Faster than light travel due in 5 years??

[kalesh]

An ftl (faster than light travel) engine is being investigated by the us government.

It will reportedly take 3 hours to get to mars and 80 days for an 11 light year trip.!!

Read full news here

[Mercedes Benzene]

That's just vague enough to sound completely preposterous. :D

[Queso]

Sounds like fun. I want to know more.

[kalesh]

Check out the link. Its on a news site so I give it some credibility.

I think i'll be really cool if it works out ok.

Hey I'm off to the next galaxy, anyone coming?

[pgrmdave]

I'm extremely skeptical - the site (which, being a news site doesn't describe science very well) provides these explanations:

 

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.

Now, I haven't yet gone to research Burkhard Heim, but I don't see how a magnetic field will result in gravity, nor can I understand how that would provide thrust (especially without some major unintended consequences).

 

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.

Now, I know of three physical dimensions and one time dimension. What definition of 'dimension' are they using, and what does a magnetic field have to do with it? Are planets' magnetic fields not strong enough?

[kalesh]

I posted this in the news forum however I have decided to post here as well so more discussion can be done on it.

According to a news article we should have ftl within next 5 years.:)

A trip to mars takes 3 hours and 11 light year trip takes 80 days?

check out this article

 

What do you think? Can it happen? Will it happen?

 

Also I read somewhere that faster than light TV signals can be sent by poking a hole in the dimension to another and sending a signal through that other dimension. The receiver pokes a hole into the same dimension to receive it. But I cant remember where.

Anyone heard? read? about this?

[Fatstep]

It will not happen.

[CraigD]

The gist of the article is that, if some of the prediction of Heim theory are correct, a very strong magnetic field could increase the local value of the speed of light in vacuum, allowing massive objects to be moved from one place to another in less time than they ordinarily would for the same propulsive energy, possibly even in less time than a light signal would take. Also, the theory predicts that artificial local gravitational fields could be created by strong magnetic fields. Such a field could, in principle, accelerate a spacecraft. It’s true that these are among the prediction of Heim theory.

 

The article also says

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.

Though I can’t confirm it, I’ve no reason not to believe that Z machine researchers don’t have plans to test Heim theory predictions, if an experiment using the Z machine can be designed.

 

The article, though, seems to suggest that the Z machine, or something like it, is a practical candidate for some sort of spacecraft engine system. This seems very unlikely.

 

The Z machine is intended to create very hot, high pressure conditions to explore ways of producing controlled “hot fusion”, with the long term goal of generating power from a plentiful fuel – the Hydrogen in water. It’s succeeded in fusing deuterium ([math]^2H[/math], that is, ordinary hydrogen with an added neutron) into Helium, but using much more energy that the fusion produced. This is expected – if controlled hot fusion using the Z machine’s “z-pinch” technique is successful, it will be done by a new, very different machine.

 

A key part of the “z-pinch” process involved forcing plasma inward with a very powerful magnetic field, generated by a brief electric current so great that it destroys its conducting wires (the destroyed wire supplies the matter used as the plasma). It’s capable of one or two such “shots” a day. Each firing requires a lot of power – about 3*10^14 watts, or about 100 times the worlds total electric power output.

 

To be used in a “Heim drive”, the magnetic field generator must operate continuously. Using the most efficient imaginable fuel – antimatter – this would consume a kilogram of antimatter, (and one of matter) every 6 seconds. At present, very little antimatter has been created and stored, at an estimated cost of about $35,000,000,000,000 ($35 trillion)/gram. Engineers predict that, by developing specialized factories, the cost could be reduced to a mere $8,000,000,000 ($8 billion)/gram. Taking this lower number, a Heim drive using Z machine technology would cost at least $1,000,000,000,000 ($1 trillion) per second to operate – or about all the money in the world every 30 seconds.

 

I’m pretty confident that, even if the necessary Heim theory predictions prove correct, no spacecraft will be using such a technology any time soon.

[Jay-qu]

The physical principles benind this are rubbish.

 

"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."

 

Firstly, how would a magnetic field invoke a changing of dimensions? assuming there is another dimension to move to - what says that the speed of light is faster there. Also a dimension is like a direction in space, dimensions are perpendicular to each other, so how would traveling down a seperate dimension get you any further along another? Perhaps they mean a parrallel dimension - like a parrallel world, but there is no proof of anything like this exsisting.

 

Secondly, they say an intense magnetic field. At the moment the strongest sustained magnetic field we can create is around 400,000 Gauss. With destructive pulsed magnets we have been able to get up to around 1 million Gauss, but this is only for a split second. The strongest known magnetic fields are produced by neutron stars (or magnetars) these have a field in the order of 1,000 trillion Gauss! Some 10 billion times stronger than the strongest permanant magnets. Now if we dont see magnetars slipping in and out of other dimensions we can only assume they are still not strong enough!

 

Just say we could produce such a strong field for a second, then this introduces another problem, due to the diamagnetism of water, your body would be ripped apart by tidal forces.. not to mention whatever we try to contruct the field and ship out of.. certainly not a metal of any kind!

[CraigD]

The physical principles benind this are rubbish.

 

Firstly, how would a magnetic field invoke a changing of dimensions?

I think that the Scotsman article, and likely the New Scientist article it references, is taking poetic license (and spewing scientific gibberish) in using phrases like “slip into a different dimension”.

 

I gather that Heim theory predicts an increase in the value of the vacuum speed of light © in the presence of a magnetic field. So the spacecraft engine being described doesn’t cause the ship to blink out of the universe “into hyperspace” or any other space-opera-like thing, but surrounds itself with a volume of space with a higher c.

 

Just having a higher value of c won’t, of course, make anything actually move. Although in principle anything – a rocket, light pressure, etc. – could be used to accelerate the spacecraft, another Heim theory prediction suggests that it could be accelerated by artificial gravity generated by the same magnetic field.

 

All this speculative design depends, or course, of these Heim theory predictions being right, which is far from certain, or even expected by most physicists. The history of the theory is controversial. Heim never published it as a peer-reviewed scientific theory. He appears to have published only one peer-reviewed paper, a speculation about application of the theory for the propulsion of missiles in the specialized engineering journal Zeitschrift für Flugkörper (Magazine for Missiles). The rest of Heim’s writing was privately published without peer review.

 

Though a casual examination of Heim’s personality and career might lead one to conclude that he was mentally disturbed, and his theory pure pseudo-science (as it’s commonly considered, including inclusion in wikipedia’s list of pseudoscientific theories), what keep it from being dismissed as such by all physicists, engineers, and enthusiasts, appears to be the impressive and difficult mathematical formalism Heim developed to pursue the theory. Unlike many alleged cranks, Heim impressed even some accomplished mathematicians and physicists as having a deep understanding of conventional science. Understanding Heim theory well enough to even have an educated opinion about it is daunting. I’m unaware of anyone having written a convincing debunking of the theory, and some respected scientists seem to guardedly yet enthusiastically hold hope that it may prove useful and to some extent correct.

Secondly, they say an intense magnetic field. At the moment the strongest sustained magnetic field we can create is around 400,000 Gauss. …

As I attempted to illustrate in my previous post, generating the magnetic fields Heim theory predicts are necessary for a practical spaceflight engine appears far beyond present-day capabilities. For this reason, I think such systems must be considered “far future” possible technology, requiring an order-of-Kardashev-magnitude greater technological base – in short, “Star Trek engineering”.

 

Whether a superluminal spacecraft will ever be made is, I think, completely a subject of speculation. My personal suspicion is “no”. But discussions like these, which are rooted in serious, if poorly experimentally supported, scientific theory are exciting, and serve, I think, to keep popular science fresh and interesting.

[Taraxanoid]

At present, very little antimatter has been created and stored, at an estimated cost of about $35,000,000,000,000 ($35 trillion)/gram. Engineers predict that, by developing specialized factories, the cost could be reduced to a mere $8,000,000,000 ($8 billion)/gram. Taking this lower number, a Heim drive using Z machine technology would cost at least $1,000,000,000,000 ($1 trillion) per second to operate – or about all the money in the world every 30 seconds.

 

This article may seem preposterous but what you said about the cost of creating and storing antimatter is equally preposterous. I want to see credible sources.

[CraigD]

This article may seem preposterous but what you said about the cost of creating and storing antimatter is equally preposterous. I want to see credible sources.

Requests to “show me your sources” are one of the core principles of hypography – I apologize for not sourcing my original post, but though the claim sufficiently well known to not require it.

 

Here’s the academic webpage that appears first in a google search of the phrase “cost of antimatter”: Antimatter - Science Fact

 

Many discussions of the difficulties and preposterous-seeming current cost of creating and storing antimatter can be found on the internet. IMHO, the best exploration of the subject, as well as how the cost might be reduced enough for antimatter to become preferable to combustibles (eg: liquid hydrogen and oxygen) as a rocket fuel, and how such rocket might be constructed, appear in the late Robert Forward’s 1998 popular science book “Indistinguishable from Magic” (available in print and electronically).

 

In summary, Forward and others note that the staggering current cost of antimatter production is due in part to it being produced by particle accelerator and collector systems that are designed for scientific research, not specialized industrial-style factories designed to be as energy efficient as possible.

 

Even if practical storage techniques can be perfected, and cost of production brought low enough for antimatter to be used as source of energy for spaceflight, it seems unlikely that a “warp engine” based on Heim theory would be practical. I, and most technologists, believe that it would be used to heat and expel reaction mass in rocket engines bearing a recognizable similarity to present day ones. By rough calculations, such engines would be about 1 billion (10^9) times more efficient than a “Heim drive”, and allow such things as single-stage flight from the Earth’s surface to the surface of any suitable planet or moon in the solar system.

 

This is not to say that, if Heim theory or something similar proves in any significant way correct, that much more advances spaceflight systems will not be built using it, only that, due to its apparently gigantic energy requirements, such systems are far beyond present day engineering capabilities.

[Farsight]

Interesting article. I think I have some understanding of gravity, perhaps only in "toy model" terms, but I can empathise with creating a "gravitational field" out of a magnetic field. However I can't empathise with this:

 

"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".

 

In my mental model, gravity is how we perceive a gradual variation in c. There's no energy delivered, so strictly speaking it isn't actually a force. The kinetic energy of a falling body comes out of the reduced c (only half of it goes into kinetic energy, the other half going into a slight increase in rest mass, see GRAVITY EXPLAINED). If you could somehow contrive an "antigravity" machine, your test object would lose weight, but not mass. It isn't going to shoot up into the sky. It would be like a lead balloon, but bumping around near the ceiling. You still need energy to travel around the Universe. Lots of it. And IMHO there are no "other dimensions" involved, and definitely no faster than light travel. Mind you, the media do sometimes exaggerate.

[TheFaithfulStone]

There's a thread on Heim Theory here.

 

Skip to the end where some of the questions actually get addressed.

 

What I got out of it was that the theory itself was probably flawed, but that it "big idea" - that space-time was quantized and that all four forces (and particles) were interactions between the six dimensions of space-time had some value.

 

TFS

[Pyrotex]

...what you said about the cost of creating and storing antimatter is equally preposterous. I want to see credible sources.

I was privileged to meet the famous physicist (and SF author) Robert Forward back around 1988, in the house of his personal friend, James Oberg (TV authority on the history of the US and Russian space programs).

 

And Dr. Forward just happened to have a presentation that he had just given to the US Air Force and NASA the day before. Over glasses of wine, we discussed his subject: the use of antimatter in space travel. Fascinating!!

 

It has been many years, but I have recalled that evening many times, and so here is what I reconstruct from memory:

 

The use of antimatter (~H2) in rocket propulsion is indeed feasible.

The rocket would use ordinary hydrogen (H2) as the reaction mass.

H2 and ~H2 would be mixed in the thrust chamber at a mixture of about 1,000,000 to 1, to give an efficient thrust.

Cryogenic ~H2 can be stored with reasonable safety, in small amounts--say 1/10 of a gram per storage vault.

 

If the rocket (let's say it carried a dozen humans or two, and their supplies) devoted only 3/4 of its total mass to engines and fuel, then given one gram of ~H2, they could get to Mars in several weeks. Given 10 grams of ~H2, a bigger rocket could visit any planet in the solar system and return in less then one year.

 

Large linear accellerators would use solar power to power beams of protons smashing into Lithium or Boron--the ~H would be captured by magnetic fields, slowed way down, combined into molecules and brought to a standstill at near 0 Kelvins in magnetic bottles (storage vaults).

 

The cost of the ~H2 would essentially be the cost of manufacturing facilities. At known rates of production (here on Earth), we could produce about 1/10 gram of ~H2 per accellerator over a period of 10 years. Ten facilities could produce 1/10 gram per year.

 

The 10 facilities would each mass at say 100,000 tons, and would each cost about $10,000,000,000. (Remember, safety is expensive)

That makes $100,000,000,000 to produce 1 gram of ~H2 over 10 years.

 

Dr. Forward suggested placing the facilities on the Moon, since 1 gram of ~H2 that explodes is equivalent to about a 10 kiloton atomic bomb.

 

At $10,000,000 per ton to get it there, that would be an additional cost of$1,000,000,000,000 just for transportation.

 

Then it would cost $1,100,000,000,000 to make 1 gram in 10 years.

I remember Forward laughing that the AF didn't bat an eyelash at that price.

 

===NOW, this is all reconstructed from memory and could be off by a factor of 5 or 10 from what the good doctor actually said, but it's close enough for our purposes. Antimatter is expensive because it must be made one atom at a time.

[Boerseun]

Interesting cost analysis!

 

Seems the biggest contributor costwise is placing the facilities on the moon, which might be a bit of an overkill. Seeing as we're talking an average nuke per gram of ~1, we can conceivably locate such production facilities in Siberia, somewhere in the northern wastes of Canada, even the Kalahari desert, or Antarctica?

[Jay-qu]

lol Antarctic? so that instead of minimising casulties you would ultimately maximising them! Imgine all the water that would be melted.. Australia has enough desert to hide one of these facilities :doh:

 

What about in orbit, instead of on the moon - it would make refuelling easier