Re: Time to update Trek history- (warp) field drive coming s
Excellent summary and history re: Tajmar, Heim, their results and theories, and how they may be connected:
From
http://forum.physorg.com/index.php?showtopic=4385&st=1950
djolds1
OK... Where to start.
At the beginning, as always.
To start off, Heim Theory (currently EHT, Extended Heim Theory) must be considered somewhat left field. It was Burkhard Heim's private baby for several decades, since at least the '50s, making rare German language forays into academic presentation and release. As far as I know, there is only Heim's 1977 monograph and a 1976 presentation at MBB (now part of EADS) that are part of Heim's official record.
Why did Heim stay away from conventional academia? He lost his arms and most of his vision during a lab accident during WW2; ended up as a recluse. I've seen some references claiming that some of the premier minds of the day were impressed with his intellect and concepts, but don't have the cites.
However, Heim was introduced to one Walter Droscher c.1980. At some point thereafter, the two begain working on Heim's ideas together. Droscher reworked Heim's original 6-dimensional model into an 8D model, which purportedly is able to account for all known forces and interactions, as well as predicting two additional forces. Droscher, in cooperation with Jochem Hauser, have been refining and publishing the Extended Theory via AIAA publications since at least 2002.
AIAA is the Professional Association of American Aerospace Engineers, so their work is not without skilled review, and one of their Heim papers did win the AIAA 2004 paper of the year award. This is not however review by the creme of the theoretical physics community.
Structurally, EHT is similar to Loop Quantum Gravity, working with minimal quanta of area instead of &*%$ing "strings." It predicts two additional forces, and claims the ability to predict the masses of fundamental particles from pure theory.
The two additional forces are variant gravitational forces, much weaker than normal gravity. "Quintessence" is a repulsive gravitational force that seems to match dark energy VERY closely. However, the timeline indicates that Heim predicted this force by the mid '60s at latest, at least 5 years before universal expansion was observed. The second gravity-cousin is the gravito-photon force. EHT provides mathematical models that allow for the transformation of photons into attractive and/or repulsive gravitational particles, gravitophotons. It is the gravitophoton that is purported to allow the manipulation of gravity, and which provides the direct link to Tajmar's work.
There is also the particle mass claim. This claim is disputed, as the particle predictions appear to predict several particles that have already been ruled out by accelerator experimentation. However, this area of the theory appears to be among the least well developed, so the criticism may be premature. It is possible that the additional particles are excited states of normal particles, but that is and remains speculation.
Heim's original notes are quite disorganized and all in German, using a notation and terminology he invented on his own. The attempt to clean them up is ongoing, and is apparently one of the reasons the particle mass part of the mathematics is so weak at present. Also, Heim's work was incomplete, and a selector rule for this part of the theory remains unfinished.
John Reed, a contributor on this board, presented a strong criticism of this aspect of EHT some time ago. He claimed to have found that the particle mass values were inadvertently pre-inserted into the theory back in the '70s. However, after careful re-review, Mr. Reed withdrew this critique, stating that the '70s era mathematics were not inserted into the newer work as he had previously thought. Per Mr. Reed's findings reported on this board, the particle mass predictions range from tolerable to good agreement with those verified by accelerator.
Droscher's & Hauser's papers mostly concern a possible method of harnessing the gravitophoton effect to productive end. Essentially, a reactionless propulsion system. In nature this is merely a variant on Tajmar's reported findings, with the artificial gravitational field directed along a different vector.
Until 2006, they were also reporting on a more radical claim, that the EHT physics potentially allow for FTL travel. However, at that time they thought that the technical requirements for even the STL (Slower Than Light) reactionless method would require truly gargantuan magnetic field strengths. 20+ Tesla for the most basic STL experiment, 80+ for the FTL. Since even the most minuscule laboratory verification would come nowhere near to real world application, the more extreme claims to gin up interest were probably justified.
After Tajmar's announcement in 2006 however, Droscher & Hauser went back and took another look. They found that EHT gave good predictive agreement with the results Tajmar had reported. The Tajmar experiment and the proposed STL lab bench demonstrator were moderately similar, albeit that the gravitational fields produced were directed along different vectors. And each set of revised results from Tajmar is reported to have brought Tajmar's observed results and the EHT predictions into closer and closer agreement.
Tajmar's method also suggested a new method for producing gravitophotons with technical requirements orders of magnitude below that previously assumed. Since then, FTL claims have disappeared and papers have become far more conservative. The wise move if your 'outside the theoretical mainstream' theory now stands a decent chance of validation. An initial failure based on tremendous claims would be a fast way to be written off as Pons-Fleischman cranks. They are now in baby-steps mode.
Their work has been supported by the Institut fur Grenzgebiete Wissenschaft, which according to an Austrian friend of mine is the Austrian version of NACA, the immediate ancestor of NASA. As with the AIAA, this is an indirect indicator of skilled but not high-prestige scientific review.
Per private communication w/Hauser, Tajmar has many more results than those he has released. The released results being those best verified to the most anal retentive degree. Per public releases, Hauser and Tajmar have been in close contact for at least the last year.
EHT's ability to predict the Tajmar results to good agreement is a suggestive and encouraging critique of the potential correctness of EHT, but far from validation. Likewise, the continued ability to predict particle masses from pure theory, even if possibly flawed in part, is suggestive and encouraging, but not conclusive.
A comprehensive review paper was due out late last year, but has yet to be released. I for one am quite happy with and respectful of the highly conservative go-slow approach Droscher and Hauser are taking.
Duane J. Oldsen
Oh, waitaminute...
I gave an historical overview, not a description of the Theory. Sorry.
EHT merges relativity and quantum theory, with an emphasis toward the relativity/ geometry side of the equation. Unlike GR, reality is not envisioned as a geometric construct through which "real" matter moves. All of existence is geometry, or spacetime. In the Heim concept, The size of the basic quanta of area (planck length squared, called "Metrons" by Heim) has varied over time. At one point they became small enough that matter essentially "popped" into existence. A "big burp" throughout the universe, not a "big bang" from a central singularity. As in LQG, matter, energy, time, all are composed of fundamental quanta that can be designated in units of length.
EHT is composed of eight dimensions, the four of human experience, and an additional four that can be thought of as "bookkeeping" dimensions. Burkhard Heim had initially limited this to 6D, and EHT provides for an absolute maximum of 12D, but according to Droscher & Hauser, 8D is all that is necessary to describe the unification of GR and QM. These eight dimensions are organized into four subspaces, R^3, T^1, S^2, and I^2. R^3 is "real" physical space, T^1 is time, S^2 are "organization coordinates," and I^2 is "information coordinates." It is the 'mixing' of subspace values that results in "real" particles, interactions, and forces.
This is an excellent overview:
http://tinyurl.com/2mtb34
An English-language PDF of one of their 2006 papers. Covers the older concepts while just touching on Tajmar.
S^2 is composed of D5 and D6. D5 is described as the entelechial coordinate, "a measure of the quality of time varying organizational structure (inverse or dual to entropy)." D6 is "the aeonic dimension... that is interpreted as a steering coordinate toward a dynamically stable state."
I^2 denotes "information coordinates:" "Entropy is directly connected to probability, which in turn is related to information. Therefore, two additional coordinates... are needed, which are complementary to the organizational coordinates, to reflect this behavior of Nature, termed information coordinates that are describing information waves."
The "mixing rules" are called "hermetry forms," another of Heim's personal neologisms combining geometry and hermeneutics. Either S^2 or I^2 must be present in a form for it to have any meaning. The additional dimensions direct action in "real space" by a double transformation. Information on the state of "real space" is transferred to the "bookkeeping dimensions" where mathematical processes are executed to determine what will happen in the next instant. This information is then transmitted back to "real space." I don't specifically recall how deterministic this is, but IIRC uncertainty is preserved.
Per memory, the FTL mechanism is purported to work as follows. A variant of the reactionless STL unit is used to create repulsive gravitophotons. These repulsive gravitophotons interact with the mass of the engine or vessel to lower its gravitational constant. This is forbidden in the normal physical universe, but the effect is real, and therefore a paradox exists. The paradox is resolved by "kicking" the mechanism into a "parallel space" (read: hyperspace) where the local speed of light (c' ; c-prime) is nc, with n= an integer. Thus c' can = 2c, 3c, 4c... etc, up to 1E66c. No fractional values however, due to quantization. If you were traveling at say 0.0001c when you turned on the hyperdrive, you're now traveling at 0.0001c'. No acceleration is felt, as you haven't "accelerated" per se. However, as "distance" in hyperspace vs realspace maps as 1:1, you're essentially traveling "n" times faster.
And since the STL mode allows constant acceleration, you can accelerate to a fair percentage of c relatively quickly and then turn on the hyperdrive. Values mentioned in the early papers were n=4000 and n=10,000. Values for the current "reference" STL engine (NOT the proposed lab bench unit) are 871 KiloNewtons thrust, 3150kg engine mass (not including power systems, structure, etc.).
Duane
Oh - three details I thought I'd included but apparently skipped.
1) Matter is not "solid," not "substance" in the metaphysical meaning. It is geometry, math, spacetime. A proton is a godawfully complex geometric construct, 1E40 fundamental planck surfaces, IIRC. The mathematical rules of the S^2 and I^2 subspaces control how that matter "evolves," as it were. This actually agrees well with various forms of spontaneous order observed in the physical universe, such as the logarithmic spiral. The spiral and various related forms of spontaneous order seem to pop out of nowhere. The mathematical direction of the bookkeeping dimensions addresses this nicely.
2) Quarks do not exist. The geometry of fundamental particles creates what you can think of as "mathematical resonances" within the particles. These are what we think of as quarks, but they are nothing more than mathematical ghosts. IOW there's no such thing as a naked quark.
3) It is possible that minute quantities of matter trapped in the 1E66 hyperspaces account for dark matter, just at the Quintessence gravitational force accounts for dark energy. In EHT, gravity switches from attractive to repulsive at a distance of 46 Megaparsecs.
Duane