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Warp Engines In Development?
Toloran writes "Although a staple of Sci-Fi space travel, it is often deemed to be just that: Fiction. However, it seems that one is currently in development. "The theoretical engine works by creating an intense magnetic field that, according to ideas first developed by the late scientist Burkhard Heim in the 1950s, would produce a gravitational field and result in thrust for a spacecraft. Also, if a large enough magnetic field was created, the craft would slip into a different dimension, where the speed of light is faster, allowing incredible speeds to be reached. Switching off the magnetic field would result in the engine reappearing in our current dimension.""
Original article from New Scientist - (also) stolen from digg.com :)
This should be a fun post. At any rate, the interest of the Air Force does not provide any more credibility to this story. I've seen some *really* whacky ideas based on science fiction rather than science fact move through the DOD that says more to me about the state of science education in the US than anything else.
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It reminds me of the experiments with the first atomic bombs: they didn't know that the chain reaction wouldn't ignite the atmosphere.
This is mostly a myth. Virtually every physicist associated with the Manhattan Project came independently to the conclusion that a nuclear bomb would not ignite the atmosphere, based on what was known about the nuclear cross-sections of atmospheric atoms (which was a lot).
I guess it's possible that some unknown physics could have resulted in ignition of the atmosphere anyway, but we are always at risk from that, so it's somewhat silly to worry about it. For instance, if current physics is wrong, a passing strangelet could destroy the Earth at any moment.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
Although a stable of Sci-Fi space travel
Staple. A *staple* of Sci-Fi space travel. A stable would be... well, I don't know what it would be, but it would be something else besides a staple.
People: spelling phonetically doesn't always work. This is getting "rediculous" [sic].
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
Basically, none. They suspend frogs inside of a doughnut field.
Forget that! We could've had interplanetary ships by the 70s if Kennedy hadn't killed Orion.
Igniting the atmosphere was also not realistic. Scientists knew of far more energetic events in recent history (e.g. Tunguska) and even a chemical reaction of the atmosphere was not plausible.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
Here's a a link for those who've never heard of it.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticality_accident
It's happened a few times in the past, though apparently never with granualted Uranium.
Strong enough to break the *real* laws of physics and enact fake ones in which electromagnetic radiation creates gravity moves objects between dimensions?
Just because the air force expressed interest doesn't mean that it's even remotely plausible. The US army, and later the CIA, had a two decade long program to use psychics to spy on the Soviets.
"WANTED: Sinking ship seeks rats."
From wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project
Edward Teller also raised the speculative possibility that an atomic bomb might "ignite" the atmosphere, due to a hypothetical fusion reaction of nitrogen nuclei. Hans Bethe calculated, according to Robert Serber, that it could not happen. In his book The Road from Los Alamos, Bethe says a refutation was written by Konopinski, C. Marvin, and Teller as report LA-602 (declassified Feb. 1973, PDF), showing that ignition of the atmosphere was impossible, not just unlikely.
Actually, there is such a theory, and it's 90 years old: Einstein's theory of general relativity. The metric of spacetime (it's curvature, and the thing responsible for what we call gravity) is determined by the energy-stress tensor, and the magnetic field DOES contribute to this tensor. In other words, a magnetic field does create a gravitational field. So does a gravitational field, for that matter. Any energy (and I'm including mass, here) creates a gravitational field.
To follow knowledge like a sinking star, / Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. ("Ulysses", Tennyson)
What if my Apocalypse battleship slipped into a different dimension where the speed of light is slower, and it would take me another 200 years to move my finger to the 'OFF' switch 2cm away just to come back again.
Then for 200 years it would be presumed your dead and by the time you re-emerge they'll have fixed the flaw in the design and we'll have several colonies on different planets.
This reminds me of a series of books by the Dutch writer Felix Thijssen (Siro's Island) where he describes a secret group using flying saucers whose propulsion is based on the theories of the german scientist Burkhard Heim.
I never knew Heim actually existed and has even published such theories!
Check e.g. http://www.geocities.com/felixthijssen (it's in Dutch, sorry).
It's not the magnetic fields that are a problem. It's the collection of atomic/subatomic particles caught in Jupiter's and Saturn's Van Allen Belts that are the problem. The magnetic fields themselves: woop-de-doo.
It's such a shame that crap like this gets on Slashdot but real technological breakthroughs don't. For example, how many of Slashdot's readers are aware that antimatter is currently being produced and stored in quantity at CERN and soon in facilities in the US? Antimatter is the ultimate in energy storage. Creating an antimatter rocket is trivial compared to regular chemical rockets. All you need is a sufficient supply of antimatter and a way to store it and we now have both.
How we know is more important than what we know.
The problem is we have the most powerful magnet on Earth. It's in Gainesville FL and it doesn't change gravity. The most powerful magnet ever detected was a magnetar of many billions of tesla and that didn't change gravity. We've observed very powerful magnets for years they have never ever slipped into alternate dimensions or changed gravity.
If you read the obliquely mentioned document, and then you pursue the original work by Heim (admittedly you'd have to read German to do that) then you find that what Heim did was simply to complete the work that Einstein started in the 1950's, that is, to derive the universe geometrically, starting with General Relativity and then working quantum mechanics into it, rather than vice versa (which is bloody hard to do.)
Admittedly Heim's work is not proven, but so far it's not disproven either. That's an important point. Heim (who was blind, mostly deaf, and was born without hands) has advanced a sort of Grand Unification Theory. It covers all the particles we know about, predicts the masses of those particles plus a few more that we haven't *proven* to exist yet, and doesn't suffer from the necessity of the Higgs Boson, which QM and ST predict, but which has yet to be seen (even though we really should have by now.)
It includes predictions of source of Dark Energy ("quintessence particles") and Dark Matter.
In all these respects, it is similar to any number of current Unification Theories. However, it has one set of properties that predict it should be possible to cause a gradient to form in the fabric of space-time, namely that by passing a set of particles through a massive magnetic field in a rotating torus, that it should be possible to cause the creation of a virtual particle pair known as the "gravitophoton" to form. This particle would then cause a compression of space time to form, giving a bias to space so that the generator would be moved in a particular direction.
The theory goes on to predict that if enough of a gradient was formed, then c' > c within the gradient (along with a bunch of other effects) that can't happen in real space. The only option that preserves GR is that the object must move out of "real" space into a parallel dimension/alternate reality where c'>c is allowed. Thus, faster than light travel.
The whole article is about the U.S. being interested in *testing* the theory. To do this, you build a big-ass torroid (6M) and get it spinning fast (> 700m/s) and then energize a big-ass magnetic field (>37 T) and measure to see if the effect occurs. The effect in this case measuring something like 3 newtons.
If it's there, then HURRAY AND HUZZAH, Heim was a genius who goes down in the history books with Einstein and we have warp drive within 100 years.
If it doesn't work, then the theory is proven wrong, and Heim wasted 19 years of his life doing some really obnoxiously hard math.
The thing is, this is just a physics experiment, no different than when Michelson and Morley set up their twin mirror experiment. And although it's a deceptively simple experiment, it could have just as big of repercussions as M&M's.
Calling it warp drive is premature. Saying it could have massive repercussions if sucessful is a huge understatement.
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
IIRC, the real concern about atmospheric ignition was for the hydrogen bomb, due to the abundance of hydrogen in the atmosphere.
When talking about nuclear weapons, the convention seems to be that "atomic" discusses fission devices, and "thermonuclear" discusses fusion devices.
The risk of atmospheric ignition was really only discussed seriously for thermonuclear devices, i thought?
The manhattan project dealt with the construction of atomic devices. I would imagine that the h-bomb work (led by Edward Teller, iirc) had a different name...
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???
I've looked back at the parent and grandparent post, and your comment makes no sense to me.
Pierre Curie was killed by a horse and cart because he didn't look before crossing the road. (Probably lost in thought - a true geek way to die.)
Marie Curie lived to a ripe old age, and died of cancer or leukemia - I forget which. It could have been caused by radiation exposure, but was probably just been old age.
Are there some fictional Curies to which you refer?
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Sounds like someone was trying to tell you about Louis Slotin's demise, caused by "tickling the dragon's tail":
Actually I didn't list the problems. But one for instance the use of diamagnetism for levitation works for lifting something like a frog but wont work for something as big as a human.
Use of electrostatic fields to lift very light small frames works but wont work for large scale objects because for example the breakdown voltage in air. These issues are more than engineering.
Bitter and proud of it.
*buzzer sound*...WRONG.
"Point A: All motion is relative. If I walk down the asile of a plane, I'm not suddenly walking at 202 mph; I'm walking 2mph in a 200 mph plane, so long as that plane is around me and at a steady flight."
-this proves nothing. you are still MOVING at 200mph in relation to the observer who is on the ground. and if you take 3 steps in a plane moving 200 mph, you've just traversed the same distance as the plane did...in 3 steps.
"Point B: The speed of light is NOT relative. It's always c. Always, always, always."
-nope. c = the speed of light in a vaccum. c can be much much slower when in a medium...such as water. scientists have recently been able to slow the speed of light down to walking speed.
The very word, RELATIVITY, indicates the complexity and the depth that must be considered when working with the laws of physics. The laws can change and DO change relative to where you are and how fast you are moving and any number of other factors.
It takes just a moment and an action to destroy. It takes some time and thought to create.
Hehe,
;D, and IMHO far more interesting. So I'm really glad someone is testing it now!!
yes, Heim worked as you describe and his theroy is neither proven nor disproven, how ever its funny how "myths" starts to grow:
That's an important point. Heim (who was blind, mostly deaf, and was born without hands)
No, he was an ordinary physician. With hands, ears and eyes. But he played to much with explosives in his lab and was crippled in an accident, whre he lost his hands, and most of his sight and lots of his hearing.
Most of his theories he worked out AFTER that accident. His wife was writing it down for him and reading him older paragraphs. So most of his therory he made up in his mind and he enver could see the formulars his wife wrote for him on dictat.
Because he was such ill he did not want to travel, and he did not publish in that period. His late students revived his theories over the last 10 -20 years, and now as I mentioned in a diffeent post, they try to rewrite his theory and correct errors in his formulas and try to work out experiments to proof/disproof it.
Unfortunately most researchers find Heims idea contradicting to their picture of the world and reject it without even trying to udnerstand it. But well, its like with a difficult mathematical proof: the one who found the proof likely worked 5 or more years on that. If you like to understand his proof you have to spend at least one year in recalculations. In our time Heims theory is not popular and money to spend for experiements is going elsewhere.
However the basics of his theroy is pretty simple. And I assume its compareable easy to set up an exsperiemnt, or lets say: cheap. Far chaper than the fusion reactors we have built so far
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Good? Since when does a magnetic field, intense or otherwise, have anything to do with a gravitational field?
There's no evidence. There's no theory. It's just something somebody made up.
Einstein thought that they did. The ultimate goal of general relativity for Einstein was a Grand Unified Theory of Everything. In Einstein's conception, all forces (not just gravity) were the effect of curvatures in space-time. Since all energy was curvatures of space-time, so was all matter. Heim just expounded on Einstein's theories and he did so in a way that actually predicts the masses of fundamental particles. Thinking hard on relativity was what he did to distract himself from the pain of from where his hands used to be after they were blown off in an explosives lab accident. The same incident made him deaf-blind, so he preferred isolation rather than colaboration and pretty much spent all his time on the subject. This same isolation made his theories relatively unknown for a very long time.
The editorial blurb is hideously sensational, though. Even if we do prove that EM fields can alter space and produce gravitational effects, you're a long way from creating a practical form of propulsion. On the other hand, we'd at least have hope of a reactionless drive.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Heck with the science for just a few minutes. Let's talk SciFi. The way I understand the "Warp Drive" as proposed in most SciFi, notably in StarTrek from where I think the title "Warp Drive" first appeared, C is not physically exceeded. A "Warp Drive" is also not the same as a "Hyperspacial" or "Extraspacial" drive, as the local spacial dimensional properties are distorted rather than escaped from. My understanding of this idea is as follows.
Multiple gravity wells of sufficient strength to distort space in compressive rotating wavefroms are continuiously created and collapsed at the optimum non-destructive proximite points as related to the craft and in the direction of intended travel. One then is pulled toward the gravity wells and/or uses auxiliary propulsion methods to push the craft in the same direction. Through balancing and counter balancing of the multiple gravity wells one is able to "surf' only the crests of the primary or convergent folded compressed space "waves" thus not really exceeding but still "cheating" the speed limit of C. I'll bet wipeouts would really suck. Beware of the Under Toad!!!
Matthew
You're probably thinking of the Louis Slotin incident. He was working with 2 half-spheres and dropped one half...when it impacted it went critical for a moment and irradiated him. He died 9 days later, and a few other people in the lab at the time died within a few years.
"FTA"(=Faster Than Ants) by George R.R. Martin.
Researchers keep independently rediscovering hyperspace, but are then encouraged into other lines of research. If they kick back against this, they're let into the secret that it's being suppressed to avoid damaging the morale of Star Trek fans.
The world has changed and we all have become metal men.