Ftl - Heim QT based propulsion models

[Schrodinger's Dog]

I've read this; simple question does anyone think this could work?

 

[Hdeasy]

I've read this; simple question does anyone think this could work?

Well, I think the evidence is overwhelming that there is some substance to Heim's Unified Field Theory. The propulsion angle would be nice to have. But for me more important is to get additional confidence in the mass formula - if that can be derived rigourlously, then it could supplant other candidate TOEs like String Theory. However, the maths is so tricky that it's uncertain which is easier - prove the mass formula or test the Heim-Lorentz force.

 

[Schrodinger's Dog]

A colleague of mine after looking at the equations merely sugested that they were reverse engineered, I.e made to fit the model like changing the variable in ax^2+bx+c can be engineered to fit any quadratic curve. Not so much predictive more just taking the answer as 100 and working out what the equation should be. That's his view, I wouldn't even begin to know how he came to this conclusion but maybe someone could hazard a guess?

What implication does that have if true?

 

[Hdeasy]

Why the Fraud allegation stinks

A colleague of mine after looking at the equations merely sugested that they were reverse engineered, I.e made to fit the model like changing the variable in ax^2+bx+c can be engineered to fit any quadratic curve. Not so much predictive more just taking the answer as 100 and working out what the equation should be. That's his view, I wouldn't even begin to know how he came to this conclusion but maybe someone could hazard a guess?
What implication does that have if true?

This is the usual answer of someone who takes a glance at the theory and decides it's too complex for him/her. Thus to justify ignoring it from now on, she rationalises that this highly respected scientist was guilty of fraud of some sort. But there are several points against this allegation - first, Heisenberg, Jourdan et al. vouched for the genius of Heim: so it's extremely unlikely that he would try a cheap trick like that. Note - an intersting case similar to your colleague was Hans Peter Dürr ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans-Peter_Dürr ), who met Heim and a colleague in 1977 when he was director of a Max Planck physics Institute (the chair previously occupied by Heisenberg ! ). Initially Dürr was dismissive until he got to talk with Heim - their conversation became intense and went on for many hours, after which Dürr was convinced of Heim's credentials. It was at this meeting that Dürr was so impressed by Heim that he convinced the latter to break his rule of not publishing before his theory was utterly complete and the result was the only peer-reviewed paper by Heim summarising his theory. So, been there, done that!

Second, looking through the derivations on www.heim-theory.com, there is a great consistency about it. Take any sub-section and examine the logic. It is always impeccable. Thus there is a plausible scientific explanation for how the equations evolve. Finally, to get 6 x 16 decimal places (more, as arbitrary powers of 10 are needed), one needs in principal more than 96 terms in various equations. This is because the coefficients are all small integers or integer multiples of Pi, so that one cannot simply say that here are 16 equations in 16 unknowns, as the answer is to be a real number. It is not clear that so many independent terms / equations are present in the final 'readout' phase.
This is why there needs to be a more accessible introduction to the theory. Luckily, one of the Heim-Theory people has tapes of Heim talking about the theory which he has almost finished transcribing. Apparently it is far easier as an introdcution to the theory than the books written during Heim's lifetime. By hte way - since this proposed book would be essentially Heim speaking to the reader, one hopes it would have the same effect as it had on Dürr in 1977.

 

[Schrodinger's Dog]

His reply to this is that the theory is no more testable than string theory. Extra dimensions give him all sorts of chills. He's not disputing that there could theoretically be a a basis for EM and Gravity being unified, just the interpritation. String theory is fascinating to me but I with my limited understanding can't help but think it is merely scientific philosophy or even sophistry as it stands now. Like a logic argument I guess.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

His reply to this is that the theory is no more testable than string theory.

Isn't that a little silly considering the motiviation for this thread? I think a working gravity drive would be fairly compelling evidence.

 

[Hdeasy]

His reply to this is that the theory is no more testable than string theory. Extra dimensions give him all sorts of chills. He's not disputing that there could theoretically be a a basis for EM and Gravity being unified, just the interpritation. String theory is fascinating to me but I with my limited understanding can't help but think it is merely scientific philosophy or even sophistry as it stands now. Like a logic argument I guess.

As I mentioned before, not only a space drive would be proof, but also a rigourous derivation of the mass formula OR new more accurate measurements of neutrino masses near to Heim's values.
I find Heim theory more fascinating than String theory. The metrons fascinate as much as strings or branes and the elegance of the quantisation of General Relativity and the way in which operators give quantum numbers that feed into the mass formula. Also, the picture of hadrons with internal structure condensing to give the impression of quarks explains why free quarks can't be seen. There are just so many fascinating aspects. Also, it's thrilling that the maths, though complex, is not of the horrendously twisted complication of String Theory.Also, unlike ST, it is background independent - the particles arise purely as part of the geometry of spacetime... wonderful!

 

[Schrodinger's Dog]

I've had the same conversation with my colleague on the other side, I'm merely playing Devil's advocate. He has a point though. If this turns out to be true I think he'll be eating humble pie, that'll be enough consolation for me
EDIT: It is a better theory than String theory which is of course the worst theory since someone used the word theory to describe it. Even if Heim theory is stuff and nonsense, it is a step in the right direction. Unifying gravity and elctromagnetism would be a great break through so even errors if they are errors are good for science.

String "theory" is little more than mathematical m******* it is unproovable either way and so is guilty of being a bad theory; although fascinating to read is of no use currently to science, IMHO, if we find evidence for it's existence at all then great, but 'till then it should reamain in the fiction section of the library not amongst the other science books. Controversial but I'm ot the only one who has serious reservations about inventing dimensions to conveniently solve mathematical inconsistency, the universe is frighteningly simple I would imagine. But then I don't know al the answers one day we may look back and say"how come they thought that wasn't it obvious all along" but then things are often obvious in hindsight. I'm a great advocate of KISS as were many of the founders of QM.

 

[Schrodinger's Dog]

i just had a thought. not really asking if Heim's Theory is true or false but if Einstein had published his three landmark papers would they all be in the skepticism and debunking thread too

 

[selfAdjoint]

Probably. There was certainly plenty of skepticism about them. People wrote papers trying to refute them.

 

[ubavontuba]

Here’s a little thought experiment for those that believe in higher dimensional travel to consider.

A universe with no dimensions is a non-dimensional point.

A universe with one dimension can have distance. So, let’s consider two points (a) and (b) separated by a given distance (x). The universe is comprised of a line passing through the distance (x) and the two points. The shortest distance from (a) to (b) is (x).

A universe with two dimensions is represented by a plane. Let’s expand our last universe into two dimensions and add a point (d) that lies outside of the vector (x). We can state that the distance from (a) to (d) is (y) and from (b) to (d) is (z). In this universe, the shortest distance from (a) to (b) is still (x).

Let’s move into a universe like our own and give it 3 spatial dimensions. As I think should be apparent, in 3 dimensions the shortest distance from (a) to (b) is still (x).

It seems apparent that adding dimensions does not necessarily provide a means for a shortcut between (a) and (b).

Let’s suppose the universe is folded into a fourth spatial dimension (like you can fold a two-dimensional universe over into the third dimension). Then perhaps, you might have available shortcuts, but only between certain points that are relative to each other from one side of the fold to the other. However, recent investigations indicate space-time is flat…

So, quick trips to any ol’ where, are not likely (even in a folded universe) and trips into a fourth dimension in a flat universe will only add distance to the trip.

 

[Schrodinger's Dog]

I think that's a neat thought experiment. What they're saying is that gravity bends space time so that distance between points is shorter. But time dilation has a way of making travel up to the speed of light annoyingly pointless. There idea is to avoid traveling in space but use the other dimension to travel their, hyperspace if you will. If you can make the distance between 2 points smaller by ignoring the laws in herent in four dimensional travel then you get there much faster. Whether this is true or as you say just going to cause the same problems is entirely a matter for Science to find out
Edit: and rightly they tried to refute them but the beauty was that they couldn't. of course we are doing the same thing. Prove it or get off my porch. Eminently scientific

 

[selfAdjoint]

Here’s a little thought experiment for those that believe in higher dimensional travel to consider.
A universe with no dimensions is a non-dimensional point.
A universe with one dimension can have distance. So, let’s consider two points (a) and (b) separated by a given distance (x). The universe is comprised of a line passing through the distance (x) and the two points. The shortest distance from (a) to (b) is (x).
A universe with two dimensions is represented by a plane. Let’s expand our last universe into two dimensions and add a point (d) that lies outside of the vector (x). We can state that the distance from (a) to (d) is (y) and from (b) to (d) is (z). In this universe, the shortest distance from (a) to (b) is still (x).
Let’s move into a universe like our own and give it 3 spatial dimensions. As I think should be apparent, in 3 dimensions the shortest distance from (a) to (b) is still (x).
It seems apparent that adding dimensions does not necessarily provide a means for a shortcut between (a) and (b).
Let’s suppose the universe is folded into a fourth spatial dimension (like you can fold a two-dimensional universe over into the third dimension). Then perhaps, you might have available shortcuts, but only between certain points that are relative to each other from one side of the fold to the other. However, recent investigations indicate space-time is flat…
So, quick trips to any ol’ where, are not likely (even in a folded universe) and trips into a fourth dimension in a flat universe will only add distance to the trip.

The hidden assumptions in this thought experiment are that space is flat, and that it is static. If it is curved, some paths between points will be shorter than others; consider going drom London to New York across the Atlantic versus via Shanghai and Honolulu. And in GR and apparently in Heim's theory, space is dynamic - at least in the large.

This means you can contemplate space growing or shrinking. Indeed cosmologists believe that spacetime as a whole is growing, and artificial solutions of Einstein's field equations exhibit shrinking of spacetime. I do not know what facilities for this kind of thing Heim proposed, but the ideas are there even in conventional modern physics.

 

[Schrodinger's Dog]

I think it's generally accepted that all the forces are pretty much the same force(super unification and all that), they became discreet at different energy levels in the big bang, it follows they should become unified if we apply enough energy, so it comes as no great shock that theories like this will spring up and wrong or right they can only further science.

I'm wondering though how much energy is required to convert an electron into a graviton/gravitophoton etc? I presume it's an awful lot? Anyone do the math for me?

 

[ubavontuba]

I think it's generally accepted that all the forces are pretty much the same force(super unification and all that), they became discreet at different energy levels in the big bang...

I don't really buy that.

Gravity should have been there from the very beginning (arguably before the beginning?). The other forces came into being only as the universe expanded enough to allow them to occur.

That is that the strong, weak, and electro-magnetic forces only coalesced out of the big bang soup at particular intervals, but it seems like gravity might have been there all along (I think). Perhaps this is why gravity doesn't fit into QM?

The real issue then becomes; what drove the big bang? What was the force that started the expansion, and where did it go? Might it have been converted into the three unified forces?

 

[Alkatran]

Does it bother anyone else that we call String Theory and Heim's theory... theories? Especially in a scientific context?

It's about time we came up with another word... I like "iom"

Did you hear about the iom of evolution?

 

[vanesch]

There are several scattered threads on Heim physics.
Let's continue discussion on Heim's theory here:

https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=883762#post883762