Text 9009, 294 rader
Skriven 2006-01-08 13:59:06 av Robert Comer (1:379/45)
   Kommentar till text 9003 av Geo (1:379/45)
Ärende: Re: anti-gravity
========================
From: "Robert Comer" <bobcomer@mindspring.com>

Fascinating stuff!

--
Bob Comer


"Geo" <georger@nls.net> wrote in message news:43c13aa2@w3.nls.net...
> if you can create a gravity well in space, why not a gravity hill within
> that well? Anyway I had this bookmarked to read, don't remember if someone
> here mentioned it or not but didn't want to miss the chance to post more
> whacky science stuff. <g>
>
> Geo.
>
> Take a leap into hyperspace
> 05 January 2006
> NewScientist.com news service
> Haiko Lietz
>
> EVERY year, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics awards
> prizes for the best papers presented at its annual conference. Last year's
> winner in the nuclear and future flight category went to a paper calling
> for
> experimental tests of an astonishing new type of engine. According to the
> paper, this hyperdrive motor would propel a craft through another
> dimension
> at enormous speeds. It could leave Earth at lunchtime and get to the moon
> in
> time for dinner. There's just one catch: the idea relies on an obscure and
> largely unrecognised kind of physics. Can they possibly be serious?
>
> The AIAA is certainly not embarrassed. What's more, the US military has
> begun to cast its eyes over the hyperdrive concept, and a space propulsion
> researcher at the US Department of Energy's Sandia National Laboratories
> has
> said he would be interested in putting the idea to the test. And despite
> the
> bafflement of most physicists at the theory that supposedly underpins it,
> Pavlos Mikellides, an aerospace engineer at the Arizona State University
> in
> Tempe who reviewed the winning paper, stands by the committee's choice.
> "Even though such features have been explored before, this particular
> approach is quite unique," he says.
>
> Unique it certainly is. If the experiment gets the go-ahead and works, it
> could reveal new interactions between the fundamental forces of nature
> that
> would change the future of space travel. Forget spending six months or
> more
> holed up in a rocket on the way to Mars, a round trip on the hyperdrive
> could take as little as 5 hours. All our worries about astronauts' muscles
> wasting away or their DNA being irreparably damaged by cosmic radiation
> would disappear overnight. What's more the device would put travel to the
> stars within reach for the first time. But can the hyperdrive really get
> off
> the ground?
>
> The answer to that question hinges on the work of a little-known German
> physicist. Burkhard Heim began to explore the hyperdrive propulsion
> concept
> in the 1950s as a spin-off from his attempts to heal the biggest divide in
> physics: the rift between quantum mechanics and Einstein's general theory
> of
> relativity.
>
> Quantum theory describes the realm of the very small - atoms, electrons
> and
> elementary particles - while general relativity deals with gravity. The
> two
> theories are immensely successful in their separate spheres. The clash
> arises when it comes to describing the basic structure of space. In
> general
> relativity, space-time is an active, malleable fabric. It has four
> dimensions - three of space and one of time - that deform when masses are
> placed in them. In Einstein's formulation, the force of gravity is a
> result
> of the deformation of these dimensions. Quantum theory, on the other hand,
> demands that space is a fixed and passive stage, something simply there
> for
> particles to exist on. It also suggests that space itself must somehow be
> made up of discrete, quantum elements.
>
> In the early 1950s, Heim began to rewrite the equations of general
> relativity in a quantum framework. He drew on Einstein's idea that the
> gravitational force emerges from the dimensions of space and time, but
> suggested that all fundamental forces, including electromagnetism, might
> emerge from a new, different set of dimensions. Originally he had four
> extra
> dimensions, but he discarded two of them believing that they did not
> produce
> any forces, and settled for adding a new two-dimensional "sub-space" onto
> Einstein's four-dimensional space-time.
>
> In Heim's six-dimensional world, the forces of gravity and
> electromagnetism
> are coupled together. Even in our familiar four-dimensional world, we can
> see a link between the two forces through the behaviour of fundamental
> particles such as the electron. An electron has both mass and charge. When
> an electron falls under the pull of gravity its moving electric charge
> creates a magnetic field. And if you use an electromagnetic field to
> accelerate an electron you move the gravitational field associated with
> its
> mass. But in the four dimensions we know, you cannot change the strength
> of
> gravity simply by cranking up the electromagnetic field.
>
> In Heim's view of space and time, this limitation disappears. He claimed
> it
> is possible to convert electromagnetic energy into gravitational and back
> again, and speculated that a rotating magnetic field could reduce the
> influence of gravity on a spacecraft enough for it to take off.
>
> When he presented his idea in public in 1957, he became an instant
> celebrity. Wernher von Braun, the German engineer who at the time was
> leading the Saturn rocket programme that later launched astronauts to the
> moon, approached Heim about his work and asked whether the expensive
> Saturn
> rockets were worthwhile. And in a letter in 1964, the German relativity
> theorist Pascual Jordan, who had worked with the distinguished physicists
> Max Born and Werner Heisenberg and was a member of the Nobel committee,
> told
> Heim that his plan was so important "that its successful experimental
> treatment would without doubt make the researcher a candidate for the
> Nobel
> prize".
>
> But all this attention only led Heim to retreat from the public eye. This
> was partly because of his severe multiple disabilities, caused by a lab
> accident when he was still in his teens. But Heim was also reluctant to
> disclose his theory without an experiment to prove it. He never learned
> English because he did not want his work to leave the country. As a
> result,
> very few people knew about his work and no one came up with the necessary
> research funding. In 1958 the aerospace company Bölkow did offer some
> money,
> but not enough to do the proposed experiment.
>
> While Heim waited for more money to come in, the company's director,
> Ludwig
> Bölkow, encouraged him to develop his theory further. Heim took his
> advice,
> and one of the results was a theorem that led to a series of formulae for
> calculating the masses of the fundamental particles - something
> conventional
> theories have conspicuously failed to achieve. He outlined this work in
> 1977
> in the Max Planck Institute's journal Zeitschrift für Naturforschung, his
> only peer-reviewed paper. In an abstruse way that few physicists even
> claim
> to understand, the formulae work out a particle's mass starting from
> physical characteristics, such as its charge and angular momentum.
>
> Yet the theorem has proved surprisingly powerful. The standard model of
> physics, which is generally accepted as the best available theory of
> elementary particles, is incapable of predicting a particle's mass. Even
> the
> accepted means of estimating mass theoretically, known as lattice quantum
> chromodynamics, only gets to between 1 and 10 per cent of the experimental
> values.
>
> Gravity reduction
>
> But in 1982, when researchers at the German Electron Synchrotron (DESY) in
> Hamburg implemented Heim's mass theorem in a computer program, it
> predicted
> masses of fundamental particles that matched the measured values to within
> the accuracy of experimental error. If they are let down by anything, it
> is
> the precision to which we know the values of the fundamental constants.
> Two
> years after Heim's death in 2001, his long-term collaborator Illobrand von
> Ludwiger calculated the mass formula using a more accurate gravitational
> constant. "The masses came out even more precise," he says.
> After publishing the mass formulae, Heim never really looked at hyperspace
> propulsion again. Instead, in response to requests for more information
> about the theory behind the mass predictions, he spent all his time
> detailing his ideas in three books published in German. It was only in
> 1980,
> when the first of his books came to the attention of a retired Austrian
> patent officer called Walter Dröscher, that the hyperspace propulsion idea
> came back to life. Dröscher looked again at Heim's ideas and produced an
> "extended" version, resurrecting the dimensions that Heim originally
> discarded. The result is "Heim-Dröscher space", a mathematical description
> of an eight-dimensional universe.
>
> From this, Dröscher claims, you can derive the four forces known in
> physics:
> the gravitational and electromagnetic forces, and the strong and weak
> nuclear forces. But there's more to it than that. "If Heim's picture is to
> make sense," Dröscher says, "we are forced to postulate two more
> fundamental
> forces." These are, Dröscher claims, related to the familiar gravitational
> force: one is a repulsive anti-gravity similar to the dark energy that
> appears to be causing the universe's expansion to accelerate. And the
> other
> might be used to accelerate a spacecraft without any rocket fuel.
>
> This force is a result of the interaction of Heim's fifth and sixth
> dimensions and the extra dimensions that Dröscher introduced. It produces
> pairs of "gravitophotons", particles that mediate the interconversion of
> electromagnetic and gravitational energy. Dröscher teamed up with Jochem
> Häuser, a physicist and professor of computer science at the University of
> Applied Sciences in Salzgitter, Germany, to turn the theoretical framework
> into a proposal for an experimental test. The paper they produced,
> "Guidelines for a space propulsion device based on Heim's quantum theory",
> is what won the AIAA's award last year.
>
> Claims of the possibility of "gravity reduction" or "anti-gravity" induced
> by magnetic fields have been investigated by NASA before (New Scientist,
> 12
> January 2002, p 24). But this one, Dröscher insists, is different. "Our
> theory is not about anti-gravity. It's about completely new fields with
> new
> properties," he says. And he and Häuser have suggested an experiment to
> prove it.
>
> This will require a huge rotating ring placed above a superconducting coil
> to create an intense magnetic field. With a large enough current in the
> coil, and a large enough magnetic field, Dröscher claims the
> electromagnetic
> force can reduce the gravitational pull on the ring to the point where it
> floats free. Dröscher and Häuser say that to completely counter Earth's
> pull
> on a 150-tonne spacecraft a magnetic field of around 25 tesla would be
> needed. While that's 500,000 times the strength of Earth's magnetic field,
> pulsed magnets briefly reach field strengths up to 80 tesla. And Dröscher
> and Häuser go further. With a faster-spinning ring and an even stronger
> magnetic field, gravitophotons would interact with conventional gravity to
> produce a repulsive anti-gravity force, they suggest.
>
> Dröscher is hazy about the details, but he suggests that a spacecraft
> fitted
> with a coil and ring could be propelled into a multidimensional
> hyperspace.
> Here the constants of nature could be different, and even the speed of
> light
> could be several times faster than we experience. If this happens, it
> would
> be possible to reach Mars in less than 3 hours and a star 11 light years
> away in only 80 days, Dröscher and Häuser say.
>
> So is this all fanciful nonsense, or a revolution in the making? The
> majority of physicists have never heard of Heim theory, and most of those
> contacted by New Scientist said they couldn't make sense of Dröscher and
> Häuser's description of the theory behind their proposed experiment.
> Following Heim theory is hard work even without Dröscher's extension, says
> Markus Pössel, a theoretical physicist at the Max Planck Institute for
> Gravitational Physics in Potsdam, Germany. Several years ago, while an
> undergraduate at the University of Hamburg, he took a careful look at Heim
> theory. He says he finds it "largely incomprehensible", and difficult to
> tie
> in with today's physics. "What is needed is a step-by-step introduction,
> beginning at modern physical concepts," he says.
>
> The general consensus seems to be that Dröscher and Häuser's theory is
> incomplete at best, and certainly extremely difficult to follow. And it
> has
> not passed any normal form of peer review, a fact that surprised the AIAA
> prize reviewers when they made their decision. "It seemed to be quite
> developed and ready for such publication," Mikellides told New Scientist.
>
> At the moment, the main reason for taking the proposal seriously must be
> Heim theory's uncannily successful prediction of particle masses. Maybe,
> just maybe, Heim theory really does have something to contribute to modern
> physics. "As far as I understand it, Heim theory is ingenious," says Hans
> Theodor Auerbach, a theoretical physicist at the Swiss Federal Institute
> of
> Technology in Zurich who worked with Heim. "I think that physics will take
> this direction in the future."
>
> It may be a long while before we find out if he's right. In its present
> design, Dröscher and Häuser's experiment requires a magnetic coil several
> metres in diameter capable of sustaining an enormous current density. Most
> engineers say that this is not feasible with existing materials and
> technology, but Roger Lenard, a space propulsion researcher at Sandia
> National Laboratories in New Mexico thinks it might just be possible.
> Sandia
> runs an X-ray generator known as the Z machine which "could probably
> generate the necessary field intensities and gradients".
>
> For now, though, Lenard considers the theory too shaky to justify the use
> of
> the Z machine. "I would be very interested in getting Sandia interested if
> we could get a more perspicacious introduction to the mathematics behind
> the
> proposed experiment," he says. "Even if the results are negative, that, in
> my mind, is a successful experiment."
>
>

--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-5
 * Origin: Barktopia BBS Site http://HarborWebs.com:8081 (1:379/45)