© 2006 All Rights Reserved. Do not distribute or repurpose this work without written permission from the copyright holder(s).
Printed from https://www.damninteresting.com/prepare-for-ludicrous-speed/
In 1957, German theoretical physicist Burkhard Heim publicly outlined a new idea for spacecraft propulsion. It was based on his new theory of physics which successfully described Einstein’s theory of Relativity within the framework of Quantum Mechanics, and it married the two so effectively that he became an instant celebrity. Such a goal was long sought by Einstein himself, but never realized.
Heim’s ideas described a “hyperdrive” which would locally modify the constants of nature in such a way that a vehicle would be allowed to travel at immense speeds, possibly faster than the speed of light. Such a propulsion system could theoretically reach Mars in under five hours, and neighboring stars within a few months.
But shortly after he announced his theory, Heim went into isolation, and took his theories and formulas with him. It would be years before his theories again resurfaced, but when they did, they attracted the attention of NASA, the U.S. military, and the Department of Energy.
About thirteen years before announcing his theory, Burkhard Heim was permanently disabled during an accident while working as an explosives developer in World War 2. He was working on an explosive device when it detonated in his hands, severing both of his forearms and severely damaging his eyesight and hearing. After undergoing a series of operations, Heim distracted himself from the pain by intensely studying Einstein’s relativity theory. He registered at the University of Goettingen to study physics, and fulfilled his academic degree requirements with the help of companions.
Heim was able to continue his work in physics because he developed an extraordinarily accurate acoustic memory, able to recall formulas in exact detail once they had been recited to him. He became involved in physics research at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, and it was during this time that he made his Heim theory public, along with the hyperdrive propulsion system based upon it.
Einstein’s relativity theory describes space-time as having four dimensions: three dimensions of space (allowing for width, height, and depth) and one dimension of time. According to Relativity, any object will deform space in proportion to its mass, which causes gravity. This theory perfectly predicts the behavior of objects in space and time, so long as the object in question is not subatomic in scale. Quantum Mechanics describes the movements and interactions at tiny scales smaller than atoms, and this theory assumes that space is not deformed by mass, but rather it is in a static, fixed state. Each theory successfully describes its own sphere, but the two ideas seem to be in some contradiction. Einstein spent much of his later life unsuccessfully attempting to harmonize these theories as a “theory of everything.”
Heim’s attempt to heal this divide added four “sub-space” dimensions to Einstein’s four, making a total of eight. Later he decided that two of the dimensions were unnecessary, and removed them from the theory. His two sub-space dimensions coupled the forces of electromagnetism and gravity, which meant that theoretically, electromagnetic energy could be converted into gravity. This is the principle that his hyperdrive idea was based upon. The theory was so compelling and the math worked out so well that after Heim announced it, Wernher von Braun— the man leading the Saturn 5 rocket program— contacted Heim and asked him whether the Saturn 5 was a waste of money.
The theory propelled Heim into celebrity status in Germany, where he started appearing in magazines, in newspapers, and on television. But when he was unable to raise the money to develop the hyperdrive, he retreated into isolation to investigate the theories further.
Progress was slow given that Heim was rather possessive of his theory, particularly on the matter of inviting research from outside of Germany. Over the years he published a couple of papers whose formulas were able to calculate the masses of the fundamental particles with remarkable accuracy, filling a gap in conventional physics. He also produced several books on his theories, but they were lengthy, formidable volumes which were only available in German. In 1982 Heim helped to program his formulas into the German Electron Synchrotron computer, which verified their surprising accuracy, but because Heim had not yet confided in other theoretical physicists on the details of the mass formula derivation, the Electron Synchrotron results were not widely published.
In the 1980s Heim began to work with a theorist named Walter Dröscher who restored the two dimension which Heim had originally discarded from his theory. The result was the theory of “Heim-Dröscher space,” which was a mathematical description of an eight-dimensional universe. It describes gravity, anti-gravity (dark energy), electromagnetism, and quantum forces. It also describes the force which would allow hyperdrive to become a reality.
Burkhard Heim died in 2001, but Walter Dröscher continued the work, and teamed up with a physicist named Jochem Häuser to produce a paper proposing an experiment to test Heim’s quantum theory. The experiment calls for a magnetic field of extremely high intensity, but space propulsion researchers at Sandia National Laboratories think it might just be possible to perform the experiment using their “Z Machine” X-ray generator. They decided to wait for the math behind the theories to be better understood before volunteering the use of the expensive piece of equipment.
Because it is so complex and has had relatively little exposure, the Heim-Dröscher theory is still not well understood by most physicists. But its ability to calculate particle mass with uncanny accuracy has lent it a certain degree of credibility, because no theory before or since Heim’s can accomplish the same thing. If the theory is accurate, the hyperdrive propulsion field it allows may make a weekend trip to Mars a reality, and put the stars within our grasp.
Update: In the years since this article was written, the Heim-Dröscher theory has not held up well to scientific scrutiny. Still, when physicist John Reed translated some of Heim’s formulas into software, he found that it was able to derive particle masses as well as Heim had claimed. Whether this is evidence or coincidence is uncertain, but Dr. Reed concluded, “I’m more convinced now that there is really something to his theory. I don’t understand much of the math yet. It’s very complicated and different from anything I’m familiar with. I have a Ph.D. in physics so I know something about physics.”
© 2006 All Rights Reserved. Do not distribute or repurpose this work without written permission from the copyright holder(s).
Printed from https://www.damninteresting.com/prepare-for-ludicrous-speed/
Since you enjoyed our work enough to print it out, and read it clear to the end, would you consider donating a few dollars at https://www.damninteresting.com/donate ?
Of all the untested or uncertain hypotheses ever posted on this site, this is the one I most hope is true.
Ouch! I read the New Scientist article and it is fascinating. I then tried to read the actual paper, and it hurts the brain to do so! This stuff isn’t even in its infancy, it’s more like it is still fetal, but if it is true this is bigger than Newton and Einstein combined! Thanks for finding it.
I don’t want Event Horizon on our shoulders. I just hope something that is plausible is found to enable long distance space travel.
I say this is something the US should be researching extensively. We don’t take our space program nearly as seriously as we should.
I can understand the delay. Travelling through hyperspace isn’t like dusting crops. Without precise calculations, we’d fly right through a star, or bounce too close to a supernova, and that’d end the trip real quick.
Elaborating on the above comment, a pebble sized piece of meteorite travelling through space is enough to lead to the destruction of a space craft, imagine how small this pebble would become in order to do the same amount of damage due to the craft travelling at such high speeds. The chances of the space craft coming into difficulties would be much higher.
Furnace said: “I can understand the delay. Travelling through hyperspace isn’t like dusting crops. Without precise calculations, we’d fly right through a star, or bounce too close to a supernova, and that’d end the trip real quick.”
You made my day. :)
The thing I find the most amazing in that article is the idea that there is actually something called “the German Electron Synchrotron computer”. That made my day.
I’ve never even heard of this guy. Very interesting article, indeed!
I do have one comment if I may, though. It is a bit incorrect to refer to Quantum Mechanics as a “theory.” It is a framework really, a new way of looking at physics, and it can be used to describe many aspects of the physical world (not just subatomic particles).
I was lucky during my undergraduate years in the Physics program at Penn to have lunch with Columbia’s Brian Greene (renowned String theorist), and in talking with him I referred to QM as a theory. He was quick to correct me. :P
bpops said: “I do have one comment if I may, though. It is a bit incorrect to refer to Quantum Mechanics as a “theory.”
But it IS a theory, in the scientific sense of the word. Just like the theory of gravity, or the theory of relativity. When he corrected you, either you were using the word theory in the wrong context when you spoke to him, or he is less intelligent than people give him credit for.
See this explanation.
I wouldn’t go so far as to belittle the intelligence of one of the most well-known theoretical physicists of our time, but perhaps this discussion might only end in a debate over the defenition of a word, and in the end, I guess I just don’t care enough.
Just trying to give a little input back to a site that I thoroughly enjoy. Carry on.
bpops said: “Just trying to give a little input back to a site that I thoroughly enjoy. Carry on.”
I didn’t mean to seem argumentative, it’s just that your comment is a very common misconception, and I want to be certain not to spread it. The word “theory” has a different meaning in science than it does in normal conversation. In science, a theory is:
A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena.
The latter part of my comment was intended as humor. I have no doubt that Brian Greene is quite intelligent. Of course,, intelligence does not imply a completeness of knowledge (including vocabulary), so he could have easily been mistaken. Consider that Einstein regularly had to call his assistant to discover his address. He was a pretty smart guy too.
Erm… I always heard gravitation and relativity referred to as laws, although of course they are theories too. (Even though Newton’s laws of the former have been entirely falsified by the latter!)
As near as I can gather, a law is a theory so well-established that contradictory evidence is generally assumed to be wrong, rather than assumed to disprove the law. Not ultimately scientific, but it’s the way things are done. Like rejecting perpetual-motion machines out-of-hand.
P.S. See a picture of the Z-machine in my article here .
Furnace said: “I can understand the delay. Travelling through hyperspace isn’t like dusting crops. Without precise calculations, we’d fly right through a star, or bounce too close to a supernova, and that’d end the trip real quick.”
Nice Han. That made my day.
But honestly I agree with the first comment, of all the promising theories this site has written about, this is the one I hope the most to be valid.
-L.
Well, then we need to start making a deflector shield!! LOL!!
Furnace said: “I can understand the delay. Travelling through hyperspace isn’t like dusting crops. Without precise calculations, we’d fly right through a star, or bounce too close to a supernova, and that’d end the trip real quick.”
You’re assuming the same set of physical laws in the parallel space. No such assumptions can be made, at least how I see it. A good part of the “faster space travel” outcome hinges on this theorized p-space NOT conforming to physical laws as we experience them.
You may well travel right through a solid object unscathed because it isn’t solid at all in p-space.
Ok, so how would you even start traveling faster than the speed of light.
I hope I live enough so I can some huge progress with this.
ITs a really nice article and Ive never even heard of that guy before :) /
US military says: “So this is how the propulsion system works in that UFO we have @ area 51!” seriously though it seems like it makes sense. Every force in nature should have it’s natural opposite such and matter and anti-matter, north and south poles of an electromagnet, or gravity and anti-gravity so that when everything is combined it equals nothing, like the big bang somehow split everything apart.
Everything comes back to energy, matter can be converted to energy and energy to matter, sufficent energy could create gravity just as it creates electromagnatism or light. It’s to bad we are nowhere near the power requirments to do anything really cool yet. Try and fit the Z-machine into a spacecraft. If a near 100% matter to energy conversion can be achieved we could do it, but even the yet to be perfected (still losing more energy than we gain) nuclear fusion is only 0.7% efficient.
Sorry to say but humans arent even a type 1 civilization (Kardashev Civilizations) to achieve this we need to be able to harness the power of the entire planet (10^16 watts). Like the first post says, i hope its true and i will be around to see it.
I think electromagnetism as an anti-gravity tool has been used in the past. The Coral Castle in Florida was built by one man, but it is impossible by known technology. Blocks weighing tons would be trailered to his place and drivers were told to leave the trailer and come back for it. No one saw him unload the blocks and he took the secret to his grave, however, there was electromagnetic field generating equipment there that no one knew how to operate (http://paranormal.about.com/library/weekly/aa071999.htm).
link
This is how he built it, nothing mysterious about a hoist.
Edited to fix long link
Its funny, back in college I had a similar idea of relating gravity to magnetism. My physics teacher kinda laughed at me saying that my theory was in the realm of science fiction. It is surprising that we find out some scientist worked it all out years and years before. Here we were all looking for a unified theory. If anything, this would be it.
This is all so exciting I wish I had gone into the field of physics instead of computers.
A couple of historical corrections should be noted. One of the earliest writings by Burkhard Heim is a report he prepared for the Gravity Research Foundation, P.O. Box 81389, Wellesly Hills, MA 02481-0004. An English translation or a copy of the original report in German is available for just ten dollars. It was submitted to the Foundation in 1956. That progress report presents his computations for a trip to Mars. Heim recites the calculations three years later in four papers published Zeitschrift fur Flugkorper (Magazine for Missiles). The citation codes for the four articles are vol. 1, no. 4, pp. 100-102; vol. 1, no. 6, pp. 164-166; vol. 1, no. 7, pp. 219-221; and vol. 1, no. 8, pp. 244-248. His earliest formal disclosures seems to have been made in presentations he made to the International Astronautical Foundation (IAF) during 1952 in Stuttgart, Germany, and during 1954 in Innsbruck, Austria. Summaries and comments by A. R. Weyl about Heim’s presentations appear in Aeronautics (British Aviation Publication), vol. 37, no. 2, pp. 80-86, and vol. 59, no. 6, pp. 16-22. Comments inspired by Hermann Oberth in Donald Keyhoe’s article, “I Know the Secret of the Flying Saucers,” True – The Man’s Magazine, vol. 47, no. 344, p. 340, caused me to search for A. R. Weyl reports.
The verbal presentations by Heim in 1952 and 1954 had stimulated the contractual negotiations for gravity control propulsion research by Glen Martin Aircraft Company. The contract was announced in Ansel Talbert’s page one newspaper articles of the November 20, 1955 issue of the New York Harold-Tribune and the November 30, 1955 issue of The Miami Herald. Talbert’s reports were among the first lengthy descriptions of America’s gravity control propulsion movement. Various authors have stated that movement had ended by 1960. Donald Keyhoe’s research indicated the G-projects had continued and grown in 1966 and 1974. General publicity about the G-projects had dropped rapidly after the announcement about a breakthrough in the July 11, 1960 issue of Missiles and Rockets, vol. 7, no. 2, p. 27. The excited response to Heim’s work had exposed G-projects that had been inspired by Thomas Townsend Brown. Experiments by T. Musha, Okamotoa and Nagao, and D. R. Buehler support Brown’s claims about his gravitator capacitor. Weyl electrovacuum and gauge invariant solutions to Einstein’s generaly relativity equations by Boyko V. Ivanov have established the theoretical veracity of Brown’s gravitators (see arXiv preprints gr-qc/04070748, gr-qc/0502047, and gr-qc/0507082). Those recent breakthroughs allow us to assume the Brown-based G-projects had been successful. Contractual announcements with Heim had exposed the Brown-based G-projects. Within a year of those contractual announcements, the Air Force initiated a race for mastering general relativity for developing the unified field theory. Some great papers on black holes were among the spin-offs of that race. Funding for those Air Force endeavors was terminated by the Mansfield Amendment of 1973. Up to that point in history, the Air Force and private industry had possessed the financial and technological resources to test Heim’s theory in the manner Burkhard Heim had suggested. Burkhard had established a laboratory by the late fifties to test his theory. Embesslement by one of his employees had ruined his attempts to complete the construction of his test equipment. Eventhough Heim may have been thwarted from conducting his tests, an American counterpart could have been constructed and may have yielded positive results. These historical facts may substantiate the fascinating statements by Philip Corso, Ben Rich, and Mark McCandlish. In the drawing provided by McCandlish, the large coil in the midsection of the Alien Reproduction Vehicle may stem from applications of Heim theory.
If its possible, it has been built, it a big secret, and any attempt to creat a transportation device of this sort will be sabotaged.
Haven’t any of you seen Stargate SG1???
How about this: thinly coat one end of a magnet with bismuth and you have created a (pseudo?) partial monopole. I have done this and one pole does seem stronger than the other. I may attempt more refined measurements later in my crude and shielded home lab. Comments? (Btw, repeatedly [let’s say 10 Hz] exposing a magnet to bismuth creates measurable heat from the re-alignment…but that’s off topic. Perhaps later….) ;#)
…oh my gosh…they’ve gone plaid!!!!
Hurry up and hook this puppy up in the Sandia National Laboratories. I want the Vulcans to come visit us!
Look, he might have been a fricken genius and been on to the path of unified field theory… or he might have been a fricken crackpot. Unfortunately, his paranoia about having his work ‘stolen’ by being plagiarized by the only people who could tell the whether he was one or the other will result in him mostly being thought of as the latter rather than the former.
Scientific advance comes from dissemination and review and correction, not from mad-scientist seclusion. Even Tesla (who was a certifiable genius) went crazy and had lots of unworkable ideas near the end of his life.
Personally I don’t think there exists the experimental data to underpin a successful unified theory at this time. In short, we just don’t have the data to draw conclusions from, and we don’t have the means to confirm or deny any research into this area. We are currently in the stage of “Building the tools that will build the tools of discovery”, the pre-pre-preparation stage of developing a theory of everything.
So I’m inclined to consider him a crackpot. Any talk of developing a “space drive” would be insanely premature when you’ve just barely come up with a unified field theory. Release the theory of everything, who gives a @#$% about the space drive, that’s small potatoes compared to the UFT and discoveries that would follow.
Quantum Gravity? It’s a good idea, and it might be a good tool for putting a more comprehensible framework around the forces of the universe. But going directly from Quantum Gravity to building a space drive is like successfully folding a paper airplane and then immediately beginning construction on a 747.
Even if he were a genius, there would still be an incredible amount of work between the two accomplishments.
Sugar Ray Dodge said: “I say this is something the US should be researching extensively. We don’t take our space program nearly as seriously as we should.”
lol, Nasa is so stupid that everytime they launch the shuttle, there’s a pretty good chance something is going to fail miserably on it and make it blow up during either the launch or the return.
I’ve always pictured the guys at Nasa as a bunch of smart nerds with no people skills or common sense. You know, like people who eat pudding with a fork instead of a spoon. Sure, the pudding will sit on the fork, but it just works so much better and makes so much more sense to use a spoon.
Friday I had only one panel, “Faster than light or slower than molasses”. I think I upset one physicist in the audience by affirming that the current view of physics is probably broken and we’re heading toward a major shake-up and discovery — just as Einstein stood the established physics on its ear with his theory of special and general relativity.
So said by Todd McCaffrey at the WorldCon/09/29/06—Not just a Pilot/Rocket Scientist/Author
440Fronte|htid| said: “Ok, so how would you even start traveling faster than the speed of light. /”
I’m just waiting to see what happens to the materials the craft is made of and the people in side it when there subjected to the G-forces of faster than light travel. the space craft would be likely to disintegrate long before it reaches the speeds necessary to make inter planetary space travel a reality.
I had something really profound and interesting to say but after filling out the log in sheet I forgot what it was……well next time……….maybe!
psyOtic said: “I’m just waiting to see what happens to the materials the craft is made of and the people in side it when there subjected to the G-forces of faster than light travel. the space craft would be likely to disintegrate long before it reaches the speeds necessary to make inter planetary space travel a reality.”
Ya I was thinking about that. There are 2 things that determine how long it takes you to get somewhere, speed and distance. The idea was to adapt some sort of device that creates a huge magnetic field to produce some kind of huge gravity field (since this man’s theory relates a gravitational dimension to a magnetic one). I think this gets around that by not actually traveling all that fast, but bending gravity fields to make the distance you are traveling closer, so you dont actually travel too fast but rather the distance minimzed, so you get their faster by changing the distance instead of the speed. Kind of backwards to what we are used to I guess. Or maybe I’m just confused.
What’s the matter, Col. Sanders? Chicken?
psyOtic said: “I’m just waiting to see what happens to the materials the craft is made of and the people in side it when there subjected to the G-forces of faster than light travel. the space craft would be likely to disintegrate long before it reaches the speeds necessary to make inter planetary space travel a reality.”
The speed you travel at doesn’t exert any force on you whatsoever – it’s the change in speed (acceleration or deceleration) or direction of travel (lateral acceleration) that you feel as G-forces. On Earth we feel effects of speed (example here being driving a car) because there is a mostly stationary atmosphere we are travelling through, the car’s wheels are travelling over bumps in the road and small imperfections in the wheel balancing around their axis of rotation will cause a noticable wobble. With conventional physics (setting aside the extra dimensions in Heim’s theory) if you were in a spacecraft (eliminate the wind and the wheels touching the road) and in your first second of travel accelerated to 32 feet per second, then in the next second you moved up to 64, the next up to 96, and continued at this rate, it would feel no different to you than you feel sitting at your desk right now. 32 feet per second per second is the acceleration we experience due to the Earth’s gravity. At that rate of acceleration for one hour you would end up travelling about 20 miles per second and after 8 hours you would be travelling about 160 miles per second. If you decided to put up with 6 Gs, which isn’t uncommon for fighter or stunt pilots to endure (I did during a flight in a WWII T-6 trainer, no G-suit needed) you would reach the 120 mile per second speed in that first hour. Once the craft stops acceleration and travels at a constant speed, the occupants would feel no G forces because there is nothing accelerating them in any direction – their speed is constant and they would be floating free inside the craft.
I do really find it interesting that the theory involves a total of 8 dimensions. Would the device that allows this hyperdrive to function by any chance be called an oscillation overthruster?
I think Jono covered it best in the first post. Nothing need be added.
Oh, this is so irritating… I saw Heim nearly every day on my way to school and didn’t know who this guy was. Interesting theory, though.
bomber991 said: “lol, Nasa is so stupid that everytime they launch the shuttle, there’s a pretty good chance something is going to fail miserably on it and make it blow up during either the launch or the return.
I’ve always pictured the guys at Nasa as a bunch of smart nerds with no people skills or common sense. You know, like people who eat pudding with a fork instead of a spoon. Sure, the pudding will sit on the fork, but it just works so much better and makes so much more sense to use a spoon.”
…maybe so, but consider this, NASA is a government organization. And like any government service, items and services purchased usually go to the “low bidder”. NOW…go back and think about that when considering the space program…or the US military program….or any other government purchases!
That ranks right up there with, say, Alan Shepard when he was asked to fly the first Mercury rocket. “Alan, we’d like you to test out this new rocket system. We’ll strap you inside a chamber, not quite large enough for you to change your mind in. We’ll set that capsule on top of a missile and shoot you up in the far reaches of the ionosphere. Oh….by the way, the last time we did this, we used a monkey.”
bomber991 said: “lol, Nasa is so stupid that everytime they launch the shuttle, there’s a pretty good chance something is going to fail miserably on it and make it blow up during either the launch or the return.
I’ve always pictured the guys at Nasa as a bunch of smart nerds with no people skills or common sense. You know, like people who eat pudding with a fork instead of a spoon. Sure, the pudding will sit on the fork, but it just works so much better and makes so much more sense to use a spoon.”
I doubt you could even make it the first week of training, so next time keep that mouth of yours closed before spewing crap.
Maybe I’m just a complete and utter noob, but if you were to travel the speed of light, wouldn’t that do something similar to a sonic boom? I mean, wouldn’t all of the electrons in the matter be left behind?
Arg….i was thinking so hard my brain leaked out and I lost everything I meant to say….pffft
I find it amusing how people bash NASA instead of the entities that build the various parts for the spacecraft. NASA is the General that puts the basic specs required for the unit. It is the subs that actually build the craft. Also many of the parts/features that go into the craft are not “off the shelf” units, thus the keywords are “custom and/or one-of-a-kind”.
New technology is “Buggy” and not all the kinks get ironed out. Yes the shuttle is old hat but too expensive to scrap. When something fails or creates problems, the “Nerds” (as one poster called them) and the developers/builders of the unit have a “think-tank” to find the reason and a solution to the problem.
…it’s all relative…
until lives are lost because of short-sighted thinking or worse, budget limitations. When you compromise safety, AT ANY COST, someone is ultimately going to pay the highest price…theirs or someone elses life. It’s called….do the right thing the right way the first time! There’s never enough time or money to right at the start…but there’s always time and money to do it over. (I luv how the old cliches’ are always so true).
Despite NASA being a general contractor, they are still responsible and liable (along with all their sub-contractors) and must ensure that as many contingent situations have been thought thru…thoroughly.
VulturEMaN said: “if you were to travel the speed of light, wouldn’t that do something similar to a sonic boom? I mean, wouldn’t all of the electrons in the matter be left behind?”
Not really. A sonic boom is caused by travelling through an atmosphere and the craft catches up to the pressure wave that is created in front of it by pushing air aside to make room for the craft to travel through the air. When the aircraft crosses through the envelope of that pressure zone it creates a shock wave that is audible. In a spacecraft you would have to be outside an atmosphere to approach even a small fraction of the speed of light because the wind resistance and heat created by the pressure waves from travelling near that fast would incinerate the craft… and the energy required to get up to that speed would multiply dramatically (imagine swimming with a parachute behind you). The “sound barrier” speed is created by the density of the atmosphere being travelled through. In the vacuum of space, no atmosphere to travel through.
For travelling near or at the speed of light, there is no tremendous force exerted to drag back electrons in atoms, just the rate of acceleration the passengers are willing to endure. (reference my last post) And under the current physics models it’s understood that the atomic forces that hold electrons in atoms is much stronger than gravity. Otherwise we would have trouble with electricity flowing uphill through wires and riding upwards in a fast elevator or roller coaster would leave a lot of electrons behind and the shock you would receive when you stepped from the car and touched a grounded conductor would kill you. What causes static electricity (electrons stripped from objects to create an electrical charge) is friction – scuffing your feet on the carpet, rubbing a balloon on your shirt, pulling a piece of scotch tape from the roll (try this to see what scotch tape has to do with static electricity: tear off a 2 foot piece of scotch tape and tack the top end to the bottom of a shelf so that the rest hangs free. Tear off another 2 foot piece and tack the top to the top of the first piece. The two pieces of tape are joined at the top, yet the bottom ends hang apart like an inverted “V” and will not come together, even if you tap one lightly, for a lot of hours… at least overnight if the humidity is low.), or helicopter rotors through the atmosphere (see “The Hunt For Red October” for an illustration of that).
Sugar Ray Dodge said: “I say this is something the US should be researching extensively. We don’t take our space program nearly as seriously as we should.”
What makes you think the US has not researched, expanded and completed Heims theories?
Its not like they would publish this information.
Does this sound like propulsion systems described in the Vedas?
Hyperdrive: ” if you put a huge rotating ring above a superconducting coil and pump enough current through the coil, the resulting large magnetic field will “reduce the gravitational pull on the ring to the point where it floats free”.
http://www.ufoevidence.org/documents/doc116.htm
Vedas:
“Inside one must put the mercury [a superconductor] engine with its iron heating [a power source] apparatus underneath. By means of the power latent in the mercury which sets the driving whirlwind [a rotating ring?] in motion, a man sitting inside may travel a great distance in the sky. The movements of the Vimana are such that it can vertically ascend, vertically descend, move slanting forwards and backwards [floating free?]
Hey, just asking.
I can see it now: A comet-tail of empty coke cans and styrofoam burger containers all the way to neptune. Mmmmmm, progress.
Why such a cynical (and wholly unrealistic) view, Shandooga? NASA does not hire from among the Redneck Brigade, members of which might be expected to throw garbage all over the sky.
The folks I’ve met in the astronaut corps would feel puzzled, if not outright insulted, by your remark.
VulturEMaN said: “Maybe I’m just a complete and utter noob, but if you were to travel the speed of light, wouldn’t that do something similar to a sonic boom? I mean, wouldn’t all of the electrons in the matter be left behind?”
Nobody can answer that question. According to the laws of Physics as we understand them, it’s not possible to exceed the speed of light under any circumstances, so it’s not possible to predict what would happen if you did figure out a way.
Let’s HOPE if they refine our current understanding, and find some loophole that makes FTL travel possible, that we don’t have to leave our electrons behind! That would suck bigtime.
Griffin said: “What makes you think the US has not researched, expanded and completed Heims theories?
Its not like they would publish this information.”
[begin sarcasm] Yeah, because it’s not like the government wants to be seen as competent or spending tax money wisely or anything. And what right-thinking scientist would want the publicity for releasing information about a working faster than light drive? Scientists hate Nobel Prizes, right? [end sarcasm]
This is another one of those conspiracy theories that requires so many participants be silent that it renders itself impossible. People just aren’t that good at keeping secrets, nor is the government that good at shutting people up.
As for VulturEMaN’s comment about a speed of light equivalent of a sonic boom, no craft would actually survive to reach such speeds anyways. Even supposing the impossible (by currently known physics) near light speed drive, as you started going faster the particles in space (which is not a true vacuum, just a near vacuum) would be striking the vehicle faster and more frequently. Eventually it would be the equivalent of driving inside of a particle accelerator flooded with protons and alpha particles causing atomic reactions all over the place. It might be a close race to see whether radiation would kill everyone on board before the craft exploded. Something like the deflector shield Botagrande mentioned would be needed at such high speeds, though I don’t believe there are any theories that could create a shield that would be up to this task so far.
For interstellar travel that doesn’t take generations we either need a way to bypass space (to make the distance somehow shorter between two points,) or access to another “space” or modify our some of our space so that the speed limits are much higher and easier to achieve (like hyperspace or a Casimir vacuum,) or a method to manipulate time in some way (other than time dilation.) Unfortunately, all of these possibilities are looking rather doubtful so far.
I decided to have a bit closer look at this and found an interesting site that presented me with many pages of detail………99.9999% of which I did not understand. What WAS interesting is that Heim states that there was no ‘Big Bang’……..
QUOTE [rather there is, according to Heim, no “big bang“ with an infinitely dense energy. Instead, matter appears only after very long evolution of a world without any physical measurable objects, which only consists of a dynamics of geometrical area quanta.]QUOTE
Of course, I didn’t really understand that either. Oh well, I’ll just wait for the cheap excursion seats to become available once the new FTL ships are up and flying.
The End said: “Elaborating on the above comment, a pebble sized piece of meteorite travelling through space is enough to lead to the destruction of a space craft, imagine how small this pebble would become in order to do the same amount of damage due to the craft travelling at such high speeds. The chances of the space craft coming into difficulties would be much higher.”
Are you serious…pebbles? Thats what DEFLECTOR SHIELDS are for!
Where on earth did the accompanying picture [top] come from?
trillian said: “Where on earth did the accompanying picture [top] come from?”
Spaceballs? I think the giant atmosphere sucking vacuum cleaner operated via the Burkhard Heim 8 dimension hyperdrive system if I remember correctly…
boingboing.net have posted some scans of Orion related data on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/xeni/sets/72157594329917915/
First time this material has been publically available they say.
Interesting stuff…
oops, posted the Orion link in the wrong thread… move along, nothing to see… :)
If you were to somehow go faster than the speed of light, like, go faster than light itself, if we see using light, and we’re ahead of it, would we still be able to see?
Crosman said: What WAS interesting is that Heim states that there was no ‘Big Bang’…
That’s because there was no “Big Bang.” Anyone who believes that is an idiot…
That question sounds so awsome Chilliwack. I’m not trying to sound sarcastic or mean, but the way you said it was like it took so much thought and it was so far out there that it was a feat just to type it out. Awsome.
Chilliwack said: “If you were to somehow go faster than the speed of light, like, go faster than light itself, if we see using light, and we’re ahead of it, would we still be able to see?”
There may be no meaningful answer to give. If you were in some non-Einsteinian spacetime that did not have the c speed limit, there might not be any photons–they might be an aspect only of Einsteinian spacetime. (If so, you’d be very quickly dead, since any number of chemical processes in your body depend on the transfer of photons.)
noway says:
“Crosman said: What WAS interesting is that Heim states that there was no ‘Big Bang’…”
“That’s because there was no “Big Bang.” Anyone who believes that is an idiot…”
The best evidence we have to date shows that there indeed was a cataclysmic event about 13.7 billion years ago, whose characteristics correspond well to the “hot Big Bang” model with some adjustments. M-theory posits two 5-dimensional “branes” (from “membranes”) colliding in an oscillating fashion, with each collision releasing energy in a new Big Bang (sometimes nicknamed the Big Clap).
Anyone who dismisses real science with an ad hominem remark such as “Anyone who believes that is an idiot” … risks being dismissed as an idiot…. ;-)
>? call me stupid, but wouldnt there be a lot of different (systems, generaters,dohickys,dodads,thingamagigers ect ) that can be say bi products of say from one source like aum im gona take a shot in the dark here but a main reactor or maybe i just watch and pay to much attenchen sci-fi b.s but what about the old promethus project ? the human race is like a newborn baby in “space” we gota learn to scoot around before we can pick our selves up think some “crazy ideaed person” might beable to come up a way to take all that toxic nuke waste out of that hole in the western united states and put it to use seems to me (being stupid agin) theres a lot of un used power there that might just be enuff to at lest get one’s feet off the ground maybe all amatter of idea’s and ” crazy enough people ” to wanta give it a try kinda like willey coyote when he straped his butt to the acme rocket with roller skates……yeee-hawwww where do i get signed up at?
gypse said: “>? call me stupid,
I won’t call you “stupid”. I will call you “hard to read”, though–please use more punctuation and capital letters; spell-checking would help too.
(I imagine that there are some readers here who may be afflicted with dyslexia, or whose native language is not English; please try to help all of your readers understand you. Thanks.)
but wouldnt there be a lot of different [systems or] … a main reactor … to take all that toxic nuke waste out of that hole in the western united states and put it to use…
Nuclear waste can be put to good use as a (modest) source of energy or certain radionuclides, or just simply disposed of, using a particle accelerator. (See this paper, for example, for some details: http://www.osti.gov/energycitations/servlets/purl/6541091-0991EJ/6541091.PDF )
However, most of it can’t be used for spacecraft propulsion. This is because its energy density and energy yield are not great enough. For that you need fission (or, ultimately, fusion), conducted in a nuclear reactor. The designers of Project Prometheus want to go this route, using a reactor’s energy to power an advanced ion drive (“nuclear electric propulsion”). See this article, for instance, on that technology: http://www.thespacesite.com/space_electric_propulsion.html
The concepts proposed by Heim may not be so abstract and complex as many people might think. There are present technologies which have the potential to practically realize a new form of space propulsion.
The following website is an excellent source for more information on revolutionary propulsion and advanced science. It presents the complex theories behind relativity and space/time in a graphical easy to understand manner and shows how we have the potential to alter that structure with existing technology.
http://www.ovalecotech.ca
glhayman said: “The following website is an excellent source for more information on revolutionary propulsion and advanced science. … http://www.ovalecotech.ca“
No, that website is a source only of confusion. The author casually mixes ideas from several branches of physics and claims to have gained revolutionary insight therefrom, but the presentation is mostly wishful thinking where it is not outright error. (example of the former: no verifiable data are present; no equations or calculations are given to support the ideas.
example of the latter: equating inertia with force)
I’ll venture that English is the author’s native tongue, but the numerous misspellings (not just typos) make me question the author’s competence w.r.t. the high-order thinking necessary for the proposed systems.
Then there are statements such as:
“It is the succesful harmonic, ordering of energy which leads to the organization of everything from atoms to galaxies. If energy of a region in space is in harmony that space will expand and grow, the energy will increase. If energy of a region of space is not in harmony that space will collapse and die, and the energy will decrease.”
This is New Age blather, not science.
Also, we see:
“We know the sun emits huge quatities of electromagnetic radiation and even associate with this radiation a radiative pressure yet the mechancial output of the sun is never discussed. The sun is a massive thermonuclear fireball and yet physicist would have us beleive that the sun is essentially quiet in terms of any mechanical vibratory output through space. Perhaps the mechanical output of the sun is not within the human range of hearing and “sound” cannot travel through a vacuume, but to say a massive thermonuclear explosion creates no form of mechanical output is ridiculous.
The Sun indeed produces mechanical vibration, but such energy is dissipated as heat as it interacts with the Sun’s own substance. There are no long-range mechanical waves crossing space that this guy’s starship could “ride”. Don’t waste your time reading his stuff.
Silverhill,
First, let me say that you are the first preson to respond to my website with any sort of negative opinion.
So in all fairness I most definetly deserve a chance to debate my objections to your blatant slander of my website.
Quoting Silverhill “the presentation is mostly wishful thinking where it is not outright error. (example of the former: no verifiable data are present; no equations or calculations are given to support the ideas. ”
I would prefer to call it positive thinking and I would prefer further clarification of the supposed errors you have so quickly discovered after I have spent five years looking for errors. I do have one calculation on my webpage ( Part 4 )and it is of extreme importance to my ideas and is confirmed by inummereable experiments. Furthermore many illustrations on my website of are a very simplistic nature, you might even call them mathematical models. For thats what physics and mathematics are essentially is models or predictive representations of real phenomon. Real phenomon which can quite easily be represented as pictures and animations as wells as formula and mathematics.
Quoting Silverhill “example of the latter: equating inertia with force)”
F=ma P=mv without any forces to alter inertia, inertia would be irrelevant. They are intimately related if not equated.
Quoting Silverhill “I’ll venture that English is the author’s native tongue, but the numerous misspellings (not just typos) make me question the author’s competence w.r.t. the high-order thinking necessary for the proposed systems.”
Ill let my rebuttal and future interest in my ideas determine my competence. I will frelly admit, I am by no means a writer,(unlike science, english was always my worst subject ). I learned web design in 2 months and wrote my website from scratch, all my own graphics and animations documenting 25 years of research into this subject. As I state in my FAQ and my disclaimer the website is a work in progress and is basically a rough outline of a future paper or book I will write. With an editor of course.
Quoting Silverhill “This is New Age blather, not science.”
No, there is a tremendous amout of science involved in what I am proposing. Simple science, well documented with many real world and self explanatory examples. However, the number of unusual coincidences with what is called ” New Age” forced me to include some fringe subjects. The relevancy of these subjects is directly apparent due to numerous interlinked graphics and animations as well repeated reference to the same topics.
Quoting Silverhill “The Sun indeed produces mechanical vibration, but such energy is dissipated as heat as it interacts with the Sun’s own substance. There are no long-range mechanical waves crossing space that this guy’s starship could “ride”. Don’t waste your time reading his stuff.”
My starship doesn’t ” ride ” mechancial waves from the Sun in any way whatsoever, the suggestion is that my vehicle rides waves in space as a boat rides waves of the ocean. Neither uses the waves for propulsions, its the stuff upon which the ship sails. I proposed mechanical waves from the Sun as a source of potential energy on the Earth. There is most definitly mechanical energy traversing space from the Sun to the Earth, if even in the radiative pressure of light itself.
Mr. Silverhill please refrain from publicly flaming my website with your own personal opinions. If you have such negative opinions you can direct them to me personnally and let people decide for themselves the validity of my proposal.
glhayman said: “Silverhill,
First, let me say that you are the first preson to respond to my website with any sort of negative opinion.
So in all fairness I most definetly deserve a chance to debate my objections to your blatant slander of my website.
Be careful, with both your choice and your use of words. ‘Slander’ is defined as the intentional verbal utterance of false things that are designed to damage someone’s reputation or character. ‘Libel’ is the equivalent term for such things that are promulgated in writing (or other non-verbal means, such as pictures). However, I present truth when I say that your presentation contains some errors. It is also truth that your presentation is at least sloppy in places, and therefore unnecessarily hard to understand even if it is absolute fact. I was irritated by this aspect as well as some others, and I responded harshly therefore. I’m sorry if I let that irritation color my response to too great a degree.
I would prefer further clarification of the supposed errors you have so quickly discovered after I have spent five years looking for errors.
As already mentioned, inertia is not the same as force. To claim so is to be in error. You say, “F=ma P=mv without any forces to alter inertia, inertia would be irrelevant. They are intimately related if not equated.” — but you fail to acknowledge that inertia cannot be altered without altering the mass involved, since inertia is an inherent property of matter. Force and inertia may indeed be related–but they cannot be equated.
I will frelly admit, I am by no means a writer,(unlike science, english was always my worst subject ). … As I state in my FAQ and my disclaimer the website is a work in progress and is basically a rough outline of a future paper or book I will write. With an editor of course.
In the meantime, you can make use of a spell-checker at least. Why not put your best foot forward when you’re trying to get people to pay attention to you, after all?
No, there is a tremendous amout of science involved in what I am proposing. Simple science, well documented with many real world and self explanatory examples.
Some of your examples need a bit more explanation, or at least more care in their presentation.
Examples:
“any electric field in space will have an associated magnetic field”
— No. Any changing electric field has an associated magnetic field. A static electric field does not.
“Resultant inertial force is not shown in the One Inductor Drive animation”
— “Inertial force” is not well defined. Please define it.
“This is the true relationship between electromagnetism and inertia or gravity.”
— Is the latter part of this meant to imply an equivalence of inertia and gravity? They are not the same.
“All photons have an inertial field and when this inertial field or photons are concentrated into mass they have an associated gravitational field. Gravity is the attraction of all inertial fields to all other inertial fields, especially when the inertial field in question contains a significant amount of inertia.”
— What is an “inertial field”? Please give a rigorous definition, and show how inertial fields attract each other.
“a cyclotron develops a very high electrical potential using a huge magnetic field”
— No. The high electric potential is applied to the dees (cyclotron electrodes) by a high-voltage, radio-frequency external source. The magnetic field’s function is to bend the particles’ paths into circular arcs so that the particles can fit a great amount of travel into a small region. During this long travel, the applied electric potentials give very high energies to the particles. The magnetic field is supplied by a large DC electromagnet.
Capable of launching small Sputnik style satelite.
What are the results so far of the tests of this system? Have you indeed launched a small satellite? (Or, at least, have you shown that the system produces useful force on test objects in an economical manner? Please give us numbers.)
I proposed mechanical waves from the Sun as a source of potential energy on the Earth.
Potential energy of what kind, please?
There is most definitly mechanical energy traversing space from the Sun to the Earth, if even in the radiative pressure of light itself.
Mechanical energy is commonly taken to be the kinetic energy of aggregations of matter, not of streams of photons. The solar wind does consist of high-speed particles, but their impacts with Earth (or its magnetic field) do not convey net energy to Earth. (If they did, Earth and the other planets would be slowly being pushed outward from the Sun by this.)
Now, light conveys momentum too, and here’s where there may simply be a blurring of definitions. Since a photon can alter the kinetic energy of a particle that it strikes, thereby altering the local mechanical energy, perhaps it could be said to be a conveyor of mechanical energy. The usual way that mechanical energy is transferred, however, is directly from one particle (or cluster thereof) to another, by collision.
glhayman said: “Mr. Silverhill please refrain from publicly flaming my website with your own personal opinions. If you have such negative opinions you can direct them to me personnally and let people decide for themselves the validity of my proposal.”
Sorry, Mr. Hayman–if you present information to the public, as you do at your website, then the public has the right to react to it. If I were to direct my comments only to you, how would people “decide for themselves” what to think? (Unless you were to publish various people’s reactions at your site, which I believe you do not.)
Oops–meant to clarify that last part, but we can’t edit stuff after posting.
I was trying to say: “I am a teacher. If I see a presentation that is confusing (or even contains some error), and I have an opportunity to help by presenting more, or other, information, I try to do so. Otherwise, interested people could get some wrong impressions, which you surely do not wish them to have.
But if I only ‘speak’ to you and not the public at large, I cannot hope to be as much help as I would wish.
Yours for clarity in education,
Silverhill
Thank you for your comments and criticism. I am in the process of running my text through a spell check but my website is just a hobby and like I said more of a draft in progress, although available to the public. I just thought people would find my ideas interesting and am not trying to deceive or mislead anyone.
Rather than another long email I will attempt to clarify some of my ideas in response to your questions.
However, the subject is quite broad and space and time ( for me anyway ) are limited.
I firmly beleive in a relationship between inertial and gravitational forces. Inertial forces being those which define a reference frame. ( for example the Momentum of the Earth can be considered in my mind an Inertial Force or as Tesla would have said, ” an Inertial Field “. It is my contention that an object in motion in space will continue its motion ( or maintain its inertia ) due to properties inherhent within the mass itself ( or properties of the region of space/time occupied by said mass ). In other words there is a difference in the properties of the mass in motion verses a mass in a different relative motion. Further more it is my contention this inertial property can be “induced” indirectly through the application of a specific electromagnetic field. The electromagnetic field must be capable of “inducing” an acceleration or force which in turn can be used to change inertia or impart momentum. Due to the body nature of the electromagnetic field the resulting change in inertia is likewise a body nature and would be perfect for space propulsion. Inertial induction through electromagnetic resonance and feedback, if you will.
No I have not launched a satellite. I am mearly suggesting a possibly scenario for experimentation and the rough logistics of launching a vehicle of this type and how it is immensly different from anything else to date.
As for power from the Sun; the Earth and the planets exist within the inertial reference frame of the sun. What I maintain is that there is an inertial field surrounding the Sun and even the Earth, which if properly understood can be tapped for useable energy. Tapping the Earths would require a reference or inertial link to the Sun. Whereas tapping the Suns would require a reference outside the Solar system. This link would be determined and established electromagnetically.
I hope this answers some of your questions. I know I probably just brought up a thousand more. I agree my references to inertia in my webpage are somewhat misplaced. I will rephrase my writing as soon as possible.
Thanks for the clarifications. (Please remember, though, while adjusting the presentation, that momentum is not the same as force; they have different units.)
Good luck on the research; please present data as they become available. If this works as described, you have a Nobel Prize in your future.
Thanks for the clarifications. (Please remember, though, while adjusting the website material, that momentum is not the same as force; they have different units.)
Good luck with the research; please post relevant data as they become available. If this works as described, there’s a Nobel Prize in your future!
Im quite confident it works as described ( although I would not claim a Nobel Prize ). I feel obligated to expand and explain a bit more.
This propulsion system is not entirely new and has already been developed into many different forms and the relationships can and already are used in many different ways. Consider the ” Helical Rotor Induction Pump” which is basically a pump impeller generated by an intense rotating magnetic field. There is no physical impeller, yet putting your arm into it would not be advised as you would find the end result the same as if the impeller were metal. ( DI = 9 ) This is a good example of what I would call ” Inertial Field Induction ” where there is a field of force induced in a region of space/time utilizing an electromagnetic field. Furthermore it has been shown that the energy of a photon can be calculated as the integral of the surface occupied by the electromagnetic field, “S”. This is not a mathematical abstraction this is a measure of the real solidity or momentum of the photon, its particle nature. All electromagnetic fields posses this measure of solidity or momentum, an associated field of force. Our reality is not as solid as we might wish to beleive, solidity or mass as Einstein so cleverly discovered can be equated to a measure of electromagnetic energy warping space/time.( m=E/c^2 ) Although I know this is not how his theory is presently explained, I think for the sanity of those involved.
I must point out the relationships between inertia, gravity and electromagnetism are not direct. They require a specific orientation, strength and density of electromagnetic energy. There exist many different forms and configurations of electromagnetodynamics, only some of which can react with mass. One key to creating the effects powerful enough for interstellar travel is to create a “runaway” nature to the electromagnetic energy, utilizing resonance and feedback. Another key is to effect only the mass of the vehicle with the field, the spaceship does not radiate energy but alters the energy of the space/time it already occupies. Huge electromagnetic fields must be contained and controlled with these systems.
This is a completely new field of propulsion and a new awareness of the Universe around us which will require an equally huge effort on the part of innumerable people to successfully develop.
Damned I thought I was AN old crazy young guy!!!
All I ever said was real!!!
AS i said There were more dimensions in world …
As drôscher had demonstrate there is 8 …
Wow How nice is the future!!!
In some of the messages above I find a lot of scientific conservatism, which had held the humanity on one place in the fist of the dark and the middle ages for a thousand years period. If yow want to jump over the limits of science, you have to open your mind, and consider something of what you are tought in university is wrong. Einstein himself, till his death, had never thought that his Relativity Theory was finished. Dear scientists, if you want to make discoveries, you have to accept that what you know is not the whole science. It’s just its current state.
I have to mention that a 100 years ago, when the first cars were made, everybody (including top scientists) thought that it is not possible for the human phisiology and technology to travel with a speed greater than 100km/h. 50 years later people were already flying supersonic. People stopped talking about sound barrier as of an inpenetrable limit, it just preserved it’s name. The same will happen to the Light Barrier. How can you imagine that in the endless space and the endless time, speed can be limited? This is ridiculous by itself. Scientists have already proven the existence of antimatter and dark energy, so the existence of anty-dimensions is totally logical. Everything in this (or any other) universe has a zero point, and has no beginning or end. This is the way math works. Think about it and find out the logical truth: we have 3 space dimensions, one time, a zero point, one anti-time, and 3 space antidimensions (or antispace dimensions if it sounds better:). Everything has its negative equivalent. It’s just my thoughts, nothing pretending to be scientific, just pure logics.
Apostol, 18, Sofia, Bulgaria
well i have to argue some points accord with my fudo theory or “fudism”
Nobody can answer that question. According to the laws of Physics as we understand them, it’s not possible to exceed the speed of light under any circumstances, so it’s not possible to predict what would happen if you did figure out a way.
well its well know than an object -in this case photons- are launched from a “in motion” plattaform the speed of the launched object its the result of the launching speed -the same if it where launched from a static platform- plus the speed of the “in-motion” platform, like in that futurama episode when bender finds god remember?
okay, while having this concept on mind, if ligth speed -just a measure of space traveled in a given time- its 300.000 km per second, what if y run with a flashligt? there in fact will be some photos traveling faster than the current “speed of ligth” doesnt? then why i dont have a bending space-time phenomena, everytime im in a car at nigth? -usually faster than running- dont i should at least became my grandfather? -sarcasm- well, let me tell you something, i dont know why the scientist insist in give “supernatural-quantum-powers” to speed of ligth, when it it just a measure, if u travel faster than that nothing goin to happen, time its no goin to ben because time is not attached to anything, it is just a refference of “when” and “how”, and even “how often” it ist just a tangible perception, if something takes less time than other to travel the same distance its ok, it is just faster, worst case scenario: if u travel faster than speed of ligth no one can see you because photons doesnt have time to reflect, well thinking it well, some pfotons in the near transit can collide and give an transparent wave effect or something but really really fast.
just like the sound barrier case described before…
now this one…
Chilliwack said: “If you were to somehow go faster than the speed of light, like, go faster than light itself, if we see using light, and we’re ahead of it, would we still be able to see?”
There may be no meaningful answer to give. If you were in some non-Einsteinian spacetime that did not have the c speed limit, there might not be any photons–they might be an aspect only of Einsteinian spacetime. (If so, you’d be very quickly dead, since any number of chemical processes in your body depend on the transfer of photons.)
photons can be indeed emited from a source inside the spacecraft, because ” their speed is constant and they would be floating free inside the craft.” so you can see intrumental and screens emmiting ligth -photons- with no problems.. and what about the photons in your body? they will be just fine, remember? you are in a constant speed, one thing to take in consideration is to give acceleration levels -like in a stairway- so the tripulant doesnt have an unpleasant trip, and then die… other thing if you can contain, anti-matter with an electromagnetic field “like-sandiwch” -one attached to the spacecraft portecting it from the anti-mater, and other one preventing the anti-matter to be left behind, visualize it as an egg shell- be an exelent shield? the only problem it left is… we cant see anything outside either using the “fudo-shield” or not, because of the speed of the spacecraft, in the moment we slow down enough to see something, we can use ather type of counter-measures to protect the spacecraft, so its not a problem.
sorry but i dont think that things like ligth speed stuff will open other dimensions or whatsoever, speed stuff its not thad big…
time manipulation is
but we are never start to try that untill everyone realized that speed have nothing to do with time mechanics.
no quantums, no atoms, no electrones, the speed is speed, nothing much, time… just a refference and those who bings tomic clocks and others.. maths says they will get delayed sooner or later, or accelerated… so yu can alter time in speed basis, we can find another way, in thinking in something, but the idea its not mature yet, so ill keep it for myself.
regards
As one approaches the speed of light, one becomes infinitely massive. One typically can not see light move. Coupling these ideas, one can understand that very fat people are moving amazingly fast. Perhaps if we tied them together, like some kind of fat-space-raft, we could distort the space time continuum and go very fast indeed. Now, where could we go to get the curly-fries that power these speed-demons? Also, are curly-fries the most basic element of energy?
To say speed and time are unrelated is completely unfounded. The speed of light is the measure of time in the purest sense. Stop the speed of a film and the flow of time in the film stops. Stop the speed of everything around you and you no longer have any way to measure time so how can you say it would still be flowing. If everything stops moving, time stops. They are intimatly related. The quest for absolute zero is intimately related to the quest for the velocity of light. To stop all motion of something would be exactly the same as if that something was travelling at the speed of light. This is the key to what could be called interdimensional travel or travel through time. Once you stop time or your ability to record the flow of time you can travel anywhere in no time. Time is stopped for a photon.
glhayman, Silverhill, get a room.
in all seriousness, your information exchange on the subject is as interesting as the damn article. awesome find, alan!
Of course speed and time are related. If you turned on a searchlight on the front of your ship while traveling at .99c the light would appear (to you) to travel away from you at 186,000mps…….because time for you has slowed down. It’s the theory of “relativity”……time and speed are relative to the observer.
I hope Heim’s theories have something to them in regard to spacecraft propulsion (it would put the stars within our reach) but something troubles me about FTL travel that you guys haven,t touched on yet. Time travel.
Bellows, Lowder,et al:
Quantum mechanics is a FACT, as is gravity, and heck– evolution. The THEORIES of these things are attempts to explain how they work. I can’t believe that this simple oversight/omission/misunderstanding should generate so much controversy and unnecessary effort.
And time and space are not merely RELATED — they are the only possible views we have of the dimension of SPACETIME. In other words they are ONE AND THE SAME. Travel through spacetime is ALWAYS occurring at a constant rate. If your’ velocity through space increases your velocity through time decreases — the constant rate will/must always be preserved. A simple illustration: For the sake of demonstration we will assign this constant a numeric value of 1000. If you drive your car in a straight line down the road at a velocity of 1 (just a numeric value – I don’t mean 1 mph — don’t get hung up on this) your velocity through time decreases to 999. If you get in a jet and increase your velocity by a factor of 10 then your velocity through time decreases to 990. It will ALWAYS add up to the constant of 1000. A further complicating, yet fascinating fact is that you CANNOT only be traveling in one plane (in your car in a straight line) because the Earth you are driving on is revolving on its axis as well as hurtling through space on its orbit around the Sun, as the Solar system travels through space as a tiny part of the immense spinning of our galaxy as it hurtles through space in the expansion of the universe. And all this ‘space velocity’ effects your ‘time-velocity’ in a relative way — so that the spacetime constant remains constant. Even if we are are a crewman on the space shuttle re-entering the atmosphere at mach 25, this can only effect our ‘time velocity’ in a tiny way compared to the immense effect these other Terran, Solar, Galactic, and Universal ‘space-velocities’ do. They in effect hold us to a near-constant ‘time velocity’ — that the greatest speed humans can accelerate our bodies to using our greatest technologies can only momentarily alter by the tiniest of amounts.
No. Putting aside the fact that light is slower in air than in a vacuum, light in a vacuum travels at a constant speed, regardless of the speed of the object it “launches” from or your frame of reference. If you were flying through a vacuum with your flashlight at half the speed of light (0.5c) the light coming out of your flashlight would still be traveling at the speed of light (1c) from your perspective and from other people’s perspective. This is because time would be slowed down in your frame of reference by half, compared to the observer who is “standing still” and watching you pass. This effect is called “time dilation.” And because the standing observer’s “one second” is half as long as your “one second” (from both of your perspectives), light would seem to travel twice as far for you in one second as it does for the standing observer, so from both perspective the light is traveling at the speed of light.
This is why the speed of light (in a vacuum) is a constant from any frame of reference.
No, they are theories, which are more important than facts. “Facts” are things like “objects dropped on Earth fall at about 9.8 m/s²” or “the Earth orbits the Sun at a distance of about 150 million kilometres approximately every 365.26 days”, but a scientific “theory”, such as the “theory of gravity”, takes all of those facts and creates a testable scientific explanation of why those objects fall at that speed on Earth, why the Earth orbits the Sun at that rate, and many other things. An extremely well established theory may come to be described as a “law”.
Now, in some specific examples some things can be both a fact and a theory, such as the evolution of fruit flies when bred with a particular selection criteria. The outcome showing that they evolved is a fact, and evolution explains why they evolved, so evolution is both a fact and a theory in that case. (see here for more)
Quantum mechanics, gravity, and evolution, those are all scientific theories meant to explain the facts, so generally speaking it’s inaccurate to simply call them “facts” no matter how true they are.
No, the fact that there is a combined word for the two things does not mean that they are the same thing. “Space” and “time” have very different meanings, and “spacetime” is simply a mathematical model that combines the two into a single system. Even within that model, position in space and time are separate variables.
This just strikes me as wrong, or at the very least a bad oversimplification. Isn’t your “1000” equivalent to the speed of light? And if so, doesn’t that mean that, by your description, light travels through time at a velocity of zero? How can something that doesn’t advance through time be the fastest traveling particle? I think there’s an error somewhere in that.
I’m having a hard time considering the “Helical Rotor Induction Pump”, since the only references to it that I can Google are your website and this page. Did you perhaps mean a “helical-rotor, electromagnetic pump” instead? In that case, it’s basically a magnetohydrodynamic drive that is meant for liquid-metal coolants, and uses the gap between a pipe within a pipe for the liquid-metal coolants. Honestly, even if you could fit your arm in there, I don’t think it would do what you claim it would do, since it would pull, not slice, the arm.
However, in space there is practically no medium at all to push against to give yourself thrust using such a means. You would still need a fuel source, which then could be highly accelerated that way, like in a magnetoplasmadynamic thruster, to give you the push in the opposite direction. And as far as I can tell, there is no scientific evidence of any “inertial field” (whatever you mean by that) out there that you could use for thrust in such a manner.
I also agree with Silverhill that saying “harmonic energy” is responsible for “expanding” or “collapsing” space is very much “New Age blather” and not in any way scientific. “Harmonic energy” is not a scientific term, it’s pseudoscience.
The helical rotor electromagnetic pump and helical rotor induction pump are the same thing. A helical rotor electromagnetic pump is a form of induction pump. This is like the difference between calling an internal combustion angine a V8. They are used for coolant and pumping molten metals. Technically you couldn’t put your arm in because it is an enclosed system but there most definitely exist helical rotor pumps with large enough dimensions to allow you to insert your arm if the assembly was open. It would sure pull your arm in alright just like any impeller would however once your arm reached the point of maximum field it would be effectively ” chopped to bits “. These pumps are quite capable of generating cavitation at high power levels as well, which is another example of the mechanical/inertial characteristics of this type of electromagnetic field. These high powers are required due to the high densities of the materials they pump.
There is indeed more than enough medium with which to accelerate a spacevehicle in the mannner I propose. Even if you consider the simple Solar Sail craft already proposed for interstellar missions. In fact, if you could build a type of electromagnetic solar sail which could theoretically simulate a sail many times larger than any physical sail could be built and flown.
Further more if you could actually electromagnetically repulse or push off of a huge volume of these solar particles you could acheive greater thrust than the purely reactionary thrust of the solar sail crafts. Beyond this I hold there can be produced a significant reaction against the ambient electromagntic field existing in any space. A reaction which is more than adequate to be utilized for space propulsion. In fact this reaction is a more pure form of inducing motion than the action/reaction of solar sails and rockets in general. A propellant is no more necessary than propellant is required for the ductless, propellant less em submarines shown on my website. The intensity of the required field would necessarily have to be much greater as the mass of the space reacted against decreased.
Again you are simply arguing against the semantics of my explanations. When refering to harmonic energy I am simply using general terminology to describe already widely excepted ideas. Consider the action of a photon emitted or absorbed from an atom. Only photons of the correct wavelength will be emitted or absorbed. And in so doing the radius of the electron orbit, which lossely defines the volume occupied by the atom, will likewise increase or decrease.
So the volume of space occupied by an atom can expand or collapse depending on the absorbtion or emission of electromagntic energy of specific wavelength. One is not in error to term this a harmonic interaction although this may not be the exact scientific terminology. Perhaps a resonant feedbacking non electromagnetic energy would be a more accurate term for what I am describing. Or perhaps I could call it a more fundamental field of force than either electromagnetism or gravity. The intoduction of new names and concepts into mainstream science could be considered a science in itself. I dont really care. Call it what you will. I have tried to describe it in as many different ways a possible to get my point across, the name itself should not be so important.
Let me simplify my earlier statement: Theories are explainations of how/why things work.
Despite protestations and attempts to obfuscate by throwing out random scientific terms laced with figures, HiEv and I actually are in agreement on this.
The following is not an opinion. It is the way things are. Gravity is a fact. The speed of light is a fact. Quantum mechanics is/are a fact. There are ALSO the theories of these things, which are the explainations of them.
I was frustrated to see an interesting exchange get bogged because bright folks don’t know that there can be both a theory AND a fact of something, but that this is not not always the case. There are plenty of untried, and untestable theories, most of which will probably never also achieve the status of ‘fact’. One could raise the point that these are postulates, concepts, or suppositions, rather than theories, but I am talking in a practical sense for the laymen. I am attempting to clarify, rather than obfuscate or impress.
HiEv goes on to say that “an extremely well-established theory may come to be described as a law”. So, is a ‘law’ a ‘fact’? In a semantic and highly technical sense, not precisely. In a practical sense, yes.
HiEv says ‘Theories are more important than facts’ — what an odd thing to say, especially when he almost immediately goes on to agree that there are things that are both.
He/she goes on to say that quantum mechanics, gravity, and evolution are not facts no matter how true they are. Another very odd statement. Didn’t he /she just say that an extremely well-established theory may come to be described as a law? Apparently in the HiEv universe physical laws do not equal facts and do not equal truths. Probably has to do with the rarified atmosphere there.
He also takes exception with my use of the term spacetime, and ‘explains’ to us that space and time have different meanings, and that positions in these two dimensions are seperate variables. Gee thanks HiEv, we didn’t know that. I see no conflict here with the concept of spacetime and velocity through both space and time always amounting to a constant. An arguement without an opposing viewpoint, hmm. Yes, the HiEv universe is indeed a heady and very interesting place.
My illustration of this constant ‘just strikes him wrong’. Imagine that. But yes it IS an oversimplification. In his/her words it is “a bad oversimplification”. I’ve taken this under consideration and sent my oversimplification to obedience school. I think it will become ‘a GOOD oversimplification’ when it’s behavior improves. This is just a theory though at this point, not yet a fact.
HiEv: Yes I do mean precisely that LIGHT travels through time at a velocity of zero. In the HiEv universe is there an example of light being affected by time? He/she goes on to ask “How can something that doesn’t advance through time be the fastest travelling particle?” I guess Einstein is unknown in the HiEv universe? HiEv beings don’t know about relativity and Einsteins famous “Battle of the clocks”? In this highly unprobable universe (I say that because probability apparently doesn’t exist there) time DOES NOT slow down for you as you approach THE SPEED OF LIGHT, like it does in THIS universe. I do agree with his statement that he/she thinks there is an error “somewhere” in that. In the HiEv universe perhaps looking in a mirror would not have the same result as it would here, and show he/she precisely where that “somewhere” is. In the HiEv universe said mirror apparently acts like a microscope instead, one focused outward on minutiae to find fault in others and direct these rays of light and truth away from the user.
What does HiEv stand for? Does he/she really believe that they are more Highly Evolved than the rest of us morons reading/posting on this site? I suspect it really means High Escape Velocity, an obscure admission of extreme overweight, obviously a problem in that universe, where the chief pastime seems to be sitting on ones butt and trying to make yourself feel superior by espousing your own half-baked ideas as ‘facts’, er . . . . ‘theories’, no wait . . . .
A comment on time travel:
It seems to me that most people discussing this domain have a view of time that is warped by human experiential limitations (understandably so).
Maybe the generally held concept of time could better be stated as a “sequence of state changes”, and the human experience would add “and the memory of that sequence in part or in whole”.
Most of the explanations of Relativity Theory that I have heard are constrained by trying to warp this to something meaningful to the way we, as humans, can sense and think. If you remove that limitation from the equation, issues like time travel become ludicrous concepts. Time is not something to be “travelled” in. It is merely a human conceived way to describe a sequence of changes to the univers.
Yes it is most definitely possible to record state changes in simple objects and replay or reset them to some known state (at least at a very small scale). One could consider calling this highly localised “going back in time”. Although doing this on the scale of the universe is probably impossible if you are of the school of thought that only a universe sized object could compute the universe.
Yes it is possible to speed up the rate at which a human senses state changes relative to the rate of ageing (state change) for that human. Which could be called “going forward in time”.
However these concepts of “time travel” are very different to those evoked by many descriptions of relativity.
It’s true that the theory is only in its infancy (even despite the age of the thoughts), eventually we’ll figure it all out. Once we do we can travel the universe at the speeds we wish, only to find nothing out there. Sure the possibility of having life on other planets is around 67% within our own galaxy, but that life having the conscience and natural design of anything human is even smaller at about 22%. Can’t wait to be a real life Flash Gordon.
Going to deep space is such a stupid idea I can hardly find the words to express it. At least Mars would be somewhat interesting for a few minutes (assuming nothing goes wrong with your air supply) but if there were one other inhabitable planet out there, what are the odds of finding it on the first try? Tenth? 100th? There isn’t enough earth to supply the materials for enough ships to find it but keep having that dream where Neverlution is real and you get to be your own god.
And upon what do you base this? There hasn’t been a bona-fide discovery of life anywhere outside of earth. Earth isn’t even 67% of the solar system! What the hell are you talking about?
yeah, exactly my point.
by the way… i always can put things to travel in time…. my videos!! just press reverse and they go back in time, how crazy is that!!!
thats for the guy who said time is real and not a conception of thigs… seriously, a minute last 60 seconds only because a bunch o people decided to make it that way, if we “made” something its not expectable to all the things in the universe become dependant of it.
just open your minds and stop the overthinking.
I’m not overly familiar with this theory, but, in general, if a theory actually makes sense and gives genuine predictions, it isn’t ignored out of spite by science at large. If this theory could actually unambiguously do the things its proponents claim it can, there would be more than 5 people in the world working on it.
On a related note, every physical theory proposal to ever include extra non-observable dimensions has failed, either because it has made predictions which directly contradict experiment (Kaluza-Klein) or because the ambiguity associated with free parameters in the theory (such as coupling constants and ways to “wrap up” the extra dimensions) leads to a landscape of theories, thus completely removing the theory’s ability to make unique predictions about our world (String Theory, Anthropic reasoning, ect.)
At a first glance, this theory seem to be some sort of cross between a genuine proposal for quantum gravity and the hilarious “G.U.I.T.A.R. theory” which claimed to be able to predict all fundamental masses and do all sorts of magical calculations whilst its dim-witted creator stumbled over ways to make it look like he wasn’t inserting the numbers beforehand.
O.0 Thevy Gone To Plaid
The article I understood (DI by the way!). However, my brain has started hemoraging from the posts……Besides, the theory of relativity was based on a false observation. Plug refraction and diffusion into the basic equations and travelling FTL is not a problem. Ballpoint Pens!
bullshit theory
prove your shit and make an engine, or shut up
at least werner von braun, built a fucking missile.
stuck some guys in and it flew just fine.
the german scientists from ww2
k fine, so do the reaserch and make the engine. i want to go to mars in 5 fucking hours. bullshit either way
you have to slow down, morons, when you get there. if you re goingb ta eth speed of light just what are your ways of slowing down again, huh>?
so that has to be figured in, the ability to brake or slow down , when yore going fast. by the way thats way too fast, mars in 2 weeks is just fine.
again, how to slow down.
and keep working in the speeding up part as well,
I firmly believe there are other ways to travel extreme distances in space than rocket or deadalus type devices.
The technique involves a direct relationship between certain configurations of electromagnetic fields and inertia. Constructive vibrations would essentially increase inertia, whereas destructive vibrations would decrease inertia.
With enough power available these increases and decreases in inertia can be large and occur rapidily. Thus speed becomes meaningless. A mass can be made to jump from point to point without passing through the intervening space. How can you measure speed when the travel time is instantaneous? It can “speed” up or slow down, instantly, in whatever direction the field is applied, as fast as you can throw the switch.
So the problem is not just to prove the theoretical and mathematical possibility of these types of propulsion systems but you equally expect said discover of such information to then become adept at business( research money ) and securing capital for an entirely theoretical device, actually build a prototype using some wharehouse, designing all the relevant components from scratch( engineering ) , testing it, and marketing it. If you could not do such a thing yourself, how can you expect it of another?
This is a huge undertaking which will require considerable effort on the part of many individuals working together as a team. Not likely to happen given Earth’s current social attitudes of serving self over serving others. We can’t go to deep space because most human beings cannot even fathom the concept of deep space, nor do they even care to fathom it. It is far easier to quickly laugh and outrite dismiss the idea, even if the individual actually has no knowledge of the subject nor how it would be realized, other than science fiction, traditional dogmas and crackpot disinformation.
Even if it were possible to negate inertia by some means, that does not mean that travel would be instantaneous. Any body of mass would still be subject to the effects of relativity.
On a related matter, the closer a body gets to the speed of light, the more its mass increases, which would probably cause your hypothetic technique to consume exponentially more energy.
If you can negate mass, then you can reduce your rest mass to zero. Then you would exist as light which seems to have no trouble travelling at the speed of light.
Furthermore, perhaps velocity c is limited due to electromagnetic principles, much like the speed of sound is related to air. By influencing the electromagnetic fields of a region of space/time it would be possible to eliminate this electromagnetic drag.
It may even be possible to suck the fabric of space/time, or electromagnetodynamic fields into some type of engine, and expell it out. Like a jet engine for electromagnetic field or pure space/time, instead of air.
There are many possibilities, and many more theories than just Heim’s suggesting this is indeed possible, and maybe much simpler than you may think.
I found this site to be very interesting! But some of the comments i did not agree with. We are not going to be stepping into an event horizon due to a hyper-drive. And the whole point of a hyper drive is to get you from point “A” to point “B”. And if anything i would not be even easier to hit any debris and would not be more fatal then if we were going slower. Though I am sure this will happen. As well as I hope that we will be able to step into an “Event Horizon”. :)
It is very interesting, a propulsion system that can reach Mars in less than five hours, and neighboring stars within a few months. But the Heim’s hyperdrive will need to be powered by a dense source of energy to make possible a weekend trip to Mars, or even better, an interstellar journey a reality still in our lifetime. http://youtu.be/ro5-QYqqxzM
I say that gravity is made, probably, by curved light. Light can be curved by strong magnet probably. Yes, I know, photon does not have mass, not charges, but I do not agree with it. Al in all, I think that US military knows theory about antigravity, but does not have technology. Probably electro magnetism bends the light and after that we get gravity. And probably very fast rotation of anything can make magnetism and again gravity. Public science is for public people, rest is military science and we could get some pieces of thechology if it earns money.
Yet another facet of science that is light years beyond me.
I don’t want to live much longer in this world that is going insane, but I would love to see faster-than-light travel before I go.