Thursday, March 08, 2007

"FTL" drive possible with Heim Theory

Another Damn Interesting article. Excerpt:
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. 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. more...
Wiki article and New Scientist articles on Heim theory. Skeptical view on the prediction of particle masses. I really hope this theory works and makes FTL travel feasible. It should be noted that most of the original work and the subsequent theories based on it have not been peer reviewed.

3 comments:

annom said...

I also really hope this theory works, but I'm far from convinced so far.

It's a bit sad that almost all physicist work on a unified theory is done on string theory. Loop Quantum Gravity also starts to receive a little attention lately, but there aren't many(any?) physicists who offer themselves to study relatively unknown theories with large allegations.

If John Reed(skeptical interpretation) is correct about the use of emperical data in the model to compute the masses, then it seems totally flawed. Without this prediction the theory is nothing unless someone comes up with a new predictions.

I hope John Reed is wrong.

cybrbeast said...

Well without the particle masses the theory might still be equally valid as String Theory. I haven't heard of any testable predictions of string theory yet.

annom said...

Very true, but it needs a lot of work from good people to show its new potential to the world.