demonstrate that the author is fully aware of why the effect is anomalous, they must cite references for the relevant current theories. The author must acknowledge possible conventional explanations of the anomaly, and the steps needed (or already taken) for a discriminating test. A discriminating test must be suggested that could distinguish between possible conventional explanations or whether this is a genuine new effect. In cases where the author is challenging negative test results that have already been published, the author must cite these references and explain why the prior tests were incomplete or why a reinvestigation is warranted. Also, the author must explain why the effect (if genuine) might be advantageous to the propulsion challenges.

All of the posted evaluation criteria seem reasonable for playing scientifically on the frontier. Somehow this latest paper doesn’t seem to quite fit. Note that the BPPP is no longer funded, and this paper’s reference to it was more along the lines of “we would meet the BPPP goals” than “we’ve been approved by BPPP”. So basically they self-evaluated on whether they meet the BPPP challenge statement for type of space drive, but there’s no equivalent evaluation of if they meet the criteria for approval that BPPP holds.

Alex Lyman Said:
>If this theory, or one of the underlying theories its based off of (or any other theory, for that matter) are shown to violate so-called “laws” (I believe so-far in this comment list were conservation of energy and momentum), they should not be automatically be put down as completely inaccurate — I believe the theories should still be tested in some way. If it comes down to it, and the theories garner some sort of supporting evidence, those laws should be reconsidered in the light of new non-supporting evidence. Remember: in science, nothing is outside the reach of further evidence.

This is a touchy matter. On the one hand, you are fully correct, nothing in science is beyond reconsideration in light of new evidence. Even the dreaded Conservation Laws are not above reproach. However, there is something to be said for the skeptic dictum, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Or to rephrase, any claim requires the amount and strength of evidence that is equivalent to the amount of evidence that it controverts. If I say I walked to the bank this afternoon, you have no reason to doubt me, and my claim doesn’t violate any known rules or expectations (except maybe why an American would walk anywhere). But if I said I levitated to the bank, it would take more than a bank statement to convince you that I am telling the truth. The bank statement would confirm my trip to the bank, but it wouldn’t confirm the method of my claim – levitation.

The Conservation Laws are firmly established and well-supported, so any proposal to violate them must be considered very critically. Any evidence of supposed violation must be scrutinized for any possible means of error. If some violation truly does emerge, it must be considered if there is some greater entertwining that has not yet been uncovered, such that some larger Conservation Law remains unviolated, e.g. Conservation of Matter being tied to Conservation of Energy.

geoff Said:
>If physics could allow us to accomplish this, I highly doubt we’d be able to find the energy or money to do so.

Yes, in order to make some of the bigger ideas of SF viable (if the physics ever allows them), we will need a revolution in economics and power generation. However, a revolution in power generation would likely lead to the necessary revolution in economics. If power production were suddenly increased by a factor of 100 without any gross increase in costs, the per kiloWatt cost would be dropped by the same factor. That’s practically unlimited, cheap energy from our current perspective. (Of course that’s a fantasy projection, but the result is valid.)

Lwindjwla Thaliazalor Said:
>All this high-falutin’ science is all very well, but what i really want to know is, what on earth or nearby planets is “mo’blogging”?

I think that’s what we would call a “typo”. I suspect the intent was “more ‘blogging”.

Carnifex, I think the quote was, “The missing link between monkeys and intelligent beings is … us.”

JusANuttaBackYahdah Said:
>You know somewhere I remember being taught that way back a lot of smart folk thought Columbus was going to sail off the edge….who knew…and who knows?

This is another one of those misconceptions that many people seem to have been taught. None of the educated people of his time thought Columbus was going to sail off the edge of the world. They all knew the Earth was round by then. The real question was whether Columbus could actually reach anywhere by sailing west. You see, everyone knew about where the Indies had to be, but nobody knew there was anything between Europe and there in that direction. The trouble was, Columbus was relying on faulty calculations and believed the Earth was about half the diameter it is. So he thought he could get the Indies with enough supplies (water, food) to make it, whereas the balky backers didn’t think he could carry enough supplies to make it there, because they had different calculations. So Columbus made his voyage because he convinced the Queen of Spain that he was right, and then accidentally and fortuitously found inhabited islands at about where he thought he would find the Indies. Thus he lived to return and make history work out correctly.

If the library in Alexandria had not been burned in the early Christian Era it’s possible that the genius level accomplishments of Newton and Einstein would have happened centuries earlier.

jbs