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Feasable FTL travel

Posted: 03 May 2006, 20:47
by AF
http://www.fileuniverse.com/?p=showitem&ID=3090

For those of you who asked, there is the pdf describing the theory set out to make FTL travel possible.

You'll also want to google for the enws items referencing ti which cotnian mroe information such as the quotes saying the Z machine could generate the necessary fields required, and that with it you could travel to mars in 30 hours, and Proxima centauri in 40 days.

For those of you who now have the urge to start spouting facts such as *you cant exceed the speed of light* or quoting relativistic affects fo causality and time differentials I note that the theory explains that and it is sound.

It works by using intense magnetics and shifting from this space into a aprrallel space by collapsing the vacuum with the magnetic field and thus moving into a new space where the permeability of electromagnetic radiation is higher, thus in that space the speed of light is far greater, and thus the amount of movement you gain for that little push gets you much more speed, thus allowing 1 tonne of rocket feul to generate a much muhc much greater amount of speed. Because of this the effects of causality and other temporal affects are far smaller, though they arent nonexistant. So technically this is only FTL travel in terms of speed relative to this space, the lightspeed barrier is never broken, it is only broken in terms of how fast we measure it here on earth.

It also describes propulsion by unconventional means, the sort of thing you would expect from an antigrav machine only it wouldnt really work unless it was in space, but I dont know the details of that.

Note that the Heim quantum theory has been going since the 1950's..

Posted: 03 May 2006, 21:31
by Mugslugs
i thought that tachyons already explained ftl travel due to the nature of theur imaginary mass caused by a failure in general relativity kind oremind me of futurama though

Posted: 03 May 2006, 21:34
by colorblind
Thanks for making me laugh, AF :P

But seriously, you don't believe in this nonesense do you? It isn't for no reason that paper of yours hasn't been publiced in a physics journal :)

Posted: 03 May 2006, 21:38
by AF
I ahd the material adn people asked for it, several, so i posted it in a thread and tried to explain what it was about, I never made any references to my beliefs =p

Posted: 03 May 2006, 21:58
by unpossible
hmm, interesting but probably a load of phooey. something about the extra dimensions (on top of the 3 we exist in) being of the order of the planck length doesn't sit right...how could we influence them/them influence us...

still, not really for me to say i don't understand it!

one thing i do find interesting is the one about the fine structure constant slowly decreasing over time (read VERY slowly)...so eventually it (and the speed of light with it) will drop so much that most of the matter in the universe is travelling faster than the (new) speed of light....BOOM. another big bang.

of course that needs a universe trillions of trillions of years old. not the paultry billions we have now.

Posted: 04 May 2006, 00:44
by Zoombie
FTL is cool, but most likely improbable. Note: Not impossible, just improbable. we just don't know enough. Right now we only see the top of the iceberg the universe is. Once we start getting below the surface then more things will become apparent and then we can decide whether its possible or not.

Posted: 04 May 2006, 02:06
by jcnossen
Wikipedia:
Heim's handicaps led him to prefer this isolation as the effort of communication in a university environment was too much of a strain for a handless, essentially deaf and blind physicist.
:shock: How did the guy make up any theory at all?
AF's paper sounds very much science fiction, but what Heim is not necessarily untrue (As far as Im able to judge that). AFAIK, string theory is also about making up new dimensions to get quantum theory and relativity in the same theory. Nobody has proven it is actually wrong.

As long as nobody has proven it wrong, it's fun to believe in it :)

Posted: 04 May 2006, 02:07
by Zoombie
Wow...sounds like a stretch he could come up with a theory. but then again his disabilitys might enable him to see things in a new angle

Posted: 04 May 2006, 08:40
by unpossible
Zoombie wrote:Wow...sounds like a stretch he could come up with a theory. but then again his disabilitys might enable him to see things in a new angle
a new angle he made up, barely even based on our reality because his is different :S

Posted: 04 May 2006, 11:36
by colorblind
unpossible wrote:...on top of the 3 we exist in...
Just so you know, we live in 4 dimensions (3 spatial + 1 temporal). Also dimensions of the Planck length aren't that crazy; if they would be bigger then we could see them.
And indeed Zaphod, stringtheory does introduce 7 extra dimensions (11 in total). But it also does a few things that Heim theory doesn't do: it solves the renormability problem in QFT, unifies the four fundamental forces, and resolves a lot of the problems the Standard Model has. (to be honest the latter two aren't realized just yet, but it seems very likely atm).
Heim theory probably only introduces a whole set of new problems. Although some call it "quantum theory" I haven't seen any quantization of it; and its new gravitonphoton could cause a lot of problems :).

And just so you know, I'm a physicist :P.

Posted: 04 May 2006, 13:04
by unpossible
colorblind wrote:
unpossible wrote:...on top of the 3 we exist in...
Just so you know, we live in 4 dimensions (3 spatial + 1 temporal). Also dimensions of the Planck length aren't that crazy; if they would be bigger then we could see them.
And indeed Zaphod, stringtheory does introduce 7 extra dimensions (11 in total). But it also does a few things that Heim theory doesn't do: it solves the renormability problem in QFT, unifies the four fundamental forces, and resolves a lot of the problems the Standard Model has. (to be honest the latter two aren't realized just yet, but it seems very likely atm).
Heim theory probably only introduces a whole set of new problems. Although some call it "quantum theory" I haven't seen any quantization of it; and its new gravitonphoton could cause a lot of problems :).

And just so you know, I'm a physicist :P.
time isn't a real dimension! ie it is literally imaginary. as in square root of -1 :P

x^2 + y^2 + z^2 -c^2 * t^2 = s^2

you can't solve it for time without having imaginary solutions,
>>>you end up with the four vector, (x,y,z,ict)

imaginary things aren't real and aren't physical, hence we don't live 'in time'.

all i was saying about the planck length thing is they are mostly invisible to our much larger dimensions (and i don't mean the dimensions of cars or people!!!!!11111 I mean normal small dimensions and such)

Posted: 04 May 2006, 14:01
by colorblind
unpossible wrote:time isn't a real dimension!
I'm sorry, but it surely is. You need four numbers (t,x,y,z) to indicate a point in the spacetime we currently live in, hence it is four-dimensional. Go study math :P.

The fact that time has a different sign only imlies that it has a different behaviour than the 3 spacelike ones; that might explain the trouble you are having with it. And your equations are flawed, please go study physics :P.

Posted: 04 May 2006, 14:04
by unpossible
time isn't real and you know it ;)
it's either that or the other 3 dimensions aren't real.

that was my point. it is not a REAL dimension. and it's x, y, z, ict

edit:flame oooooooon!

edit 2: you wouldn't argue if i said we don't exist in these small upper dimensions from string theory...they are non physical...so why do you think we exist in time?

Posted: 04 May 2006, 14:38
by Michilus_nimbus
unpossible wrote:time isn't real and you know it ;)
it's either that or the other 3 dimensions aren't real.
Could you explain that please?
I can't imagin time not existing, as I see it as the reason why the universe changes it's state.
Of course, I haven't studied quantum fysics or anything (yet)...

Posted: 04 May 2006, 14:45
by unpossible
Michilus_nimbus wrote:
unpossible wrote:time isn't real and you know it ;)
it's either that or the other 3 dimensions aren't real.
Could you explain that please?
I can't imagin time not existing, as I see it as the reason why the universe changes it's state.
Of course, I haven't studied quantum fysics or anything (yet)...
time does exist, just not in the same way that our space does.
you can't relate time and the spatial coordinates to each other without including an i (sqrt of -1) in there somewhere. this means that time is has an imaginary bit tacked on the front...vis it's not real. as in not physically relevent. much like you won't find an imaginary length or a negative area (lengthxlength) in the real world.

edit: oh noes i did the equation wrong. it's corrected now. the shame!

Posted: 04 May 2006, 15:10
by jcnossen
Here's another paper:
http://www.hpcc-space.de/publications/d ... 2-4094.pdf

I found the field mass pretty cool:
- material in a gravitational field implies gravitional energy stored in the field (common knowledge)
- E=mc^2
- so you can calculate the mass of this energy
- this mass itself causes gravitation.

(is it correct to apply E=mc^2 in this way?)

it was also the only part that I actually understood

Posted: 04 May 2006, 19:17
by colorblind
Unpossible, I really don't feel like teaching you Special Relativity. But I'm just too stubborn not to :)

Your equation is quite close to being correct, the actual form is

X^2 = - (ct)^2 x^2 + y^2 + z^2

for flat spacetimes. X is a vector pointing to somewhere in spacetime. Now there are 3 different cases:

X^2 > 0; the vector is said to be timelike
X^2 = 0; the vector is said to be lightlike
X^2 < 0; the vector is said to be spacelike

If we look at the lightcone,
Image
we see three areas: the future (the upper part of the cone), the past (the lower part), and elsewhere (everywhere outside the cone).

The timelike vector either points to somewhere in the future or past light cone. The lightlike vector sits exactly on the boundary of the cone (as it travels with the speed of light), and the spacelike vector points to somewhere outside the cone.

You cannot get from the present to elsewhere without breaking a few laws of physics; you have to go faster than the speed of light or travel in an imaginairy amout of time. This is probably what got you confused. Spacelike paths, e.g. paths with X^2 < 0, are simply unphysical.

Lightlike paths and timelike paths are however perfectly possible; light travels on lightlike paths and you yourself happen to walk a four-dimensional timelike path, whether you like it or not. There's nothing maginairy about it :).


And I'm sorry Zaphod, you're hopelessly wrong. The gravitational force is carried by gravitons, and has nothing to do with Einstein's most famous formula (btw I give you a cookie if you come up with the other two of his most famous). Classically the gravitational force is something like

Image,

which is a derivative in r of the potential energy:

Image.

How exactly the gravitons interact with matter is not understood, but to relate the rest mass energy to the gravitational energy is just wrong. The order of magnitude alone is off by a factor of 27!

Posted: 04 May 2006, 21:15
by unpossible
zounds i am undone. i always thought the 'time' axis was i*t not t, with the gradient c being the lightlike vector, or ict with the lightlike gradeint being 1. perhaps not!

:evil: PERHAPS :evil:

Posted: 05 May 2006, 00:48
by jcnossen
I know the conventional gravity formulas, I was just repeating what they did in the paper. And "Just wrong" doesn't really do it for me ;)
According to the paper there is a rest mass (could be a point) in a gravity field. This rest mass has a potential energy U.
This potential energy U causes a "field mass" on top of the rest mass, calculated with:
m = U/(c^2)

This field mass causes its own gravity field that affects everything around the point mass, however it is small compared to the actual rest mass.

G is so inaccurate that it leaves room for such a theory.
Image

So this particular thing from Heim's theory sounds somewhat possible, or atleast not necessarily false.

The theory also defines formulas to calculate the masses of all the elementary particles, so there has to be some truth in there somewhere.

Posted: 05 May 2006, 02:32
by Sabutai
Time is real. We have to define time to understand why time is fo real. So what is time? It seems to appear when change happens. Imagine a single point in "space" and nothing more. Without anything to relate one couldnt say if it was moving or how much time has passed watching it. A point has how many dimensions? ;) This is the same with two points somewhere. If they stood still no time would pass. It would be a two dimensional "space". Through motion the third dimension and time is created. So time is directly linked with space, mass and energy. Time is evoked by the interaction of the three. It is so real that planets wont move backwards n stuff. Masses obviously influence space and the flow of time. Einstein was a genius being able to pour this knowledge into formular. One cant go back in time because space, mass and energy just dont behave like that. And because of the same reason nothing can go faster than light. Mass would turn to energy if it moved at lightspeed. The flow of time is restricted to its enslavement to objects.