Heim hyperspace thingum

[Kinbote]

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/mg18925331.200

I'm not about to get my hopes up, but can you imagine if this stuff turns out to be right? Pretty stunning implications.

I read elsewhere, somewhere, I forget where, that NASA and/or the Air Force are going to start testing the theory out pretty soon.

[Squirrel]

That's a weird little idea. So they want to use a big electromagnet to turn magnetic energy into gravitational propulsion, and they reckon if they blast it hard enough they can shunt it into another dimension...?

[Nak Nak]

Yes I was reading about that recently, the possibilities are immense.

[Squirrel]

Sounds awesome. However, I would like to call shotgun on NOT being the first person to try it out.

[Nak Nak]

Originally posted by Squirrel
Sounds awesome. However, I would like to call shotgun on NOT being the first person to try it out.

the philadelphia experiment has taught us not to mess with other dimensions!

[Six Ways]

Coolio. From what I could see there, it seems logical and at least theoretically viable. The whole forces from other dimensions thing seems to fit, and actually ties in with something similar I've been thinking about for a while (it occurred to me that if gravity is actually a bending of space then why can't other forces be distortions of space in other dimensions?). Not hugely sure about the 'blasting into other dimensions' bit but there wasn't much info on that. If it's correct, then it's amazing....11 light years in 80 days? I hope so!

[Herr Lipp]

Pfft they've been doing that shit on the Enterprise for years. Nothing new.

[Six Ways]

I think you'll find, Fraser my boy, that the drive you refer to is in fact Warp Drive as opposed to the proposed Hyperdrive. Warp drive propulsion is manifested as a force experienced by normal 4 dimensional space which results in an abnormal curvature and compression of said space. This is caused by a fluctuation in the density of the underlying sub-space exerting said force on normal space.

By comparison, the proposed hyperdrive is quite obviously not just a bend but a tear in normal space, enabling true travel through the sub-space, rather than changing normal space by the influence of sub-space. Thus the two methods vary greatly and only a buffoon, sir, would intermingle the two in said buffoon's largely empty cranial cavity.

[Squirrel]

Originally posted by Six Ways
11 light years in 80 days? I hope so!

I just looked it up, and Alpha Centauri is only about 4.5 light years away. :yes:

[Six Ways]

Yeah, but there's probably not much there.

[Herr Lipp]

Originally posted by Six Ways
I think you'll find, Fraser my boy, that the drive you refer to is in fact Warp Drive as opposed to the proposed Hyperdrive. Warp drive propulsion is manifested as a force experienced by normal 4 dimensional space which results in an abnormal curvature and compression of said space. This is caused by a fluctuation in the density of the underlying sub-space exerting said force on normal space.

By comparison, the proposed hyperdrive is quite obviously not just a bend but a tear in normal space, enabling true travel through the sub-space, rather than changing normal space by the influence of sub-space. Thus the two methods vary greatly and only a buffoon, sir, would intermingle the two in said buffoon's largely empty cranial cavity.

It was a joke, and though one will inure your buffoon comment, one does not condone it! You Batty! :)

[Kinbote]

Originally posted by Six Ways
Yeah, but there's probably not much there.

Why not? From what I've read the effect of B on A, and any potential planet around A, would be minimal, or at least acceptable, in terms of gravity and heat.

[Nak Nak]

Originally posted by Six Ways
Yeah, but there's probably not much there.

I read that Proxima might be interesting.

[Smith Comma John]

Originally posted by Squirrel
Sounds awesome. However, I would like to call shotgun on NOT being the first person to try it out.

i'll go first. it sounds kinda fun to me. :) and i'd rather die being blasted into another dimension than being buried in the ground.

[Six Ways]

Yeah, sure, but wouldn't you rather live than die by being blasted into another dimension?

[Six Ways]

Originally posted by Nak Nak
I read that Proxima might be interesting.

How? I thought Proxima was the most likely to be boring. It's too small and cold to support life.

[Nak Nak]

Originally posted by Six Ways
How? I thought Proxima was the most likely to be boring. It's too small and cold to support life.

Oh blast, I mixed it up with something else ending in -a I think.

[DrHibbert]

I hope all this shit goes down before I die.

[XenonDreams]

Originally posted by Nak Nak
Oh blast, I mixed it up with something else ending in -a I think.

yeah. proxima, i believe is this small little shit star that orbits the main binary system of alpha centuary (all told the whole system is three stars). though i was reading that they've worked out the numbers on binary systems, and you could potentially have terrestial, life bearing planets. apologies to fans of tatoine sunsets, however, as you'd only orbit one star, and the other would be a very bright star in the night sky.



as for the article itself...i dunno, i get kinda nervous when people start pulling dimensions out of there ass just to make everything fit together. of course mainstream physics doesn't look much better compared to the theories here, so who knows.
if that drive technology actually worked, i guess the dimension warping would somehow have to negate the effects of accerlation on the occupants of any such ship if you wanted to go 11 years in 80 days. I'm too lazy to do the calculation, but I'm pretty sure the gees would kill you even if you could muster all that energy while also violating the speed of light.

the irony, it seems, of modern physics is that while biologists have spent a lot of time of late battling claims that there must be the hand of a designer in the making of the universe, physicsts are still desperately seeking to find an elegant design in the very fabric of the universe. i'm more and more inclined to suspect that we live in a random, inelegant universe where there are no truly fundamental particles, the speed of light can never be broken and there is no unity between general relativity and quantum physics. Particularly on this last point, it seems to be taken as a matter of faith (which of course is to contradict what science is all about) that there must be some coherent and unifying principles behind all the forces in the universe, but I have never had anyone explain to me why this is so. Not to say a "theory of everything" is not worth pursuing; both practically and philsophoically, it makes sense that we may as well bang our heads against the wall for the rest of eternity trying to find one rather than give up not sure if there is a basic and realted set of rules governing reality. But it seems like you'll never hear a scientist admit that it could be the case there is no simplicity or elegance at the most basic levels of it all.

Then again maybe I'll being enjoying a vacation in orbit of another star in a decade. Here's to hoping.

[Kinbote]

Proxima might be dull, but Alpha Centauri A and B are, like, two inches tyfurther on. A is a G2 spectral type, a virtual twin of the sun. B is a K1, less inviting, but not without its points of interest. No reason to assume things can't be there (which isn't to say, obviously, that they ARE).

I like this Heim guy, too. Blind, deaf, no hands, paranoid loner who refused to publish for fear of plagiarism. He's like a Heinlein character. Not a specific one, mind you, but I am thusly struck.

[XenonDreams]

Originally posted by Kinbote

I like this Heim guy, too. Blind, deaf, no hands, paranoid loner who refused to publish for fear of plagiarism. He's like a Heinlein character. Not a specific one, mind you, but I am thusly struck.

I think you mean, Heim looks like Hein, and I'm thusly confused.

Not at all like any of his characters.

[Kinbote]

I said not an actual character. I'm thinking, I think, of the incidental fellow who did whatever with the Shipstones in Friday.

[Squirrel]

Originally posted by Six Ways
Yeah, but there's probably not much there.

We'll just build something, it'll be fine. Actually, some scientist should just make up a report about a planet there with an assload of oil inside it. We'd be there by summer. :)

[Squirrel]

Originally posted by Kinbote
I like this Heim guy, too. Blind, deaf, no hands, paranoid loner who refused to publish for fear of plagiarism. He's like a Heinlein character. Not a specific one, mind you, but I am thusly struck.

I liked the sound of this guy too. I love the idea that he may have worked out the secret of interstellar travel, and he just stuck it in a drawer somewhere because... well, fuck you, that's why. :yes:

[Kinbote]

Originally posted by Squirrel
I liked the sound of this guy too. I love the idea that he may have worked out the secret of interstellar travel, and he just stuck it in a drawer somewhere because... well, fuck you, that's why. :yes:

Yeah! And cripes, not just interstellar travel - I think this is, isn't it, also one of them fancy unified field theory things? I'm sure if it's correct there'll be all kinds of other neat consequences.

[Six Ways]

Originally posted by XenonDreams
Cynical, disillusioned technobabble

I don't understand what you mean by most of this; like you doubt there's a link between relativity and quantum....if there's no link, the universe doesn't exist. It's not a case of there might be a link, it's a case of there IS a link because gravity exists and so do subatomic particles. What you're saying is that the universe doesn't exist on one set of rules, that it completely randomly chooses to swap between relativity and quantum mechanics?

My point is, I think you're mixing up reality with our perception of reality. Sure, our theories may be wrong and there may be absolutely no way to reconcile quantum mechanics and relativity - but all that means is that one or both are wrong. It doesn't mean the universe suddenly doesn't have any rules just because we don't know them.

Put it this way; gravity DOES work on the quantum level. We don't know how. Therefore there is a link between the correct quantum theory and the correct relativity theory, but we may not yet have the right theories.

Plus, Occam's Razor indicates that the probability is massively for one basic set of rules from which all the phenomena we experience and call the universe emerges. It's like an equation; 1+6=7, but then 1+2-2+2-2+2-2+6=7 too. The 2s cancel down, and there's no reason for it to be more complex than it's most basic form. It's a fundamental idea of thermodynamics and entropy. I also think you've misunderstood the idea of where biology is going and where physics is going. They are in fact trying to tell us the same thing, not different things. You say that biologists are trying to tell us nothing consciously ordered the universe, and that physics is trying to tell us the universe is ordered. These are not mutually exclusive ideas, there's obvious room for compromise.

In fact, what each is trying to say is that the universe is very, very simple at the basic level, which ends up in complex behaviour on the macro scale. Evolution is based on simplicity, not chaos; biologists aren't saying we live in a crazy world, just that a creator is not necessary for an ordered system of evolution. Simple things following simple rules leads to complex things with complex behaviour.

[XenonDreams]

I didn't say there are no rules. I said there is no reason to suspect there is anything simple or unifying at a fundemental level. Our statisitical sample of universe's is one, and so far we can't even tell interpert that single data point. I perfectly understand how simple fundamentals can lead to complex macros. My only point is there is no reason to assume simple fundamentals until we've got a falsifible theory that experiment doesn't succeed in falisfying.


T

[Six Ways]

Well, the fundamentals might not be 'simple' as you put it, but they must be unified; otherwise science doesn't work. It'd be just like having a god, since we would never know what was going to happen at all as it would be completely arbitrary. In other words, consider a situation where god does exist - nothing is science since we can never say if something is 'possible' or whether god just decided to make a miracle which breaks all laws of physics. In the same way, if the universe was totally random and arbitrary, without a unified underlying set of laws nothing is predictable and science wouldn't have been as successful as it has been. The fact that science, by a huge, huge majority of instances, works, points very strongly towards unified and consistent fundamentals.

[Bumblebee mouth]

So why is it necessary for all of the forces to have a similar origin? Why can't gravity be due to spacetime distortions and the others be due to photons and gluons and whatnot?

I've got to say, the idea that the electromagnetic, weak, and strong forces arise from distortions in other dimensions is a really cool idea. Just like mass distorts spacetime, maybe charge distorts space+extra dimension. It's times like this I wish I understood modern physics better.

[DrHibbert]

Originally posted by Bumblebee mouth
It's times like this I wish I understood modern physics better. Yeah, you've got a lot of work to do. lol

[Six Ways]

Originally posted by Bumblebee mouth
So why is it necessary for all of the forces to have a similar origin? Why can't gravity be due to spacetime distortions and the others be due to photons and gluons and whatnot?

I wasn't suggesting that they had to originate from the same place, just that they would appear to have some common laws that govern them....the distortion of spacetime that manifests itself as gravity could well come from the same source as whatever manifests itself as gluons etc. What I mean is I do believe there is a common origin, but it may well be deeper than just all of them originating in extra dimensions.

The thing is, gravity, despite being a curvature of spacetime, is still believed to have exchange particles (gravitons). If this is true, then why can't the other forces believed to operate via exchange particles also be dimensionally based.

Personally, I'm not sure about the whole particle model of forces...I know exchange particles have been found but the whole theory seems a bit dodgy to me, and seems to have a lot of holes. I know Xenon Dreams said there's no real reason to believe that fundamental laws need to be particularly elegant or simple, but exchange particles do seem needlessly messy to me, at least in their current formulation. Suffice it to say, this dimensions idea does strike me as being simpler and like I say fits with my own thought processes. That's not to say that exchange particles don't exist, since they seem to, but I would not be surprised if it turned out that exchange particles are in fact a byproduct of forces rather than their mediators.

[Bumblebee mouth]

Originally posted by Six Ways
I wasn't suggesting that they had to originate from the same place, just that they would appear to have some common laws that govern them....the distortion of spacetime that manifests itself as gravity could well come from the same source as whatever manifests itself as gluons etc. What I mean is I do believe there is a common origin, but it may well be deeper than just all of them originating in extra dimensions.

The thing is, gravity, despite being a curvature of spacetime, is still believed to have exchange particles (gravitons). If this is true, then why can't the other forces believed to operate via exchange particles also be dimensionally based.

Personally, I'm not sure about the whole particle model of forces...I know exchange particles have been found but the whole theory seems a bit dodgy to me, and seems to have a lot of holes. I know Xenon Dreams said there's no real reason to believe that fundamental laws need to be particularly elegant or simple, but exchange particles do seem needlessly messy to me, at least in their current formulation. Suffice it to say, this dimensions idea does strike me as being simpler and like I say fits with my own thought processes. That's not to say that exchange particles don't exist, since they seem to, but I would not be surprised if it turned out that exchange particles are in fact a byproduct of forces rather than their mediators.

There was an interesting article in Scientific American recently about the Stardard Model of Elementary Particles. I didn't get a chance to read the whole thing. The model is fairly sound, but a new model may takes it's place in the near future. Gravitons have not yet been observed, and (please correct me if I'm wrong) I believe they were only postulated to make gravity fit into the Standard Model. Anyway, I don't necessarily disagree with you, I just wanted to play devil's advocate. Are you familiar with Feynman diagrams? Those are something I need to read up more on. I don't know very much about how the elementary particles are supposed to mediate forces. There was a brief description of it in that article and it was related to Feynman diagrams. Anyway...

[Six Ways]

Originally posted by Bumblebee mouth
There was an interesting article in Scientific American recently about the Stardard Model of Elementary Particles. I didn't get a chance to read the whole thing. The model is fairly sound, but a new model may takes it's place in the near future. Gravitons have not yet been observed, and (please correct me if I'm wrong) I believe they were only postulated to make gravity fit into the Standard Model. Anyway, I don't necessarily disagree with you, I just wanted to play devil's advocate. Are you familiar with Feynman diagrams? Those are something I need to read up more on. I don't know very much about how the elementary particles are supposed to mediate forces. There was a brief description of it in that article and it was related to Feynman diagrams. Anyway...

I'm aware of the invention of the graviton, yes....it's one of the reasons I'm not so happy with the particle model.

As for Feynmann diagrams...they wont help you understand anything, they're basically useless as far as I can tell. It's just a way of graphically displaying particles coming close, exchanging particles and deflecting from each other or converging. They don't help you work anything out, they just display information you already know. Basically, they just show the state of the particles before, during and after interaction.

[Bumblebee mouth]

I'm aware of the invention of the graviton, yes....it's one of the reasons I'm not so happy with the particle model.

As for Feynmann diagrams...they wont help you understand anything, they're basically useless as far as I can tell. It's just a way of graphically displaying particles coming close, exchanging particles and deflecting from each other or converging. They don't help you work anything out, they just display information you already know. Basically, they just show the state of the particles before, during and after interaction.

That's what I thought the gist of them was. I wasn't sure if there was anything deeper to them. Is the Higgs Boson also made up? If I recall correctly it hasn't been observed yet.

[Six Ways]

Not in the same way....the Higgs is a fairly essential part of the current theory. The invention of the graviton is fairly arbitrary; it's only really necessary conceptually to make the theory sit right, whereas the higgs is mathematically necessary. Without the higgs or something equivalent pretty much the whole theory falls apart.

[Bumblebee mouth]

Not in the same way....the Higgs is a fairly essential part of the current theory. The invention of the graviton is fairly arbitrary; it's only really necessary conceptually to make the theory sit right, whereas the higgs is mathematically necessary. Without the higgs or something equivalent pretty much the whole theory falls apart.

I boned up a little on it. Basically, in the theory particles have no mass. But clearly some particles do, so Peter Higgs invented something called the Higgs field which permeates all of space. Due to wave-particle duality, this field must have an associated particle, which is called the Higgs Boson. The interaction of other particles with the field gives them their mass. So as you said, it's a necessity for the theory. Just out of curiosity, are you in any way a physicist, or are you just like me and find this stuff interesting?

[Blue River]

Too true

We'll just build something, it'll be fine. Actually, some scientist should just make up a report about a planet there with an assload of oil inside it. We'd be there by summer. :)

[Six Ways]

I boned up a little on it. Basically, in the theory particles have no mass. But clearly some particles do, so Peter Higgs invented something called the Higgs field which permeates all of space. Due to wave-particle duality, this field must have an associated particle, which is called the Higgs Boson. The interaction of other particles with the field gives them their mass. So as you said, it's a necessity for the theory. Just out of curiosity, are you in any way a physicist, or are you just like me and find this stuff interesting?

That stuff's correct, yes, and I am definitely a physicist. Or I will be, I'm in my first year doing a physics degree. What are you by profession anyway?

[Bumblebee mouth]

That stuff's correct, yes, and I am definitely a physicist. Or I will be, I'm in my first year doing a physics degree. What are you by profession anyway?

Ph.D.? I'm a biochemist. Are you doing your degree in theoretical physics?

[Six Ways]

I'm just in the very first year at the moment, but I'm definitely doing a masters, and might do a PhD, dunno. And no, I'm not doing theoretical specifically, but some of that stuff interests me a lot. Theory of everything type stuff, you know.