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Wow. That would.. rule.
Yeah im in awe, if we can pull this off in my lifetime (even better in 5 years!) it would be neat to see how quickly we start colonizing other planets, which you can sign me up for by the way :D
>it would be neat to see how quickly we start colonizing other plants
um, we have a hard time not screwing up an ecosystem that was perfect when we started, do you realy think we are capable of teraforming another planet?
anyway, it would be prety cool if this worked out, but if the engin uses a powerfull magentitc field as propusion, it'll also need non electronic compters (among other advancments before it could be used as a governable spacecraft)
um, we have a hard time not screwing up an ecosystem that was perfect when we started, do you realy think we are capable of teraforming another planet?
anyway, it would be prety cool if this worked out, but if the engin uses a powerfull magentitc field as propusion, it'll also need non electronic compters (among other advancments before it could be used as a governable spacecraft)
nothing like a fresh start, think positive man!
I colonize plants all the time.
I don't care how often you do it a1k0n, you better not try and colonize my pants...
The thing about the US military, is that they are run by gullible bureaucrats who would pull at *any* straws, just to "get ahead". Here now, they are giving money to a couple of dudes who resurrected a crackpot theory which no self-respecting physicist will even touch.
Okay, maybe we'll touch it with a ten-foot pole during the regular lunch gossip sessions. Just maybe.
Now if I can just think of a military use for these gravitational waves I am trying to make with cosmological phase transitions, I can also dip into the infinite pockets of US military funding.\
Okay, maybe we'll touch it with a ten-foot pole during the regular lunch gossip sessions. Just maybe.
Now if I can just think of a military use for these gravitational waves I am trying to make with cosmological phase transitions, I can also dip into the infinite pockets of US military funding.\
I certainly hope they actually get around to testing it out.
Softy, Heim theory is actually extrememly accurate at predicting a particle's mass, something that nothing else in traditional physics can do. This paper modifies that basis a bit and pushes it waaaay out there in their conclusions, but Heim himself thought some sort of hyperdrive might be feasible.
Softy, Heim theory is actually extrememly accurate at predicting a particle's mass, something that nothing else in traditional physics can do. This paper modifies that basis a bit and pushes it waaaay out there in their conclusions, but Heim himself thought some sort of hyperdrive might be feasible.
starfisher :
It does not reduce to the particle content of the SU(3)xSU(2)xU(1) standard model, which is experimentallly verified to very high accuracy. Indeed, it apparently also predicts a neutral partner of the electron...
Also, it is not true that "predicting mass" is something traditional physics cannot do. One has to be careful about what one means by "predicting mass", because mass is a dimensionful parameter. What you care about is mass hierarchies, i.e. ratios of mass. Physicists like "natural" hierachies of order unity, the standard model has problems with hierarchies : the mass ratios are orders of magnitudes different from each other. Heim's theory do not solve this problem, since no-one even knows what its natural scales are.
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by the way, you can read a skeptic (Steuard) view of things vs a pro-Heim dude (hughey) here :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Burkhard_Heim
Steuard is a good guy and a good friend, one of the best young brains out there.
It does not reduce to the particle content of the SU(3)xSU(2)xU(1) standard model, which is experimentallly verified to very high accuracy. Indeed, it apparently also predicts a neutral partner of the electron...
Also, it is not true that "predicting mass" is something traditional physics cannot do. One has to be careful about what one means by "predicting mass", because mass is a dimensionful parameter. What you care about is mass hierarchies, i.e. ratios of mass. Physicists like "natural" hierachies of order unity, the standard model has problems with hierarchies : the mass ratios are orders of magnitudes different from each other. Heim's theory do not solve this problem, since no-one even knows what its natural scales are.
[edit]
by the way, you can read a skeptic (Steuard) view of things vs a pro-Heim dude (hughey) here :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Burkhard_Heim
Steuard is a good guy and a good friend, one of the best young brains out there.
I was waiting for softy to comment on this thread before I said ANYTHING...
This sounds like the "cold fusion" thing all over again... (Which BTW they are stll pursuing apparently as a way to mass-produce Neutrons...)
This sounds like the "cold fusion" thing all over again... (Which BTW they are stll pursuing apparently as a way to mass-produce Neutrons...)
You can sell pretty much anything to the US government. In contrast to NSF, most DARPA programs are managed by retired generals (soldiers), and not scientists. All you need is a quad chart showing some nice pictures, and you get your millions. In DARPA the final funding decision is made by the program manager, not by a panel of scientist (as NSF does it). A lot of crap slides by these days. Its even worse with HSARPA (Homeland Security ...).
So the fact that your government throws a couple million dollar at this does not necesarily mean there is any substance to it.
So the fact that your government throws a couple million dollar at this does not necesarily mean there is any substance to it.
Much of Steuard's criticism seems based on the fact that Heim was a crippled, eccentric recluse who refused to give his ideas to the rest of the world. What the few physicists who have actually dedicated the (apparently) years necessary to grasp the theory have said is far more positive.
The fact that a paper based on it won an award from the AIAA (American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronomy) raises it above the level of some crank scheme to leech money from the Defense Department in my eyes. I'm not saying it's a revolution that will change the world, or that it's even solid science - only that it isn't complete crap, and the tangential advances in materials required to build a test device might be worth it on their own.
To be honest, I'd rather throw a few million dollars at some loons hell-bent on generating a big magnetic field than dump any more into the cock-up of ITER. There are so many whackos out there with crazy theories, even some with pretty crazy experimental results, who could use a million or two to actually run some crazy experiments and maybe find something interesting.
Basically, I'm a proponent of natural selection among researchers instead of the current "overfund only politcally opurtune experimentation". Peer-review is nice, but traditionally, scientific progress is driven by people on the fringe doing stupid stuff that fails the majority of the time. I'd rather fund 1000 failures for a few successes than fund a march of ever more expensive and complicated experiments that never seem to do anything.
The fact that a paper based on it won an award from the AIAA (American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronomy) raises it above the level of some crank scheme to leech money from the Defense Department in my eyes. I'm not saying it's a revolution that will change the world, or that it's even solid science - only that it isn't complete crap, and the tangential advances in materials required to build a test device might be worth it on their own.
To be honest, I'd rather throw a few million dollars at some loons hell-bent on generating a big magnetic field than dump any more into the cock-up of ITER. There are so many whackos out there with crazy theories, even some with pretty crazy experimental results, who could use a million or two to actually run some crazy experiments and maybe find something interesting.
Basically, I'm a proponent of natural selection among researchers instead of the current "overfund only politcally opurtune experimentation". Peer-review is nice, but traditionally, scientific progress is driven by people on the fringe doing stupid stuff that fails the majority of the time. I'd rather fund 1000 failures for a few successes than fund a march of ever more expensive and complicated experiments that never seem to do anything.
Jamay sees particals and pecunia flying around his head and gets dizzy. I WANT THAT ENGINE, DONT CARE HOW IT WORKS IF IT WORKS!
so, we hop to some other dimension, and then hop back?
but how do we know what one to go to, and when when get there, if we will be able to survive there for any appreciable ammount of time, and if we do, will we be able to pop out at the correct one after our journey?
so many questions, so much BS.
but how do we know what one to go to, and when when get there, if we will be able to survive there for any appreciable ammount of time, and if we do, will we be able to pop out at the correct one after our journey?
so many questions, so much BS.
my physics and such aren't the best (high school sophomoreish), but couldn't they reproduce this engine to a much smaller scale to test, hypothetically? like produce a strong enough magnetic field to 'warp,' oh, say a HotWheels car-sized ship?
starfisher
I suppose this is on topic.
If you read the thread, you should see that steuard is the one who is consistently trying to make some sense of the theory, but hughey (and others who are too "positive" about Heim theory) who are dragging the "Heim's blind and disabled so give him so slack even though he is writing crap" horse around.
That aside, the AIAA award means nothing. It's an astronautic engineer's association, not a physics association. Now, before you drag out the "physicists look down on engineers" stuff, I was a member of this association because in a past career, I build spacecraft for a living and was an astronautic engineer. And, there are a lot of bright people there, but fundamental theory is not what they are experts in.
Finally, the crux of the matter : the myth of the "lone ranger scientist". There is no such thing. It's a product of the iconization of famous scientists that create the illusion that "fundamental" changes are made by significant individuals working on the fringe. From Newton to Einstein, nobody revolutionize physics with a brilliant idea out of nowhere. The latter for example, have been touted as the guy who pull relativity out of his ass from nowhere. Albert was really smart, but he didn't invent Special Relativity out of nowhere (he based his ideas on Lorentz'), and I can say the same things about his other accomplishments such as General Relativity (he scooped Hilbert and others). Science is a collective endeavour. Cue the quote about newton standing on shoulders of giants.
(i was writing some flames about people who diss peer review, but I think I've said enough.)
The reason I am partly flaming is because I am sad everytime I see such crap being paraded as science to the public, and money's wasted on entertaining crackpots. There are a lot of honest scientists out there trying to eat from an ever shrinking pie in this anti-science country, and crackpots taking pieces of it is the last thing they need.
/flame off. Carry on!
I suppose this is on topic.
If you read the thread, you should see that steuard is the one who is consistently trying to make some sense of the theory, but hughey (and others who are too "positive" about Heim theory) who are dragging the "Heim's blind and disabled so give him so slack even though he is writing crap" horse around.
That aside, the AIAA award means nothing. It's an astronautic engineer's association, not a physics association. Now, before you drag out the "physicists look down on engineers" stuff, I was a member of this association because in a past career, I build spacecraft for a living and was an astronautic engineer. And, there are a lot of bright people there, but fundamental theory is not what they are experts in.
Finally, the crux of the matter : the myth of the "lone ranger scientist". There is no such thing. It's a product of the iconization of famous scientists that create the illusion that "fundamental" changes are made by significant individuals working on the fringe. From Newton to Einstein, nobody revolutionize physics with a brilliant idea out of nowhere. The latter for example, have been touted as the guy who pull relativity out of his ass from nowhere. Albert was really smart, but he didn't invent Special Relativity out of nowhere (he based his ideas on Lorentz'), and I can say the same things about his other accomplishments such as General Relativity (he scooped Hilbert and others). Science is a collective endeavour. Cue the quote about newton standing on shoulders of giants.
(i was writing some flames about people who diss peer review, but I think I've said enough.)
The reason I am partly flaming is because I am sad everytime I see such crap being paraded as science to the public, and money's wasted on entertaining crackpots. There are a lot of honest scientists out there trying to eat from an ever shrinking pie in this anti-science country, and crackpots taking pieces of it is the last thing they need.
/flame off. Carry on!
Mmmm... tasty non-physics... :P
softy: steuard tries to make sense of the theory, when the theory is admitted by all sides to be far too complex and obfuscated to simply review and grasp. He, and others, fall back to saying that it's not worth their time to actually understand the theory because it hasn't been peer-reviewed and published by a reputable science journal. They also cite Heim's eccentricity/insanity as a reason for ignoring his physics. I'm not saying "give him a break because he got blown up by the Nazis" - I'm saying toss a few million from the bloated defense budget at people who come up with these crackpot ideas. Spreading the money around can only help, especially given that even if the theory itself is totally debunked and proven conclusively to be worthless, the necessary development required to even run the test can only help other people.
And who gets funding in todays world? Those who get vigourously peer-reviewed? If only that were the criteria - you have to be politically palatable as well. Even then, peer-review and feasibility haven't stopped pork projects from soaking up money.
I should probably clarify that I don't mean one guy in his basement when I say "people", although you can find recent examples of one guy in his basement making impressive gains. Of course they stand on the shoulders of other human beings! I don't dispute the need for a community and skeptical review of purported results, but there are small groups of people willing to put their necks out on stuff that isn't strong enough to stand peer-review. I for one would rather give them a million dollars over a year or two than spend that in a few hours over in Iraq or funding flashy glitz like ITER - and if they fail, like most of them will, tough for them. Everyone else gets to benefit from whatever they did in the meantime.
Technological progress can only increase by injecting more money into the system.
And who gets funding in todays world? Those who get vigourously peer-reviewed? If only that were the criteria - you have to be politically palatable as well. Even then, peer-review and feasibility haven't stopped pork projects from soaking up money.
I should probably clarify that I don't mean one guy in his basement when I say "people", although you can find recent examples of one guy in his basement making impressive gains. Of course they stand on the shoulders of other human beings! I don't dispute the need for a community and skeptical review of purported results, but there are small groups of people willing to put their necks out on stuff that isn't strong enough to stand peer-review. I for one would rather give them a million dollars over a year or two than spend that in a few hours over in Iraq or funding flashy glitz like ITER - and if they fail, like most of them will, tough for them. Everyone else gets to benefit from whatever they did in the meantime.
Technological progress can only increase by injecting more money into the system.
They're reason for funding it is that if they don't, and he's right, but someone else funded his research, we're in deep s(pace).