Spacetime Physics And Advanced Propulsion Concepts

[sparhawk]

For those who are interested in this, I found a nice article about spacetime physics:

 

http://www.hpcc-space.de/publications/docu...sionRevised.pdf

[Vadrosaul]

Thx a lot I'll take a read at work today

[sparhawk]

I haven't read it yet, so I couldn't really say what it was about. Only got it recommened it by a collegue who was a physics scientist when he was after his student time. Didn't earn enough, so he became a programmer.

 

It seems to be about a proprosal to create some kind of hyper drive. Don't know if I will understand it, but at least I learned allready a little bit from reading into it.

[Nyarlathotep]

Does it mean I'm a geek if I can read just the title of the paper and recognize the theory in question (Heim Theory)?

 

It's been a while since I've looked over the document, but the hyperdrive they describe works by using a huge magnetic field (a minimum of around 60 T, I believe) to do something they call "mass conversion". Basically, the principle behind it is that (m0 * v0)/(m0 * c0) = (m1 * v1)/(m1 * c1). The usage of the magnetic field to produce this effect has to do with the two new (gravitational) forces that Heim theory predicts, quintessence and the gravito-photon (a boson mediator between gravity and EM).

 

At it's base, Heim theory is a (partially) background-independent, Higgsless attempt at quantum gravity. Heim's fundamental unit of the metron (a quantization of spacetime--approximately the Planck area) manifests itself physically in a very similar way to loop quantum gravity and causal dynamical triangulation (CDT), with geometry (bounded completely by metrons) condensing into spacetime and matter. (Imagine spacetime as being a seething froth of geometry, the faces never bigger than a metron.) Unlike CDT, where this fundamental geometry is limited to the 4-simplex (also called the pentachoron--having five tetrahedral faces), Heim's metron geometry may take any form (although I do believe it has to be closed). Apparently, Heim was able to derive a mass formula that predicts the masses of particles--although not accurate, by far the closest ever achieved. Indeed, he not only predicted that neutrinos were massive before experimental evidence, but he actually predicted their masses well within the current bounds!

 

There's a lot of interesting cosmology predicted by Heim theory. For example, quintessence in Heim theory has been proposed as an alternative to dark energy (note: not dark matter), explaining the observed acceleration of the universe. Quintessence is a small antigravity effect produced by all mass that begins to exert itself at ~150 lightyears out and gradually goes to zero at the Hubble Limit. The concept of the metron as fundamental unit has several prediction for cosmology itself, but it'll have to wait until I'm done with my school work.

[sparhawk]

I think I understood part of your postoing, but not enough to make a meaningfull answer.

[demagogue]

I just have an interested layman's understanding of this stuff.

So is quintessence an alternative to Einstein's cosmological constant that apparently has had some experimental confirmation, although it's small.

 

Also, I couldn't imagine even beginning to understand any of that without having tried to go through these two books (or ones like them) first:

 

Novaes, Standard Model Introduction

Griffiths D. Introduction to elementary particles

 

I've found them online, but not sure if it's kosher to post that here so I'll leave it at that.

Edited March 31, 2007 by demagogue

[Order of the Hammer Bureaucrat]

I had a glance through that pdf. This is what amazed me. In 1991 some Russian guy was in a Finnish physics lab smoking a pipe, and noticed by observing the smoke a decreased gravitational field above an apparatus. This was exciting, and NASA set out to confirm it, spent 3 or so years with crappy scientists and reached the conclusion that it's not possible. I still had faith in that guy. Now I see in this document that something similar was done by the European Space union. I was excited about "antigravity" since I was 8 years old, incessantly talking about to everyone surrounding me. By "antitgravity" I mean reduction of gravitational force, artificial gravity generation, and any field propulsion..

[Crispy]

In 1991 some Russian guy was in a Finnish physics lab smoking a pipe, and noticed by observing the smoke a decreased gravitational field above an apparatus.

Couldn't it just have been an updraft of warm air from the apparatus? Automatically attributing it to an "antigravity" effect when no such effect has ever been observed before is a huge leap of faith.

 

I'd also like to see your source. It sounds very much like the stuff of urban legends.

 

Also, what evidence do you have that NASA's scientists were "crappy"? (Assuming that your story is in fact true.) Are you assuming that they're "crappy" simply because they couldn't reproduce the antigravity effect? If so, that's somewhat self-fulfilling.

 

Please forgive me for being so interrogative, but I'm always very skeptical of such claims. They often sound like they merely spring from wishful thinking, like "zero-point energy".

[Order of the Hammer Bureaucrat]

It could be an updraft. I don't remember where I remember the people doing the NASA study being incompetent. And aren't you sceptical of the claim on page 11 of the pdf that the european space agency achieved it in March of 2006? I am. I don't expect any of it come true, or for anything to replace rockets and helicopters. And I forgot to mention, that smoking guy had smoke over a rotating superconductor while researching superconductors.

[Ishtvan]

You shouldn't smoke in the lab. Smoke includes dielectric particles which can get sucked into laser beams (same principle as optical tweezers) and ride them right on to the optics.

 

I haven't gotten a chance to read this in great detail yet, but I do wish I could put pretty color pictures like that in my papers.

[Crispy]

And aren't you sceptical of the claim on page 11 of the pdf that the european space agency achieved it in March of 2006? I am.

I hadn't read it before. Now that I have read it, I don't understand enough of it to know whether or not to be sceptical!

 

At least it has the appearance of being based on scientific theories, whereas "some guy noticed that the smoke from his pipe tended to drift upwards when it was above a rotating superconductor" isn't admissible evidence...

[Order of the Hammer Bureaucrat]

"admissible evidence"? We are not in court. Does it sadden you that I put things into my own words?

[Crispy]

It's not your words that are the problem. It's the entire idea of leaping straight from "hey, the smoke particles are floating upwards a bit more than usual over there" straight to "IT MUST BE AN ANTIGRAVITY FIELD!" that makes me sceptical. I'm dubious of the guy who originally made the claim, not you.

 

As for "inadmissable", I couldn't think of a more appropriate term off the top of my head. I just mean that the leap of faith is not scientifically rigorous, and therefore not a good foundation on which to build a theory.

[sparhawk]

Fortunately I have a collegue at work who knows his stuff about particle physics, because he also worked at a scientific research project. When he showed me his paper, I even remembered reading about this project in some issue of Scientifc American. So hopefully he is finished on Monday with reading it, and then he might explain it to me a little bit.

[Nyarlathotep]

I was originally going to include a small amount of information on the ESA (funded) experiment (Tajmar), given that Droscher and Hauser (TFA's authors) have had success predicting the size and direction of the effect. Eugene Podkletnov's experiment, on the other hand, has a number of unverified claims, and in general sounds a lot like the ramblings of a crackpot ("[independent verifiers are] keeping quiet lest they be criticized by the mainstream scientific community.").

 

I recall reading about the predictions made by Droscher and Hauser in regards to the ESA experiment. One thing particular thing was that they stated the effect is not observed in high critical temperature superconducters, the effect having to do with Cooper pairs. This rules out any effect produced by Eugene Podkletnov.

[Order of the Hammer Bureaucrat]

In any case I don't believe either Podkletnov or ESA. I'll believe it when I see little flying saucers on my street, but not before that.