Star Trek may become a reality!
Thanks for that, Reef!
I LOVE this stuff!
When you look at the greatest leaps in Technology, its when someone says “Hey…let’s see if it works…” and don’t get Bound by convention.
In some cases, the TRUE pioneers may not know WHY something works, but do it anyway until the Science catches up with the reality.
If this theory of propulsion pans out, it will definitely open up a New Era in space travel.
Exciting stuff!
Mufasa
What happens if you pop into another dimension where the speed of light is slower?
[quote]pookie wrote:
What happens if you pop into another dimension where the speed of light is slower?
[/quote]
I am guessing it has to do with the energy they supply for the cross dimensional to happen. They will probably be testing that. And all they would have to do is turn off the engine. Unless the speed of light is super slow, and they can see the big banging happening ahahah.
Lol this all smells of Doom 3.
[quote]SeanT wrote:
pookie wrote:
What happens if you pop into another dimension where the speed of light is slower?
I am guessing it has to do with the energy they supply for the cross dimensional to happen. They will probably be testing that. And all they would have to do is turn off the engine. Unless the speed of light is super slow, and they can see the big banging happening ahahah.[/quote]
Well, if the speed of light happens to be, say, 1 inch/million years, turning off the engine could take a while, since they won’t be able to exceed the speed of light while reaching for the off switch.
But seriously, technologies based on “controversial theories” (generally nice scientist speak for “bullshit”) have very little chance of ever appearing.
And while I agree with Mufasa that many great strides have been made by people who weren’t constrained by the current thinking about various stuff, there is also the fact that most of the low hanging fruits made available by scientific progress have already been plucked. Most of the progress in the last 100 years has been derived from our understanding of quantum mechanics; very little “breakthroughs” have occurred since.
In fact, other than miniaturization, there is very little new technology in the past 30-40 years. Nanotech and biotech show much promise, but that’s not being done by guys in their garage, nor is most of it applicable to FTL travel.
If that were to work, how would you be able to communicate with mission control?
No one would know if it worked for years. After a successful mission, you could return only to hear your transmissions years later.
Whoever greenlighted this project is a sucker.
Mufasa I understand that it is important for science to undertake new research/tasks/etc. But this is just a shot in the dark. They aren’t starting this project with any fundamental understanding of the medium they are working with(dimensional travel).
Even in the article a huge jump is made in the logical progression from a magnetic field providing thrust, to a magnetic field shifting the spacecraft to a new dimension…
This isn’t just challenging current physics understanding, it is like taking a page from a fiction book and saying “it could happen” and trying to make it happen because you want to.
Hey I once saw this movie called Event Horizon that said you could bend space in half to get anywhere instantly, let’s go make that engine while we’re at it.
[quote]red04 wrote:
it is like taking a page from a fiction book and saying “it could happen” and trying to make it happen because you want to.
[/quote]
Isn’t that the concept behind all adult films?
Haven’t heard anything about it since Jan 2006. Not this propulsion or this HQT that is brought up. Probably a lot of crap.
We’ll see.
-Gendou
Would be nice to work, but the Heim Theory, upon which it is based, is quite controversial:
It predicts particles that, so far, have not been observed, and it does not predict pretty well-known particles.
Heim Theory collides with the Supersymmetry, which is pretty bad news since the latter is thought to be quite likely true. The Higgs boson, if it exists, does not “rhyme” with the Heim Theory either.
Once the big accelerator in Switzerland is turned on in 2008 we may eliminate some of the unknowns. Who knows, maybe Heim was right after all, although that’s usually considered to be quite unlikely.
Burkhard Heim, the guy who made this theory, had a fairly unusual life:
Event Horizon, anyone?
The “light speed broken” experiment seems to be a repeat of a similar previous experiment (can’t find the reference) where the speed of light had been exceeded.
The problem with these experiments, is that while the speed of light is exceeded, you cannot use the method to send any information. Hence you get no causality violations, but it’s also devoid of practical applications. If you can’t use it to communicate or travel, it’s not of much use.