Welcome to Mars express: only a three hour trip
IAN JOHNSTON SCIENCE CORRESPONDENT
AN EXTRAORDINARY "hyperspace" engine that could make interstellar space travel a reality by flying into other dimensions is being investigated by the United States government.
The hypothetical device, which has been outlined in principle but is based on a controversial theory about the fabric of the universe, could potentially allow a spacecraft to travel to Mars in three hours and journey to a star 11 light years away in just 80 days, according to a report in today's New Scientist magazine. 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. The US air force has expressed an interest in the idea and scientists working for the American Department of Energy - which has a device known as the Z Machine that could generate the kind of magnetic fields required to drive the engine - say they may carry out a test if the theory withstands further scrutiny.
Professor Jochem Hauser, one of the scientists who put forward the idea, told The Scotsman that if everything went well a working engine could be tested in about five years.
However, Prof Hauser, a physicist at the Applied Sciences University in Salzgitter, Germany, and a former chief of aerodynamics at the European Space Agency, cautioned it was based on a highly controversial theory that would require a significant change in the current understanding of the laws of physics.
SNIP
http://news.scotsman.com/scitech.cfm?id=16902006
On Jan. 14, 2001, the German physicist Burkhard Heim died, 75 years old, in Northeim/Germany. In 1944 he had lost his sight, his hearing and his hands in an accident. Because of his handicap he left the MPI of Astrophysics in Göttingen to continue his research in private. In 1957, after having discovered a new field propulsion system for space vehicles, Heim became known in the media. Then, nothing was heard about him for some ten years. Only a few physicists knew that Heim was working on a unified six-dimensional quantum field theory of matter and gravitation. Between 1977 and 1984 he published his theory and the masses of elementary particles which he had got from his mass formula and which up to now have not jet been found by any other physicist. There was hardly anyone willing to deal with such a difficult matter (written in German) since nobody wants to believe that a privately working physicist might be able to find the world formula. As the results Heim had got in particle physics proved to be correct, there won´t hardly be any choice but to start dealing with his theory, even if hesitantly, in the near future. And this will necessarely lead to a new world view of physics.
There is debate among physicists as to whether the ideas of Heim achieved his goals. Those who have collaborated with Heim generally believe that he may have succeeded. Most other physicists have not held the theory in as high a regard, primarily because a significant portion of Heim's work has not been published in rigorously peer reviewed journals. Other factors limiting the acceptance of Heim's theory include its complex mathematical formalism (such as its use of selector calculus), as well as its lengthy nature. In particular, the theory was initially published in German and had notations which were not in widespread use. For these reasons, Heim's theory has attracted a limited audience and appeal in today's theoretical physics community. As a result, he is not as well known now as most prominent physicists, though in the 1950s and 1960s he was prominent in the media and amongst distinguished physicists.
A few researchers today continue developing Heim's theory using a form of quantum gravity with the expectation that Heim may receive posthumous credit for finding a comprehensive framework for a Theory of Everything.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burkhard_HeimTake a leap into hyperspace
* 05 January 2006
* From New Scientist Print Edition
* Haiko Lietz
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. It could leave Earth at lunchtime and get to the moon in time for dinner. There's just one catch: the idea relies on an obscure and largely unrecognised kind of physics. Can they possibly be serious?
The AIAA is certainly not embarrassed. What's more, the US military has begun to cast its eyes over the hyperdrive concept, and a space propulsion researcher at the US Department of Energy's Sandia National Laboratories has said he would be interested in putting the idea to the test. And despite the bafflement of most physicists at the theory that supposedly underpins it, Pavlos Mikellides, an aerospace engineer at the Arizona State University in Tempe who reviewed the winning paper, stands by the committee's choice. "Even though such features have been explored before, this particular approach is quite unique," he says.
Unique it certainly is. If the experiment gets the go-ahead and works, it could reveal new interactions between the fundamental forces of nature that would change the future of space travel. Forget spending six months or more holed up in a rocket on the way to Mars, a round trip on the hyperdrive could take as little as 5 hours. All our worries about astronauts' muscles wasting away or their DNA being irreparably damaged by cosmic radiation would disappear overnight. What's more the device would put travel to the stars within reach for the first time. But can the hyperdrive really get off the ground?
“A hyperdrive craft would put the stars within reach for the first time”
The answer to that question hinges on the work of a little-known German physicist. Burkhard Heim began to explore the hyperdrive propulsion concept in the 1950s as a spin-off from his attempts to heal the biggest divide in physics: the rift between quantum mechanics and Einstein's general theory of relativity.
http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/mg18925331.200/
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