The topic for this post is "Space," but it could also be "Media Criticism." New space blogger Eric Collins emails:

You may have noticed the post on HobbySpace about the so-called hyperspace drive. The linked-to article from the Scotsman is annoying on several different levels. I was really disappointed that this article was making it onto several highly visible blogs (including slashdot).

I was preparing a long blog rant about this incredibly speculative, bordering on crackpot, theory when I finally came across a link to the original article posted at New Scientist. This article is much more informative and manages to sufficiently address the speculative nature of the proposal. So, rather than blog about it myself, I decided that I would just try to make sure people were aware of the New Scientist article. And, since your blog is much more visible than mine, I figured you could probably get the word out much more effectively than I could.

Yes, I was going to post something about this, particularly after Glenn picked up on it, but I haven't had time, so thanks to Eric.

The strangest thing (of several strange things) that jumped out at me about the Scotsman article to me was this paragraph:

...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.

Huh?

Even ignoring the mumbo jumbo about magnetic fields and different dimensions, this is the equivalent of saying "the solution to land-based transportation is to raise the speed limit from seventy MPH to 500 MPH," ignoring the fact that no one has a car that can drive this fast. There is no description in here of how one goes faster than our "dimension's" speed of light, even if the speed of light is faster. The problem isn't speed limits, it's propulsion. Hell, if we could approach the speed of light here, that would be a huge breakthrough. Once we figure out how to do that, then we can start worrying about how to increase the speed of light.

This is another example of how science and technology stories can get mangled by reporters who don't have any idea what they're writing about. And the New Scientist piece is, indeed, much more interesting (and describes what actually is a new form of propulsion, by converting electromagnetic forces to gravitational forces), to those who (unlike the Scotsman reporter) are numerate and literate in basic physics.

Thanks for the update, Rand. I saw the Scotsman piece via Slashdot yesterday, and was immediately both very interested and very skeptical, because of the lack of details. The New Scientist article gives a lot more detail and makes it sound a lot less "out there."

As for the "hyperdrive allowing FTL travel" bit, I was irresistibly reminded of a certain short-short SF story I read years ago, which punctured a certain basic assumption about all SFnal hyperdrives. Why do we always assume that the "speed limit" in hyperspace will be faster?

The link to Eric's web page sends me back to transterrestrial. Is it another blonde joke?

When I read that portion of the article I immediately thought of the notion that there could be an infinite number of universes and that each one has there own physical laws and realities. One would have to be extremely lucky to just so happen to find the one universe where the speed of light is faster yet all the other laws of physics were just such that your magnetic field and space ship didn't just immediately disintegrate.

So, ignoring the hyperspace part for a minute and just looking at its use as a magnetogravitonic(?) sublight engine, what's the general prognosis? Feasible (at least, something over 1%)? Million-to-one worth throwing a little money at anyways just for the science results?

For those of us without New Scientist subscriptions, could someone summarize the math and scales involved? Are we talking something that requires a tokomak-sized magnetic field, or a carrier's nuke plant to operate? Or something the size of a Winnebago with wings? Assuming we hit the cosmic lottery and the concept works, how hard would it be to build operational hardware?

Since this requires speculative physics beyond the standard model, and for which there is no evidence, the chance of it being correct is very small. Almost all speculative theories in physics (and elsewhere) end up being wrong.

Just finished reading the New Scientist article. What is it with these German-speaking patent clerks? They seem to have a lot of time on their hands!

The real kick here is that if you can generate gravity via electromagnatism, then you have a reactionless drive.

Even if you can only generate 0.01g of acceleration, a nuclear reactor powered craft would be able to cross the solar system in very short time - continuous acceleration is very, very cool.

If you want the hard facts. There is a AIAA paper (AIAA 2002-4094) on the concept.

Okay, so, extremely strong magnetic field = access to extradimensional space.

How do objects with extremely strong magnetic fields (i.e. pulsars and magnetars) fit into this. Why don't they 'drop' into extradimensional space?

Either Droscher or Heim made the comment that "this is not anti-gravity, but a new set of forces previously unknown". If it would only be useful for moving mass into space without the usual orbital velocities, that would be a good thing. But that z-pinch machine at Sandia uses a hellacious amount of power.

I believe all this was covered in The Wounded Sky by Diane Duane...one of the first Star Trek novels which hypothesized that a ship traveling at high sub-light speeds would transport itself into "DeSitter space" where the high sub-light speed is actually many times the speed of light....warping space....warp speed. Its a viable theory, using a relativity loop-hole to define higher than light speed.

What, no wormhole?

How very un-Stargate. ;-p

Given that, according to the article, the Heim theory produces masses of elementary particles in much better agreement with experiment than does the standard theory it does seem there might be something to this. Let's hope so.

Mike

I have read the paper and would say that the chances of this working are very low. That said, these people are definitely not crackpots.

They say that their theory predicts the masses of all particles to a very high precision and they propose an experiment to verify the theory. They also want somebody to double check their math.

The theory says that there are not four but six fundamental interactions, and that under very special circumstances photons can be converted to "gravitophotons", which is the 5th of the 6 interactions they propose.

So basically when you have a magnetic field of a certain strength and some other stuff, you get a force on your "drive" because of adsorption of the gravitophotons by protons and neutrons.

This would violate every single physical law (conservation of momentum and energy, thermodynamics etc.), so the chances of this working are very low indeed. But if the underlying theory does indeed predict the masses of all particles, then it is certainly worth investigating.

Heim is hardly a crackpot. I hope the new publicity of his work encourages others to seriously review his ideas more.

Hi All

Well "New Scientist" has done everyone a service by bringing Heim's work to the fore again. He was known and respected by a lot of greats in physics, but his disfigurement in a rocket accident kept him from the limelight.

That being said his ideas sound a bit like string theory but with the fundamental unit being quantised area, metrons, instead of strings floating in a quantum void. It could almost be likened to cellular automata theories of space-time that have floated around for the last 30 years.

If others, like Droescher et. al., can get into his maths and make it clearer for the rest of us then maybe it'll get the fair hearing it deserves. Heim knew his mathematical physics - and was by no means a semi-literate crank or crackpot using high school maths.

Besides antigrav and hyperdrive are worth a few sessions on the Z-machine to prove or disprove aren't they???

The real kick here is that if you can generate gravity via electromagnatism, then you have a reactionless drive.

Do realize that if that putative drive works the same in all reference frames, unless the power it consumes is very large (that is, the same as a photon rocket of the same thrust) it amounts to a perpetual motion machine of the first kind, since you can find a reference frame in which the change in kinetic energy is greater than the energy consumed.

Actually the theory does not predict the particle massed correctly. The electron mass is 27 standard deviations from the measured value in experiments!

"Hell, if we could approach the speed of light here, that would be a huge breakthrough. Once we figure out how to do that, then we can start worrying about how to increase the speed of light."

I think it's the hyperdrive has the effect of reducing the ships mass to zero. this means it will travel at the speed of light by default.

Does any one else remember the Golden Age of science fiction? This hyperdrive would appear to be James Blish's Spindizzy Drive.....

Guys ,
In the first place , it isn't even just a Magnetic field which is being used , but a combination of a magnetic field and an Electro-magnetic field which collide or , I guess " INTERACT " would be a better way to say it . I'm thinking it sort of rips a hole between the dimensions allowing for a spacecraft to pass through .
My big question is this ... When you turn the drive off WHY WOULDN'T YOU REMAIN IN THAT DIMENSION ??!!!
Since you got the necessary energy to get there why wouldn't you have to loose an equivalent amount of energy to leave there ??!!! Spec.