What is Heim's theory and how does it relate to Maxwell's equations?

[aeroboyo]

I'm curious about the theories of Burkhard Heim. I get the impression that few really understand them, or take them seriously. I'm wondering if anyone knows enough about it to say a little about it, a kind of 'popular' overview? I know there are other threads about his theories on PF, but the point of this thread would be that it's written so that people without a strong background in physics can get an idea of what his ideas were. I'll start with a brief quote from a pdf about his theory. I'm hesitant in providing the source because it seems a bit cranky to me, but i hope that doesn't deter from a discussion of the basics of the theory and not the possible far-fetched applications.

http://www.americanantigravity.com/documents/AuerbachJSE.pdf

"It is well known in physics that energy is stored in the gravitational field surrounding any material object. Heim
concludes that in accordance with Einstein’s relation E=mc2 (E=energy, c=velocity of light=300´000km/s) this
field must have associated with it a field mass, whose gravitation modifies the total gravitational attraction of an
object. In addition, the field mass gives rise to a second gravitational field. The relation between the two fields is
very similar to the relation between electric and magnetic fields." END OF QUOTE

What do you think of this basic concept that there might be a 'field mass' associated with any material object, and an interaction between the two resulting gravitational fields? The pdf goes on to say that:

"The result of this is a set of equations governing the two dissimilar gravitational fields quite analogous to those
describing the electromagnetic fields (Maxwell´s equations). The main difference is the appearance of the field
mass in the gravitational equations in the place where zero appears in Maxwell´s equations. The zero in the latter
is due to the non-existence of magnetic monopoles. This difference renders Heim’s gravitational equations less symmetric than the electromagnetic ones. The same lack of symmetry also applies to a unified field theory, combining electromagnetism and gravitation, which cannot more symmetric than ist parts." END OF QUOTE.

So the interaction between these two graviational fields has something in common with Maxwell's equations? I find this very interesting. If anyone would like to contribute their knowledge about Heim's ideas that would be great. But please keep it simple!

 

[Jim Graham]

This may help you - it's a translation of Heim's own introduction to the theory for laymen.http://home.comcast.net/~djimgraham/INDEX.HTML"

 

[Sauron]

Or you could read the wikipedia entry for his theory.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heim_Theory

Just to advise you that it appears under teh cateogory of pseudocientfic theories:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pseudoscientific_theories#Physics

Without a referene to any outer authority clearly the claims of these theory look like a compendium of the favorite things people hates in some theories.

For example, it requires extra dimensioins which is something LQG people dislike of string theory.

On the other side it requires a minimal length, wichis something string people doesn´t like of LQG.

Anyway, i found very interesting the wikipeidan entry by the references in the last section about new experimental results concerning gravitomagnetism and podkeltnov effect (anomalous weight of cooper pairs in a gravitational field) .

 

[aeroboyo]

Why is it in the pseudoscientific category?

 

[gato_]

I have been looking for sources on this theory, too, but haven't found much more. I think that the fact that it gives a prediction of the masses of the fundamental particles should be enough to give it a try

 

[heusdens]

I have been looking for sources on this theory, too, but haven't found much more. I think that the fact that it gives a prediction of the masses of the fundamental particles should be enough to give it a try

It didn't predict them, that is, the values from which this can be calculated were put in by hand.

 

[heusdens]

I assume Heim was a Catholic. It immediately shows up in his cosmology, which started out with a Trinity!

 

[massformula]

@heusdens

please look here, before you make such a statement about Heim:
And by the way. His religious beliefs have nothing to do with the A Matrix problem, which John solved!

from wikipedia:

According to a 2006 posting to the "PhysicsOrgForum" by John Reed [10], the apparent success of the Heim theory predicting particle masses may be illusory. Reed argued that Heim's original work, published only in German, has been very difficult to follow, and the masses are derived from Heim's "Matrix A." Reed translated the original German work to find out how Heim's Matrix A was derived, and discovered that the data in Matrix A used "EMPERICAL DATA OF GROUND STATES"-- in other words, experimental values of particle masses were inserted into the theory by hand. Therefore he argues there should be no surprise in simply recovering the experimental data used as an input assumption. Reed goes on to remark that this should not be taken as deliberate fudging by Heim, since Heim himself did not intend this data to be used to predict the elementary particle masses in the first place. Reed commented "Heim was after the excited states, and for this he needed good estimates of the ground states. He used experimental mass values for this." Nevertheless, since the excited states calculated were in fact "useless" (according to Reed), it was unclear whether any other predictions of the Heim theory remain. [11]

In a later posting in August 2007, however, Reed, received the updated 1989 mass formula code from the Heim Theory group, and on the basis of this, withdrew the assertion that both the 1989 and 1982 code almost certainly used quantum numbers based on the A matrix.

“ When I first looked into the 1982 version, the A matrix was present in the equations and a suggestion given for its values. Only in reading Heim's books did I learn the source of the values. Heim said that he had to fix the values to obtain correct ground state masses. I assumed that in the following work this hadn't changed. Apparently that assumption is incorrect. It looks like Heim made further progress and found a way to derive masses without the A matrix, so the A matrix should no longer be part of the discussion.” [12].

On September 4th, Reed reported on results obtained by the updated 1989 formula:

“ I've completed my programming of Heim's unpublished 1989 equations to derive the extra quantum numbers (n, m, p, sigma) that I thought were coming from the A matrix. I can now say for certain that the A matrix is not involved with this new version. In addition, I can derive particle masses with only the quantum numbers k, Q, P, kappa and charge without the A matrix. This is what I had hoped to be able to do. These results agree with Anton Mueller's results.

I'm able to get accurate masses for the 17 test particles I have tried this program on. The worst mass comparisons with experimental data are the neutron, 939.11 vs 939.56 experimental and the eta, 548.64 vs 547.3 experimental. All the others are closer, sometimes agreeing to 6 digits.” [13]

 

[rolls]

It didn't predict them, that is, the values from which this can be calculated were put in by hand.

I thought in the later revisions this was shown to be not the case?

 

[Vanadium 50]

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