Are you ready for warp speed? (1 Viewer)

[Eric_L]

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/...mg18925331.200
"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"


http://www.defensetech.org/archives/002065.html

"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."

Think I could retro-fit my Mustang?

 

[Lynda-Marie]

Hmm, interesting, find ANOTHER dimension, much more interesting or exciting than this one.

I wouldn't mind taking over the dimension where I am worshiped as a goddess and have my choice of men for my harem.

P.S. Eric that depends on the year of your Mustang. If it is a classic, and I mean muscle car era, then by all means, retrofit it. If it is one of those "soccer mom" abominations of the mid-90s and beyond, you'd be better off with a DeLorean.

 

[ChristopherDAC]

I would not expect this to work.

Yes, an Austrian mathematician did discover a mathematical transform between electromagnetism and gravity before the First World War, but seriously -- using magnets and gravity for propulsion? I seem to recall something about "conservative forces" from physics.

The nuclear-fusion researchers have produced some pretty strong magnets, and I've never heard of anything like this being reported. There is a phenomenon known as "gravito-magnetics" which holds out hope for producing artificial gravity, but it's a completely different thing.

 

[Jordan_E]

It all sounds a little too Event Horizon to me. If it ever worked, who knows what will be waiting Over There anyway?!

 

[Eric_L]

IT seems to me quite a few folks thought Davinci was loopy for thinking of a helicopter...

 

[BrianW]

If some people think that magnetic fields can be used to produce anti-gravity, then I hope they get the opportunity to test their theory. That would be cool in the extreme.

However, in my my humble opinion, this is junk (as in non-) science. The paper introduces the "virtual electron" in order to allow what amounts to a violation of conservation of momentum, and excuses it by saying that the laws of thermodynamics are broken all the time, as can be observed in the complex structures that spontaneously arise in our Universe in violation of entropy. Despite the paper's assertion, entropy has never been observed to be violated in this Universe, and I don't expect momentum conservation to be violated any time soon, despite the violation's convenience to this paper's goals.

The paper also proposes that, like gravity, the other three forces in nature are consequences of the geometry of space-time (albeit at higher dimensions). It also proposes that space is quantized, and that space quanta are subject to the laws of quantum mechanics, just like any other quantum particle. Taken separately, neither of these notions is a bad way to go, theoretically. In fact, they are quite reasonable.

However, the paper wants to have it both ways, selecting the bits in General Relativity theory (space-time geometry) and Quantum Mechanics (quantized space) that support its conclusions, and ignoring the bits that don't. The result is a mish-mash of assertions that are supported by hand-picked equations from two competing theories that haven't first been properly combined into a single, coherent theory.

Besides, if we move to a higher dimension, our guts will fall out. Any dummy knows that.

 

[Blu]

Once faster than light travel has a working model how far out would theoritical time travel be?

I can think of a couple of things I'd love to go back and change.....sheesh....like telling George Lucas to put everything in Star Wars the first time around so to nip the whole Han Solo argument in the bud.

 

[BrianW]

Yes, it's quite true that others thought to be crackpots turned out to be correct. But it does not logically follow that, since other crackpot theories turned out to be correct, this particular (or any particular) crackpot theory will also turn out to be correct.

I've seen better crackpot theories at the Mall of America.

 

[Blu]

Have you read anything about the John Titor story?

Pretty fascinating stuff, although probably a elaborate hoax about a time traveler from 2036 I think.

 

[Ricardo C]

According to John Titor, America was supposed to be deep into civil war last year.

Yeah, "hoax" seems likely