Marte, dus intors 5 ore !

Take a leap into hyperspace

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?

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.

Quantum theory describes the realm of the very small - atoms, electrons and
elementary particles - while general relativity deals with gravity. The two
theories are immensely successful in their separate spheres. The clash
arises when it comes to describing the basic structure of space. In general
relativity, space-time is an active, malleable fabric. It has four
dimensions - three of space and one of time - that deform when masses are
placed in them. In Einstein's formulation, the force of gravity is a result
of the deformation of these dimensions. Quantum theory, on the other hand,
demands that space is a fixed and passive stage, something simply there for
particles to exist on. It also suggests that space itself must somehow be
made up of discrete, quantum elements.

In the early 1950s, Heim began to rewrite the equations of general
relativity in a quantum framework. He drew on Einstein's idea that the
gravitational force emerges from the dimensions of space and time, but
suggested that all fundamental forces, including electromagnetism, might
emerge from a new, different set of dimensions. Originally he had four extra
dimensions, but he discarded two of them believing that they did not produce
any forces, and settled for adding a new two-dimensional "sub-space" onto
Einstein's four-dimensional space-time.

In Heim's six-dimensional world, the forces of gravity and electromagnetism
are coupled together. Even in our familiar four-dimensional world, we can
see a link between the two forces through the behaviour of fundamental
particles such as the electron. An electron has both mass and charge. When
an electron falls under the pull of gravity its moving electric charge
creates a magnetic field. And if you use an electromagnetic field to
accelerate an electron you move the gravitational field associated with its
mass. But in the four dimensions we know, you cannot change the strength of
gravity simply by cranking up the electromagnetic field.

In Heim's view of space and time, this limitation disappears. He claimed it
is possible to convert electromagnetic energy into gravitational and back
again, and speculated that a rotating magnetic field could reduce the
influence of gravity on a spacecraft enough for it to take off.

When he presented his idea in public in 1957, he became an instant
celebrity. Wernher von Braun, the German engineer who at the time was
leading the Saturn rocket programme that later launched astronauts to the
moon, approached Heim about his work and asked whether the expensive Saturn
rockets were worthwhile. And in a letter in 1964, the German relativity
theorist Pascual Jordan, who had worked with the distinguished physicists
Max Born and Werner Heisenberg and was a member of the Nobel committee, told
Heim that his plan was so important "that its successful experimental
treatment would without doubt make the researcher a candidate for the Nobel
prize".

But all this attention only led Heim to retreat from the public eye. This
was partly because of his severe multiple disabilities, caused by a lab
accident when he was still in his teens. But Heim was also reluctant to
disclose his theory without an experiment to prove it. He never learned
English because he did not want his work to leave the country. As a result,
very few people knew about his work and no one came up with the necessary
research funding. In 1958 the aerospace company Bölkow did offer some money,
but not enough to do the proposed experiment.

While Heim waited for more money to come in, the company's director, Ludwig
Bölkow, encouraged him to develop his theory further. Heim took his advice,
and one of the results was a theorem that led to a series of formulae for
calculating the masses of the fundamental particles - something conventional
theories have conspicuously failed to achieve. He outlined this work in 1977
in the Max Planck Institute's journal Zeitschrift für Naturforschung, his
only peer-reviewed paper. In an abstruse way that few physicists even claim
to understand, the formulae work out a particle's mass starting from
physical characteristics, such as its charge and angular momentum.

Yet the theorem has proved surprisingly powerful. The standard model of
physics, which is generally accepted as the best available theory of
elementary particles, is incapable of predicting a particle's mass. Even the
accepted means of estimating mass theoretically, known as lattice quantum
chromodynamics, only gets to between 1 and 10 per cent of the experimental
values.
Gravity reduction

But in 1982, when researchers at the German Electron Synchrotron (DESY) in
Hamburg implemented Heim's mass theorem in a computer program, it predicted
masses of fundamental particles that matched the measured values to within
the accuracy of experimental error. If they are let down by anything, it is
the precision to which we know the values of the fundamental constants. Two
years after Heim's death in 2001, his long-term collaborator Illobrand von
Ludwiger calculated the mass formula using a more accurate gravitational
constant. "The masses came out even more precise," he says.

After publishing the mass formulae, Heim never really looked at hyperspace
propulsion again. Instead, in response to requests for more information
about the theory behind the mass predictions, he spent all his time
detailing his ideas in three books published in German. It was only in 1980,
when the first of his books came to the attention of a retired Austrian
patent officer called Walter Dröscher, that the hyperspace propulsion idea
came back to life. Dröscher looked again at Heim's ideas and produced an
"extended" version, resurrecting the dimensions that Heim originally
discarded. The result is "Heim-Dröscher space", a mathematical description
of an eight-dimensional universe.

>From this, Dröscher claims, you can derive the four forces known in physics:
the gravitational and electromagnetic forces, and the strong and weak
nuclear forces. But there's more to it than that. "If Heim's picture is to
make sense," Dröscher says, "we are forced to postulate two more fundamental
forces." These are, Dröscher claims, related to the familiar gravitational
force: one is a repulsive anti-gravity similar to the dark energy that
appears to be causing the universe's expansion to accelerate. And the other
might be used to accelerate a spacecraft without any rocket fuel.

This force is a result of the interaction of Heim's fifth and sixth
dimensions and the extra dimensions that Dröscher introduced. It produces
pairs of "gravitophotons", particles that mediate the interconversion of
electromagnetic and gravitational energy. Dröscher teamed up with Jochem
Häuser, a physicist and professor of computer science at the University of
Applied Sciences in Salzgitter, Germany, to turn the theoretical framework
into a proposal for an experimental test. The paper they produced,
"Guidelines for a space propulsion device based on Heim's quantum theory",
is what won the AIAA's award last year.

Claims of the possibility of "gravity reduction" or "anti-gravity" induced
by magnetic fields have been investigated by NASA before (New Scientist, 12
January 2002, p 24). But this one, Dröscher insists, is different. "Our
theory is not about anti-gravity. It's about completely new fields with new
properties," he says. And he and Häuser have suggested an experiment to
prove it.

This will require a huge rotating ring placed above a superconducting coil
to create an intense magnetic field. With a large enough current in the
coil, and a large enough magnetic field, Dröscher claims the electromagnetic
force can reduce the gravitational pull on the ring to the point where it
floats free. Dröscher and Häuser say that to completely counter Earth's pull
on a 150-tonne spacecraft a magnetic field of around 25 tesla would be
needed. While that's 500,000 times the strength of Earth's magnetic field,
pulsed magnets briefly reach field strengths up to 80 tesla. And Dröscher
and Häuser go further. With a faster-spinning ring and an even stronger
magnetic field, gravitophotons would interact with conventional gravity to
produce a repulsive anti-gravity force, they suggest.

Dröscher is hazy about the details, but he suggests that a spacecraft fitted
with a coil and ring could be propelled into a multidimensional hyperspace.
Here the constants of nature could be different, and even the speed of light
could be several times faster than we experience. If this happens, it would
be possible to reach Mars in less than 3 hours and a star 11 light years
away in only 80 days, Dröscher and Häuser say.

So is this all fanciful nonsense, or a revolution in the making? The
majority of physicists have never heard of Heim theory, and most of those
contacted by New Scientist said they couldn't make sense of Dröscher and
Häuser's description of the theory behind their proposed experiment.
Following Heim theory is hard work even without Dröscher's extension, says
Markus Pössel, a theoretical physicist at the Max Planck Institute for
Gravitational Physics in Potsdam, Germany. Several years ago, while an
undergraduate at the University of Hamburg, he took a careful look at Heim
theory. He says he finds it "largely incomprehensible", and difficult to tie
in with today's physics. "What is needed is a step-by-step introduction,
beginning at modern physical concepts," he says.

The general consensus seems to be that Dröscher and Häuser's theory is
incomplete at best, and certainly extremely difficult to follow. And it has
not passed any normal form of peer review, a fact that surprised the AIAA
prize reviewers when they made their decision. "It seemed to be quite
developed and ready for such publication," Mikellides told New Scientist.

At the moment, the main reason for taking the proposal seriously must be
Heim theory's uncannily successful prediction of particle masses. Maybe,
just maybe, Heim theory really does have something to contribute to modern
physics. "As far as I understand it, Heim theory is ingenious," says Hans
Theodor Auerbach, a theoretical physicist at the Swiss Federal Institute of
Technology in Zurich who worked with Heim. "I think that physics will take
this direction in the future."

It may be a long while before we find out if he's right. In its present
design, Dröscher and Häuser's experiment requires a magnetic coil several
metres in diameter capable of sustaining an enormous current density. Most
engineers say that this is not feasible with existing materials and
technology, but Roger Lenard, a space propulsion researcher at Sandia
National Laboratories in New Mexico thinks it might just be possible. Sandia
runs an X-ray generator known as the Z machine which "could probably
generate the necessary field intensities and gradients".

For now, though, Lenard considers the theory too shaky to justify the use of
the Z machine. "I would be very interested in getting Sandia interested if
we could get a more perspicacious introduction to the mathematics behind the
proposed experiment," he says. "Even if the results are negative, that, in
my mind, is a successful experiment."
Who was Burkhard Heim?

Burkhard Heim had a remarkable life. Born in 1925 in Potsdam, Germany, he
decided at the age of 6 that he wanted to become a rocket scientist. He
disguised his designs in code so that no one could discover his secret. And
in the cellar of his parents' house, he experimented with high explosives.
But this was to lead to disaster.

Towards the end of the second world war, he worked as an explosives
developer, and an accident in 1944 in which a device exploded in his hands
left him permanently disabled. He lost both his forearms, along with 90 per
cent of his hearing and eyesight.

After the war, he attended university in Göttingen to study physics. The
idea of propelling a spacecraft using quantum mechanics rather than rocket
fuel led him to study general relativity and quantum mechanics. It took an
enormous effort. From 1948, his father and wife replaced his senses,
spending hours reading papers and transcribing his calculations onto paper.
And he developed a photographic memory.

Supporters of Heim theory claim that it is a panacea for the troubles in
modern physics. They say it unites quantum mechanics and general relativity,
can predict the masses of the building blocks of matter from first
principles, and can even explain the state of the universe 13.7 billion
years ago.



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